I came back to where we were when Aisha pinched my leg. Maryam Madam had just asked me a question over her shoulder. I blinked.
“I asked if you and Aisha were taking private lessons. I agree with Naseema that it wouldn’t be Islamic to make something like that available to only some students but not all.”
I glanced at Aisha. She spoke for the first time, saying, “Leena hasn’t been taking any lessons, ma’am. But I have. From Leena.”
“You’ve been teaching law?” Naseema Madam asked, sounding stunned.
I spoke to Maryam Madam’s back. “I realized I had to take care of my own future,” I said, hoping she felt as hurt by my words as I had by hers. “I’ve been reading cases from my father’s practice, working with his partner when he can afford to pay me, and studying with Aisha. If Daria wants to share in that instead of spending her evenings flirting with the boys she picks up at Faisaliyah, she’s welcome to join us.”
Maryam Madam didn’t turn to look at me, but her shoulders pinched upward, so I knew my words had found their mark.
“Leave us,” she said. “Naseema and I need to talk.”
Aisha and I didn’t need to be told twice. We got out quickly. On the way back, Aisha dragged my sleeve, and we went to the bathroom and climbed up on the ledge. I was glad she’d thought of it, because I needed the fresh air.
“How do you do that?” Aisha asked eventually.
“Do what?”
“Be so brave. Say what you think without being afraid. It’s what they’ve been trying to get me to do in the debate preparations, but I just freeze up when I’m talking to people. I get really soft and forget everything I know. But you! How do you stay so sharp? That, too, in front of two headmistresses!”
For the first time the word didn’t make me angry. I was sharp, not a garawiyya who got fooled easily or who turned into a puddle in front of powerful people.
“They’re just women,” I said, feeling almost sad about it. “What’s the worst they can do?”
18
SHABAB
Ahmed was in ecstasy! Whatever it was that he and the others had been waiting for, they’d found it. I could tell just from the way he drove when he picked me up.
Coca-Cola was right to call it dancing, what they did. See, one way to understand what cars meant to a Saudi was to listen to the Rowdha Yousefs of the world, the ones who insisted on their right to be chauffeured around by their guardians. It was only when I learned to drive, when the wind roared in my ears as I took the car all the way to 140 on the highway without even a prick of fear, that I understood what those women were so panicked about. Driving in Saudi Arabia wasn’t about transportation or the practical question of getting from one point to another. Living in motion called to our blood as it did to our nomadic ancestors.
To us, driving wasn’t about taming the land but about becoming one with its wildness. It was about power, a rite of passage to be taken with the utmost seriousness.
Ahmed’s long fingers on the steering wheel were precise and determined as we drove out to the whiteland in the southern part of the city, the empty lots that were never built over because of the rancid industrial smoke-smell from the refineries.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked.
“It’s best you don’t know the details. Don’t you trust me? These things can get ugly. It’s best if you don’t get too mixed up in it.”
I scowled and turned away. I hated how he talked about the things he’d decided were “best” for me, that he still treated me like a kid. I hated how needy I became when he did, and I hated that a part of me loved him more for trying to protect me. Above all, I hated the gnawing suspicion that he saw me only as a little sister, while his heart really belonged to Mishail.
“Don’t sulk,” he said. “Tonight we’re celebrating.”
“I’d celebrate more if I knew what we were celebrating.”
He laughed and reached over to squeeze my hand in his. He let it go slowly, in a caress full of unmistakable intent.
“Oh, Leena, I love how you can always make me laugh. It won’t be much longer now.”
That kind of thing used to make me melt, but I realized only now, and with a sinking heart, that it was never what I actually wanted it to be. Never I love you.
I fought back the tears that threatened to spill. I told myself to be grateful that I had even this, the chance to feel love even if it wasn’t returned. Most girls never felt anything this deeply, never in their lives knew a stronger love than for the posters of actors. Most of us had resigned ourselves to the thought that we’d grow up to be a kind of Fatima Aunty, a fat and gossiping crone who had several opinions but no passions.
