Princess Read online

  In 1891, my mother’s family had accompanied the Al Sa’ud clan in their flight from Riyadh when they were defeated by the Rasheed clan. Ten years later, male members of her family returned with Abdul Aziz to recapture the land; my auntie’s brother fought alongside Abdul Aziz. This show of loyalty ensured their entry into the Royal Family by the marriages of their daughters. The stage was set for my destiny as a princess.

  In my youth, my family was privileged, though not yet wealthy. The income from oil production ensured that food was plentiful and medical care available, which at that time in our history seemed the greatest of luxuries.

  We lived in a large villa, made of concrete blocks painted snowy white. Each year, the sandstorms turned the white to cream, but father’s slaves would dutifully repaint the sand-colored stones white. The thirty-feet-high block walls surrounding our grounds were maintained in the same fashion. The childhood home I took for granted was a mansion by Western standards, yet, in looking back, it was a simple dwelling by today’s Saudi royal expectations. As a child, I felt our family home was too large for warm comfort. The long hallways were dark and forbidding. Rooms of various shapes and sizes branched off, concealing the secrets of our lives. Father and Ali lived in the men’s quarters on the second floor. I used to peer into their quarters with the curiosity of the child I was. Dark red velvet curtains closed out the sunlight. A smell of Turkish tobacco and whiskey embraced the heavy atmosphere. One timid look and then with a rush I would return to the women’s quarters on the ground floor, where my sisters and I occupied a large wing. The room I shared with Sara faced the women’s private garden. Mother had the room painted a bright yellow; as a result, it had the glow of life that was so glaringly absent in the rest of the villa.

  The family servants and slaves lived in tiny, airless rooms in a separate dwelling set apart at the back of the garden. While our villa was air-conditioned, the servants’ quarters were ill-equipped for enduring the hot desert climate. I remember the foreign maids and drivers speaking of their dread of bedtime. Their only relief from the heat was the breeze generated by small electric fans. Father said that if he provided their quarters with air-conditioning, they would sleep the whole day through.

  Only Omar slept in a small room in the main house. A long golden cord hung in the main entrance of our villa. This cord was connected to a cowbell in Omar’s room. When Omar was needed, he would be summoned by the ringing of this bell; the sound of the bell, day or night, would bring him to his feet and to Father’s door. Many times, I must admit, I rang the bell during Omar’s naps, or in the middle of the night. Then, lungs bursting, I would rush to my bed and lay quiet, an innocent child sleeping soundly. One night my mother was waiting for me as I raced for the bed. With disappointment etched on her face at the misdeeds of her youngest child, she twisted my ear and threatened to tell Father. But she never did.

  Since my grandfather’s day, we owned a family of Sudanese slaves. Our slave population increased each year when Father returned from Haj, the annual pilgrimage to Makkah made by Muslims, with new slave children. Pilgrims from Sudan and Nigeria, attending Haj, would sell their children to wealthy Saudis so that they could afford the return journey to their homeland. Once in my father’s care, the slaves were not bought and sold in the manner of the American slaves; they participated in our home life and in my father’s businesses as if they were their own. The children were our playmates and felt no compulsion to servitude. In 1962, when our government freed the slaves, our Sudanese family actually cried and begged my father to keep them. They live in my father’s home to this day.

  My father kept alive the memory of our beloved king, Abdul Aziz. He spoke about the great man as if he saw him each day. I was shocked, at the age of eight, to be told the old king had died in 1953, three years before I was born!

  After the death of our first king, our kingdom was in grave danger, for the old king’s hand-picked successor, his son Sa’ud, was sadly lacking in qualities of leadership. He extravagantly squandered most of the country’s oil wealth on palaces, cars, and trinkets for his wives. As a result, our new country was sliding toward political and economic chaos.

