The Green Bicycle

by Haifaa Al Mansour

  No matter what they did, the guy wouldn’t give up. Through the window, Wadjda saw his beady eyes fixed on her mother’s cloaked form. When they switched sidewalks, he switched lanes, rolling the car along at a snail’s pace right beside them.

  Finally, her mother had enough. With shaking hands, she picked up a big chunk of rock and hefted it threateningly. She shouted as loud as she could, projecting her delicate voice into the street.

  “If you don’t leave us alone, I’ll smash your headlights in!”

  Her whole body was trembling now, but there was no doubt she was serious.

  Despite her anger, the guy in the car started to laugh. He tossed a piece of paper out the window. It landed at Wadjda’s feet, and she saw a phone number written on it. Pressing down on the gas, he sped away, shouting, “Call me if you change your mind!”

  Wadjda and her mother walked on in silence. Her mother moved more slowly, though. The fire that had possessed her and driven her out of the house seemed to be smothered, dying. With the loss of momentum, their pace dragged. Soon Wadjda was able to walk easily next to her mother. The new speed didn’t make her feel better, though. If only she knew what was wrong!

  After another few minutes, they reached their destination. Wadjda’s eyes widened. They were at the hospital, the one just down the block! Her mind raced as she followed her mother through the automatic doors. What if someone was sick? Who could it be?

  But then she remembered the conversation with Leila on the stoop. Had her mother listened? Maybe she was going to apply for a job! By the time they reached the lobby, Wadjda had started to get excited.

  At her side, though, Mother looked nervous. She stood, shifting from foot to foot and drumming her fingers as she scanned the partitions and desks for a familiar face.

  There! Leila was at the far end of the room, wearing a lab coat and sorting big binders of files on a shelf. To both Wadjda and her mother’s shock, Leila wore only a hijab. Her face, even some of her hair, was revealed.

  As they watched, a male doctor set a cup of coffee on the counter next to Leila. Wadjda felt her mother tense up. But there was no cause for alarm. Leila and the doctor were chatting, laughing and joking, even!

  “Are you going to work here with Leila?” Wadjda whispered, tugging at her mother’s abayah. “Those lab coats are cool, like the ones in The Matrix, only white!”

  “Shh!” her mother snapped. “I . . . I just want to give her something, that’s all.”

  But Leila had heard Wadjda’s voice. She spotted them across the room, smiled, and waved excitedly.

  “Hey! You came. Wonderful.” Once more, Wadjda found herself thinking how young Leila looked, how happy. “Wait one sec. Let me get the application.”

  “Leila, what happened?” Mother whispered, “Why are you showing your face?”

  Leila smiled confidently, waving off the remark without comment. She went behind the desk and began shuffling through a file cabinet, searching for a job application. A minute later, the male doctor returned and started organizing his own set of files—on the table right in front of Wadjda and her mother. At first he was distracted by his work, but then he noticed the duo and smiled politely at them.

  “How are you?” he asked Mother. She turned her head away without answering and tucked her hands into her abayah.

  Undeterred, Wadjda looked at the man casually and said, “Hello.”

  The doctor smiled at her, grabbed a set of X-rays, and went on his way. Mother, overcome by the whole situation and growing more uncomfortable with each passing moment, leaned over the counter, waving her hands furtively to get Leila’s attention.

  “Leila, dear, don’t worry,” she whispered. “I’m not here for an application. We were just passing by, and I thought . . . I thought we’d say hello.”

  Leila’s eyes darted to Wadjda’s face, and Wadjda scrambled to cover her surprise at her mother’s lie.

  “We’ll leave you now to work,” Mother said hurriedly. “You seem so busy.”

  “It’s a good job, and the places are filling up quickly,” Leila said. Wadjda almost winced at the sympathy in her voice. “You should—”

  “It’s good to see you, Leila,” Mother interrupted. “I’ll call you later.”

