As if we’d summoned her by saying her name, Bilquis appeared in front of us. Her arms were folded in front of her, and she stood over us like some kind of bodyguard.
“Has this one tried to sell you some story about how we went through her bag?” Bilquis asked. “Let me tell you what really happened. We got the news immediately that you’d been arrested. Naseema Madam is smart, not like that idiot Maryam. She knew the next step would likely be an investigation into the school. It’s about time, really, if you ask me. But Naseema didn’t know whom she could trust, so she asked a few of us to prepare the school for a muttawa raid and confiscate any forbidden materials. That’s all.”
“And you chose my bag first and last?” Aisha said. “How convenient.”
“The other girls handed over their materials immediately, no questions,” Bilquis said, tossing her hair. “Even Mishail.”
At the name, I flinched, feeling sick to my stomach. I couldn’t bring myself to think about her and Ahmed. I had stared at my phone a dozen times in the last day, aching to call one of them. But what if I called Mishail to confess my heartbreak and she told me it served me right? What if I told Ahmed what had happened and he said something that proved he wasn’t in love with me after all?
It’s fine, Leena. I always thought of you as one of the boys anyway.
I clutched at my stomach.
“What’s wrong with you two?” Bilquis said. “Say Leena in front of Mishail, and she runs to the bathroom to vomit. Looks like you react the same way.”
I frowned. What?
“Anyway, it should all be sorted out soon,” Bilquis continued. “The trouble with the muttaween in this country is that they’re all men, and so they think like men. To protect the virtue of a woman, you need to think like a woman. I’ve realized that’s what I want to do with my life. I want to become the first woman muttawa, to help other women. To think in the curvy, mixed-up, secretive ways that women think and show them the straight path instead, bring them relief.”
“I see,” I said, struggling to keep a straight face.
“Anyway, that’s why I’m here now, Leena. You and I, we’ve had our differences, but after what you’ve been through I know you’re finally ready to return to the straight path. I know you need real friendship, not what this one is offering you, hiding your secrets so you can continue to be Leena Adhaleena. I just wanted to offer my forgiveness, and let you know that if you need guidance, I’m here to help.”
I stared at Aisha, who was staring at Bilquis. How was I supposed to respond to that? A part of me wanted to spit in Bilquis’s face or punch her, but the memory of Maryam Madam with the prison guard came to me, and I held back.
“They are truly lucky,” I said carefully, “who can learn from the experience of others without having to make their own mistakes.”
Bilquis beamed and walked away.
“What’s wrong with you?” Aisha said. “You’re turning into a multazimat now? She’s the enemy!”
“No, she isn’t,” I said, feeling the truth of it down to my bones. “There’s no us or them. There’s just one ummah, and we’re all in it, and we’re never going to climb out of the well if we keep fighting each other over little things.”
“What are you talking about? What well?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, shaking off my anger at Bilquis. What was the use of fighting with her when I had so many bigger problems? I asked Aisha, “What did she mean about Mishail?”
“She saw the photo, too. They passed it around. Most of the girls didn’t even mind that you were driving, they just admired your sunglasses. Sofia said that after all, there’s no law against women driving anymore; it was just that people didn’t dare do it. But Mishail—she saw the photo, grabbed it from us, and stared at it as if there was some hidden secret. Then she ran to the bathroom and threw up. She cried all day, too, and wouldn’t talk to any of us.”
She must have guessed whose car I was in. Mishail hadn’t arrived at school yet. I wondered if she would come or if she’d have her driver send in a sick note.
“And where’s the photo now?” I asked.
“Naseema Madam took it. She said she and Maryam Madam would figure out what to do with all the confiscated materials, and that was the end of it. And Maryam Madam never came back yesterday, so I don’t know what happened next.”
The door opened, and Mishail slipped inside, quiet and subdued. The whispers around her fell and then rose again. The way she looked at me tore me to bits. There was no accusation in her eyes, just loneliness, guilt, and despair.
