Sexual Harassment: How I Learned to Drive "Driving is easy. Just remember. Break pedal. Gas pedal. And go."

Sara turned the key in the ignition and suddenly the car sprung to life. She couldn't believe it. Was she really driving? All of her life, while living in Saudi Arabia, driving meant sitting in the back seat, being taken somewhere by someone else. Learning to drive was a male rite of passage, like growing a beard. But driving in America was taken for granted. Even little old ladies who drove with their knobby knuckles clutching the wheel drove to the store. You could not get anywhere in America without driving. So Sara would have to learn to drive, while she was a student in this new country.

Sara was not her real name. However, because Ben could not pronounce her full Arabic name, he called her Sara. Sara did not object. There were many things she let Ben get away with which she would never let another boy do, had she been living back home. Like asking her why she wore her hair covered. Sara had bowed to American culture by switching to a brightly-colored scarf, which was not permitted in her homeland.

She knew if her many cousins or brother could see her now, they would have pulled her out of the car and dragged her home and thrown a dark abaya over her head. Her older cousin Alia had not been seen by her husband...

Break pedal. Drive. Park," said Sara. She felt as though she was getting the rhythm of driving. She had watched men drive often enough. Ben and Sara circled around the empty faculty parking lot of the university, where they were practicing on a Sunday.
Sara remembered her cousin Badr telling her that American boys were interested in only one thing. He hadn't wanted her to go studying abroad. But Ben was different than other American boys. If a boy only wanted one thing, why was Ben driving around in circles in a parking lot, when he could have any girl he wanted on campus? Carefully, Sara parked the vehicle into a parking spot and eased the car into park.

"Beautiful," said Ben. "You would have thought you had been doing this all of your life."

The next week, Sara felt confident enough to navigate the streets with Ben by her side. The car was a small blue Honda. It wasn't the type of car that you would picture a boy like Ben driving. Sara imagined he would have preferred a small, sporty car. But it was a graduation gift from his parents, and they had wanted Ben to have a sensible vehicle. Sara liked the fact that Ben was close to his parents and spoke fondly of them.

Because Sara had no learner's permit, much less a license, the couple had to drive very…