So it is with some relief that we meet at the Ritz Hotel in Chicago, where
Alsanea erupts from the lift, a whirlwind of designer labels, perfect manicure
and lipgloss, consulting her Gerald Genta watch (a white saucer, inset with
diamonds). She looks fabulously glitzy, as you would expect from the writer of
a novel widely hyped as 'Saudi-style Sex and the City'. The image is complete
when she opens her Louis Vuitton handbag to itemise her three mobile phones.
'This one is for my American chip. See, it has two cameras! This one is for my
Saudi chip; this one is a pocket PC.'
At 25, she is confident and outspoken and has the hauteur of someone who grew
up with two maids and drivers. 'Very painful,' she says of the photoshoot that
morning. The shoes? I volunteer, pointing at her high heels. 'Not just the
shoes. She [the photographer] is trying to make me kick up my legs. I say, I am
a writer, a grade-A student and a dentist, so I should be a little bit formal.'
But she is also hard to pin down. The daughter of liberal parents, she took to
wearing the hijab (headscarf) three years ago (Louis Vuitton is among her
favourites) and says she was late for our interview because she had to pray.
But then she breaks off our conversation at one point to say, 'Nice dress!'
when she sees a woman wearing a micro-mini with deep cleavage. I assume she is
being ironic. But no: 'I'm going to buy it!' Moreover, she is set to be a
literary star, with rights to Girls of Riyadh sold throughout the Arab
world, and in 11 countries in the West. And yet, she is emphatic: teeth are her
career. A dentistry graduate from Riyadh, she is doing a two-year postgraduate
course at the University of Illinois, and plans to set up in private practice
in Saudi Arabia. 'Being an author is not as respected [in Saudi],' she
explains. 'It is not a proper job. It doesn't pay.'
It is precisely these contradictions that make Girls of Riyadh so
absorbing. Set among the city's elite 'velvet class', the novel chronicles the
loves and dreams of four privileged young women and their tug-of-war between
obedience and rebellion in a land of conservative Islam and glitzy shopping
malls. Relayed by an anonymous narrator via weekly e-mails to an internet
chatroom, we encounter the various Riyadh types. Gamrah is traditional and
naive ('the majority of girls at my school were like Gamrah,' Alsanea says,
'happy for their families to choose who they marry and thinking that once
married, they're going to have a pink, happy life').
advertisementMetropolitan Sadeem (she jets off to London for the summer where
she eats sushi at Itsu) has everything except what she really wants - to marry
the man she loves. Michelle is Westernised (her mother is American), sceptical
and ends up working in the media. Lamees is popular, cool, clever and
'gym-toned', but not a pure-bred - her grandmother is Egyptian, so under
Saudi's strict laws governing which class and tribe can marry each other, she
also finds love treacherous terrain.
Most of the girls look like rock-solid citizens in this stronghold of Islam,
but in the privacy of their homes (often vast sprawling affairs with home
cinemas and swimming-pools) they throw parties (women only, of course), eat
Burger King, watch cable television (Sex and the City is a big favourite), and
live an undercover life that is an extraordinary 'pot-pourri' of West and East.
They flirt with boys on the internet in Arabish (a mix of Arabic and English),
send their drivers to pick up Frappuccinos from Starbucks, talk about 'front
bumpers' and 'back bumpers' (breasts and bottoms) and reveal a world where
women hide more than their desires under their long black abayas. Gamrah's
treat after her divorce is to go to Lebanon for a cheering 'tinsmithing'
session: a makeover procedure that begins with a nose job and ends with a
chemical peel. 'Cosmetic surgery is forbidden in Islam, but everyone does it,'
Alsanea says. 'Girls have nose jobs and boob jobs and older women get
facelifts.'
In Saudi Arabia women are not permitted to drive, divorcees are social outcasts
and brides are not even expected to sign their name on marriage certificates -
a thumbprint will do. 'Saudi is where Islam started,' Alsanea observes. 'It is
the country that has Mecca, the country where all Muslims go when they are on
pilgrimage, so we're always going to be the number-one country in Islam. We
want to be the best Muslims in the whole world, and sometimes we carry it to
extremes.'
