by Jean Sasson
Chapter Eleven: Kareem
Much to Father’s amazement, and to my bitter disappointment, Kareem’s family did not break off our engagement. Instead, Kareem and his father arrived at Father’s office the following week and politely asked that Kareem be allowed to meet me, under proper supervision, of course. Kareem had heard of my unorthodox behavior with his relatives and was decidedly curious to discover if I was completely mad or just highly spirited.
Father had not responded to my earlier entreaty to meet with Kareem, but a request from the man’s family was a different matter. After discussing the issue at length with several of the family aunties and my sister Nura, Father gave a favorable reply to Kareem’s request.
Wild with joy, I danced around the room when Father told me the news. I was going to meet the man I would marry before I married him! My sisters and I were electrified, for it was just not done in our society; we were prisoners who felt the ever-present chains of tradition lighten.
Kareem’s parents and my father and Nura decreed that Kareem and his mother would come to our villa in two weeks’ time for afternoon tea. Kareem and I would be chaperoned by Nura, Sara, two of my aunties, and his mother.
With this possibility of control of my life on the horizon, hope was born, a fantasy I dared not imagine only yesterday. I found myself excited and wondered if I would find Kareem to my taste. Then I was struck with a new and unpleasant thought; perhaps Kareem would not like me! Oh, how I wanted to be beautiful like Sara, so that men’s hearts would throb with desire.
Now I stood for hours gazing in the mirror—cursing my small stature, twisting my short, unruly curls. My nose seemed too small for my face, my eyes had no luster. Perhaps it was best to hide me under a veil until the night of the wedding!
Sara chuckled at my agony and tried to reassure me: Men loved petite women, particularly ones with small, upturned noses and smiling eyes. Nura, whose opinion everyone respected, said, laughingly, that I was considered very pretty by all the women in the family. I had just never pursued beauty; perhaps the time had come for me to enhance my assets.
Suddenly consumed with yearnings to be considered a desirable woman, I told Father I had nothing to wear. For even though we Saudi women veil on the streets, our dark coverings are discarded the moment we enter the home of a female friend. Since we cannot awe those of the opposite sex, other than our husbands, with our carefully selected fashions, we females attempt to dazzle each other. Here, we really do dress for other women! For instance, women in my country will arrive at an afternoon tea party carefully dressed in lace and satin, with their garments tastefully accented by a display of priceless diamonds and rubies.
Many of my foreign friends have been stunned by the plunging necklines and skimpy clothing hidden under our dowdy abaayas. I have been told that we Saudi women resemble bright exotic birds with our choice of attire under our black veils and abaayas. Without a doubt, we women in black take more time and effort with our individual clothing under our cloaks than do Western women, who are free to flaunt their fashionable clothes.
Father, delighted that I was displaying an interest in a marriage he had thought I would disrupt, easily relented to my pleas. Nura and her husband traveled with me to London for a three-day shopping spree at Harrods. I took great pains to tell the Harrods salesladies that I was going to meet my fiancé the following week. Just because I was a Saudi princess, I did not want them to assume I was without choices in my life. I felt disappointed that no one expressed awe or surprise at my proud announcement. Those who are free cannot fathom the value of small victories for those who live on a tether.
While in London, Nura arranged for me to have a cosmetic makeover and a wardrobe color chart prepared. When told that emerald green was my most flattering shade, I bought seventeen outfits in that one color. My unruly hair was pulled back in a smooth twist, and I stared in delicious wonder at the sophisticated stranger in the storefront windows as I walked through the shopping districts in London.
Sara and Marci helped me dress on the day of the party. I alternately cried and cursed at the impossibility of duplicating my London hairstyle when Huda suddenly appeared at my bedroom door.