“Here,” Ahmed said in that fond tone he used when he knew I was upset about something. He pulled over, got out of the car, and came over to my side. “Why don’t you drive?”
I shook my head and laughed. “You think that’s all it takes to change my mood? I should increase my going rate. Start demanding Swarovski.”
“It’s no use, habibti,” he said, and my heart skipped a beat at the casual way he dropped that endearment. “I know what you really want.”
He was right. I loved driving, and I loved Ahmed’s shabab with more fire and fury than I’d ever loved anything or anyone, including Ahmed himself. I loved the word itself, shabab. It meant a group of young men, but it sounded effervescent, like an explosion of youth and vigor. I loved how the car moved to meet my slightest wish as we raced down the shining roads with their perfect palm trees. I loved to listen to Coca-Cola in the car ahead lean out and scream his restlessness, his tufshan, as he drank in the dust-scented rain. I loved our music playing on the radio, and our poetry, which was the knife with which we carved our hopes into the rose sandstone of the Najd plateau.
Suddenly, Ahmed started swearing loudly, a string of curses so obscene it made me shudder to hear him.
In the distance, I heard sirens.
“How far away are they?” I asked. “Tell me where they are.”
Ahmed turned to sit sideways, facing my profile. The police cars following us were several hundred feet away. He called out the distance and the road they were on, and I knew there was no way for us to stop and switch drivers. If we were caught, we’d go to jail, or worse if they found out I was a woman.
“We have to stop!” Ahmed shouted. “If we switch quickly, I can get us out of here!”
“There isn’t time!” I said.
To my surprise, the simplicity of the situation made me calm. There was no choice but to get away, to do whatever it took to escape. I recalled my mental map of the city and said, “They’ve probably guessed we’re going to Dirab Road, so maybe we can confuse them by getting on Ring Road and going east. Unless you have a better idea?”
When Ahmed said nothing, I snatched a look at him. He looked furious and frightened, and I turned back to the road. We sped past an eternity of golden roads punctuated by car showrooms, McDonald’s, and Euromarchés. We had long since overtaken Coca-Cola, who had disappeared into an alley.
Few other cars were on the highway this late at night. Once Ramadan was over and the shops had closed, there was nowhere left to go, and anyone still out this late moved hastily aside at the sound of the sirens.
An idea occurred to me. A mad one, but it was something. You could drive on Ring Road forever until you ran out of gas. Ahmed had done that on one of the other occasions. It was a wide, multilane loop around the city with a belt in the middle that allowed figure eights. But there was one place in the east, sandwiched between King Abdulaziz Hospital and the slums of Naseem, where Ring Road ended abruptly, hitting an intersection that would require a tight U-turn to put us right back on the highway going in the opposite direction.
“I’m going to Ali Al-Arini,” I said. “I’ll get off the highway—”
“And turn around,” Ahmed said. “You’re as mad as your father.”
I grinned.
The car roared as if preparing to take flight
. I held my breath as we came to the ramp. There was no traffic, so it was entirely down to skill. The car screeched and skidded as it slowed, but it obeyed me as if it were an extension of my body. I guided it around the turn and accelerated evenly on the curve back up onto the highway, hiding in plain sight.
The police cars got off the ramp and sped in the opposite direction.
We were free!
“I’m definitely ready to celebrate now!” I laughed aloud, my heart ready to burst with joy.
“Enough showing off,” Ahmed said sharply. “We’re late to meet the others.”
I was so stung the car swerved, and Ahmed cursed again. I told myself to ignore it. He was just recovering from the stress of it all. He’d never have spoken to me like that otherwise.
“I don’t think it’s safe for you to be driving anymore,” he said.
I nodded dumbly. Did he mean later tonight? Or forever? What was going through his mind, and why wouldn’t he tell me?
