'After signing the wedding contract, Walid started coming over to the house, sometimes with Sadeem's father's knowledge, and often without. He was coming after the evening prayer and rarely left her room before 2 a.m. Soon the first kiss occurred and with each visit things were getting hotter. It was Sadeem's decision to postpone the wedding party for after her finals, although Walid was rushing her to have the wedding as soon as possible. Happy and glowing, Sadeem was also feeling a bit guilty: she made her beloved Walid wait a few more months! Was it fair to him? Walid was getting impatient... that night she made up her mind. Sadeem decided to please her beloved: the lights were dim, soft music streamed from the invisible stereo system… The girl came to the door wearing nothing much other than a red lacy negligee that revealed more than it hid…"
"So many young Saudis are enchanted by this book because it tells the truth."
Sadeem, Lamees, Michel and Qamra are four girlfriends in their early 20s who are looking for love...in Riyadh, one of the most conservative cities in Saudi Arabia.
Banat al-Riyadh or "Riyadh Girls" is the first book by 24-year-old Rajaa as-Sanaa, who is a resident of Riyadh herself and a daughter to one of the richest and most powerful families in town.
In Sanaa's book, the familiar format of four girlfriends chatting about love, men, sex, marriage and divorce has been transplanted into a particularly exotic ground: Saudi Arabia. There, sexes are segregated not only in school, but also in the streets, in the banks and in the malls, and the harsh laws of the country make flirtation and romance almost impossible. And still, Rajaa Sanaa's revealing book deals with the most restricted taboos in the country - homosexuality, premarital sex and the discriminations of the divorcees and social casts.
Is it the Saudi version of Sex and the City?
SANAA'S heroine, Lamees, who comes from an ultra-orthodox Wahhabi family, falls in love with Ali, a young Shi'ite and goes on a date with him despite threats from the "morality police." Sadeem, who is convinced of her fianc Walid's love, loses her virginity before the couple marries. Walid, shocked by her sexual boldness, decides to annul the marriage.
Qamra and Rashid are forced into an arranged marriage, which soon turns out to be a nightmare for the new bride. Qamra finds out that her husband is involved with a Japanese woman whom he is not allowed to marry. Already pregnant, Qamra returns to her parent's house to live a life of misery.
And Michel, who is half-American, sneaks away from her house disguised in men's clothing so she can drive with her boyfriend to a shopping mall. Unfortunately, not being a "genuine" Saudi, Michel cannot marry her boyfriend, son to a wealthy and noble family. Nuri, a teenage boy who is know to all by the name of Nutert due to his sexual preferences, is beaten by his father who suspects that Nuri is a homosexual.
The book tells the tales of its four heroines in 50 short chapters. Each chapter is an e-mail sent out by the narrator to a popular Arabic Yahoo! blog, in which she discloses her best friends' secret romantic encounters.
Banat al-Riyadh was published by Saki Publishing in Beirut and became a huge hit all over the Arab-speaking world overnight. More than 50,000 copies were sold in the Beirut Expo and today the 3rd edition is in print. In September 2005 the book was also translated into French, German and Italian.
Written by a Saudi, the book is officially banned in Saudi Arabia, although it is possible to have a copy brought from Cairo or Beirut, or even to find one on the Internet. There are 328,000 entries for the book title in Google, where you can find multiple blogs - in English and Arabic - where the book is heatedly discussed by readers. Many of them believe that Banat al-Riyadh is a very true and honest picture of life in Saudi Arabia, and accurately describes the many contradictions, taboos and hypocrisy that rules in the kingdom.
Though difficult to speak with Saudis and gather their reactions due to the impermeable nature of their society, these Internet blogs provide insight on how much attention the book has garnered.
ONE blogger who liked the novel wrote that while "it does tell the story of many Saudi girls... maybe the name of the novel was not quite appropriate, [because] not all of the girls of Riyadh are living like that... to me, the novel was good and funny at many parts and sad at the same time."
Another blogger said although the novel is "not meant to be an intellectual read," they found it "interesting" nonetheless, and asserted that "the point of all this was just to show people what many Saudi girls go through."
There were others, of course, who rushed to criticize Banat al-Riyadh, some without even reading the book. One angry mother - who didn't read the book - wrote in a letter published in the Al-Riyadh daily newspaper that she worried the novel would badly portray their city and their "beloved kingdom." She complained of the "media frenzy" created by the novel and expressed concern about her own daughter's exposure to such literature.
The letter was later cited on one of the popular Saudi blogs, and hundreds of bloggers advised the mother "not to judge the book by its cover."
"I feel a lot of care for the writer in your letter, but if you'd find the time to actually read the book, you should see that in no way does it shame the girls in Riyadh. The book is well written and really fascinating," says a post published by one blogger.
Others brought up the contradiction between the imposed moral laws in the country and the obvious disrespect for these laws at home and abroad. One of the scenes in the book describes drinking champagne in alcohol-free Saudi Arabia.
"It is a known fact that on weekends many Saudis go to neighboring Bahrain and buy tons of alcohol, which they bring home and drink on the beach. And what about those men who forbid their wives to go to the mall alone but spend all their free time with prostitutes in Dubai?" asks another blogger, who chose to name himself "as-Saddiq" (the virtuous one).
