The Contract

by Sheila Grinell

  At the entrance to the restaurant, he passed her along to the maître d’, who grinned and seated her at a table at the back. On the menu he handed her, she saw pictures of bottles of booze and fried food. Not a hint of tea. She asked him, as he leaned over her, for a soft drink. He placed his hand on hers.

  “I will be soft. American women, they like me.” He leaned closer, smelling like cooking grease, and sweat, and something raw.

  She recoiled and pushed her chair away. She said she’d changed her mind and hustled to the door. The maître d’ followed. Hassan stood outside, blocking her path.

  “Why don’t you eat? The food is good.” he said.

  “I’m not hungry. I wanted tea. Please take me home.”

  The maître d’ scowled at Hassan, and Jo realized he must be paying a kickback.

  “But you have all day.” Hassan spread his hands apart, as if confused.

  “I’ll pay you for a full day and rate you five stars. I want to go home.”

  Hassan shrugged and stepped aside. She pushed past him, eyes forward. They got in the car. She sat on the cool leather feeling angry and alien. If Ev had accompanied her, she thought, that creep wouldn’t have fooled with her. She’d been victimized by a lecher and a bully out to make an extra buck, just because she was female. The concierge who recommended Hassan must have been told by Saudi businessmen that he delivered the goods. Not her kind of goods. She had learned nothing about Bahrain except that it catered to Saudi vices.

  Hassan must have sensed her antagonism because he drove silently toward the causeway. They passed through the Bahraini gate and into Saudi passport control. He turned off the engine to wait their turn, asking her for her passport to present to the officials. She gave it to him, because she had no choice, and watched the cars ahead. Uniformed officers made travelers get out of their cars. They opened doors and trunks and packages and thumbed through passports, seeming to berate people. Jo put on the abaya and head scarf she had left on the seat as one of the officers approached. Hassan got out of the car and handed over both passports; he kept his eyes lowered. The officer walked around the car and peered through the window at her; he sneered and her pulse quickened. She sat still while the officer talked to Hassan, feeling helpless. After a beat, the officer handed back the passports and waved them clear. As they drove away, she spread the abaya carefully across her lap, feeling secure for the first time that afternoon.

  My god, she thought with a catch in her breath, I actually want to be covered. She remembered Myriam’s remark the last time they talked in Riyadh. Now she understood.

  Myriam sat across the table from Jo at a seafood restaurant overlooking the Gulf. They were alone; Ev was fiddling with the exhibits once again. Jo looked at the water lapping peacefully at the pier on which the restaurant stood. Myriam had said Al Khobar was proud of this establishment, on a par with the latest in the West. Jo sipped her “Saudi cocktail,” a minted, fruity, fizzy soft drink in a champagne glass, and silently begged to differ.

  Myriam looked flushed as she ordered their lunch, pointing to items on the menu and grilling the Philippine waiter. She ordered lobster from the Gulf, caught that morning, for both of them. The waiter bowed away, and she settled back in her chair.

  “You must think I eat in restaurants all the time. No, I am too busy. But you are my guest.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Tell me, how do you like Bahrain? You went yesterday?” Myriam folded her hands on top of the table.

  “I didn’t see much of Bahrain except for a shopping mall and a police station manned by Pakistanis. On the way home, the passport control officers were stripping cars looking for contraband, and they were nasty. So I put on my abaya and I felt protected, and I said to myself, ‘Now I understand what Myriam meant when she said she had a right to feel comfortable.’ It’s about privacy. If you follow the rules, even if you don’t like the rules, you keep your privacy.”

  Myriam unfolded her hands and smiled into Jo’s eyes. “I am sorry you did not enjoy Bahrain. I took my family there when the IMAX cinema opened. It was very educational. My daughter went there to learn to drive, before it was permitted here.”

  First time Myriam had mentioned a daughter. “Does your daughter drive?”

  “My daughter, yes. It is not important for me. I am earlier generation.”

  “You are just as important as your daughter.”

  “A mother knows her children belong to the future. I am content in my time.”

  Myriam looked into Jo’s eyes. She spoke gently. “Mrs. Joanna, I do not cover for privacy. I cover because it is who I am as a Muslim and a woman. I cover out of respect for a way of life based on faith. It is my joy.”

  Jo could not suppress a loaded question. “Did your faith stop you from driving, or was it the religious police?”

  “Good people who live the Quran believe we need the mutaween, and I honor those people.” She paused. “First is my faith. Then my family. Then my country. I hope you can understand.”

  Jo said nothing. The religious police revolted her.

  Myriam adjusted her perch on the chair and removed a notebook and pen from her purse. “Now, tell me your plan for the girls. I am excited for this.”

  “That’s the other thing I wanted to talk about. Right now, we don’t have anything special in mind. They’ll explore just like the boys. But I always root for the underdog.”

  Myriam smiled.

  “What else should we do?”

  “I am a feminist. It is excellent to treat the girls just like the boys. I will make sure they know it. And the teachers, too.”

  The waiter brought two plates, half a pink-shelled lobster on each. Myriam put down her pen. The waiter laid the plates on the table. Myriam said, “Shall we eat?”

