In the Land of Invisible Women (7 page)

The cab slowed and took a right turn off Siteen Street. As we trundled along the side road, we approached a mosque spilling worshipers left and right. Isha (evening prayer) had just ended. A fluorescent umbra cast by the harsh lighting of the minaret bathed the streetscape in lurid green. Short, thobed figures scattered to either side of vehicles, each one a boy playing in the street. One figure, kicking a dusty soccer ball, drew a swarm of boys following him intensely, tackling with dusty, slippered feet. We turned left across from another mosque and stopped. This was Zubaidah's house.

As we clambered out of the car, straightening our abbayahs, I looked around. There was no sidewalk. Underfoot, a thick layer of dust covered the once-black tarmac. Small oil puddles punctuated dirt. Again there was not a single planted tree in sight. The neighborhood looked in poor repair, not particularly affluent. Approaching the gate, however, I saw cars parked by the house, a Jaguar, two Benzes, a few other German automobiles. This was a moneyed neighborhood after all, and those boys with dusty, worn sandals didn't live in these houses; that much was clear.

Christine rang the dusty bell in its fractured casing. An intricate steel gate towered above our veiled heads, the twisting white metal work supported by sky-blue metal plates. It wailed open. The house was surrounded completely by a barricade of high walls, over twenty feet high.

I crossed the threshold, entering the lives of others. Either side, neatly tended lawns were encircled by terracotta planters spilling cheerful scarlet geraniums. From the inside, these same walls which had looked so ominous from the outside now looked strangely protective. I was glad to be behind them, ensconced in privacy and at once immediately relaxed. At the top of a small flight of steps was a terrace, onto which opened white-framed double French windows. No matter how often I visited Zubaidah's home, I never got used to the French window entrance, as if I was entering secretly from a rear entrance.

A Filipina maid opened the door, wordlessly ushering us inward. As I was taking in the Daum figurines and the oversized Lalique coffee table amid a Liberace-esque interior, Zubaidah rushed up to greet us, a riot of color against her white marble home. She looked so different, she moved differently; even her voice was less modulated. Her hair I could now see was a flaxen golden brown, playfully turned upward in deliciously sassy, soft waves. I looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. I couldn't take my eyes from her and in that moment I understood the power of veiling. A woman is transformed by hair. I was agog, and, soon after, embarrassed that I was looking at Zubaidah rather in the way a man might have done. For full moments, I was transfixed by the sight of her exposed hair and her buoyant beauty.

The forbidden becomes much more enticing than what is always revealed. I was astonished at the effect her unveiled appearance had on me. Momentarily, I was jealous at how she caged her beauty, sharing it only with the few, the chosen. Briefly, I wished I had treated my looks with such gravity, with such careful measure, instead of giving myself away, daily, wastefully, indiscriminately. Adjusting to the distraction of her entire appearance and her total beauty, I saw she was smiling her warm and infectious pearly smile, greeting us each in turn, gray-brown eyes sparkling with animation, rapidly speaking in refined English laced with a cultivated Lausanne-Amman hybrid accent, markers of a lifetime of summers spent in her family's Jordanian and French-Swiss homes.

She greeted each of us with brief but sincere hugs, and we responded in perfumed flurries of salaams and good evenings. Unanimously we admired her stylish, heavily embroidered burgundy caftan. Zubaidah had opted to wear the traditional dress preferred by so many Palestinian exiles in Riyadh. I was learning. Zubaidah was born and raised in Riyadh and was a Saudi national, but her father had left Palestine in 1948. She was a Saudi Palestinian.

Quickly disengaging ourselves of our abbayahs, we handed them to the silent maid, and followed Zubaidah into her sumptuous home. She led us down the white marble stairs, and into a refinished basement, a suburban American aspiration once again, except it was finished in marble, with Persian fine rugs and several areas of seating. There wasn't a man to be seen. Instead the room was filled with amazing-looking women. My dull outfit was becoming, like me, more hideous by the minute. Zubaidah was the centerpiece of the room, animated, a little flushed and vibrant. She moved effortlessly, engaging in conversation in several languages all the while skillfully switching music and introducing her guests. Seated around the perimeter of the room, other women coolly appraised us, the newly arrived guests. We were the only Westerners there. I was the only non-Caucasian Western Muslim, a strange fruit indeed. I invited extra scrutiny.

