The picture of a girl in a glitzy mall on a Thursday afternoon with her veiled nose buried in a book is a sight that is not very common. Yet, in our world of possibilities, there is nothing impossible or improbable. As I sat observing this girl with spectacles perched on her nose, head bent over pages of what certainly looked like English prose, a pencil in her hand which she used to underline sentences every few seconds, my interest was piqued. I finally gathered the courage to interrupt her and inquired about the title of the book. It was ‘Eat, love, pray' by best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert. In her accented English she explained: “This book is about the writer's experiences in Italy, India and Indonesia. She describes the years she spent traveling around the world in search of personal restoration, after a difficult divorce, to different places around the world.” When asked why she was underlining sentences in the book, she said she wanted to highlight phrases or parts which appealed to her and were beautifully written. She works as a receptionist in a fitness club for women and loves to read books. “I like the beauty of the written word. Literature is art,” she said. It sure is art, I agreed and there is no best friend like a book wherein one can lose oneself in the story of the writer or become the protagonist itself. What was amazing was not that I found a young Saudi woman sitting in a café reading a book but rather how all the stories that go around or the tales that people love to tell or the branding, in the West, of Saudi women do not hold true. Saudi women are described as shopping-crazy, education-deprived, top-to-toe covered in black mystery with no access to activities or sports. Throw in the ban on women driving and they become only more obscure. Sure Saudi women like to shop but then which women don't? What little is known of Saudi women, barring the very senseless stereotypes of course, is only a matter of not observing or simply ignoring. An educated Saudi woman looks forward to a career in her chosen field, marries who she and her family collectively choose and in many cases she herself makes the choice. A Saudi woman also goes on to have children and balance a career and some choose to let their career take a back seat in order to raise their children. There are scores of Saudi women bloggers, artists, teachers, professors, doctors and women in high-profile management jobs. There are, no doubt, things that are not accessible to women in Saudi Arabia – engineering courses, driving their own vehicles and other things like jobs in certain fields like aviation, but there are great efforts being exerted to promote these things and a change is not far away. That doesn't mean that meanwhile all they do is shop, eat and sleep, which by the way are basic human necessities. They do not, or at least the majority do not, shop in order to make up for the absence of doing anything worthwhile. Saudi women are smart, intelligent, and creative, and they lead meaningful lives dabbling in many things. If only we could take a closer look at what they are capable of, we would realize that the black that they wear does not signify ignorance, but rather an assertion of the right to the beliefs of strong, independent women. __