We headed to an empty construction site to meet the shabab. The others were waiting for us, and when we arrived, the boys whooped and hollered out congratulations, hugging and kissing Ahmed as if he’d scored a winning goal. My mind was still on our fight, so it took me a moment to remember that we had come to talk about the rebellion.
“Speech!”
“Speech!”
“Tell us everything!”
Ahmed put his hands out to silence the crowd, as if to remind them that what we were doing was already illegal, as more than four people out after the isha prayer discussing politics was a crime. I thought with another thrill coursing through me that we had already got away with so much, broken so many laws in just the last hour.
Ahmed strode to the center of the space with a bounce in his step that was stunningly familiar.
“Tonight!” Ahmed said, and looked around the room. “Tonight we begin to take our vengeance!”
More cheers erupted. Someone groaned as if that were too far away.
“I know,” Ahmed said, looking in that direction. “I know some of us have been waiting years for this. Long, painful years. And we know, don’t we? How slowly time passes in the desert? How slowly time passes for those who know grief?”
He spoke with confidence, always meeting our eyes, and I realized he had practiced this moment. I had seen my father do this, control the room, pace his words, tell his story with both the command of a sheikh and the humility of a servant, as if reminding us that in the end it wasn’t money or wasta that had allowed Muhammad to conquer the hearts of Mecca and Medina.
Words alone had won the two holy mosques.
“Let us remember the hadith of Al-Bayhaqi. Whoever looks into the house of another without their permission, they may put out his eye with a stone without incurring sin. Do our rulers and government ministers live by this? Do they not watch our houses, listen to our private conversations, and demand to know even our most private thoughts?”
There were loud, angry cheers, and once again Ahmed calmed down the crowd.
“Do they not try to turn us against one another, brother against brother, an Ahmed into a Fatullah, through threats and torture when baksheesh fails to corrupt us?”
The angry murmurs grew louder, and my heart started pounding in my ears. Even knowing that Ahmed was simply using the arts he had learned from my father didn’t change the fact that those arts called for my blood to rise. My fists were clenched at my sides.
“But we will not betray one another, will we?”
“No!”
“Never!” I cried. Ahmed’s eyes met mine, and for a moment, for one mad and jubilant moment, I knew we were alive with every cell of our being. I knew that I was in love beyond the call of reason or religion. I knew that if Ahmed asked me tonight, my answer would be yes.
“We will fight fire with fire!” Ahmed declared, and cheers erupted, so loud that I almost missed what he said afterward. Almost. “The minister who betrayed Hadi Mutazil will see that he isn’t beyond our reach!”
I froze in shock as the other boys swarmed Ahmed to hug him and lift him into the air.
I told myself I’d misheard. Or that he could have meant any old minister. There were hundreds, after all.
How many could have betrayed your father, you idiot? You really think the mahabith would have caught the most influential rebel in the country if it hadn’t had help? How did Mishail’s father go from rebel to interior minister in just a few short years?
You just need to be willing to get your head out of the sand.
But what did Ahmed mean, the minister wasn’t beyond his reach? Had Ahmed and Mishail worked out a plan together? Maybe Mishail had finally succeeded in finding something to blackmail the minister with, something that wasn’t stupid statistics about youth delinquency.
I schooled my face into a mask of excitement on the drive back. It was easy enough, given that Ahmed was driving.
“How did you find out?” I asked, keeping my tone casual. “That the minister betrayed my father?”
“Mishail, of course,” Ahmed said, and I didn’t let myself flinch. She had never once told me.
“And she has the evidence? To use against her father?”
Ahmed laughed and muttered, “She is the evidence.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” Ahmed said, putting his arm around my shoulders. “As I said, trust me. That monster will see what it means to hurt us. He’ll know what it feels like to have your family violated. I myself made sure of it.”
