Girls of Riyadh (22 page)

To: [email protected]

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: December 17, 2004

Subject: A Message for “F”

A lot of people have written to me asking to know more about Sadeem’s sky-blue scrapbook that I mentioned a couple of e-mails ago. Some have asked how it is that I managed to see what Sadeem wrote in it (and of course the subtext here is: if you aren’t Sadeem, that is.). They’re just DYING to figure out if she and I are one and the same. Others are just curious about what is written in that scrapbook.

To the curious ones out there, I say: I will read to you, and with you, more of Sadeem’s musings from her sky-blue scrapbook. To those who are nosy and have made it their business to “out” me, I say: Just drop it.

W
hen she couldn’t seem to find an appropriate job after graduating, Sadeem decided to start a business with a portion of her inheritance. She had for some time been thinking about becoming a party and wedding planner, since there certainly was a demand for it—hardly a week would go by without her receiving an invitation to someone or other’s wedding or dinner party or reception. During summer—the high season—it was not uncommon for her to get invitations to two or three different occasions on a single evening. She and many girls her age, whenever they felt bored or cooped up, would arrange to get invited to a wedding—it didn’t matter whose. They could dress up and deck themselves out and put on heavy makeup and spend the evening dancing to music played by live bands or DJs. It was the closest you could get to an evening in a nightclub, albeit a very respectable and entirely female nightclub.

Sadeem’s idea was to start by arranging small get-togethers for her relatives and friends and then to gradually expand until she got good enough to organize weddings. For years she had noticed that the party-organizing sector was pretty much a monopoly held by a small group of women, all Lebanese, Egyptian or Moroccan, who demanded enormous sums of money but did not provide excellent service in return. Sadeem was electrified at the thought of having the opportunity to plan every detail of an event herself, from A to Z, and modifying the plans to fit the type of occasion and the budget. She already knew the restaurants, florists, furniture shops and clothes makers that she would want to work with.

Sadeem proposed to Um Nuwayyir that the older woman take charge of the Riyadh office, with Gamrah as her assistant. Sadeem would assume control of the eastern region, where she was about to move, and Lamees, if she wanted, could set up an office in Jeddah, where she would be moving with her husband, Nizar, after her graduation. They could even arrange with Michelle over in Dubai to hire some singers who would make special recordings of songs suitable for wedding processions or graduation parties.

Um Nuwayyir welcomed the idea. It would fill the hours of loneliness she faced daily when she got home from work, which would be lonelier still after Sadeem’s departure. Gamrah was very enthusiastic as well. She and Sadeem began setting up small gatherings to which they invited their acquaintances. Tariq, Sadeem’s cousin, helped them take care of official tasks, obtaining a commercial license and other necessary documents. Since women are not always permitted to take care of legal matters with banks and other offices themselves, Sadeem made him their official agent for legal affairs.

The evening before Sadeem left for the eastern province, Gamrah produced invitations to the wedding celebration of a relative of a friend of her sister Hessah, and so Gamrah, Lamees and Sadeem went along with Hessah to the wedding. Hessah took her seat at the table reserved for the bride’s friends, while the three girlfriends sat up on the dance floor. That was where all young single girls customarily sat, magnets for the roving eyes of matrons who were mothers of eligible young men.

When the
tagagga
crooned into the microphone, the three girls stood up, ready to dance to the familiar Saudi ballad. All of the girls sitting on the raised space started to move as the drumbeats began to throb. The sound roused the entire hall as the
taggaga
’s voice soared.

Sadeem was dancing in place, shaking her shoulders softly and moving her head from side to side with her eyes closed as she drummed her fingers in time to the song. Gamrah was moving her arms and legs in a random rhythm that had no relation to the beat, her eyes staring upward. Lamees shook her hips as if she were belly dancing, singing the song lyrics along with the singer, as opposed to Gamrah, who did not memorize song lyrics, and Sadeem, who considered showing off how in tune you were with the music while you danced to be a bit overdone.