And right then I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ahmed hadn’t told her the real reason he’d taken her photograph. He had always intended to use her in his plan for vengeance. He had never loved her, not for a minute. We had both been equally betrayed.
In a moment of madness, I walked right up to her and gathered her in a hug. She threw her arms around my neck and burst into tears.
I didn’t care who was looking. I didn’t care what anyone thought. Never mind kalam en-nas. There was one truth at the center of my existence that needed no evidence, and it was that I couldn’t let Mishail be hurt on my watch.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I saw his reflection in your sunglasses yesterday. I’d never have—”
“I found out what he did yesterday,” I admitted, feeling a weight lift off my shoulders. “I deleted the post, but then I went crazy. I walked around. That’s when they caught me.”
The classroom door burst open, and Maryam Madam demanded I go with her immediately.
“We’ll talk later,” I promised.
“Nothing they do can touch us,” Mishail promised back, smiling wanly.
“One day,” Maryam Madam muttered as we walked down the hallway. “I was gone for one day. Is it too much to ask that we can go one bloody day without a crisis?”
She slammed open her office door and slammed it shut. Naseema Madam was inside, looking like a child who had caught her hand in a candy jar.
“These arrived for you today,” Maryam Madam said, snapping a folder against the table.
I didn’t have to see more than the Ministry of the Interior letterhead to know what it was. My freedom, signed and sealed, delivered as promised. I reached for the folder hungrily, and the headmistress snatched it away.
“You don’t think I want you to have this?” she asked. “When I first met Norah, I thought she was an idiot. But this is a brilliant idea, I’ve got to hand it to her. I think of your career, she thinks of your husband. I think about education, she thinks about money. And this”—she waved the precious folder around—“could be the answer not just to your prayers but to so many girls’ prayers. So I asked him to send me more than one. Five to start with, only to be used in emergencies. And I got in today and shared the great news with Naseema, and what do I hear?”
Maryam Madam paused, as if we were supposed to complete her thought. Naseema Madam squirmed uncomfortably.
“Un-Islamic, says my esteemed colleague,” Maryam Madam finished. “Not illegal, mind you, which can be worked around, but un-Islamic. Because it has to be signed by two Muslims, and together she and I only count as one. Not a problem! I said I’d get Shoaib to sign as the other. That’s when Naseema squirmed even more than she’s doing right now and told me what was really bothering her. That there’s something more that’s required for a valid marriage that isn’t covered in this document. Take a guess.”
I didn’t have to guess.
“Chastity,” I muttered. “You need to assert our chastity.”
Maryam Madam snapped her fingers in fury. “Exactly! Chastity. And that’s when Naseema showed me something that made my heart stop. A photo. A printed photo of you driving around somewhere, wearing no veil, and acting like some idiotic Hollywood starlet. And who in the world was taking the photo? Neither of us has any idea. It could be a mahram. Or it could be that all this while I thought you, you of all my girls, knew the difference between freedo
m and stupidity, but I was wrong. Tell me, Leena, which is it?”
I smiled, batting my eyelashes as I’d seen Maryam Madam do at the prison guard yesterday.
“He’s just a friend, ma’am. But it’s not considered legal for a man and a woman to be friends in this country, is it?”
Maryam Madam stared at me for a half minute, and then threw back her head and laughed. She laughed so hard she doubled over and wiped tears from her eyes.
“What’s wrong with you?” Naseema Madam asked.
“Nothing, nothing,” Maryam Madam said, controlling herself. “Sometimes we forget who we’re dealing with. How fast kids learn, how much they’re watching us.”
“I believe,” I said hesitantly, “that a doctor can assert chastity. They would have to sign a certificate.”
“You know everything, don’t you?” Maryam Madam said, looking amused. “What do you think, Naseema? If she can produce a certificate of chastity, shall we sign one of these?”
“I can’t be examined by a doctor without the permission of a guardian,” I said, frowning. “So I can’t produce the certificate of chastity unless I have that form first, to get a new guardian who can give that permission.”
