The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf: A Novel

by Mohja Kahf

  Saweem Shahbandar was Ebtehaj's milk sister. Milk relationships were created by women alone. When a woman breastfed another woman's baby, that child was henceforth considered a sibling to all the children of the woman who'd nursed him or her. In recognition of the milk bond created by Saweem's and Ebtehaj's mothers a generation ago, the Shamys had been invited to stay at Saweem Shah- bandar's home for the rest of their Mecca sojourn.

  Aunt Saweem had been a teacher at a private lycce in Damascus when she received the proposal from the handsome uncle of one of her Saudi students. Her ensuing life had been spent entirely in her husband's country, and she had assimilated to Saudi customs.

  "Why, even your speech is Saudi-ized," Ebtehaj teased.

  The two women chatted, catching each other up on their respective lives. Khadra grew drowsy and leaned back on the ornate sofa. Some kind of nature documentary was playing on a television at the far end of the large room. Khadra could hear both narrations, the uppercrust British male voice that reminded her of 16mm films in ninth grade biology class and, layered on top of it, the Arabic dubbing. To survive in the and climate of Saudi Arabia's western lowlands, these unexpectedly beautiful flowering plants have developed physical defenses. The forbidding-looking thorns ofthe acacia trees are an example. Such lethal external appearances discourage grazing animals from chewing their foliage ...

  The next morning, Khadra asked the one she thought was the daughter-in-law, "Where's the mosque whose adhan I heard right outside my window?" The call she had heard had thrilled her, bringing pure glory to all her senses. She'd never experienced a real adhan before this trip, the kind that rang out over the rooftops.

  "Right next door," Buthayna said.

  What Khadra could not explain to this stranger was how the sound had made her feel. She had run to the window, flinging it open, and leaned her head out in the early morning darkness, as if to bring her whole self closer to the call. It was the long-awaited invitation. She was going to the ball.

  The next day Khadra awoke to the adhan for fajr as if to the call of love. She beat Buthayna to the bathroom for wudu. Then back in the bedroom, she got dressed and picked up her shoes and tiptoed out.

  "Where are you going?" Buthayna asked her guest in the hall.

  "To pray fajr," Khadra whispered over her shoulder.

  Thirty minutes later, with a tearstreaked face, Khadra was back, escorted by two burly matawwa policemen with big round black beards and billy clubs belted over their white caftans.

  "Is this one of your womenfolk?" they asked Uncle Zaid, Saweem's husband, his face freshly washed. "We found her trying to get into the mosque." They said it as if she was a vagrant or something.

  Uncle Zaid shook his head no, not looking at her bare face. He seemed mortified that the matawwa police were at his door and glanced sideways to see if any neighbors were out.

  "But I'm Khadra!-the daughter of Wajdy Shamy and Ebtehaj Qadri-Agha," she cried in a tremulous voice. "Your guests!"

  He looked up, startled. "Ah, yes, yes, I'm so sorry-yes, officerswhat is the problem?"

  "Are you her mahram?"

  "No."

  "Produce her mahram."

  Wajdy came to the door. "Khadra! Binti, what's wrong-when did you leave the house, what is this?" He had to produce his passport and travel documents, the whole family's documents.

  "How could you leave the house without permission-your parents', your hosts'? Without telling anybody?" Ebtehaj asked in an angry whisper behind closed doors.

  "I-just-wanted-to-pray-fajr," Khadra hiccupped between sobs.

  "You can pray in the house," Wajdy said.

  "But I didn't want to pray in the house, Baba. The mosque is so near-the adhan was so beautiful-and it was calling to me, to me."

  "Well, women are not allowed to pray in the mosque here," her father replied. He was deeply embarrassed by the position Khadra had put him in before his grave-faced host.

  "But, Baba, how can women not be allowed?" Khadra had never heard of such a thing. No mosque she had ever encountered hadn't had a place for women. Not even the tiny Kokomo mosque that ran out of a Motel 6. "Then where do they pray?"

  "They pray at home."

  "But where do they pray when they go to the mosque?" Khadra said, uncomprehending.

  "Khadra, you're not listening. Women here don't go to the mosque. They don't in most Muslim countries."

