Whatever happened to the daughter of my host in Saudi Arabia back in the 90s?

Was she one of the first women to run for election in the Kingdom just a few weeks ago? Is she discreetly learning to drive behind the walls of her family’s gated estate? Or is she working today outside her home, with a career and a profession that mean something to her?

Saudi Arabia wasn’t my first choice for a remote reporting assignment as a journalist working for The Stars and Stripes in Europe during the 90s. It wasn’t my second, either.

However, when my editors assigned me to be both the first woman from Stripes to report from the Kingdom and Saudi bureau chief in Dhahran, in the country’s Eastern Region, I mustered my courage, queued up for some minimal training in the use of a gas mask — just in case — and packed jeans and long-sleeved t-shirts for a tour of duty that was supposed to last from four to eight weeks.

Initially on arrival in the Kingdom, my Stripes colleagues and I holed up in a hotel. I liked it. I had my own space, and it was air-conditioned, with a TV and a small refrigerator to stock my soft drinks and water. Looking a bit on the exterior like some highway motel in the US West, our hotel was centrally located in Dhahran, not far from a mall and the local Safeway supermarket.

Problem was, it was fairly expensive to base a few reporters there on a daily lodging rate plus pay for meals eaten at restaurants. So a Stripes editor was tasked to find a house for us to live in and work from. Not a good idea, actually, because men and women who were not married or related to each other were not supposed to live together, no matter how platonic the relationships. Nevertheless, the visiting editor was told to find a house to rent. The accommodation he found was owned by a sheikh.

He was always referred to as “the sheikh”. If I ever knew his name, which I doubt, I’ve forgotten it. My first meeting with him was at his own home, where we drank tea on short, elegant sofas placed about a rectangular reception room. From our first meeting, he was always kind to me, exuding a gracious hospitality and warmth. At that first meeting, he introduced me to his young daughter, who was between eight and 10 years at the time, and he asked me to talk with her.

She was a beautiful young girl, bright-eyed and sweet, dressed in clearly expensive children’s clothing. I had no idea what to talk to her about; I did not understand how little girls were raised there. I only knew that they grew up to wear black and hide their faces, and they generally were hidden from the world. In our brief conversations, she told me about trips her family took to Dubai, and how they could go to the cinema there. She said little about her life in her home during our brief conversation.

I was to meet her two or three times more during my stay in Saudi Arabia. Our chats were a little stilted, but I told her about my work, about having gone to university and about my husband, sisters, brother and pets, loving to see films and plays, and being fond of music. I waited for some sign that her father disapproved of our conversations, but he encouraged her to speak with me, and always brought her to me first thing when my colleagues and I visited him to discuss rental business. He obviously adored her, and seemed very keen for her to be exposed to someone unlike the other women she would encounter at home.

This sheikh was attuned to the world outside his — not only did he welcome me into the rental home along with my male colleagues, but he arranged for my colleagues and I to enjoy not one but two Christmas dinners with different families during our stay, and saw to it we each received a present. Considering that the practice of other faiths outside the strict Wahhabi strand of Islam is discouraged there, these were acts of great generosity.

I wish I had been cleverer about being in touch with this little girl after my tour of duty was over and I left the Kingdom. I’ve often wondered about how she grew up; never more so than in the late months of 2015.

I hope she is well, happy and fulfilled, wherever she is, and whatever fulfilment means to her. And I am grateful to her father all these years later not only for his kindness to me, a stranger in a strange land, but most of all for his love and respect for his daughter. And for wanting her to live a life with eyes wide open.