When the song was over, Lamees went off to chat with an old friend from her school days that she had happened to bump into. The friend had been recently married and Lamees wanted to ask her how she was finding marriage so far, and what the wedding night was like and what kinds of birth control she had tried, and other such particulars that were concerning her now that her own wedding had been booked for the midyear break.

Sadeem remained with Gamrah on the dance floor to dance to a song she loved by Talal Maddah:
*

The gentle words and mournful tune pierced straight through Sadeem’s heart. The image of Firas clouded over her mind, and though she was surrounded by people on the dance floor, she danced as if it were only Firas who was watching her.

When it was time for dinner, they all filled their plates from the buffet and started talking about Sadeem’s departure the next day. Sadeem was feeling so sad that her chest was constricted in sorrow, and she did not know how she would ever emerge from the ordeal whole again. As they talked and ate, one of the cell phones lying on the table beeped twice, indicating that a text message had been received. Every one of the girls dove for her phone, hoping that she would be the one who got the text from someone who had remembered her at that particular moment. Lamees was the lucky one. Knowing that his darling was attending a wedding party, Nizar had written from home saying: “May
our
wedding be the next,
habibti!”
**

H
OURS LATER,
Sadeem stared at the suitcases and boxes that filled her room, ready to be shipped to Khobar. She felt a lump rise in her throat as she traced the scratching she had made on the edge of her desk as a child and gazed at the magazine pictures of celebrities and her friends’ photos plastered on her closet door. She picked up her sky-blue scrapbook and pencil, and wrote.

To: [email protected]

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: December 24, 2004

Subject: Lamees Marries the First and Only Love of Her Life

One reader—she didn’t give her name—tells me she doesn’t know how I can be so naïve as to exalt love. And how can I be so proud of my clueless friends who go on pursuing this hopeless quest and probably will do so for the rest of their lives? There is nothing better, she proclaims, than a respectable fiancé who, as they say, “walks in through the front door.” The two families already know each other, there are solid ties and since it’s all done through family channels the bride is certified as a good girl and everyone agrees on everything. There is no room for nonsense or deception as there is with this “love match” thing. This method is beneficial to the girl, since it guarantees that the guy won’t have any suspicions as to her past, which might well happen if they had had any sort of relationship before marriage. How could any rational girl kick away an opportunity like that and run after something not guaranteed?

Your opinion, my friend, is one I respect. But if we lose faith in love, everything in this world will lose its pleasure. Songs will lose their sweetness, flowers their fragrance, and life its joy and fun. When love has been in your life you see that the only true, real pleasure of life is love. Every other thrill arises from that basic source of pleasure. The most meaningful songs are those your lover hums in your presence, the prettiest blossoms are the ones he offers and the only praise that counts is your beloved’s. In a word or two, life only goes Technicolor in the very moment love’s fingers caress it!

O God, we—the Girls of Riyadh—have been forbidden many things. Do not take the blessing of love away from us, too!

A
fter a three-week engagement and after waiting four months after the contract-signing ceremony, Lamees’s wedding day arrived.
*
It was the first wedding to be planned by Sadeem, Gamrah and Um Nuwayyir, in collaboration with Michelle, who had come from Dubai especially to attend her friend’s wedding on the fifth of the month of Shawwal, the month after Ramadan, when the marriage business booms.

Preparations were in full swing all through Ramadan. The biggest share of the burden fell on Um Nuwayyir and Gamrah, since they were the only ones in Riyadh, where the wedding would take place. Sadeem took on some light duties such as ordering the chocolates from France, while Michelle was responsible for using her connections to record a CD of songs written by some of the famous singers she knew personally. A custom-made CD for Lamees and Nizar to play during the party, and then copies could be handed out afterward to the guests as a keepsake.

Gamrah would begin working every night after she performed the evening Ramadan prayers at the huge mosque downtown. Shopping malls rarely open in the daytime during Ramadan, but they make up for it at night, opening until three or four in the morning throughout the holy month.