  With that, she took Wadjda’s hand and led her toward the door. Wadjda looked back at Leila wistfully, then turned to gaze at her mother. In spite of herself, she tugged on her sleeve and whispered, “I thought you were going to—”

  “Enough!” Mother said, and quickened her pace out the door and away from the hospital.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  In the courtyard, the entire school had gathered for a special assembly. The girls stood in long rows, organized by class. The teachers walked among them, helping students find their places, straightening the shoulders of those who slouched. Each girl was carefully inspected. Was she wearing black shoes? Were her nails cut and without color? Any makeup or accessories were forbidden. Wadjda saw a girl to her right surreptitiously tug a bracelet off her wrist and secret it away beneath the sleeve of her uniform.

  The few girls with long nails were pulled from the line, handed nail clippers, and sent to the back. Under the watchful eye of a teacher, each one cut her nails into a large garbage bin. This, Wadjda knew, was to ensure that the clippings were securely disposed of. Common Saudi belief held that if someone got hold of your discarded fingernails, or even a lock of your hair after it was cut, they could use it to cast a magic spell on you. The prospect was scary, Wadjda had to admit that.

  After what felt like hours of waiting, Ms. Hussa emerged and made her way to the makeshift stage. With neat, deliberate motions, she picked up a megaphone and flicked it on. Sternly, she assessed the crowd, meeting each row of expectant eyes in turn. Aside from her watchdog duties at arrival and dismissal, she rarely made public appearances. The students responded with appropriate awe. Complete silence filled the courtyard.

  “Girls, I would like you to listen well.” Ms. Hussa held the static-y megaphone a few centimeters from her lips, which made the words very loud and a little blurred. “We’ve discovered two girls doing something extremely inappropriate here in our school.”

  Her gaze swept back and forth across the student body. Her words echoed, bouncing off the walls on every side.

  “In our own backyard.” She paused to let the magnitude of what she was saying sink in. “Their names are Fatin Ali and Fatima Umar.”

  The silence was complete. No one moved or even dared rustle her clothing. Ms. Hussa motioned the offenders forward. Slowly, Fatin and Fatima walked up to the stage. Every girl in the school stared, wide eyes pointed straight at them.

  “They will now come to the front of the stage to repent,” Ms. Hussa said, gesturing the girls forward.

  Fatin and Fatima! Could these hunched figures really be them? Wadjda was used to their cheeky smiles, the ease of their bodies as they roamed the school, the laughter and secret jokes that seemed to play constantly between them. Now they looked broken, heads hung low, faces blank. Wadjda felt her stomach turn, and thought she might throw up then and there.

  “To avoid similar situations,” Ms. Hussa was saying, “you are no longer allowed to bring flowers to your friends at school. You may not give one another letters or autographs. And no one is allowed to hold hands. Do you understand?”

  Her voice got louder, resounding through the courtyard. Across the rows of girls, heads bobbed up and down in silent agreement.

  “Good. You may go back to your classes now.”

  The lines of girls broke apart. Masses of students crowded toward the doors, pushing and shoving at one another, trying to get ahead.

  Fatin and Fatima turned to leave, too, but Fatin accidentally bumped into a younger girl.

  “Don’t touch me!” the panicked third grader screamed. “Don’t you dare!”

  Wadjda waite
d for Fatin, always ready with a smart answer, to say something. But she didn’t. She just turned, lips pressed into a thin line.

  Impulsively, Wadjda started to walk toward her and Fatima. But then she saw Ms. Hussa waiting by the stairs. She stopped and glanced at the two girls. They had always been so kind to her. Even when no one else was.

  Her eyes went back at Ms. Hussa. And before she could change her mind, Wadjda walked away from Fatin and Fatima, more guilty and uncertain than she could ever remember being in her life.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Blue-painted toenails. Though they looked impossibly cool, a heavy feeling of guilt weighed Wadjda down. She lay sprawled across her mother’s bed, staring at her bare feet where they rested against the wall. As Fatin and Fatima’s nail polish dried on her toes, memories of the afternoon spectacle at school kept running through her mind, like a movie she couldn’t stop.

