“Quick, son! Get up, hurry, get me my blood pressure medicine! My heart, oh, my heart! I think I’m dying…”
Faisal tried hard. It must be said that he really tried hard to convince her, to get her to see Michelle’s many exceptional qualities, or, in the horse-trading language of mothers looking to make a match, her “fine attributes.” He went on and on about things that meant nothing to her. Mashael was a cultured, educated girl; she was a university student whose potpourri of Eastern and Western thinking he really liked and admired. The girl understood him; the girl was sophisticated and not straight out of the village like all of the other girls he had met or those his mother had hinted strongly about marrying him off to. The simple truth of it was the one thing that he could not say plainly to his mother: the girl loved him and he loved her. He loved her even more than she loved him, he was sure.
Faisal’s mother gulped down her pills. (If they didn’t help, at least they didn’t hurt.) She wept hot tears and she stroked his hair gently as she talked about her great hopes to marry her youngest son to the best of girls, to give him the best home there ever was, and the best automobile, plus all-expense-paid tickets to spend the best honeymoon ever.
Poor miserable Faisal! He cried, too, poor Little Faisal under the feet of his cherished mother. He loved no one in the universe more than his mother, and he had never opposed her, never ever, never in his life. He wept also for the sophisticated girl, his beloved who understood him and whom he understood, more than any two people in this world could ever understand each other, Michelle with her Najdi beauty and American personality, who would not be his.
16.
To: [email protected]
From: “seerehwenfadha7et”
Date: May 28, 2004
Subject: Is This Emotional Stability?
Lots of you folks out there simply did not believe what Faisal did. Or, to put it more accurately, what he did not do. Let me assure you, though, that this is exactly what happened. He told Michelle the sordid details of the back-and-forth with his mother—which I in turn conveyed to you—but only after several weeks of confused mental meandering, several weeks of self-punishment, several weeks of war between a passionate heart and a head that knew exactly what the limitations—set down long ago by his family—were in the choices he would have in life.
I can’t understand why all of you are so surprised! Such tales happen among us every day, and yet no one has an inkling of it except the two people who get scorched at the scene of the fire. Where do you think all of these sad poems and wailing, melancholic songs of our heritage came from? And today, poetry pages in newspapers, radio and TV programs, and literary chat rooms on the Internet all draw their nourishment from such tales, such heartbreaks.
I will tell you the things that happen inside our homes and the feelings that grip us—we, the girls of Riyadh—when such things happen to us. I will not attempt to access the contents of the manly crocodile chests out there because to put it simply, I don’t know enough about the nature of crocodiles. Frankly, crocodiles are not among my spheres of expertise or interest. I speak only of my female friends; the rest is up to someone who is feeling crocodilish enough to want to say something about his friends. That crocodile should definitely write to me and inform me of what goes on in the swamps they inhabit, because we—the lizards—are in truly desperate need! We really do long to know their thoughts and understand their motives, which always seem to be so deeply hidden away from us.
All hell broke loose for some after my last e-mail about Faisal and Michelle. Unfortunately, some people can always be heard over everybody else because they are proud practitioners of the questionable philosophy that the loudest voice beats all. If they are so eager to stir things up, wouldn’t it be a better use of their time for these vengeful types to wag their tongues against repugnant ideas and outdated traditions like tribal prejudice,* rather than against people who merely try to get some discussion going about how offensive these practices are?
Everyone is condemning my bold writing, and perhaps my boldness in writing at all. Everyone is blaming me for the fury I have stirred up around “taboo” topics that in this society we have never been accustomed to discussing so frankly and especially when the opening salvos come from a young woman like me. But isn’t there a starting point for every drastic social change?
And this I believe: I might find a few stray people who believe in my cause right now, or I might not, but I doubt that I would find many people opposed to it if I were to look half a century into the future.
Gamrah’s permanent return to her family’s home was billed as a routine visit. Her mother, who knew everything that had happened, thought it wisest to hide the truth from everyone. “A summer cloud”—that was how she described her daughter’s quarrel with Rashid and his threat to divorce her. Her mother decided not to tell even Gamrah’s father, who was in North Africa on holiday. After all, the man had never taken any interest in the personal lives of anyone in the household and he never would. Gamrah’s mother had always been the organizing mastermind, the mover and shaker of the household, and she always would remain so.
When various women visited, pouring out their congratulations on her pregnancy, Gamrah repeated what she had rehearsed with her mother:
“Rashid, poor man, is at the university night and day—he won’t even take any time off on holidays. The minute he realized I was pregnant, he insisted that I must give my family the good news in person, the darling! A month or so here, and I’ll go back. I know he can’t stand waiting for me any longer than that!”
In private, her mother would say, “There will be no divorce in our family. I don’t care if your brother did divorce his wife. Al-Qusmanji girls never get divorced!”
But Rashid the jerk did not let things go long enough to give Gamrah’s mother time to think of a solution. In a virtual reenactment of Sadeem’s tragedy, the divorce papers were delivered to Gamrah’s father two weeks after Gamrah landed in Riyadh, effectively blocking all possible maternal machinations. It appeared as though Rashid had just been waiting for the moment in which he felt he could justifiably rid himself of the wife that had been imposed on him by his family.