  Khadra had never heard of such a preposterous thing. It couldn't be right. Being a Muslim meant going to the mosque. "What? I don't know what you're talking about. It doesn't even make sense. Everyone knows women go to the mosque. Women have always gone to the mosque. It's part of Islam."

  "You're used to America, binti," Wajdy said. "In most of the Muslim world, it hasn't been the custom for hundreds of years."

  "But you said you said-" she whirled here to include her mother, "you always said it was part of Islam. What about Aisha? What about how Omar wished his wife would not go to the mosque for fajr but he couldn't stop her because he knew it was her right? What about the Prophet saying `You must never prevent the female servants of God from attending the houses of God?' I told the matawwa that hadith and he laughed-he laughed at me, and said `listen to this woman quoting scriptures at us!"'

  Here she started sobbing again. It was like-the tone when he said "this woman"-it was like the police thought she was some kind of bad woman, out in the street at that dark hour, alone, face uncovered, and were going to haul her in for some sort of vice crime. None of them believed her or even listened to her. Like she was a joke, like what she said didn't even matter. It was all she could do to get them to bring her to the house.

  And then the expression on Uncle Zaid's face when he wouldn't look at her at first and then when he recognized her: it was that look again. For a minute, she actually felt like a bad woman, as if she really had done something wrong, and she shuddered, and it frightened her. But then, it made her really angry-angry that they would treat her this way, and angry that she let them get inside her feelings-and she wanted to come out swinging.

  I want someone to drive me Down town

  -Memphis Minnie, "Won't You Be My Chauffeur"

  Saweem was telling Ebtehaj, in scandalized tones, that her husband's sister, Sheikha, held mixed-gender dinner parties. Ebtehaj tsk-tsked.

  "I don't see what's wrong with that, if the women wear hijab," Khadra'd said. She couldn't resist. It was so boring here. And it was bogus of her mother to pretend the Dawah didn't have a mixedgender work environment.

  On the other hand, she couldn't believe her ears when her mother defended Americans later that day. Aunt Saweem had just declared that American women had to be sluts: that much was clear from the way they dressed.

  "I used to think so," Ebtehaj said slowly, and her daughter looked up with interest. Her mother had a puzzled frown on her face, as if she were measuring Livvy's tiny halter-tops against the long denim jumpers of Norma Whitcomb. "How they dress depends on their upbringing. We have a neighbor, if you saw her, why, except for the hair uncovered, you'd say she was as modest as you or I." She looked surprised at what she'd just said. It seemed to have come together in her mind at that very moment.

  "Really!" Saweem said, with a doubtful look.

  "Yes," Ebtehaj said, with a little more certainty. "And also-even the scantily dressed ones-I've found you can't always draw conclusions about them." Under Saweem's questioning, a notion was emerging that hadn't fully formed in her before. "Khadra has an American friend, for example, who-well, to look at the way she dresses, you might think she was a young streetwalker."

  "Yee." Saweem said. "God preserve us."

  "No, no-but after you know more, you understand that she is really a very good girl. A moral girl. She just doesn't know how to dress."

  "Hmmph," Saweem said, not at all convinced that those two things, skimpy dress and good morals, could go together.

  "So you really have to pity them, more than condemn," Ebtehaj pressed on, eager now to expre
ss the thought. "They don't have the teachings of modesty. Their mothers don't teach it to them. And everything else in their culture kills the natural instinct of a woman for modesty, and teaches her instead to expose herself. To please men."

  This was an insight Khadra'd never heard her mother articulate before.

  "Want to go visit my Aunt Sheikha?" Afaaf said to Khadra over a ping-gong game in the recreation room.

  Khadra lunged to hit back a strong serve. "Does your mother let you go there? She doesn't seem to approve of your aunt."

  "She has to-ties of the womb."

  Khadra didn't see what was so tempting about going to another house when all she'd done was sit around this one, but it was a change of scene, anyway.

  "You're sure it's safe?" Ebtehaj asked Saweem. "To send the girls with a driver?" Ebtehaj wasn't used to servants. Back in Syria, if you had a housekeeper, she was a poor Syrian, not a foreigner-more accountability in that, both ways.

  "Aijaz? He's a good Muslim," Saweem assured her, referring to the Gujurati driver.

  "And-this sister-in-law of yours-does she have boys?"

  "I understand you completely, my dear. Her sons are at camp in Yanbu. And Sheikha may be too liberal for us, but she is a deeply moral woman."

