Girls of Riyadh

by Rajaa Alsanea

He laughed at her confession and she laughed, too. After a moment, he said to her, a little provocatively, “By the way, Sadeem, you know, my job requires that I travel overseas a lot.”

  This time she answered him without a pause, raising one of her eyebrows flirtatiously. “Not a problem. I love to travel!”

  He told her that he found her mischievousness and quick wit delightful, and she lowered her head, blushing fiercely and cursing her inability to control her runaway mouth, which might turn out to be the cause of a runaway groom. Seconds later, her father unwittingly came to the rescue by walking through the doorway. She excused herself hurriedly and made straight for the door, giving Waleed a big smile, which he returned with an even bigger one. She left the room with butterflies in her stomach.

  She had found Waleed handsome, even if he wasn’t really her favorite type. She preferred darker skin; his complexion was fair with a pinkish hue. His shadowy mustache and goatee and those glasses with the thin silver frames added a lot of charm to his face, though, she thought.

  Once she was out of the room, Waleed asked her father’s permission to phone her so he could get to know her better before it was announced that they were officially engaged. Her father agreed and gave him Sadeem’s cell phone number.

  Waleed called late that night, and after allowing the phone to ring a decently long time, she answered. He told her how much he liked her. He would speak a little and then go quiet, as if he expected her to comment on what he was saying. She told him that she had been happy to meet him, but said no more. He told her that he really liked her, that in fact he had been bewitched by her and that he found it unbearable to wait until Eid Al-Fitr, after which they could sign the marriage contract.

  After that, Waleed called her dozens of times a day—he called the minute he woke up in the morning, before going to work, at work, after work and finally for a long conversation before going to sleep that would stretch on sometimes until the sun was peeping over the horizon. He even woke her up in the middle of the night to have her listen to a song he had dedicated to her on the radio. And every day he would ask that she pick out at the store a pair of glasses for him, or a watch, or cologne—he would immediately buy whatever she dictated, he said, so that everything he wore would be completely to her liking.

  The other girls began to envy Sadeem, especially Gamrah, who would become overwhelmed with self-pity whenever Sadeem described to her on the telephone how fond she was of Waleed and how he adored her in return. Gamrah started making up stories about her blissful life with Rashid—how loving he was toward her, how many gifts he brought her.

  Waleed and Sadeem signed the marriage contract in a small ceremony. Sadeem’s aunt wept uncontrollably as she thought of her sister—Sadeem’s mother—who had never gotten the chance to see her daughter married. She also cried secretly for her son, Tariq, whom she had always hoped would be the one to marry Sadeem.

  During the official proceedings Sadeem pressed her fingerprint onto the page in the enormous registry book after her protest about not being allowed to sign her name was dismissed. “My girl,” said her aunt, “just stamp it with your fingerprint and call it a day. The sheikh says fingerprint, not signature. The men are the only ones who sign their names.”

  After the signing ceremony, her father threw a huge banquet for the two families. On the evening of the next day, Waleed came over to see his bride, whom he had not met in person since that one legally permitted viewing. On this visit, Waleed presented her with the customary gift for the engagement period nowadays: a cell phone, one of the very latest models on the market.

  In the months to follow, during the milkah period, the traditional time between the official signing of the documents and the actual wedding ceremony, Waleed’s visits to Sadeem grew more and more frequent. Most visits her father knew about, but there were a few little encounters that escaped his attention. During the week, Waleed usually dropped by after the evening prayers, and usually stayed until two o’clock in the morning. On weekends he rarely left before dawn.

  Every few weeks Waleed took her out for dinner in a fancy restaurant, and on other evenings he would bring her food or sweets that she loved. They spent their time talking and laughing, watching a film that one of them had borrowed from a friend. Then things began to progress, and they developed far enough that she experienced her first kiss.

