Girls of Riyadh

by Rajaa Alsanea

  “Oh, thank you. I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. By the way, I still have your umbrella and raincoat, you know!”

  “Of course. I gave them to you to keep.”

  “I hope you didn’t get sick that day because of me.”

  “No, Alhamdu lillah, thank God. When you live in London, you get used to leaving your umbrella and raincoat in the car because the weather changes all the time. Anyway, on that day I got right into my car and went straight home. I was more worried about you getting sick from walking in that bad weather.”

  “No, nothing, Alhamdu lillah. And it’s all because of your umbrella and raincoat; now I don’t go anywhere without them!”

  “Enjoy them!”

  “Thanks. By the way,” Sadeem asked hesitantly, “are you staying in Riyadh this time or planning to return to London?”

  “Wallah, I still haven’t made up my mind, but until things get a little clearer my time will be divided between Riyadh, Jeddah and Khobar. It makes a certain sense, since Riyadh is the official capital and Jeddah is the unofficial capital and Khobar is the family’s capital.”

  “You’re from Khobar?”

  “Yup. I mean, originally we are from Najd, but we settled in the eastern region a very long time ago. You know how they say there are no native citizens in the eastern province. Most of us come originally from Najd.”

  “Isn’t it tiring to do that, move around so much? Aren’t you kind of beyond that, so much coming and going every week?”

  Firas laughed. “It’s nothing. My chauffeur buys the plane tickets for me, I have clothes in both places and even the little things, like toothbrushes, one in each house. At least after all this practice, I won’t have any problems juggling two or even three wives.”

  “Ha ha, very funny! So the real you is wicked after all, eh? What’s your birthday?”

  “Why? Are you planning to buy me a present? You can bring it by anytime!”

  “Now, why would I bring you a present? You’re too old for that kind of stuff. Leave that to the youngsters like me!”

  “Thirty-five isn’t so old.”

  “If you say so. So, tell me, what’s your star sign?”

  “You know about that stuff?”

  “No, not much, but one of my friends is an expert, and she got me into the habit of asking everyone I meet.”

  “I’m a Capricorn. But I don’t believe in those kinds of things. As you said, I’m too old for that, right?”

  During the flight, Sadeem noticed Firas’s care in making sure that none of the flight attendants mistakenly offered her any alcohol or food with pork in it. He didn’t have any, either. But it surprised her that he was so concerned about what she did. She really enjoyed his solicitous attention. And being a Virgo (as Lamees had explained), she was bound to appreciate someone who cared about little details as much as she did.

  “I’m sure you’ll find your mother leaping for joy that you’re coming home,” Sadeem said warmly.

  “Yes, she would, but actually, she’s still in Paris with my sisters. Poor thing, she was so miserable the whole time I was away studying. She called me every day with the same questions: ‘Are you happy? Don’t you want to come home? Haven’t you had enough? Don’t you want to get married?’”

  “Well, she has a point there. Don’t you want to get married?” Sadeem’s question was impulsive and her eyes were fixed on the gap between his two front teeth.

  “Hey, this is the second beating—after that you’re too old remark—I’ve gotten in the space of a minute! Can’t a guy get a break? Am I really that old?”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean that, please don’t misunderstand me! It’s just that, I mean, I’m not used to seeing a Saudi guy over thirty who isn’t married. Usually our boys start nagging their mothers to find them someone to marry even before they have the faintest shadow of a mustache!”

  “I’m a little difficult, I guess. I have very specific qualifications that are hard to find in many girls these days. Frankly, it has been years since I gave my family my description of the girl I would want to be with. I told them, look around but take your time. But they still haven’t found me the right one. Anyway, I’m fine as I am, perfectly content, and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.”

  “So, can I hear what these impossible qualifications are, since no one can find anyone with them?”

  “At your command. But before I forget, can I make a small request?”

  She was studying his white teeth, deep in serious thought. It really was the cutest little gap. Would her little pinkie finger fit in it? “Sure.”

