I visited Saudi Arabia and realised that everything I thought I knew about the country was wrong

The first sign that I was wrong came at breakfast. As the platter of mini babkas arrived at the table—begging to be buttered up and wolfed down—a tinkle of laughter wafted up the stairwell. A couple emerged at the landing, the woman in hijab, accompanied by her husband in his pristine white thobe, holding hands and giggling at some private joke. “Is it common for people to be openly affectionate?” I asked my host, Mishael. “Yes, but in public, the most you’ll see is couples holding hands,” she responded nonchalantly, before adding, “Saudi men are very romantic.”

And so began my daily routine of excavating preconceived notions and examining them in the unforgiving light of the desert sun. When I was younger and saw the world in black and white, I had proclaimed that I would never visit, as a tourist, places where women weren’t treated equally by law. Saudi Arabia topped my no-fly list. Then in 2017, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud declared that women could drive. My hosts told me there was such a rush of applicants that the wait time to take the driver’s test extended to more than a year in the main cities. In 2018, the crown prince followed it up with a pronouncement that the hijab was not mandatory.