Girls of Riyadh

by Rajaa Alsanea

  Gamrah didn’t need any astrology book to tell her what sort of an expression Rashid the Leo would have on his face when he showed up at home after his lover had personally told him everything that had taken place between her and his wife. That was the reason Gamrah had delayed meeting the fallen woman until she was sure that she was pregnant. She had long heard her mother and female relatives repeating the wisdom of previous generations, that if all else fails, pregnancy was the only way to ensure that a marriage continues. (Notice that I say continues and not succeeds.)

  Less than an hour after Gamrah had seen Kari, Rashid came home. If only he had not.

  “C’mon. Get up!”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’re going to apologize to Kari for what you did to her and for the garbage you said to her. These stupid things you do aren’t going to work with someone like me. Got that? If your family didn’t know how to raise you, well, then I’ll have to do it myself!”

  “You’re not going to tell me what to do! I will never apologize to that Filipino! And for what? And who should do the apologizing?”

  Rashid grabbed her arm and yanked. “Look, lady! You’re the one who is going and you’re the one who is apologizing. And after that you are getting on the first airplane out of here and you are going back to your family and I don’t want to see your face here ever again. I’m not a man that a woman like you is going to order around!”

  “Yeah, right! So I’m the one who wasn’t raised properly! And what about you, mister? Cheating on me with that Asian housemaid!”

  The slap landed on her right cheek, and the sound of it echoed in her head.

  “That ‘maid’ is as good as you, and she’s worth your whole family, too, do you understand? At least her father didn’t come kissing up to my father so he could marry his daughter to a man who he knew loved someone in America and had been living with her for seven years! This housemaid loved me and stood next to me and gave me a place to live when I wasn’t getting a penny from home, when my family refused to let us get married and cut off my money for three years! She didn’t run after me because of money and my family’s reputation! The one you hate so much is more honest and more honorable than you are and more than your family is, much, much more!”

  After the painful slap, Gamrah’s mind stopped taking anything in. Everything Rashid said after that, all the insults, were just a continuation of that never-ending slap. Without realizing what she was saying and that the timing was all wrong to confess such a thing (is it ever okay to use children as human shields during marital wars?), she said, amid her tears, touching the spot on her cheek with one hand and putting the other on her belly, “I’m pregnant.”

  Gamrah’s voice started to fade as the scene grew more tense, while Rashid’s voice got louder. Rashid had become a mass of anger, his eyes glowing like a pair of bright-red coals. His voice boomed out:

  “What? Pregnant? You are pregnant! How did that happen? Who gave you permission to get pregnant? You mean you’re not taking the pills? Didn’t we agree there would be no pregnancy until I finish my PhD and we go back to Saudi? You figured you could twist my arm with these filthy tricks!”

  “Me? I’m the one with dirty tricks? Am I the one who wanted to keep an innocent wife dangling for two years, having her work for you as a servant until you get your diploma, and then planning to throw her out like trash? Was it me who married a good girl from a good family while I was playing around with a cheap whore?”

  The second slap came and she fell to the floor, sobbing painfully. Rashid left the apartment to run into the arms of the “unworthy one,” leaving Gamrah cursing and slapping her cheeks and spitting at him, in a state of hysteria, close to madness.

  14.

  To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

  From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

  Date: May 14, 2004

  Subject: Of Michelle and of Faisal I Will Tell You

  Love is a matter of the heart, and a person has no control over it. Human hearts lie between two fingers—the fingers of Allah the merciful—and He tilts them as He wills. If love were not so very precious and fine, then so many people, ever since the time of the prophets, would not have ventured there. The Prophet—may the blessings and peace of God be upon him—stressed that the flame of love can only be quenched by marriage. For love which is bound by the reins of chastity and piety gives no cause for shame. But if the marriage does not occur, then patience with the bitterness of disappointment is the only solution.

  We have to distinguish between love as a practice and a behavior, on the one hand, and love as an emotion, on the other. It is right Islamic practice i.e., Halal to feel love, but if love turns into acts of love, such as a touch or a kiss or an embrace, it is against the law of Islam i.e., Haram. Many bad things will result, because it is difficult for the person in love to keep that love in check. So what is the love that we do want? We want love that changes hearts and souls. We mean love that pushes those who have it to perform deeds that will then get documented in history as a beautiful love story.—Jassem Al-Mutawa’*

  I have begun to get really engrossed in reading your comments on the story, all of you out there! After my last e-mail, I received nearly one hundred messages! And I read every last one. That is because I want to be sure that we are a people who agree to disagree. From the one who sympathizes with Gamrah to the one who finds her pitiful, and from Rashid’s supporters to those who are really angry at him and ready to swing a blow, I can assure you that I thoroughly enjoyed reading every one of your varied opinions, even those I disagree with. But to those of you who ask about Michelle and say I have neglected her for too long, I must say that I agree, and I apologize. Things are looking good for Michelle, and how easy it is to ignore happy people!