  “Can I call you later? I’d like to hear your voice tonight before I go to sleep.”

  20.

  To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

  From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

  Date: June 25, 2004

  Subject: Return to Um Nuwayyir

  One reader who says she has followed my e-mails from the beginning was extremely thrilled by the ending of my previous e-mail and sent me the following message: YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!! Finally! What we’ve been longing for! We were running out of patience waiting for this Firas to make a move! Alf mabrook, many congratulations to Sadeem!

  How enchanting this give-and-take is! It compels me to forge ahead with this series of mine, this scandal-mongering, highly committed and seriously reform-minded series. Aren’t messages like this a thousand times nicer than the others I get every day telling me how liberal and how decadent I am?

  Some say I speak of the faults of others but claim to be faultless myself by simply removing myself from the events told. No, I’m not making any such claim. I’m not pretending to be some kind of paragon of perfection, because I don’t consider the actions of my friends to be wrong or sinful in the first place!

  I am every one of my friends, and my story is their story. And if I have refrained from revealing my identity at present for my own private reasons, I will reveal it someday when those reasons no longer exist. Then I will tell you my whole story, just as you want to hear it, with complete sincerity and transparency. As for now, let’s return to our darling Gammoorah.

  All this time Gamrah had been anxiously pondering her unknown future. As Sadeem had done with Waleed, for many weeks Gamrah went on dreaming that Rashid would return to her or at least would make some attempt to contact her after coming to regret how awful he had been, and how terribly he had wronged her. But when that didn’t happen she began to worry about her future. Would she remain parked in her father’s house like an old piece of furniture in the back storeroom? Would she return to the university to finish her studies? Would the university administration even allow that, now that she was a whole year behind her classmates? Or should she sign up for one of the courses offered by private institutes and women’s associations to fill her free time and obtain some kind of certificate? It didn’t really matter what it was.

  “Mama, I want some more limes with salt.”

  “Too much lime isn’t good for you, my dear. You’ll get a tummy ache.”

  “Ufff! I’m just asking for some lime and salt, for God’s sake! What if I was craving something really hard to get? Then what would you have done?”

  “I seek God’s refuge from your tongue!” Gamrah’s mother turned to her housemaid. “Bring her this lime, may she get acid tummy for it, then maybe she’ll know how to control her temper!”

  Gamrah’s younger brothers, Nayif and Nawwaf, were delighted that she had come home. They were always trying to divert her and cheer her up, inviting her to come and play Nintendo or PlayStation with them. But the severe mood swings that Gamrah suffered—brought on by Rashid and by Rashid’s child, who had begun to rule her life even before he was born—made her tense and ready to argue at the drop of a hat.

  “Is this the way I’m going to be for God knows how long? God give you no rest, Rashid! May the Lord not absolve you, wherever you go and whatever you do! May what you have done to me be done to your sisters and daughters! O L
ord, make my heart cool down and make his burn and take away the pain from me and put it all on him and his cheap mistress.”

  SADEEM GOT in touch with her friends the minute she arrived in Riyadh, and the four girls agreed to meet the next day at Um Nuwayyir’s house. They hadn’t all gotten together for a long time—after all, each of them had been caught up fully in her own circumstances.

  Um Nuwayyir offered them cups of chai tea with milk and cardamom sweetened with lots of sugar in the Indian-Kuwaiti style, as she scolded them for neglecting to visit her. Sadeem was the only one who had remembered Um Nuwayyir during her travels: she brought her a luxurious cashmere shawl that absolutely delighted Um Nuwayyir, and she congratulated her on the return of her son Nuri from America, where she had enrolled him two years before in a special boarding school for troubled teens.