Naseema Madam clucked in disapproval and said, “It isn’t right, to have so many hoops for us to jump through when we’re just trying to do the right thing.”
“What do you want to do about it?” Maryam Madam asked. “I said that we would make our decisions together, and I meant it. I won’t go behind your back on this. The only thing I’ve learned in all these years is that when I find myself doing something alone, I’m usually doing something I shouldn’t. We have a shared destiny, you and I, and the chance to either shape or destroy this girl’s future.”
She’d looked at me when she said it, so I knew she was trying to send me a message, meant for my mother. I remembered how relieving it had felt to share my pain with Mishail even for an instant. Why couldn’t my mother do the same with Maryam? What use was it to hold my father’s decisions against her? So what if they’d signed a marriage contract?
“We can’t sign this document without proof of chastity,” Naseema Madam said, and I made a sound of protest. She silenced me with a wave. “But that doesn’t mean she can’t have the document as it stands, which was how it was intended to be given. If she can find a way to prove her chastity and get the signatures to take to an imam, she can marry whomever she likes. Or maybe,” she said with a look of contempt, “there are others who are less particular about that last detail of the law.”
I saw a smile play on Maryam Madam’s lips, as if she had succeeded in her true mission, the conversion of the black-and-white-thinking Naseema Madam to her own curvy Sudairi path. I wouldn’t have been surprised if that wasn’t her plan from the outset, breaking the Bilquis-like way of thinking in the straight lines of prison bars until—
I took advantage of both headmistresses looking at each other instead of at me and snatched not one but all the forms out of the folder, signed by the minister himself. If they noticed, if I was caught, I’d say it was an honest mistake.
—our minds were like the river, carving its route around and through even the hardest rocks of the earth.
22
SURAH AL-NISSA
Even ten-year-olds knew that the worst day in the year for a girl to be outside, curfew or no curfew, was Valentine’s Day. Between police; Al-Hai’a; nervous brothers, fathers, and husbands; paranoid restaurant owners who preemptively closed up shop; and political protesters determined to make a point, the city had the volatility of gasoline.
Bilquis was right about one thing. It took a woman’s mind to navigate the city’s labyrinthine streets, to scheme some way of meeting up when under so much surveillance. Muttaween swarmed the Burger Kings and Herfy’s in search of the potential indecency involved in Valentine’s Day trysts. Police waited outside the men-only sections of Yamal Asham and other hot favorites, trying to find women dressed as men. A poster from the hospital’s psychiatric-care unit appeared on bus stops and taxi stands. Be proud of your femininity, it said. The path of the boyat is not for you. In the hadith it is said, God is beautiful and loves beauty. Rise up against what confuses your feminine nature.
So nobody expected us to be at Lenôtre restaurant, which on any ordinary day was packed with a wait list. It was far too romantic, far too obvious, and far too expensive. The four of us, Sofia, Aisha, Mishail, and I, arrived together in Mishail’s car. I could see Aisha glaring at Mishail and knew what it meant. Had I not glared the same way at Daria for “stealing” Mishail? And where had that brought me?
It was time for us to adapt, to come up with a new plan, and I had the papers signed by the minister tucked into my skirt. I wasn’t going to let them out of my possession for an instant.
I hadn’t quite thought through what I was going to say, so we ordered food and talked about fashion and recipes, about how finals were coming up and how stressed out we all were about them. We were seated at the edge of the terrace, looking out at both the Faisaliyah and Kingdom towers. This was one of the few restaurants in the city where women were allowed to dine outside. I’d chosen it for a reason.
The adhan of the isha prayer rent the air and was immediately followed by the citywide reverberation of shutters coming down in shops. Businesses were required to close for all five prayers, and in Riyadh, doors closed with a decided bang, and taciturn shopkeepers turned customers out the minute the Allah-u-Akbar sounded in the air. But our waiters made no move to stop service. Lenôtre was rumored to be one of the few places that allowed people to stay inside.
