Sisters Write Arabic Children's Book with Female Heroines
- Community
- Aramco Brats
Author: Lauren Dorgan; Concord Monitor
Released 27 December 2005
With a little help from the world's largest oil company, a pair of juniors at St. Paul's School have published a children's book in Arabic and English.
Seventeen-year-old twins Sarah and Elizabeth Spalding will be promoting the book during their winter break this month. They will have to don body-covering abayas to visit three girls' schools in Saudi Arabia, among other stops.
Saudi Aramco, which is distributing 10,000 copies of the book throughout the Middle East, employs the girls' parents. Born in Boston, the Spalding sisters grew up on the Aramco compound near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, a suburban enclave of ranch houses replete with a golf course and a swimming pool.
Elizabeth and Sarah Spalding describe the Aramco compound as a kind of Pleasantville, a multicultural version of the ideal 1950s suburb where nobody has to worry about locking their doors. Americans, Saudis, Indians, and Pakistanis are among the compound's 8,500 residents. Walled-in and heavily guarded, it's one of the only places in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia where women are allowed to drive.
When they were sixth-graders at the Aramco school, Sarah and Elizabeth Spalding worked on a successful petition to get their school to teach Arabic in addition to French and Spanish.
In their studies of beginning Arabic, the Spalding sisters devoured children's books. They noticed that children's books in Arabic never seemed to have feminine lead characters. They also found the books boring and lacking plot, chronicling events like visits to the zoo and going out to eat.
A book of Their Own
With encouragement from their Arabic teacher and their mother, they decided to write a children's book of their own. They knew a woman who did public relations for Aramco, and she helped them get a meeting with people who edit the company's publications. Aramco helped them find a publisher, Al Mutawa Press, to print 11,000 copies of the book.
In the Spaldings' book, girls star. The plot in Dhaman: The Mystery of the Arabian Champion Horse goes like this: Two female sleuths, one Saudi and the other American, figure out why an Arabian horse falls mysteriously ill just before the race. (The American girl is named Elizabeth, the Saudi one Sara.) The Spalding sisters said they wanted to emphasize cooperation between cultures in the book, but also make it fun for children to read.
Aramco is distributing 10,000 copies throughout Saudi Arabia at girls' schools and at an oil exhibit center, as well as to schools in Cairo, Beirut, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. (Aramco, originally an American oil company, was bought out by the Saudi government in 1980. It leads the world in crude oil reserves, production, and exports. It owns the world's largest oil field, as well as the largest offshore oil field.)
Meanwhile, they're still full-time students in the all-important junior year of high school. They're leaders in the Arabic club at St. Paul's. On Wednesday, Sarah had a tidy to-do list written on the back of her hand, color-coded with the most important items outlined in pink.
They've spent breaks from school illustrating the book and finalizing the plans. They've polished their Arabic so they could write the Arabic version themselves, rather than relying on a translator. This break, they hope to finalize a deal with a British publisher, Troubadour, which has expressed interest in printing 1,000 copies of the book. They have yet to find an American publisher, but they're still looking.
Over the summer, they hope to bring their tour to the United States, with events in Houston and other cities, maybe even Concord.
An 'In-Between' World
In an interview this week, the twins, who finish each other's sentences effortlessly, describe themselves as grateful for having grown up between cultures.
"We're not exactly immersed in Saudi culture; we're not exactly immersed in American culture,"said Sarah Spalding.
"That's why it makes it so easy to do this children's book, because you do see it from both sides," said Elizabeth Spalding.
Until they arrived at St. Paul's, they had always thought of themselves as American.
"I thought I knew lots about American culture," said Sarah Spalding.
Yet they felt out of tune with the culture here, missing the punch lines of jokes. They watched a lot of movies to get up to speed, they said.
When they arrived, the 2004 election was heating up and were shocked at how interested in politics everyone seemed to be - no one talked politics in Saudi Arabia, they said. In a monarchy, there are no Democrats or Republicans.
Going back to Saudi Arabia, they found amusement at the watchful eyes of customs censors. They do get their American magazines - but everything considered inappropriate is covered in black magic marker and white stickers. Even their St. Paul's yearbook wasn't immune -censors used a tiny marker to color in the exposed shoulders of their female classmates.
They like venturing out into the country, but can't do so without a male driver.
"We have to travel with male escorts, we have to go with our family," said Elizabeth Spalding.
"So it's a lot harder for women,"said Sarah Spalding.
This break, they're looking forward to a camping trip planned for the wind-swept dunes of the Rub al Khali, Saudi Arabia's "empty quarter." They describe it as a place full of adventure, where archeological finds just lie on top of the sands.
"You can actually go out and find fossils, arrowheads, ostrich shells and shark teeth," said Sarah Spalding.
The Rub al Khali was closed to visitors for a long time because it was a suspected al-Qaida hideout, they said, and they're glad that it is once again open.
Things have changed in other ways since the terrorist attacks. The U.S. consulate in a nearby town used to hold a blowout Fourth of July bash, but hasn't held one in years, the girls said. And they've noticed that there aren't as many Americans at the Aramco compound as there used to be.
Still, the sisters say they're grateful for their upbringing in what Elizabeth Spalding calls "an in-between kind of world."