“I’m afraid I can’t inspire anyone in physics.” Jo addressed the back of the young man’s head, “You’ll have to meet my husband when he brings over the displays.”
“It will be my pleasure. I look forward to seeing them.”
“Where did you learn your English? You sound almost like a native.”
“A native of which country? I went to American high school in London for a few years. It was my mother’s idea, so of course my father agreed. She was an English teacher, you know. It was good for me in many ways.”
Myriam asked, “Do you have children, Mrs. Joanna?”
“Just ‘Jo,’ please. No, I don’t. But I work with children in museums.” With those kids, and her clients, and the staff, she did plenty of mothering.
Myriam nodded, with a slight pursing of the lips. Jo chose to interpret her reaction as sympathy for her childlessness rather than disapproval. Yesterday at the research team briefing, she had learned this was a nation of families, with a huge population under eighteen in need of education. The five Saudi men present—they always seemed to flock in fours or fives—had addressed all their comments to the older of Owen’s young, male research associates. She’d had to ask her questions through him. She hadn’t taken it personally, but felt frustrated nonetheless.
She addressed Ahmed. “Do your siblings speak English as well?”
“No, I went to the UK alone. I don’t mind the cold.”
Myriam clucked her tongue. “My other sons are lazy.”
Jo wondered if Myriam had daughters but didn’t know if she should ask. She returned her attention to Ahmed. “Are you working on the children’s museum project with your mother?”
“No, but I am interested. My mother does interesting things. You are going to the school district office today. Why?”
“I want to find out about the field trips elementary school kids take, and what support the teachers might need. In the US, we help teachers prepare for the field trip, to make the most of the day.”
“You will see that our schools are more structured than in the West. Our teachers work very hard. I think they will want to hear your ideas.”
“I hope so. Thanks for the encouragement. And the ride.” She leaned back into the seat. Myriam pressed her hand to her chest and smiled with obvious maternal pride. Jo thought, wherever you are in the world, mothers are mothers.
Jo called Ev from the hotel just after dinner—morning for him—to debrief the day. She could hear him moving around the kitchen making his coffee as he listened. She hurried because there was so much to tell.
“Myriam’s son dropped us off at the school district office. Only it wasn’t the main office, it was the female division office. Everybody inside the building was female, even the janitor. As soon as Myriam introduced me, they said “Take it off, take it off!” in English and I took off the abaya. Theirs were already off. Most of the women were hefty. They wore makeup, and fancy blouses over long skirts, and some pretty amazing jewelry. Myriam translated. Bottom line: the administrators say teachers will bring the little ones if the principals tell them to. But they warned me that it will be hard to convince parents to bring their girls on weekends. They might bring their boys. The administrators say they have a hard time communicating with the traditionalists. We brainstormed a little. It was really good that I came.”
Ev grunted.
“We had this really lively discussion about teacher preparation. I showed them a reference on my phone, and instantly each of them whipped out her phone, snapped a picture, and forwarded it. They discussed it for a while in Arabic. It was clear they had a lot of respect for Myriam. Then she asked them to join us for a late lunch. These confident, professional women put veils over their faces to walk across the street to a restaurant! Can you imagine!”
Ev said no, he couldn’t.
Jo hurried on. “There were fifty items on the menu, from all over the world, but no Saudi dishes because, Myriam told me, there are no Saudi chefs. Cooking is women’s work. I ordered paella and two others did, too. They tried to include me, but Myriam couldn’t keep up with the chatter. It didn’t matter. My mind was already blown.”
Ev asked, “Why?”
She stopped to think. “I guess I expected them to be aloof, maybe even a little hostile to the foreigner coming in to tell them what to do. But they were warm and welcoming. So different from the men. I wanted to take a picture, but Myriam said photos are verboten because they could be seen by a strange man. But here’s the kicker: when we left, Myriam’s driver came to pick us up, not her son, her regular driver. And she put a veil over her face! When we were in the back seat I asked her why she covered. She said, ‘I have a right to feel comfortable outside my home.’ Then she looked at me as if I were a child and patted my hand.”
She waited for Ev’s reaction.
He said, “And?”
“I don’t get it. One of the women at lunch kept her face veil on during the meal, even though we were in a private room. She slipped bites of food underneath. I thought okay, she’s from the provinces. But Myriam is a sophisticate. She sends her son to study in England. She’s helping her boss make social change. Why hide from her own driver?”
There was a loud noise on Ev’s end. She could hear Carlos swearing in Spanish. Ev said, “Gotta go. Text me your flight info again.”
She ended the call, unsatisfied. She wanted to talk. She thought about going out for a walk to replay the day in her mind, but she could not without an escort. Stuck in the hotel, with no place to sip a nightcap, she stepped to the window to watch lights come on as the sky darkened over a modern city with medieval customs. Before the internet era, she would never have been invited here. She would never have met Myriam, an intelligent woman who liked being repressed. As a girl, Jo used to wonder what she would have done if she had lived centuries ago when only the nobility had privileges. Would she have been a faithful servant, or would she have put on boy’s clothes and caused trouble? It would have been a short, hard life in either case. And Myriam wanted to lead a twenty-first-century version of that life. A bad taste filled her mouth.
