Karim stood, barefoot, at the open door. He still had the same dimples he’d had as a boy, and his handsome features were strange but familiar.
Patricia Bonis, the woman sitting in front of him, had been anticipating this moment for 14 years. When her eyes met her son’s, a mix of fear and excitement overwhelmed her.
She questioned whether she would have recognized him if they had crossed paths on the street. The last time she had seen him, he was a four-year-old boy. Now, he stood before her as a six-foot-tall man.
Then she shrunk back a little and thought: ‘What if he hates me?’
Karim looked at her quizzically and, in a gentle, deep voice, asked: ‘Who are you?’
Fourteen years ago, during a tumultuous custody dispute, Karim and his sister Sultana were taken by their father, a powerful and wealthy Saudi sheik who used his influence to flee the United States with the young children.
Patricia had all but given up hope of ever seeing her children again, when a phone call from a long-forgotten acquaintance informed her that Karim was playing polo at a boarding school in the US.
It took just a few months, a lot of internet sleuthing, and a very expensive private investigator to uncover her son’s home address. To her astonishment, he was living almost under her nose, in Boston – just a few hours’ drive from her home in New Jersey.
Patricia had fallen in love with the exotically handsome Rahman Abbar – heir to one of Saudi Arabia’s richest families – during the height of the 1970s disco era
He looked like a guru, she says, with his dark hair and shirt unbuttoned, revealing a gold medallion
In her explosive new memoir, Jeddah Bride, she recounts the heart-stopping moment she faced her son for the first time as a stranger.
‘Fixing my gaze on his face, I stated far more calmly than I felt, “I’m your mother, Karim. May I please come in?”
‘Dead silence, shock… Karim’s smile fell, and he took a step back.’
Then he gathered his composure and ushered her in. The hard work at rebuilding their relationship was just beginning.
Patricia had fallen in love with the exotically handsome Rahman Abbar – heir to one of Saudi Arabia’s richest families – during the height of the 1970s disco era. She was studying at Wellesley and he at Boston University, and he swept her off her feet.
He looked like a guru, she says, with his ‘dark wavy hair and his teal blue, African-patterned shirt’ which was unbuttoned half way down his chest, revealing a gold medallion.
Even more eccentrically alluring was the fact that he wore expensive-looking zebra-stripe sandals – despite the fact that it was snowing in New England.
‘I couldn’t stop staring. Rude as it might have been, I was fixed on him,’ she writes. ‘My nose caught a whiff of patchouli, or maybe musk oil, and I leaned in a little closer, almost tipping over.
‘Beneath shapely brows, amber eyes blazed like precious stones. It was a sensual assault. He flashed a wide grin my way. At that moment… I had lost myself.’
He may have had the air of a bohemian hippie but, with his expensive English education, Rahman was a sophisticated westerner, seemingly a million miles from the strict Muslim country.
Patricia could never have imagined he would lure her into a terrifying, patriarchal world – where stoning adulterous women was a weekly spectator sport, and an ‘infidel’ baby could be ripped from its mother’s womb.
Patricia was studying at Wellesley and he at Boston University, and he swept her off her feet
Rahman proposed in Paris with a Piaget gold, malachite and diamond watch, worth more than $50,000
She dreamed of sharing his life in Jeddah – with their private jets, palatial estates, designer clothes, and homes full of servants
She dated Rahman for four years before he proposed on the streets of Paris with a Piaget gold, malachite and diamond watch, worth more than $50,000.
She was excited to start their new life together in Jeddah – taking full advantage of all the privileges his wealth and connections could buy, from private jets and palatial estates, to designer clothes and homes full of servants.
But the reality was nothing like her romantic daydreams.
She certainly enjoyed unimaginable material advantages, but she was lonely and isolated, and grew increasingly uncomfortable with the brutality that lay just beneath the surface of the country’s outwardly liberal sophistication.
On one occasion, while jewelry shopping in downtown Jeddah, a crowd gathered in the square behind her.
‘A solitary black-robed woman, still as death, stood on a crude platform in the middle of the square,’ she writes. ‘The crowd all faced her, their rhythmic cheers increasing in volume.
‘I could feel the tension rise, palpable and foreboding. The woman suddenly recoiled, taking the first hit, then steadying herself as if for another. They were throwing rocks at her.’
This was a public stoning – something she had heard of but couldn’t quite comprehend was happening.
‘They were murdering her right in front of us. The somehow still standing brave woman let out one final, horrible, blood-curdling scream before collapsing to the dusty ground beneath her.
‘But the crowd wanted more of her blood. They roared ever louder, pushing forward for a glimpse of her now limp body. It was savage, like lions on broken prey.
‘Heavy stones continued to pile up, until her still body was fully entombed above ground in the square. Her shape was now nothing more than a hill of sharp earth.’
