by Qanta Ahmed
I had no response. I was crestfallen. The man I had regarded as a liberal, Westernized, brilliantly trained acolyte, a philanthropist to boot, had emerged a rabid anti-Semite. For all his scholarship of the Quran, I realized it hadn't reached further than his throat. It hadn't touched his heart. Islam guides Muslims to enjoin with all People of the Book, Jews included, to achieve mutual goals in the pursuit of virtue. For him, when convenient, Islam was lip-service.
It took me weeks to recover from my disappointment. I wanted so much to think well of my elite friends, but in the end, I discovered they were little better than the cake-ordering celebrators of murder. Though Mu'ayyad worked long nights and hard days to debride dead flesh on unfortunate patients in an effort to heal them, I realized he would never be able to debride his own devitalized hatreds that encased his glossy world. His hates would never heal. They would only propagate. He had no desire to shed the crusty cocoon of anti-Semitism, impenetrable to the love of a Jewish academic mentor and ultimately unsoftened even by the responsibility to preserve the innocence of his child. I felt hopeless.
These were the darkest weeks in the Kingdom for me. A veil had been lifted. The courtliness and courtesies had been swept aside, allowing coils of nurtured hates to become clear in the most unexpected corners. Whether perpetrating violence or merely condoning it, the Hadith had come true, just as The Prophet had predicted more than 1,400 years earlier: the worst enemies of Islam would come from within. Like arrows in a quarry, they were suddenly in our midst, and some of them wore Gucci and smoked Dunhills.
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13 The Prophet is referring to imposters who will commit destruction in the name of Islam. He mentions the gravest enemies of Islam will emerge from within it.
FINAL MOMENTS, FINAL DAYS
I WAS LEAVING IN THREE days. I stood in my living room. The cool November night carried the smell of the desert through open windows. My cat, Souhaa, lay napping with a fat, full belly, softly snoring. Around me my humble abode, once an ugly apartment, over time had morphed into a pretty twinkling Saudi home.
Life in Saudi Arabia was perpetually transient for all who worked there. I was no exception in this Kingdom where, for non-Saudis, the only certainty was impermanence. I looked at the containers that had arrived in the living room. They were big enough to hold me. These would return the contents of my home to New York. Two years suddenly had flashed by. Like all departures, I was experiencing mixed emotions of both relief and loss. I couldn't wait for the turmoil of transition to be over.
“Qanta, I would like to arrange a farewell dinner for you,” Imad had mentioned during a phone call some days earlier. “I want to give you a send-off.” I had flushed with pleasure, surprised.
“Please invite anyone you wish. They will be my guests.” He wouldn't hear of anything else. We chose to dine at a restaurant in Olleyah, a place renowned for the freshest seafood from the Red Sea. Lobsters were a particular specialty. For Imad, it was a serious passion.
I considered who else I could invite. Even though he had disappointed me terribly, I couldn't leave without saying goodbye to Mu'ayyad. I wanted to remember him in a positive light. Of course friendly Hamid was a must, along with Ahmed, Imad's best friend. I well knew my Saudi women friends wouldn't think of accompanying me to a mixed gathering, even in a private room in a restaurant in the Kingdom. Such open mixing would wound their family reputation and, further, consorting with men from work would ensure everyone would hear about this scandalous mixing. I didn't bother even asking them. We would meet and have our own farewells. As a result, I found myself invited to dinner with four men.
My relationship with Faris had been strained since my resignation, and somehow my Pakistani colleagues declined to join me as Imad's guests. Even in recognizing my departure, my friendships revealed themselves to be fragmented and disconnected. The men were divided by status as migrant worker or Saudi citizen. I was the lone link between divided factions. Declining politely, the others determined to accord separate occasions for our goodbyes, but this dinner (days from my final exit) would be the last time I would see Imad before returning to New York City. Immediately after, he would leave for a meeting in Jeddah.
On the evening of the dinner, I dressed up in a beautiful Escada suit only for it to be swamped in my horrid black abbayah. I was already counting the days before I could discard my polyester prison forever. My faithful driver, Zachariah, arrived exactly on time. I was looking forward to dinner and rather excited at the prospect of dining with so many men. As we journeyed into central Riyadh, I realized how much of my world, while interfacing with occasional Saudi women, was really the world inhabited by Saudi men.
