Love and sex have long been subjects of interest, but perhaps none more so than in places where both are considered forbidden. The boldness of anonymous technology and the Internet is slowly opening up repressive cultures and encouraging people to question not only their heritage, but also their religion and place in the world. Taking the Islamic world by storm and immediately getting banned, Raja Alsani’s Girls of Riyadh is a strange mix of message and narrative about the lives of four high-class Saudi women searching for love and meaning while dealing with a changing world and new ideals. The temptations and tensions of Western culture penetrate the minds of these four young college girls as they struggle to find a balance between the possibilities and beauty of tradition and the strength of their own faith. Narrated by an unnamed narrator, their stories seep into the world through a collection of emails sent to randomly found addresses in Saudi Arabia, where the anonymity of the internet acts as a cloak and allows both writer and audience to juggle all the difficult questions and talk about all the forbidden desires.
At the beginning, we meet Gamra, a conservative girl who enters into an arranged marriage and is the envy of all her single friends. Her friends recognize that Gamra’s life looks good because she now has a husband and is not so lonely. However, Gamra’s new life partner has secrets to hide. Neither has chosen the other, and the struggle of duty over desire and love soon tears the fragile relationship apart with bitter consequences for Gamra. Marked by the black mark of a divorced woman shackled to an unwanted child, Gamra is shunned by society and her rights, few as they were, are further violated until she discovers the beauty of chat rooms and pretend romances. Still, Gamra’s world is one of fantasy and loneliness, painting a vivid picture of a double betrayal-the betrayal of her husband and the even greater and more pertinent betrayal of her culture.
Sadim has it a little better than Gamra. When she marries her true love Walid, she agrees to overcome the system and spend a night of pleasure with her future husband. Once completed, Walid suddenly reneges on the contract and ends the possibility of the union. A girl who has not protected her virginity, who has given herself to a man (regardless of the circumstances), is shunned and also unable to marry. Lonely and hopeless, Sadim wonders if all people are like this, or if her treatment is a sign of harsh and outdated cultural prerogatives and a certain element of double hypocrisy inherent in her restricted society. When she meets a second chance, she must choose between love and self-respect.
Michelle (Mashael) is half American and half Saudi. The hopes of Michelle, the liberal, outspoken thinker of the group, are soon dashed when her ambiguous heritage convinces her heartbroken lover Faisal that despite his love, he must heed his mother’s warning. Choosing the security of family and tradition over feelings, Faisal’s heartbroken rejection makes Michelle distrust men. As she becomes more involved in her career, trying to forget about her loneliness, she is once again hampered by cultural expectations and her father’s sudden move to “save the family name.”
Only Lamiz manages to combine love and successful work for a long and happy life. By choosing the middle, Lamis combines her devotion to religion with a modern worldview, choosing her own man and her own life without rejecting any remnants of her heritage. Always open to the needs of her friends, Lamis’s advice brings a disparate group of women seekers together into a cohesive unit. The friends take care of each other and together question their tragedies and disappointments in men, developing as individuals but still bearing the emotional (and sometimes physical) scars of their experiences.
As the story progresses, the anonymous narrator responds to both hate mail and fan mail, providing more details about each girl in his gossipy style, while refusing to identify himself (or herself) in the story. Together, the tight-knit group of friends delve into the tough questions they shouldn’t be asking. Some rise from the ashes (Lamis) and find balance and answers, while others (Gamra) fall into unresolved rage. It is a strikingly vivid portrait that strikes a chord with the reality of each person. The ideas of love and the etiquette of relationships, no matter how culturally distant, are still painfully familiar to the audience, as are the pressing questions of the developing world. Are all religion and society built on hypocrisy? Is tradition an unbreakable chain that breaks and destroys? Are some elements of heritage good and others bad, and if so, how do we identify them and choose what stays and what goes? How has the advent of technology and online disguise affected those regions of the world where it is now possible to disregard past rigor with a device-and, ultimately, should we?