The woman’s crime? ‘Probably adultery,’ her friend answered nonchalantly, as they were ushered into the jewelry store and offered tea.
On another occasion, Rahman’s cousin and a dear friend shared a secret that, once divulged, Patricia wished she could unhear.
Noura recounted how she had fallen in love with a man from Sierra Leone while they were both studying in England.
‘He wasn’t Muslim,’ she told Patricia. ‘He was a Christian, and marriage to a Christian man is strictly forbidden to Muslim women. Here in Saudi, it’s punishable by death. Do you understand?’
Learning to scuba dive in Jeddah – their life there was one of astonishing privilege
With Rahman and toddler Karim at the polo club in Wellington, Florida, 1987
Rahman was an accomplished polo player, and his son inherited his love of the sport
But she didn’t care. The pair married and settled in London, where they believed Saudi expectations and religious laws couldn’t touch them.
Only when she was five months pregnant did she decide to finally return to Saudi for a vacation, to share her happy news.
Her family however, strict Muslims, were incensed.
‘On the third day of my visit, they took me in a car to the airport, forced me onto a private plane, and flew me over to Cairo,’ Noura told her. ‘There, they dragged me to a doctor. He sedated me against my will, cut open my stomach, took out the baby, and killed it.’
Noura never returned to England. Her spirit was broken and – with her passport revoked – she remained in the family compound for the rest of her life.
‘All I have to prove that this actually happened to me is this big, ugly scar left on my stomach,’ she laughed bitterly. ‘No more bikinis for me.
‘I have no idea where my husband is or what he thinks happened. Maybe he divorced me and got married to someone else. Maybe he returned to his country. Maybe he’s still in London, waiting for me. Maybe he thinks I died. He’s probably better off that way.’
Patricia wept for her friend – but she was soon to discover first hand the cruelty the family was capable of.
After returning to live in the US, her marriage deteriorated and Rahman – during a supervised visit with the children – kidnapped them, taking them first to Morocco and then Saudi.
Privilege, wealth, and a diplomatic passport protected him, and after years of battles in the court and through the State Department, she was left broke and alone.
‘I wandered around, dazed and confused and thoroughly broken for many years,’ she writes, ‘trying desperately to reclaim my children who were held captive in that padlocked foreign land of still desert air and antique customs.’
Terrified that she, like Noura, might be kidnapped – or even killed – she couldn’t risk travelling to Saudi.
So she resigned herself to weekly calls to the family home, in the hopes of hearing a friendly voice that might give her news of the children.
And she sent pleading letters to anyone she knew in the country, begging for news, or even a photograph.
Patricia now competes in the World Equestrian Festival and other horse shows across America
The years passed. ‘Friends and family had for the most part moved on and encouraged me to do the same.’
She remarried, and had another daughter, Amanda. But she still hungrily sought out the smallest snippets of information about her lost children.
‘Despite everyone else moving on, I stayed the course for 14 years. Having my children safe in my arms again was the only thing keeping me alive. I never relented.’
A year after that chance phone call that led her to Karim, she began communicating with Sultana.
‘Every afternoon, while she was ostensibly doing her homework online, we would email back and forth with each other,’ she writes. ‘I finally got to know my daughter.’
Sultana also came to the US to study the following year.
‘Patience again rewarded me with a wonderful and willing daughter who wanted to rekindle the bonds of mother and child. This was another miracle; anything could have happened.’
She adds: ‘When my adult children and I were finally reunited, Rahman was less than pleased.’
But there was little he could now do. And, in an astonishing turn of events in 2010, Patricia was reunited with her former father-in-law at a large family dinner in London. Rahman was noticeably absent.
‘I want everyone in this family to know that I am very pleased to welcome my daughter, Patricia, and my granddaughter, Amanda, to our table today,’ he told the gathering.
‘I want everyone to know that Patricia is a fine woman, a true lady, and that Karim and Sultana have a beautiful, intelligent, educated, and graceful mother.’
Patricia’s pride in that moment was mixed with the pain of anger and regret.
‘I’ll never know at what age Karim lost his first tooth,’ she writes. ‘I never enjoyed the wonder of Sultana’s budding personality as she grew into womanhood… those invaluable moments… the non-milestones of favorite songs, fleeting friendships, bedtime stories, cuts and bruises, are all lost to me.
‘There is no making up for that.
‘My two oldest children were raised without a mother, and I missed the miracles of their growing up – something that can never be fully righted by any amount of apologies or regrets in this life. But for what we are now, I am grateful.
‘We will live new, inestimable memories and milestones together, my three children, all gifted and good, under my wing.’
Jeddah Bride by Patricia Bonis is published by Conservatarian Press