Unease coiled in my gut, but I knew I couldn’t let it show. I knew that other girls would probably be jealous of me now, that I had found a boy who loved me so much he would take my greatest burden from me. But I couldn’t just say Insh’allah and hope for the best. I’d done it before out of laziness, sometimes out of fear, because that is what we women did, trusted our God and our guardians and never ourselves, and then complained when things didn’t go our way.
I realized something, a simple thought that changed everything.
“The plan was always to get vengeance on Quraysh, wasn’t it?” I asked meekly. “Not getting my father out?”
“Your father can come out any time he wants,” Ahmed said with a casual shrug. “But only we can hurt the minister where he’s weakest.”
I nodded as if I had learned a great lesson. And maybe I had. It was suddenly clear to me that he had never once said that the plan was to get my father out of jail. I had assumed that, had let my hopes sit in the bag of his ambitions when he’d never had any intention of helping me at all. Not the way I wanted.
I studied his profile, wondering what I’d missed to have made such a great mistake in judgment. Was there something weak about his chin that I should have recognized? How could I have known that all he cared for was vengeance?
Daria, a voice whispered in my head. Daria is how you knew.
They were twisted in the same way, Ahmed and Daria, into thinking that destroying another person’s happiness was the same thing as being happy. After enough unhappiness, it was easy enough to believe that the moments when the stick landed on others were the same thing as paradise.
I had to find out what Ahmed meant when he said that he was going after the minister where he was weakest. I had a suspicion, and so I said, “Do you need any help? With the minister, I mean. I could ask Mishail.”
“No, it’s already done. She gave me everything I needed. I’m not putting you at risk. Your father would never forgive me.”
A plan formed in my mind. I said, “But you took a photo of me. How is that not putting me at risk?”
“You asked me to do that! But thanks for reminding me. It’s probably best you delete that from your phone. Here”—he handed me his phone, as I’d hoped he would—“get rid of it from mine, too.”
While he drove, I quickly searched through the photos. Not just for the one I knew he had taken of me, which I promptly deleted, but through his entire collection. I would recognize Mishail in a heartbea
t.
“Your phone is really different from mine,” I said to buy some time. “All the buttons are in different places.”
I was just starting to doubt myself, to feel ashamed of my suspicions, when I saw it. The rays of dawn slicing through an east-facing window made of ornate wooden lattice, cut into a wall the color of coral.
I deleted it quickly, but I suspected that wasn’t the end of it. I tried to think of what I might do if I had something truly incriminating on the minister’s daughter. The answer was obvious. I found it then. A photo of Mishail, unveiled, smiling, her head against the pillow as if murmuring a secret.
Along with the photo of her bedroom window, this one was posted online for everyone to comment on.
For everyone on the Internet to know that the minister’s daughter was unchaste.
“Still looking for it?” Ahmed said, and I fought down the flinch.
“Only just found the photos,” I said, hoping my voice was calm.
How could he? How could he have kept this from me? Obviously Mishail had known he was taking this photo, because her eyes were open. Had she wanted him to use it? And if she hadn’t, why would Ahmed believe that I would enjoy seeing my best friend humiliated publicly, for any reason?
I deleted the post, although the damage had probably already been done. I knew he’d find out soon enough, as soon as he got home or checked his phone again. When he did, he’d be furious, and he’d never speak to me again.
A wave of something almost like relief washed over me.
I handed the phone back to Ahmed, glad that it was dark and that he could see only my profile. We were only five blocks from my house. I just had to hold myself together until then.
“It was really smart of you to remember that,” Ahmed said. His arm was still around my shoulder, and his fingers played with my hair. I wondered why he thought I was smart, wondered if he could feel my swallowing down my disgust, if he sensed the rapid pulse in my neck.
“Sabah ul-khair,” he said as he dropped me off, his head jerking toward the sunrise. Good morning.
I got out of the car and waited until he had driven away before running into an alley. I leaned against the wall and sank to the ground, putting my head between my legs.
Driving by Starlight Page 14