Strangers

by Carla Banks

  ‘And they are unable to distinguish between what is good and valuable, and what is merely fashionable and transient, which is why young people must be guided by their elders. Islam does not bend its beliefs for compromise. You may go.’

  Roisin had trouble containing her anger as she went along the corridor to the cloakroom. The professor had banned her from teaching the way she wanted to and had issued a clear warning. If Roisin put a foot wrong from now on, her job would be in jeopardy. Employment laws in the Kingdom were close to non-existent. Her contract allowed the university to sack her at any time. Joe was not automatically entitled to have his wife with him. They had made concessions and allowed him to bring her with him because they needed his skills, but her work permit was dependent on her job. If she lost it, she would have to spend the next nine months sitting at home in the compound, which she didn’t think she could stand. It was possible she would lose her permission to stay in the country.

  As far as she could see, she had no choice–either she did it Souad’s way, or not at all. Souad had been unreasonable–unprofessional even, in Roisin’s eyes. But it wasn’t Roisin’s opinion that counted here, as Souad had made very clear. She tried to work out what it was that she had done to cause this upset. She had run the classes as seminars–but that had been understood from the start. Seminars gave her access to the students, allowed the exchange of ideas and the expansion of discussion. Although she’d been careful to keep away from topics that would be controversial in this most closed of societies, she’d become friendly with Yasmin and Najia. Maybe that was where she had overstepped the mark.

  She was still trying to work this out as she stood in the cloakroom adjusting her headscarf. It had to be something relating to the articles Najia had been posting on the web site, even though they were nothing to do with her. They were hardly inflammatory by Roisin’s standards, but by the standards here–who could tell? Did Souad think she had been encouraging Najia?

  The door of the cloakroom opened, and a woman came through. Roisin picked up her bag, then put it down again slowly as she realized that the woman was Yasmin. ‘Yasmin…’ she said.

  Yasmin looked round. ‘You have been to see the professor?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. She wants to stop the seminars.’

  ‘I know. She talked to me as well. Don’t worry, Roisin. We have learned a lot from you, and I’m sure we will enjoy your lectures.’

  Roisin sighed. ‘I wish I knew what had happened.’

  ‘It is not you,’ Yasmin said, shaking her head. ‘These are difficult times. If things go wrong, the professor has to show people that she is doing something.’

  Roisin made a rueful face. ‘I didn’t realize that anything had gone wrong.’

  Yasmin didn’t reply but concentrated on rearranging the folds of her scarf. ‘Truly, it is not you, Roisin,’ she said. ‘But I…’

  She stopped abruptly, and Roisin looked at her in surprise, then saw the black-shrouded figure standing in the doorway. It was Haifa.

  ‘Hello, Haifa,’ she said, after too long a silence.

  Haifa ignored her and spoke to Yasmin in Arabic.

  Yasmin replied, then said in English, ‘She says my driver is waiting. I have to go.’ She moved past Roisin to the door.

  Haifa stood there for a minute longer, then she left. Roisin fastened her bag. Her own driver would be here in a few minutes. She walked down the long, cool corridor where the darkness was punctuated by pools of light. As she came to the end, a voice spoke quietly from the shadows. ‘Roisin.’

  She stopped. Yasmin was standing there, almost invisible in her dark abaya, her face concealed. ‘Roisin, would you meet me next weekend? Thursday? I am going to the al-Mamlaka mall then. I will be at Starbucks at three o’clock.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

  Yasmin moved away down the corridor towards the exit. Roisin waited a moment, then followed. As she came into the bright sunlight, she saw Souad standing in the doorway of her office, watching. As Roisin’s eyes met hers, she smiled and nodded.

  20

  It was like the quiet before the storm. Damien had been watching the clouds gather, and had been bracing himself for the onslaught–and suddenly, everything was quiet and still. The security clamp-down seemed to be having its effect. The attacks hadn’t ended, but the police had started making arrests. Majid looked less stressed than he had for months when they met at one of the pavement cafés.

