Cupid flutters over Saudi Arabia despite ban
Young Saudis defied on Tuesday the ultra-conservative kingdom’s ban on Valentine’s Day celebrations to exchange sweets, red teddy bears, greeting cards, roses and even kisses.
On the night before Valentine’s young men and women strolled up and down the Tahliya upscale shopping avenue in the western city of Jeddah, browsing at heart-shaped chocolate boxes and the red lingerie gracing shop windows.
A few stores down from a lingerie shop called “Female Magic,” a veiled woman in a traditional black robe dashed out of a gift shop with 150 blown-up red balloons stuffing them in two cars that sped away in what resembled a bank holdup scene from an American movie.