A
summary of chapter one and two of DARING
to DRIVE by Manal AL-Sharif
The
story begins with a knock on the lady’s door followed by a frequent bang. The
lady goes by the name Manal al-Sharif who is divorced and has a five-year-old
son. Manal narrates her story and how all this started that lead to the banging
on the door at 2.00AM in the morning. Manal was arrested the day before by the
police because she was driving and according to the Saudi system of governance,
women are not supposed to drive. She had been driving her brother’s car who was
seated next to her when the arrest was taking place. Since the system does not
explicitly state that a woman is not supposed to drive, they found other reasons
the validate the arrest and made her sign some papers. The signing was after
several hours in the police station, but she finally goes home to find her
leaving room full of guests. After the arrest she had texted a friend of hers
about it and to assist her, she posted on Facebook and a hashtag trend to press
for her release. After talking for a while, the guest had left.
Manal
narrates how her life changed gradually from being married at twenty-four to
getting employed in Aramco, an oil company. She highlights that the company
allows women to do things that are not permitted by the Kingdom like driving.
After deliberating with her friends, lawyer and herself, she decides to go with
the men from the national security division. On arrival at the police station,
Manal is interrogated a couple of time, and then her items are confiscated. She
is later detained together with a guard from Aramco.
The
next chapter follows the processing from the police station where she was held
to prison. Between transportation from the police station to the jail, Manal
had pleaded with the guard to allow her to call her family but all was in vain.
She tried to also plead with the person processing her at the prison, but they
all refused to hear her out. Instead, the insisted that it was all her fault.
The chapter ends with Manal in jail for driving a car, and the whole world knew
about it through social media.
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