  ‘You are well, my friend?’ Majid said, after a greeting that was, for such a reserved man, close to ebullient. Unusually, he talked about his wife, or at least the impending birth of their child. ‘I am very happy,’ he said. ‘You must marry, my friend, and have children. I want to see you happy as well. A man is nothing without children.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Damien thought about Amy, about him and Amy living together somewhere with a family of their own. If he’d offered her that, would it have made a difference? If he went to her now, and made those promises, would it give them a new start? But the image had the thin, translucent quality of fantasy.

  Later, he drove to the hospital where Amy worked. It was a world-renowned centre for excellence in obstetrics and neo-natal medicine. Many of those training as researchers and clinicians were women, but even though their education received active government support, the hospital was having trouble filling vacant posts.

  Damien pulled up outside the hospital and swung himself out of the cool interior of his car into the heat of the late afternoon. The entrance doors slid open in front of him and he entered the cool of the air-conditioned lobby.

  The atrium was high and airy with marble pillars. There was a drift of coffee in the air from stalls selling drinks and pastries. Across the open expanse of stone floor, there was a rock sculpture. Water glistened as it ran across the surface and trickled away bringing a fresh coolness to the air.

  Through the doors, he could see a car drawing up outside. He recognized the driver as one of Arshak Nazarian’s staff–the man who drove Nazarian himself. Nazarian, coming to this hospital? He stepped back into the shadow of one of the palms and watched.

  A woman stepped out of the car and came through the main entrance. She was moving briskly towards the lifts. Her face was shadowed by her scarf, but Damien knew that quick, high-stepping walk.

  Amy.

  As she turned her head, the light fell on her face and he saw her eyes were bright with an emotion he couldn’t quite interpret in that quick glance. He crossed the lobby towards her.

  ‘Amy,’ he said.

  She spun round. ‘Damien! What are you…Oh. You’re here for a meeting.’

  He nodded.

  Her eyes went back to the entrance, where the car was just pulling away. ‘If it’s the staffing, it’s about time. We’re using–I hardly know the people on my ward, they come and go so quickly. I…’

  ‘It’s OK, Amy. You can do what you like. It isn’t my business any more.’

  The colour flooded her face. ‘I didn’t mean…’ The lift doors opened and she stepped inside. He moved back, and her eyes met his as the door slid shut between them.

  Amy and Nazarian. Where in hell had that come from?

  Suddenly he was breathing in the scent of her body, could feel the warmth of her breath on his mouth. He forced the thoughts out of his mind. Maybe Amy had been right. Maybe there had been nothing beyond sex in his feelings for her.

  But the thought of her with Nazarian was a gnawing ache.

  * * *

  Roisin called in to collect their post on the way back from work. Her mind was still going over the encounter with Souad as she let herself into the house. She dumped her bag in the kitchen and poured herself a glass of fruit juice, then she sat down to check the mail. There was a letter from her mother that she put on one side for later, a couple of things for Joe, including one from the university in Melbourne where he had applied for work once his contract in Riyadh was over. There was also an expensive-looking white envelope addressed to Dr a
nd Mrs J. Massey. She opened it and slipped out a thick white card with dark lettering.

  It was an invitation to a party the following weekend from one of the senior consultants at the hospital where Joe worked. The date of the party was 8 Thul Qedah. Roisin glanced quickly at the conversion calendar and realized with a jolt that it would soon be Christmas.

  Here, Christmas would be just another working day. The Mutawa’ah had very definite ideas about overt celebration of this non-Islamic festival. A party at Christmas was what they needed. It would be their first Christmas together–if together described their life these days.

  Putting the thought out of her mind before it could depress her too much, she pinned the invitation on the noticeboard and turned to her mother’s letter, which was full of chatty news from home and barely concealed anxiety about the insecurity in which Roisin was living. Please take care of yourself was the theme of the letter. I hope you have a good special day, her mother signed off.

  Roisin had posted a card ten days ago with the typical American Happy Holiday that seemed to be acceptable here, warning her not to send any Christmas greetings. Her mother had taken the warning literally, and even in the letter the forbidden word was not mentioned. Roisin smiled as she read it again. She could picture her mother sitting at the kitchen table as she wrote, frowning as she selected the code that would allow her to wish them a happy Christmas.

