Peter translated. The director held a hand up to his cheek and shook his head. Peter laughed and turned back to Jo.
“He says he wished someone had told him about museum audiences before he took this job. He says you are most welcome here.”
Jo said, “Thank you. Can you tell me how many visitors we should expect?”
Peter did not relay the question. “It has been arranged. You will have two classes of six-year-olds from the male school and one group of their teachers this week. The same from the female school next week.”
“What about families?”
“They will come on the weekend.”
“How many people will that be?”
Peter shrugged. “It has not been arranged. Whoever comes, comes. The plan was made by the committee. It must do.” He spoke to the director and both men stood. Jo rose as well, glad to have connected with the director however lightly, concerned that the sample of family visitors might be too small. Ev had warned her not to expect American-style conditions.
Peter asked, “Shall we visit the exhibition? They have opened it for you. It is polite.”
She followed him down a corridor into a large room in which six hexagonal kiosks formed a circle. Each contained illuminated panels with faceted geometric designs as borders. Some panels featured ancient manuscripts; others included drawings of odd-looking apparatus. Peter pointed to a panel that displayed the digits one through nine in diamond-shaped windows, with zero at the top. He said the exhibition was about inventions by Muslims that had ushered in the modern world, such as algebra, for example. In the Islamic tradition, he said, the Dark Ages were not so dark.
Jo turned to inspect the two displays in the middle of the room. A mannequin hung from the ceiling, dressed in a shift and turban, with wood-and-cloth wings strapped to his back, evidently intending to fly. Another mannequin sat on top of a full-sized elephant with a six-foot cage behind him; a serpent, a bird, and bells adorned the cage. Peter explained that the elephant was a clock with a water-based timing mechanism. It had been built by an Arab polymath in the thirteenth century AD to advance Chinese and Greek clockwork. Peter surveyed the elephant clock with obvious pride. Jo thought, if only visitors could get their hands on a clock mechanism or two, then the exhibition might appeal to everyone in the family. That is, if she could predict the behavior of Saudi families.
In the taxi back to the hotel, Peter chewed gum and hummed to himself. Jo took two sheets of paper from her briefcase and handed them to him.
“This is the questionnaire for the weekend. Please have it translated and make a hundred copies.”
Peter ran his eyes over the papers. “A hundred copies?”
“We probably won’t need to interview that many people. This isn’t a random-controlled study.”
“How many do you actually need?”
“Beats me. Enough to show a pattern.” She didn’t mean to flaunt her worry, but the words escaped her.
“I will translate right away.”
“Shouldn’t you have a Saudi do it? You’re Egyptian.”
“All Arabs share the language of the Quran. We are united in its beauty. It is the same in every place.” He swiveled his wrist with a flourish, as if to excuse her ignorance. “It has not changed for centuries. It will not change.”
Jo turned away, unable to respond. Neither of them spoke for the rest of the ride.
In the golden hour before sunset, Ev and Jo decided to take a stroll. Ev had solved the mechanical problem that had been bugging him, and Jo had finished responding to emails. She’d also sent the interview schedule to Myriam and Owen. The latter had replied he didn’t give a shit about sample size, “Just hold a focus group and be done with it.” Pity she couldn’t forward his petulance to Myriam without appearing unprofessional. As she pocketed their room key, she decided to chance leaving the abaya behind. In this “liberal” city, perhaps a foreigner might walk with only her head covered. She put on a duly modest, long-sleeved shirt over her jeans.
The sky remained clear, but the wind had died down, and they could smell the sea. They walked in the direction of the Heritage Museum, turning onto a broad commercial avenue, and stopped at a light. Jo thought they could be walking in Las Vegas: in front of them lay a newish concrete sidewalk and utilitarian mid-rise buildings housing a rhyme-less mix of cafes and furniture outlets, with bare, sandy lots interspersed among them. A Porsche pulled up to a restaurant frontage; a youngish man in Western dress got out and disappeared into the restaurant. He did not glance their way. There were no other pedestrians.
