Inevitably there will come a time-after a few years or many-when each woman will be forced to contemplate her chances of emotional and physical survival if she goes back to her country of origin. It all depends on the level of happiness the woman experiences with her husband, the amount of religious/cultural saturation she has undergone, and whether she has a mind of her own and any sense or not. They don’t obtain social security numbers for their children, nor do they in any other way register their offspring as American, British or so on. Some women all but disappear from Western memory. Yes, Sir, and those were the few who decided to show up! It’s easy to melt into an Arab country when you’re a Western female married to a Saudi citizen. I didn’t realize there were so many of you,” he stammered. The Consul General came into the room and blinked at us. The meeting had to do with security precautions during the war and the infrastructure whereby volunteers would be assigned to call a list of four or five people whenever there was some news or recommendation to impart. We all waited, wrapped in our abayas and turhas, for the Consul General to address us.
The less financially capable Western wives must depend on husbands or sons or hire freelance drivers who come to their houses by arrangement.ĭuring the first Gulf War (1990-91) under Bush Senior, I went to the American Consulate in Jeddah and found myself amidst a crowd of other American ladies married to Saudis. They have gotten used to the poor drivers imported from Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka or Egypt who take them to their children’s schools, to shops, or to their friends’ homes. Every day they put on their black cloaks-called abayas – and their black scarves – called turhas – to go out in the cars they are not permitted to drive.
A great number of Western women-running into hidden hundreds if not thousands-live in Saudi Arabia, married to Saudi men.
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