  Waleed had been accustomed to kissing her cheeks when saying hello and good-bye to her. But one evening his parting kiss was decidedly hotter than usual. Maybe the tragic end of the movie they had watched together (Armageddon) played a role in creating the right mood for him to plant that long, needy kiss on her virgin lips.

  Sadeem started preparing for the wedding, browsing around in the shops with Um Nuwayyir or Michelle or Lamees. Sometimes Waleed would go with her, especially if she was planning to buy nightgowns.

  The wedding celebration was set to occur over the summer vacation, a week or two after Sadeem’s final exams, as Sadeem had requested. She was afraid to get married during Eid Al-Adha break, worried that it would interfere with her ability to study for her exams—Sadeem was always a top student, vigilant about getting good grades. But her decision upset and distressed Waleed, who was anxious to get married as soon as possible. Sadeem decided to make it up to him.

  One evening she put on the black lace nightgown he had bought for her but which at the time she had refused to try on in his presence. She invited him to come over for the evening without informing her father, who was out camping with friends in the desert.

  The red petals she strewed across the sofa, the candles placed here and there, the soft music wafting from the well-hidden music system—none of it impressed Waleed as much as the black nightgown that revealed more of her body than it concealed. Since Sadeem had vowed to make her beloved Waleed happy that night, and since she wanted to erase his disappointment over her insistence on delaying the wedding, she allowed him to go further with her than ever before. She did not try to stop him—as she had gotten used to doing—when he attempted to cross the line that she had drawn, for herself and for him, in the early days after the signing of the contract. She was convinced that he wouldn’t be satisfied unless she offered him a little more of her “femininity,” and she was willing to do anything to please him, the love of her life, even if it meant exceeding the limits she had spent her lifetime guarding.

  As usual, Waleed left after the dawn call to prayer, but this time Sadeem thought he seemed distressed and troubled. She figured he must be feeling as nervous as she was after what had happened. She waited anxiously for his usual phone call once he got home, since she especially needed to hear his tender voice after such a night, but he didn’t call. Sadeem didn’t allow herself to call him and waited until the next day, but he didn’t call then, either. As difficult as it was for her, she decided to give him a few days to calm down before calling him to ask what was wrong.

  Three days passed without a word from Waleed. Sadeem decided to drop her resolve and called, only to find that his cell phone was turned off. She kept calling through the entire week, at different times of the day and night, desperate to reach him. But his cell phone was always switched off and the private line in his room was always busy. What was going on? Had something awful happened to him? Or was he still angry at her, this angry even after all of her efforts to please him? What about everything she had given him on that night? Had he gone insane?

  Had she been wrong to give herself to Waleed before the wedding celebration? Did it make any sense at all to believe that that was the cause of him avoiding her? Why, though? Wasn’t he her legal husband, and hadn’t he been her legal husband ever since they signed the contract? Or did getting married mean the ballroom, the guests, the live singer and the dinner? And what she had done—did it somehow deserve punishment from him? Hadn’t he been the one who initiated it? Why had he encouraged her to do the wrong thing and then afterward abandoned her? And anyway, was it wrong, was it a sin, in the first place? Had he
been testing her? And if she had failed the test, did that mean that she was not worthy of him? He must have thought she was one of those girls who were easy! But what kind of stupidity was this? Wasn’t she his wife, his lawful partner? Hadn’t she on that day placed her mark in that big register next to his signature? Hadn’t there been acceptance, consent and commitment, witnesses and an announcement to the world? No one had ever cautioned her about this! Would Waleed make her pay for what she did not even know? If her mother had been alive, she would have warned her and directed her, and then none of this would have happened! And besides, she had heard a lot of stories about young women who had done what she did, and maybe more, after signing the contract and before the wedding party! She even knew of cases where the brides had given birth to full-term babies only seven months after the wedding. Among the people who were aware of such events, only a very few seemed to care. So where was the error? Where was the sin?