She is most annoyed by the strict rules that govern marriage. 'In Saudi, girls
are not free to pick their own partners. The family chooses.' Only one of the
four girls in the novel marries happily. 'I would say it was even less than 25
per cent in real life,' Alsanea adds. 'I want people to know these are issues
we go through, and we never talk openly, just because we're raised in a way
that everything brings shame. I used to get so angry with all the books that
didn't write about how we were feeling, how we're living our life in Saudi
nowadays. Most novels describe Saudi 50 years ago. They talk about when girls
were not educated: there are no cell phones, no internet, no description of
what modern life is really like.
'What you have in Saudi now is a society that is changing. I'm talking about a
life that starts in 1999 - when the internet arrived. It exposed young people
to what is happening outside Saudi, not just what you're taught at home or at
school. You have a whole world to learn from and you tend to compare what you
have with what others have.'
The book struck an immediate chord. First published in Lebanon two years ago -
'all Saudi books that are controversial start in Lebanon, just because we have
censorship for books in Saudi' - it became a cult hit. Within days,
black-market copies started appearing in Saudi. The trickle turned to a flood,
and three or four months later Alsanea approached the Ministry of Information
in Riyadh for official permission to publish there. 'I got it a few days
later.' As well as now being available throughout the Arab world, the book has
picked up a high-profile endorsement (Ghazi Al-Quasaibi, the celebrated Saudi
author and former ambassador to the UK, wrote the prologue and praised it as
'worth reading') and secured a place in the top 10 of the German bestseller
list. It is now poised to slice through the rest of Europe and the States.
'It is a book that shed light on what was going on,' explains Khaled Al-Maeena,
the editor of Arab News, who thinks that novelty is what lies behind the
success. 'It is a very important book,' echoes Fana Halasa, 44, a former banker
with Citibank who lives in Jordan, where Girls of Riyadh caused a
furore. 'We knew deep inside that in Saudi Arabia women are living a different
lifestyle, especially the girls,' she says. 'They do everything undercover, so
we were not shocked about that, but we were shocked about the detail. They have
the money, they can go anywhere they want in the world, but when they want to
come back home, they have to behave a certain way because society is asking
them to do this. In Jordan women are freer. We can choose our mates and have
the freedom to go out.'
Alsanea was born in Kuwait, the youngest of six children, into a family of
relatively modest means. Her father was an editor and a journalist who worked
for the Ministry of Information. 'He always said, "I don't have any money to
give you. Your inheritance will be your education." My father wanted us to be
different. He wanted us to be more open-minded than others. He raised us to be
very strong and independent.' When he died from a heart attack the family moved
to Saudi to be near their relatives. Alsanea remembers that on the plane her
sister Rasha was forced to put on the abaya and the hijab. 'I was still a
child, so it was easier for me, but Rasha underwent an enormous culture shock.
It took her a long time to resign herself to the idea that, for women, covering
up is a fact of life in Saudi.'
Her eldest brother, 18 years her senior, who had just graduated from medical
school, took over the role of supporting the family, and that is the way it has
stayed ever since. 'My brothers raised and supported me and so now anything I
earn isn't just for me, it's for all of us. My brothers put a lot of effort
into me and my sister because they knew that it takes courage for a girl in
Saudi to be confident.'
Alsanea says she has always written. 'My father used to say I was his little
author. I used to enter writing contests and win, so I always knew I was gifted
and I had this dream of writing my own book.' But the medical profession is
high status in Saudi and the gene is rampant among her siblings: three are
doctors, two are dentists. 'I wanted to make my mum proud and all writers in
the Arab world are broke, so I thought I'd become a dentist and do writing on
the side.'
She is well read and Girls of Riyadh shows the encyclopaedic spread of
her interests: she quotes Balzac, Helen Keller, Socrates and Mark Twain, as
well as Arab poets and authors. The strongest voice that rises from the pages
is that of the character Cher, the Hollywood rich kid played by Alicia
Silverstone in the film Clueless. 'A big influence! It was my teenager movie.'
A greater influence came with her enrolment at King Saud University in Riyadh.
'I was suddenly exposed to this bigger world of girls from other cities in
Saudi. I saw Shi'ite girls, poor girls, it was just an eye-opening experience.
I thought that girls' society in Saudi Arabia would be something really
interesting to write about.' The book took her six years to complete; she wrote
mostly in the evening and during the summer break. At one point she lost
interest, and wrote nothing for a year. 'My sister, she is like my soulmate, my
best friend, she read a chapter and said, "Rajaa, you have got to finish this!