  In Faisal, Michelle found everything she had been looking for in a man. He was not like any of the young men she had met since settling in Saudi Arabia. The strongest indication of this difference was that their relationship was still going strong after nearly a year, when the longest of her relationships before Faisal had not lasted more than three months.

  Faisal was a truly cultivated guy. He knew exactly how to treat a woman, and he didn’t jump to exploit opportunities like all the other guys did. He had quite a few friends who were women, just as Michelle had male friends, but they both made it clear to everyone that they were a serious couple.

  Faisal’s gentleness and refined behavior made Michelle rethink the bad impression she had initially formed of young men in her home country, following a number of very short-term relationships. Before getting to know Faisal, it did not even occur to her that a young Saudi man could be as romantic as young men everywhere else in the civilized world. For example, every morning when her driver took her to the university, Faisal would follow them in his own car as a sign of his devotion. She had to admit to herself that seeing him at seven-thirty in the morning maneuvering the streets of Riyadh and working hard to fight off his drowsiness just so he could be almost in her company tickled her heart and filled it with joy.

  Michelle had never been able to explain to any of her friends, not even her close girlfriends, the sense of loss she had felt when she had to move back to Saudi Arabia from America. Even though her girlfriends understood how intensely she loathed Saudi society and its severe traditions, and even though they knew how much she mocked the restrictions that the society placed on young women, the battle of two civilizations that raged within her was so contradictory and complex that only someone with an acute intelligence and an enlightened, open-minded thinking could truly comprehend it. And then Michelle found herself in the company of Faisal, who seemed to understand exactly what she was going through. Soon, every time they were together, she told him more and more about what troubled her. After finally stumbling across a young man who understood her, after years of groping around for something that didn’t seem to exist, how could she not grab the opportunity to reveal who she really was to someone?

&nb
sp; She would meet him at Um Nuwayyir’s house. Um Nuwayyir believed in love and never once tried to represent it to the four young women as something that one should be ashamed of. She was well aware that genuine love had no outlet or avenue of expression in this country. Any fledgling love relationship, no matter how innocent or pure, was sure to be seen as suspect and therefore repressed. And that, in turn, might well push the lovers over the edge and into a whole lot of bad choices. So when Michelle told Um Nuwayyir that she was determined to invite Faisal to her home in her parents’ absence, since she had gotten so tired of meeting him in cafés and restaurants where they had to hide behind protective curtains as if they were fugitives, Um Nuwayyir opened the door of her own home to the hapless lovers. She did this to keep their heretofore innocent and respectable relationship from turning into something bigger before any official acknowledgment of their union was established.

  Faisal grabbed Michelle’s pampered little dog, Powder, and played with the tiny white poodle as he listened to Michelle tell one of her stories. She spoke English, because she felt less constrained that way.

  “When I was five and we were still in America, the doctors discovered that Mama had cervical cancer. She had to have chemotherapy and then she had a hysterectomy. So she couldn’t have any more babies.

  “We returned to Riyadh after she finished the radiation therapy but before her hair had grown back in. As soon as we arrived, instead of consoling us, my aunt—that’s my father’s sister—suggested, right in front of my mother and me, that my dad should marry another woman who could give him a son to bear his name. As if I’m not enough! What’s the use? If I were to try to talk about every crime committed in this hypocritical society, I would never stop talking! Daddy stood his ground and refused to marry another woman. He loved Mama and was totally attached to her, he loved her from the first time he saw her, in America, on New Year’s Eve, which he was spending at a friend’s. He met her that night and married her two months later. My father’s family was never reconciled to that marriage, and my grandmother would grumble every time my mother visited—and she still does.

  “Less than a month after we left America my father moved us back there—my father, who had dreamed of returning to his homeland so that I would grow up as a Saudi girl! But he couldn’t get his relatives to respect his privacy and stay out of his business. So he emigrated again.”

  Every so often, Um Nuwayyir came in to check on things. She was so sweet and kind. Even though she didn’t care much about tradition, she was always as protective of the four girls as if they were her own daughters, and she was completely committed to them. Um Nuwayyir would sit with the two of them for a few moments, asking Faisal about the health of his mother and siblings, none of whom she knew, of course. She wanted him to know that she cared about Michelle and that he would have to be on his best behavior. She did not want him to get “too close” to Michelle physically, either. He had to feel that they were not left alone in the house, that the caring auntie could come in at any second. After Um Nuwayyir left the room, Michelle returned to her story as the two of them munched on the special mixed nuts that Um Nuwayyir had brought from Kuwait.

  “Three years later, when I was thirteen, we returned to Riyadh, and Meshaal was with us. Can you believe that it was me who chose him, from out of hundreds of children, as my brother? I really had the feeling, at the time, that I was shaping fate! I loved his black hair, which was nearly the color of mine, and his little innocent face. I felt somehow that he was close to me. He was seven months old when we adopted him. He was so cute. As soon as I saw him, I told my mother and father that this child was my brother, he was the one they were looking for.