  Jo picked up her knife and fork, glad for a gap in the conversation. She needed time to reorganize her thinking about this woman whom she was coming to trust as a leader, yet who accepted the unacceptable. She took a bite of lobster: tender and sweet, best she’d tasted in years.

  Jo sat on the floor of the museum lobby next to Ev, who had taken apart the conveyor belt and spread the pieces on the ground. She watched him pry food out of the gears of the hand crank. A kid must have smuggled in a snack. Most of the exhibits had held up well. Ev’s tree section had suffered the most. The boys had ignored the tree’s interior behind its clear plastic wall and tugged away at the exposed bark and roots. They’d crawled beneath the root structure as anticipated, but, Peter said, they had not imagined themselves to be underground. Ev’s piece de resistance was the only flop in the demo. Yet Ev was happy about the whole. She knew so because she’d found a doodad next to her pillow this morning after he had gone down to breakfast. Doodads were always a positive sign.

  The thing was a hand mirror with a plastic flap over the top. The flap contained a hole situated so that when you looked at yourself, you saw only your eyes, forehead, and the bridge of your nose. In other words, Ev had made a method for boys and girls to put on—and take off—a woman’s facial veil. He might have wanted her to test the idea on kids and parents over the weekend, but she had feared the committee wouldn’t want boys to imagine themselves female or girls to imagine themselves unrestrained. She’d tucked the doodad away in her suitcase. Maybe she’d bring it out in the next phase of the project, if there were one. She’d thanked Ev mentally, though, for siding with the girls.

  She watched him tend to machinery in his familiar, steady way. Absorbed by the exhibits, he hadn’t said anything about the doodad. He often abandoned ideas, perhaps because he had so many to choose from. He blew hot and cold about many things. He’d blown hot and cold about the entire Saudi deal over the course of the past year. She’d discounted his vacillation and steadied him along. It amused her to think they defied gender stereotypes: Ev was the one fueled by emotion while she worked on logic. At least most of the time. This particular job, she admitted to herself, affected her illogically.

  “I asked
Myriam if we should do something extra for the girls. She said no. Being treated equal to boys would be enough. It must not happen often.”

  “Huh.” He slid the handle and gears together and got up. He picked up one end of the belt. “Want to hold the other end?”

  She rose and grasped her end of the belt. They carried it in tandem across the room. She fastened her end to the table and waited for Ev to secure his end in place. He would be finished tinkering soon, and a janitor would come to clean. No American museum ever looked as spotless as this place. Perhaps hyper-cleanliness was a Saudi tradition. A benign tradition compared to arresting a woman because her sleeves were too short. She leaned against the wall to wait for Ev to make the rounds of the displays one final time.

  Her thoughts meandered to the war she had long been waging against tradition. The first skirmish took place when she was fifteen, and Diane wanted to play Pinocchio in the third grade recital. Diane had come home from school crying because the teacher wouldn’t let her audition. Jo cut first period the next day to talk to the teacher, arguing a wooden puppet could turn into a girl as easily as a boy. Miss Lucy offered to star one of her brothers, knowing they were much too old. Jo smelled hypocrisy masquerading as tradition and she hated it.

  The next skirmish happened freshman year at college, when Jo’s roommate, a self-described “traditional girl,” suggested Jo would make more friends if she lost her down-home accent. Jo cleaned up her speech all right, and swore never to act like her roommate. She’d tasted snobbery and recoiled in disgust. Skirmish number three lasted all senior year when she felt snubbed by the design department over Robbo. Although they claimed they’d followed the rules, they’d abused their authority, and it sickened her. She came to associate tradition with rigidity; she came to expect that people who vaunted tradition really wanted to squelch innovation. She came to doubt conventional wisdom and to seek a fresh angle in her work. Ev always saw fresh angles. She loved him for it.

  Now, Myriam confused her. A traditionalist—no, a fundamentalist who puts her faith first—but also an activist for women and girls. Jo felt attracted and repelled at the same time.

  “Ev, do you think we’d understand these people better if we were Mormons, or some other fundamentalists?”

  He placed the wrench he had been using in the toolbox and tucked the box into the janitor’s closet. “Nah. It’s not about religion, it’s about tribe. Some anthropologist discovered that people only relate to about a hundred fifty other people, the ones closest to them. People don’t naturally tolerate everyone else. You’ll always be on the outside here.”

  “That’s not very encouraging.”

  She’d heard his rant on tribalism before. He’d say the trees would outlast us because they never made war on their own species. She usually countered by saying democracy required people to transcend the tribe. Not a good argument to make in a country content to be ruled by an absolute monarch.

  Ev said, “I don’t mean to discourage you. You’ll get close enough to do your job. But don’t expect more.”

  Did she expect more? She felt drawn to the female teachers who were so warm and welcoming. And to Myriam, who defended civil rights she did not personally enjoy.

  The janitor appeared, and Ev gestured to indicate they were about to leave. Jo re-fastened her abaya and wrapped the scarf around her head. They stepped into the street and Ev waved for a taxi. Apparently, he was ready for the girls to arrive at the demo tomorrow. Myriam would translate for the teachers. Jo would be happy to see her and grateful for her help. Understanding would have to wait.

