JEDDAH, 24 December 2006 — Rola Grimli, a Saudi in her mid-40s, was shopping with her mother recently in a Danube supermarket when a tall, well-dressed man became outraged that she wasn’t wearing the “niqab”.
“He said to me: ‘Cover your hair and face, shame on you; it is the holy month of Ramadan. Women like you are the reason behind moral corruption in this country,’” recalled Grimli. “I was wearing my abaya with my face uncovered just like many women in the supermarket. The man, who didn’t appear to be religious and whose wife’s face was uncovered, suddenly started harassing me while my mother and I were approaching the dairy section.”
“I told him: ‘You should lower your gaze and not stare at women,’” she said. After that, Grimli says the man followed her around the store, verbally harassing her in front of shoppers and the store’s security personnel.
Grimli said that the only person who came to her assistance was a Filipino worker who stood by her and provided escort to the two women back to their car.
The woman’s husband, Labib Shhab, later wanted to file a complaint with the authorities, but when he asked for a copy of the store’s video surveillance tape that his wife said recorded the incident, the management unapologetically refused to comply. The security supervisor of the Danube store in Jeddah, Nasser Abdullah, did not entertain Arab News’ attempts to contact him regarding the store’s security procedures and Rola Grimli’s harassment incident.
This type of harassment is so common that at least one supermarket chain contacted by Arab News provided an official incident report it uses to document such crimes.
“We have six security women on the premises during working hours,” said Wasim Saeed Al-Mubarak, the security supervisor at a Panda hypermarket at Roshan Mall on Jeddah’s King Road. He was ready to speak to Arab News without an appointment. “They are undercover and their job is to keep an eye on shoplifters and assaulters. Each security woman has a walkie-talkie to contact security men available on the ground of the supermarket when they notice cases of theft or harassment problems.”
Al-Mubarak showed Arab News a copy of Panda’s incident report, a kind of confessional statement where customers caught in sketchy behavior with women shoppers are compelled to sign “admitting immorality.”
“We intervene and try to address the man politely to leave the premises,” said Al-Mubarak. “The harassed woman can choose to let the man go after he signs the form, or she can file an official complaint against him in the police with our help.”
The forms are kept at the store as internal documents for future reference. “If a man signs three of these forms, he is then prohibited from entering the supermarket,” he said.
Umm Muhammad, a 46-year-old Saudi mother of three daughters, said that she usually sends her oldest 19-year-old daughter with her younger sisters to the supermarket to buy whatever they needed.
“I always feel safe sending my girls to any supermarket without escorting them,” she said. “Incidents happen everywhere. It is the supermarket’s job to provide multiple safeguards to prevent customers, especially women, from being harassed or assaulted.”
Nashwa Al-Roainy, host of the weekly talk show “Nashwa” that is aired on Dubai TV, said the UAE’s penal code provides protection for women against such harassment. It is common for the local media to publish photographs of men caught verbally or physically abusing women.
In Jeddah, Grimli found herself at the mercy of her male harasser in one of the city’s largest and most popular supermarkets. She found no help in the store’s security personnel; the police have filed away her complaint and aren’t likely to follow through with legal action, and her abuser got away with his crime.
