Table of contents for September-November 2021 in Womankind

It’s the one question that we’d all like to know the answer to, so we could just get on with it - the living part, that is. If we knew what the ‘good life’ entailed then we could shun the rest, and just concentrate on the important bits. But society has a tendency to derail us. We’re repeatedly told that the good life is about making loads of money, having a successful career and buying as much as we can possibly shovel into our houses and garages. Some are convinced that they need to be famous and get their name up in lights for the good life to kick in. It’s worth remembering that the phase of flight for the Kunanyia stephaniae butterfly lasts a mere 14 days, long enough…

A pilgrimage is a journey taken in search of something deemed important in one’s life, whether that’s the search for meaning, personal transformation, or the higher good. Many religions around the world involve pilgrimage to a sacred place, either alone or in a group. Pilgrims, often from varied cultural and geographical regions, come together, wearing special clothing, eating or abstaining from certain foods, and performing certain rites, either before or at the place of the sacred sites, sometimes undertaken at particular times of the year, or even phases of a person’s life cycle. Once on a pilgrimage, the pilgrim separates from their everyday life at home. In a desert valley in western Saudi Arabia sits Islam’s holiest city, Mecca, or Makkah in Arabic. Mecca is the birthplace of Islamic Prophet…

Before the 16th century, we human beings believed that the earth was the centre of the universe and that everything circled around it (us). This was not only a longstanding theory of astronomy but, dare I say, an implicit theory of psychology as well. Scientists and popular society were highly resistant to Copernicus’s assertion that the Earth was a supporting actor in the universe and that the Sun, in fact, plays the starring role. Soon after Copernicus proposed this controversial idea, in a further blow to our collective narcissism, Galileo used his powerful telescope to get a good look at the planet Jupiter. He discovered that there are other worlds out there with moons and orbits and atmospheres all of their own. It took quite a lot of convincing to…

To the naked eye, Chateau Louis XIV appears centuries old, built in the tradition of the great French palaces. Nestled in a 57 acre park, there are marble statues and fountains; a hedged labyrinth and bridle paths; and a handsome, if ostentatious, façade. But “the world’s most expensive home” - as dubbed by Fortune magazine when it sold in 2015 for $300 million - is actually a new development. Modern luxuries include a home cinema, a subterranean nightclub, and an aquarium under the moat, a transparent chamber designed for viewing the sturgeon and koi fish swimming overhead. Everything - from the fountains to the lighting displays - can be controlled from a phone. Chateau Louis XIV’s owner is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, presumed heir to the Saudi throne. It…

It was midnight, or perhaps it was around one in the morning when I woke up. My room had caught on fire. I opened my eyes, and all I could see were flames. I don’t know how I got the power. It was like a power that came to me from the universe. I became a superwoman. There was no time to call the firefighters, or wake anyone up, the fire was just growing in seconds. I burnt my feet, I was covered in smoke, I was black. My mother’s cat, Snowy, who is white, became grey. My hair was like a piece of rug. Honestly, I don’t know how I didn’t die that night. Even just from the smoke. But I know I was protected. I was protected by…

A pea-sized lump, hard as a bullet. A dull pain in my left breast. A haunting thought that something was brewing. Susan Sontag perceived illness as the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. There’s the country of the well, and the country of the sick. The border between the two can be breached in an instant - a fact we suppress. Death, the one sure extinction that we are constantly travelling towards, is something that happens to other people. Not to a fit, outwardly healthy woman in her forties, a single parent of two young children. A few days after I discovered the lump, I was sitting in a surgeon’s consulting room. Brisk and business-like, no makeup and a sensible haircut, she bore no trace of the hyper-femininity or…

Great change has taken place in the lives of Bedouin populations throughout the Arabian Peninsula over the last century. A general displacement from their traditional migratory lifestyle has had an inevitable effect on cultural identity, economic independence, and once-nomadic trading lives. Traditionally, the Bedouin people have relied on herding for subsistence, following the migratory routes they have walked through for many generations, but new borders, political uncertainty, and government incentives designed to induce the Bedouin to form settlements instead have all left their mark over the last six or seven decades. For Bedouin women, the transition to ‘sedentary’ life in established settlements has meant that traditional tasks such as caring for animals, milking and herding them, erecting and caring for tents, and a host of other important tasks are no…

Hafsa belongs to a Bedouin tribe which has inhabited the north-west of the Arabian Peninsula since long before the creation of Saudi Arabia. A mother of eleven, she was raised according to a traditional nomadic way of life where tents and camels were the only shelter and transport available. Hafsa’s family continues to spend part of the year roaming the deserts with her family; the rest they now spend settled on a small plot of land on the outskirts of Tabuk, where they have constructed more permanent shelters. Hafsa has no birth certificate but believes she is currently in her mid-fifties. I gave birth to eleven children out there in the sands - five boys and six girls. There weren’t any doctors; at least I’d never met one. AlhamduLillah, every…