The divorce document was not particularly gruesome-looking in itself, but its contents were indeed pretty horrifying. When her brother handed it to her, Gamrah read the lines of script and collapsed onto the nearest chair, screaming, “Yummah!*Yummah, Mama, he divorced me! Yummah, Rashid divorced me! It’s all over, he divorced me!” Her mother took Gamrah into her arms, weeping and cursing the wrongdoer with vile invectives: “God burn your heart to ashes and the heart of your mother, too, Rashid, like you’ve burned up my heart over my little girl.”
GAMRAH’S SISTER HESSAH, who had gotten married a year before Gamrah and had been eight months pregnant at Gamrah’s wedding, joined her sister and mother in hurling curses, but in her case they were directed at all men. She, too, had suffered since getting married. Her husband Khalid, who had been mild-tempered and tender through the entire engagement period, had turned into another person immediately after marriage, when he became completely aloof and uninterested in her. Hessah complained constantly to her mother about his neglect. When she got sick, he would not take her to the doctor. And when she got pregnant, it was her mother who accompanied her to the standard pregnancy checkups. Once the baby girl arrived, her older sister Naflah had to go with her to buy the necessary baby products. What infuriated Hessah most in Khalid was his lack of generosity with her, since she knew he had a lot of money and he certainly was not stingy about his own expenditures. He refused to give his wife monthly expense money the way her sister Naflah’s husband did and the way her father did for her mother. Instead, he handed money over for each specific item she wanted to buy, and even then only when she had harassed him to the point where she felt humiliated.
If she needed a new dress to wear to her cousin’s wedding and asked him for three thousand riyals, he would come up with w
hatever excuse he could find to avoid giving her the money: “No need for the dress, you have lots of dresses.” Or, “Didn’t I buy you a dress six months ago?” Or, “I have barely enough money. Go and get it from your father, he’s always buying one of your brothers a new car, or did they dump you on me so they could rid themselves of your ridiculous demands?” Or some other equally outrageous comment that generally succeeded in getting her to turn her eyes away from whatever it was she happened to need or want. On those rare occasions when he did give her money, he would give her five hundred instead of the three thousand she had asked for, or fifty if, hoping to spare herself his humiliating response, she had only asked for the five hundred in the first place. And for some reason that escaped her, his mother encouraged him. In fact, the Scorpion (as she had nicknamed her mother-in-law) positively applauded her darling son Khalid for being so stingy with his wife. That’s how a good Najdi man should be. It was how her husband, Khalid’s father, treated her all those years.
Gamrah suffered a great deal of pain as a result of her divorce from Rashid. Though Sadeem had told her how excruciating her official separation from Waleed had been, Gamrah was overwhelmed in a way that Sadeem had not prepared her for. Nighttime was the worst. Since returning to the family home, she had been unable to sleep for more than three hours a night—she, who had never found it hard to sleep ten—or twenty—hours at a stretch before her marriage, and even during it! Now she would wake up tormented in anguish. Was this the “emotional instability” that was such a popular topic of conversation among her unmarried girlfriends? She had never once been aware of the importance of Rashid’s presence in her life until he left it.
Lying in bed on her side, she would extend her right leg full length and when her foot would not collide with Rashid’s, she would turn over restlessly. She would recite the two talismans and the protective Throne Verse from the Qur’an and all of the bedtime prayers she had ever memorized, and then she would clutch her pillow and lie on her stomach. Finally, she would doze off, her head at the upper right corner of the mattress and her feet stretched down to the bottom left corner. Only when she lay down on the diagonal like this could she fill the big emptiness that Rashid had created in her bed, but only a small part of the emptiness that he had created in her life.
17.
To: [email protected]
From: “seerehwenfadha7et”
Date: June 4, 2004
Subject: All I Need Is Another Saudi!
Have We not laid your chest open for you, and put aside your burden for you, that burden which weighed heavily on your back even as it exalted your mention among people? For with hardship comes ease; indeed, with hardship comes ease.—Qur’an, Surat Al-Sharh
(chapter of easing), verses 1–8
During the past few weeks, I have been reading news stories that talk about me, or let’s say, about my e-mails! Eminent national newspapers are writing about
a prevailing uproar here, and behind it is an anonymous young woman who sends an e-mail every Friday to a large number of Internet users in Saudi Arabia. In these e-mails, she tells the stories of her four female friends, Gamrah Al-Qusmanji, Sadeem Al-Horaimli, Lamees Jeddawi and Michelle Al-Abdulrahman. The girls belong to society’s “velvet class,” an elite whose behavior is normally kept hidden to all but themselves.
Each week, the writer reveals new and thrilling developments, leading her ever-widening circle of eager readers to await Friday noon prayers breathlessly. Every Saturday morning, government offices, meeting halls, hospital corridors and school classrooms metamorphose into arenas for debate about the latest e-mail. Everyone weighs in. There are those who support this young woman and those who object to her. There are those who believe that what these girls are doing is perfectly natural (and also is no secret) and there are others who boil with rage at the revelation of what they consider to be the excesses that are going on around them in our conservative society.
