Jean P Sasson - [Princess 02] (12 page)

Unsure of what my concerns were, I had difficulty expressing myself. "Have you noticed your daughter Amani today?" I asked. "Amani is worrying me. I feel that a strange mood is oppressing our daughter. I do not like it."

In a weary tone, my husband insisted, "Sultana, cease to view danger where there is none. She is at Haj. Do you not believe that all pilgrims are engrossed in special thought?" He paused and then added in a malicious tone, "Other than you, Sultana."

Kareem then stood silent, but he gave me a withering look that spoke clearly of his desire for solitude.

Irritated, I left Kareem in his library. I searched for Maha, but she had retired to her bedroom and was sleeping. Abdullah was not around. He had gone with his Auntie Sara to their villa. I felt terribly alone in the world.

I decided that I would go to the source of my worry. I walked to Amani's bedroom, and when I heard the mumbling of her voice, I put my ear to the door and tried to understand the words she was saying. My daughter was praying, and her voice pleaded with God with an urgency that awakened my memory of another I had eavesdropped upon from behind a locked door. Suddenly the memory of that other voice in another time reminded me why I was so tormented with anxiety. Lawand!

Amani was praying with the same sort of isolated longing I had often heard from the locked room of her cousin Lawand!

The atmosphere that had surrounded Amani from the moment of our participation in the first ritual of the day had seemed vaguely familiar. Now, on this day, Lawand's insanity had re-emerged in the chilling intensity of Amani's eyes. I told myself that Amani was going the way her cousin Lawand!

While still a teenager, Lawand, who was a first cousin of Kareem on his father's side of the family, had attended school in Geneva, Switzerland. Her parents' decision to send her abroad for schooling proved a grievous mistake. While in Geneva, Lawand disgraced her family by becoming involved with several young men. In addition to her sexual involvements, Lawand became addicted to cocaine.

While moving secretly out of her room one evening, Lawand was captured by the head mistress, who called her father in Saudi Arabia, demanding that he come and collect his wayward child.

When the family found out about their daughter's activities, Lawand's father and two brothers flew to Geneva and took the girl to a Swiss drug rehabilitation center. Six months later, when her treatment was completed, she was brought back to Saudi Arabia. The family was exhausted with shame and fury, and as punishment they decided to confine Lawand to a small apartment in their home until they were satisfied that she had realized her reckless offense to Muslim life.

When I heard the verdict, I could think of little but Sameera, the best friend of my sister Tahani.

Sameera had been a brilliant and beautiful young woman when she was deprived of her freedom so long ago and forced into the dark prison of the woman’s room. While Lawand would one day secure her freedom, it seemed that only death would free Sameera from her incarceration. 

Within my limited sphere of expectations, I found myself thinking that Lawand was fortunate her father was not the unfeeling sort who could confine his daughter to life imprisonment, or to death by stoning, and I experienced sad relief instead of passionate anger.

How fortunate is the human being who has no memories, for memories often remold the victim of oppression into the image of their oppressor! With terrifying seriousness, I listened as the men of my family mouthed the law of obedience, saying that the peaceful structure of our conservative society rested upon the perfect obedience of children to their parents and wives to their husbands.

Without that obedience, anarchy would rule the day. The men of my family firmly stated that Lawand's punishment was fair.

I visited the family on many occasions, listening with profound sympathy to the grief of Lawand's mother and her sisters. Often, the women of the family spoke with Lawand through the locked door.

Initially, Lawand begged for forgiveness and pleaded with her mother to set her free.

Sara and I smuggled notes of encouragement to our cousin, advising her to recall the wisdom of silence and to read the books and play the games female members of the family placed through the small opening that had been constructed for the delivery of food and for emptying the pail containing bodily wastes. But Lawand had little interest in occupying her time with quiet pursuits.

After several weeks of confinement, Lawand returned to God and began to pray, declaring that she had seen the error of her ways and swearing to her parents that she would never again commit a single wrong.

Taking great pity on her daughter, Lawand's mother beseeched her husband to set the child free, saying that she felt certain Lawand would now return to the pious life.

