Princess Sultana

One word that can be described when I think about Saudi Arabia’s royal family is wealth. They always live in glamour lives; they have many large houses and palaces spread around the Kingdom and the world, numerous servants, luxury cars, and expensive jewelries that high-class family cannot afford. An Indonesian maid who worked in one of royal family’s households who later became our good friend told me that all princes and princesses receive a large amount of salaries every month from the first time they were born into the world. A salary?? Are you kidding me? Here is the fact: there are about 25,000 royal family members; approximately a thousand are princes or princesses who are direct descendants of King Abdul Aziz. So can you imagine how much the government spends the money (which mainly comes from the oil) each year for these rich and lazy people??

I have always been curious about the life behind the House of Sa’ud. Unlike Britain and other countries whose members of their royal families are haunted by paparazzi, Saudi royal family’s private lives have never been exposed by the media. They live in a tightly closed society. Besides, in Arab world, it is a taboo to reveal and talk about other people’s private lives to the media – including celebrities; they are all free from running paparazzi! So I was so excited when I discovered a book about a life of a royal Saudi woman.

Princess is a book that reveals a dreadful life of Princess ‘Sultana’, a real Saudi princess closely related to the King. Written by Jean Sasson and first published in 1992, this book provides you with touching and shocking stories of forced marriages, sex slavery, and other outrages against women, both royal and common. Unlike other biographies which I question their authenticity, the stories in this book are much similar with what I hear from other people, what I witness, and how my Saudi neighbors and friends live. Few stories are too shocking for me (because I have never heard of them), but I believe that those events might occur back in 1960’s and 70’s when Saudi Arabia was still a desert populated with uneducated people.

Just like many traditional Saudi families, “… [s]ons are the sole reason for marriage, the key to satisfaction for the husband.” When I was a kid, I had a Saudi friend whose mother desperately needed a son. She kept giving births hoping a son, but unfortunately she got 7 children, all of them were females. Even these days, I still witness how proud the fathers are when the sons are born; the joy and happiness are not the same as when the daughters are brought to the world. These ‘popular stories’ sadly occur in the lives of royal family, Princess Sultana’s.

In a family of ten daughters and one son, fear ruled our home: fear that cruel death would claim the one living male child, fear that no other sons would follow, fear that God had cursed our home with daughters. My mother feared each pregnancy, praying for a son, dreading a daughter. She bore one daughter after another – until there were ten in all.

With sons being so treasured, Princess Sultana and her nine sisters were treated differently by her father. Women in her house had little rights; only her father and brother, Ali, had the unlimited authority over them. Her father loved Ali so much, that he bought Ali, who was 14 at the time, four identical red Porsches to be placed in four different cities where their palaces were located.

And so it comes to be that women in my land are ignored by their fathers, scorned by their brothers and abused by their husbands. This cycle is difficult to break, for the men who impose this life upon their women ensure their own marital unhappiness. For what man can be truly content surrounded by such misery? It is evident that the men of my land are searching for gratification by taking one wife after the other, followed by mistress after mistress. Little do these men know that their happiness can be found in their own home, with one woman of equality. By treating women as slaves, as property, men have made themselves as unhappy as the women they rule, and have made love and true companionship unattainable to both sexes.

During her childhood, Sultana has witnessed how forced marriages eliminated the dreams of many young women and almost put her favorite sister, Sara to death. Her father forced Sara to marry to a sixty-two years old man who would become her third wife. He “was chosen solely because of past and future business deals.” Most Saudi women are married to men not of their choosing. The men could be their cousins, relatives, or friends who are either the same age or 30 to 50 years age difference. Usually, neither the brides nor the grooms see the faces of their future spouses until the wedding ceremony. Social dating is not common in Saudi Arabia, so the mothers and sisters are those who seek the best and proper women for the men. The arranged marriage is still well practiced by Saudis today.

Just like any other wealthy Saudis, Sultana’s family had more than 20 servants in their palace. I’ve heard that each child usually has his/her own nanny (!!!). Such a waste!! But anyway, Sultana had a chance to know one of the Filipino servants called Marci and talk with her about the horrible life of many foreign servants in Saudi Arabia. Many of these people are physically and sexually abused by their employers. Even some of them were forced to serve as a sexual release for their employers and sons. They could not escape; the only thing they can do is to wait until their contracts ends. Reporting the events to the police will make no difference. No members of royal family would be charged in the court system.

Sultana also revealed that she and Sara discovered her brother raping a young girl when they were having a vacation in Cairo, Egypt. This poor girl was given by her mother in exchange with money. Again, I’m not surprised with this event, as I have seen so many Arabs going to Indonesia for sex. If you are not convinced, probably you should go to Puncak, West Java in June-September. You will see many Saudis giggling and holding hands publicly with Indonesian women (something they cannot do in their country if a woman is not his wife) and pay these women to serve them for their sexual needs.

This book does not only provide me with information about how Sultana lived. But it also increases my knowledge on Saudi Arabia’s history and past kings. I just knew that King Faisal, who supported a reform to his country, was assasinated by his nephew. I think he brought his country into the right path (e.g. cutting the ’salary’ of family members), but many of the princes feared of losing their wealth. So probably that’s one of MANY reasons why he was killed. And now I strangely hope that King Abdullah will not be killed by any other family members! He supports the better change of his country, including women’s rights, that I always admire.

After reading this book, I could quickly feel the anger inside me, that we, Moslem people could do nothing to help hundreds and even thousands women who are in dangerous situation and trapped in a land we called ‘Holy Land’. I began to think: how HOLY this land is??? I remember a friend telling me: “that’s one of the reasons why Prophet Muhammad SAW was ordered to spread Islam in a land known later as Saudi Arabia. They are aggressive people who live without morals.” And soon the values and teachings that our Prophet SAW brought will be entirely disappeared. If I think about those women, we should be grateful for everything God has given to us; that we were not born into a society where women are ignored. We should be thankful.

From my reading, I know that most civilized successors of early cultures smile at the primitive ignorance of their ancestors. As civilization advances, the fear of freedom for the individual is overcome through enlightenment. Human society eagerly rushes to embrace knowledge and change. Astonishingly, the land of my ancestors is little changed from that of a thousand years ago. Yes, modern buildings spring up, the latest health care is available to all, but consideration for women and for the quality of their lives still receives a shrug of indifference.