What If She Were a Man?

Two years ago a woman named Huda Al-Mansour came to the offices of Al-Riyadh newspaper bringing with her films and a projector and accompanied by some volunteers. The purpose of her visit was to explain the dangers of thalassemia, a chronic blood disease that renders patients in need of constant medical care. Families sometimes watch helplessly as they are left to face the inevitable.

Huda was not seeking publicity. All she wanted was for people — journalists as well as all those concerned about health — to see for themselves the suffering caused by the disease. She wanted everyone to appreciate the gravity of the situation and to begin doing something to confront the killer disease. She wanted people to be engaged in a serious joint effort to ensure family protection through premarital medical checkups in order to stop thalassemia and other diseases resulting from marriages between relatives.

First to sense the danger, thinking the lady had done the unthinkable, were her colleagues at the Ministry of Health. Since our bureaucracy could not possibly tolerate anything unfamiliar and since it wants only to live quietly and obliviously in its cocoon, some ministry officials even tried to convince Huda that employing doctors and distributing medicines is one thing but intervening in family life is something totally different. To them the matter should have been referred to a special committee for investigation or perhaps even require the establishment of a special department within the ministry.

Huda was unconvinced by all their arguments and resisted attempts to make her drop the project. The officials told her that even members of the royal family often marry their relatives and that bringing up the subject would outrage social convention. Her answer was that she recognized the fact that the majority of Saudis accept marriage with a relative but that people ought to undergo premarital checkups to ensure that the couple are not carriers of any such genetic diseases. She continued meeting officials and decision-makers, showing them her films and introducing them to volunteers. She was told that religious scholars were against any intervention in marriage customs and would resist attempts to make people undergo premarital checkups.

This only made her more determined. She went as far as meeting with some religious scholars, some of whom welcomed her idea on the grounds that Islam calls for taking all necessary precautions to ensure a healthy and prosperous family life. She kept knocking on doors until her objective was finally realized. Premarital medical checkups are now mandatory thanks to the courage and determination of one woman who refused to give up or despair and who triumphed over red tape.

Let us not forget that she is a woman — and a woman in a country said to be short of active females capable of taking the bull by the horns and accomplishing anything.

The story ends in a most bizarre and surprising way. Instead of being honored and having her work appreciated, Huda received the shock of her life when she was notified she had been transferred from her area of specialty to a mere laboratory where she is under the control of management. Despite such shameful ungratefulness, I cannot imagine her to be someone who would be swayed from a course of action she saw as not only necessary but also right. She is a woman who should have been honored and showered with awards instead of being relegated to the backseat.