Rebel – My Escape from Saudi Arabia to Freedom by Rahaf Mohammed, published by HarperCollins Publishers and received from Jonathan Ball Publishers South Africa in May this year, is the astonishing true story of how an incredibly courageous teenager defied Saudi Arabia's archaic male guardianship system and managed to flee that country in January 2019.
Rebel – My Escape from Saudi Arabia to Freedom, which Mohammed calls her personal biography, left me incredulous at the pitiless brutality she had suffered as a girl child and teenager in her own home, where her own family threatened to kill her for having the impudence to wish for the kind of freedoms we in the Western world often take for granted.
As the daughter of a politician, Mohammed was raised according to an oppressive interpretation of Islam, under which women and girls have virtually no freedom or independence. A system condoned by the government, and that defies international laws and human rights norms. It is incredible to think that, while the rest of the world are making strides in finally granting women equal standing, there are still countries where this barbarism continues unchecked. More unbelievable still, is the fact that the rest of the world is simply turning a blind eye to these cruel injustices, often to protect various commercial and economic interests.
Her tale had me in fits of fury but also absolute admiration for her bravery and that of other Saudi women who managed to escape the tyranny and the ‘non-existence’ of females in that country. Because that is what it is: the denial of another human’s existence because of their gender. I was continually – and unbelievingly – checking the dates to confirm that the incidents Mohammed recounts did in fact occur in modern day Saudi and not some barbarous prehistoric era.
After three years of painstaking planning, she finally made her escape while on holiday with her family in Kuwait in 2019, from where she would flee to Australia and seek asylum. With her passport and Australian visa in her pocket, Mohammed boarded a plane to Australia via Bangkok. Alas, Thai officials put paid to her carefully laid plans when they detained her upon arrival on orders of Saudi officials (read: her father). She would be returned to her family and would, she believed, be given the death sentence.
As a last desperate gambit, Mohammed barricaded herself in an airport hotel room and, with the support of Sophie McNeill, an Australian journalist who’d read her tweets and had flown nine hours to cover Mohammed’s story, she managed to appeal for help via social media. It blew up, as the kids say. Causing a veritable Twitter storm, Mohammed’s story captured the attention of government leaders, human rights advocates, various world press and, eventually, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
This passionate tale had me equal parts horrified and thrilled and I devoured it in one sitting; transfixed by the courage of a young girl who refused to accept a system that denied her humanity and future, and who decided to break the pattern.
Just by writing Rebel – My Escape from Saudi Arabia to Freedom, Mohammed puts herself at more risk as it shines a light on the rampant and dangerous inequalities that persist in Saudi society, and encourages women everywhere to dream of a better future for themselves and their daughters. For that, she should be lauded and applauded.
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