Tucson, Arizona Tuesday, 12 November 2002
Cops vs. underwear
By Maureen Dowd
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia
I had been wanting to catch a glimpse of the mutawwa, the bully boys from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice who go around harassing and arresting Saudis in the name of Islam.
But since I grew up with "I Dream of Jeannie" and tales of Aladdin's lamp, I should have known that
Arabia is not the place to make wishes lightly.
The religious police were reputed to look angry and have long, scraggly beards and to clean their teeth with a tree root called miswak.
They had been so out of control lately that Prince Naif, the interior minister, cautioned them last week to show tolerance, respect the sanctity of private homes and stop spying on people.
This kingdom is a thicket of unfathomable extremes. Frederick's of Hollywood-style lingerie shops abound, even though female sexuality is considered so threatening that the mere sight of a woman's ankle will cause civilization to crumble.
As one cleric put it, women can become "the most dangerous weapon of destruction" for Islamic nations.
Saudi Arabia has some remarkable women, but you won't find them helping to run the country; the toilet seats at the Foreign Ministry are routinely left up.
On Wednesday at 11:30 p.m., I walked to the mall connected to my hotel to verify that there is a "women only" lingerie section in Harvey Nichols.
(The first wife of Muhammad, who did not seem to mind high-achieving women, was a merchant; during Ramadan, trade is encouraged, and stores stay open past midnight.)
My dinner companion, Adel al-Jubeir, went with me. The smooth Georgetown-educated spokesman for the Saudis has been the kingdom's point man on the Sunday talk shows, trying to repair its friendship with America after 9/11.
The three-story mall was so chockablock with designer stilettos, bondage boots, transparent blouses and glittering gowns with plunging necklines that it would have made Las Vegas blush.
I felt drab, dressed in black to suit Saudi standards with a scarf over my hair, a long skirt, a sweater over a
T-shirt and flats. An earlier outing with a pink skirt had caused my Ministry of Information minder to bark: "Get your abaya! They'll kill you!"
I made some notes on Harvey Nichols' lingerie apartheid - racks of sheer zebra and leopard Dolce & Gabbana nighties and lacy Donna Karan items - and Jubeir and I headed back to the hotel.
Suddenly, four men bore down on us, two in white robes, one in a brown policeman's uniform and one in a floor-length brown A-line skirt (not a good look). They pointed to my neck and hips, and the embarrassed diplomat explained that I had been busted by the vice squad.
"They say they can see the outline of your body," he translated.
The police took my passport and began making notes about the crime, oblivious to the irony of detaining me in front of the window of another lingerie shop displaying a lacy red slip.
I figured they'd shrink away upon learning that Jubeir's boss was Crown Prince Abdullah. But they didn't. I thought I'd catch a break because I'm an American Catholic, not a Muslim. I didn't.
Apparently, the mutawwa are not on board with the Saudis' multimillion-dollar charm offensive to persuade America that the kingdom is not a hotbed of hostile religious zealots.
Jubeir asked whether I'd "placate" the mutawwa by putting on an abaya from a nearby shop. I'd had to wear one of the macabre, hot black shrouds that day to see the crown prince, and I was loath to get shrouded up again to walk a few yards.
After the men argued for 15
minutes, I fretted that I was in one
of those movies in which an American makes one mistake in a repressive country and ends up rotting in
a dungeon.
I missed John Ashcroft desperately. The Saudis, after all, have been fighting with the U.N. Committee Against Torture so they can keep using flogging and amputation of limbs as disciplinary measures.
Finally, the mutawwa agreed to let me go, appeased by the promise that I would soon be leaving Saudi Arabia.
A relieved scofflaw, I was left
to ponder a country at a turning point, a society engaged in a
momentous struggle for its future, torn between secret police and secret undergarments.
* Maureen Dowd is a columnist for The New York Times, 229 W. 43rd St., New York, NY 10036; e-mail: liberties@nytimes.com. |
