In the Land of Invisible Women Quotes

“I remember being thirteen years old, sitting in my room all night, listening to the same song over and over. I thought that if I could write something beautiful, something honest, I could make someone love me.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“Generations of women are ignorant, ignorant of the Quran and its teachings. If we don't inform ourselves as women, we don't know about the rights we can exercise, which are empowering to women actually, because Islam is such an egalitarian religion, Qanta! Islam gave women inheritance rights and property rights and the rights to divorce and to choose a marriage partner. Servitude never enters the equation. Beatings are Haram.” Maha”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“I don't think this is a good idea. We all live on one planet so we cannot segregate the genders. If the Holy Mosque in Makkah, which is the holiest place on earth, does not segregate women, then why would the Ministry of Health want to segregate them?”
She also went on to object to the selection of a physician based only on gender and not competence, expressing her disdain as follows: “I prefer doctors who are professional in studying my situation and solving my problem, regardless of whether they are male or female. I cannot imagine a men's hospital without female nurses and doctors, and I also cannot imagine women's hospitals without men playing a role in them.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“Ignominiously reined in by their ruler, the Ikhwan became deeply offended especially as they considered themselves the religious Army of God. The rude rebuff drove them to question their unwavering loyalty for their King. Thus the first crisis of clergy and King was conceived.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“fact that a woman cannot drive or travel without authorization, for example, gives a special sense of strength to the man. And this strength is directly connected to the violence. It creates a sense of immunity; that he can do whatever he wants, without sanction.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“By removing the ability to drive themselves anywhere, women were at the mercy of male authority, compelled always to inform men of their destinations and returns, and in a country where women could not travel without prior authorization by men, they were effectively hostage to their male relatives. Rania”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“Yet I couldn't connect this racial purity with the warmth of the toothless, lined Bedouin women who showed me such affection in the hospital. I thought about the Bedouin patients I had attended in Riyadh and what they had taught me of acceptance. Surely these Bedouin were the purest Saudis of all, Daughters of Arabia, borne of tribal forebears who had roamed Arabia before the slick of oil wealth suffocated their culture, washing them up like half-dead seagulls into the new urban metropolis of modern Saudi Arabia. I decided it had to be wealth which made the stark difference. All I had to do was think back to the “real” Saudis I had met in Riyadh, so different than the women sharing this tent with me.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“Here at Hajj, I was experiencing a taste of the same poison. While the women in my tent weren't nearly as wealthy or polished as the bewitching woman at al-Multaqa, they subscribed to the same view, deciding (based on skin color and ethnicity) that I surely must be a handmaid or at best nanny to a poor Saudi family who couldn't afford the much better Filipina maids, having instead to resort to Pakistani or worse, Bengali help. In fact I did remember one Saudi woman in the tent asking me if I was Bengali.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“Discrimination in fact is how many of the Saudis define themselves. Saudi Arabia is about separation of gender, race, tribe, fiefdoms.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“The forbidden becomes much more enticing than what is always revealed.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“On either side, tumble-weed and desert bushes fell away to interminable sand, an earth-bound Sea of Tranquility on a nocturnal moonscape.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“The men were not watering the grass; they were spraying it an emerald green. This was Ireland in an atomizer. The workers were coloring the dead, hurrying to finish before the Crown Prince's gaze would zoom by, perhaps peering through the bullet-proofed, tinted, heavily-armored glass of his German car. So much about the Kingdom concerned outward appearances. Veneer was as important as substance, perhaps more so.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“The origins of the Mutawaeen therefore were never to be an anti-Western mine-sweeping tool, rather a means of policing the state for the security of the precarious monarchy that had conquered it.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“Religious zealotry therefore became the anchoring fabric weaving fractious fiefdoms together into a Kingdom.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“The efforts of the Ikhwan would replace this primitive culture with the clarity of their furious Islam. A convenient military strategy was therefore cloaked in a righteous enforcement.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“In the night light, the golden Thuluth Arabic calligraphy glittered on the Kisweh, its brilliance enhanced by the velvet blackness of the surrounding silk. I was bewitched by its beauty. With the distortions of Wahabi extremism, beautification of any object was considered an offense, resulting in a Kingdom without ornate decorations, other than repetitive geometry which peppered public walls and even highway underpasses. Anything else was considered futile vanity by Wahabis, but at least the Wahabis had not eroded what seemed the final remaining evidence of Islamic craftmanship: unparalleled calligraphy. For the first time in the Kingdom, I appreciated beautiful Saudi craftmanship.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“I looked at the pilgrims kissing the Black Stone. I was disturbed by the paganistic and ritualistic qualities of the scene. But I knew this was an ancient rite utterly distinct from the stone worshippers of centuries earlier. Muslims are very clear that only God is worthy of worship. The stone is only honored because Muhammad (PBUH) demonstrated his reverence for it by kissing it, but never worshipped it, worshipping only his Maker,,, so I found, as I would time and again in the days ahead, that in this of holiest of Islamic rites, deeply pagan rituals had survived the passage of time, persisting even after the dawn of Islam.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“Worse, they suggested this was a considerate move for the protection of women, conveniently disguising their discrimination with a thin veneer of patronizing gallantry.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“I was slowly becoming aware that chauvinism and sexism was just as marked among many of the Western attendings as it was amongst many of the Saudi and other Arab physicians, as though the climate of the workplace promoted an infectious transmission of male supremacy.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“The driving in Riyadh was deadly. Turbocharged testosterone without creative or sexual outlet translated into deadly acceleration.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“Inexplicably, the Kingdom's clerics compel non-Muslim women to veil also, a rule which is not to be found codified in the Quran.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“While these veils conceal women, at the same time they expose the rampant, male oppression which is their jailor. Polyester imprisonment by compulsion is ungodly and (like the fiber) distinctly man-made.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“Such forced incarceration of womanhood is a form of female infanticide.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“I knew my hips were showing, noisily announcing my sex. I wished I had something to engulf my debilitating gender. I almost wished I was a man.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“In Riyadh, I would be licensed to operate procedures on critically ill patients, yet never to drive a motor vehicle. Only men could enjoy that privilege.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“Did an unconscious sickly Muslim have the same responsibilities as a conscious, able-bodied one?”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“Even when critically ill, I learned, hiding her face was of paramount importance. I watched, entranced at the clash of technology and religion, some version of my religion.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“Even when critically, I learned, hiding her face was of paramount importance. I watched, entranced at the clash of technology and religion, some version of my religion.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“unsoftened even by the responsibility to preserve the innocence of his child.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

“he would never be able to debride his own devitalized hatreds that encased his glossy world. His hates would never heal. They would only propagate.”
― Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom