I began reading "The Princess. The True Story of Veiled Life in Saudi Arabia." The book is written with the words of one of the many princesses from the royal family, who tells about the life of Saudi women since the 1960s. Of course, there were no disruptions of masks for me, but I think that Russian readers would be interested to know the details of the life of women in Saudi Arabia. Several paragraphs from the book Men in my country believe that they are superior beings and behave accordingly. In Saudi Arabia, men control and repress the sexuality of their women, otherwise they will be scorned by all. The belief that a woman has no right to sexual desires is carefully guarded by men. This absolute control has nothing to do with love, it is only the result of the fear of losing one's manhood. The authority of a Saudi man is limitless. He punishes and has mercy, and his wife and children will live if only he so wishes. At home, he represents the highest authority. The situation is complicated by the fact that fewer and fewer boys are born in the country. From childhood, boys are taught the idea that a woman has no value and serves only for convenience and pleasure. The child sees the neglect with which the father treats his mother and sisters, and begins, in turn, to treat all members of the opposite sex with contempt, which further makes friendly relations with women impossible. Accustomed from childhood to the role of master, the boy, when the time of maturity comes for him, considers his girlfriend to be nothing more than a part of his property. This is how it happened that women in my country are ignored by fathers, bullied by brothers and abused by their husbands. This circle is difficult to break, since men, treating women in this way, cannot be happily married. They know only one way to get satisfaction, taking more and more wives for themselves, followed by more and more concubines. Few of these men are able to understand that happiness can be found in their own home, with one single, but equal woman. By treating women as slaves, as their property, men make themselves as unhappy as their wives. Love and companionship becomes impossible for both sexes. The history of our women is hidden under a veil of secrecy. The birth or death of a woman is not officially recorded anywhere. All this goes only to the lot of male children. Regret and shame are common feelings when a daughter is born. Although Saudi women are increasingly giving birth in hospitals, most of the births still take place at home. Outside the cities, no births are recorded. In 1962, when I was twelve years old, my father was already a very rich man, however, for all his wealth, he remained the least extravagant of all the al-Saud. Yet he built a palace for each of his four wives: in Riyadh, Jeddah, Al-Taif and Spain. All four palaces were exactly the same, right down to furniture and carpet colors. My father hated change and wanted to feel like he never left the house in any of the four palaces. I remember how he told my mother to buy any items in fours, even if it’s even baby's underwear. My father didn't want the family to bother packing their bags before each of their many trips. It always seemed to me supernatural that when I entered my room in Jeddah or Et-Taif, it turned out to be exactly the same, like my room in Riyadh, with the same clothes hanging in the same closets. Books and toys were also bought for me in four copies, for each of the four palaces. My mother rarely objected to my father, but she could not resist when my father bought four identical red Porsches for my brother Ali, who was only fourteen at the time. She told her father that it was a shame to waste money so thoughtlessly when so many people are starving in the world. However, when it came to Ali, the father did not consider expenses. In Saudi Arabia, during a wedding, women and men gather in different places. Th