  Sheikha greeted them breathlessly. "I'm sorry girls, you're welcome here, but I'll be busy. I've just received word that Raja Alem-the surrealist playwright, surely you know-is in town for a very short time and I must interview her. I've been trying to get her for my Saudi women writers series. And now," she said jubilantly, "I've got her! What a coup!"

  "My aunt is a journalist," Afaaf said to Khadra.

  "Call Rini in the back when you want dinner," Sheikha said as she threw on her abaya and veil. "You're welcome to use the library but don't disturb the files on my desk." She hurried out to the car and driver the newspaper had sent.

  Khadra was interested in the library-she hadn't brought much reading on the trip and glimpsed rows of leatherbound novels on the shelves, The Remembrance of Things Past, Tess of the D'Urbervilles-but Afaaf pulled her by the hand to the home theater room instead, where an enormous television center took up an entire wall. She picked a tape out of a well-stocked video library and slipped it in, and soon a shimmering Olivia Newton-John was singing on roller skates, with hordes of roller-skating Americans in her train. This was Afaaf's idea of great entertainment, Xanadu?

  "This is only a pit-stop," Afaaf said. "Just wait a bit." She picked up a gold-trimmed princess phone and started dialing numbers. Meanwhile, she flipped open a compact and applied mascara, eyeshadow, and blusher, and outlined her lips. "Come on, get your abaya. We're going out!" she said.

  Sheikha's driver didn't like being ordered out by Afaaf. The lady of the house had left no such instructions.

  "Then we'll take a cab," Afaaf said, pouting.

  "No, fine, I'll take you. Better someone keeps an eye on you."

  But Afaaf sent him home as soon as he dropped them off at a shiny mall that seemd to be called Prisunic.

  "No, not shopping," she hissed, pulling Khadra away from the automatic glass doors. She sauntered around to a side street, pulling her abaya tight against her waist and shapely bottom. A long black limousine with official tags of some sort drew up. To Khadra's consternation, Afaaf got in and pulled Khadra in after her.

  The car was full of young Saudis-two cleanshaven guys in white caftans and a girl whose black abaya was crumpled under her Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. "Like a Virgin, "a familiar sultry voice pounded out on the stereo system.

  "Here she is," Afaaf said to them. "My American cousin."

  "Tifham arabi?" one of the guys asked Afaaf. His ghutra was pushed rakishly back on his head.

  `Aiwa, bifham, " Khadra retorted. She was shocked to see Afaaf throw off her veil and abaya inside the limo. She shook out her short, dark auburn curls. Her lips were full and glossy.

  "Oh," the guy said. "So ... you're not really American? You don't speak Arabic with an accent."

  "No. I'm not really American. I'm an Arab, like you."

  The girl seemed to think this was funny. Outside the window, the city disappeared. They were speeding down a bare stretch of highway with empty desert on both sides. Khadra felt a pang in her stomach.

  "Do you drive?" Afaaf's conversation partner said. He had a wide smile and a funny, kind of broken-looking nose. "I'm Ahmad, by the way," he added, sticking his hand out.

  Khadra shook her head. She didn't even shake hands with men in America, just like her mother. She wasn't going to start in the land of the Prophet. During Haj, no less. The strangeness of this whole scene was making her uncomfortable.

  "Afaaf's here for her driving lesson," Ahmad said. "Ready?"

  "Ready!" Afaaf cried. Ahmad said something to the driver and the car slowed to a stop. Then he pulled off his white headpiece and draped it on Afaaf's head. He and Afaaf climbed into the front seat.

  A fat white Mercedes pulled up next to them. "Look, it's Rasheed," said the guy who'd remained silent until now. He had a John Travolta cleft in his chin.

  "And he's got Fawaz and Feisal with him," the girl said, clapping her hands. She buzzed down her automatic window. "PARTY!" she shouted. The young men grinned and waved. One of them mouthed something at her.

  The limo jerked forward, Afaaf driving. The fat Mercedes matched its motion. Afaaf darted forward again. The other car kept pace. And suddenly both vehicles were off.

  "Wheee!" Afaaf shouted, the wind in her face. Then brakes screeched. The limo whirled in a circle, burning rubber. John Travolta was thrown against Khadra.

