Change in Saudi Arabia | Before or After our Lifetime?

I woke up this morning to drink my coffee like I do every morning and I open Snapchat to find a message from a dear friend. For those of you who don’t know Snapchat is very popular in the Middle East and especially Saudi Arabia for the reason that it provides some layer of imagined privacy and security in a country where to speak against the royal family and the government is actually a crime. 

It’s very dangerous to have recorded messages like the ones that we used to leave each other on WhatsApp. Snapchat allows the messages to be automatically deleted and therefore you feel a sigh of relief that no one will take the message and use it to throw you in prison or worse report you to the morality case. 

The message was heavy hearted. 

She said to me “I had a really bad day honey”. As she went on my heart hurt for the vivacious girl she was. She sighed… I felt her heavy silence. She continued “I don’t know what it’s like. I don’t know if you can understand me anymore, but I don’t know what it’s like to wake up and breathe the air and feel like I have choices. I don’t know what it’s like to be able to decide your own destiny to have options. I don’t know what it’s like. Sometimes I have days where I feel so trapped. I’m fine now honey. I wish I knew what it’s like. What it’s like you live now to wake up and decide what you want to wear, if you want to go out to just go. I have all my decisions made for me by men. I hope it changes but I hope it changes before the end of my lifetime. I’m OK now honey I put it away. I forgot about it I just have days sometimes but it’s useless to want the impossible”.

I’d like to say that change will come before the end of her lifetime. I’d like to see that change but I don’t think it will come. 

My heart felt heavy so heavy. I knew how she felt. If you’ve ever been a Saudi woman in Saudi Arabia you would know how she feels too. We’re raised that this is just the way it is. The woman belongs to the man. We call it guardianship. They say it’s for our protection. I wonder why we can’t protect ourselves in this day and age? Make our own decisions? but Saudi Arabia doesn’t live in the 21st-century. Fact is living there despite all the technological advances is more like living in the 18th century. We’re meant to manage our households, bare children and educate them. There is nothing wrong with choosing such a vocation but the key word here is CHOICE. 

You might ask why didn’t she ask me what it is like to be free? The answer is because the answer would hurt her too much and bring her lower than she is. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss for a time but it moves nothing forward. You might say to yourself they should get out of there! But sadly that is not an option for them with the guardianship laws in place. Many them also don’t want to leave their homeland and everything they have known their whole lives what they really want is it all, freedom and country. They can have it all.

I replied and I said “I remember what it feels like honey. I remember what it feels like to feel like you have no power not even over your own body. To feel like you can’t do anything, unless you asked nicely. I remember how it felt to look out a window and wonder what the world is like across the sea. To wonder what it’s like to be those girls in those soap operas & movies who get to choose who they love, who get to choose what they wear, who get to choose to dance in the street. I hope it happens in our lifetime honey. I wish it happens in our lifetime but the problem is that, a lot of women are going to have to stand up together. That’s the only way it changes we have to make the change. We have to decide not to forget. Even when I did get out and I found real freedom it took me years to believe it was real. That it would not be ripped away in an instant. The truth is I still don’t believe it won’t”.

What she was going through I like to call this the scarlet O’Hara concept. Scarlett, O’Hara from the movie Gone With The Wind when she was feeling down, sad or angry she would say to herself “I don’t wanna think about that today. I’ll think about it tomorrow”. So like my friend despite her feelings, her wishes and her dreams of freedom she picked herself up and tucked all her thoughts into a box and stuffed them in the top of the closet and forgot about them in order to survive. In Saudi Arabia you either go insane or you put such thoughts out of your mind. For wishing for the impossible what you imagine is impossible can make you go mad. You have to have the courage to change something that is very very hard. I understand I was afraid once too. 

Elise Evans