Last weekend I returned to the lovely property of Kripalu in the Berkshires of Massachusetts for a couple of days of writing and meditation. It renewed the passion necessary to create a regular writing practice and I realized how unproductive I have been lately.

During the course of several classes, we were shown how to give ourselves permission again to identify ourselves as “writers”, but more importantly, commit to actually writing. If  you have an interest in writing but have never been to a workshop with others struggling with the same blocks, time constraints and excuses that we all make to not regularly enjoy this cathartic experience, I encourage  you to do so. What I took away from the weekend was a refreshing perspective of how easily writing comes to those meant to do it. A few minutes of guided meditation that leads your brain in one direction followed by a writing prompt that can either continue on that which came to you in stillness or surprise you by providing a spontaneous change in trajectory was an eye-opening exercise! Dani Shapiro was the author leading the workshop and she had a brilliant way of making you feel as though you were in the passenger seat riding along a country road, allowed to close your eyes and go wherever the driver chose– but then suddenly your eyes are opened, the vehicle makes a sharp turn and now YOU are the one in control of the steering and speed.

Dani led a meditation of about 10 minutes and then we were given the prompt, “It could have happened.” For 20 minutes we wrote and then broke into small groups to share what had come to us. There was no time for editing, no time for revision or polishing.  Writing in longhand, pen to paper, thinking and composing much more slowly than I write by typing, was yet another new lesson in how a new stimulus can tweak the brain into expressing its thoughts in a different style. The following is my result of that prompt.

It could have happened. I could have been left to swelter in the July Jeddah heat, the driver refusing to re-enter the cab as long as I remained inside. It could have been Saudi police who came upon us and pulled up behind the vehicle, who would have seen me, a 27 year -old white skinned, blonde American stewardess who defied social laws and dared to venture off the compound, out of the city, without the required male relative as an escort.

The Egyptian driver, only in the Kingdom for a minimally better opportunity to provide for his family, would have surely been arrested, beaten, and…? Simply for having accepted me as a passenger.

Had the police come upon us, this man’s family could have never heard from him again, the first inkling of something being amiss would be the money wire that failed to appear this week at the Bank of Cairo. Days, weeks, months this man would languish in jail; maybe not. Maybe he would have soon been deported back to Cairo with is visa revoked and his passport bearing an enormous “Exile” stamp, forever ending his contract of employment in the Kingdom, no longer to support his aging parents, put his children through school, start a business upon his return to Cairo.

The police would have arrested me as well. But…I had value. Even as a woman I would have been a valuable hostage, for as an American, my absence would not have gone unnoticed. I could be traded for ransom, negotiated as a political pawn. I could have been paraded on the news in clean, beautifully stitched abayas, veils with intricate lace borders. But off-camera? Off-camera, lewd eyes in front of distorted perspectives of religion, decency, and entitlements would make me part of a much more ominous narrative.

As I sat in the back seat of the taxi far on the outskirts of town, still far from the airport, I looked out the back window and watched the man walk away. It turned out that he actually didn’t speak English; he didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to get me to the compound to which he had agreed to provide me transport.

When it became apparent to him that I couldn’t give him pointed direction, he realized his risk of being with me and knew he had to immediately separate himself from my company.

I saw ancient abandoned minaret towers, desert grass, sand dunes, and camels. I had heard of the Filipino nurses and teachers who were lured to Saudi for work in privileged homes—and who were used up by the salacious Saudi men, their bodies dumped at the bases of these prayer towers. Did the offenders choose those locations with the intent to follow their crimes by climbing the stairs inside to pray for absolution?

Saudi police made routine sweeps around these structures to collect the remains.

Our twenty minutes was up. For over a decade I have been trying to think of a way to start writing about the year I spent as an expat in Saudi Arabia. All it took was a prompt from a single dramatic sentence of four words.