Whatever the outcome, there is no doubt whatsoever that these strange and unusual e-mails have created a furor in our society, which has never before experienced anything like this. It is clear that these e-mails will continue to furnish fertile material for exchange and debate for a long time to come, even after the e-mails cease to appear.
Sadeem began to enjoy her job at the HSBC Bank. Everyone treated her affectionately and politely. She was the youngest worker there, and people went out of their way to offer her help and advice. She was especially comfortable with Tahir, a Muslim Pakistani colleague who was the cheeriest and most fun of everyone.
The work was not burdensome. Her duties were limited to receiving people who came into the bank for information and helping them to fill out forms, or sorting and filing papers.
She wasn’t attracted to any of her fellow workers, so she behaved unself-consciously with everyone. Even better, there wasn’t a single other Arab among them, so she felt free to act as if she were one of them, joking with this one and laughing with that one, and putting no constraints on herself as she normally did when she was with a group of Arabs, especially people from the Gulf and particularly Saudis.
One day as the bank was closing, Edward, a colleague with blue eyes, black hair and a charming Irish accent, suggested that they all go to the Piano Bar on Kensington High Street. Sadeem agreed to come, since a whole group of people including Tahir was going and since the bar they were heading for was not far from her apartment. Tahir had planned to meet a friend at the bar and then go on to the movies. Sadeem announced that she would leave whenever Tahir did. He had become like a big brother in whose presence she felt relaxed and secure.
At the bar, Sadeem’s eyes kept straying over to the piano. A line of glasses sat on the piano’s transparent glass cover. The piano made her think of the white piano in her aunt Badriyyah’s old home in Riyadh. Tariq, her aunt’s son, had taken piano lessons and had taught her everything he learned.
Sadeem made the bold decision to try to play the piano even though it had been seven years since she had last played. She apologized in advance and began to attack the keys almost at random until she found the right note. She went back to the beginning and this time played a recognizable tune, a piece by Omar Khayrat, her favorite composer.
About to enter the pub where he was to pick up Tahir, Firas was stopped in his tracks by the familiar Arabic melody coming from within. From his position on the stairs, he peered through the glass window and caught sight of a very attractive young woman sitting at the piano. He stayed where he was, listening to her play until the sound of applause rose and the girl returned to her seat.
Firas descended the remaining steps and walked over to his friend’s table. He gave a quick greeting to the group and asked Tahir to hurry up so that they could get to the film in time, leaving no time for Tahir to introduce him to the group.
Tahir turned to Sadeem and asked if she was sure she didn’t want to come to the nearby Cinema Odeon with them. She declined, wishing them a pleasant time, but gathered her things to walk out with them, as she didn’t want to stay at the bar without Tahir. Outside, they headed left toward the cinema while she turned right, walking toward her flat.
A WEEK LATER Tahir threw a party for his thirtieth birthday at the Collection Pub and Bar at South Kensington. There, Firas saw Sadeem for the second time. He walked over to her just as she settled herself down on one of the chairs.
“My sister here is an Arab?”
Sadeem’s eyes flew open. “You’re an Arab?”
“Saudi, in fact. My name is Firas Al-Sharqawi.”
“I’m Sadeem Al-Horaimli. I’m so sorry, I assumed you were Pakistani like Tahir.”
He laughed at her embarrassed frankness. “What about you? Anyone looking at you would swear you’re Spanish! Even your English—ma shaa Allah! It’s perfect.”
“I’m Saudi, too.”
He smiled. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
Sadeem was not at all so thrilled to meet him, now that she knew he
was Saudi. “Yes, well, hello; nice to meet you, too.”
“I heard you the other day playing the piano and I knew you must be Arab, and then when I asked Tahir he told me you’re Saudi.”
“Really? I don’t recall you being there when I was playing.”
“I stayed hidden on the stairs and watched you through the glass. It’s the first time I’ve heard Eastern music in the Piano Bar. I thought your playing was amazing.”
“Thank you—that’s very kind.” Sadeem picked up her handbag from where it was resting on the chair next to her. “Well, I have to go now. Excuse me.”
“It’s early!”
“I have an appointment.”
“Okay, but why don’t you wait a little—at least until you have had a chance to say good-bye to Tahir? He’s probably downstairs at the bar.”
“I can’t. Please, if you see him, give him my best and tell him I’m sorry, I had to leave.”
“Good-bye, and I hope I didn’t bother you. Anyway, it was nice to have a chance to see you again.”
Bother me? You could say that! Just a few words from you and I can feel all my old bitterness rising up inside me like a volcano. What do you expect, though? You’re Saudi!
“It was very nice indeed. ’Bye.”
Sadeem returned home, cursing her luck at the revelation that Tahir’s friend was Saudi. She began reviewing in her mind every single thing that had happened that night at the Piano Bar the week before. Had she committed any of the transgressions that a young Saudi guy must not see coming from a daughter of his country? Had she said anything opinionated, bold, inappropriate? Had she been wearing something that was respectable enough?
Girls of Riyadh Page 10