It was after evening prayer. The religious police would be patrolling restaurants and malls making a nuisance of themselves far from us. As always, there remained a risk of being apprehended, but Imad obviously believed this was manageable and a risk worth taking. I found myself flattered and rather taken aback at his boldness.
Though we had still not discussed our deepening feelings for one another, we had made a habit of speaking to each other on a daily basis. Telephoning, often late into the night, we felt close. I already realized I would miss him enormously and privately I wondered if I would have the courage to declare my feelings to him before I would leave his country for good.
Zachariah dropped me off in a nondescript parking lot outside the restaurant venue. I scurried toward the entrance. Years in the Kingdom had not expunged my intense discomfort of being in public, especially when unaccompanied. A knot of fear gathered in the pit of my stomach, which always happened to me when I left my home and went outdoors in Riyadh. For a single woman, being outside the security of a gated compound, a glass walled ICU, or the privacy of high concrete walls was unsettling, bringing feelings of exposure and vulnerability into sharp focus. I actually felt a guilt of some kind. I was finally beginning to understand the Saudi women whom I had seen scuttling about in Riyadh, whether in veils in malls or in scrubs in hospital corridors. I could understand their intense recoil from public space, where anything could befall them, a place where their vulnerabilities were most visceral. Now, I felt the same.
Inside, the restaurant was dimly lit. Heavily paneled walls of teak shone, glossy with the glow of bonhomie. Instantly I felt glad to be ensconced away from the public space. Almost as soon as I approached the reservation desk, I was flanked by the four men: Mu'ayyad, Hamid, Ahmed, and Imad. We greeted each other with warmth expressed only in handshakes; in itself anathema for Saudi men when greeting Muslim women, but each man here was comfortable with the Western woman within me. To a man, they looked thrilled.
As a group, we raised no eyebrows; behind partitions other dinners were busy enjoying their meals. We passed the screened-off men's section quickly and bypassed the ladies' section. Instead, we were lead by the South Indian waiter to a private cabin inside the family section, where each table was placed inside a room of its own. Behind the wooden panels and the frosted glass, we were relatively secure. It would be difficult for the Muttawa to intrude, unable to tell whether they would be accosting a Saudi family enjoying a private dinner or, like us, surreptitious friends who were flouting the law.
The panels were about seven feet in height; the room like a giant office space divided into cubicles. No ceilings enclosed each dining area. A soft hubbub of conversations in Najdi Arabic, the clink of cutlery, and the sound of ice trickled in from above.
We seated ourselves. Ever thoughtful, Imad had invited his most senior nurse, Lynn, who was already settled. He had asked her along so that I would not feel uncomfortable surrounded by men. I was surprised to see her there but was touched at his clumsy consideration, immediately knowing she was a panacea not for my discomfort but for his. In Saudi Arabia it still remained illegal and brazen to dine with an unrelated, unchaperoned woman in public.
As a man from a conservative traditional and very elite Saudi family, I knew just how far Imad had deviated from his usual customs. A son of a
Senior Saudi bureaucrat, Imad was steeped in protocols of religion and culture. While he may well have been comfortable dining in mixed company in the West, in the Kingdom he was violating a social taboo that would offend his closest family members. I was surprised that despite all his inhibitions, Imad had suggested such a public gesture and in the presence of his closest male colleagues. As usual, he transmitted mixed messages. I could never truly know what he felt about me and what he intended for me to feel in turn.
Saturated with heavy cologne, all the men except Imad were dressed in long flowing Saudi thobes. I inhaled their masculinity, realizing how much I had craved mixed company. Imad chose to stick to his customary khakis and open-necked shirt. Among them all, it was Mu'ayyad who looked truly glamorous.
