Karate enthusiast, science lover, award-winning podcaster.

These are some of the ways to describe Majd Abdulghani, 23, a Saudi Arabian woman and Iowa State graduate student who gave a 25-minute glimpse into her world after recording her daily life for two years.

This Radio Diaries project, which took place from when she was 19 until she was 21, brought up themes of marriage and the expectations of women in Saudi Arabia. The main reoccuring topic though was Abdulghani’s pursuit of a career in science, specifically genetics.

Now, after her time as a podcaster has come and gone, her aspirations have brought her to Ames where she is working toward a master’s degree in genetics development and cell biology.

“You know it’s the norm for girls to study now. It’s not strange, it’s not a big deal,” Abdulghani said. “What I want to do in life is I want to be a scientist. I want to get a master’s and then I want to get a Ph.D. and then I want to do a Postdoc. This is my life plan.”

Abdulghani’s love for science stems from the environment she grew up in. She was raised in what she called a science-centered family.

Her mother, a computer engineer, received her doctorate while raising her five children. Her father works as a psychiatrist.

“There were always so many books to read and that was really our pastime, me and my brothers, as well as computers and internet because my mom, as a computer engineer, had to work with them a lot,” Abdulghani said. “I remember in the early days when she’d log me onto the Barbie website.”

Because of this exposure to science and technology, Abdulghani said she always wanted to do something with science as her career.

Abdulghani thought she’d follow her mother’s footsteps by going into a field involving computers or technology. This changed when she began to study genetics in her biology classes. 

From then on, this is all she wanted to pursue.

‘An opportunity to have my voice heard’

Typically, Radio Diaries seeks out their own diarists. This time, they thought they’d let the diarists come to them. 

The podcast’s producers started an international search for a new teenage diarist and received over 1,000 entries. 

Abdulghani forgot she had submitted an entry when she received an email from one of the producers, Sarah Kramer. 

“My decision was more why say no when there’s nothing obviously negative about it,” Abdulghani said. “So, it was like I felt like it was an opportunity to have my voice heard and I didn’t think saying no was wise even though I didn’t really know what I wanted to say.”

From then on, Abdulghani would record her day and upload the files to a dropbox allowing Radio Diaries to sort through it. 

When she first began recording, she would turn off the recorder during times in the day she considered mundane such as in the car on the way to university. Eventually, she was told to have the recorder on at all times.

“Later they told me ‘No keep the recorder running, even in the car, because you never know when an interesting conversation might happen or when you see something interesting,’” Abdulghani said. “So, it slowly evolved into just recording everything.”

She said there are parts of the podcast that she didn’t think would’ve made it to the final cut.

“It was like here you go. Here’s my life and [you] choose,” Abdulghani said.

“Majd’s Diary” went on to win the 2017 Best Documentary: Silver Award at the Third Coast International Audio Festival in Chicago. This is often referred to as the “Sundance of radio.”

A shifted view of marriage

Three minutes into “Majd’s Diary,” she receives a potential wedding proposal. After hearing of the proposal from her mother, Abdulghani responded, “The chance that I agree to this person is 0.00000001 percent.”

This addresses a common misconception of Saudi Arabians. Families will set up their children with potential partners, but the daughter chooses who she will marry.

Abdulghani shows disinterest in marriage throughout the diary, mainly because she feared it would get in the way of her career.

By the end, there is a shift and the show finished with clips of her wedding day and an interview of her husband, Anmar Arif. Arif is a graduate student working toward his doctorate electrical and computer engineering.  

“I feel like until the very last minute before I met my now husband, it was like I’m meeting him just because, really actually now that I think about it, similar to the approach I had accepting to do the radio diary,” Abdulghani said. “It was like why not try it out.”

When they had their initial meeting, Abdulghani said he just seemed to say all the right things as he came across as someone who was passionate about science.

“You meet him with the expectation that you could get married if things go well. I wouldn’t say it’s a typical date where you just date for the heck of it,” Abdulghani said. “It’s more like it’s going to be serious if this carries on.”

He fit her main requirement that he be a man of science. She fit the same requirement he had for his future wife.

Abdulghani said he was very accepting of the fact that she liked karate and at the time was doing horseback riding.

“My parents, before I met him, they were like, ‘Don’t tell him you do these things or he won’t want you,’ but I told them I don’t care. I’m saying these things because I don’t want him if he doesn’t want these things either,” Abdulghani said.