  Who would draw for her the fine line between what was proper behavior and what wasn’t? And, she wondered, was that line that their religion defined the same as the one in the mind of a young man from conservative Najd? Waleed had criticized her every time she put a stop to anything, saying that she was his wife according to the religion of God and His prophet. Who was there to explain to her the psychological makeup of the young Saudi man so that she could understand what went on in his mind? Had Waleed now come to believe that she was a young woman of “experience”? Did he actually prefer it when she told him to stop? She hadn’t done anything more than go along with him, the way she saw things done on TV and heard from her married girlfriends. He had done the rest! So why was she at fault for following his lead and instinctively knowing how to conduct herself? It wasn’t something that required knowledge of chemistry and physics to figure out! What was it that had taken possession of Waleed, to make him so irrational?

  She tried to call his mother but was told that she was sleeping. She left her name with the maid and asked her to inform her mistress that she had called, and then she waited expectantly for a call from Um Waleed that never came. Should she tell her father what had happened on that bitter night? How would she tell him? What would she say? If she said nothing, though, was she going to say nothing all the way to the wedding day? What would people say on that day? That the groom jilted her? No, no! Waleed couldn’t possibly be as horrible as this. He must be lying in a coma somewhere in some hospital. To think of him lying in a hospital bed was a thousand times more bearable than to think that he could be deserting her in this way!

  Sadeem was afloat in a state of bewilderment, waiting for a call or visit from Waleed, dreaming that he would come to her on his knees begging for forgiveness. But he didn’t visit and he didn’t call. Her father asked her what was wrong, but she had no answer for him. An answer did come from Waleed three weeks later, though: divorce papers! Her father tried hard to find out from Sadeem what lay behind the horrible surprise, but she collapsed in his arms and exploded into tears without confessing. In anger, he went to Waleed’s father, who denied knowing anything and said he was as surprised as Sadeem’s father was. All Waleed had said to his father was that he had discovered he was not comfortable with his bride and he preferred to break the contract now before the wedding was consummated.

  Sadeem kept her secret from everyone. She licked her wounds in silence until the second shock arrived: in her first year at the university, she had failed more than half of her courses.

  6.

  To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

  From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

  Date: March 19, 2004

  Subject: Lamees, the One and Only!

  Many e-mails have come my way that ask me to reveal my true identity. Am I one of the four girls I am writing about in these e-mails? So far, most of the guesses have veered between Gamrah and Sadeem. Only one guy thinks I’m likely to be Michelle, but then he said he wasn’t sure since Michelle’s English is better than mine!

  What really got me howling was an e-mail from Haitham, from Al-Madina, City of Light, in which he slams me for my extreme partiality toward the “Bedouin” girls of Riyadh and my neglect of Lamees, his heart’s darling. You people are starting to act as if you know my four friends better than I do! Don’t let it bother you, dear Haitham. My e-mail today will concern Lamees and only Lamees.

  Though Lamees and Tamadur looked very much alike, enormous differences in character and in their thoughts and ideas separated the twin sisters. True, they had attended the same classes in elementary and middle school, and even as far as high school and university, where they both studied at the College of Medicine. But Tamadur alone drew the admiration of professors for her intense seriousness and hyperdisciplined personality. Lamees, on the other hand, was the cool A+ student who was also the favorite of her classmates because of her wit and her friendliness to everyone. At the same time, she also managed to maintain her good grades. Lamees had more courage—and also more sheer nerve—than Tamadur, who always described her sister as careless, dare-devilish, and rash, not to mention flighty and a bit flirtatious.

  Their father, Dr. Asim Hijazi, was a former dean of the College of Pharmacology at the university and their mother, Dr. Fatin Khalil, had been a deputy administrator in the same department. Dr. Asim and Dr. Fatin were the keys to their daughters’ success and their distinctive academic superiority. Ever since the twins’ birth, the parents had been as careful as could be to parcel out their roles and attention so that the two little girls would get all the consideration and care they needed. As Tamadur and Lamees entered nursery, and then kindergarten, and then real school, the parents’ attentiveness grew rather than dwindled. So did their aspirations for their daughters’ ongoing—and accelerating—academic distinction.