She turned away from the window and went to the desk where her computer sat open. Owen’s team had set up a series of Google Docs in which to collect field notes. She did not want to insert flat, antiseptic data into the matrix labeled “schools.” She picked up her phone and dialed Phil Owen direct.
“I’ve been talking with the supervisors at the school district’s female division. They advise us to focus on school groups because parents won’t bring their girls on weekends. Maybe they’ll bring their boys. The supervisors say it’ll be really hard to buck tradition. I think we should take their advice seriously.”
Owen’s voice was muffled. “You can set up the demo in a school, but it’s too soon to change the business model.”
“What business model? Aren’t we about to invent one?”
“My dear girl, the committee already has ideas on how they expect their museums to operate. They like the American format, half state funded, half earned income. They expect us to market to the parents, and they expect to attract weekend visitors by the thousands. I tried to sell them on a five-year audience development plan. They pushed me back to a maximum of three.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I must agree.”
“Why didn’t you tell them what you really think?”
“Because they wouldn’t hear it. Governments are the worst listeners.”
“I’m putting the school supervisors’ advice in my notes.”
“Please do. My team will want to know everything you’ve learned.”
Jo ended the call, disgusted. Clearly, Owen’s instructions from the committee didn’t match hers from the director. She needed clarification. Urgently.
Myriam called as Jo was covering her head to go down to the lobby for breakfast. Myriam apologized for being unable to accompany Jo that morning, but Ahmed would drive and translate. He would be good to her. She c
ould ask him anything. Myriam would meet them for lunch after prayers.
She took the elevator down to the lobby without wearing her abaya. Last night she had seen another woman dining in Western dress with only a scarf over her hair, and she’d decided to follow suit. In the dining room, she put her purse down on a table and walked over to the omelet station. The mustachioed chef watched her point to peppers and tomatoes. Moving slowly, he prepared her omelet and placed the plate on a tray. When she said thank you, he did not acknowledge her, even with a flick of the eye. So much ado about so little, she thought. The omelet was delicious.
She returned to her room to brush her teeth and collect her notebook. As she prepared to leave again, she glimpsed the abaya spread across a chair. She realized she needed to wear it for young Ahmed’s sake, because she wanted to be able to talk to him without offending the men they would meet. Or him. Myriam had said “ask him anything.” Myriam’s absence might be opportune. She slipped the abaya over her clothes, considering it like a disguise.
Ahmed was standing near the door in the lobby. He nodded politely and ushered her into the gray SUV parked in the driveway. He started the engine and asked which museum she wanted to see first. She replied the renewable energy center—yes, there was one!—and sat back to plot her bit of intrigue. Outside the window, sand-colored walls gave way to modern congestion: flat, glass-clad buildings, a Starbucks on a corner, a few scraggly palm trees planted in the median in front of the tallest structures. The sky was almost too blue.
“Thanks for taking the time away from your studies,” Jo began.
“It is my pleasure. I want to help. I know it is hard to understand a country different from your own.”
“If you come to America, it will be my turn to escort you.”
“I would like that very much. But I have no plans.” He turned the side of his face toward her. “Except completing my degree.”
“Come afterwards.” She leaned toward him. “If my husband were here, he would ask you where the trees are. I don’t see many.”
“This part of my country is desert. It is too dry for European trees. I can show you a date plantation to the north if you want to see trees.”
“I wonder if date palms are actually trees. They look like giant dandelions gone to seed. I’ll have to ask Ev.”
“There are many different kinds of palm. We have grown them for centuries. Dates are very nutritious.”
“Speaking of history, Ahmed, can you explain why your mother and the school district leaders worry about convincing the ‘traditionalists’ to visit the museum? I thought education was part of your tradition.”
“It is. But there are different interpretations, and my mother respects them.”
“What about you?”
“I have less patience.” He paused. “More than two hundred years ago, our king and our religious leader made a compact. Religion showed us how to live, and government kept us safe. It is a powerful tradition, and people fear to change it. Because their family does something, they think God wants it. They do not separate what is custom from what is holy.” He paused. “My mother is distressed when I speak like this.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell.” She waited a beat. “It seemed like your mother and the others are afraid to even start a conversation with the traditionalists.”
“Mrs. Joanna, if you want to talk about change with a traditional person, you do it in private. We are not like Europeans. Except for online.”
“Yeah, I noticed everyone has a smart phone. But I still don’t understand.”
“Because you are American. You do not have a long history. Change takes time.” He smiled, looking more like Myriam as his cheeks widened.
This kid had something going for him. Maybe Becca could come on the next trip and meet him. She might like to talk to a thoughtful young physicist who had unconventional opinions about convention. They might get along, that is, if Becca didn’t first jump down his throat.
“Do your siblings think like you? And your half siblings?”