It could be called an urge, or a need, and it pesters us. We think we can rid ourselves of it, but before long, it is back, niggling at us. But in a society that values money and prestige, we can’t fathom how such a need as superfluous as this, which has no role in our modern world, has got such a grip on us. Writer and educator Ellen Dissanayake began a quest to investigate why she, and many women like her, had this inexplicable need to make things. This ‘making’ urge could manifest in sewing, cooking, painting, writing, decorating, fashioning new things from the old, gardening, and so forth. It was a need to get off the computer and the screen, to stop ingesting passive entertainment, and to use…

When crises hit - an illness, a death, a mental malady of some sort - the self can feel like it’s fallen into a state of disintegration. The person pre-crisis is no longer the same person afterwards. And this death of the ‘old self’ can feel as disconcerting as the crisis itself. How is it possible to get back on to one’s feet, to regain ground? Kazimierz Dabrowski, a Polish psychiatrist and psychologist, was the third son of four children. When he was six years old, his youngest sister, aged three at the time, died of meningitis. As a teenager, his best friend ended his own life. Dabrowski gained a medical degree and began his studies in psychology. He married at 28, but his wife died of tuberculosis not long…

When Zora O’Neill embarked on a trip through the Middle East in search of a new language, she was under no illusion as to the hardships she was about to face. Learning a new language to some sort of fluency, especially when approaching middle age, was not going to be easy. And the evidence against language learning at an older age was stacking up. A new study using an unusually large database of 669,498 people, pulled from a quiz on social media, bleakly concluded that our ability to learn new grammar declines after 17.4 years of age. And if you seek to learn grammar on par with a native speaker, start before you are ten years old, or so says the report. So how does that leave someone in middle…

Twenty prospective students, myself included, stood in a loose circle around Ted, the course coordinator. “This course,” he told us, “will change your life. By the end of the first semester, you’ll be looking at the world differently. Even that window,” he said, flourishing his hand, “you’ll look through with an artist’s eye. So, don’t come expecting a holiday, or a break from work. You’ll work harder here than you’ve ever worked before. And not just in this studio. You’ll be completing assignments late at night, and on weekends when you’d rather be at the beach. In all these ways, you’ll be training your eye to see the world as it really is, rather than as you might like it to be.” I looked out the window. “I can guess…

I’m 33. I was born in Al-Taif, Saudi Arabia. I’m not married or divorced. I’m simply single, and happy. I live in a rented apartment. I moved into it four months ago. I have lived with my family my whole life, and in that time we only moved maybe, say three times from one house to another. And then I moved four months ago. I now live in an apartment with a roommate. Yes, I do have my family, my mother, brother, and sister. They’re everything in my life and my biggest supporters. They’re my happiness because they support me in everything, whatever I want to do. My childhood in Saudi Arabia, to be honest, was beautiful. I was living in a compound with my family. I went to Saudi…

In the lift on the way up to the 30th floor, I read a sign for residents and short-term guests of the apartment block. “Strictly no parties after 9pm.” Underneath, there’s a general number for residents to report any unsettling laughter or merriment after the clock strikes nine. On the other side of the lift, a note instructs residents to pick up their parcels from reception because mail will no longer be delivered to individual rooms. “And if you don’t pick up on the date of delivery,” the note seems to snarl, “your parcel will be returned the SAME DAY.” The notes have that sense of being written by some heartless aunt, the type you read about in children’s fairy tales, the one who insists that children should be neither…

Suzannah Marshall Macbeth Day one: When I finally sit down at 11pm and set a timer for five minutes, it’s the first time I’ve been alone all day. I worked at home - in the same room as my partner - with an hour for lunch during which I looked online for places to rent. I went horse-riding in the evening, a regular Thursday activity. Once I remembered [the challenge] at 9:30pm, I tried to be idle on the couch, but my partner, unused to that, looked at me askance and asked me what I was doing. Not an unwelcome distraction, but a distraction nonetheless, so I waited until he went for a shower. It seems I can’t just ‘be’ idle. I have to actively try not to think, otherwise…

“Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.” Charles Caleb Colton Queens of the Kingdom By Nicola Sutcliff Meet Hafsa, a Bedouin who gave birth to eleven children in the open desert, or Jamila, the first wife in a polygamous household. Nicola Sutcliff spent four years living in Saudi Arabia, meeting and interviewing women from all walks of life. This candid collection of essays captures the essence of what it is like to be a woman living in Saudi Arabia today. Sutcliff asks: What are their hopes and dreams? Their stories paint a portrait of a country that appears to be on the cusp of change. Happy Inside By Michelle Ogundehin Whether your home is owned or rented, small or large, and regardless of how…

