My mother smiled, the bone-chilling and ruthless smile that I had come to recognize as meaning that the next words would land with the crisp deadliness of lightning.
“I’m sorry that your infertility has made you feel the need to mother me. But I don’t need you.”
Fatima Aunty gasped. A shiver passed through me. I understood now why my mother always had such frustration in her voice when she said I was sharp. I had learned my anger from her.
I fixed my eyes on Fatima Aunty’s red face, on the fat and quivering lower lip that I loathed for its weakness.
Fight back, I pleaded inwardly. Fight back. She wants you to.
“I just—how can you say such a thing? I’m here because I love you.”
My mother put on her abaya and handed a pile of black silk over to Fatima Aunty with an expectant eyebrow.
“If you’re going to be like this, I’ll—see if I care! I’ll never come back! I’ll tell Hadi, and I’ll never visit, I’ll never—”
My mother grinned.
Fatima Aunty marched out, texting her driver furiously. She brushed past me on the way out, her face so orange that it appeared her headscarf was choking her.
“Let’s go,” my mother said. She had a determined look in her eyes, the kind that I knew spelled death for anything or anyone that got in her way. It was the same look she had when she put bleaching powder on the kitchen floor and sprayed Windex on the cockroaches to melt them into dust while they were still alive.
I followed quietly, taking my place by the window in the back, separated from Faraz by my mother, who sat in the middle. Nobody spoke, although my mother was having some sort of conversation with the Hosseins, in the front seat, that consisted purely of exchanged looks. Rather than hazard a guess, I looked out the open window, glad of any chance to be outside. In Riyadh, with its geometrically designed, wide roads, pedestrians were rarely if at all present. Ahmed said it was because of the law against public gatherings, enforced by the mahabith.
We passed through the poorer districts on the outskirts of the city, where the foreign laborers stayed in cramped hovels. Men with rubbery red skin lounged around bakhalas, spitting out tobacco juice or cleaning their teeth with twigs as they waited for work. Young immigrant boys with white mesh caps rode bicycles through narrow streets, driving me mad with jealousy. Women were allowed to ride bicycles only if escorted by a mahram. Not that much bicycling was likely to happen with an abaya in the way.
Finally, we were out of the city, heading toward the red mountains. The landscape was barren and empty to the horizon in every direction, and yet it filled me with a sense of possibility. Beyond the city limits, past the police, were the farmlands and pastures of the bedouin who lived off the land. Sometimes I found myself envious of them, even though they were poor, especially the young girls who stayed behind to milk the goats and tend to the camels.
Ahead, the sun shone so brightly that it created a mirage, as if a thin film of water was on the smooth road. Small shacks dotted the roadside, where men lounged in the shade alongside gallons of water and crates of soda cans. And then those, too, disappeared, and we were well into the Najd plateau. Swirls of dust whipped up in little tornadoes, enchanting inverted pyramids that soared arrogantly into the sky.
Hossein took an exit, leaving behind the paved road for a flat path carved by the tires of other trucks. My mother took off her headscarf, shaking her hair loose with a look of mute obstinacy. We stopped in a clearing that was hidden from the road by a large hill. The adults pulled out a mat and blankets and set up a picnic in the shade of the truck. I wandered around, exploring the clearing, glad to stretch my legs and just be outside. Faraz sat in the flatbed of the truck, reading some university-preparation book. I didn’t look at it too closely, because it would only make me jealous. He was due to hear back soon about whether he’d been accepted.
I heard my mother call me. There was something strangled about her voice, as if she was trying very hard not to show her emotions. I hurried back.
To my surprise, all she said was, “Faraz, why don’t you try teaching Leena how to drive.”
For a moment Faraz and I looked at each other as if confirming we hadn’t imagined that.
“You just want us to go away so you can talk in peace,” I said.
“So?” my mother said with the same strained voice, and turned away as if the decision had been made.
I got in the truck. I knew better than to argue with her when she was in that mood. We’d both end up saying the most horrible things to each other. I was so preoccupied with trying to understand what was going on that I forgot I wasn’t supposed to know how to drive. I had adjusted the seat and mirrors for my height and turned the key in the ignition before I realized Faraz was supposed to teach me how to do those things.
It was too late. My secret was out. Faraz’s face showed that not only had he figured out that I knew what I was doing, but he also had a pretty good idea I’d been doing this a lot, and recently.
My heart skipped a beat. I was about to beg him not to say anything when he said quietly so only I’d hear, “If you step hard on the accelerator, the truck will jump. It’s a common mistake people make when they’re first learning. It usually makes them scream a little.”
I obeyed, overcome with gratitude. We moved forward in a jerk, and I squealed loud enough for the adults to hear. They laughed and told us to have fun. My ears burned.
We drove out of earshot before I said, “You aren’t going to ask?”
“Not unless you want me to,” he said. I shook my head. He continued, “Don’t drive at such a steady speed, then.”
I laughed and relaxed, slowing and speeding up inconsistently as if I were new at this.
“Do you know what they’re talking about?” I asked.
“Yes,” Faraz said. “It’s what they always talk about. Your future.”