Lawand's father suspected his daughter of deceit, since he had told her that her confinement would end when her mind once again embraced the proper thoughts of a believing Muslim.

Before long, Lawand prayed all her waking moments, failing even to respond to our worried voices. I could easily see that Lawand was hallucinating, for she spoke to God in her prayers on an equal basis, shouting that she would represent him on earth, teaching his followers a new moral code of which only she, Lawand, had knowledge.

After one particular visit, when Lawand's mother and I overheard her madly rejoicing in the confines of her room, I told Kareem that I was certain Lawand had lost her mind.

Kareem spoke with his father, who in turn visited his brother's home. As the eldest brother of Lawand's father, Kareem's father had authority over the family. On my father-in-law's advice, Lawand's father opened the locked door and released his daughter from her prison. Lawand would now be allowed to rejoin her family in a normal life.

Lawand's eleven-week confinement had ended, but the family tragedy ripened rapidly. During the course of her prison sentence, Lawand had disciplined herself to ascetic austerity, and carried out of her imprisonment seething with Islamic fervor, claiming that a new day had dawned for Islam.

On the day of her release, Lawand informed her family that all Muslims must denounce luxury and vice, and promptly pounced upon her two sisters for wearing kohl [black powder] on their eyes, rouge on their cheeks, and fingernail polish on their nails. After she made her sisters cower on the sofa, Lawand ripped an expensive necklace from her mother's neck and rushed to throw the precious stones down the kitchen drain. The women of the house could barely restrain her, and the family disturbance resulted in various minor injuries. Lawand was given a shot by one of the palace physicians and a prescription for drugs to calm her mind.

Violence hid its face for a while, but nevertheless survived, and from time to time Lawand would lash out with blunt passion, directing abuse at whoever was handy.

After she ripped Sara's gold earrings from my sister's ears, shouting that to see such gleaming finery hurt the eyes of God, I thought to protect myself by purchasing a small canister of Mace while I was on holiday in the United States. I hid the item in my luggage, even from the eyes of Kareem, and began to carry it in a small bag when I visited Lawand's home.

As is my disastrous misfortune, Lawand selected an afternoon when I was paying a visit to demonstrate her renewed religious fervor.

Lawand, her mother, two sisters, and I were having a pleasant chat while sipping tea, eating pastries, and discussing my last trip to America when Lawand suddenly became restless, her eyes flashing about, seeking some affront to God.

In her temporarily disordered state, she began to criticize her mother's choice of clothing, which Lawand stated was much too immodest for a believing Muslim. Fascinated, I watched as Lawand carefully folded her table napkin and very courteously covered her mother's neck with the fabric.

Then, without warning, Lawand began to curse. She made a sudden wild leap in the air, twisting her body in midair to face me.

I saw that Lawand was eyeing my new pearl necklace, and remembered too late Kareem's warning that I should not wear jewelry in her home.

Lawand's pale ascetic face, twisted in passionate and divine conviction, awed me, and I felt the acute danger that she posed. I quickly dug in my small bag and brought out the Mace, warning my cousin that she should quit the room or sit down immediately, or I would be forced to defend myself.

Lawand's mother began to scream and to tug on her mad daughter's sleeve. I braced myself for an attack when Lawand pushed her pawing mother from her side and rushed at me, forcing me into a small corner between a lamp and a chair.

The worst was yet to come.

Sara, who had agreed to meet me at Lawand's home, entered the villa at that exact moment. I saw that she held her youngest child in her arms.

Sara's jaw dropped when she saw that Lawand had cornered her youngest sister between a chair and a lamp, and that I was holding a weapon in my hand. Knowing Lawand's weakness, Sara quickly regained her calm and subtly attempted to persuade Lawand to stop her foolishness. For a short moment Lawand, with feline deception, pretended to submit to Sara's wisdom. She dropped her aggressive stance and began to rub her hands together in a nervous manner.

