Some might remember in my book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, I wrote about the veiled Muslim women transgressing the stringent rules of their religious and political land that forbades women to drive cars… that when the war broke out and people were imperiled, they ran and started up the engines of the family automobiles and drove all over hill and dale to warn people and help people. The very same women were not allowed to walk out of the house, nor to shop, nor to appeal to petty or local governances without being accompanied by a father or a brother. This was culturally and religiously written in stone.

But, then stone is also clay, isnt it. Yes, it is, even though some would have us believe what is ‘set in stone’ is impenetrable. It isnt. Before stone was stone it was only drifting, shifting sand.

This week the King of Saudia Arabia, the most ancient of Muslim kingdoms imaginable and one of the most repressive toward women living freely, granted women the right to vote in elections.

Remembering that women in Switzerland were not allowed to vote until the early 1960s, and it being said that Swiss women and other women across the world were ‘not interested in the political life of the nations’…

This is a good day… remembering too how in South Africa, I saw old women were literally carried in rusty wheelbarrows miles across the dust and dirt, simply to be able to vote in the first election ever… wherein they as people of Africa and as women, were finally seen as human beings.

To our loving and stalwart sisters in Saudia Arabia and their brothers and all who support them: Las Fuerzas, all. The brave and fierce ones.

Saudi women may not have the right yet to drive an auto, but for sure they are descendents of some of the most ancient of horsewomen…. just like you and me, male or female. Wherever there were horses on earth, there were horsemen and horsewomen amongst our ancestors.

May our sisters continue and never forget the heart of the horses are still within in terms of determination and patience and massive strength, despite some metal horse with four wheels being for the moment, out of safe reach.

CODA
the picture is a rider “dressed in a the costume of an Arabian princess.” Her Arabian stallion and she were in the 2008Sharjah International Arabian Horse festival. More than 200 Arabian horses and riders from United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrian and Kuwait took part in this three day event. Photo credit ©2008, by Marvan Naamani