Loveless country.(The Veiled Kingdom)(Book Review)

The Veiled Kingdom, by Carmen bin Ladin; Virago, 2004, $29.95.

ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, Carmen bin Ladin looked, horror-struck, at the terrifying images screening on her television and knew at once who had done it--her brother-in-law, Osama. Over the days that followed, her own reactions and those of her bewildered and frightened daughters, who shared the surname of the world's most reviled man, inspired her to start writing this book, which is an exploration of her own contact with the infamous family. It is an extraordinary glimpse into the stultifying, depressing world of the ultra-Wahhabi family of the globe's most wanted terrorist.

It is also a simply told tale of a human tragedy, a tragedy caused in great part by the hideous inflexibility, repression and emotional deadening of Sandi upbringing and custom. In its sometimes artless prose, and its telling detail (such as, for example, in one of the world's sunniest countries, the incidence of Vitamin D deficiency in women is high), it exposes more about the dull, desperate and stifling lives of Saudi women--and the repressed rage and rancour just under the surface of Saudi impassivity, both male and female--than anything I've read in a while. The author paints portraits of her in-laws and their friends which are both frightening and piteous; yet she is often compassionate, and often sad, at the wasted lives, wasted opportunities, and sterility of the culture that surrounded her.

Carmen bin Ladin (she spells her married name that way in part to distinguish herself from her brother-in-law) was married to one of Osama's older half- brothers, Yeslam, for many years but is now divorced from him and living in her native Switzerland with her three daughters. The half-Swedish, half-Iranian beauty, with her sophisticated, aristocratic background and her full-blooded enjoyment of life, fell in love with the dashing yet gentle young man when he was on one of his frequent visits to the West. It was true love, not arranged in any way, and for a while the couple were very happy, living first in Swizterland, then in the USA, where Yeslam was completing his studies. He seemed to enjoy the West, and to love being with his wife, and, soon, their first daughter.

But it was not to last. Soon, they would return to Saudi Arabia, and Yeslam would be absorbed back into the bosom of his huge family (the author describes, rather amusingly, how the family occupied not just houses but an entire compound, or neighbourhood). He had to help to take care of family business, not an easy thing to do when you share it with more than fifty siblings, who are all sniping and fighting and engaging in constant one-upmanship, and you have to also negotiate the Byzantine complexities of doing business with the royal family. And he also had to fit back into the world of the repressed and domineering Saudi man. As to Carmen, she had to become a virtual ghost--the black-clad ghost of Saudi ideal, the woman whose personality and very form are effaced under her veil and abaya. There were no more possibilities for her, not even of shopping trips: home was her only domain, her female relatives the only people she could interact with, aside from her husband.

In the West, Yeslam had seemed to be a strong character who loved Carmen's independence, spirit and sense of fun; back in the house of his stem, incurious and ultra-religious mother, he shrank little by little, unable to reconcile the contradictions in his nature, his inclinations, and the expectations of his culture. Meanwhile, Carmen tried, but failed, to get accepted by her in-laws, and attempted to fit in with Saudi society without violating too much.

She kicked out, sometimes in mutinous silence, against the grotesque, petty, demeaning and ridiculous restrictions; the boredom, repetitiveness and narrowness of women's lives, the ignorance and ...