Believe me, no one has written anything like this!" I said I was too busy at
school and she said, "I'll help you!" ' Already a qualified dentist herself,
Rasha took on the burden of Alsanea's course work to enable her sister to
write.
Is the novel autobiographical? 'I'm not as crazy as those girls,' she says.
'I'm not like, I must go and party every day. Everything happening around me
was material for the book. I would write down stuff I heard on Post-It notes
and stick them by my bed.' If pressed and asked to name the character she is
most like, she says Lamees. 'She is the funniest, good at dancing. I am a very
good dancer - belly dancing...'
One of the intriguing things about Girls of Riyadh is that despite the
men being absolute shits - two, for example, drop their girls for being 'the
wrong sort', while Sadeem's husband-in-waiting pushes her to offer 'more of her
femininity' than ever before and then promptly dumps her the next day ('he was
testing her limits,' Alsanea explains, 'and she failed') - the book is shot
through with a very romantic view of relationships (with some rather sickly
touches: Faisal's present for Michelle on Valentine's Day - a Western import
banned by the religious police - is a teddy bear with diamond earrings that
plays Barry Manilow). The girls yearn with an intensity that can come only from
denial.
'We're separated from boys for such a long time,' Alsanea confirms. 'We're not
raised to be friends or classmates and often are only exposed to each other
after the age of 25.' But she is quick to defend Saudi men. 'They are victims
just as much as women. They are ruled by traditions that were set for them by
their great-great-grandparents. It's not like we're suppressed because of men.
We're suppressed because the whole society is suppressed and that is very, very
sad.'
She admits that she is very romantic: her heart's desire is to marry the man of
her dreams. What would he be like? 'I don't think I will ever find him,' she
sighs. 'He has to be dark - men from Jeddah or the west coast have fairer skin
with a pinky hue.' She finds this utterly repellent. Ditto men with ponytails,
a style of growing dominance back home. 'It's like, "No, no, no, don't get that
from West!" He has to be very funny, very smart and very witty. He has to be
very different and supportive of me. He would be tall, because I'm short [5ft
2in]. He would look good in a suit, wear nice shoes and nice socks.'
Nice socks? 'Not white cotton. Silk, maybe Gucci or CK. Navy-blue towards
blackish, because if you're wearing a thobe [men's traditional white robe] and
you sit down, your socks are always on show.' She groans. 'I'm being so
shallow!'
Since last year, Alsanea has been living in a house in downtown Chicago with
her sister and brother (both doing Masters in dentistry, too - 'they're doing
braces, I'm doing root canal. Very painful!') and her brother's wife. Next
summer she plans to move back to Saudi, open up a private practice and carry on
writing.
Of course, far away here in Chicago, she must feel more liberated?
Surprisingly, the answer is no. 'Society is built in a way that gives females
some freedom in Saudi,' she frowns, listing all the things she can't do here:
get her hair done, because there are no women-only salons and 'I can't take off
my scarf without worrying there is some guy around'; sunbathe (because the few
friends she has here do not live in apartments with private pools, or have
private beaches, like at home); or glam up in dresses by Elie Saab and dance at
friends' houses. 'So, I feel bad because here I don't get to wear everything I
would like to wear just because there is no segregation.' Segregation, she
insists, is not all bad. 'You have your girlfriends and you're partying and
having dinner parties, doing what you want, it's just that it's all female.'
There are compensations: Macy's, the department store where she bought the
zebra-print kaftan she is wearing today ($400), and McDonald's. 'I put on 20lb
when I moved here. It's the lifestyle! I come home, I'm very tired. I just want
to go and buy something ready-made and yummy.'
The upshot? 'I am appreciating what I had at home more than ever before. I'm
not saying I want mixed bathing or dancing because now I wear the hijab, I like
it this way. But I want to give a message to Saudi that it's not as bad as they
think for females to drive or have careers or be divorced. And that most of
all, families shouldn't be involved with marriages as much as they are. I feel
I have this gift of knowing how to talk about things and I am not an outsider.
I'm one of them. I feel what they're feeling. I want them to change. '
And with that she heads off to watch a DVD, pick up a McDonald's, and pray to
Allah the Mighty. 'I have the prayer times flagged up on my computer.'
The Telegraph
