Full Description

In the Land of Invisible Women

"In this stunningly written book, a Western trained Muslim doctor brings alive what it means for a woman to live in the Saudi Kingdom. I've rarely experienced so vividly the shunning and shaming, racism and anti-Semitism, but the surprise is how Dr. Ahmed also finds tenderness at the tattered edges of extremism, and a life-changing pilgrimage back to her Muslim faith." - Gail Sheehy

The decisions that change your life are often the most impulsive ones.

Unexpectedly denied a visa to remain in the United States, Qanta Ahmed, a young British Muslim doctor, becomes an outcast in motion. On a whim, she accepts an exciting position in Saudi Arabia. This is not just a new job; this is a chance at adventure in an exotic land she thinks she understands, a place she hopes she will belong.

What she discovers is vastly different. The Kingdom is a world apart, a land of unparralled contrast. She finds rejection and scorn in the places she believed would most embrace her, but also humor, honesty, loyalty and love.

And for Qanta, more than anything, it is a land of opportunity. A place where she discovers what it takes for one woman to recreate herself in the land of invisible women.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Bedouin Bedside
Chapter 2: A Time to Leave America
Chapter 3: My New Home, a Military Compound
Chapter 4: Abbayah Shopping
Chapter 5: Invisible and Safe
Chapter 6: Saudi Women Who Dance Alone
Chapter 7: Veiled Doctors
Chapter 8: The Lost Boys of the Kingdom
Chapter 9: A Father’s Grieving
Chapter 10: An Invitation to God
Chapter 11: The Epicenter of Islam
Chapter 12: Into the Light
Chapter 13: The Child of God
Chapter 14: The Million-Man Wheel
Chapter 15: Committing Haram
Chapter 16: Calling Doctora
Chapter 17: Daughters of the Desert
Chapter 18: Next Stop: Absolution
Chapter 19: Prayer under the Stars
Chapter 20: Between the Devil and the Red Sea
Chapter 21: Mutawaeen: The Men in Brown
Chapter 22: Single Saudi Male
Chapter 23: The Calm before the Storm
Chapter 24: Wahabi Wrath
Chapter 25: Doctor Zhivago of Arabia
Chapter 26: Love in the Kingdom
Chapter 27: Show Me Your Marriage License!
Chapter 28: An Eye for an Eye
Chapter 29: Princes, Polygamists, and Paupers
Chapter 30: Divorce, Saudi-Style
Chapter 31: The Saudi Divorcée
Chapter 32: Desperate Housewives
Chapter 33: The Making of a Female Saudi Surgeon
Chapter 34: The Hot Mamma
Chapter 35: The Gloria Steinem of Arabia
Chapter 36: Champion of Children
Chapter 37: 9/11 in Saudi Arabia
Chapter 38: Final Moments, Final Days
Afterword: Rugged Glory

Endnotes
Bibliography
Reading Group Guide
Acknowledgments

Excerpt

Excerpt

I returned to Khalaa Tarfa, my first patient in the Kingdom. She was a Bedouin Saudi well into her seventies, though no one could be sure of her age (female births were not certified in Saudi Arabia when she had been born). She was on a respirator for a pneumonia which had been slow to resolve. Comatose, she was oblivious to my studying gaze. A colleague prepared her for the placement of a central line (a major intravenous line into a deep vein).

Her torso was uncovered in anticipation.. Another physician sterilized the berry brown skin with swathes of iodine. A mundane procedure I had performed countless times, in Saudi Arabia it made for a starling scene. I looked up from the sterilized field which was quickly submerging the Bedouin body under a disposable sea of blue. Her face remained enshrouded in a black scarf, as if she was out in a market scurrying through a crowd of loitering men. I was astounded.

Behind the curtain, a family member hovered, the dutiful son. Intermittently, he peered at us . He was obviously worrying, I decided, as I watched his slim brown fingers rapidly manipulating a rosary. He was probably concerned about the insertion of the central line, I thought, just like any other caring family member.