She always brought Saleh with her to the mosque when she went to pray—she wanted to be sure to inculcate in her little boy, who was now three years old, a sense of religious devotion early on. Saleh was happy to come, and would throw on his miniature black woman’s
abaya,
which Gamrah had cut and hemmed to his size after he demanded that she buy him one exactly like hers. He wouldn’t be put off about the
abaya,
and so she had relented, shrugging off Um Nuwayyir’s repeated warnings about giving in to his desires. Gamrah would remind Um Nuwayyir that Saleh was growing up in different circumstances than those in which her Nuri had been raised. Her little Salluhi was growing up among all his uncles, and so there was no cause to fear that he would lack adequate male role models just because his father wasn’t around. Anyway, he looked so cute, gathering the folds and ends of the voluminous black
abaya
around his little-boy clothes, his head covered all the while in a traditional
shimagh.

During the prayers, Saleh would stand next to her imitating every one of her moves, from the very beginning with saying “Allah Akbar”
*
to reciting to bending down and prostrating himself on the carpet-covered floor. When he got bored with imitating her, he would twist his head and contort his upper body toward her as she bent and knelt, trying to peer into her eyes and those of the rest of the grown-ups lined up for prayer, seeing if he could make them laugh. Kneeling in front of them, he would lean so far forward that he would topple over on his face, and then he would roll over onto his back, still grinning his wide grin and waiting for someone to smile back, any one of those gloomy-looking women in the row who tried to avoid meeting his gaze and keep their concentration on the prayer. Losing hope, he would take the opportunity of their kneeling and bending to the ground in prayer to give every one of those frowning women a little pat on her rear end, before going back to stretch out on his back in front of them, laughing and totally proud of his achievement!

The women complained about his naughty behavior and ordered Gamrah to send him over to the men’s section to pray. Gamrah found his little antics adorable but would try to reprimand her son in front of the other ladies, fighting to keep from laughing. Saleh would give her one of his cute smiles, encouraging her to let out the laughter she was suppressing, as if he knew that she didn’t mean to scold him.

Riyadh Tarawih prayers
*
usually ended around eight-thirty or nine
P.M.
and the shops opened their doors right after that. Gamrah would make her rounds, from the seamstress who was sewing the tablecloths and chair coverings for the wedding hall to the restaurant where she tasted new dishes every evening in order to select what pleased her most for the wedding buffet. She had visits to the florist and the printer who was doing the invitations, and many others, in addition to her many trips to the mall with Lamees to get whatever Lamees was still lacking for her trousseau.

Gamrah wouldn’t get home before two or three in the morning, although during the final third of the month she would return an hour or two earlier, in time to do the Qiyam prayers
**
at the mosque with her mother and sisters. At first, Gamrah’s mother wouldn’t let her go out on these work missions alone, but she began going easier on her daughter when she noticed how seriously Gamrah took it all. What most impressed Um Gamrah was when she saw her daughter make her first profit—for arranging a dinner party in the home of one of Sadeem’s professors at the university—and hand it over to her father, who finally was persuaded of the suitability of his daughter’s odd work. Her mother had tried to force her sons to accompany their sister in her nightly outdoor activities, but they refused, one and all, and she eventually let it drop. So Gamrah was free to go about her work, sometimes in the company of her sister Shahla, or with Um Nuwayyir, or—most of the time—with Saleh and no one else.

On the long-awaited day, Lamees looked more gorgeous than ever. Her long chocolate-brown hair flowed down her back in pretty waves. Her mother-of-pearl-studded gown dropped softly from her shoulders, draping gracefully in front and revealing her upper back before widening gradually until it reached the ground. Her tulle veil flowed from her head down her bare back. One hand held a bouquet of lilies and the other clasped Nizar’s hand. He was softly invoking God’s name over her before every step and helping her lift the long train of her gown.

Lamees’s friends could see the unadulterated joy in her eyes as she danced with Nizar after the procession, amid a circle of women, his relatives and hers. Their friend Lamees was the only one who had fulfilled the dream they all had, the dream of marrying the first love of their lives.