  But the date made her wonder about the party. She looked at the invitation again. Maybe it was a pretext to celebrate without offending their Saudi hosts. The address, as befitted someone of the status of the consultant, was in one of the wealthier suburbs on the far side of the city. She’d heard that at some of these parties they served champagne, real champagne that had been smuggled into the Kingdom. The Mutawa’ah rarely interfered with ex-pat parties, as long as events remained firmly within the walls of the house.

  She waved the invitation at Joe as he came through the door. He looked at it, frowning. ‘I didn’t expect us to be asked to this. Do you really want to go?’

  ‘Are you crazy? Of course I do. It’s in Millionaires’ Row. I’d love to see it.’

  ‘Billionaires, more like.’

  ‘Do they pay their top consultants that well?’

  ‘No chance. His wife’s the one with the money. Most of the people who live out there are bastards–it’s in the job description for being that rich.’

  Roisin was tired of the moral ambiguities of the Kingdom, tired of the long hours spent on her own and tired of looking over her shoulder. ‘So what? Joe, it’ll be Christmas. Our first Christmas together. Let’s go and drink their champagne.’

  Joe smiled reluctantly. ‘You’ve heard the rumours too?’

  He was opening his letter from Melbourne as he was speaking. As he scanned it, his face changed and he let out a whoop of triumph. ‘Yes! Sweetheart, they want me. They want me the moment my contract’s over. They want me sooner if I can do it.’ He put his arms round her waist and lifted her off the ground, waltzing her around the room. ‘Australia. What do you think? Shall we cut our losses and go?’

  He put her down and she looked up at him, breathless and surprised. ‘Go? What do you mean, go?’

  ‘I mean we can leave. We can get the hell out of here.’

  Leave. For a moment, the words meant nothing, then she felt her whole mood start to lighten, as if a curtain had been pulled back, one she hadn’t been aware of until it was gone. They could leave. They could go. They didn’t have to spend another nine months in the stifling restrictions that Riyadh imposed on its inhabitants. ‘Can we do that?’

  ‘My contract says a month’s notice–I made sure of that before I signed. Yours will be even less. It’ll take us a week or two to get exit permits, and we’ll have to sort out accommodation over there. Visas. Permits–shit, all that paperwork. But yes. We can do that. A month, six weeks tops and we can be the hell out of here.’ He looked at her. ‘Christ, I’d forgotten how much I hated this place. You’re right about the party–we’ve got something to celebrate.’

  The strain she’d seen on his face had gone. He was smiling as he kissed her. ‘This has been rough on you. Not the best start to a marriage. I sometimes think we might have done better somewhere else.’

  Suddenly, he was the Joe of the London summer again. ‘We’re fine.’ And she found she could say that with confidence.

  ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’ She nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking. If we go there, we’ll be there for a few years.’ His eyes were warm as he looked at her. ‘You know that baby we were talking about…?’

  ‘Baby…?’

  ‘Mmm. Want to go for it? Do you fancy having a little Aussie?’

  A baby. Her and Joe and…‘You know I do. Oh, Joe. When?’

  ‘Well–now? We could make a start.’

  So it wasn’t until much later that she got round to telling him about her day. As they lay in bed together, tangled in the sheets, she told him about her meeting with Souad, but all the frustrations of the day had evaporated into a minor annoyance. She didn’t want to spoil their evening by making him anxious, so she didn’t mention the odd encounter she’d had with Yasmin as she was leaving.

  21

  The mall took Roisin’s breath away. The retail section of the soaring needle that had drawn her eye that first day in Riyadh occupied three storeys of the building. The third floor, closed from the outside world, was reserved for women. It was a fantasy land of mirrors and glass and reflections with high ceilings and long walkways where the shop fronts displayed their wares.