  “When we returned to Riyadh, my father had a meeting with his parents and brothers and sisters. He said to them straight out that little Meshaal was the son God had not wished to give him through Diane—my mother—and that they were all to respect his choice, and that they were not to reveal this secret in front of Meshaal, ever. Close relatives were the only ones who knew about my mother’s illness because no one had seen her here throughout her illness and treatment, and my father did not permit the news to get out.

  “My father gave his family a choice: if they wanted him to stay, they could accept his decision and his family. If they didn’t accept, he would return to live in the States. After a week of family conferences, the family agreed to accept little Meshaal as one of their own. My father was sure that they would agree, not because they loved him but because the family business urgently needed my father’s expertise. We went back to America just to tie up everything there, and one year later, the four of us were back in Riyadh, beginning a new stage of our lives.”

  She had gotten used to Faisal’s silences when she was speaking, especially if it was something moving and sad like this, but she was a little afraid of his silence this time. She started searching in his eyes for some reaction, some response that would hint at what he was thinking about after hearing her story. When she didn’t find anything to reassure her, she added sadly, “We’re not afraid of anyone. We didn’t hide where Meshaal came from out of embarrassment or anything. Believe me, my father was ready to broadcast the truth on the pages of national newspapers and magazines, if it were not for his sure sense that his society in Saudi would not accept his adopted son with the same welcome that his wife’s society in America would welcome him. Isn’t it sad to have to hide a truth like this from Meshaal and from my friends? I wish I could tell them, but they wouldn’t understand. They would call him painful names behind his back and treat him badly. And that is what I won’t accept! It is my father’s and mother’s life and they chose to live it in this way, so why did everyone try to interfere in their business? Why am I forced to act a part in front of others? Why doesn’t this society respect the difference between my family and other Saudi families? Everyone considers me a bad girl just because my mother is American! How can I live in such an unjust society? Tell me how, Faisal!”

  She burst into tears, which she had found she even enjoyed when she was with him. He was the only one who knew how many tears exactly he had to let her spill before he could gently tease her to get her to stop crying. He was the only one who knew that she would laugh in spite of herself if he brought her the soft butter milk candy of her childhood or a can of her favorite strawberry soda from the nearest grocery shop.

  Faisal, this time, was keeping his thoughts to himself. He comforted her gently as he imagined the conversation he would have with his mother as soon as he returned home. He had tried to postpone this conversation many times, but this time he was determined to open (or close) the subject with his mother once and for all.

  God help us! he said to himself, and left.

  15.

  To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

  From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

  Date: May 21, 2004

  Subject: My Heart! My Heart!

  I know that all of you are dying to know what happened between Faisal and his mother, and so we return today to the chapter of Faisal and Michelle. Dear Michelle, who is such a source of gossip because people are convinced that I am her (if I am not Sadeem)! It seems that I am Michelle whenever I use English expressions. But then, just the next week, when I type out a poem by Nizar Qabbani, I become Sadeem. What a schizophrenic life I lead!

  The minute Um Faisal heard the English name Michelle, one hundred devils swarmed into her head. Faisal hastily tried to correct his mistake. People called her Michelle but her real name was purely Saudi, Mashael, he assured his mother.

  “She is Mashael Al-Abdulrahman.”

  A searing look from his mother’s eyes scared him and halted his tongue. He worried suddenly that some ancient quarrel existed between the two families. But it quickly became clear to him that the problem was that his mother had never before heard the name of this family.

  “Who do you mean, Al-Abdulrahman? Abdul is the servant and Rahman is the Merciful, one of Allah’s several names. So she com
es from the family of the servant of God, just like any Abdullah or Abdullatif or Abdulaziz. All are names of God. But do you know how many servants of God there are? We all are! So what makes this Abdul Rahman special?”

  Michelle’s family name—“Servant of the Merciful”—was as common as the epithet suggested it could be. Apparently, the name had never ascended to the ranks of families who formed alliances with—or even mixed with—the family of Al-Batran. Faisal tried to explain to his mother that Michelle’s father had only been settled in the country for a few years, and maybe that was why his name was not yet known to many in Riyadh society.

  His mother didn’t get it. “Who are his brothers?” she demanded to know. Faisal answered energetically that Michelle’s father was the most successful of the Al-Abdulrahmans. It was just that, since returning from America, where he had lived for many years, this Al-Abdulrahman had customarily mixed only with people who had the same cultural outlook and ideas.

  That just made his mother angrier.

  The family of that girl was not of their sort. They must ask Faisal’s father, since he knew infinitely more about genealogies and families. But from the start, his mother suggested, this line of conversation did not augur well. The girl had tricked him! Aah, the girls of this generation! How awful they were! And aah, for her young, green son—she never would have expected him to fall into the trap of a girl such as this! She asked him who the girl’s maternal uncles were and as soon as she heard that the girl’s mother was American, she decided to bang the door shut for good on this fruitless dialogue around this utterly ridiculous topic. So, like countless mothers before her, she resorted to the oldest trick in the book: