hajia

You may not believe this, but all the above girls are Arabs, Saudi Arabs. They are students of KSU ( now don’t confuse this abbreviation with Katsina State University, it really stands for King Saud University) Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Of course they cant walk the streets in that kind of attire. Perhaps thats why they hold their index fingers to their mouths which indicates a do-not-tell gesture. Among the girls is Farah Sowaleef who is an accomplished Saudi blogger. I culled the picture from farooha.buzznet.com where she uploaded a few of her pictures. She started her blog back in January 2005 and had published a lot. Here is the way she describes her blog:

“The every day nattering of an exhausted, repressed and bored Saudi Arabian Chic: A professional KSU geek, nonconformist wannabe, qualified gossip and reality tv junky. (Hey! everyone's got guilty pleasures, this one's mine)”

The above are her own direct words and the reason I am interested in the girl is because of the issues she writes on in her blog. She chronicles the life of a college student but occasionally touches on both local Saudi and international issues. Some of the issues could be pretty touchy in Saudi Arabia, like the thorny issue of driving cars by women. She is an intelligent girl no doubt. But the blog has of late disappeared without any trace. Yes, without any trace. Whenever I try to get to the web site using the address: http://farahssowaleef.blogspot.com a blogger site tells me PAGE NOT FOUND. Why is that so?

Well I have recently been theorizing that may be Farah has got herself into trouble with Saudi authorities and they just wiped her page into oblivion. This is in fact possible. Bloggers get into trouble with authorities every now and then. Moreover Saudi government has a high tech facility in Jedda that has the technical capability of doing that. They call it the King Abdulazeez City for Science and Technology (KACST). At one time they banished another blog site known as Saudi Eve and the blog remained un accessible in the kingdom for some time. That action drew sharp criticism from liberal bloggers who successfully exerted pressure on the Kingdom's Internet watchdog, KACST to unblock the site.

Was Farah’s site blocked by KACST? I don’t know for sure but what irks me most is the deepening silence on the issue by other Saudi bloggers. None of them is talking about the disappearance of Farah’s blogsite. Blogs like Saudi Jeans, Rasheed's World, eveksaI and all the rest are keeping mum. Now I find that odd.

I publish this story with the hope that one of you out there would have information on the disappearance of this fine blog site or information on the whereabouts of the woman involved ie Farah Abdulazeez (aka Farahssowaleef), knowing that there are ICT gurus among you. Pls solve this puzzle for me.....

# posted by hajia @ 8:43 pm