GAMRAH:
May God’s generosity put us there next! Just look at those two blissed-out faces out there on the dance floor! Ah, how lucky is the girl who gets a Hijazi man! Where are
our
men when it comes to these romantic gazes of Nizar toward his bride? I swear to God, a Najdi would kill you if you said to him, sitting up there on the bridal dais, “Just turn toward me a little, and smile, for God’s sake! Instead of sitting there frowning as if somebody had dragged you here against your will!”

SADEEM:
Remember how Rashid reacted when we told him to kiss you during the wedding? And look at this Nizar, all he does is kiss Lamees’s forehead every couple of minutes, and then her hands and her cheeks. You’re right, men from Jeddah are a different species.

GAMRAH:
And look how considerate he is, he’s happy to let her stay in Riyadh while he’s in Jeddah, until she graduates and can move there. I swear to God he’s a real man, God bless both of them and make them happy.

MICHELLE:
But isn’t that the way it should be? Or did you think he was not going to let her finish her studies, or that he would force her to finish in Jeddah because he’s there? This is
her
life, and she’s free to run it as she wants, just as he’s free to run his as he wants. Our problem
here
is that we let men be bigger deals than they really are. We need to realize—assume, even—right from the start that things like letting us graduate are not even optional, it’s just what makes sense, and our eyes should not fly out of our heads if one of these men actually does something right!

SADEEM:
Shut up, both of you. You two are giving me a headache! Let’s just watch those lovebirds over there. They look so
cute
when they’re dancing together. Just look at how he looks at her! His eyes are glazing and he looks like he’s going to die of happiness. Oh, my poor heart! That’s what I call
love.

GAMRAH:
Poor Tamadur. Don’t you think she must be jealous because her twin sister got married before she did?

SADEEM:
Why should she be jealous? Tomorrow her own luck and fate will show up. And by the way, have you noticed how well groomed these Hijaz guys are? Nizar is positively glistening, he’s so clean and tidy! Just look how perfectly trimmed his goatee is. Every Hijazi bridegroom I’ve ever seen has a goatee precisely that shape, and not too heavy. You’d think they all go to the same barber!

MICHELLE:
Those guys get a scrubbing, a Turkish bath and facial threading so they won’t be too hairy, plucking and a pedicure and sometimes even a waxing. Not like the guys from Riyadh, where the groom looks just like all the guests except for the color of his
bisht.
*

SADEEM:
I couldn’t care less whether a guy is well groomed or not. In fact, I prefer a man who is a little untidy. It’s so much more masculine—he doesn’t have the time or the vanity to dress up and buy the latest fashions and act like a teenager who has nothing better to do.

UM NUWAYYIR:
God have mercy on the old days! The days when you used to fall all over yourself when it came to good-looking men. Even Waleed, how your eyes were full of him!

SADEEM:
True, but after Waleed I got Firas, the untidy devil who filled my eyes with nothing in the world but him.

GAMRAH:
Basically I’d take any guy, whoever he is, clean or filthy, tidy or messy. Who cares? As long as he’s there. I’m ready to be happy with any man. I’m so bored, girls! I’m fed up and I can’t stand it. A little more of this and I’ll go insane.

When it was time for the bouquet toss, the young single ladies lined up behind the bride, eager to find out who would get to board the sparkling marriage train next. Lamees’s and Nizar’s relatives crowded in, mixing with the rest of her friends. After her mother insisted, Tamadur sulkily joined them. Sadeem and Michelle stood front and center, and were hurriedly joined by Gamrah, who was quick to comply with Um Nuwayyir’s encouragement to stand among the young bachelorettes; even if she was married before, she was technically single at the moment of the bouquet toss and more than ready to remarry again.

Lamees turned her back to the girls, having earlier agreed with her three friends that she would try to throw the bouquet in their direction. She tossed it high in the air and the crowd of girls surged to grab it. After a lot of pushing and shoving and kicking and hitting, Gamrah got hold of what was left of Lamees’s bouquet, a few green leaves tied with a strip of white lace. She raised it high, giggling ecstatically. “I caught the bouquet! I caught the bouquet!”