Saudi Arabia- who would ever think it could be fun. Genia did!
Excerpt
Bored at work and nursing a broken heart, a thirty something R.N. leaves her prestigious job in the Houston Medical center to work in a military hospital in Saudi Arabia in 1978. She arrives in a land struggling to catch up to the Western world while retaining its strict Muslim morality- at least in public. "Genia" a bold, single blue-eyed blonde disovers that sex and drugs are very much in demand inside the high-walled compounds of the Western-educated Saudi elite.
During two years in the Kingdom, genia manages to break every rule short of theft and murder while befrriending Arabs of all social standing, including her grateful patients. A hot-shot saudi Air Force pilot and a top Saudi official become her lovers, and she paties with princes and princesses at their opulent homes and Bedouin camps. But she also dons the veil and long , black obaya in order to move freely among the ordinary saudis who welcome her into their homes.
With plenty of ovetime pay and vacation time. Genia travels to more tjan twenty-five countries while based in Saudi Arabia. She describes these travels, along with her relationships, nursing work, and unleashed feminism in this extrordinary memoir of a time when America wasn't a dirty word in the Arab world.
Professional Reviews
Behind a cloak and a veil
I knew Genia was real when I asked whether she had met Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the former Saudi oil minister and a leader of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), when she partied her way through Saudi Arabia as a contract nurse almost 30 years ago.
Sheik Yamani was best knownn for his role in the 1973 oil embargo, when he spurred OPEC to quadruple the price of crude oil. He was also the first person I interviewed as an Associated Press reporter following my trasnder from Detroit to New York in 1972.
Genia (Gen-EE-ya) didn't bat an eye at the question.
"Of course I knew him. We met him at parties where we all called him "Zaki" she said when we met several weeks ago. Genia, the Arab word for witch or she devil, was the name given her by a Saudi Air Force pilot who she dated clandestinely for nearly a year.
Genia adopted the pen name to write "Single in Saudi", a unique and illuminating book about herself as a blonde, blue-eyed American woman living in Saudi under a veil, the long, hooded robes Saudi woman are required to wear in public.
"It's about breaking all the rules in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and getting away with it." one reviewer wrote.
At one level it's a sexy romp through high-walled compounds inhabited by some of the world's richest men. At another it's full of sad insights into the degradation thrust on Saudi women by their countrymen.
Genia began writing the book after she left Saudi Arabia and while she was working as a private nurse for a wealthy family in 1983 in Bahrain, an island 14 miles from the oppressive Saudi shores.
She set her manuscript aside for over 20 years and didn't pick it up again until after9/11, when she realized how little most people know about the Middle East.
Published in 2004 and available on Amazon.com, Author house and locally at Horizon Books, "Single in Saudi" provides as much as we will ever want to know about how wealthy Saudi men treat their Saudi wives and foreign girlfriends, imbibe Western booze behind stucco walls, and fly posh jets and drive fancy cars, wherever they may be.
At some point the American-led coalition will have to decide whether fighting the war, or insurgency, or keeping the peace,or whatever we may be doing in Iraq, is worth expending our blood and treasure for a nation of ingrates and incompetents and worse.
And that decision will be based on our view of those who people the nations of the Middle East, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a regime of hypocrites that Genia indulged without apology.
The books is full of trysts and drugs:"Everything that was happening in the Unite States was also happening in Saudi, although it was more covert and took place behind walled homes."
"I'm happy i wrote the book," said Genia, a member of Michigan Writers who was interviewed by Interlochen Public Radio on the release of the book.
By Fred Gray, News -Review Staff Writer
for Petoskey News
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Reviews for "Single in Saudi"
Reviewed by Kim Rahilly
12/12/2008
I thoroughly enjoyed, "Single in Saudi" because of, and in spite of, the fact that it was written by a woman who does not think of herself as a "writer." It is a juicy read that feels like you are sneaking a peek into a saucy 32-year-old American blonde's diary as she rebels against a misogynistic Middle Eastern society. She unabashedly enjoying sex with a succession of partners, along a shot of scotch and a few tokes of hashish (a lifestyle that would have been 100% acceptable back in the States!). Her travel tales inspire me to see more of the world as a single woman; and to find a way to do it while working abroad (albeit with a tad more reserve). Author Jan Stowe (as revealed on Author’s Den) writes under the pen name of "Genia" (meaning “witch”) never brags about her accomplishments as a contract nurse, but her hard-partying exploits are balanced by the competent work she performs under difficult circumstances, and by the numerous lives she saves or simply touches. She is clearly a “force of nature” with a charisma that children, old men, women in danger, debauched royalty, and suave playboys (among others) are drawn to. Ms. Stowe drew me in, along with as my mother and my friend, Iris, who spent nearly a year in Cairo, who passed “Single in Saudi” along to me. Keep on writing, Jan! We are curious to know what adventures you embarked upon thereafter.
This book is a collection of short stories that depict events in Author's life while she lived in Romania, then in Greece, and last in America. It's a beautiful and very sincere account of a young woman's life and comming to age.