In place of scrubs, his thobe was exceptionally fine, the linen sheen on it perfectly pressed, starched, and glowing blue-white in halogen spot lights. Silver buttons glinted at the throat. A high, starched collar, almost Victorian, framed handsome and very fair Caucasian skin, freshly shaven and dressed in aftershave. His headdress was subtly elegant and, like many dashing rakes in Riyadh, he had folded the cloth at the front into the low peak of a Stetson-shaped drape. Tonight he was a truly polished Saudi cowboy. The long drapes of his ghutra were tossed behind his broad, chiseled shoulders, sweeping into an elegant mane. I spied a tiny Dunhill logo on a corner of the cloth, revealing the discerning taste of the man within. In slim, blue-veined fingers, with a surgeon's precision, Mu'ayyad twisted a costly silver and lapis lazuli rosary. Nicotine-stained nails gave away his extremely heavy smoking habit. I complimented the men on their national dress. While the others looked uneasy, characteristically Mu'ayyad handled it well.
“Thank you, Qanta. I like to dress up when I go out. Our national dress is so comfortable. I much prefer it to Western clothing.” He smiled, laying the expensive rosary on the table. He was extremely dashing. I regretted not getting to know Mu'ayyad sooner. Now that I was leaving I would miss him a lot.
Only Imad was dressed in Western clothing and he squirmed as Mu'ayyad was speaking.
As I watched Imad around his countrymen that evening, I finally began to see how he was as much an outcast in this environment as I was. Trapped in the echelons of power, his nonconformity was even more striking and even more disabling. In his Tommy Hilfiger he was a jarring outcast among the elegant Saudi men surrounding him.
The food arrived. To o salty to eat, I hardly touched my soup while I was busy talking. My Saudi hosts ordered like emperors, the table spread with enough food for ten. Ahmed regaled us with funny stories in a very butchered rendition of Glaswegian. We laughed for hours. Finally the mood became more serious.
“This is not a good thing, that you're leaving,” Mu'ayyad began, smiling sincerely. “Are you sure you can't change your mind? Dr. Fahad would easily arrange it.”
“Oh that's kind, Mu'ayyad, but I am already packing. The cargo people come the day after tomorrow. And you know it's better for me to plan a move. I have done what I can here.” Imad was looking at me intently. I wondered if he wanted to express his reservations about my departure.
“And Imad suggested I consider changing to do less intensive care. Didn't you, Imad? We even thought perhaps I should change departments, but none of it would get me back to my dream of returning to New York. No, Mu'ayyad, it's definitely time to go. I need to return to somewhere where I can be free. You know it's not easy for a woman here, especially for an unmarried one.”
None of them looked me in the eye. The nurse busied herself with the breadbasket. I had probably insulted my hosts by pointing out the uncomfortable and ugly realities of Kingdom life, something to which, as men, they were completely immune. In many ways, men were as free here as they were in the West, especially the affluent men who were seated next to me.
When the absence of cinemas or restaurants that were secure from the Muttawa grew too wearing, they could jump in their cars and drive themselves out of the country, reaching Dubai or Oman or Bahrain in a few hours. As men, they could apply and receive multiple entry and exit visas and take as many international trips as they liked without seeking anyone's permission. I discovered that evening that the Saudi employees did not grant their employers possession of their passports in the way I had been compelled to do for these two years. No, their experiences of the Kingdom were very different than mine. Whatever hardships they might perceive they faced, they paled against the plight of even privileged women like me.
“Well, America may not be the same place you left, Qanta, not after 9/11,” Ahmed warned, “especially if it continues in this direction in these weeks after 9/11. Look at what they are doing with food parcels and bombs in Afghanistan. It's a disgrace.”
“We will flush them out!” someone mocked, remembering President Bush's initial speech post 9/11. The men at the table laughed in scorn.
“And just look at the state of Palestine,” Mu'ayyad continued. “America is always allying with Israel, no matter how bad the conditions become because of the occupation. How can you want to live in America, that Israeli ally?” Mu'ayyad was smoldering, impassioned. He tapped a bruised packet of Marlboros, extracting a single cigarette. Lighting his cigarette he snapped his heavy lighter shut with an expensive click. I watched him take a long, sexy drag, struggling to order my thoughts. Nervously, I side-stepped his anti-Semitism. I didn't want to bring that ugliness to the fore again.
