In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom
Qanta Ahmed
Language: English
Pages: 464
ISBN: 1402210876
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"In this stunningly written book, a Western trained Muslim doctor brings alive what it means for a woman to live in the Saudi Kingdom. I've rarely experienced so vividly the shunning and shaming, racism and anti-Semitism, but the surprise is how Dr. Ahmed also finds tenderness at the tattered edges of extremism, and a life-changing pilgrimage back to her Muslim faith." - Gail Sheehy
The decisions that change your life are often the most impulsive ones.
Unexpectedly denied a visa to remain in the United States, Qanta Ahmed, a young British Muslim doctor, becomes an outcast in motion. On a whim, she accepts an exciting position in Saudi Arabia. This is not just a new job; this is a chance at adventure in an exotic land she thinks she understands, a place she hopes she will belong.
What she discovers is vastly different. The Kingdom is a world apart, a land of unparralled contrast. She finds rejection and scorn in the places she believed would most embrace her, but also humor, honesty, loyalty and love.
And for Qanta, more than anything, it is a land of opportunity. A place where she discovers what it takes for one woman to recreate herself in the land of invisible women.
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in dirt and roughened already with young callous. Perhaps he was one of the boys who kicked a dusty soccer ball around in the vacant lots awaiting development. His hands were flaccid and open-palmed. I noticed the fingernails were bitten to the quick and some of the hangnails recently bloody. His crumpled thobe, stained and worn, lay soiled on the floor. A smell of stale urine pervaded the air and then my eyes finally saw the precipitant of admission. As I moved in to examine the head and review
People are afraid, and the networks to report it in order to take action don't really exist right now.” “So tell me if you have seen a case of child abuse recently,” I asked, always curious to learn from my knowledgeable friend. “A kid was brought into the ER on a busy Thursday night some time ago. He was a scoop and run. By that I mean they had just piled him into the back of the pickup and dumped him onto a gurney in the ER. At the time we didn't have the Red Crescent ambulance services which
to render her professional opinion, and that she was overall subdued and reticent in public. I had mistaken her retiring qualities for shyness. Now I found her mutual curiosity surprising. I wondered what else I would learn about her. So began my first friendship with a Saudi woman, one which led to many others. Zubaidah would open the doors into the Kingdom for me. She would show me the lives of others inside this bell jar. Some weeks after our first meeting, Zubaidah mentioned she was having
in Saudi Arabia's history. I was listening rapt, only now realizing that several other women had gathered to listen to Zubaidah's mother recount the recent history which had become modern folklore. She had more to tell. Al-Otaibi was a radical critic of the royal family.6 He believed Wahabi doctrines could somehow become a political program that would avoid creating either a republic or a monarchy. Instead he wanted the rigid, archaic teachings to form a philosophical basis on which to run the
one side, a single invisible organism. Frequently I would try to move each female resident with a gentle but firm guiding hand to their draped elbow or shoulder, encouraging them to move to the fore of the group. Like a phalanx, they moved only in a cohort, afraid to stand alone, sheltering each other in a cumulative shadow of their opacity. They remained silent and respectful during acrimonious exchanges, inscrutable behind their hijabs, rarely tendering any opinion, and certainly never
