Driving the Saudis by Jayne Amelia Larson

Author:Jayne Amelia Larson [Larson, Jayne Amelia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Royalty, Women, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9781451640014
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2012-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

13

Un-Avoidable

One day, I was asked to drive Princess Zaahira’s cousin, Princess Soraya, who was seventeen years old. She looked nothing like the other young Saudi girls, who emulated the older women’s fashion look with layers of haute couture, heavy makeup, and lavish jewelry. She was slender with short black hair and dressed simply in a striped T-shirt, pressed jeans, and clean white sneakers. Soraya reminded me of Audrey Hepburn in the movie Roman Holiday, the one in which she plays a European princess who falls in love with an American. The young Saudi girl looked pleasingly fresh, almost impish, but with a serene, composed countenance as if she were older than her years.

“Thank you, you are very kind,” Soraya said to the hotel doorman as he opened the car door for her. She got in the back of the black Crown Victoria town car and smiled broadly at me.

“Hello, driver,” she said. She spoke English with a refined, slightly British accent. “My name is Soraya. It is a pleasure to meet you. I would like to visit the Krispy Kreme, please? And I would like to visit the UCLA, please? And I would like to visit the beach, please. Thank you.” As I drove out of the hotel driveway, I could see that she tried to power down the window. It didn’t budge. She frowned and she tried again.

After a few moments she said, “Excuse me, please, driver? Will you unlock the window, please?”

I remembered what the colonel had told us about keeping all the doors and windows locked. “I’m sorry, Soraya, but I was told . . . ,” I said as I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw her looking hopefully at me with a beseeching expression as if to say: please, no one will know. I unlocked the controls.

She beamed at me. “Thank you!” she said. Then she stuck her head half out the window and smelled the air like a big puppy, smiling as we drove down Wilshire Boulevard toward Westwood. I watched her in my side mirrors as she pushed up the drink holder console in the center of the back seat and slid from one side of the car to the other, looking out the windows the whole time. After a long while, Soraya brought her head back inside the car and beamed some more.

“You are so lucky. Do you like to drive? I would like to learn. I am sure I could learn.” She pointed to a car we passed. “Oh, there is a little car with the sign that says ‘Westwood Driver Education’ on top.” She looked hard at the car. “The instructor is a man?” she asked.

“Yes, most of them are. Not because they’re better drivers, though.”

Soraya looked down at her hands for a minute. “It is not possible for me to learn how to drive,” she said. “I must return home to my family soon. It is unavoidable.” She said unavoidable as if it were two separate words. Un-avoidable.

“I would like to stay here very much.

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