  I recall one occasion in 1963, when the men of the ruling family gathered in our home. I was a very curious seven-year-old at the time. Omar, my father’s driver, burst into the garden with a manner of great importance and shouted for the women to go upstairs. He waved his hands at us as if he were exorcising the house of beasts and literally herded us up the stairwell and into a small sitting room. Sara, my older sister, pleaded with my mother for permission to hide behind the arabesque balcony for a rare glimpse of our rulers at work. While we frequently saw our powerful male uncles and cousins at casual family gatherings, never were we present in the midst of important matters of state. Of course, at the time of each female’s menses and subsequent veiling, the cutoff from any males other than father and brothers was sudden and complete.

  Our lives were so cloistered and boring that even our mother took pity on us. That day, she actually joined her daughters on the floor of the hallway to peek through the balcony and listen to the men in the large sitting room below us. I, as the youngest, was held in my mother’s lap. As a precaution, she lightly placed her fingers on my lips. If we were caught, my father would be furious. My sisters and I were captivated by the grand parade of the brothers, sons, grandsons, and nephews of the deceased king. Large men in flowing robes, they gathered quietly with great dignity and seriousness. The stoic face of Crown Prince Faisal drew our attention. Even to my young eyes, he appeared sad and terribly burdened. By 1963, all Saudis were aware that Prince Faisal competently managed the country while King Sa’ud ruled incompetently. It was whispered that Sa’ud’s reign was only a symbol of the family unity so fiercely protected. The feeling was that it was an odd arrangement, unfair to the country and to Prince Faisal, and unlikely to last.

  Prince Faisal stood apart from the group. His usual quiet voice rose above the din as he asked that he be allowed to speak on matters that were of grave importance to the family and the country. Prince Faisal feared that the throne so difficult to attain would soon be lost. He said that the common people were tiring of the excesses of the Royal Family, and that there was talk not only of ousting their brother Sa’ud for his decadence but of turning away from the entire Al Sa’ud clan and choosing instead a man of God for leadership.

  Prince Faisal looked hard at the younger princes when he stated in a clear, sure voice that their disregard for the traditional life-style of bedouin believers would topple the throne. He said his heart was heavy from sadness that so few of the younger royals were willing to work, content to live on their monthly stipend from the oil wealth. A long pause ensued as he waited for comments from his brothers and relatives. As none seemed to be forthcoming, he added that if he, Faisal, were at the controls of the oil wealth, the flow of money to the princes would be cut and honorable work would be sought. He nodded his head at his brother Mohammed and sat down with a sigh. From the balcony, I noticed the nervous squirming of several youthful cousins. Even though the largest monthly stipend was no more than ten thousand dollars, the men of the Al Sa’ud clan grew increasingly wealthy from the land. Saudi Arabia is a huge country, and most of the property belongs to our family. In addition, no building contracts are signed without benefit to one of our own.

  Prince Mohammed, the third eldest living brother, began to speak, and from what we could gather, King Sa’ud had now insisted on the return of absolute power that had been taken from him in 1958. He was rumored to be in the countryside, speaking out against his brother Faisal. It was a devastating moment for the family of Al Sa’ud, for its members had always shown a unified front to the citizens of Saudi Arabia.

  I remember when my father had told the story of why the eldest living son after Faisal, Mohammed, was passed over as successor to the throne. The old king had declared that if Mohammed’s disposition were backed by the power of the Crown, many men would die, for
Mohammed’s violent temper was well known.

  My attention returned to the meeting and I heard Prince Mohammed say that the monarchy itself was endangered; he approached the possibility of physically overthrowing the king and installing Prince Faisal in his stead. Prince Faisal gasped so loudly that the sound stifled Mohammed. Faisal seemed to be weeping as he spoke quietly. He told his kin that he had given his beloved father a deathbed promise that he would never oppose the rule of his brother. In no event would he consider breaking the promise, not even if Sa’ud bankrupted the country. If talk of ousting his brother was going to be the heart of the meeting, then he, Faisal, would have to depart.