  "Oh-excuse me," he said, but didn't seem very quick to move from where he had landed on her, rather firmly. Khadra scuttled to her side of the car, hugging the black leather.

  "Are you okay?" the girl opposite said. "You look green." The car lurched forward again, then skidded to a stop. "Afaaf, stop!" the girl called. "The American girl is gonna hurl on us."

  Khadra closed her eyes. She didn't want to be here. This was supposed to be Haj.

  "Here," the girl said. She snapped open a little gold lamb handbag with an Italian label and dumped out an assortment of colored pills. "Try the yellow ones," she suggested, giggling.

  Khadra shook her head.

  "Suit yourself!" she said, flinging the door open. "I'm going to say hello next door-" and then she was in the Mercedes.

  "That's my cousin, Ghalya," the guy left with Khadra said. "I'm Ghazi. So ... you're American, huh?"

  "No," Khadra said. "I'm Arab. I told you, I'm Arab. Just like you." She got out of the car. Where was Afaaf? The limo chauffeur was back in the driver's seat, having a cigarette. A hulking sports utility GMC pulled up alongside them, and a silver Jaguar with a loud, obnoxious engine was arriving. The "party" appeared to be mushrooming.

  "What kind of Arab?" Ghazi said, trailing after her.

  "The Muslim kind," Khadra flung behind her back.

  "I mean, what Arab country? I can't tell from your accent." It was true-her dialect was a mish-mash of Damascene, Palestinian, and Eygptian, all the Arab accents in the Dawah community.

  "Syria."

  "Ohhh . . . Syria, huh," he grinned. "Syrian girls have a reputation."

  Khadra wasn't listening to him. She knocked on the window of the Mercedes. "Afaaf?"

  The window rolled down on a cheerful male face. "Hi!" he said in English. Then he said over his shoulder in Arabic, "But she doesn't look American."

  "Afaaf?" Khadra called into the car. "Is Afaaf there?" She peered past him into the back seat. There were a couple of open cans of Diet Coke on a polished wooden tabletop between the seats, and something else-a thin line of white powder. Ghalya leaned over it. ' "Our house is your house," she said to Khadra, gesturing hospitably.

  Khadra recoiled. "Afaaf? Afaaf!" she called, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. The abaya, hanging from her shoulders, spun with her in a dramatic arc. There was utter desert darkness, no streetlights, a full array of stars above her wi
th such clarity as she hadn't seen since the station wagon trip across America. And even though she was in a Muslim country at this moment, and not just any Muslim country but the Muslim country, where Islam started, she had never felt so far from home. There was a nip in the air all of a sudden.

  "Wait for her in here," Ghazi said, opening the limo door for her. "The desert turns cold on you at night." Khadra shivered and got inside, Ghazi following.

  "Surely you don't wear that thing in America," he said, tugging at her veil and pouting boyishly.

  What the-? She batted his hand away. A pugnacious look flashed across his face and for a minute he reminded her of-of Brent Lott, of all people. He caught her hand by the wrist. Halfplayfully he wrested it down to her side. In the middle of Mecca, this was the last thing she expected.

  "Let go," she said.

  "Why? No one can see us," he said. Without warning, he was pulling her veil down the back of her head and pushing his other hand up against her breasts and his mouth was grazing her now exposed neck. She was squeezed up against the car door, and then he was pushing himself on top of her, his jeaned thighs taut.

  "Get off-get off of me!" she gasped. And what did he mean by that, "no one can see us"-wasn't the driver of the car right there, and wasn't he looking straight at them in his rearview mirror-only why didn't he do something, why didn't he move? The driver lowered his eyes and tucked his head down and sat very still.

  "What is it-what is the big deal-we're not doing anything you have to worry about," Ghazi said thickly. "-we've got our clothes on-and you grew up in America-don't tell me you never do stuff like this in America-"

  She fumbled for the door latch and tumbled out when it opened. He fell half out too, and cursed. Khadra pounded her fists on the side of the limo and kicked the back left tire of the Mercedes and shouted at the wan faces that poked out of windows at the commotion. "AFAAF! You get out here! You get out here right now and take me home! Afaafl"

  A disheveled Afaaf stumbled out of one of the two farther cars. "What is your problem?" she said, wiping her wet mouth with the back of her hand. "What's the matter, is this not as fun as what you do in America?"