“Oh,” I said, and my voice shook. I wanted to ask what he knew, what they said, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
“I’ll tell you if you really want to know,” he said, looking ahead instead of at me. “But not while you’re driving. And there are things you might not want to know.”
His voice had a twinge of hurt, and I wondered what that was about. He was right, though. There were certain things it was better not to know. What I’d learned about Daria, about the secrets of Najd National, had made me sick with anger and disgust that had no outlet. I couldn’t even talk to Ahmed about it. The idea of talking to a boy about that stuff was completely impossible.
“When?” I asked Faraz. “When can you tell me?”
“Tonight, after they’re asleep. If you can stay awake, meet me behind that.” He pointed to a mushroom-shaped rock.
The evening passed so slowly that I thought I would die of anxiety. I watched my mother carefully as she helped Faraz’s mother with the cooking, but they let nothing slip. They cooked the meat the bedouin way, burying it in foil amid the sun-baked stones of an extinguished fire pit to let it roast over the course of hours. My mother avoided looking at me, so I knew she was upset about something.
We set up three tents, one for Faraz’s parents, one for me and my mother, and one for Faraz. It took every bit of my concentration to escape the tent without waking her up, and I padded all the way over quietly to the rock that was lit up in the moonlight before I realized my teeth were chattering. Faraz was already there, and when he saw that I’d come wearing the clothes I’d gone to sleep in, he took the blanket he had wrapped around himself and put it around my shoulders.
I stammered a surprised thanks.
“Are you really sure you want to know?” he whispered.
I nodded, and then realized he probably couldn’t see it, so I said, “Yes.”
“Your mother wants a divorce,” he said.
I made a startled sound, and Faraz leaped up and clapped his hand over my mouth. I felt faint with cold and shock. It couldn’t be. My knees shook, and Faraz’s other arm came around my wa
ist to hold me up.
“You promise you won’t be so loud if I let go?”
I nodded, sinking to the ground. I felt that same floating sensation I’d had in the headmistress’s office, the words coming from a distance. I was numb.
“The trouble is that she can’t actually sue for khula without your father’s consent. All the other requirements can be met.”
My mind scrambled to remember the requirements for khula. In other countries, women had the right to divorce without the husband’s consent. It was known as talaaq-i-tafweez. But not here. In addition, here the wife had to pay her husband back her mahr, the bride-price she had been gifted with upon marriage. No wonder she’d been working so hard. All those ifthar parties at Ramadan, when I thought she was just keeping herself busy, she’d been collecting the required amount. She’d never said a word.
Faraz said, “In Yemen, the woman is granted a divorce if the husband is in prison for some number of years, but we don’t have that law here. If the husband doesn’t consent—”
“It’s up to the judge,” I finished. “How can she do this?”
“It’s a gamble,” Faraz said. “I think she believes your father won’t consent. That he’ll realize where he belongs, sign the taahud, and come home. Because, if she gets the khula, she also gets custody of you.”
I felt a jolt of pride underneath my anger. It was a smart plan.
“But if he accepts—” I couldn’t finish that sentence. I couldn’t believe that my father would let that happen.
“You know better than me how that ends,” Faraz said. He wouldn’t look at me. I understood his embarrassment. My mother’s catering business would lose clients. My mother wouldn’t be able to stay in the house or keep her bank account. I would never find a husband or a job when people found out that my parents were divorced. We would have to start over in Hofuf with the women refugees (and eat cockroaches), and that was if we even got to Hofuf. We wouldn’t be able to travel without permission. In all likelihood, we’d end up on the streets.
“We have to stop her,” I said, shaking my head helplessly. It was too insane a risk.
“I think there’s another plan,” Faraz said hesitantly. “It was an idea my father had, right when they asked you and me to go away. I don’t know the details for sure, but I can guess.”
“What is it?” I asked. Faraz didn’t answer. I grabbed his collar. “Tell me!”
“Shhh!” he said. His hands came up around mine and gently pulled them off. The warmth of his hands made me realize again how cold I was. But I couldn’t bear his pitying kindness. I snatched my hands away.
“There’s only one other person who can make him come home.”
I waited, but still Faraz hesitated. I wondered why he wouldn’t tell me. What could be worse than divorce? My mind wasn’t working, and my thoughts spun around in hazy circles, trying to put the pieces together.
“That’s what my father said,” Faraz continued. “That there was just one other person. Then your mother said she would never let another woman pay for her happiness.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, pulling the blanket close around me.
“I don’t know.”
“You said you had a guess.” I knew I was begging, my voice hoarse with despair.
Faraz sighed. “It’s only a guess. The only other woman who has any influence over your father is you. I think … I think they mean to get you married, to someone powerful, ideally in government. Your father would never consent to something like that. He’d die first.”
I shuddered. It was too absurd.
“That won’t work. I’d have to consent, too,” I said. “Besides, who in government would want to marry the daughter of a jailed rebel?”
“Leena, there’s something else you should know,” Faraz said, shifting awkwardly in the sand as if he needed to pee.
“Yes?”
“I got accepted to Qaraouine.”