  There was a hum of voices as the men of our family agreed that Mohammed, the eldest brother next to Faisal, should attempt to reason with our king. We watched as the men toyed with their coffee cups and made vows of loyalty to their father’s wish that all the sons of Abdul Aziz would confront the world as a united force. As the traditional exchange of farewells began, we watched as the men filed as silently from the room as they had entered.

  Little did I know that this meeting was the beginning of the end of the rule of my uncle, King Sa’ud. As history unfolded, and our family and countrymen watched in sadness, the sons of Abdul Aziz were forced to evict one of their own from his land. Uncle Sa’ud had become so desperate that in the end, he had sent a threatening note to his brother Prince Faisal. This one act sealed his fate, for it was unthinkable for one brother to insult or threaten another. In the unwritten rule of the bedouin, one brother never turns against the other.

  A fevered crisis erupted within the family, and the country. But we learned later that a revolution, sought by Uncle Sa’ud, had been averted by the soft approach of Crown Prince Faisal. He stepped aside and left it to his brothers and the men of religion to decide the best course of action for our young country. In doing so, he took away the personal drama of the movement so that it became a less volatile matter, with statesmen making appropriate decisions.

  Two days later, we learned about the abdication from one of Uncle Sa’ud’s wives, for our father had been away at the time with his brothers and cousins. One of our favorite aunties, married to King Sa’ud, burst into our home in great agitation. I was shocked to see her rip her veil from her face in front of our male servants. She had arrived from the Nasriyah Palace, Uncle Sa’ud’s desert palace (an edifice that, to my mind, was a wonder of what endless money can buy and a ruinous example of what was wrong with our country).

  My sisters and I gathered around our mother, for our auntie was now out of control and screaming accusations about the family. She was particularly incensed at Crown Prince Faisal and blamed him for her husband’s dilemma. She told us that the brothers of her husband had conspired to take the throne that had been given by their father to the one of his choice, Sa’ud. She cried out that the religious council, the Ulema, had arrived at the palace that very morning and had informed her husband that he must step aside as king.

  I was entranced by the scene before me, for rarely do we view confrontation in our society. It is our nature to speak softly and agree with those before us and then to handle difficulties in a secret manner. When our auntie, who was a very beautiful woman with long black curls, began to tear out her hair and rip her expensive pearls from her neck, I knew this was a serious matter. Finally my mother had calmed her enough to lead her to the sitting room for a cup of soothing tea. My sisters gathered around the closed door and tried to hear their whispering. I kicked around the large clumps of hair with my toe and stooped to gather the large smooth pearls. I found myself with fistfuls of pearls and placed them in an empty vase in the hallway for safekeeping.

  Mother guided our weeping auntie to her waiting black Mercedes. We all watched as the driver sped away with his inconsolable passenger. We never saw our auntie again, for she accompanied Uncle Sa’ud and his entourage into exile. But our mother did advise us against feeling harsh toward our uncle Faisal. She said that our auntie had uttered such words because she was in love with a kind and generous man, but such a man does not necessarily make the best ruler. She told us that Uncle Faisal was leading our country into a stable and prosperous era, and by doing so, he earned the wrath of those less capable. Although by Western standards my mother was uneducated, she was truly wise.

  Chapter Two: Family

  My mother, encouraged by King Faisal’s wife Iffat, managed to educate her daughters, despite my father’s resistance. For many years, my father refused even to consider the possibility. My five older sisters received no schooling other than to memorize the Koran from a private tutor who came to our home. For two hours, six afternoons a week, they would repeat words after the Egyptian teacher, Fatima, a stern woman of about forty-five years of age. She once asked my parents’ permission to expand my sisters’ education to include science, history, and math. Father responded with a firm no and the recital of the Prophet’s words, and his words alone continued to ring throughout our villa.

  As the years passed, Father saw that many of the royal families were allowing their daughters the benefit of an education. With the coming of the great oil wealth, which relieved nearly all Saudi women, other than the bedouin tribes people and rural villagers, from any type of work, inactivity and boredom became a national problem. Members of the Royal Family are much wealthier than most Saudis, yet the oil wealth brought servants from the Far East and other poor regions into every home.

