It’s 1997, and supposedly we’re all civilized human
beings. Supposedly we all care about all human beings the world over. We
give a show of indignation at the atrocities committed against foreign
peoples, but we never seem able to get beyond that point. What is wrong
with us? We are the victims of indifference toward that which does not
affect our lives, lives that we take for granted every day of every
year. Well, below is the example of the day in the life of a woman, any
average woman, in Saudi Arabia.
It is High Noon Saturday, the first day of the week according
to the Islamic Calendar. Mona (we will call her that for posterity’s
sake) is still sleeping. She is still sleeping because there is nothing
else for her to do except briefly check on the kids. Her husband is off
at work and she, being a woman, is stuck in the house with nothing to do
but sleep the day away.
At 2:00 p.m. Mona might watch television or gossip with her
friends on the telephone and drink tea. There really isn’t much she
can do because she is a woman. She does not get in the car and drive to
the grocery store or the mall, and Mona does not use the family car to
take the kids for a pleasant afternoon in the park. Her kids are too
young to go to school yet, so they play indoors all day or they watch
cartoon videos.
Mona, by the way, is eight and a half months pregnant with her
fifth child. It has been a troublesome pregnancy because she has
experienced false labor three times. Today, at 3:37 p.m. she goes into
that painful labor again, only this time it is NOT false. Mona starts to
cry with the pain. She wants to call her husband, but he works in a
refinery almost two hours away. What is she to do? The neighbor’s wife
cannot drive her to the hospital because they do not allow women to
drive in her country, so, the only thing that can be done is to send her
neighbor’s son, who happens to be home sick from school, to fetch a
taxi.
The young boy hurries to fulfill his task. He returns almost
thirty (30) minutes later with a taxi (it seems that none of the drivers
wanted the job of rushing a pregnant woman, who also happened to be in
labor, to the hospital!). The taxi driver that has come to Mona’s
house has done so only because the little boy decided not to tell him
the truth of the mission after so many rejections. However, upon
arriving at the home, the driver sees the VERY pregnant Mona making her
way to the car and promptly starts to call to God for mercy as he runs
down the street away from the scene.
Unfortunately for the young boy, he is now in the back seat of
this taxi with Mona, who has begun to give birth, hospital or no
hospital! All that the boy can do now is to help Mona as much as he can
with the birth of her child. His mother, thinking the two of them off to
the hospital, is upstairs watching Mona’s other children. Amid Mona’s
screams of agony and his own nerve-wracking fear, the baby makes its way
into the world despite anyone’s distress.
- After the birth of Mona’s third bouncing baby boy, the
young boy helps her make her way back into the house where his mother
is almost faint at learning that her son has just helped with a
childbirth in a taxicab! The boy’s mother finds Mona’s husband’s
number and calls him to notify him of the arrival of his newest son.
She gives him no details, but he rushes home, scoops up Mona and the
baby and continues to the hospital at warp speed. All is well.
Eventually.
