Buckling up in a pearl-silver Lexus, Sabeeha al-Fakher takes the wheel and relegates her son to the passenger seat, a role reversal the 68-year-old Saudi widow never imagined would be possible in her lifetime.
Until June 24 last year, the act would have been considered a crime in Saudi Arabia, where hardliners have preached for decades that allowing women to drive would promote gender mixing and promiscuity.
Overturning the world's only ban on female drivers has potentially put thousands of women behind the wheel in the most visible symbol of the conservative kingdom's modernisation drive.
Among them is Fakher, a mother-of-five who never thought she would see the reform, which ushered in a new era of freedom and mobility for women.
“I still don't believe it,” she said, zipping past younger drivers in her native eastern city of Qatif.
Her husband, who passed away a decade ago, secretly taught her how to drive during trips to neighbouring Bahrain in the 1990s, despite the risk of infuriating family patriarchs.
The reform has freed many Saudi women from their dependence on private chauffeurs and male relatives.
“We felt like (we were) in a cage before,” said Munirah al-Sinani, a 72-year-old mother of four, driving in the nearby city of Dhahran with her husband in the passenger seat.
“Open the cage. We fly, we go wherever.”
Arson attacks
The move was part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's much-trumpeted reform drive aimed at overhauling the conservative petro-state, long criticised over its treatment of women.
But as authorities detained several veteran women's rights campaigners in the weeks before the ban was lifted, it became clear that the reform drive would not include greater political freedoms.
However, with the kingdom tightening its purse strings amid low oil prices, their new-found mobility allows the women to join a labour market chronically short of female workers.
Only a handful of driving schools for women have cropped up in the Saudi cities, where applicants have rushed to learn to drive cars and even Harley-Davidson motorbikes — scenes unimaginable until recently.
But in a society steeped in conservatism, many say thatthey have endured sexism and aggression.
Social media is rife with memes of traffic pileups blamed on women drivers, along with condescending messages advising women to “avoid wearing make up” while driving.
More alarmingly, arsonists “opposed to female drivers” torched a woman's car near the holy city of Mecca last July, the Saudi media reported.
Since then the local media has reported at least five more arson attacks on women-driven cars in several cities.
