Opinion | The Prince Who Would Remake the World

“Cover your head!” the agents ordered her.
“No.”
“Well,” they muttered, “may God protect you.”
With that, the bearded enforcers limped away. They used to descend on stores that sell the shapeless black gowns called abayas imposed on Saudi women, scoop up those with any adornment — a trace of color, beads — and burn them. No longer: These once-feared upholders of a puritanical Islamic order are now defanged — completely neutered, as the woman put it to me.