Girls of Riyadh (11 page)

He came back carrying an umbrella and raincoat, and he handed them both to her. She tried to convince him to keep one of them, but he stood firm, so she accepted them with thanks and good wishes.

Before they parted, Sadeem hoped he would be bold enough to ask for her telephone number so that they wouldn’t have to leave the next meeting to chance, especially since she only had a few days left in London before she had to return to Riyadh to resume her studies. He disappointed her, though, putting out his hand to say good-bye and thanking her pleasantly for her company. She went back to her flat, every step carrying her farther away from the happy ending to a story that had not even had a chance to begin.

To: [email protected]

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: June 11, 2004

Subject: A Society Riddled with Contradictions

I’ve noticed that recently my e-mails have (finally!) begun to get approval from members of my own sex, although most of the encouraging letters I get are from males, bless them! I can just imagine the scenario: your average girl, week after week, sits hunched over her computer every Friday after prayers waiting for my e-mail to come up, and the minute it does she frantically scans it for any sign of resemblance to herself. When she doesn’t find any, she breathes a sigh of relief and then calls her friends to make sure they’re also in the clear, and they all congratulate each other for having safely avoided scandal for yet another week! But should she find anything that remotely resembles an incident she went through some years ago, or a street that one of my characters walked on sounded like the street near her uncle’s house in the suburbs, then all hell would break loose on me.

I get a lot of e-mails that are threatening and scolding: Wallah, we will reveal you the same way you revealed us! We know who you are! You’re that girl, the daughter of my sister-in-law’s uncle’s niece! You’re just jealous because your cousin proposed to me and not you! Or, you’re the big-mouth daughter of our old neighbors in Manfooha, so jealous because we moved to Olayya and you’re still stuck in that awful place.
*

F
aisal told Michelle half the truth. Sitting across from her in their favorite restaurant, he told her that his mother had not supported the idea of his marrying her, and he told her about the dramatic nature of the exchange, but he left it for Michelle to deduce the obvious reasons behind his mother’s anger. Michelle could not believe her ears. Was
this
the Faisal who had dazzled her with his open-mindedness? Was he seriously letting go of her as easily as this just because his mother wanted to marry him to a girl from their own social circles? A stupid naïve little girl who was no different from a million others? Was this how Faisal was going to end up? Was he really no different from the other trivial young men whom she despised?

It came as a severe shock to Michelle. Faisal didn’t even try to make any excuses for himself because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to change anything no matter what he said, so his position seemed weak and his reaction cold. All he said was that he hoped Michelle would consider what the consequences would be if he were to challenge his family; there was no power on earth, he said, that could block or lessen the awful things they would do to hurt both him and her, if he insisted on marrying Michelle. She would never be accepted by his family, and their children would suffer for it. He had not even made an attempt to object to his mother because of the utter futility of it. It was not because he didn’t love her, he said. But
they
didn’t believe in love!
They
believed only in their inherited beliefs and their traditions from across the generations, and so how could one possibly hope to convince them otherwise?

Michelle remained absolutely silent and still, staring across the table into the face which she seemed no longer to recognize. He held her hands to his face, moistening her palms with his tears before he said good-bye and stood up to leave. The last thing he said to her before he left was that she was lucky, because she was not from the kind of family he was from. Her life was simpler and clearer and her decisions were her own, not those of the “tribe.” She was better off without him and his family. Her wonderful free spirit would not be sullied by
their
rules;
their
poisonous thoughts and insidious ways would not destroy her goodness.

Faisal distanced himself from his beloved Michelle. He put before her the ugly truth and then he fled even from his responsibility to deal with her reaction. He left her sitting in the restaurant silent and alone so he would not see the reflection of his own disfigured image in her eyes. Poor Faisal! It wasn’t his pride that made him abandon her. It was just that in spite of everything he wanted to preserve a beautiful memory of her love for him.

With a great deal of patience and will and a sincere desire to surmount grief, and with the help of God, who knew how harsh her suffering was, Michelle began the process of peeling away the pain. Aided by her righteous scorn and her stubbornness, she decided to let the trailing hems of their beautiful past slip through her hands.

She hoped that time would heal her and that her joy in simple things would return to her life. When this did not happen, she took the uncommon step of seeing a shrink. She went to an Egyptian psychiatrist referred to her by Um Nuwayyir, who had seen him during the first stages of her divorce.

She found no chaise longue to stretch out on there; there would be no “free association” allowed. The shrink seemed quite conservative in the way he dealt with her, and he didn’t appear able to handle her grief-filled question whose answer would remain hidden from her for as long as she lived: What more could I have done or said to make him stay?