My heart skipped a beat. I was glad that it was dark and that he couldn’t see that my immediate reaction was a wild and jealous fury. It broke my heart that Qaraouine, the university started by a woman, was now closed to us all. And Faraz had gotten in, while I wasn’t allowed to apply!
“I don’t know how I got in,” Faraz said, sounding amazed. “Everyone else has already done something amazing with their lives. Helped refugees in Jordan and Egypt, petitioned the United Nations, gone on national television to debate world politics. I’ve barely made it through high school, and you know exactly how good I am at law. You started off behind me, and now I swear you’re better at it than my father.”
“Congratulations,” I said, choking with the effort not to cry.
“I don’t know what your plans are for the future, but if you wanted to come with me—”
“How?” I snarled, feeling far too breakable to be kind about it. “I can’t even apply. Even if I got in, I couldn’t pay. If I got a scholarship, I wouldn’t be allowed to accept it. And I can’t leave the country without a guardian, and even if my father did get out of jail, it would be by signing the taahud, which we know means he wouldn’t be allowed to leave the country. So how exactly am I supposed to come with you? And what am I supposed to do while I’m there, count chickens?”
For a long time Faraz said nothing. He seemed to stop and start sentences in his head, as if he had an idea in his mind but didn’t want to say it. In the end, all he said was, “If you wanted to come, if you found a way, I would like for you to come with me. That’s all. No pressure.”
Then he got up and walked off, his shoulders hunched in defeat.
16
SHILLAH
The shillah was my idea, but the contract was Aisha’s, naturally. It was simple, but we started it with Bismillah-ur-Rahman-ur-Rahim, which meant In the name of God, the beneficent, the merciful, so breaking it was unthinkable.
We wrote out the contract while sitting on the ledge outside the bathroom window, where the pellet gun and bag of bullets gathered dust. It was my first day back after the weekend camping in the desert with the Hossein family, and I really needed to talk to someone. I didn’t know how boys did it, kept secrets that were so explosive they could shatter us in an instant. I felt the pressure building inside me, and I didn’t know how long it would be before I burst from holding it all in.
As for Aisha, she was always the practical one. I took her to the ledge after Daria blew up at her yet again for confusing jihad and itjihad, which was a very reasonable mistake that everyone made at least once, the way anyone learning English started off thinking inflammable meant the opposite of flammable. But Daria had called Aisha the weight around her feet that would drown us all. Aisha burst into tears, and I just couldn’t take it anymore.
I said we should form a secret society, but only invite outcasts. Collect the people who weren’t so religious that they’d be absorbed into the Bilquis Bubble, but who, for whatever reason, weren’t part of the liberal Daria-Mishail-Zainab set, either.
Aisha said the hard part would not be getting people to join, but getting them to stay, and stay true when things got hard. We needed a contract that would guarantee our safety. Otherwise, what was to stop someone from betraying the others’ secrets if they decided someday to leave the shillah? Hadn’t Daria betrayed Bilquis exactly this way?
So the contract we drew up required that girls who joined had to share a secret that they had told no one else and had to give evidence of it to the others for safekeeping. I shared a print of the photo I’d had Ahmed take of me with his cell phone (unlike us, boys did not have a busted camera on their phones). In it I was unveiled and behind the wheel, wearing large reflective sunglasses, my hair flying loose behind me as if I were a movie star.
Aisha gave me love letters she had received from a cousin in Dubai she hoped to marry one day.
The second rule written into the contract was that we would do whatever we could to help the others in the shillah and never knowingly harm them. Rule three contained proceed
ings for new members. Besides submitting acceptable evidence of their trespasses, at least three existing members would have to agree that the new person could be included. (Which I pointed out was ridiculous since there were only two of us, but Aisha seemed convinced that was a temporary situation.)
The remaining rules were silly, but for Aisha’s sake I signed to agree that once we joined, only death could end our membership, and that if a new member was invited and refused, she could not ask again for one year. I didn’t want to point out that since we were seniors, after we left school in the spring, some of us would end up housewives never to be seen again while others would do their best to leave the country and never come back, so planning a multiyear contract was a little too optimistic.
I didn’t tell Aisha about my mother’s plan to get divorced, though. Only naive garawiyya told all their secrets to new friends, starting with the most shameful. But starting a shillah, or any friendship, as I’d learned from Mishail, was like a dance. You had to find out how you fit with the other person, then you had to find the beat, and then came the first phase of the new friendship, where you were surprised at how well you moved together, how much you agreed on. It was only after you found that groove that you could test its strength.
The secrets we started with were the ones we were actually proud of. Driving, love, romance, and adventure. Just as Mishail had shown me her lace underwear stuffed in the air conditioner, where they lay in wait for the right day, I showed Aisha a photo of Ahmed that he had posted on a site that allowed us to share pictures but see them only once. Then the photos were automatically deleted, exploding in a puff of virtual smoke, saving us all from future ruin. Aisha used it to share a photo of her cousin Nasser and cursed his pale, hairless skin.
“He’s a Hejazi man; I don’t know if he’ll ever change,” she said, as if she didn’t delight in exactly that paleness.
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