Life had become unbearable, so I’d learned not to fear death. It was as if I’d jumped off a roof, and Qayamat, the Day of Judgment, when we’d stand before God and answer for what we’d done, was the ground I was hurtling toward. But there was no more use in fighting it than there was in screaming after I’d jumped. I might as well make peace with my end.
“Maybe we should give up,” I said to Ahmed one night when I was feeling more conflicted than usual. Someone had suggested holding protests at Justice Square, the way the Egyptians had at Tahrir. But that square patch of sand outside the courthouse was also called Chop-Chop Square because it was where prisoners were executed. More than five people gathering in public was forbidden by law. Even standing where so many had died felt like a crime.
I said, “You could go to university. You could leave the country.”
I meant, You’re not a girl, you’re not stuck like me. I meant, Why are you staying with me when you don’t have to?
He laughed as if I’d said something very childish.
“Do you really think you could ever leave this?” he asked as we slipped between two cliffs to burst upon a star-studded sky. I gasped. Above our heads the star known as Yad al-Jauza, the hand of Orion, glowed a fiery orange. It was humbling to look at the cloudless desert sky, to feel so tiny in the universe. This, this was God. Not the bearded face of a muttawa. Not the rules that suffocated us, not the stupid and pointless shops of Faisaliyah with the designer handbags I couldn’t afford and didn’t need. Religion was what I felt now, what I could only ever feel out in the desert.
Why couldn’t we just do what we wanted and believe what we wanted and be left alone? There was enough space in the desert for us all. It stretched out around us, asking nothing, all these sunset-red cliffs and sudden, proud trees and wadis where shepherds led their flock to newly discovered springs.
“Yes, I could go to university,” Ahmed said. “I could study hard to become a doctor only to have my seat go to someone with wasta. I could go to America and become a taxi driver. I could give up on the world altogether and join them.”
He didn’t have to explain who they were. The rest of the bin Ladens might care more about buying towers of condominiums than blowing them up, but the legacy of that one still endured. Sometimes I wondered how my government could be so blind. It had made alcohol illegal, and so people got drunk every night on sid they made at home in bathtubs and carried around in Rausch sparkling apple-juice bottles. Zina, or fornication, was illegal, and so the average person got divorced at least two times, at least according to Hossein’s client list. And as for joining them, I might not be allowed to go to university without my guardian’s consent, but I could buy a gun in Batha with just six months of lunch money, no questions asked.
I thought of how on every birthday my father would present me with books he had smuggled in or downloaded and printed at the office for my sake, books that were banned for sedition. He always gave them to me along with those famous words of the prophet that meant all those things that fathers in this country were not allowed to say to their daughters.
If a daughter is born to a person and he brings her up, gives her a good education and trains her in the arts of life, I shall myself stand between him and hellfire.
“Or you could teach. Start a school,” I said. “Teach children something different, maybe they’ll grow up to be different.”
Ahmed smiled at me, that affectionate sidelong glance I now lived for.
“Most people aren’t worth the trouble,” he said. “But you’re definitely your father’s daughter.”
I fell silent, aching with loss. I remembered what my father had said to Maryam Madam on parent-teacher night, his soul shining out of his slanted eyes as he said rebellion was in our nature. “Me against my brother. Me and my brother against the tribe. Me and my tribe against the world. That is how the proverb goes, is it not?”
“There is another way,” Maryam Madam had answered. “Tie a man in chains and he will show you the extent of his strength. Give a woman her freedom and she will show you the extent of her wisdom.”
My father had thrown back his head and laughed, as if he had finally found his match.
“He always dreamed of starting a school,” I admitted, and my eyes filled with tears I hadn’t shed for him in years. “Aiyi shakhrasa aiyi darrasa, he would say. Anybody, any study.”
“So if you were going to die tomorrow,” Ahmed asked again as he drove me home.
Nothing would stop me today, I thought, and my heart felt as if it had been burned pure.
14
MULTAZIMAT
“There is only one difference between girls and boys,” Mishail said, loudly enough that I could hear her even though she was on the other side of the room. “Every boy wants to walk where no other man has ever walked, to have what no other boy has ever had. Every girl wants to be where all the other girls are, to have what they have.”
There was a hum of agreement among her set. I felt another pang of guilt, followed immediately by anger. Why should I be the one to give in?
Mishail’s triumphant return to school after her two-week suspension was like something out of a novel. She wore her crime like a crown, refusing to tell anyone what she had done to merit the punishment. The rumors that grew around her had the complexity of the desert rose, sand twisting upon itself until it formed intriguing crystals in the shape of flowers. The first rumor I heard was that she had climbed out her window to meet her lover at a mixed-gender restaurant and had been caught by muttaween. Another was that upon her suspension, she had been sent to Paris to her aunt and that the two of them had tasted champagne and gone out with French boys. Mishail fueled this latter rumor by saying calmly, “After you’ve tasted real champagne, you can’t even look at a Pepsi without feeling like vomiting.”