I settled myself into a deep, navy blue sofa, which, by dint of generous upholstery, defied any possibility of sitting up straight. I felt increasingly inelegant, my ignominy around these sophisticated Saudi creatures mounting ever further.

Across from me, a Saudi woman, in her early thirties, sat alone on an armless dining chair, dressed in a tight fitting gray wool dress with a short, fringed skirt exposing a single, chiseled knee peeping beyond the hemline. She smoked Marlboros skyward, her glossy head lazily abutting the wall, a picture of nonchalance. Smooth, waxed legs wore tall, black, high-heeled suede boots. Her shapely legs were idly crossed, swinging in synch to each drag of the cigarette. Slowly, she fixed on me with a steady, unblinking gaze and surmised my clumsy ensemble. As she exhaled languidly, I noticed her cigarette was perched on immaculately manicured, slender fingers. In fact every Saudi woman there was also smoking cigarettes, except for Zubaidah. I looked at the chic woman once more. So this was what women in Saudi Arabia wear: exactly what they wear in Manhattan, even down to their nail polish!

I thought of the hundreds of abbayahs that had scurried by me, perhaps many concealing chic and trendy outfits, free of my critical eye, or indeed anyone else's.

“I love your dress!” I told her, “and the boots are fabulous! Where do you shop?” I asked her in genuine admiration.

“From my own boutique in Oleyya,” she replied, coolly, blowing a smoke ring. After a moment, she went on, “This is all from my store. You should visit. Perhaps you will find something you prefer,” she replied, only a glint of excitement in her eye giving away her pride. Her accent was harsher than Zubaidah's and the color of her skin darker, closer to my own, though her English was measured and excellent. This was Hudah, born and bred in Riyadh, of an undiluted Saudi family, a family that allowed their daughter to be a business owner! In Riyadh! Immediately, I wondered if she was married but instinctively knew she was unwed. She seemed too independent. I was pleased to recognize some of myself within this woman.

In the Kingdom, women had been asserting their economic independence for some time. I was stunned to discover a number of other women at the party were also business owners, of clothing boutiques, hair salons, or even, like my friend Zubaidah, owners of chic stores purveying hard-to-find European wares like hand-turned glassware or rare porcelain. It is estimated that forty percent of private wealth in Saudi Arabia is held by Saudi women, and even though women are not permitted to hold a business directly, many do so through the front of a male representative, often a family member. More than fifteen thousand firms are owned and operated in this manner, and their women owners are allowed to be elected to business guilds and chambers of commerce in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dharan.
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Elsewhere, a young, sylph-like girl clattered into a small room in the corner of the basement, carrying a series of rather ugly vases. I could see no flowers. Not everything was quite ready for this party, after all. I followed the activity and offered help. With expert, feline dexterity, the young Saudi woman, Sara, quickly assembled the series of thick glass cylinders onto a round base. From one cylinder (the top most) emerged a thick flexible hose of purple silk. At the end of the hose was a wooden carved pipe wrapped with red cloth, ending in a brass mouthpiece. The “vase” being cleaned was not a vase at all. I was increasingly alarmed. Drugs! The Ganja! In Saudi Arabia! Don't they know about the death penalty? Do they really think they are safe in their homes, here in this police state? Hysterically, I began to feel unsafe, even here, in the security of a private home.

Sara carried on, oblivious to my rising anxiety. She pulled out a small packet of dusty gray bricks, each smaller than a deck of cards, unwrapped the colorful paper enclosing them, and placed them carefully on a steel tray to one side. She piled them up loosely like a short, fat tower. Then she lugged the vessel of vases, which was by now almost as tall as she was, into the deep sink, filling the base of the cylinder with tap water. Finally, I could see, she was assembling a giant kettle; it was a “hubbly-bubbly,” a hookah. Tonight women would smoke!

