Princess: Stepping Out of the Shadows Read online

  I gasp when the baby cries pitifully. I then understand that her father is incensed because the tiny one is a female. This is no surprise since until Islam in Arabia female babies were typically undesirable, not only to the fathers but often to the mothers and even the community. But it is clear to me that this mother loves her baby. She cups her hand over the infant’s mouth to silence the child, for the infant’s loud sobs are making the man even more furious. I stare in horrified disbelief when the man roughly tugs the infant from the mother’s arms and rushes out of their home and away from the small village to carry the crying baby to a sandy area.

  After the child is taken, the young mother collapses to the floor and remains there, unmoving, as stiff as a long-dead corpse.

  My eyes return to the father. He tosses the helpless baby to the ground and begins feverishly to dig a hole. The sand seems to be fighting against his brutish plan, for as he hollows out what will become the grave the sand slides back into the cavity.

  I am aghast as I watch the grisly scene, but remember that the pages of time have been turned back and I am not an actual witness to the murder about to be committed. Tears well in my eyes, as I feel I am a spectator to a terrified baby who is sensing the horror fast becoming her reality. With eyes tightly closed, she is shrieking and flailing her little arms.

  Her father’s heart is unmoved. He quickly prepares the burial place and cruelly pushes his kicking infant into the small hole, shoving and kicking the sand until the grave is fully covered.

  I see movement under the sand! A baby girl buried alive!

  The horror! The terror!

  I become paralysed by the revulsion of the moment, for I know that in the time before Islam society was addicted to female infanticide. Unwanted infant daughters were often slain by live burials, repeated thousands of times during that age of ignorance. Although I know the barbarity I have witnessed happened centuries before, the scene feels as real to me as if it were occurring at that moment.

  In anger and sorrow, I watch as the murderer strolls back into his village, seemingly without concern for the agony he has wrought. The moment his terrified child was covered in sand, choking to death, he thought of her no more. He speaks with a few men along the way, who appear to congratulate him on ridding his family of a daughter who, in their eyes, will only create endless problems.

  Men celebrate with their kinsmen and friends while infant daughters inhale sand until death claims their sweet, innocent little lives and mourning mothers weep in sorrow.

  My wanderings fail to bring me the happiness I desire; instead, I reel from extreme misery. From my studies of Islam and of the enhancements brought to female lives, I have always known that the days of ignorance were the most dangerous time in human history to be a female, whether an infant, a girl or an adult woman. There was no punishment for murdering females; rather, there were congratulations and celebration! For fathers, grandfathers and uncles a baby girl was considered the greatest curse. Those who were born ignorant, and died ignorant, truly presumed that females would bring nothing more than unnecessary expense and humiliation to their family name. Male children consumed all monies available in family life, and their every action, whether impacting the family negatively or positively, was considered a cause for merriment.

  Truthfully, history tells us that happiness eluded the majority of those born female. Even if a baby daughter was spared a sandy grave, she would endure a lifetime of desperate neglect and drudgery.

  Girls would be married while still young children.

  Females would never be companions or friends of their husbands, always servants.

  A wife’s duty would be to tend to her husband’s needs.

  A wife’s duty would be to produce many sons, who would grow to be warriors.

  A wife could be divorced at any time and for any reason.

  A mother’s children could be taken from her.

  Females could be passed from man to man like an object, losing their identity, their pride and any sense of decency.

  A woman, once abandoned by her husband, lived in fear of poverty and starvation. Without her man to provide for her, no one would offer food or shelter.

  During that dark time in Arabia, this was the life experienced by most women. There was nothing to curb the cruelty of men – no laws, no social condemnation, and certainly no religion.

  In pre-Islamic Arabia, the desert tribes did not practise an official, organized religion but instead had a primitive fear of deities in stars or in the centre of the earth, which they observed by performing various rituals for protection from these mysteries of life. No one knows for certain if people at that time believed in the afterlife, but ancient narratives describing the securing of camels foodless to the owner’s grave indicate that the deceased believed he would need a method of transport wherever it was he was going.