A look into Saudi culture

People outside of Saudi Arabia have their own idea of what life is like in the Arab nations, one of these perceptions being that Saudi women are oppressed.

Sarah Kramer introduced “Majd’s Diary” calling Saudi Arabia one of the most oppressive places in the world for women.

She added, though, that this is changing. One of the more recent changes being women getting the right to drive. 

Kramer said there are more women on college campuses than men. 

Abdulghani lived in London from ages 10 to 15 while her mother worked toward her doctorate there.

Upon returning to Saudi Arabia before turning 16, Abdulghani went straight to university. She said this was a big learning curve on top of adjusting to a culture she wasn’t used to.

“I feel like I grew up more in the U.K. than I did in Saudi because from 10 to 15 that’s where most of my growing up happened,” Abdulghani said. 

The shift Kramer spoke of was evident to Abdulghani as she returned to Saudi Arabia.

“I definitely saw the change during my growing up especially before I left to London when I was around 10 and then when I came back,” Abdulghani said. “I felt like there was a big difference.”

For example, she said before she left pretty much every woman had to cover her hair and wear a closed abaya, a long robe-like dress. When she came back, she saw many women not covering their hair and wearing opened abayas.

The fashion of the abaya has changed as well. Abdulghani said women have shifted from plain black to abayas with color and designs. She said there are fashion shows for abayas and they have become fashion statements.

She also said female gyms were nonexistent before she moved to London. When she returned, there were gyms, but they were secretive. She said since she has moved to Ames, female gyms have become accepted in Saudi Arabia.

“I do think it’s generally restrictive, but I also think that what western cultures don’t realize is that a lot of women are happy with how things are,” Abdulghani said. “They place these restrictions on themselves a lot of the time, so even if, for example, you might say that enforcing the abaya is restrictive, but even if that law wasn’t there, I am pretty sure a lot of women would still wear it.”

With the niqab, Westerners often view covering the hair and face as oppressive, but women still choose to wear some sort of head covering.

Another Saudi Arabian student at Iowa State, Shatha Alghamdy said she only stopped covering her face upon coming to Iowa State because of the way westerners view it. Otherwise, she said she feels more comfortable covering her face.

“It sounds counterintuitive, but for me at least, it’s kind of liberating,” Abdulghani said. “It gives me such complete anonymity. Nobody knows who the hell I am.”

She said there are both women, like herself, who want women to be able to drive and women who don’t want to drive and don’t want other women driving as well.

“[Driving], I think is an inherent restrictiveness that makes no sense. I mean, you could argue that covering our hair is part of our religion or covering our bodies in general in is part of our religion,” Abdulghani said, “But you can’t argue that not allowing women to drive is and regardless, I don’t think it should be legally enforced.”

From the Arabian Peninsula to Ames

With her husband already working toward his doctorate in Ames, Abdulghani did not factor much else into the decision.  

“It was very strange for me because I’d never even heard of Iowa, let alone Iowa State,” Abdulghani said. “When I came here, I was pleasantly surprised. I really like it here…The people here are so friendly, so accepting, I could say even more than they are back in Saudi.”

On a college campus like Iowa State, there is a mix of people who have traveled and studied other cultures and those who have barely been outside of the midwest.

Abdulghani said she has come across people with less exposure to other cultures, but always found the conversations to be open and without judgement.

“They might not have a big world view, but they’re always willing to ask questions for things that they don’t understand and I always appreciated that because if there’s something you want to ask, instead of making up your own answers about it, just ask the question,” Abdulghani said.

As far as moving to Iowa, Abdulghani said it has been great aside from her homesickness.

One aspect of Saudi culture she misses are the female spaces where she can take off her hijab or niqab and feel more comfortable.

When men are present, she acts more reserved than she would around other women or her family.

“If I am walking around in the mall for example with my friend, I would make an effort not to laugh too loudly for example because I know that would draw attention to me and I don’t know really know how much of it is my culture and how much of it is my religious upbringing,” Abdulghani said.

“I wouldn’t say I restricted myself or something. It was just something normal for me and a subconscious reaction to being in the public that I would behave a certain way.”

At King Saud University, where she attended the female campus, the mood shifted for her. The expectations were no longer there and she could be herself.

There were no males on this campus unless they were in basements and took a special entrance, so it was rare to run into them. She said in the university it’s just “me being me.”