I looked at Sara more closely. No more than twenty-six, weighing less than one hundred pounds, her darker complexion was nearer mine in color, not as fair as Zubaidah. She was well made up; her well-dressed darker skin concealed scars from recent teenage acne, carefully covered in camouflage makeup. Sara's features were more Indian than Arab, and there was a coldness in her vivacity. She knew the power of her beauty already at a young age. Her widely arched eyebrows and wide-set, dark eyes imparted a feline appearance, compounded by her elegant, efficient movements. She too was wearing a stylish ensemble, a short skirt ending above the knee accompanied by a slim-fitting sleeveless sweater. Clicking heels added to her momentum. The body-hugging clothing revealed a lean, enviably streamlined figure.

Sara, like all the other women aside from Zubaidah, was dressed in entirely Western clothing. She would have looked right at home in New York City. What then was the Saudi national dress for women? These women didn't look anything like my patient Mrs. al-Otaibi or her relatives. In fact I noticed from my observations so far, though Saudi men were umbilically rooted in the Medieval magnificence of robes, immutable across centuries, the modern Saudi woman was much more Neiman Marcus than Najd.

As I watched her critically, Sara scurried amid peels of laughter and placed the hubbly-bubbly down on the floor by the spineless sofa. Clearly she was expert at doing this. The steel tray of charcoal bricks was now at the apex of the glass tower and, with matches, a flame was lit beneath. Soon water bubbled and bricks glowed, perfuming the air with roses. Women puffed on the hubbly-bubbly, offering each other the same mouthpiece, each carefully wiping it before passing it on. As I sat, flanked by the Irish nurse and the Canadian peacekeeper, the hubbly-bubbly was offered to me. I was surprised to find myself taking the long, purple, silk-covered hose between my fingers. Even if I was a lung specialist, finding no excuse to refuse and not wanting to offend my hosts, I inhaled deeply. Someone snatched a photo documenting my efforts. It was surprisingly pleasurable, leaving a brief race of nicotine pounding in my chest and a soft aftertaste of rosehip. So I had engaged in smoking—a
macrue
activity (undesirable, but not forbidden) in Islam. These women were not at all rigid, in the way I expected. Already they had me pushing my boundaries.

I passed the pipe on to the next guest, satisfied that I was participating in the joviality rather than just spectating from the sidelines. I settled back to enjoy the scene, as they laughed, smoked, giggled, and generally had fun. Soon the conversation lapsed into Arabic, but our hostess never forgot to see that we were included in conversations in English whenever possible. All women there spoke perfect English, and many spoke excellent French too. Finally, hours after I had lost my appetite, around eleven p.m., food was served, elegantly displayed in silver trays and porcelain platters. Zubaidah had personally prepared much of the menu: hummus, tabouleh, kibbe, rice, motabbal, kebabs, babaghanoush, yogurt sauces; a dazzling array. The food was predominantly Lebanese, Mediterranean, and Jordanian.

As we started eating, Zubaidah's mother descended the stairs. She floated into view without intruding yet somehow immediately causing a stir. She was an elegant woman, wearing her hair short in a stylish, well-cut bob dyed a tasteful auburn. Smoking a cigarette, leaning one hand languidly on her hip, she greeted her guests with soft, liquid salaams. She had presence and superb dress sense. Tonight she was swathed in a chic outfit of neutral wools and silks, draping her tall figure in softly pleated slacks, a silk blouse, and a warm shawl casually thrown together with effortless precision. The generational contrast was intriguing. I wondered why Zubaidah had chosen a traditional Palestinian costume when her mother was much more MaxMara.

Zubaidah's mother spoke French with more ease than English, though she fluidly swirled between both. Eager to welcome me, she seemed to know about me already; being the first female physician in the ICU had apparently been some news. Immediately she enquired of my parents and then asked how I could leave them so far away. I was beginning to get used to my parental lineage as an opening gambit in any conversation in Riyadh. People wanted to know where I was from, but more importantly, to whom I belonged. Without family, I was an unmoored puzzle. Quickly however, and unbidden, she told me her memories of Riyadh before the Mutawaeen had become so powerful.

“Riyadh wasn't always so difficult, Qanta,” she began in a cultured, tobacco-bruised voice. “When I was newly married in the '50s, we never covered! No abbayahs, no scarves. I could go out alone without my husband.” She released a poignant gravelly laugh.