She had given up soft drinks and chocolates entirely, and her skin glowed as if it had been polished with honey. She walked proudly and confidently, as if she had nothing to be ashamed of. But the thing that broke my heart was the way she smiled at me. It was an absent, pitying smile, the kind a queen would give to the beggars who chewed on their miswak sticks as they sat on the pavement. Mishail wasn’t just at peace without me, she was happy.
The only person unhappier than me was Daria. She was snapping at everyone these days, particularly at Aisha for making mistakes in law class. Most people probably thought it was the stress of the debate. I felt it was because Daria had seen Mishail as her sidekick and didn’t want anyone but herself at the center. I almost felt sorry for her. After sixteen years, I had learned that Mishail would always be the sun around which we all revolved. Even now, when I hated her for her happiness, when I wished for something to happen that would make her miss me as much as I missed her, when Ahmed dropped me off at home with a simple good night instead of saying something romantic and I wondered whether he was still texting Mishail, I knew that she was and would always be the center of our world, a goddess among ordinary girls.
Mishail sat on a table in the corner of the room. It was recess and raining outside, so we were all indoors, unsupervised. Zainab, Sofia, and nearly a dozen other girls sat in chairs around Mishail.
“Mishy, I have a philosophical question,” Zainab said hesitantly, and I snapped my pencil in half at the casual confidence with which that pear-shaped princess used my nickname for my best friend.
I glared at Mishail, but she either pretended not to notice or had finally perfected her mask so even I couldn’t see within.
Zainab continued, “Mahmoud says that he wants women to be educated and modern, and he’s not one of those guys who expects his wife to wear a hijab in public. But his sister told me that it was just what he said because he wanted the woman to choose to stay at home and guard herself from other men out of love and submission to him. She said that there had been another woman, who did what Mahmoud said he wanted. She acted modern, and then he broke off the engagement because he thought she was cheap. What do you thi
nk I should do?”
“A man’s soul is divided,” Mishail said, as if issuing a fatwa. “A man is always questioning whether to follow his head or his heart. The Arab man believes in his head that he wants a modern wife who is educated, but do you see those kinds of girls”—she coughed a word that sounded like my name, and some of the girls laughed—“getting proposals or even a love letter? That’s because deep in his heart, a man wants to feel powerful, and in this country, the only way he can be powerful is if someone else is under him. So your sister-in-law is right. You’re in the milkah period now, so Mahmoud’s talking from his head. After the marriage is final, he’ll speak from his heart.”
My hands clenched in fists. I couldn’t bear much more of this. I didn’t dare look up to see if anyone was on my side. I knew what the answer was likely to be. Worst of all, Mishail’s words had the sting of truth. Ahmed laughed at my jokes, said he loved talking to me, said that he had never felt such a close connection with anyone. But he never called me beautiful. I was starting to wonder if he didn’t feel the same electricity. If I was starting to be as familiar as a sister.
As if reading my thoughts, Mishail said, “The key to a man’s heart is to be helpless. Let him save you and protect you. Men need to be needed. Otherwise, they’ll think you’re one of the boyat, nothing but a tomboy sidekick. What do you want as a gift, a necklace or a necktie?”
I stormed out of the classroom at the laughter that followed. How could she? As if I had a choice about my situation, as if I wanted to be treated like a boy.
As soon as I entered the bathroom, I realized I had walked in on another clique I wasn’t part of. Bilquis hurriedly shushed the four girls around her into silence. I rolled my eyes. It had been an impressive feat, really, how Bilquis had also converted her humiliation into a badge of honor. Bilquis hadn’t soiled her pants because she was shy, it was because she was religious. Bilquis and her mother weren’t fossils stuck in an old, traditional age. They were multazimat, “committed to Islam,” a term Bilquis used nearly every day now to justify all sorts of things, but mostly to walk around with a saintly look of peace that apparently came from knowing that everyone else was going to hell.
Now she had her own little group of religious nuts who followed her around. They made disapproving clucking noises whenever they heard any mention of boys, love, or marriage, sometimes making the younger girls cry at lunch by telling them they would go to hell for wearing friendship bracelets.
Bilquis walked up to me with her arms crossed against her chest. “I haven’t forgotten how you tried to get me to commit haraam,” she said, using the traditional Arabic of the preachers. “It is said, Let them not stamp their feet so as to reveal their adornment. I haven’t forgotten how you pranced about in the open.”
“You know what they say, an elephant never forgets,” I said.
Bilquis moved forward as if to slap me, but I ducked.
“Still haven’t learned how to run?” I said, and darted out of the bathroom. My blood was pounding again. It had felt good to insult Bilquis. For those few moments I hadn’t been hurting over Mishail. But soon that pleasure subsided, and I felt worse than I had before. How strange it was that guilt and anger went together so well, like salt and lime! I hated everything and everyone these days, and that hate burned so bright it was molding me into someone new. Someone who was sharp but proud of it, who wore a knife around her heart as if it were a gold brooch.
I returned to class just in time to hear Daria say to Mishail’s group, “Don’t be silly. Naseema Madam is blind as a bat. She hides behind her dirty hijab so she won’t have to see the truth.”
“And what’s that?” asked Munira.
Daria seemed to sense that I could hear her, because she looked at me and said, “I’m not about to tell you in front of that traitor.”
