(iii) The idle, miserable day-to-day life in Saudi Arabia

The idle, useless life led by Saudis generally, and by Saudi women in particular, became apparent to Carmen almost from the minute she moved to her place of residence.

We took no exercise. Walking anywhere was completely unthinkable. There was, in any case, nowhere we could go. No hotels, sports arenas, theaters, swimming pools, restaurants--if they existed at all, they were only for men. No ice cream parlors, parks, or shops: A woman of quality could almost never shop. No male other than Yeslam could see my face. True, Yeslam [Carmen's husband - Ed.] had warned me about all this before I'd arrived. But living it was very different. It was unreal. [p. 37]

As an added dimension to the idle life, any conceivable pleasure was removed from life in Saudi Arabia through religious fanaticism.

Everything seemed to be haram, or sinful; and if it wasn't sinful it was abe, shameful. It was haram to play music, abe to walk around in the street; abe to talk to a male servant, haram to be seen by a man outside the family.[p. 57]

The two TV channels broadcast an imam chanting the Koran all day; for lighter fare, little boys as young as six or seven, who had won prizes for their Koranic knowledge, recited the holy texts from memory. Foreign newspapers were Magic Markered into fragments: Any comment on Saudi Arabia or Israel, any photo or advertisement showing even one inch of a woman's limbs or neck was blacked out by the censors. I held them up to the light, to divine the forbidden words veiled by the censor's pen.

There were no books. There were no theaters, no con­certs, no cinemas. There was no reason to go out, and in any case we could not go out: I was not allowed to go for a walk, and legally could not drive. [p. 59]

Of course, women were particularly hard-hit:

The lowliness and subservience of Saudi women is deeply in­scribed in that culture. Pleasure, comfort, equality--so many things I had taken for granted were completely for­eign here. ... Saudi Arabia is a stern, im­placable country. For many Saudis, it seems sometimes, al­most every kind of pleasure is a sin.

I was very young then, and I believed things would change. ..I was almost always disappointed. The English-language TV channel was censored to shreds. Apart from news of the King's latest foreign visit, it mostly showed cartoons and the cop show Columbo--shows with no kissing or politics. The bookstore sold almost no books: Saudi Arabian customs of­ficials would not permit entry to any love stories, or books by Jews, or to most books on religion, Middle Eastern poli­tics, or Israel. It was dispiriting... [p. 79]

Many of the princesses lived on pills--prescription, natu­rally. They made a beeline for the chic doctors on Harley Street every time they went to London, checking into clinics for countless tests. Some owned gym rooms and had their own indoor swimming pools, but nobody ever swam that I could see. These women never saw the light of day.

They had bone density problems from the lack of sun­light and exercise, heart problems from eating too much, psychosomatic problems galore. A very large proportion of these women were depressed. They lived alongside hus­bands who had almost nothing to do with them and in the constant fear that they might one day be divorced. They had no responsibility, and no control of anything. They lived in complete dependence, in a kind of waking slumber. It was no kind of life. [p. 178]

The consequences of this dreary life are not difficult to forecast:

in Saudi Arabia there is much drug abuse and promiscuity. There is homosexuality, and AIDS. And there is certainly much more hypocrisy than anywhere in the West that I have ever been. But these things are not openly displayed, or honestly discussed. For the Saudis, it seems, what is hidden does not exist.

This is the face of Saudi Arabia, a member of the UN Human Rights Commission, the job of which is to malign Israel systematically. No doubt, Saudi Arabia and the Commission deserve each other.