The light changed and they stepped into the street to cross. Two cars drove through the intersection alongside them, horns honking. They walked on. A string of cars approached in the lane facing them; the last two drivers honked. Jo felt her chest tighten. Could the drivers be protesting no abaya? She took hold of Ev’s arm. They walked two blocks farther; a motorist sounded his horn for such a long time they heard the Doppler shift as he streamed past. She grew frightened. Ev halted mid-block.
“Maybe we should turn back?”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t want you to get shot.” Gallows humor. Her chest did not loosen.
They returned to the hotel and made their way to the courtyard behind the lobby. They sat on an outdoor sofa beside a blue-tiled reflecting pool in the mild evening air. Jo took Ev’s hand in hers. No more experimenting with dress, even in Al Khobar. She feared they’d never understand Saudi taboos well enough to design something that reached into parents’ hearts. She felt defeated although it was stupid to do so. Nothing here should be taken personally.
Ev said, “When you’re ready, I want to go up.”
She gripped his hand harder.
Her phone buzzed: Peter, in the lobby.
“Will you stay until Peter comes?”
Ev nodded.
Peter appeared in the courtyard carrying a manila envelope.
“I am early!” A big grin. “Here are the questionnaires in Arabic. I made fifty because I had to do them one by one. The feeder was broken.” He placed the envelope on the coffee table in front of them. “I will do the manual later.” He surveyed them. “Are you ready for tomorrow?”
“We’ll start as soon as you can get us into the building” said Ev. “How about seven thirty?”
“I will send a car.”
Jo grasped Peter’s arm. “Before you go, can I ask a question? We were walking on the boulevard, I was dressed like this, and drivers kept honking. They didn’t slow down, just honked. Were we in any danger?”
Peter laughed. “Danger? No. I think it was the opposite. They were admiring your Levi’s.”
“So the honking was like a wolf whistle?”
“I do not know that word. But you were not in danger. Not here.” He raised his hand in a salute. “Seven thirty.” He turned to leave.
Relief flowed through her. And embarrassment for having been wrong. She stood when Ev did and waved good-bye to Peter as he disappeared into the building.
They took the elevator up to their room. Ev said he felt grubby and went to the bathroom to shave and shower. She took off the long-sleeved shirt and sat at the desk. She did not power up her laptop. No, they had not provoked an attack in the street, but there was still the problem of the wolf whistle.
Back in Atlanta at her first job, she took the bus downtown and walked past a construction site to her company’s office tower.
Every morning for the three months it took to complete the steel work, some hard hat or other whistled at her. The shrill chirp rose above the noise of machinery, penetrating her ears and stabbing her consciousness. She felt dirty, somehow. She pretended she didn’t notice and strode purposefully, keeping her eyes focused straight ahead. When she left the building in the evening, the hard hats were already gone for the day, to her relief.
One day at lunch, one of the copywriters mentioned that she liked being whistled at; she felt flattered. She was a big, pretty woman; Jo was short and plain. In a flash
Jo had realized the construction workers whistled at women indiscriminately. It hurt to be treated as a commodity. It hurt to be probed sexually, albeit by sound, when you had no power to escape. She told the copy writer she dreaded the whistling. An older woman at the table gave her a remedy. She told Jo to say to herself, “Buddy, I have more degrees and make more money than you ever will, so eat your heart out.” Jo took the advice, and it helped, on the days when she believed in her own success. When the steel work ended, her problem went away but not the revulsion it had engendered.
Was there a difference, Jo wondered, between an American construction worker’s whistle and a Saudi driver’s honk? They both felt threatening, although the perpetrators intended no physical harm. Yet, hadn’t she risked provoking the drivers just now by leaving the abaya behind? They couldn’t have known she was a foreigner with a different understanding of female modesty. Perhaps today’s honkers were less culpable than the whistlers had been. It seemed wrong to think so, though, given the mess the Saudis made of gender issues. A mess she knew she didn’t—and probably wouldn’t—understand or condone.