Mishail laughed, and I turned away to hide my burning face.
“Please?” Munira begged. “You can’t just leave it like that. Do you really know a secret, or are you just making it up to get attention?”
Daria fumed and said, “Have you never wondered how a woman as poor and stupid and traditional as Naseema became headmistress of a top school? Why so many princes and government ministers donated money to keep the school running and admit more girls, when the woman has neither brains nor wasta? Why Najd National was targeted for total destruction and this school had only a few broken windows? If you can’t put it all together, you’re as stupid as she is.”
There was silence. Everyone shifted uneasily. Even Mishail was frowning. But I could tell none of the other girls had made the connection Daria wanted them to. The fact that I understood only made me feel worse. No decent mind would have gone there, and no woman should have been able to understand as quickly as I had. But one day, when I’d been more miserable than usual about my lack of a future, Ahmed, to cheer me up, told me about the parties in Bahrain where women who had been promised internships with the government were instead sold into service on cruise ships to please foreign diplomats and spy on them. Those girls needed to speak fluent Arabic and English, and they needed to be as beautiful as they were poor.
Daria’s eyes met mine. She saw that I now knew, and her eyes grew wide and afraid. She said quickly, “Never mind. Leave me alone,” and turned to her book.
“I don’t understand,” Aisha said.
“That’s because you’re an idiot,” Daria said through her teeth.
“I’m sorry,” Aisha said, her voice shaking. “I don’t know why everything I say makes you angry. I was just trying to—”
“Would you shut up, you incredible waste of space? It’s bad enough we’re going to lose because you can’t remember more than six hadith at a time, do you have to keep annoying me with your screeching voice?”
Batool Madam walked in at just that moment. She reeled as if struck, and then seemed to collect herself. She marched over to Daria and grabbed her by the ear and dragged her out of class, telling us to behave while she was out.
The room exploded in whispers and muttering. I saw tears fall from Aisha’s eyes onto her law textbook. I went to sit beside her in Daria’s empty chair.
“I’m fine,” Aisha said. “I know she’s just stressed. She doesn’t hate me, does she?”
I didn’t answer; I just rubbed her back. My head was spinning with the sickening realization of why Daria acted the way she did, why she was so boy crazy. Where she had first got her experience.
“Everyone hates me,” Aisha sobbed. “Mishail hates me because I took her place. You hate me because you know you’re better than me at law.”
“I don’t hate you,” I said. I felt the sharp edges of my heart soften just a little. It wasn’t fair that Aisha had been chosen over me. But it also wasn’t fair that Aisha was bearing the punishment for something that wasn’t her fault. We were all fighting one another for a window out of hell. Me against my sisters.
It had to stop.
15
KHULA
That weekend, I could tell by the charge in the air that my mother was lying to me again. I was told to pack blankets and pillows into cardboard boxes that had been marked Fragile. Really? My mother said the boxes had always been marked that way, but I could still smell the marker in the air.
She was now in the kitchen making a picnic lunch, and Fatima Aunty was chewing on a carrot (her latest diet involved doing this all day, and she was turning orange as a result) and offering her opinion on our decision to spend the day in the desert with the Hossein family.
“Far be it from me to tell you how to live your life,” Fatima Aunty began, as she always did when she wanted to pull rank. She was my father’s older sister, and that put her above his wife in status. “It’s just, what will people say? Going out with a non-mahram man on a Friday? Even if his wife is there, what can she do if…”
Fatima Aunty trailed off when she saw me in the doorway.
“It’s just for a few hours, in open daylight,” my mother said, her eyes on
me, warning me not to mention the blankets and pillows. As if I were that stupid.
Fatima Aunty sighed, and my mother’s shoulders pinched upward. The tension in the room was so high that when the doorbell rang, I flinched. I let Faraz in to help carry the boxes down to the car.
“And that’s another thing,” Fatima Aunty said in a whisper so loud it was clearly meant for Faraz’s ears. “Why are they borrowing your glassware to throw a party?”
“Do you see us throwing a party?” my mother asked. “Why can’t they use what we’re not using?”
When we were climbing down the stairs with the boxes, Faraz asked, “What’s her problem?”
“Nobody to claw at,” I said. My hands were itching. I placed the boxes in the flatbed of the pickup and took the stairs two at a time to avoid missing the explosion I knew was about to occur.
“They act like brother and sister, as if they were mahram,” Fatima Aunty was saying. “It’s completely inappropriate for Leena to be without her abaya around him.”
“You said it yourself, they act like they’re brother and sister. Isn’t that the whole point of mahram, that it is meant for family?”
“I just want to make sure you’re not vulnerable. In your situation—”
“You’re not in my situation. Now please call your driver to have him pull up. I don’t want to keep them waiting.”
Fatima Aunty squawked in protest. She said, “I was going to stay here and wait for you to get back.”
I stood at the entrance of the room, eyes fixed on my mother. I knew Fatima Aunty could tell something was up. She had come to check in on us. Her offer to stay and wait was nothing more than policing. She might not have seen the blankets in the back of the truck, but she must have had a vague intuition that we weren’t coming home that night.
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