Manal al-Sharif - Daring to drive: a Saudi womans awakening

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Authors Note: This book is based on my personal recollections. I have endeavored to be as accurate as possible, but I do not claim to be a historian or religious expert. In most cases, I have removed names or used only first names. Any errors or missing details are unintentional. My apologies for any mistakes in these pages.

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Copyright 2017 by Manal al-Sharif

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition June 2017

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Interior design by Lewelin Polanco

Jacket design by Alison Forner

Jacket photograph by Maha Nasra Edd

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sharif, Manal, 1979 author

Title: Daring to drive : a Saudi womans awakening / Manal al-Sharif.

Description: New York : Simon & Schuster, 2017.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016041017 (print) | LCCN 2016050553 (ebook) | ISBN 9781476793023 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781476793047 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Sharif, Manal, 1979 | WomenSaudi ArabiaBiography. | Women political activistsBiography. | Women automobile driversSaudi ArabiaBiography.

Classification: LCC HQ1730.Z75 S47 2017 (print) | LCC HQ1730.Z75 (ebook) | DDC 320.082/09538dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016041017

ISBN 978-1-4767-9302-3 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4767-9304-7 (ebook)

To Mama & Abouya:

Sorry that we have not been thankful for everything you gave us or taught us;

we didnt know it was all you had.

To Abdalla and Hamza:

Question the rules, not yourself.

To the forty-seven women drivers of 1990:

You are my idols.

The best of you are those who are best to the women.

PROPHET MUHAMMAD, Peace Be Upon Him

Dont be afraid. Fear wont prevent death, it prevents life.

NAGUIB MAHFOUZ

My problem isnt forgetting, my real problem is having excessive memories.

GHAZI ALGOSAIBI

T he secret police came for me at two in the morning. The second knock on the door quickly followed the first. They were loud, hard knocks, the kind that radiate out and shake the doorframe. My five-year-old son was asleep, but I was awake still, sitting up with my brother.

Startled, my brother jumped up and rushed to the entry. I stayed slightly behind, feeling the night air rush in as he pulled open the door. It was May, so the air was warm but still pleasant, not oppressively hot. And it was dark. My lone porch light had burned out weeks before and I hadnt bothered to replace it. I thought about the light, I wondered whether the sudden noise would have woken my sonsmall thoughts passing through my mind in those seconds before everything changed.

In the shadowy darkness, all we could see were men, crowding around my front stoop, pressing forward. They had no uniforms, nothing to identify them. When my brother asked them who they were, there was silence. Finally, one of them spoke. Is this Manal al-Sharifs house?

My brother didnt hesitate. Yes, he answered, his voice firm.

She needs to come with us right now. They want to see her at the Dhahran police station. My brother did not have to ask why. That previous afternoon I had been pulled over by the traffic police for the crime of driving my brothers car. The specific citation was driving while female. My brother had been sitting beside me, in the passenger seat, and then had sat next to me again for five hours inside the Thuqbah traffic police station, a two-story, nondescript concrete government building with a sturdy fence all around and a detention room where drivers could be held for hours or even days. There was only one detention space in the station, and it was only for men. Im quite sure that I was the first woman ever to enter the Thuqbah station. It took the police several hours, including a call to the commander and a visit to the local governors house, just to produce a paper for me to sign. The paper was a promise to never again drive on Saudi lands. I refused to sign, but they persisted. When my brother read the piece of paper, he realized I would only be admitting to having violated Saudi custom, because there are no specific Saudi statutes or lines in the traffic code that forbid women from driving. All they could accuse me of was disobeying the orf, or custom. I signed, and we were released. My brother and I took a taxi home, thinking that the incident was over, thinking that we had stymied the system, that in some small way, we had won.

We returned to my town house to find the TV on. There were pizza boxes on the coffee table, and three of my friends were clustered in my small living room with their laptops and smartphones. As I walked in, my sister-in-law started crying, and my friends rushed over and hugged me, shouting that they couldnt believe the police had let me go. One friend had even started a Twitter hashtag, #FreeManal, after Id texted him from the car when the police first pulled me over. Everyone was talking at once, telling me to look at this tweet or that Facebook page or this news feed. In the six hours, the news of my arrest had gone viral. But I couldnt look at anything. I was exhausted, physically, mentally, and emotionally. All I wanted to do was to take a shower and go to bed. But it is against every Saudi custom to ask guests to leave, so I sat and we talked about winning our first battle, about having proved that there is no traffic code explicitly banning women from driving. When they finally left, they were still so excited and happyand so was I, thinking, Well, now no one can stop us.

But then it was 2:00 a.m. and there were men at my door and my elation from the day was gone. As soon as I heard the words Dhahran police station, I was terrified. My brother slammed the door shut and locked the bolt. There was a pause. Then the knocking started again.