Doubting her sincerity, I yelled for Sara to take her baby and run from the room! At the sound of my excited voice, Lawand swung about and then, with all the fury of one who is insane, bounded toward me with outstretched hands, making for my pearl necklace.

I squeezed the Mace container with both hands and Lawand dropped to her knees. In the back of my mind, I remembered reading that it takes double power to disable the in sane, so in my excitement, I emptied the container and laced not only Lawand, but her mother and one sister, who had come to Lawand's aid.

Lawand recovered from the Mace attack rapidly, but had lost her will to fight.

Her father finally realized that his daughter needed long-term professional attention, which she received in France, enjoying a full recovery within a year's time.

Lawand's mother and sister required immediate medical attention. The Pakistani physician summoned to treat the women had difficulty maintaining his professional seriousness, when informed that one royal princess had laced three other princesses who were members of her family.

Everyone in Kareem's family thought I had acted with too much haste, but I refused to let myself be crucified for defending myself against a woman who had lost her mind, and I told them so.

Indignant, I added that instead of criticism, I deserved their appreciation for my deed, for the event had led to Lawand's recovery.

While there is a tendency among some to dismiss my actions as those of a female of excitable emotion, I am a woman of deadly seriousness when it comes to women’s issues.

A wise man was once asked what was the most difficult truth in life to uncover. His reply was "to know thyself." While others might harbor doubt, I know my own character. Undeniably, I have been endowed with an overabundance of spontaneity, and it is from this exuberance that I gain my power to do battle against those in command of females in my land. And I can claim some degree of success in bending the bonds of tradition.

Now, remembering Lawand's temporary and unhinged obsession with unhealthy fundamentalist fervor, I attached great significance to my daughter's extreme infatuation with our religion.

While I believe in and honor the God of Mohammed, it is my contemplative interpretation that the masses of humanity who are engaging in loving, struggling, suffering, and enjoying are living life as God intended. I have no desire for my child to turn her back on the rich complexity of life and reaffirm her future through the harsh asceticism of a militant interpretation of our religion.

I ran to my husband and said in a rush of words, "Amani is praying!"

Kareem, who was quietly reading the Koran, looked at me as though I had finally lost all reason.

"Praying?" he asked, his voice tinged with disbelief at my extreme reaction to another's communication with God.

"Yes!" I cried. "She is exhausting herself with prayer." I insisted, "Come! See for yourself!"

Regretfully, Kareem laid his Koran on his desk and, with an expression of incredulity, humored his wife by following me from the room.

As we entered the hallway leading to Amani's door, we could hear the sound of her voice, rising and falling with the intensity of her words.

Kareem left my side and burst into Amani's room. Our daughter turned, displaying a face lined with pain and haggard with sorrow.

Kareem spoke softly. "Amani, it is time for you to take a small rest. Go to bed. Now. Your mother will wake you in an hour for the evening meal."

Amani's expression appeared stricken, and she did not speak. But still bound to Kareem's influence, she lay across the bed, fully dressed, and closed her eyes.

I could see my child's lips as they continued to move in silent prayer, uttering words that were not meant for my ears.

Kareem and I quietly left our daughter. Drinking coffee in our sitting room, Kareem confessed that he had a small degree of concern but was skeptical of my exaggerated fear that Amani was sinking into a medieval passion, darkened with thoughts of sin, suffering, and hell. He sat quietly for a short while and then announced that my apprehension was directly linked to Lawand's unhinged denunciations of human wickedness. He told me that Amani's religious revival did not result from insanity, but was essentially linked with the overpowering joy of Haj.

"You will see," he promised, "once we have returned to the normal routine of life, Amani will lapse again into the habit of accumulating wandering beasts, and her religious fanaticism will soon be forgotten." Kareem smiled and asked a small favor. "Sultana, please, allow Amani some peace to turn from her daily problems to a oneness with God. It is a duty of all Muslims."

With a grimace, I nodded my head in agreement. Somewhat relieved, I hoped that Kareem was right.

Still, not leaving such an important matter to chance, in my prayers that evening I indulged in long hours of pleading with God that Amani would once again be the child she had been prior to our attending Haj.