  When the counselors informed Um Nuwayyir that Nuri’s condition was psychological rather than physiological, and that it was a temporary phase any adolescent might go through—especially one who was experiencing family problems—Um Nuwayyir breathed an enormous sigh of relief. She was well aware that even if showing signs of being homosexual might not be considered an illness in America, in Saudi Arabia it was an utter calamity, an illness worse than cancer. She had almost fainted when the doctors told her, at the start of it all, that her son was “defining his sexual identity.” Over time, they said, he would choose between masculinity and femininity. And when Um Nuwayyir asked what would happen if his choice rested on femininity, she was aghast to hear them say that at that point it was possible to intervene medically to help him with a surgical operation and hormone treatment along with psychological counseling.

  Nuri stayed in that school for two years, before deciding on masculinity, at which point he was promptly returned to his mother’s embrace. Her spirits soared when she saw that her only child had grown into a man she was proud of, someone she could stick in the eyes of his father and everyone else who had slandered and despised her and her son. Especially all those female relatives and neighbors and coworkers!

  Once the girls were reunited, Michelle could talk of nothing but the corruption of Saudi society, its backwardness, its benighted rigidity and overall reactionary nature. She was bursting with enthusiasm about traveling in two days’ time to begin a new life in a healthy place—somewhere other than “this rotten-to-the-core, toxic environment that would make anyone sick,” as she put it. Sadeem, meanwhile, cursed Waleed after every sentence she uttered. As for Gamrah, she kept up a steady stream of complaints about her mother’s constant harassment; she moaned that her mother forbade her to go out the way she used to, just because she was now a divorcée and, her mother claimed, all eyes were fixed on her, waiting for a single misstep and prepared to spread the most lurid rumors about her.

  Gamrah believed her mother trusted her but was too concerned with what other people thought. Her mother had never learned the truth of the old adage that anyone who tries to watch all the people all the time will die of exhaustion. Dozens of times every day, Gamrah was told the same thing: “What? Did you forget you are a divorcée?” Of course she hadn’t forgotten it, not for a single second. But wasn’t that painful enough without having her freedom so horribly curtailed? And without spending so much time worrying about all the busybodies and their stupid chatter? Believe it or not, this was the first day that she had been allowed to leave the house since her return from America three weeks before, and she did not think her mother would let her repeat an outing like this anytime soon.

  Late as usual, laid-back Lamees had pranced in balancing a platter of lasagna in one hand and a pan of crème brûlée in the other, and swearing they would love both. The three girls glared at her as Um Nuwayyir got up to help her carry her load to the kitchen. Lamees asked her why everyone was in such a bad mood.

  “Honey, look, these girls—every one of them is up to her eyebrows in troubles, and then you come sailing in without a care in the world and bugging them with trying your macaronis and your sweets? You never quit, do you?”

  “What harm can a little comfort food do? So, am I supposed to be like them and act suicidal, too? May God give them something better, sure, but this is no way to be! Look at them, every one of them sitting there with a scowl on her face. Reliving their stories only brings more grief!”

  “Don’t say that. You don’t know how heartbroken each one of those girls is. Damn men! Bastards! They have always been such a pain and headache!”

  But Lamees was determined to snatch her friends from the abyss of misery. She pulled from her handbag the latest hot-off-the-press, thin-as-toast book by Maggie Farah on the zodiac, which she had ordered from Lebanon. The girls immediately became more animated when they caught sight of their source book for love. They began their usual give-and-take.

  SADEEM: Lamees, please check out the traits of the Capricorn man for me.

  LAMEES: “The Capricorn man is emotional by nature, but he has very little ability to awaken feelings and emotions in the other partner. He is a rational creature who does not react quickly, but when he does react he loses his senses completely and he can’t control his behavior. The Capricorn man is exacting; he holds fast to customs and traditions and doesn’t go in for adventure and risk. He is never led by sentiment and rarely influenced by his feelings. Family attachments are important. Among his flaws are pride, egotism, and careerism.”

  MICHELLE: What’s the success rate for a Leo woman and a Cancer man relationship?

  LAMEES: Eighty percent.

  SADEEM: Is Virgo a better match with Aries or with Capricorn?