“Beware,” she cried, her eyes narrowing to slits, “first you will know happiness, but then unhappiness will come with your new husband.” I threw my hairbrush at her and loudly told her not to spoil my day with her gibberish. Sara twisted my ear and told me to be ashamed of myself; Huda was just an old woman. My conscience did not hurt me at all, and I told Sara so. Sara replied that the reason was that I did not have a conscience. We sulked with each other until the gate bell rang; then she hugged me and said I looked lovely in my emerald green dress.
I was actually going to see my future husband in the flesh! The sound of my pounding heart filled my ears. Feeling all eyes on me watching for my reaction made me blush, which was ruining the sophisticated entrance I had planned. Oh, to return to the safety of my childhood!
I had no need for such emotions. Not only was Kareem the most handsome man I had ever seen; his sensuous eyes caressed my every move and made me feel quite the loveliest creature on earth. Within minutes of our strained introduction, I knew he would never call off our engagement. I discovered in myself a surprising hidden talent, one that is most helpful to women who must manipulate to achieve their goals. I learned I was a natural flirt. With the greatest of ease I found myself pursing my lips and looking at Kareem through lowered lids. My imagination soared: Kareem was only one of my many suitors.
Kareem’s mother was watching me closely, in obvious distress at my vampish mannerisms. Sara, Nura, and my aunties were exchanging pained looks. But Kareem was hypnotized, and nothing else mattered.
Before Kareem and his mother left, he asked if he could call me on the telephone one evening later in the week to discuss our wedding plans. I scandalized my aunties by failing to ask their permission first and replied, “Of course, anytime after nine would be all right.” I gave Kareem a woman’s smile of promise when he said good-bye.
I hummed my favorite tune, a Lebanese love ballad, as Nura, Sara, and my aunties told me in great detail every wrong move I had made. They declared that Kareem’s mother was sure to insist the wedding be called off, since I had practically seduced her son with my eyes and lips. I told them they were just all jealous because I had the chance to see my husband before the wedding. I stuck my tongue out at my aunties and told them they were too old to understand the beatings of young hearts; I left them standing wide-eyed in shock at my audacity. Then I locked myself in my bathroom and began to sing at the top of my lungs.
Later, I thought about my performance. Had I not liked Kareem, I would have ensured that he not like me. I liked him, so I willed him to fall in love. My actions had been well thought out: If I had found him repulsive and wanted our engagement canceled, I was going to eat without any manners, belch in his mother’s face, and spill hot tea in his lap. If Kareem and his family were still not convinced that I was an unworthy wife for Kareem, I had thought I might pass gas.
Luckily for Kareem and his mother, they were saved from a shocking afternoon since I had found him attractive and pleasing in character. I was so relieved to know I would not be marrying an old man blunted from life that I thought love would find fertile ground in our union.
With such pleasant thoughts in my mind, I gave Marci six pretty outfits from my closet and told her I was going to ask Father if she could go with me to my new home. Kareem called me that night. With a great deal of amusement, he told me his mother had advised him against our marriage. She had quivered in fury at my boldness and predicted I would bring heartache to her eldest son and, in turn, disaster to the entire family.
Feeling confident in my newly found female wiles, I tartly replied that he best consider his mother’s advice.
Kareem whispered that I was the girl of his dreams: a royal cousin, bright, and of good humor. He declared he could not abide the women his mother wanted him to wed; they sat
fixed like stones and he knew they tried to anticipate his every wish. He liked a woman with spunk; he would be bored with the ordinary. He added, in a sexy murmur, that I made his eyes happy.
Kareem then brought up a puzzling subject; he asked if I had been circumcised. I told him I would have to ask Father. He cautioned me, “No, do not ask. If you do not know, then that means you were not.” He seemed pleased with my reply.
In my innocence, I blurted out the question of circumcision at the dinner table. It was Father’s turn with his third wife on that particular evening, so Ali was sitting at the head of the table. Aghast at my question, he put his glass down with a thump and looked to Sara for comment. I continued to scoop my bread into the dish of hommous, and for a moment failed to see the anxiety in the eyes of my sisters. When I looked up, I saw that everyone was ill at ease.
