Strange, but true

We all know that it is against the law in Saudi Arabia for women to drive. Did you know that it is also against the law for them to enter stand-alone music stores? This Saudi woman certainly didn't:

A vehicle pulled up outside and although I didn’t know for what, I instinctively knew that I was in trouble. I pulled my veil over my face and casually strolled over to the ice cream shop.

As I was about to enter a voice boomed behind me, “I know where you have been!”

My legs turned to jelly.

“You were in that cassette shop, weren’t you?” I stood transfixed holding the door open wondering about the severity of the crime I had inadvertently committed.

“I know what you were doing,” the voice continued to accuse. “You were going to buy a cassette!” Dr. Watson had obviously just returned from his special services training in Scotland Yard, but mercifully left me alone after pronouncing that amazing deduction.

However, the poor guy who had tried to boot me out of the cassette shop had not been so lucky. As I left with my sundae I watched him being dragged out and taken away by the police. I felt terrible. When I sent an emissary to investigate his wretched fate, he returned with the news that the fellow in the adjacent convenience store told him that there was “a lunatic woman who had entered the shop and got the guy arrested” and now the shop had been closed down indefinitely.

Read the full story here.

But my purpose for posting this is not to advertise Saudi Arabia's warped vision of law and society. The interesting part is that this story, containing blunt criticisms of Saudi laws and the way they are enforced, was published in a mainstream newspaper there. So a woman might not have the freedom to step inside a streetside music store, but she certainly seems to have the freedom to thrash the entire legal system in national media.