Roisin had brought with her about Saudi women. She was in her late forties, married with children, and a professor of English at the prestigious university. She wrote books, attended academic conferences all over the world and enjoyed an international reputation for her work on translation.
She stood up from her chair as Roisin entered, moving forward to greet her. ‘Good morning,’ she said in heavily accented English, then switched to Arabic. ‘Peace be upon you.’ She was small and pretty. Like her students, she wore the hijab. Hers was folded in a style that made it drape elegantly over her hair and round her shoulders. Her dress was black and ankle-length, subtly ornamented with silver stitching.
‘And upon you peace,’ Roisin responded. Wa-alay-kum as-salam.
‘Salaam,’ Souad al-Munajjed corrected her pronunciation and nodded her approval of Roisin’s courtesy. ‘It is good that you speak Arabic,’ she said, reverting to English.
‘I speak very little.’
‘But you try. This is good.’ She studied Roisin in silence. ‘The bangles you wear, they are very pretty.’
‘Thank you. My husband bought them for me when we first arrived, from the market.’
Souad nodded as if this pleased her. ‘We have good silversmiths here. Now, these first meetings are important, are they not? I would like to introduce to you one of our graduate students who will be your teaching assistant today.’ She indicated a chair in the corner of the room where another woman was sitting, unnoticed until now.
As she stood up to greet Roisin, it was obvious she was pregnant. ‘I am Yasmin,’ she said.
She was beautiful. Her heart-shaped face was framed by a black hijab that emphasized the fairness of her skin. A curl of chestnut hair escaped the confines of the scarf. But she looked tired. Roisin could see dark circles of fatigue under her eyes, and lines around her mouth that denoted some kind of strain. ‘I am most pleased to meet you,’ she said. She spoke English with a slight French accent.
‘And I’m pleased to meet you. I’m Roisin Gardner.’ Roisin hadn’t had time to get the name on her teaching papers changed to reflect her new status. ‘Will we be working together?’
‘Sometimes. I would like to learn better English.’ Her smile to Roisin was cautious. ‘I think I will be your student.’
‘Yasmin will assist you in some classes,’ Professor Souad explained. ‘But I cannot spare her all the time. Some days, she teaches in the villages. We have a big programme, funded by our government, to bring education to the village women. Now, my dears, I think we should have tea.’ She picked up the phone and spoke briefly, then sat down and gestured for Roisin to sit next to her. ‘What is your impression of our university?’
‘It’s beautiful. But I was surprised there were so few students–in this part, I mean. I thought you had more women than men here.’
‘Yes indeed. Our education policies are more enlightened than we are given credit for. But the girls don’t arrive before classes start, unless they are here to see their tutors. Saudi girls don’t waste their time in gossip and “hanging out”.’ She gave the phrase an ironic emphasis. ‘Isn’t that right?’ she added to Yasmin, who smiled and nodded. ‘Don’t worry. Your class will be waiting for you. Now you must tell me about yourself.’
Over the next fifteen minutes, she subjected Roisin to a friendly but close interrogation, interrupted briefly by the arrival of tea and pastries. Her eyebrows lifted in surprise when Roisin told her she had no children. ‘But, my dear, you are already thirty-two!’
‘I only got married a few weeks ago,’ Roisin said.
‘I had four children when I was your age.’ Souad patted Roisin’s hand. ‘Take my advice. Don’t delay.’
‘A lot of women in the West wait until their thirties.’ Roisin noticed with some amusement the flash of slightly contemptuous pity in Souad al-Munajjed’s eyes.
‘The students,’ the professor said briskly; ‘you have seen their work online–what do you think of them? And you like our discussion forum? This was my idea.’ She refilled Roisin’s cup unasked, and put a sweet, crumbly pastry on her plate.
‘There have been some interesting postings recently.’ Roisin broke off a piece of the pastry and put it in her mouth, letting it melt on her tongue. Its intense sweetness was mellowed by the flavour of spices. ‘I was surprised about the…’ She hesitated for a moment, but these women were too intelligent not to be aware of what she was thinking. ‘I was surprised at the openness of the discussion about women’s rights. And about the vote.’
The professor nodded slowly. ‘Truly we discourage openly political topics. There are some hotheads who do not understand about debate. Otherwise, why should the girls not discuss what they wish? You must be aware that sometimes they talk without thinking. They are very young, very inexperienced. There are a lot of wrong ideas about women in this country. I don’t pretend for a moment that all is well, but women have their difficulties everywhere, and sometimes things can be made worse when they are brought into the open.’
Roisin noticed that Yasmin had withdrawn from the discussion and was sitting quietly studying her hands. ‘You think they shouldn’t discuss it?’
‘I think that the–what is the word? The status quo–the status quo can be the best. For example, it has long been the rule in the Kingdom that women are not allowed to drive, but attitudes were perhaps starting to change. Then there was a protest here, and a group of women drove. All they achieved was to lose their jobs, anger the clerics and draw attention to a law that may have been quietly repealed in a year or two. Instead, their defiance made attitudes harden. So where was the value in the protest? All it did was to make life more difficult for everyone. Is that not so?’ She turned to the silent Yasmin.
‘It caused trouble, certainly,’ Yasmin said after a moment.
‘And now,’ the professor continued, ‘there are the elections. It can worry the students. They say things they do not understand.’
‘Some women,’ Yasmin said in her quiet voice, ‘expected to be given the vote—’
‘Ah, the vote.’ Roisin got the impression that this was a topic the professor was used to dismissing. She turned to Roisin. ‘Tell me, does your vote make any difference to who rules you, who makes the laws you must abide by?’ She was smiling as she looked at Roisin, her head tilted like an interrogative bird.
Roisin evaded the question. ‘I thought that Islamists believe laws come from God.’
‘Ah, but you are not an Islamist, as that remark shows. Come now, what do you believe?’
Roisin shrugged. ‘People make laws. Men make laws. One vote, no, it makes no difference. But…’ She had a vague memory of an Arab proverb and she was trying to remember it: ‘One small thing is…small. But a lot of small things together…The women could make a difference if they voted.’
‘And you support the government that rules you?’
‘Not entirely, no.’
‘And did you vote for them?’
‘No. I voted for someone else.’
The professor nodded slowly. ‘So in this much-praised democracy, your vote counts for nothing and you are governed by someone you didn’t choose? As these girls are governed by someone they didn’t choose?’
‘The government knows that not everyone supports them. That limits what they feel able to do. I was able to express my choice. I feel unhappy about a system that denies so many people that right.’
‘When my children disagree with me, I let them tell me why. I let them have their say, I let them “express their choice”, and then their father and I tell them what they must do. If I had a democratic family, it seems that the children would rule.’ Her eyes gleamed as she watched Roisin’s reaction.