Every now and again, he signaled vigorously, rapidly talking in Arabic to instruct the nurse. I wondered what he was asking about and how he could know if we were at a crucial step in the procedure. Everything was going smoothly; in fact soon the jugular would be cannulated. We were almost finished. What could be troubling him?

Through my dullness, eventually, I noticed a clue. Each time the physician’s sleeve touched the patient’s veil, and the veil slipped, the son burst out in a flurry of anxiety. Perhaps all of nineteen, the son was instructing the nurse to cover the patient’s face, all the while painfully averting his uninitiated gaze away from his mother’s fully exposed torso, revealing possibly the first breasts he may have seen.

I wondered about the lengths to which the son continued to veil his mother, even when she was gravely ill. Couldn’t he see it was the least important thing for her now at this time, when her life could ebb away at any point? Didn’t he know God was Merciful, tolerant and understanding and would never quibble over the wearing of a veil in such circumstances, or I doubted, any circumstances?

Somehow I assumed the veil was mandated by the son, but perhaps I was wrong about that as well. Already, I was finding myself wildly ignorant in this country. Perhaps the patient herself would be furious if her modesty was unveiled when she was powerless to resist. Nothing was clear to me other than veiling was essential, inescapable, even for a dying woman. This was the way of the new world in which I was now confined. For now, and the next two years, I would see many things I couldn’t understand. I was now a stranger in the Kingdom.

Reviews

Reviews

ForeWord
A Westerner’s Cultural Education

Whether or not a reader is familiar with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Dr. Qanta Ahmed’s debut memoir is a mesmerizing read. It’s also the perfect primer for those who want to know what life is really like for women in a rigidly orthodox Muslim country. A British citizen of Pakistani origin, Ahmed completed her medical training in internal medicine, pulmonary disease, and critical care in New York City. At the completion of a fellowship in sleep disorders, she found that her visa application to stay in the United States had been denied. Without much thought or familiarity with the Kingdom, Ahmed accepted a job offer to work at the King Fahad National Guard Hospital in Riyadh.

Although she had been raised Muslim, Ahmed had very little knowledge of the religion. Through her writing, readers gain an education as well. Further, Ahmed’s firsthand experiences in a Muslim country elucidate facets of its culture, from an explanation of blood money to the practices of polygamy. One of the most moving sections of the book covers Ahmed’s Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, the holiest site for Muslims. It’s on this journey, ripe with adventures and side turns, that Ahmed discovers the importance of religion to her, and embraces all the positivism of Islam.

Yet, throughout, Ahmed encounters various dichotomies, especially because she is a Westernized Muslim woman. Right away, her experience wearing an abbayah—a robe that covers from head to toe except for the eyes, which all women in the Kingdom must wear when they go out in public, no matter their nationality or beliefs—was paradoxically restrictive and freeing: “As I fastened the abbayah in front of a mirror inside the makeshift dressing room, I watched my eradication. Soon I was completely submerged in black. No trace of my figure remained. My androgyny was complete.” She described it as a “strangely inviting prison” and “in some respects the abbayah was a powerful tool of women’s liberation from the clerical male misogyny.” Only through the abbayah’s protective layer can a woman get anything done.

There are other examples of the way Saudi women “benefit,” from their female status. In marriage, women receive a mahr from their new husbands, which is a substantial fortune. And if they divorce, the woman gets to keep all of her mahr. Divorce is also easily obtained; if a man wants to take on a second wife (in Saudi Arabia, he can have up to four), this alone is grounds enough for divorce. Yet, in a divorce, men are awarded custody of children over the age of seven or nine, a fact that runs counter to a Westerner’s way of thinking.

Polygamy is another intriguing topic discussed here—one of Ahmed’s colleagues divorced her husband for wanting to take on a second wife, then confessed that she herself would like to become a second wife: “I am going to marry a man who is already married. I don’t want to marry a naïve bachelor. I want to marry a man whose primary needs are already met.” Ahmed, the Westerner, found this logic puzzling, and rather sad.

