Inside Saudi Arabia’s Okaz Newspaper
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 01.08.04 | 9:18 PM ET
It’s not a conventional travel story, but Lawrence Wright’s Jan. 5 feature in the New Yorker about his three-month stint training reporters at Okaz newspaper offers a fascinating glimpse into Saudi Arabian life. Among the many highlights, Wright reflects on the invisibility of women in public spaces. “The self-effacement of an entire sex, of sexuality itself, was the most unnerving feature of Saudi life,” he writes. “I could go through an entire day without seeing any women, except perhaps beggars sitting on a curb outside a prince’s house…The only places I was sure to see women were at the mall and the grocery store, and even there they seemed spookily out of place. Many of them wore black gloves, and their faces were covered entirely—not even a pair of plummy, heavy-lidded Arabian eyes apparent. Sometimes I couldn’t tell what direction they were facing. It felt to me as if the women had died, and only their shades remained.” The article is not available online.
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
khaleel 01.01.06 | 12:13 PM ET
hi