These memories are the testimonial of an experience that has been deeply lived by a Western woman who started her adventure in Saudi Arabia many years ago with enthusiasm and optimism. The kind of life she has experienced here has been interesting and highly enriching. She did her best to accept and accommodate Saudi traditions and ways for years. She believed she could do it, she was determined to succeed, and she did.
She arrived in Saudi Arabia from a major European city in the early 1970’s when the country was totally different from what you now know, from what you are used to seeing every day. You now go shopping in huge beautiful malls while back then the downtown was tiny and consisted of only a few traditional “souqs” with little stalls arranged on unpaved little alleys. When you now drive around you see high elegant glass and steel buildings; back then most buildings were small and most houses were made of mud, crowded along dirt roads.
It was another “city”, it was another “lifestyle.” Things were very different. They were much simpler, though: connections were easier, gatherings less formal, communications more “personal”, goals and needs less demanding.
I found it intriguing to walk with such woman along “Memory Lane”, while she remembered “Saudi” things, people and situations from her own Western perspective.
PART I
Today I happened to find an old photograph of mine while I was rearranging a cupboard.
I stood still, with the picture in my hand and memories just started flooding back into my mind. I saw myself at the beginning of a successful career as a lawyer. I was young, pretty, full of hopes and plans when I met Saud, the Saudi student who was going to change my life. I now objectively ask myself how could I have decided to drastically change my life, forgetting my dreams, my high expectations.
How could I have plunged myself into such a daring and uncertain future?
My father never showed me his disappointment in my choice, but I believe he felt some. My family never made me feel that they did not approve of my decision to marry Saud. I will always be grateful to them for this freedom they granted me. I believe that parents should always leave their children free to make their own choices, even if they disapprove of them.
Now I know, I can feel deep inside the perplexity my relatives and friends must have felt the night of my wedding party. “Is it possible, is it sensible for a young girl, belonging to a very good family, wealthy, admired, to abandon everything in order to go and live in an unknown country?” I myself, in spite of my studies and my cultural background, hardly knew the existence of Saudi Arabia. I remember telling Saud, when I first met him, “Saudi Arabia? Oh yes, of course! By the way, what’s its capital? I can’t remember right now....... Riyadh? Yes, naturally, how could I forget?” Actually, I had never heard of it before. I doubt many people had back then, years before the oil boom.
From the few things he told me, I realized that it was a sort of old-fashioned country, with very strict traditions and religious rules. But young people tend to underestimate the reality of certain situations. Sometimes they even pretend not to understand their meaning. They do not want to see things as they really are, they prefer to see them the way they want them to be. When they make a decision following what their hearts tell them, they are convinced and fulfilled. Sometimes they are right, other times they are not. I was young and full of sincere enthusiasm. Yes, I was young, sincere, eager and enthusiastic. I was determined to make a great success out of my life in my new adopted country. I was willing to succeed, willing to cope, no matter the many challenges I was certainly going to face.
To be continued next month
(Memories of the early 1970’s narrated
to me by a Western woman)