To a degree, the divorcée’s story is an indicator of a Saudi view Ahmed encountered in a more global realm—that of anti-Semitism. Ahmed was in Riyadh during 9/11, and these chapters are some of the most moving, disturbing, and insightful of the book. Ahmed was saddened and distressed—she is, after all, extremely attached to New York and America—and taken aback by her colleagues’ excitement in reaction to the attacks. Female Saudi obstetricians in her hospital bought cake for their staff to celebrate. Her friends talked about how America “deserved” this tragedy because of its support of Israel. It’s a turning point for Ahmed, as she uncovers the complexity of allegiances. It’s also an affecting illustration of how unaware some Westerners—Ahmed included—were of the antipathy much of the Middle East harbors for the West. It points to ironies and paradoxes on so many levels; many of her Saudi colleagues had their medical training in the States with Jewish mentors, and benefit from oil money—yet they flatly “hate the Jews.” While such attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors disappointed and isolated Ahmed, they fit neatly into her growing understanding of the Kingdom.

Ahmed’s portrayal of Saudi Arabia during her two years there is one of both fondness and frustration, and a fascinating one at that. (September)

Publishers Weekly
"This memoir is a journey into a complex world readers will find fascinating and at times repugnant... intimate introduction to a world most readers will never know."

In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor’s Journey in the Saudi Kingdom
Ahmed, Qanta (Author)
Ahmed (Author)

ISBN: 1402210876
Sourcebooks
Published 2008-09
Paperback, $14.99 (464p)
Biography & Autobiography | General

Reviewed 2008-06-02
PW

This memoir is a journey into a complex world readers will find fascinating and at times repugnant. After being denied a visa to remain in the U.S., British-born Ahmed, a Muslim woman of Pakistani origin, takes advantage of an opportunity, before 9/11, to practice medicine in Saudi Arabia. She discovers her new environment is defined by schizophrenic contrasts that create an "absurd clamorous clash of modern and medieval.... It never became less arresting to behold." Ahmed’s introduction to her new environment is shocking. Her first patient is an elderly Bedouin woman. Though naked on the operating table, she still is required by custom to have her face concealed with a veil under which numerous hoses snake their way to hissing machines. Everyday life is laced with bizarre situations created by the rabid puritanical orthodoxy that among other requirements forbids women to wear seat belts because it results in their breasts being more defined, and oppresses Saudi men as much as women by its archaic rules. At times the narrative is burdened with Ahmed’s descriptions of the physical characteristics of individuals and the luxurious adornments of their homes but this minor flaw is easily overlooked in exchange for the intimate introduction to a world most readers will never know. (Sept.)

Copyright © 1997-2005 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Booklist
Denied visa renewal in America, British-born Pakistani physician Ahmed, 31, leaves New York for a job in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where she celebrates her Muslim faith on an exciting Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca... After 9/11, she is shocked at the widespread anti-Americanism. The details of consumerism, complete with Western brand names .... are central to this honest memoir about connections and conflicts, and especially the clamorous clash of “modern and medieval, . . . Cadillac and camel.”

Kirkus
A female doctor provides a uniquely revealing look at the hidden world of Saudi Arabian women.