  Their religion, if that is what we choose to call it, was primitive and lives were similarly archaic.

  * * *

  Everything changed in Arabia when the most important figure in medieval history was born in the city of Mecca. All that I learned about this important man was taught to me by my mother, a woman who lived the most virtuous life of anyone I have ever known. Every question in her life was solved by reading the pages of the Koran. Every action of her life was intricately bound with Islam.

  Mother told me, ‘Sultana, you are a child of God. To live the good and pure life of a Muslim, you must know every aspect of Islam.’

  How I wanted to be an image of my mother, but I was never able to attain her purity of spirit. I have been told by my sisters that I was born with what they describe as a double naughty gene! Despite my obvious shortcomings, I was fortunate to learn from Mother about the Prophet of God, who was responsible for bringing Islam to Arabia.

  Mother told me in simple terms that this important individual was the child born to a man named Abdallah and a woman named Amina, who married in the year 568. Abdallah was with his bride for only three days before embarking on a mercantile expedition, dying at Medina on his return trip to Mecca. In 570, two months after Abdallah’s death, his wife, Amina, gave birth to a male child named Mohammed, meaning ‘highly praised’.

  The child Mohammed’s ancestry was distinguished. His father’s uncle, Hashim, was a wealthy merchant, philanthropist and one of Mecca’s important chiefs. At Hashim’s death, his prestigious position was assumed by his younger brother, who was the father of Abdallah.

  Despite the elevated position of the family, Mohammed’s patrimony was modest. His father had left him an unpretentious house, a flock of goats and five camels. There was also a slave who nursed Mohammed in his infancy.

  When Amina died six years later Mohammed’s grandfather, an elderly man of seventy-six years, took over his care. At the grandfather’s death, Mohammed’s uncle Abu Talib assumed the obligation.

  The men responsible for the child Mohammed treated him with enormous care and great affection, and despite his lack of formal education the man Mohammed would one day write what would become the most famous and eloquent book in the Arabic language.

  The child Mohammed grew into a man of strength and dignity. As he aged, he became more and more absorbed in thoughts of religion, withdrawing alone or with his family to Mount Hira, three miles from Mecca. There he spent many nights and days in a cave, praying, meditating and fasting. It was in the year 610, while he was sleeping there alone, that Mohammed was approached by the angel Gabriel, ordering Mohammed, ‘Read!’

  Mohammed replied, ‘I do not read.’

  Gabriel pressed against Mohammed so tightly that he thought he would die. Gabriel ordered once more: ‘Read!’

  Mohammed began to read loudly, and the angel Gabriel loosened his grip and disappeared from Mohammed’s dream. When Mohammed awoke the following morning, he said that the words he had read were written in his heart, never to be forgotten. When he left the mountain, he heard a voice from heaven. ‘O Mohammed, thou art the messenger of Allah,
and I am Gabriel.’

  Mohammed raised his head towards heaven to see Gabriel in the form of a man.

  Gabriel repeated the words: ‘O Mohammed, thou art the messenger of Allah, and I am Gabriel.’

  The newly defined Prophet Mohammed returned to Mecca in a flash, where he told his wife Khadija of his astonishing visions. Khadija accepted them as a true revelation from heaven, encouraging her husband to announce his mission for God.

  After Prophet Mohammed endured many struggles and fought many battles, the creation of a new religion called Islam was a great triumph. The subsequent explosion of the Islamic Arab armies in invading, occupying and converting half of the Mediterranean world to Islam is the most extraordinary phenomenon in medieval history.

  Many social changes took place across the Arab peninsula under Islam, including security for all, but most importantly the lives of girls and women profoundly improved.