He laughed. “I do not have half siblings. The Quran tells us a man may marry four wives if he treats them equally. My father says it is impossible to treat women equally and so he married only once. Really, I think he knows my mother would kill him.”
Jo thought, your mother is woman enough for any man. “I see.”
Ahmed nodded and drove on. She sat back in her seat, content to wait for another opportunity to interrogate him. She had spotted a fissure in the façade of perfect Saudi obedience.
Ahmed led Jo and his mother into a booth in the “family” floor of a Lebanese restaurant. They settled around a table behind a privacy screen, and Myriam suggested they order a local fish much loved by her family, even by Ahmed with his English tastes. She ordered for them and then asked Jo’s permission to talk to her son in Arabic to make sure he had been a good guide. Jo said he had.
As they waited for the meal to arrive, mother and son conversed and Jo reflected on her morning. She had been struck by the contrast between the two places Ahmed had taken her, the brash, high-tech energy center and the old-fashioned National Museum. Both were based on Western museum practice, but, clearly, different standards had been at play. Which standards would the director prefer? At the first break in the Arabic conversation, Jo pressed ahead.
“May I ask you something, Myriam? I spoke to Owen yesterday. He said the committee expects the museum to earn half its income in three years. The director has said nothing about charging admission. I am concerned about making premature assumptions.”
Myriam stopped eating the carrot stick she had taken from the crudités plate in the center of the table. “Mr. Phil made many promises to the committee. We will see if he can keep them.”
“Are you saying that earned income was Owen’s idea?”
“It was discussed. The committee liked Mr. Phil’s proposal for the budget. The director wants to understand it. You will help her.”
The waiter brought three plates of fish and a pile of flatbread. Ahmed broke one of the slabs of bread and offered Jo a piece. She took it in silence. This project was like an onion, layer beneath layer. She’d never get to the bottom of who said what to whom about earned income, and it didn’t matter. The work would unroll anyway, or it wouldn’t. She watched Myriam cut into her fish with the side of her soupspoon and maneuver a bite into her mouth. The waiter had left knives and forks at their places as well as spoons. Jo picked up her knife and fork. The fish was delicious.
Myriam said between spoonfuls, “I went to the school district this morning. The women like you very much. They say to come again. Is that possible?”
“Not this trip. The next few days are spoken for. Please thank them for the invitation, though.”
“You have touched their hearts. You treated them as colleagues. With respect. I hope you will visit longer with me the next time you come. As a friend.” Myriam reached into her handbag and removed a small package tied with a gauzy bow. “A little souvenir.”
“Thank you.” Jo tucked the box into her briefcase, wondering what had impressed the school district leaders. She had done nothing unusual. That is, nothing unusual in an American context. She took another bite of fish.
Ev answered his phone on the first ring. “Sorry I cut you off yesterday. Carlos dropped an I-beam. No damage.”
“I’m fit to be tied. Last night I found out Owen promised the museum would earn fifty percent of the operating budget by year three. Myriam says the committee will press him to deliver. And today Myriam’s son took me to the renewable energy museum. It’s actually a visitor center with a few artifacts and one slick audio-visual display after another. And the logo is a lantern from the Quran, sort of like Aladdin’s lamp, lighting the way into the future!”
“Huh. Clever.”
“They spent a fortune on video. No evaluation to speak of. They’re too enamored of the place to check if it really delivers the message.”
Ev said, “Slow down.
What’s got you buzzed?”
Jo took a breath. “It’s propaganda. Propaganda full of gizmos.”
“So? You’ve seen that before.”
“I’m worried they will want us to produce the same drivel.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions. The director wants us. Anyone who wants us doesn’t want whizz-bang.”
“But they’re so proud of the place. Even Myriam’s son liked it, and he’s a thinker.”
“Come home and we’ll talk about it.”
She ended the call, calmed a bit by the sound of Ev’s voice, but worried that the committee might demand all sort of unexpected things. She remembered the time a former government client had come up with an ultimatum: D-Three had created a show about food for a state convention and visitors’ bureau. Just before installation, the client threatened to withhold payment unless the show featured products from every region in the state. So they added an extra section on grapes, at no additional cost to the client. They lost money on the deal. Something similar could very well happen here, with a much higher price tag.
She undressed and stepped into the tiled bathroom. She turned the shower lever to hot. When it began to steam, she stepped in. Needles of heat hit her back and shoulders. She urged herself to relax. In twenty-four hours she would be on her way home.
In response to Jo’s impromptu request for a meeting, the director had cleared a slot in her schedule. At nine in the morning, Myriam escorted Jo to the director’s door and withdrew. Jo entered an ordinary bureaucratic office containing a metal desk and one hard chair for a guest. Sitting behind the desk, the director looked anything but ordinary: cashmere shawl wrapped around her shoulders, earrings rimmed with diamonds, perfectly polished fingernails, perfectly sculpted eyebrows. Jo felt her own appearance lacking and pulled her sweater lower on her hips. The director signaled her to sit and reached for a bronze pot on the credenza behind her. She poured steaming tea into two glass cups and offered Jo a plate of sweets.
The Contract Page 13