Denied a renewal of her visa in the United States, British-born, American-educated pulmonologist Ahmed accepted a position at a hospital in Riyadh. On rounds, the male residents she supervised would interrupt her, and female residents (what few there were) would cluster silently at the back of the group. All female doctors were required to be completely veiled. In surgeries, sons would supervise unconscious mothers, not to ensure the quality of their medical care, but to ensure that no parts of their faces were revealed by slipping veils. With such evidence around her, Ahmed began to think of these women as the wretched of the Earth. "I wouldn’t be corrected in my simplistic views," she writes, "until much later, when I had befriended more Saudi women." When she did, she learned that the lives of these women under veils were no less complex and rich for being largely unseen. At her first party, she was astounded by the elegance and confidence exuded by professional women who had struggled immensely to achieve their positions. She began to understand how respect and love for women were expressed in her adopted society. Despite the strict monitoring of their clothing and behavior and the edicts against showing even the smallest scrap of skin in public, the Saudi women she met were neither so silent nor so helpless as their formless presence suggested. However, her friends were wealthy and educated; the vast impoverished majority could not even afford to visit doctors, let alone become one. Though never ceasing to be dismayed by the uglier aspects of regressive Saudi orthodoxy, Ahmed also found her own Muslim faith deepened and her conception of Islam broadened by her sojourn there. If she never learned to love the veil, she at least learned to understand it.

A big-hearted examination of the extreme contradictions in a society very different—yet not so different—from our own.

Kirkus
Faced with visa troubles

in the United States,

British-born doctor Qanta

Ahmed accepted a position

at the top hospital in

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,

without hesitation. “I did

no reading, knew nobody

who’d been to that country,

but thought, ‘Well, I’m a Muslim, what’s

there to know?’ ” she says. Upon arriving,

Ahmed quickly realized that she was nowhere

near prepared for the experience, which she

details in the forthcoming In the Land of Invisible

Women. “Your status in Saudi society is

determined entirely by your relationship to

family. Going there alone was a uniquely difficult

and challenging situation,” the pulmonary

specialist says. Ahmed quickly learned to

brush off the judgmental stares from colleagues

when she shunned the veil because it

interfered with her ability to practice medicine.

She details the difficult process of integration

into Saudi society throughout her two-year

post: adjusting to life in a country where

women are largely ignored, the jarring anti-

Americanism and anti-Semitism of Westerntrained

professionals and the pilgrimage to

Mecca that renewed her faith. Despite the

restrictive customs of Saudi’s religious rule,

Ahmed found a vibrancy that left her hopeful.

“Saudi is much more heterogeneous than one

would expect,” she says. “Muslims themselves

feel fairly lost in a country so caricatured and

vilified for its severe austerity and Wahhabi

theocracy, but it’s also the cradle of Islam and

the site of the Hajj—a symbol of what Islam could be.”

Armchair Interviews Beth Cummings
Dr. Qanta Ahmed is a Muslin British citizen of Pakistani descent. She grew up in London and then attended medical school in New York City–obtaining certifications in internal medicine, pulmonary disease, critical care medicine and sleep disorder medicine. Then in 2000 her visa renewal was denied. While rectifying this problem, she needed to live and work outside the U.S., so she took a two-year position at the top hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This memoir details her time there.

Before going to Riyadh, Qanta had been warned about the many ways that the Saudi Kingdom represses women–both Saudi nationals and expatriates working there. She initially felt that being a Muslim with Pakistani coloring would give her a leg up. This was not to be the case. Her Muslin upbringing in a liberal, educated British home and then her experiences in American medical schools barely scratched the surface of what she was expected to know and how she was expected to behave in the different circumstances of Saudi society.

Qanta extremely carefully depicts Saudi life. She covers the mundane as well as a thorough description of her trip to Mecca to complete the Hajj (the religious pilgrimage that all Muslims are required to make during their lifetime). While there she feels a strong religious uplifting that changed many of her previous views about being a Muslim–and being a Muslim woman in a Muslim society that is ruled by theocratic conservatives. The Quran (Koran) teaches that all humans are to be treated with respect, but she becomes more and more aware of the discrepancies between the written teachings and the actions of the religious police (Mutawaeen).

Qanta Ahmed tells about her friendships with Saudi nationals, both women and men, and the difficulties involved with simple gatherings of friends. Like Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran does with Iran, this book provides a realistic picture of life in the Saudi Kingdom.

It is a substantial book and should be savored by readers who feel as I do, that the more we know about the inner workings of countries the more understanding we have of their policies and their view of us.