“Well, Mu'ayyad,” I began gingerly, “I think America is a great country.” I hoped my voice didn't sound too plaintive. “It is a country that allows me to be freer than here, a country that is the closest we have to a pure meritocracy. It gave me all my abilities, all my training, and all the opportunities that stemmed from that effort. I am not an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I hadn't even met Palestinians until I moved here to Riyadh.
“God has granted the Arab Muslim world unparalleled wealth and what is being done with it? Sometimes I feel the wealth here from oil has just been set ablaze, ignited. Like so many oil rigs aflame, it's just vaporizing. Prince al-Waleed is a leader in reinvesting in his country, one of very few men who do this. For the rest of us, all the GDP we earn travels out of the Kingdom. We don't give back to our countries. But for me, most importantly, in America I get to be a Muslim on my terms, not on those of some illiterate Muttawa! No one tells me how to be a Muslim there, or how to be a woman there, for that matter!”
I stopped, breathless and rather worried.
My fellow dinner guests were silent. I had deeply offended them. For once Mu'ayyad didn't have a pat answer. He blew smoke circles and started biting his ragged nails. Lynn looked up in concern but didn't dare enter the discussion. With nervous laughter, looking up at the open ceiling, Imad broke the awkward silence.
“Well Qanta, if the Mutawaeen enter, we will tell them it was you that said that! We will watch them carry you away.” The table dissolved into strained giggles. I laughed the loudest and the tension ebbed. He smiled at me, meeting my gaze warmly.
Like the People magazines that arrived in the Kingdom censored, with ripped-out pages and photographs blacked out in thick marker, there were many subjects that could not be discussed outside the barricaded privacy of high-walled homes. In his squirming discomfort, Imad was feeling, like the other men here, some of the same vulnerabilities I sensed as a woman. They were afraid. However, unlike my upbringing in England and America, he and his colleagues had never mastered the freedom of expression that a liberated life in the West truly inculcates. Worse than the defiant women I had encountered in the Kingdom, these men were afraid to stand up for themselves. They had become their own censors to the degree that the governing forces didn't need to actively impose restrictions. The men had censored their own logical dissent and viewed matters, whether women's rights, driving legislation, or the frighteningly passionate subject of Middle Eastern politics, through the same distorted lens of a society that enforced oppression. The men around me, while allowed certain liberties, wer
e no more free than the heavily veiled women who scuttled around them.
The time flew too quickly and soon dinner was over. Imad offered to drive me home, again with the chaperone of the nurse as a cover. Instead, my driver was waiting and so, crestfallen, he escorted us to my car. Discreetly the nurse seated herself into the vehicle, allowing us time alone. Under the Riyadh sky still glowing with light pollution, I finally gazed at Imad. We stood face to face. He was tall and leaning over me slightly, from my vantage, at a perfect height for a kiss. I never felt more attracted to him, but between us, in the short distance which separated us, was a world of traditions, Mutawaeen, restrictions, and cultures that would ultimately separate us forever. On that evening we still believed in each other and the possibility of a shared future. Imad did his best to reassure me.
“You know Qanta, I travel a lot. I am in London and Paris very often. We will see each other soon.” He continued to smile at me, all the shyness suddenly gone.
We stood together in silence for a while and then, after chastely shaking hands, I got into the car. I watched his tall figure absorbed into the darkness. The last image I had was of a rangy muscular figure, hands in pockets, locked in a puddle of street lighting. Like a performer on a stage he was spotlit, immobile, watching me leave, until finally I could see him no more.
Detecting my somber mood, the nurse reassured me, “Don't worry Qanta, you will see him again. He travels all the time. This isn't so much a farewell as a ‘see you later.’” She beamed at me. I suddenly wondered if she was privy to Imad's feelings.
The next day I resumed the slow task of packing and dismantling. I folded up my prayer mats, purchased in the marketplace outside the mosque in Mecca during Hajj. How I wished I could see the Ka'aba again before I left. I stroked the silken rug, watching the soft pile change color with direction. Just as I was pondering this, the phone rang.