In this electronic age, Saudi girls navigating cyberspace looking for spouses has led to an increase in Internet-mediated marriages. Some conservative families do not allow their daughters to meet strangers. But if you meet in cyberspace, technically you are not breaking any religious or cultural norms as you are not physically alone with that person. Arab and Muslim online surfers still feel embarrassed about cyber searches for spouses. Many of those who had success were reluctant to say where they met their mate. This does not necessarily mean that all Internet-mediated marriages are successful as there are clearly both positive and negative aspects to this kind of marriage. Narrating her experience, Afaf said she went to one website in the hope that she would find a compatible spouse, and thus she started communicating with some men among whom were engineers, businessmen and doctors. “At the beginning, I was a bit hesitant, but as I had the feeling that I was communicating with sophisticated people looking for educated and enlightened young women, it encouraged me to continue with the experience even to the extent of talking to them on my cellular phone. But as things became serious, they started insisting on meeting me in a café or park and when I refused, they simply disappeared,” Afaf added. Hanan, another young woman who had a similar experience, said that while she was browsing, she came across a marriage advertising website which told rosy stories about scores of successful cyberspace marriages. This encouraged her to provide some information about herself and her teaching job. “I then received lots of responses from hundreds of young men including a fellow who said he was a multimillionaire and an only son, whom I gave permission to ask my father for my hand in marriage. He started calling me on my mobile phone promising the moon and eventually ended up in asking me to see him,” said Hanan. “One day,” she added, “the multimillionaire took me by surprise when he asked to borrow SR5,000 in order to pay the workshop which was repairing his car after a traffic accident. After a few weeks, he called me again to tell me that he lost his fortune as the customs had seized consignments worth millions as they were not in conformity with Saudi specifications, and thus he was now bankrupt. He kept repeating the same story for several days until one day, he told me that he was completely broke and needed financial help from me in order to marry me. Thus I discovered that I had fallen easy prey to an impostor as he had told a completely different story to my father when he went to ask for my hand.” She said he switched off his mobile and after some days he appeared to tell her that he had traveled to his hometown to inform his family about the marriage, but that the entire family, especially his eldest sister, refused to accept the idea of the marriage. Hanan said she found herself in a very embarrassing situation as she was reluctant to tell her family about the new development especially after the man had set a date for the marriage. She said that it was God's mercy that the pre- marital test showed their incompatibility and thus she was able to pull out of the marriage arrangement, but only after he had taken some of her savings. Layla's luck was not much better than Hanan's. “I loved him from the depth of my heart,” she said. “And so I agreed to meet him out of fear that my family might force me to marry a man that I did not love. So I went to see him with the understanding that we would meet in a public place. Instead he took me to a furnished apartment, and of course, I refused to enter it. It was in this way that I discovered that he was just toying with my feelings.” Hayat, another victim, said she developed a relationship with a young man whom she admired for his seriousness and gentleness, but when it came to the point of marriage, he “chickened out and disappeared.” “He told me that his ailing mother was admitted to the ICU when she learned about the marriage,” Hayat said, adding: “His mother wanted him to return to his wife who is her cousin and because of this an argument ensued and his mother was admitted to the ICU where she died. Thus his family blamed him for her death and since then he has had a guilty conscience although he loves me very much.” Hayat said when her family learned about the telephone calls, she asked the man to see her family to ask for her hand in marriage. “In fact he put me in a very embarrassing situation as he switched off his mobile and disappeared,” she said.