  LAMEES: With Capricorn, of course! I don’t even have to go to the book to know that! Look—see what’s written here. “The degree of harmony for the Virgo woman with the Aries man doesn’t get any higher than sixty percent. Between the Virgo woman and the Capricorn man it won’t go lower than ninety-five percent.” Way to go, girl! Obviously, you are getting over Waleed in no time! C’mon, spell it out, Yalla, who’s this Capricorn you’re interested in?

  GAMRAH: Listen to a little advice from me, girls! Just stop dreaming. Forget all this and leave it to God. Don’t get your hopes up when it comes to men, because you’ll get the exact opposite of what you were hoping for! Believe me.

  LAMEES: So if he’s the opposite of what I hope for, what’s going to force me to take him?

  GAMRAH: Fate, I guess.

  MICHELLE: Let’s be honest with each other here. If Rashid hadn’t appealed to you, you wouldn’t have accepted him. You had the right to say no, but you didn’t. So you better drop all this “fate” theory, all this stuff about us not having any hand in any of our life paths. We always act the role of the helpless females, completely overcome by circumstances, and as if we don’t have a say in anything or opinions of our own! Utterly passive! How long are we going to keep on being such cowards, and not have even the courage to see our choices through, whether they’re right or wrong?

  The atmosphere immediately turned electric, as it always did when Michelle jumped in with her sharp views. Um Nuwayyir, as usual, intervened to try to calm them down with her jokes and comments. This was the last evening the three of them would be with Michelle before she left to study in America, and so everyone was managing to overlook her biting candor. But Gamrah found herself shrinking, secretly and silently, from the painful remarks Michelle always directed at her whenever the two of them were with the rest of the clique.

  21.

  To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

  From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

  Date: July 2, 2004

  Subject: Fatimah the Shiite

  I am dedicating this e-mail to two Shiite readers, Jaafar and Hussein, who both wrote in to inform me that even the Shiite community is devoutly following my story every week. It got me thinking how hard it must be to be different in a unicultural, uniethnic, unireligious country like Saudi. I feel sorry sometimes for those of us who are in some way…different.

  Lamees’s move to the
College of Medicine in Malaz put a serious strain on her friendship with Michelle. Each tried to ignore the new tension, but some pervasive, negative thing had begun to seep into their relationship. It all came to a head over Lamees’s new friend: Fatimah.

  “Fatimah the Shiite”*—that’s what the shillah called her. But Lamees was completely confident that deep down none of her friends really cared whether Fatimah was Shiite or Sunni or a Sufi Muslim mystic or Christian or even Jewish; what bothered them was that she was just different from all of them, the first Shiite they had ever met, a stranger in their midst, an intruder in their close-knit Sunni circle. The long and short of it was that for people in their society, hanging out together went way beyond the simple matter of friendship; it was a big deal, a deep commitment that aroused all kinds of sensitivities, a social step more akin to engagement and marriage.

  Lamees recalled her childhood friend Fadwa Al-Hasudi. Lamees did not usually gravitate toward people like Fadwa; she tended to befriend girls like herself who were lively and spirited. But one morning Fadwa surprised her with a question.

  “Lamees, will you be my best friend?”

  The proposal came just like that, without any preliminaries, like a marriage proposal in a Western country. And just as quickly Lamees agreed. She couldn’t have imagined that Fadwa would become the most jealous girl around.

  Lamees “went with” Fadwa for several years and then she met Michelle. At first her relationship with Michelle was based on little more than sympathy for a new student who knew no one, but then they grew close. Fadwa became maliciously jealous and began to launch attacks on Lamees denouncing her around the school. The reports quickly reached her: “Fadwa says you talk to boys!” “Fadwa says your sister Tamadur is smarter than you are and you cheat off your sister to get better grades.” What really embittered Lamees was that Fadwa was two-faced; she kept proclaiming her innocence to Lamees’s face. There was nothing that Lamees could do except be cold to her until finally they graduated from high school and went their separate ways.