I was right. We were finally alone. While the prayer rang out, every muttawa in the city was either at prayer or rounding up miscreants from the streets and demanding they go to the nearest mosque.
“We don’t have much time,” I said urgently. “What I’m about to show you could change our lives forever. I need you to promise that even if you don’t want to join me, you won’t betray me.”
“You don’t need further proof from those of us in the shillah,” Aisha said, tossing her head and including Sofia but not Mishail in her gaze. “You know that we at least don’t run from the slightest inconvenience because we’ve lost our minds over a boy.”
Mishail blushed but didn’t say anything.
“We,” I said, pointing to each of us in turn, “are the only we there is.”
“We have to follow the rules if we want to include her in the shillah,” Aisha muttered. “If she’s willing to do that, I have no quarrel with her.”
“What rules?” Mishail asked. When Aisha and Sofia looked away, she asked again, “What rules? I want to join.”
“You have to share a secret that nobody else in this room knows,” I said, “and give evidence of it into our safekeeping.”
“We do what we can to help each other, and never knowingly harm each other,” Sofia said.
“At least three of us,” Aisha said, “which in your case means all of us, have to agree that you can be included.”
“When you join us, you join us for life,” I said, trying to gauge Mishail’s expression. A part of me was nervous about including her. I may have misjudged the expression I’d seen on her face. We hadn’t been able to talk freely in the last two days, and this wasn’t the kind of thing you could discuss over the phone like a business meeting—I think we’re agreed, then, that we’re both going to stop talking to Ahmed? That’s what I read in your eyes, but I couldn’t ask while the class was listening, so I thought I’d ask over the phone while your father might be listening. It’s agreed, then?
Mishail chuckled softly. Her eyes blazed with anger. She said, “It’s sad, isn’t it? That the only way to make a friendship last is to find ways to blackmail one another?”
Aisha looked ashamed but sulky, as if she recognized the truth of Mishail’s words but didn’t see any other way. I had to admit I didn’t, either. Mishail was the equivalent of a human bomb. If she was on our side, she was a
weapon to be reckoned with. But her influence and position made her a dangerous enemy.
“It’s what I’ve wondered about in all the proposals that are coming for me,” Mishail said. “What do they really want? The guy’s the one who has to pay the mahr, so he’s not exactly getting a bargain. Maybe he wants a friendship with my father, which is the oldest reason in the book to marry a woman. Maybe—and here I can dream—he’s seen my eyes, or a photograph, or heard about me, and wants me, not the daughter of Minister Quraysh. And they’re each willing to sign all kinds of things into the contract. One of them wants to give me a Cadillac I’ll never get to drive. Another wants to buy me an apartment in Muscat for winter vacations. Once they’ve got me, though, I know how these things go. I’ll be installed like a TV set in some apartment and told to occupy myself until I’ve had a child, while the guy moves on to the next thing. The next wife.”
None of us said anything. I had assumed people would bang down the gates to marry Mishail, but I hadn’t thought it had started.
“But here, I’ll tell you the secret you’re looking for. The one that you can use to destroy me, because I don’t care if you do. I know what I have to answer for and to whom, and it isn’t you, it isn’t my father, and it isn’t anyone in this world. I’ve decided to kill myself.”
While we gaped in shock, the adhan sounded again behind us, a loud and long wail. We had only about thirty minutes before people would start coming in, sitting at the tables nearby for dinner. I felt a prickling at the edges of my scalp, as if the stubble of growing hair was shying away in horror.
“We’re told that men are animals, that they can’t control themselves,” Mishail said. “That’s why they whistle and holler at us at Faisaliyah. That’s why we have to wear the abaya, because men can’t be responsible for their behavior. So what do you make of it when the boy you love refuses to touch you? When he tells you that when you’re married you’ll take romantic vacations, he’ll show you the world, he’ll change society, but all the while you know he’s in love with someone else? I sensed it,” Mishail said, and her eyes locked with mine. “I always knew he wanted something else, but I kept believing he was just fighting his urges.”
Driving by Starlight Page 17