  20

  They’d been home for two days, most of which Jo had spent at her computer going over the data and composing a draft of the report she would send to Phil Owen. It had to be a work of art, a politically astute narrative that communicated clearly to the committee yet preserved D-Three’s ability to flex. She decided to read through one more time before sending it on.

  DRAFT

  Dunhill + Dana + Design

  Children’s Museum Project

  Demonstration Study

  Al Khobar, February 2017

  The demonstration was hosted by The Islamic Heritage Museum, which opens to the public four days a week. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, the museum’s visitors are predominantly school groups; families come on the weekend, Fridays and Saturdays. Admission is free, with the exception of special features and occasional films presented by local clubs.

  Our crates were delivered to the museum on Sunday. Our crew of four people completed installation in two days as planned: the twelve demonstration exhibits plus stage set were mounted in the museum’s lobby, where they were accessible to all visitors for two weeks. A principal of Dunhill + Dana + Design was present at all times to observe visitors and maintain the exhibits in good working order. A representative of the museum was also present.

  With the help of male and female interpreters, we administered a short survey to those family visitors who agreed to be interviewed. In addition, the museum had arranged for four classes of six-year-olds from two nearby schools to visit, along with their teachers, specifically to test our displays. The interpreters helped us converse with the teachers after they had watched their pupils use the displays.

  Preliminary results of the demonstration study are summarized below, followed by specific recommendations for the next phase of the project. Detailed descriptions of the displays and activities may be found in Appendix A. Detailed observations, protocols, and survey responses may be found in Appendix B.

  We wish to thank the Islamic Heritage Museum, our skillful interpreters, and the Ministry for enabling us to mount this demonstration. We and our partner, Owen and Associates, are grateful for their generosity and support. The findings of this study, along with the market research Owen and Associates has undertaken in parallel with this work, will be invaluable for informing the design of the eventual Children’s Museum Project. It has been an honor for us to assist the Ministry in furthering its important objectives for enhancing early childhood education, thus helping to ensure a productive future for Saudi youth.

  The committee led off every meeting, every document, every oration with its ultimate agenda, so Jo paid homage, too. The tone seemed right.

  SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

  Audience segment: six-year-olds

  Research goal: to look for barriers to engagement with the displays

  Two classes of six-year-old boys totaling twenty-nine children visited in the first week. Two classes of girls, totaling twenty-five children, visited the second week. Essentially, boys and girls behaved the same at the exhibits, with the exceptions noted below. We found that:

  • Children were shy at first, not knowing what was permissible. When urged to touch the apparatus by a teacher, one or two children led the way. Almost immediately the others followed. Girls required a bit more urging initially than boys.

  • Children had no trouble understanding what to do at the displays. The exhibit controls are designed to be self-evident, and the children were comfortable working with the mechanical and technical interfaces. The children stayed engaged throughout the forty-five minute session. Girls talked more to their teachers than boys did.

  • At the facilitated display, a workbench where children sit and an adult leads them through a series of hands-on experiments (e.g., look at different soils under a microscope—see Appendix A), children were quite willing to go along with the facilitator. (In this case, it was one of the teachers whom we had coached for fifteen minutes at the start of the visit.) Many children asked questions and made original observations. No child refused to cooperate.

  Note: several children asked about creatures that live underground. We recommend including live animals in any permanent installation.

  She nodded to herself; how could anyone take umbrage at moles?

  Audience segment:

  elementary grade teachers

  Research goal: to understand teachers’ attitudes to this style
of display; to discover what can be done by the museum to help teachers use such displays to advance their curriculum

  We were able to converse with four male teachers for twenty minutes; Joanna Dunhill met with five female teachers for twenty minutes. The same protocol was used in both sets of conversations (see Appendix B). We urged the teachers to be candid in their comments, and the interpreters assured us that they were. We found that:

  • Teachers expressed enthusiasm for the style of the displays, saying they liked seeing the level of engagement their pupils showed.

  • Teachers say they would bring their classes to the Children’s Museum, resources permitting. The schools that participated in the demonstration allow two field trips per year; teachers warned that many other schools are not as generous. Female teachers were more concerned about lack of resources; they urge the museum to provide busing since transportation is often not available for girls.

  • Teachers would prefer that the topic of the demonstration relate explicitly to their curriculum, which is primarily Islamic studies and Arabic language arts in first grade.

  • Teachers asked for help in utilizing the field trip. They suggest that we provide a manual stating the standards to be used in evaluating both pupils’ cognitive gains and their own performance as facilitators. Female teachers in particular thought benchmarks would be important for their professional standing.

  Note: standards for evaluating teacher and pupil performance, as opposed to aligning curriculum, are not generally provided in US children’s museums. We recommend that they be developed for Saudi teachers’ use.

  The committee might see this as a pitch for more resources—and so it was. Bus money for teachers, an additional deliverable for the contractors. She hoped none of the teachers got in trouble for telling the truth.