She heard Ev’s electric razor whine behind the bathroom door. Being married to Ev had changed her feelings about sexual predation. Ev would never pull a power play, of any kind. He didn’t expect her to assume a traditional role. He had dulled her edges without trying to, just by being Ev. She was grateful. She rose and knocked softly on the bathroom door. She wanted to touch him and thank him, just for being Ev.
At seven thirty in the morning they exited the lobby and got into the promised car. Jo wore her abaya this time. Peter didn’t show. At seven fifty he phoned to say go ahead without him and please pass the phone to the driver. The driver took them to the rear of the museum, where three laborers in work clothes relaxed on the steps. He said something to them, and they opened the door for Ev. Jo followed him in. They walked through internal corridors and emerged in the lobby, where D-Three’s shipping crates and a pile of extension cords had been stacked against a wall. Ev motioned for the laborers to follow him and pointed to a crate marked TOOLS. The men helped him wrangle it. They began to unpack.
Jo took inventory: all crates present. She set out to look for the museum’s forklift. She could operate a forklift in an emergency, and this might turn into one if Peter didn’t appear. One of the men ran up behind her shouting, “Mrs.! Mrs.!” shaking his head and waving his arm in the direction of the lobby. She turned back; she would have to wait until the men had done the heavy work before she could be useful. They had two days to complete the installation, and then the museum would reopen. They might need to work into the night.
Ev and the crew seemed to understand each other, speaking the language of crowbars, wrenches, and cables. They pushed crates up against the far wall after they’d emptied them. Under Ev’s direction, the crew laid out parts of displays on the floor where the finished exhibits would stand. They made good progress; Jo cleaned up behind them with broom and dustpan. Peter arrived shortly before noon, bringing lunch for the crew and a box of sweets for the solitary museum guard observing them. The crew hailed Peter and crowded around the containers of food he placed on top of a crate. Ev rubbed his stomach to signal his intention to eat. Jo hung back and confronted Peter.
“Where were you this morning?”
“Ah, Mrs. Joanna. I was doing your business. I went to the university to get words. ‘Fungi.’ ‘Substrate.’ Words from your manual that I have not seen before. You will use these words with children?”
“No, with teachers. And parents, if they want to know more.” For some reason, she didn’t believe his excuse. She remembered him disappearing in Dubai. He might have had something extra going on there, and perhaps he moonlighted here. But the installation appeared to be on track now, and she could afford to be generous. “Have some lunch. I have work for you afterwards.”
Like a good Saudi woman, she leaned against one of the crates and waited for the men to eat first. She watched Peter take a generous helping from each of the containers, and she thought about the rest of the installation. In only a matter of days they’d know how Saudi families reacted to their style of displays. They’d see the true dimensions of the challenge. She felt nervous and excited in equal measure.
19
On Sunday, after the first week’s visitors had been through the demo, the Heritage Museum closed and Ev went there to prepare for the next round. Jo gave Peter the day off and called Myriam at her office, thinking they might meet, but she was tied up. The hotel concierge suggested Jo use her free time to go shopping in Bahrain. He said you drive on a sixteen-mile causeway over the Persian Gulf and you come to another country, an island Arab state with fewer social restrictions than the Kingdom and European haute couture on sale. You could have English tea in a hotel. Or a glass of wine. Jo asked him to find her a car and driver. She had a multiple-entry visa, and she intended to use it.
Promptly at ten, a dark-skinned man with long hair shellacked to his head picked her up in a clean Ford Fusion. She got into the backseat, smelling a heavy perfume that may have wafted from his hair or perhaps from the upholstery. She cracked the window open and the breeze fluttered her head scarf and abaya. She couldn’t wait to make it through the border so she could strip and travel like the American she was. Cars clogged the causeway, and it took an hour to cross over the calm, shining sea into Bahrain.
