the exile at all costs of the Saudi Arabian Rahaf Mohammed

She was 18 years old and, for several months, she had only thought of fleeing. Flee Saudi Arabia, its laws, its culture, which considered women as sub-beings entirely at the disposal of men. To flee the Muslim religion and this Koran that she had begun to hate, noting the duplicity with which it was invoked to further subjugate the girls. Fleeing his toxic family: his father, polygamous and all-powerful, governor in the most conservative region of the country, in relation with the royal family; his mother, educated and modern, since she taught in town, but who brought up her daughters in the most archaic tradition; her older brothers, sadistic “little roosters”, who acted as guardians of their sister’s virtue, frequently beat her up and locked her up in the name of sacrosanct “honor”.

She was 18 and she wanted to live free. “Free to dress as I wanted, free to ride a bike, listen to music, go out without my brothers, choose a lover or a lover as I please…” She had no idea what exile meant and didn’t realize what the word freedom could also mean, responsibility, loneliness, duties, setbacks. She just knew that if she stayed in this land cursed for women, she would die. Killed by her brothers or her father, more and more exasperated by her rebuffs, unless they lock her up in a chemical straightjacket like her big sister, broken for wanting to flee. Or maybe she kills herself.

She was 18 years old and in the taxi that took her to Kuwait airport, on this cold night in January 2019, she still looked like a slightly plump teenager, with shoulder-length hair, a rebellious pout and look, the hand clutching his phone. Yet she had just made the most serious decision of her life and left behind her, in the hotel where they were still sleeping, her mother, her little sister and her two dreaded brothers from whom she had stolen her passport. Her plan was clear: take the 9 o’clock flight to Bangkok on Kuwait Airways and then continue to Australia, this land of plenty from which she had obtained the visa online and where she would find another fugitive to seek asylum.

Hounded by the embassy

She had flushed her SIM card down the toilet, which would have allowed her family to track her whereabouts. She had 2,700 dollars (2,650 euros) deposited in the account of a friend whose password she had. A clandestine network of Saudi women, spread over several continents, but connected by a secret messaging system, was to track her. They were his new family. At every moment, at the Kuwait airport, she feared that she would be arrested. But no. She boarded with no problem. And on the plane, overexcited, she felt a first dizziness of freedom. It was on landing in Bangkok that everything went wrong.

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