TO be born to a middle class family in Saudi Arabia gives you various advantages, allowing you to view your entire society in a comprehensive way that you wouldn't be able to do if you were born in a richer or poorer family. As part of the middle class, you will find that you are mixing with a variety of people from different backgrounds and different socioeconomic, ideological and educational classes. Your list of friends will probably include sons of high-ranking officials and businessmen as well as sons of taxi drivers and your school's janitor. Giving you the chance of looking into their lifestyles that maybe similar or astonishingly different than the one you are living. After reading Raja'a Al-Sane's novel "Riyadh's Girls" I was astonished to hear that some deny the existence of Saudi girls like the ones Al-Sane spoke of in her novel. I was amazed because I know for a fact that girls like Al-Sane's characters live among us, and in fact some of the stories that were mentioned in that novel weren't actually new to us, since we have all heard similar true stories over and over in schools, universities and through the grapevine of society. This made me realize that parts of Saudi society live in illusion, thinking that everyone is the same as them, and that anyone breaking that convention is a bizarre exception. You might find my examples to be a bit over feminine, and perhaps that is due to the separation between males and females in our society. Away from women who complain of a lack of jobs or those complaining about the limited entertainment options and low incomes and everything else which forms the miserable image of what life in the Kingdom is like for women whether we like it or not. Away from all these factors is a group of women who have the things the rest of the Kingdom do not have access to. A group of women who do not have invisible barriers in their lives. If you meet these women, you will find some that they talk about scuba diving in a scuba diving club that doesn't allow Saudis (males or females) in. Others will go on for hours about the trip that they took with their private college to India, or their work in a mixed environment in which they work with men without even wearing their veils, while others will tell you about their photographic exhibit which will probably be held in some foreign embassy and their luxurious mixed weddings in their mansion, and so on. Suddenly we are faced with a different image than what we are used to, which is not easy to accept. Since it is different from all what we are used to see with regard of Saudi women – especially for us who had suffered from the absolute refusal of our parents whenever we try to ask for permission to visit a female college friend at home. So we are not to be blamed for our surprise when we see young girls going with their college friends for a swim. And as I recall the strict regulations and instructions regarding covering our faces and hair and wearing our veils properly in intermediate school, I find myself surprised to find that most private colleges now don't actually stress on such matters; in fact some allow the veil to be worn on the shoulders only so that it would cover the already covered shoulders instead of the hair. And while we all had a hard time learning through closed circuit video conferences that carried the image of our male college professors to us, we find that these precious young private college girls in that group are tutored by living breathing and solid real college professors. And while thousands of females that travel to study abroad on scholarships live in fear that their scholarships may be terminated if authorities found out that they are alone without male companions, which usually occurs thanks to their gallant countrymen, we find that these precious girls never live in that fear, since that even if it does occur their families are more than capable of paying for their education very comfortably. It's not only about differences in the level of religious conservatism; it's more about the huge difference in economic level and lifestyle. While many women have to go through tons of trouble and accept many hard and sometimes unjust rules in order to make a living by working for government or private organizations, you'll find others that respond to a momentary impulse by traveling at any given time from Jeddah to Geneva simply to get the latest collection of Chopard watches before it hits the market here. One of these precious ladies was asked about the temporary decorations that she had set up in her house for an occasion, she replied in a joyful manner saying that it was actually cheap, adding that she was quite lucky to get it for only SR30,000! So as you see, these people are fully entitled to show their discomfort of the continuous whining of others about increasing prices, as Marie Antoinette had said centuries ago: "why don't they just eat biscuits? It is the time for us to admit that our society is in fact formed of several other sub-societies, each of which is living away from the other in what can sometimes be complete solitude, as if there were invisible barriers that prevent any mixing between these sub-societies. Those thinking that Saudi society is one big homogenous mass and that what shows on its surface is its true image are mistaken. One has to be innocent to judge the entire society by what he sees in his own sub-society and it takes a really naive person to think that virtue is protected by the passing of more extreme and conservative laws, since these laws are implemented only on certain groups. Groups that also happen to be in the bottom of the pyramid when it comes to income, influence and representation. *The writer is a post-graduate student in the United Kingdom __
