I listened to a woman speak yesterday in her audio book, Carmen Bin Laden “Inside the Kingdom”, my life in Saudi Arabia… She was raised in Europe and married the brother to Osama Bin Laden.
So she had to do as women do in that country… she lost her freedom as she covered herself up.
She married her husband in the 70’s. Both had lived in the United States and went to college here, so her vantage point is as a woman who was free going to not being free.
It was interesting to hear that the women and men felt they ‘respected’ woman by making them hide and not show themselves.
How odd.
We respect you so much that you are to become invisible???
She explained how the world looked from behind the dark veil, how you cloudy and dark all things were. How when she left the country and could be without the veil, how crisp and clear and fresh all things looked.
And how when she was in a large group of women, she lost her sisters, for they all appeared as dark triangles. There was no way for even the women to tell who was who; they all just blended into covered triangles.
She said it was like entering a parallel universe, for it was completely foreign and she said little by little she allowed her self to be taken over.
What is so interesting to me is that she is a grown woman, who in order to be ‘loved’ by her husband and his family had to hide behind the veil, giving up all her free rights as a human being.
Coming from the outside she could see things so differently than the women born into this society.
The ones born in this didn’t even know that they had another choice available.
While listening to her, you can see how the beliefs and lifestyles mindlessly get handed down. Girls are treated differently from the day they are born; they are never groomed to have rights.
What is so odd is that the men/boys would get in trouble for seeing a bare unveiled woman. So they are taught it is wrong to see a women without her being hidden.
The value systems are set in place in childhood…
The extreme societies are extreme examples.
Yet on the scales of freedom, a loss of individual power is still a loss. Some of us are in the process of getting our power back, enabling us to shed the veils or silken chains of not being able to own our own lives.
Carmen is showing me the extreme cases of women being brainwashed into succumbing and giving up the right to breath fresh air, to see clearly, to walk freely…and yet it is my belief, that while many women in the FALC don’t wear a darkened veil, they are just as imprisoned.
Albeit on a lesser scale, but not being free is not being free.
I M Perfect lady 