  The couple had only these twins, and moreover had had them only after enduring much suffering and medical attention over a span of fourteen years, after which they had been given, by God’s mercy, these two lovely baby girls. They did not try for any more children, since by then the mother’s age was somewhat advanced and any attempts to have another child might be bad for her health and that of the unborn baby.

  One of the more infamous episodes of Lamees’s high school career occurred in her first year. She, Michelle and two of their other classmates executed a massive and perfectly planned video exchange. On the appointed day, each girl brought four films to school. The idea was that at the end of the school day, they would parcel out the sixteen films among themselves, but bad luck had it in for them. No sooner had they arrived at school than the girls heard about the administration’s intention to search all of the classrooms and everyone’s schoolbags that day, looking for prohibited items. The list of contraband items was long and included photo albums, diaries, perfume bottles, romantic novels, music cassettes and videotapes.

  Lamees didn’t know whether someone had ratted on them or whether it was merely the bad luck that always seemed to chase her. When the news got around, the four girls were thrown into utter chaos, aghast at this unexpected development. And the true disaster was that this wasn’t a question of one or two tapes; it was a matter of sixteen!—found with four of the school’s leading students! What a total scandal—and the possibility hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind!

  Lamees gathered up the videos from her classmates, stuck them inside a large paper bag, and asked them all to act normal. She assured them that everything would turn out just fine and that she would handle the whole mess and take care of everything.

  During recess, she carried the bulging paper bag into the bathroom to search for a hiding place, but it was a big bag and she couldn’t find a good place to stash it. She worried that any school employee might stumble on it and steal it or take it to the authorities. If that happened, her problem wouldn’t just be a school scandal but—and maybe this was ten times worse—she would have a real issue on her hands with her classmates, none of whom would be particularly happy to have her own tapes seized!

  Next, Lamees c
onsidered stuffing the bag into the classroom cupboard. But the spot was pretty open to view, not to mention being an obvious place to look. Lamees began to feel desperate. The whole thing was like a dangerous game of hide-and-seek played at a time and in a place that simply were not suitable for playing games at all.

  But just then the perfect solution popped into her head. Brilliant! She knocked on the door to the teachers’ lounge and asked to see her favorite teacher, Ms. Hana, who taught chemistry. Ms. Hana appeared in the doorway, full of welcomes for this surprise visit, and boldly Lamees explained her difficult situation. The teacher’s welcoming expression disappeared.

  “Shu badik?” Ms. Hana wailed. “So what do you want me to do, Lamees? I have my position to think of! It’s impossible! I can’t help you with this!”

  “If the principal finds out, I’m screwed!” Lamees wailed back.

  “Are you crazy? Bringing films to school. Sixteen of them at once? Shame on you.”

  After a great deal more resistance, the teacher took the enormous bag from Lamees, who had not stopped begging for her salvation for a second. She promised Lamees that she would do whatever she could to snatch her good name from the jaws of disaster.

  About halfway through the day, some administrators swooped down on Lamees’s class and began to search through all of the students’ schoolbags. They poked into the desk drawers and the cabinet, searching high and low for any prohibited items. Some students hid the music cassettes that they were carrying, or a bottle of perfume, a small photo album or pager (that was in 1996; cell phones weren’t popular yet) in the big pockets of their school uniforms, and stood with their backs plastered to the classroom wall. The eyes of Lamees’s friends followed the inspectresses in terror, in anticipation of their finding their films in Lamees’s bag.

  In the last class hour, one of the office girls came into Lamees’s class to tell her that the principal was asking to see her. Lamees lowered her head. So, Ms. Hana, she thought, is this what it has all come to? You go and inform on me, just like that? You chickened! A grown-up teacher is more afraid of the principal than I am!