  Her parents’ room was decorated sparsely: some flowery curtains, a single, beautiful lamp in the corner. Still, despite its relative emptiness, it was a cozy, inviting room. And even here, Wadjda was unable to push away her shame. Over and over, she saw Fatin’s and Fatima’s faces, emptied of their usual life. How terrible to be humiliated in front of the whole school!

  I deserve to die for not standing by them, Wadjda thought fiercely. For not standing up to Ms. Hussa, too, when I might have cleared their names.

  Even thinking about her green bicycle somehow made her sadder.

  Her mother was also lost in thought. She sat across the room, in front of the mirror, straightening her hair. As she worked through her long, thick locks, she sang, her voice pure and strong as ever. Again Wadjda thought that she put to shame any singers on the radio—or anywhere else, for that matter.

  “I’ll write you a love letter. Tell you how much I miss you,” her mother crooned, clamping the flatiron over a lock of hair. As she dragged the iron down the silky length, she leaned in close to the mirror, studying herself in the glass.

  “I wish I could cut my hair shorter,” she said abruptly, “like Lobna Abdel Aziz.”

  That would look awesome! Wadjda thought, brightening. Lobna Abdel Aziz was an Egyptian actress who’d made a lot of old black-and-white movies. She was very beautiful, with wide eyes and dark curls in a halo around her face. Sure, her movies were old and boring, but in terms of style—

  “Do it,” Wadjda said definitively.

  Her mother gave her a sidelong smile. In her eyes were unspoken words. Wadjda could read them clearly: If only it were that simple.

  “Your father loves my long hair,” she said, not without a hint of pride, and broke back into song. “I’ll write you a love letter. Tell you how much I miss you . . .”

  As she sang, she got out a bandanna to wrap up her hair. They both heard the rattle as the drawer opened, the sound of something rolling from the back to the front. Mother blinked, reached in, and pulled out a new tube of dark red lipstick.

  “What!” Though she turned to Wadjda and raised a skeptical eyebrow, her voice was tender. “Did you buy this for me?”

  Wadjda nodded eagerly, proud that something so simple could make her mother happy. Their eyes met in the mirror, and her mother gave her a soft smile. Shyly, Wadjda turned away. But when she looked back at the glass, her mother was still gazing at her. It was clear how touched she was. Her eyes shone.

  “I’d say thank you,” she said, “but I’m afraid to ask where you got the money.”

  She smiled, pursing her lips as she applied the lipstick. Wadjda smirked and rolled her shoulders against the bed in a sort-of-shrug. It will remain a mystery, the gesture said. Her mother shook her head ruefully, returned the lipstick to the drawer, and went back to straightening her hair. With her eyes on her reflection, she said, “Your father finishes his shift early tomorrow night. What should we cook? Margoog?”

  Ew. Margoog again? All those vegetables and meat, mashed together and covered in raw bread dough . . . Wadjda shuddered at the thought.

  “I hate margoog. And is he going to give me my allowance this month? Or is he going to skip it again?”

  Her mother didn’t answer. “Your father loves margoog,” she said simply. “So we’ll cook it for him.”

  Anger jolted through Wadjda’s body. Her father got whatever he wanted, and he didn’t do anything! He came and went as he pleased. He never talked to her. He just sat around playing video games. And still her mother treated him like a king! It wasn’t fair! Without thinking, she lifted her head and snapped, “You should cook me kapsa! You know he’s paying off his second wife’s dowry with my allowance!”

  Her mother stopped cold, her whole body stiffening. She’d turned her face away, so Wadjda couldn’t see her expression in the mirror. All she could make out were the harsh lines of her mother’s body, the way she’d frozen like a statue.

  Just like at the assembly, Wadjda felt her ears warming, her face turning red. In that moment, she felt guilty enough to eat a hundred plates of margoog.