After four visits, all Michelle discovered about herself was that she needed a more profound cure than anything she would find in the words she heard from this primitive physician. In discussing Faisal’s deception, the good doctor said it all boiled down to the story of the wolf enticing the ewe to his lair before devouring her. Well, she was no bleating sheep and her darling Faisal was certainly no wolf. Was this the most brilliant and cutting-edge insight that the discipline of psychology had produced among the Arabs? And how could a male Egyptian shrink understand the dimensions of a problem that afflicted her female Saudi self anyway, with the enormous gap in social background that their nationalities entailed, since Saudi Arabia has a unique social setting that makes its people unlike any others? In spite of the wound that Faisal had inflicted, Michelle was sure that Faisal had loved her truly and fiercely, and that he still loved her as she loved him. But he was weak and passive and submissive to the will of a society that paralyzed its members. It was a society riddled with hypocrisy, drugged by contradictions, and her only choice was to either accept those contradictions and bow to them, or leave her country to live in freedom.

This time when she proposed the idea of studying abroad to her father, she did not face an immediate refusal as she had a year ago. It may be that the weight she had lost and the paleness that taken hold of her face in recent weeks had an effect on his decision. The atmosphere of their home had become very bleak with her depression and the departure of her brother Meshaal to Switzerland for his summer boarding school. Her parents agreed to let Michelle go to San Francisco, where her uncle lived. On that very day, she wrote to all of the colleges and universities in San Francisco; she was determined to not lose the opportunity to register before the beginning of the new school year.

All Michelle wanted was to hear that she had been accepted in one of the schools there so that she could bundle up her belongings and turn her back on a country where people were governed—or herded—like animals, as she said to herself over and over. She would not allow anyone to tell her what she could and could not do! Otherwise, what was the point of life? It was her life, only hers, and she was going to live it the way she wanted, for herself and herself only.

To: [email protected]

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: June 18, 2004

Subject: Among the Stars…Above the Clouds

My inbox is on fire with exploding e-mails. Some have warned me that I’m getting too close to the red line. Others tell me that I’ve already crossed it and that I will surely be punished for interfering in other people’s affairs, and (worse) for becoming a role model to others who might be tempted to challenge our society’s traditions with such audacity, brazen insolence, and self-assurance.

Hey, don’t shoot the messenger!

O
n the walkway into the airplane Sadeem wept, as if she were trying to rid herself of whatever tears remained inside before going back to Riyadh. She wanted to return to her old life there, her life before Waleed. She wanted to go back to her university and her studies and her hard work, to her intimate friends and the good times at Auntie Um Nuwayyir’s house.

She took her seat in the first-class cabin, put the earphones to her Walkman on and closed her eyes, as the beautiful music of Abdulmajeed Abdullah, one of her favorite Saudi singers, washed over her.

To occupy her time as she flew toward her homeland, Sadeem had chosen a collection of songs that could not have been more different from those that took her to London. This time, she intended to say farewell to the sadness that overtook her when she broke with Waleed. She had decided to bury her grief in London’s dirt and return to Riyadh with the high spirits a young woman of her age ought to have.

After the seatbelt light went out, Sadeem headed—as she always did on any international flight—to the WC to put on her
abaya
. She could not bear putting this task off until just before the plane landed in the kingdom, when the women were all lined up, and so were the men, down the aisle, waiting to get into the toilets to put on their official garb. The women would put on their long
abayas,
head coverings and face veils, while the men stripped off their suits and ties, including the belts that they always tightened under their bellies so that one could see how rippling-full of flesh and fat and curds and whey they were, to return to the white
thobes
that concealed their mealtime sins and the red
shimaghs
that covered their bald pates.

As she made her way back to her seat, she caught sight of a man who, it seemed to her, was smiling at her from a distance. She squinted and frowned to make out his features more clearly. How much easier it would be if she were able to put in her corrective contact lenses herself instead of depending on the eye specialist at the shop to put them in for her! When she reached her seat, though, only four steps separated her from that young man’s row. She saw who it was! A gasp escaped her, louder than it should have been, loud enough to embarrass her. It revealed her enthusiasm, which of course would have been hard to explain in public.

“Firas!”

She went the rest of the way to him. He rose, welcoming her with obvious delight and then asking her to sit in the seat next to his, which fate had decreed would be empty.

“How are you, Sadeem? What a wonderful coincidence!”

“God sweeten your days!
Wallah,
seriously, a lovely coincidence. I never imagined I would see you after that day in the bookstore.”

“And you know what? I was on the waiting list for this flight. I mean, I wasn’t sure that I would even be traveling tonight! A God-given grace! But then, thank goodness you got up to go put on your
abaya
, or I never would have seen you!”

