REBEL

A harrowing account of a Saudi woman’s triumph over oppression.

In a stark memoir related in shocking detail to Canadian journalist and human rights activist Armstrong, Mohammed recounts growing up under Saudi Arabia’s repressive male guardianship system in which “legally, a woman is a nullity.” Raised in an elite Sunni family, she was taught the severely puritanical Wahhabi version of Islam, “a strict, harsh, unforgiving and repressive doctrine driven by coercion and fear.” When she was 7, her mother warned her she must always be quiet, submissive, and pious; from the age of 9, she had to wear an abaya, a loose, shapeless, black garment that covered her whole body; and at 12, she had to add a niqab, a mask that exposes only the eyes. “Going outside without my niqab covering my face was an offence that called for severe punishment,” she writes, “and that’s what they delivered to me with fists and kicks and slaps.” She could do nothing, and go nowhere, without her father’s or brothers’ permission. Even at a medical appointment, “when the doctor would ask me questions about why I was there or what was wrong, my father or my brother would answer and explain to him what I was feeling.” A rebellious young woman, Mohammed boldly questioned her teachers, enjoined her younger brother to accompany her to the homes of more liberal relatives, and stealthily managed to circumvent some restrictions: She first had sex with a girl when she was 12; and later with a boy whom she smuggled into her huge, multiroom house. She watched films and read forbidden books on her phone. Longing for freedom, she found an online network of Saudi women runaways who helped her plan an escape. Mohammed creates a tense narrative of her desperate flight, the efforts of her powerful father to stop her, and the determined journalist who came to her aid.

An absorbing chronicle of courage.