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The distributors regularly send out booklets listing movies available at prices ranging from $20 to $80 — the current rental fee for Star Wars.
In this semiprivate world, the wives of the rich can buy Christian Dior gowns at elegant shops in Riyadh and Jidda. At beach houses on weekends, young women whose mothers would not dream of appearing in public without a veil may don swimsuits that violate the spirit if not the letter of Islamic injunctions about female modesty.
While the well-to-do experiment with Western ways behind closed doors, groups of Islamic zealots, known the Committees for the Commendation of Virtue and the Condemnation of Vice, still patrol the streets outside. At prayer time these committees roam the cities and towns, ordering shops to close. Not long ago, the committees campaigned against young men who had adopted the infidel habit of letting their hair grow long. The drive backfired when a committee caught a tough Bedouin whose tribe had worn long hair for centuries. The tribesman fought back and was stabbed to death in the fight; the leader of the committee was tried, convicted and beheaded. The committees will publicly flog anyone found drinking alcohol in public. But respect for privacy is so great in Saudi Arabia that not even the most fanatical of these protectors of public virtue would ever dream of breaking into a home.
Within this underground culture, the ranking item on the list of necessary reforms is women's rights. Women are still forbidden to drive cars, travel alone or obtain exit visas unless accompanied by a "legal guardian," a male relative. Polygamy remains a thriving institution. But behind those closed doors, many Saudi women are spoiling for a showdown. "We will fight them," a young woman says of the religious conservatives, "and we will win."
Much of the limited progress that Saudi women have achieved is due to the work of Queen Iffat, the enlightened widow of King Faisal. Through her husband, Queen Iffat persuaded the government in 1960 to open an elementary school and later a secondary school for girls. There was great resistance to the idea, and in the beginning the King had to send police to keep the guardians of public morals from flogging the girls on their way to school.
Today about 250,000 Saudi girls attend public school; there are also 11,000 university coeds, about half of whom are studying abroad. Despite conservative opposition, educated women are gradually moving into public life. They work today as radio and TV announcers, physicians and psychologists (even treating male patients on occasion), and newspaper columnists and teachers.
But the public debate is far from over. Every Friday in the mosques, the imams (preachers) bemoan the immorality of working women. A few months ago, the ulema pressured the government into circulating a letter to private companies asking them not to hire women. On the other hand, two Cabinet ministers asserted in a TV interview a few weeks ago that women should be allowed to work in order to ease the country's labor shortage. When a newspaper columnist wrote that male and female students at the local university were mingling in an immoral fashion, the women at the school sued him for circulating false rumors about the immorality of women, a violation of Islamic law. He spent two days in jail.