  There was no more conversation, and no more song. Silently, her mother tied the bandanna around her hair, got up, and went to the kitchen. Wadjda sat motionless on the bed, staring at the ceiling. For the second time that day, shame crashed over her like a wave.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The next day, Wadjda moved quietly about the house. She kept her eyes on the ground and made sure her voice was very respectful. At night, she helped prepare dinner and clean the kitchen. She didn’t talk back to her mother. She didn’t talk much at all. They both knew she was trying to apologize.

  When two nights had passed, Wadjda slipped into the sitting room. Her mother sat on the floor, ironing Wadjda’s father’s thobes. She’d flipped one of the big prayer rugs onto its back, and was using the stiff surface as a board. And—Wadjda’s heart lifted—she’d started singing again.

  For a moment, she stood in the doorway, listening. Then she padded into the room. Her mother jerked her head up, surprised to see her—and even more surprised to see the Quran in Wadjda’s hand.

  Tentatively, Wadjda folded her legs and sat, cross-legged, next to her mother. Her mother turned back to her ironing, but continued to sing.

  “The handsome man stole my heart with his black eyes / I come closer, he goes away / making me feel hollow / No tears, no words can bring him back. / Oh, my heart!” She drew out the final note, a beautiful low sound, and smiled at Wadjda, who was organizing note cards on the floor in front of her.

  Despite the beauty of the melody, Wadjda sighed. There were big circles under her eyes, and the corners of her lips turned down. She looked morose and tired. Concerned, her mother examined her more closely.

  “What’s wrong?” she said. “You look so—”

  “All this work for the competition is killing me!” Wadjda blurted. “Studying, memorizing, reciting—I can’t take it anymore! And stupid Ms. Hussa . . . It’s all too much.” Her voice broke, and she whispered, “I’m tired.”

  “What does Ms. Hussa have to do with anything? Winning is your business! And you’ve been working very hard. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.” Her mother smiled encouragingly and added, “Your father’s happy that you’re doing this. He’s so proud of you.”

  She paused to playfully chuck her daughter under the chin.

  “Please, Wadjda. Him being proud . . . That’s very important right now.”

  Was it possible that she’d been forgiven? A glimmer of hope lit Wadjda’s eyes. Squaring her shoulders and straightening her spine, she started reciting:

  “And of His Signs is that He creates for you mates out of yourselves, so that you may find tranquility in them; and He has put love and mercy between you. Surely in this there are indeed Signs for a people who reflect.”

  The words tumbled out of her mouth as fast as she could say them. Phrases blurred together. Though Wadjda got every word right, her pronunciation made it
hard to tell. And her mother looked at her lovingly, the way only a mother can look at a daughter in dire need of help.

  Turning off the iron, she set it carefully to the side and clasped her hands in front of her.

  “Give it a tone like this.” In her beautiful voice, she began, giving each phrase a lilting lift, like the verses of a song. “And of His Signs is that He creates for you mates out of yourselves, so that you may find tranquility in them.”

  She stopped and nodded to Wadjda. “Go on, try it.”

  There’s no way I can sound like that! Wadjda swallowed hard and took a deep breath. Then she recited again, trying her best to imitate her mother, pacing the words out melodically in rising and falling tones.

  “And of His Signs . . .” Wadjda blinked in surprise. She sounded good! “Is that He creates for you mates out of yourselves, so that you may find tranquility in them.”

  “Yes, Wadjda, that was wonderful!” Her mother clapped her hands, almost laughing with delight. It was rare that she got to impart wisdom to her daughter. Eagerly, she went on, “Now, do the next lines like this: ‘And He has put love and mercy between you. Surely in this there are indeed Signs for a people who reflect.’”

  The rich tones of her voice emanated pure reverence. Again, Wadjda straightened her shoulders and followed along. Her voice was stronger now. She let certain words thrum and vibrate, filling the air of the small sitting room.

  “And He has put love and mercy between you. Surely in this there are indeed Signs for a people who reflect.” When she finished, Wadjda pressed her palms to the floor to keep from cheering in victory. It was hard to believe that such a perfect recitation had come from her.

  “Excellent!” They beamed at each other, a joyful energy passing between them. Then her mother smiled and added, “Your voice is as lovely as your mother’s.”