  Prophet Mohammed condemned formerly common and brutish practices such as female infanticide. Appalled to observe that Arabians prior to Islam were fixated on murdering their daughters, he spoke out against the heinous practice on many occasions until the monstrous custom was finally discarded by most. It’s such a shocking concept that most women who know of the tradition carry a secret fear of the prospect.

  Even I once felt panic and alarm at being buried alive.

  This happened after my brother Ali and I had engaged in a physical spat over a toy, a mechanical horse given to me by one of my uncles. I was the victor, keeping what was mine. My brother was furious because he was accustomed to winning due to his larger size, but my cunning powers had overtaken my brother while we were still children. I had easily succeeded in convincing him that I would relinquish my little horse. With a smug smile, he relaxed to walk with his hand outstretched to claim what was not his, but I looked over his back to call out, ‘Mother!’ He froze for an important moment, believing that our mother was a witness to his wicked behaviour, and that’s when I moved as fast as the swirling winds in a sandstorm to conceal my little horse in a top-secret cupboard in my bedroom.

  My bewildered brother was unable to find my hiding place and he was so upset that he sputtered in anger before rushing into the back garden. I followed to see him seize one of the gardener’s digging tools to hollow a pit in the flower bed where the sand was soft and malleable.

  Bragging about my triumph, I ridiculed him, laughing, ‘No, my brother, I did not hide the horsey in the flower bed!’

  Ali grabbed a handful of sand and threw it at me, screaming, ‘Eat this.’

  My mouth was still open due to my laughter, thus grains of gritty sand landed on my tongue.

  ‘Taste it!’ my brother ordered. I well knew his implication even before he shouted, ‘You should have been buried alive at birth, Sultana!’

  I tried to spit out the sand and stepped back, ready to make a run for my life should my brother try to force me into a hole in the ground. There were times that my brother truly frightened me. I had once heard my older sisters whispering about the ancient habit of burying baby girls alive in the desert. Given the chance, would my brother really do me the ultimate harm? For sure, I could easily see that he so hated me that he wanted me out of our family, perhaps buried in the big sands surrounding Riyadh.

  I was young enough to still cry out for my mother and so I ran looking for the safety of her arms, telling her between tears, ‘Ali wants to bury me in the garden! He tried to make me eat sand!’ I opened my mouth as wide as possible, pulling my tongue out with my fingers. ‘See! See the sand!’ Mother looked but could see nothing because during the excitement I had indeed swallowed it.

  ‘Darling, Sultana, your brother did not mean the words he uttered,’ my mother reassured me. ‘He is a young boy, foolish at times, and he will regret those words when I speak with him.’

  I remember her soft but steady voice as if it were yesterday, as she continued soothing her youngest child. ‘Sultana, hush, child. You will not be buried in the sands. Prophet Mohammed forbade such a thing. It is now a serious crime with punishment.’

  I memorized the words she spoke, for I wanted to be ready to teach my brother Ali lessons that he should know.

  ‘These words were spoken by the greatest man to ever live, the man who was given the wisdom of God directly through angels.’

  I felt a rush of excitement because I did not know what this wisdom was but surely longed to learn so I could use such knowledge against my brother when he and I engaged in physical disagreements.

  ‘Sultana, the Prophet valued his own daughters dearly, and he said these words: anyone who brings up two daughters properly will be very close to me on the Day of Judgement.’

  My mother smiled sweetly, kissing my head and my cheeks before resuming the messages she wanted me to know.

  ‘There is a lovely story relating how the Prophet reprimanded a man once for showing favour to his son over his daughter. This man, in the presence of Prophet Mohammed, kissed his son and put him on his lap but did not do the same for his daughter, who was also by his side. The Prophet objected, telling the man that he was an unjust father and that he should have also kissed his daughter and placed her on the other side of his lap.’

  I nodded my small head, comprehending that the revered Prophet had taken up for girls in an important manner.

  ‘Sultana, there will be no babies buried alive ever again. Let your heart be happy, daughter, and know that in the eyes of God you are as important as your brother.’

