Cruising

It’s tough being young and repressed. A NYT article talks about the lengths young men in sex-segragated Saudi Arabia will go to meet young women. One of the most popular ways is “numbering,” trying to exchange phone numbers with women they pass in cars.

A phone number written out on a piece of cardboard is “the classic approach,” Fahad said, but most of the time he and his friends use Bluetooth to try to send their phone numbers directly to the cell phones of girls in the vicinity. Usually this means chasing cars containing women, but sometimes Fahad and his friends drive past the entrances of shopping malls where women wait for their drivers. It’s not easy to tell which of the black-shrouded shapes might be young women, Fahad admitted, but there are a few tricks.

“You look at the style of the abaya, the way she holds her bag,” Fahad explained. “See that one there, how thin she is, and how carefully she’s covered up her face?”

He pointed out a slight figure with a pastel handbag. Sure enough, a pair of girlish-looking sneakers were just visible beneath the hem of her abaya.

“I’d say that maybe 3 out of 10 nights of numbering,we have some success,” Fahad explained.

“You mean that 3 out of 10 nights you get a girl to talk to you?” I asked.

“No, no,” Fahad laughed. “Maybe 3 out of 10 nights we get one phone number. Getting a girl to actually talk to you on the phone is much rarer. But it happens, so we’re always hoping.”

This reminds me of the male Saudi college students I know in Spokane. Forbidden to drink alcohol, or even be in a place where it’s been served, they hang out at Shari’s, an all-night restaurant chain, drinking coffee for hours, hoping a woman will stop and talk to them. Lack of success doesn’t seem to deter them. They’ve been doing it a couple of years now, with just enough “meets” to keep them coming back for more.

Their staring and attention-getting behavior can feel threatening. Any female, particularly with long hair, even a middle-aged woman like me, merits ogling. In Shari’s help is a foot away. But on the streets of Riyadh, that attention can take a more frightening turn.

I looked around. We were surrounded by several other cars, all containing young men and all trying to get the attention of the figures in the GMC, while simultaneously trying to edge each other off the road at high speed.

“Isn’t this getting a bit dangerous?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Fahad. “Sometimes the girls get really scared, there are so many cars chasing them. Sometimes they’re in their car, crying and screaming for us to go away. It’s fun to make girls angry.”

“It’s fun.”

Doesn’t sound quite so innocent and cute now, doesn’t it? It proves that even cloaked in an abaya, forbidden to drive for “their own protection,” woman still get punished for leaving their homes, all for the amusement of men.

Boys will be boys.

Yeah.