One (very) small step for a woman

LIKE its thimble-sized cups of coffee, democracy in Saudi Arabia comes in doses that are tiny, yet capable of packing quite a punch in a politically parched landscape. People power was on display, for example, at a poetry reading in the port city of Jeddah on December 12th. When Ashjan Hindi, a woman poet, took to the podium, religious conservatives rose to cut her off. “Do you accept this, brothers?” cried one of the bearded vigilantes, expecting that the audience would share his outrage against such a breach of the conservative kingdom’s ban on public “mixing” of sexes. Instead, a chorus shouted back “Yes we do!” as organisers hustled the astonished would-be guardians of virtue from the room. Within hours the Twitter hashtag “Yes we do” was trending in the kingdom, as Saudis gleefully shared cellphone videos of the vigilantes’ humiliation.