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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Remarkable,
By A Customer
This review is from: At the Drop of a Veil (Hardcover)
This book tells the tale of Marianne Alireza, an American college student who married a Saudi citizen in 1943. In 1945, Alireza moved to Jeddah with her husband and infant daughter, and from there witnessed Arabian lifestyle firsthand for 12 years. She describes her experiences as part of the Alireza harem, composed of her mother-in-law, 2 sisters-in-law and their various children, of which Marianne herself eventually had 5. Alireza discusses how the family traveled to the mountains of Ethiopia to escape the summer heat in Jeddah, and how development changed all of their lives. She also details the events that led to the end of her marriage, and how she abducted her children from their school in Switzerland. The details of this book make it invaluable for anyone wanting to learn about living conditions for women in affluent Saudi Arabia in the 1940s and 50s. The story of Alireza's marriage and its demise should also serve as a warning to any Western woman considering marrying a Muslim. Under Islamic law, a Muslim man is usually granted sole custody of his (weaned) children following divorce and a Western woman who is divorced from a Middle Eastern Muslim man stands a very high chance of never being allowed to see her children again. From the man's point of view, his child custody rights are guaranteed by God, and he would be devastated to lose his children. It was exactly this sort of situation which put Marianne in the position where she felt she had no choice but to abduct her children and try to escape back to the States. All marriages these days face a relatively high risk of divorce, but cross-cultural marriages bring added stress and tend to have even higher divorce rates than marriages within a culture. Thus, a Western woman who decides to marry a foreign Muslim man is entering into a situation where there is a 1 in 2 chance of divorce, and if divorce does happen, she has an extremely high chance of losing her children forever. And this is true no matter how happily the marriage starts off, as it happened in Marianne's case. Interestingly, a quick 2001 Web search for Marianne's children turned up a traveler's note stating that all 5 of her children decided to return to Saudi Arabia upon reaching adulthood.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Facinating story about the world of hareems in Saudi Arabia,
By A Customer
This review is from: At the Drop of a Veil (Paperback)
A surprisingly good book written over 25 years ago about a young women's experience in Saudi Arabia. As a college student at Berkeley, she met a prominent man from Saudi Arabia. They fell in love, and she became the first Western women to marry a Saudi citizen. A year after they married, a royal request forced them to move to Saudi Arabi. She found herself thrown into a world that she could not comprehend, filled with cultural and gender issues that are unimaginable by our American standards. Over the course of twelve years, she learns to accept and appreciate the laws and taboos of the Saudi way of life. Even though her adventure ends in a completely unexpected divorce, followed by a years-long struggle to keep her children, she retained an amazing reverance for the people that were her world.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent,
By A Customer
This review is from: At the Drop of a Veil: Marianne Alireza (Paperback)
I am a granddaughter of Marianne Alireza, and I am very proud of her accomplishments. Through reading the book, I found out things about Saudi that are no longer seen today and felt that it was her strength and perseverence which enabled her to do what she did. She was warned of some of the hardships she might encounter in giving up her western life and moving to the unknown, however she did not let that get in her way and I find this to be inspirational to not only women but anyone who may face similar circumstances of marrying into a different culture. I will admit however that it does take a certain type of person with a strong mind and good heart to be able to embrace a mentality and life that is so different to that of their own.
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