  All children need to be stimulated, but my sisters and I had little or nothing to do other than to play in our rooms or lounge in the women’s gardens. There was nowhere to go and little to do, for when I was a child, there was not even a zoo or a park in the city.

  Mother, weary of five energetic daughters, thought that school would relieve her while expanding our minds. Finally, Mother, with the assistance of Auntie Iffat, wore Father down to weak acceptance. And so it came to be that the five youngest daughters of our family, including Sara and myself, enjoyed the new age of reluctant acceptance of education for females.

  Our first classroom was in the home of a royal relative. Seven families of the Al Sa’ud clan employed a young woman from Abu Dhabi, a neighboring Arab city in the Emirates. Our small group of pupils, sixteen in all, was known in those days as a Kutab, a group method then popular for teaching girls. We gathered daily in the home of our royal cousin from nine o’clock in the morning until two o’clock in the afternoon, Saturday through Thursday.

  It was there that my favorite sister, Sara, first displayed her brilliance. She was much quicker than girls twice her age. The teacher even asked Sara if she was a primary graduate, and shook her head in wonder when she learned that Sara was not. Our instructor had been fortunate to have a modern-thinking father who had sent her to England for an education. Because of her deformity, a club-foot, she had found no one who would marry her, so she chose a path of freedom and independence for herself. She smiled as she told us that her deformed foot was a gift from God to ensure that her mind did not become deformed too. Even though she lived in the home of our royal cousin (it was and still is unthinkable for a single woman to live alone in Saudi Arabia), she earned a salary and made her decisions about life without outside influence.

  I liked her simply because she was kind and patient when I forgot to do my lessons. Unlike Sara, I was not the scholarly type, and I was happy the teacher expressed little disappointment at my shortcomings. I was much more interested in drawing than in math, and in singing than in performing my prayers. Sara sometimes pinched me when I misbehaved, but after I howled in distress and disrupted the whole class, she left me to my mischievous ways. Certainly, the instructor truly lived up to the name given her twenty-seven years before—Sakeena, which means “tranquility” in Arabic.

  Miss Sakeena told Mother that Sara was the brightest student she had ever taught. After I jumped up and down and yelled, “What about me?” she thought for a long moment before answering. With a smile, she said, “And Sultana is certain to be fam
ous.” That evening at dinner, Mother proudly passed on the remark about Sara to Father. Father, who was visibly pleased, smiled at Sara. Mother beamed with pleasure, but then Father cruelly asked how any daughter born of her belly could acquire learning. Nor did he credit Mother with any contribution to the brilliance of Ali, who was at the top of his class at a modern secondary school in the city. Presumably, the intellectual achievements of her children were inherited solely from their father.

  Even today I shudder with dismay while watching my older sisters attempt to add or subtract. I say little prayers of gratitude to Auntie Iffat, for she changed the lives of so many Saudi women.

  In the summer of 1932, Uncle Faisal had traveled to Turkey, and while there, he fell in love with a unique young woman named Iffat al Thunayan. Hearing that the young Saudi prince was visiting in Constantinople, the young Iffat and her mother approached him about disputed property that had belonged to her deceased father. (The Thunayans were originally Saudis but had been taken to Turkey by the Ottomans during their lengthy rule of the area.) Smitten by Iffat’s beauty, Faisal invited her and her mother to Saudi Arabia to sort out the misunderstanding of the property matter. Not only did he give her the property, he married her. Later, he was to say it was the wisest decision of his life. My mother said Uncle Faisal had gone from woman to woman, like a man possessed, until he met Iffat.

  During the years of Uncle Faisal’s reign, Iffat became the driving force behind education for young girls. Without her efforts, the women in Arabia today would not be allowed in a classroom. I was in awe of her forceful character and declared I would grow up to be just like her. She even had the courage to hire an English nanny for her children, who, of all the royal brood, turned out to be the most unaffected by great wealth.