Ali, thinking himself the leader of the family, banged his fist on the table and demanded to know where I had heard the word. Realizing something was amiss, I remembered Kareem’s warning and said I had overheard some of the servants talking. Ali dismissed my ignorance with a glare in my direction and curtly told Sara to call Nura in the morning and have her speak to “this child.”
With our mother now dead, Nura, as the eldest, was responsible for my knowledge of such subjects. She arrived at the villa before ten o’clock the next morning and came directly to my room. She had been summoned by Ali. She made a wry face when she said that Ali had informed her that her performance as eldest daughter was sadly lacking. He, Ali, intended to notify Father of his observations and displeasure.
Nura sat on the edge of the bed and asked me in a kind voice what I knew of the relations between a man and a woman. I replied confidently that I knew all there was to know.
My sister smiled as she spoke. “I fear that your tongue is your master, little sister. Perhaps you do not know all of life.”
As she discovered, I knew plenty about the act of sex.
In Saudi Arabia, as in much of the Arab world, the subject of sex is considered taboo. As a result, women talk of little else. Discussions regarding sex, men, and children dominate all female gatherings.
In my country, with so few activities to soothe women’s minds, the main occupation for women is to gather in each other’s palaces. It is not uncommon to attend a women’s party each day of the week, excluding Fridays, which is our religious day. We gather, drink coffee and tea, eat sweets, lounge on overstuffed sofas, and gossip. Once a woman begins to veil, she is automatically included in these functions.
Since my veiling, I had listened in fascination as young brides told of their wedding night; no detail was too intimate to reveal. Some of the young women shocked the female gatherings by declaring that they enjoyed sex. Others said they pretended to enjoy their husbands’ advances, to keep them from taking another wife. Then there were those women who so despised sex that they kept their eyes closed and endured the assaults of their husbands with dread and repulsion. Significantly, there were a few that remained silent during such discussions and shied away from the topic; those were the women who were dealt with in a cruel manner by the men in their lives, much in the same way that Sara had been brutalized.
Nura, convinced that I understood the implications of marital life, added little to my awareness. She did disclose that it was my duty, as a wife, to be available to Kareem at all times, no matter my feelings at the moment. I proclaimed that I would do as I willed, that Kareem could not force me against my inclinations. Nura shook her head no. Neither Kareem nor any other man would accept refusal. The marriage bed was his right. I stated that Kareem would be different. He would never use force. Nura said that no man was understanding about such matters. I should not expect it, or I would be crushed with disappointment.
To change the subject, I asked my sister about circumcision. Her voice thin and low, Nura told me that although our first king had long ago banned the rite, she had been circumcised when she was twelve years old. She said the rite had also been performed on the three sisters that followed her in age. This happened because our mother was from a tribe that continued the practice, despite the fact few girls in our country had to undergo the custom. Thankfully, the youngest six daughters of our family had been spared the barbaric custom due to the intervention of a Western physician who spoke for many hours against the ritual. Nura added that most young girls in Saudi Arabia were blessed not to have endured such a trauma.
I was one of the fortunate.
I could see that my sister was close to tears; I asked her what had happened.
For more generations than Nura knew, a large number of the women of our family had been circumcised. Our mother was one of these women. She had been circumcised when she became a woman, a few weeks before she was wed. At age fourteen, when Nura became a woman, Mother followed the only tradition she knew and arranged for Nura’s circumcision to be performed in a small village some miles from Riyadh.