  My mother sighed as once more she tenderly pulled me close. ‘And, Sultana, your mother prays to God with thanks that I am of this time in Arabia, for my heart would have stopped beating had any daughters of mine been taken to the sands to die.’

  It was on that day that I learned from my mother that the Koran makes no distinction between the sexes, considering the birth of the female as a gift and blessing from God, the same as a male child. The verses my mother shared helped to cool my heated heart. But, despite the fact, as I was being pacified I was plotting revenge on my spoiled and brutish brother.

  * * *

  My wandering mind abruptly diverges from my personal memories to return to the electrifying past of Arabia. I am floating above vistas of the central region of the peninsula, where I pass over a mud-walled village situated on a plateau in the middle of the desert in the region known as Najd. The population is larger than most, with nearly 10,000 residents. Instinctively, I know this is Riyadh in the late 1800s, a time when the power of my family, the al-Sa’ud, had declined.

  For more than a hundred years, from the mid-1700s, we had been a main power in the region, but in 1890 all was lost when our key regional rivals, the al-Rashid tribe, conquered and occupied Riyadh and the surrounding area.

  My wandering eye does not linger in Riyadh, for in a blink my ancestors fell from the high perch of sovereignty to the level of powerless and homeless paupers. Their only possessions were what they could carry. After fleeing Riyadh, they temporarily found refuge with the al-Murrah, a Bedouin tribe located in the southern desert of Arabia.

  The al-Murrah had accompanied the al-Sa’ud on tribal raids, so they were an approachable tribe in times of trouble.

  From overhead I can see a lonely figure pacing amid the thorn trees in the flat desert sands on the peripheries of the al-Murrah’s black-haired tents. This man is of a towering stature and I automatically know that I am looking at my grandfather, Abdul Aziz, when he was only a teenager. He looks just as I have so often heard him described by my own father, who was one of the younger sons born to my grandfather – born too late to fight beside his father during the momentous period of making a nation, but old enough to accompany his father on camel rides in the desert after Saudi Arabia was formally named a nation.

  I am open-mouthed in wonder, gazing at a man who appears physically to be perfectly formed. My grandfather is massive, with a broad chest and shoulders. His back is ramrod straight. His head is large, befitting his body size. He has
a broad face, dark brown eyes and a large nose, with a thick moustache and light beard. He was famous for saying, ‘I am nothing but a simple Bedouin,’ but truthfully he looks like the king he became.

  My grandfather is obviously deep in thought, for he appears to be quivering with suppressed excitement. Perhaps he is already plotting revenge against the al-Rashid tribe, for I know that his troubles were many after his family was routed from their home in Riyadh to live in shameful exile.

  He remains alone and thoughtful until the sun fades and disappears into a moonless dark night, pausing only for times of prayer. I am not surprised at this scene, for my father once told me that his father had never missed a prayer. Even when he was fighting a battle he would make certain to cease momentarily to place his prayer rug on the sands and face Mecca.

  The desert night is cool and he lights a fire from the palm ribs, then sits staring into the fire without eating or drinking. Finally he rises from the sand, brushing off his clothes with his huge hands before making the dawn prayer and returning to a black-haired tent where his father is sleeping. But my grandfather does not sleep. He stares into nothing until the sun rises full and yellow on a new day. I know in my own heart that his thoughts rest on the Najd, the only home he had ever known, and the home he cannot forget.

  My family’s exile kept them for nearly two years with the al-Murrah. That time of banishment was not wasted. Grandfather told his sons many stories of how he trailed the men of the al-Murrah and absorbed their desert skills, abilities that would help him when he fought to form a nation, for Arabia was a land of tribes. My grandfather acquired crucial familiarity with the Bedouin life, knowledge that he could have never known without the al-Murrah. The village Arab became an expert in tracking and raiding, and his heightened skills enhanced future negotiations with the numerous tribes of Arabia when he fought and bargained to bring them all together.