Rahaf al -Qunun

- or however you care to spell her name - is a brave but foolhardy young woman. I hope her actions help other young Saudi women but I rather doubt it. 
She is also going to have to watch her back for the rest of her  life. Her family, indeed her nation, will see her as having brought shame on them. 
At one time I went to university with a Saudi Arabian princess. You would not have known it. She covered her head but she also wore jeans. Most of the students were completely unaware of who she was.
I knew because I also met her father. He was one of the more enlightened, much more enlightened, members of the royal family. All his children went to university. I don't know what the boys did but one of the girls did engineering, another did medicine, and the one I knew was doing education. She wasn't actually going to be allowed to teach. Her sisters would not have ended up as engineers or doctors either. What was the point of them doing all that study and not using it?
Her father told me something along the lines of things would change one day. He wanted his daughters as well as his sons to understand major areas of importance. He saw them as being responsible for helping to guide the country out of what he saw as an unsustainable anti-female culture.
It hasn't happened yet. I know he died some time ago. He would have died a disappointed man. His daughters have had to fight to get their own children - from their own arranged marriages - an education. But - they are getting a very good education. 
I suspect the girl I once knew is now a very frustrated woman. Her father was a curious mix of new and old. He expected absolute obedience from all his children. He did not display affection in public, indeed seemed almost cold. Nevertheless he commanded both respect and great affection from his daughters. 
I wonder what this man would have done if the girl I knew had tried to seek asylum? My guess is that, for all his apparently enlightened ways, he would have found a way of forcing her to return home. Once there she would have had no chance of leaving again. He would have been not merely angry but furious and he would have remained so. They probably would not even have spoken again. Yes, he loved her. I don't doubt that. There was pride in his voice when he spoke about her, about how hard she was working, and how well she was doing but he still saw her as belonging to him and under his control.
It is going to take much more than one young girl trying to leave such a stifling and restrictive lifestyle behind to bring about any real change in Saudi Arabia. All we can hope for is that young Rahaf al-Qunun remains safe.