In this Opinion Journal.com piece, Danielle Crittenden reviews a new book — “Inside the Kingdom” — by Osama Bin Ladin’s former sister-in-law, Carmen bin Ladin.
Inasmuch as women of radical Islamic families risk severe punishment for speaking out, first person accounts of life in this culture are rare. As Ms. Crittendon notes, Ms. Bin Ladin is not a distant relative seeking to cash in on her the Bin Ladin family’s notoriety. Rather, her story is arguably the most vivid account yet to appear in the West of the oppressive lives of Saudi women:
Carmen’s life in Saudi Arabia began when her car pulled up to Yeslam’s mother’s compound outside Jeddah. In the mid-1970s, the town was still not much more than a donkey crossroads in the middle of the desert. If winds weren’t whipping up the sand in blinding funnels, the sun was scorching down with unbearable heat. Shrouded in her unfamiliar and suffocating black robes, Carmen entered what sounds like a luridly decorated marble tomb. From then on, she was no longer free.
Each day, Yeslam vanished to work. Carmen and her young daughter passed the hours in the company of his mother and sister. Rarely could she leave the house–rarely, even, did she see sunlight. Courtyards had to be cleared of male servants before she could poke her head outside; she was not even permitted to cross the street alone to visit a relative. When she did venture out, she had to wear a choking abaya and thick socks to hide her ankles. “It was like carrying a jail on your back,” she writes.
Nor was she much freer inside the house. She could not listen to music, pick up an uncensored book or newspaper, or watch anything on television but a dour man reading the Quran. Nor could she absorb herself in household tasks. These were left to foreign servants, including the care of children.
Carmen was horrified by the effects of this isolation and uselessness. “The Bin Laden women were like pets kept by their husbands;. . . .Occasionally they were patted on the head and given presents; sometimes they were taken out, mostly to each other’s houses;. . . .I never once saw one of my sisters-in-law pick up a book. These women never met with men other than their husbands, and never talked about larger issues even with the men they had married. They had nothing to say.”