Girls of Riyadh - Rajaa Alsanea

...Saudi women, though, the four girls belong to the so-called ‘velvet’ class, i.e., the wealthy high society. I don’t accuse the author of leaving out the other strata, however, her subject is the influence of the world outside on the closed Saudi society, what consequences it has when young people get to know that different forms of life are possible but have no chance to try them out for themselves. Although TV programmes from more liberal countries ...
...more interesting is what the girls experience in the rigid Saudi society, some incidents take my breath away.

On the one hand women are encouraged to get a good education, even to study abroad, but on the other hand they’re treated as if they weren’t certifiably sane or grown up and capable of thinking for themselves. Overbearing parents and society at large following the ancient laws of tribes and traditions regulate everything. Once ... more

A clique of four college-age women are keen on finding Mr Right, they do get to know men, some are right or at least seem to be, some are so-so, some are as wrong as can be.

So far, so uninteresting, the topic has been dealt with ad nauseam, however, what makes this novel outstanding, sensational even, is the fact that it is set in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, the most Islamic of all Islamic countries. I bet you’ve never heard of a chic lit novel that has attracted the attention of the authorities and involved the author in a lawsuit for slandering society. The author, twenty-something Rajaa Alsanea, knows her country well and foresaw trouble, so she had her debut novel published in Lebanon (in 2005); it was immediately banned in Saudi Arabia, but black-market copies are nevertheless - or rather because of this - widely available.

What is so sensational? The novel allows us a glimpse into the world of young Saudi women, not all young Saudi women, though, the four girls belong to the so-called ‘velvet’ class, i.e., the wealthy high society. I don’t accuse the author of leaving out the other strata, however, her subject is the influence of the world outside on the closed Saudi society, what consequences it has when young people get to know that different forms of life are possible but have no chance to try them out for themselves. Although TV programmes from more liberal countries are watched even in the most remote oases, it’s only the velvet class that travels and gets into direct contact with the outside world. The young women shop in London, Paris, New York and then wear their expensive sexy designer clothes under their robes covering them from head to toe. On international flights, people queue for the loos to change into or out of the prescribed Saudi dresses. According to the author the Saudi society is ‘riddled with hypocrisy, drugged with contradictions.’

Not only fashion from outside finds its way into Saudi society but also thoughts concerning self-determination, especially in the field of love and marriage. Readers who’re interested in chick lit subjects find enough to be entertained, I remember a list of different male and female character types, another list of zodiac signs and how high the percentage of harmony and happiness is if men and women born in certain signs meet. I’m not so keen on all this and read these pages cursorily. What I find more interesting is what the girls experience in the rigid Saudi society, some incidents take my breath away.

On the one hand women are encouraged to get a good education, even to study abroad, but on the other hand they’re treated as if they weren’t certifiably sane or grown up and capable of thinking for themselves. Overbearing parents and society at large following the ancient laws of tribes and traditions regulate everything. Once one of the girls is arrested by the religious police when she’s sitting in a café with a man who’s not a relative. Another girl and a young man fall deeply in love, but her mother is American and her potential mother-in-law asks her son, “Is her blood pure?” When she outlines a life as an outcast for him, his wife and their future children, he caves in and gives up the love of his life. Or: young men and women meet in the presence of their parents, sign a marriage contract some days later and then ‘get to know each other’ through endless mobile phone chats and text-messaging during the weeks before the official wedding ceremony. Oh, Allah!

The four young women differ in character, they’re described well so that I had no problems to know who is who although I’m not used to Arabic names. By following them and their sometimes tumultuous love life a reader gets a close look at the stratum of society they belong to.

But that isn’t all, even closer insight comes from a different source. The 50 chapters of the novel are written as e-mails, when I saw this, I thought, “Oh no, not another one trying to be up-to-date and sucking up to young readers!” but then I realised that the author had thought up a clever trick by presenting the story this way. She invents a young woman as a narrator - it never becomes clear who she is - who for a year, every week after Friday prayers, posts a new episode of her story about the four girls of Riyadh to the subscribers of her yahoo chat group. Before going on with it she addresses the readers thus evoking the omniscient narrators of the literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth century who knows what is going to happen and leads the readers through the story.

We’re in the 21st century, however, and the omniscient narrator is also a kind of blogger taking up and working into the story the suggestions and/or reproaches that have come from the readers. This narrator can be seen as a fifth character in the book, she’s franker and cheekier than the four girlfriends, she discusses openly the relationship between the sexes, racism, tradition, homosexuality, topics that up to now have never been discussed openly in Saudi Arabia. She mixes unashamedly high- and low-brow references, she uses slangy internet speak, she quotes Socrates, Mark Twain, Eleanor Roosevelt, Arabic poets, Muslim televangelists and the Quran to prove her point. She’s got prophetic insight, too, she mentions that her weekly e-mails are the talk of the town and stir the media, just what happened to the novel proper after its publication.

I don’t love this book but I’m impressed and recommend it to readers who’re interested in a culture that has always been closed to outsiders. One critic compares Girls of Riyadh to The Kite Runner and finds that it falls short. This is a crap remark in my opinion, one wouldn’t compare oranges with melons, would one? I’m sure an orange doesn’t want to be a melon but is happy to be a pretty orange. This remark is a bit show-offy, “Look, I also know another novel coming from the Middle East!”

Rajaa Alsanea currently lives in Chicago, where she is pursuing a degree in specialised dentistry, when she comes back, she’ll find that her novel has had an impact. What more can an author want? (from the net) “Many Saudi women started writing and publishing books as was mentioned by Reuters, it is said that Saudi Arabia’s literary output doubled in 2006, with half the authors being women.”

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Penguin
320 pages
RRP 5.99 GBP

 

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