A celebration was held, a feast prepared. A youthful Nura basked in the attention bestowed upon the one of honor. Moments before the rite, Nura was told by Mother that the elder women were going to perform a small ceremony, and that it was important for Nura to lie very still. One woman beat a drum, other women chanted. The oldest women gathered around the frightened child. Nura, nude from the waist down, was held by four women on a bed sheet that had been spread on the ground. The oldest of the women raised her hand in the air; with horror Nura saw that she had a razor-like instrument in her hand. Nura screamed. She felt a sharp pain in her genital region. Dizzy with shock, she was lifted in the air by the women and congratulated on her coming of age. Thoroughly frightened, she saw blood pouring from her wounds. She was carried into a tent and her lacerations were dressed and bandaged.
Her wounds healed quickly, but she did not understand the implication of the procedure until her wedding night; there was unbearable pain and much blood. As the condition persisted, she grew to dread sex with her new husband. Finally, after becoming pregnant, she saw a Western doctor who was appalled at her scars. He told Nura that her entire external genitalia had been removed and that, for sure, the sex act would always result in tearing, pain, and bleeding.
When the physician discovered that three more of Nura’s sisters had been circumcised and that the remaining six would more than likely suffer the same consequences due to the beliefs of mother’s tribe, he pleaded with her to arrange for her parents to visit him in his clinic.
My other three sisters visited the physician. He said our sister Baher was in much worse condition than Nura, and he did not know how she endured sexual relations with her husband. Nura had been a witness to our sisters’ ceremonies and recalled that Baher had fought the old women and had actually managed to run a few yards from her tormentors. But she was caught and returned to the mat, where her struggles caused much mayhem and a great loss of blood.
To the doctor’s surprise, it was my mother who had insisted upon the circumcision of her daughters. She herself had endured the rite; she was certain it was the will of Allah. Finally, the physician convinced our father of the utter nonsense of the procedure, as well as of the health risks. He also reminded our father of his father’s ban.
Nura said I had been saved from a custom that was cruel and useless. I asked Nura why she thought Kareem would inquire of such a matter. Nura said I was fortunate that he was a man of the opinion that it was good for a woman to be complete. She said that some men still insisted upon circumcision of their brides. It was all a matter of the region you were from or the opinion of the family in which a girl was born. Some families continued the practice while others left it in the barbaric past, where it belonged. Nura said it sounded to her like Kareem wanted a wife who would share pleasure, not just be an object of pleasure.
Nura left me with my thoughts. I knew I was lucky to be one of the younger females in our family. I shuddered when I imagined the trauma Nura and my other sisters had endured. I was glad Kareem was concerned for my welfare. I was beginni
ng to entertain the notion that some women might be happy in my land, in spite of traditions that do not belong in a civilized society. But, still, the unfairness of it all lingered in my thoughts. We women of Arabia could find happiness only if the man ruling us was considerate; otherwise, sorrow would surround us. No matter what we do, our future is linked to one prerequisite: the degree of kindness in the man who rules us.
Feeling drowsy, I went back to sleep; I dreamed I was in a beautiful emerald green wedding gown waiting for my groom, Kareem. He failed to arrive, and my dream turned into a nightmare and I awoke in a trembling sweat; I was being pursued by ghoulish old women in black, razors in hand, screeching for my blood.
I cried out for Marci to bring me cold water. I was in anguish, for I recognized the meaning of my frightening vision: A major obstacle to change and relief from our antiquated customs were the women of Arabia themselves. The women of my mother’s generation were uneducated, and had little knowledge other than what their men told them to be true; as a tragic result, such traditions as circumcision were kept alive by the very people who had, themselves, suffered under the cruel knife of barbarism. In their confusion of past and present, they were unwittingly strengthening the men in their efforts to keep us in ignorance and seclusion. Even when told of the medical dangers, my mother had clung to the traditional past; she could imagine no other path for her daughters than the one she herself had trod, for fear that any shift from tradition would harm their marriage chances.
Only we modern, educated women could change the course of women’s lives. It was in our power, within our wombs. I looked to my wedding date with determined anticipation. I would be the first of the Saudi women to reform her inner circle. It would be my sons and daughters who would remodel Arabia into a country worthy of all its citizens, both male and female.