  Lights glittered off the polished metal and the reflective sheen of the walls and floor. A fountain splashed in the centre of the massive concourse, refreshing the air, and coloured lights glimmered from ornamental pools. Women strolled through, stylishly dressed in jeans and tight tops, immaculately made up. Roisin couldn’t equate them with the dark triangles of the streets or the veiled faces she saw looking out from the back seats of cars.

  They were surrounded by a luxury that amazed her, display window after display window crammed with designer clothes, jewellery, accessories, all, presumably, to be worn hidden away under the enveloping abaya. The women around her may live in cages, but they were cages gilded with wealth and comfort.

  ‘Roisin.’ The voice behind her made her jump. She turned and saw two women sitting at a table outside a café with the familiar Starbucks logo. For a moment, she didn’t recognize them, then she realized that the one dressed in the uniform of fashionable youth–stylish blue jeans and a shirt–was Najia, and the other, more conservatively dressed, her head covered with a lacy scarf, was Yasmin.

  A third woman was standing in the background. She was older than Yasmin and Najia, and was dressed in a drab shalwar kameez. She didn’t look like a Saudi. She stood silently with her hands clasped in front of her.

  ‘Hello, Yasmin,’ she said. ‘And Najia. I wasn’t expecting you. And…?’ She looked at the third woman.

  ‘This is Bakul,’ Najia said. ‘She is my mother’s maid.’

  ‘Hello.’

  The maid looked at her unsmilingly and made no response to Roisin’s greeting.

  ‘Bakul, buy Roisin coffee,’ Najia said.

  ‘No. It’s fine. I’ll get my own.’ Roisin reached into her bag.

  ‘Please,’ Yasmin said quickly. ‘Bakul will get it.’

  The two women sat silently as the maid moved away. Roisin studied them. Najia looked younger, freed from her hijab. She also looked tense and unhappy.

  Once Bakul had gone, Najia leaned forward. ‘Roisin, I’m sorry we were not quite honest when we brought you here today. I asked Yasmin not to tell you I would be here because of the trouble.’

  ‘Trouble about the articles on the web site?’

  Najia nodded. ‘The professor spoke to my brother. And now…my brother says I must leave university. He wants me to stay at home.’

  Yasmin touched her wrist. ‘He’s upset. He will change hi
s mind,’ she said. Her worried frown suggested she wasn’t convinced by her own words.

  ‘He won’t, because he’s afraid. Everyone is afraid.’ Najia’s voice was agitated. ‘I am the one who is angry, but what can I do?’

  ‘We have been to Versace, but we still have all the other shops to visit,’ Yasmin said.

  Roisin looked at her in surprise and saw that Bakul had returned with her coffee. The maid put it carefully in front of Roisin. Roisin smiled at her. ‘Thank you.’ Bakul seemed surprised and quickly resumed her place behind Najia’s chair. Roisin looked at her uncomfortably. ‘I can’t—’ she began. She wasn’t going to sit here while the maid stood, but Yasmin interrupted her.

  She patted her stomach. ‘I have to get things for after, you see.’ She turned to the maid and spoke rapidly in Arabic. Bakul looked at Najia, then at the other women and nodded reluctantly. Then she left. Yasmin looked at Roisin. ‘I asked her to go to our next shop and arrange for them to have a chair for me.’

  Najia stirred her coffee with angry vigour. ‘My brother won’t let me go out now unless I have Bakul to go with me. She tells them everything–who I talk to, where I go and what I do.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Roisin wanted to help Najia, but she didn’t know what she could do. She recalled Damien O’Neill’s warning: any intervention from her would only make matters worse. ‘I thought that things were getting better here for women.’

  ‘So we thought, for a small while,’ Najia said. ‘But then they refused us the vote. Roisin, the elections were a set-back, not progress. Those who want reform are being arrested and prevented from speaking out. The traditionalists have been made more strong than they were before.’

  ‘And they are the ones who make people afraid,’ Yasmin said. ‘The government, the authority–they don’t worry if some woman puts an article on a web site about the vote. They just get it removed. But the others–they will kill for this. And they will harm your family too. People are too afraid to see that the only way to win is to fight back.’ Her eyes were constantly checking for the return of the silent maid.