“It’s strange, isn’t it?! And look at you! You’ve got your
thobe
on before you even get on the airplane.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t like to change my clothes on the airplane. Makes me feel like I’m schizoid. As if I’m Dr. Jekyll about to change into Mr. Hyde.”

“Ha ha! It’s pretty impressive that you recognized me even though I was in my
abaya
and hair cover.”

“As a matter of fact, you happen to look terribly cute in your
abaya
.”

Was this man serious? Was his taste really that appalling or did he think she was so hideous that he preferred it when she was covered and wrapped in her
abaya
to spare him the sight?

“Oh, thank you. I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. By the way, I still have your umbrella and raincoat, you know!”

“Of course. I gave them to you to keep.”

“I hope you didn’t get sick that day because of me.”

“No,
Alhamdu lillah
, thank God. When you live in London, you get used to leaving your umbrella and raincoat in the car because the weather changes all the time. Anyway, on that day I got right into my car and went straight home. I was more worried about you getting sick from walking in that bad weather.”

“No, nothing,
Alhamdu lillah
. And it’s all because of your umbrella and raincoat; now I don’t go anywhere without them!”

“Enjoy them!”

“Thanks. By the way,” Sadeem asked hesitantly, “are you staying in Riyadh this time or planning to return to London?”

“
Wallah,
I still haven’t made up my mind, but until things get a little clearer my time will be divided between Riyadh, Jeddah and Khobar. It makes a certain sense, since Riyadh is the official capital and Jeddah is the unofficial capital and Khobar is the family’s capital.”

“You’re from Khobar?”

“Yup. I mean, originally we are from Najd, but we settled in the eastern region a very long time ago. You know how they say there are no native citizens in the eastern province. Most of us come originally from Najd.”

“Isn’t it tiring to do that, move around so much? Aren’t you kind of beyond that, so much coming and going every week?”

Firas laughed. “It’s nothing. My chauffeur buys the plane tickets for me, I have clothes in both places and even the little things, like toothbrushes, one in each house. At least after all this practice, I won’t have any problems juggling two or even three wives.”

“Ha ha, very funny! So the real you is wicked after all, eh? What’s your birthday?”

“Why? Are you planning to buy me a present? You can bring it by anytime!”

“Now, why would I bring you a present? You’re too old for that kind of stuff. Leave that to the youngsters like me!”

“Thirty-five isn’t so old.”

“If you say so. So, tell me, what’s your star sign?”

“You know about that stuff?”

“No, not much, but one of my friends is an expert, and she got me into the habit of asking everyone I meet.”

“I’m a Capricorn. But I don’t believe in those kinds of things. As you said, I’m too old for that, right?”

During the flight, Sadeem noticed Firas’s care in making sure that none of the flight attendants mistakenly offered her any alcohol or food with pork in it. He didn’t have any, either. But it surprised her that he was so concerned about what she did. She really enjoyed his solicitous attention. And being a Virgo (as Lamees had explained), she was bound to appreciate someone who cared about little details as much as she did.

“I’m sure you’ll find your mother leaping for joy that you’re coming home,” Sadeem said warmly.

“Yes, she would, but actually, she’s still in Paris with my sisters. Poor thing, she was so miserable the whole time I was away studying. She called me every day with the same questions: ‘Are you happy? Don’t you want to come home? Haven’t you had enough? Don’t you want to get married?’”

“Well, she has a point there. Don’t you want to get married?” Sadeem’s question was impulsive and her eyes were fixed on the gap between his two front teeth.

“Hey, this is the second beating—after that you’re too old remark—I’ve gotten in the space of a minute! Can’t a guy get a break? Am I really that old?”

“No, no, I didn’t mean that, please don’t misunderstand me! It’s just that, I mean, I’m not used to seeing a Saudi guy over thirty who isn’t married. Usually our boys start nagging their mothers to find them someone to marry even before they have the faintest shadow of a mustache!”

“I’m a little difficult, I guess. I have very specific qualifications that are hard to find in many girls these days. Frankly, it has been years since I gave my family my description of the girl I would want to be with. I told them, look around but take your time. But they still haven’t found me the right one. Anyway, I’m fine as I am, perfectly content, and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.”

“So, can I hear what these impossible qualifications are, since no one can find anyone with them?”

“At your command. But before I forget, can I make a small request?”

She was studying his white teeth, deep in serious thought. It really was the cutest little gap. Would her little pinkie finger fit in it? “Sure.”

“Can I call you later? I’d like to hear your voice tonight before I go to sleep.”