His name, he said, was Hassan, and didn’t she like his hair, so much better than the Saudis? He faced forward as he drove, talking nonstop over his shoulder. He said he was Pakistani and complained about his boss, and especially about his boss’s boss, who was Saudi. He’d been driving for eleven years and hated every minute, but the money, ah, it should be better, they could afford it. Nevertheless, he intended to stay in Saudi Arabia if he could get himself a better job. But the deck was stacked against him because, he said, they were all racists. Even though his Arabic was pretty good, if he said so himself.
Jo did not encourage his talk, nor did she squelch it. Something about the way he’d instantly unloaded his opinions made her wary. She hoped his discontent did not extend to foreign women because then she’d have to shut him up, and the ride would get ugly. She pressed her lips closed and looked out the window. Too bad Ev hadn’t come.
They drove along the Bahraini side of the causeway, which looked the same as the Saudi side, and she asked to be taken to a historic house she’d read about online. He asked if she wanted a ladies’ room. She said, yes, when convenient. He pulled into a parking lot surrounding a glass-and-steel building where, he told her, she’d find a bathroom and could visit the shops. He would wait at the car. She walked into the marble-floored shopping arcade, past the glittering windows of luxury boutiques, to a marble-walled bathroom where a uniformed attendant in a hijab handed her a soft towel. On the way back, a suit in one of the windows caught her eye. A four-thousand-dollar price tag was attached to the skirt and a tag she couldn’t read hung from the jacket. She wondered who would spend ten grand on a suit only to cover it with an abaya. Talk about conspicuous consumption.
When she returned to the car, Hassan said he was surprised to see her so soon, and didn’t she like the mall? He offered to take her to another, or to a club where she could buy a day pass to enjoy the entertainments. He smirked and rotated his wrist in what she took as a sign for hanky-panky. He offered to show her the sights. She said she wanted to see the historic house. He frowned and confessed he’d never heard of it. His customers had other desires.
Hassan pulled out his phone and called his office for directions. They told him to find a policeman, who would be Pakistani and so would help him. He turned left, then right, left again, right again until they came to a police station. Two officers stepped up to the car, one talked to Hassan in Urdu, the other tried to chat with Jo, but she couldn’t follow his English. Hassan saluted them and proceeded to drive around several corners, telling her the police weren’t really sure where to find the house, but he would find it. Sh
e began to doubt it.
The streets began to narrow. Stucco houses with a shop window carved into the ground floor leaned into each other; dark-looking men hung around doorways, smoking and shooing skinny dogs. Hassan stopped the car abruptly. He got out and scratched the back of his head with one finger—he didn’t muss his hair—and hailed an older man sitting in front of a shop at the corner. They argued, gesturing right and left. Hassan got back behind the wheel and the old man got into the front seat. Jo wanted to yell “Hassan, what are you doing?” but she couldn’t get the words out quickly enough. She clutched her purse. The car took off. They turned several more corners. Hassan stopped, backed up half a block. The old man got out, walked away. Hassan turned to her.
“It is there.” He pointed down an alleyway to a white house with a wooden balcony suspended outside the second story windows, as if clinging to the wall. “I picked the oldest man because he must know.”
Jo got out of the car, feeling sheepish for having feared a kidnap, and walked to the house. It bore a plaque in Arabic and, below, an English sign stating the museum’s hours. It should have been open, but it wasn’t. So much for Bahraini historic preservation. She got back into the car, deflated, and told Hassan, “Now you can show me the sights.”
He drove to a mosque where, he said, women can enter at certain times. Jo saw three domed buildings, a minaret, a tower, and walls penetrated by rows of archways. Hassan drove to the entrance to read a sign and then told her she couldn’t enter now, so he would take her to the sea. On the corniche, he drove past entrances to villas with speedboats moored at the docks just visible behind them. He did not stop, and Jo began to feel trapped. She told him she wanted to go to a hotel for tea. He said he refused to let her be “ripped off” at a hotel, and there was a better place. He drove into a downtown-looking area and parked. She scurried behind him for four blocks to the restaurant of his choosing.
The Contract Page 16