Armchair Interview says: Just shy of 450 pages, the Reading Group guide makes this an excellent book group choice.

Adventures in Reading Rebecca Swaney
Sourcebooks, Inc. kindly sent me a copy of the memoir In the Land of Invisible Women by Qanta A. Ahmed, MD, which was perfect timing as I had just heard Ahmed’s interview on the Diane Rehm Show and was quite curious about the book. Ahmed, “a British Muslim doctor,” is denied a visa to stay within the United States and quickly makes up her mind to accept a position in Saudi Arabia. Her memoir In the Land of Invisible Women offers a unique perspective of a western woman, professional doctor, and Muslim living within the kingdom.

I feel that most of what I know about Saudi Arabia has been my interpretation of evening news’ sound bytes. Via an original and interesting perspective, Ahmed takes the reader through her experience of Saudi Arabia, particularly in Riyadh [1], where she worked as a doctor for two years at the National Guard Hospital. In the Land of Invisible Women reads as a cross between a medical narrative and a memoir, and also manages to pursue two distinctly interesting themes: a western woman’s experience within the Kingdom and a lifelong Muslim’s interaction with more extreme forms of Islam.

My only complaint about the book regard some structural issues as some chapters read as disjointed. Assumedly the format is chronological, though certainly gaps of time are missing, but the reader at times is expected to make shaky leaps between one handful of chapters, for example, that focus on Hajj season to the next handful of chapters detailing Ahmed’s experience with romance in Riyadh. Relatively a minor distraction, but it did force me to wonder if I had managed to skip pages.

What I most appreciated about this book was Ahmed’s divulgence of her opinion and how she avoided becoming dismissive of other’s beliefs. The author is consistently willing to acknowledge the complex traditions and cultures that, for example, produce both negative and positive responses to wearing the abbayah. Nevertheless, Ahmed still beautifully asserts her arguments and confronts the anti-Semitism, the sexism, and the anti-western attitudes she experienced.

In the Land of Invisible Women gave me a lot to think about, and just not about the complexities of Saudi Arabia but also my country’s, the U.S.A., interactions within the Middle East.

Bookopolis Sheri Stock
Rating: 4.5 stars


After being denied a visa to stay in the United States, Dr. Qanta A. Ahmed, a Muslim woman of Pakistani origin, embraces the opportunity to practice medicine in Saudi Arabia. In this book, Dr. Ahmed describes her experiences while living in The Saudi Kingdom as a doctor, and more specifically a female doctor. Though the book chronicles Dr. Ahmed’s personal journey, it also represents the lives of so many other oppressed women who are forced to abide by strict rulings or else face the harsh consequences. Dr. Ahmed gives those women a voice and speaks out against this kind of treatment. Through her own observations, Dr. Ahmed learns a great deal about life in The Saudi Kingdom and most importantly, she learns a lot about herself. We also see that although the men often live privileged lives in relation to the women, they also have their own share of obstacles and challnges they must endure.

This is an important story because it perfectly demonstrates that major inequalities between men and women are still rampant in some parts of the world. What Dr. Ahmed witnessed and had to face is a reality for many women and a true testament to their strength and courage. This book took me through a range of emotions, including anger, sadness and amazement. Not only is the story incredibly powerful, Dr. Ahmed’s writing is really beautiful. I loved the writing style as and the way she managed to transport me into her experiences. I felt her outrage, her pain and her frustration as though I was living it as well.

While reading the book there were times when I felt that Dr. Ahmed went into too much detail and perhaps less would have been more in some cases. However, I do realize that many of those details are integral parts of her experience and offer important insights into each aspect of daily life as a woman in The Saudi Kingdom.

This book is a well -written and fascinating insider’s look into life in Saudi Arabia and the challenges that women and sometimes even men must face in their daily lives.

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Trade Paper Specfications

• Length: 9.00 in
• Width: 6.00 in
• Height: 0.00 in
• Weight: 23.00 oz
• Page Count: 464 pages