Antonia Case:  Antonia Case is Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director of Womankind, and Editorial Director of New Philosopher. She was awarded the 2016 AAP Media Professionals’ Award for excellence in the presentation of philosophy in the media. Her forthcoming book Flourish will be published by Bloomsbury Sigma. Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore: Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore is a British journalist who lives in New York. She writes for New Philosopher, The Guardian, The Economist, Financial Times, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Statesman, New Internationalist, The Huffington Post, and Time magazine. Jennifer Kunst: Jennifer Kunst is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, working in private practice in California. She is a training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of California and an adjunct associate professor at the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology. She is…

“Oh, she is very balanced,” we say about the person who doesn’t seem at all ruffled, even in the most trying circumstances. When we call someone ‘balanced’, it’s typically said as a compliment. It follows that being ‘out of balance’ is, therefore, probably a bad thing. You apply for a job and get turned down. Your best friend moves to another city. For some unexplained reason, your work, which you used to love, is boring you. Major tensions and upheavals, according to Polish psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski - times that whack you ‘out of balance’ - are key opportunities for accelerated personal growth. So instead of regarding this state of disequilibrium as bad, or somewhat indicative of ‘poor mental health’, Dabrowski sees upheavals as fuel for ‘positive disintegration’. “Sadness and depression…

Iranian artist Narjes Mohammadi was born and raised in the ancient city of Mashhad, Iran, a city known for its literary figures, and artists, such as the poet Mehdi Akhavan-Sales who moved within Mashhad’s literary circles. Mohammadi, a self-professed woman of few words, speaks through her artwork of strong dignified women who are always facing in the direction of hope. What was it like to grow up in the Middle East? Growing up in the Middle East isn’t easy at all. It means you have to face many challenges from an early age, but it also teaches you to be creative in finding new ways to expand your abilities. Living here means that you’re growing up with the fear of war and death, but at the same time you learn…

My name is Saa’da Muhammad Al-Zahrani. I turned 50 last year. I have eight children, four girls and four boys. If I could change anything in my life, it would have been the first mistake I made with my husband, the father of my children. I should have taken what was left of my dignity after the first betrayal, and asked for a divorce. But I was afraid of asking for a divorce. I was born in one of the villages of Al-Baha. I grew up there until I was three years old. There was no electricity, no [clean] water. I suffered from severe anaemia and excessive thinness, so my sister took me and said, “OK, leave her with me,” since my sister was newly married and she had a…

The women in her work convey a boldness and strength, a look that has made Saudi Arabian artist Fatimah Al Nemer rather popular in artistic circles, particularly with female art patrons. With a career spanning over 21 years, Nemer is now at the forefront of an artistic and cultural revival in Saudi Arabia, driven by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Sal-man’s economic and social reform plan, Vision 2030, which decidedly targets Saudi’s already flourishing arts sector. “Art has become one of the fundamentals of the 2030 Vision of art,” says Nemer. She mentions the public art initiative Riyadh Art which intends to transform the city of Riyadh into a gallery without walls. “Art Riyadh will become one of the largest open-air art museums in the world,” she says, and will hold…

Do you think that the rights of women in the Middle East have improved over recent years, particularly in places like Saudi Arabia? Yes, definitely, as we do not live in a static world. We see dynamics in the trajectory of the world we live in. Believers try to understand, and recontextualise their religion to suit contemporary realities and challenges. We can see the long trajectory of Muslim women’s rights consciousness, for example, in many parts of the Middle East. Egyptian women’s activists, in particular, have been an important inspiration for many women’s activists including Muslim and Islamic feminists in other Muslim majority countries, especially evident in the first half of the twentieth century. Their agenda ranges from women’s access to education and work, and preventing polygamy, forced, and child…

Sand Wars Sand seems quite insignificant, yet those grains of silica surround and impact our lives. Every house, skyscraper and glass building, every bridge, airport and sidewalk depends on sand. We use it to manufacture optical fibre, cell phone components and computer chips, and even in our glass of wine (both the glass and the wine, as a finishing agent!). Is sand an infinite resource? Can the existing supply satisfy a gigantic demand fueled by construction booms? What are the consequences of intensive beach sand mining for the environment and the neighbouring populations? This investigation takes us around the globe to unveil a new war on sand. Saudi Women’s Driving School In the capital city of Riyadh, Saudi Women’s Driving School draws on unprecedented access to a number of Saudi…