But your eyes remained the way I love them.*
44.
To: [email protected]
From: “seerehwenfadha7et”
Date: January 7, 2005
Subject: Life after Lamees’s Marriage
Readers were divided—as usual—between those who supported Sadeem’s return to Firas and those who opposed it. But everyone did agree this time—unusually—that come what may, the extraordinary love between these two demands an extraordinary ending to their story.
The hints about the benefits of attachment and stability Michelle heard from Hamdan came in a variety of shapes. He told her his dream was to marry a girl who would be his best friend, and that he was hoping he would find a girl who had exactly her grasp of things and her openness toward the world. (Michelle smiled as she heard him praise her openness, the very same quality she’d heard so much criticism of in her own country.) He was always complimenting her on her elegance, and he noticed the tiniest changes she made to her appearance from one day to the next.
Michelle admitted to herself now (having come to depend, in her new life in Dubai, on the principle of being frank with herself) that she could see one of two possibilities. Either she admired Hamdan very much or she loved him very little. His presence left her feeling happy—it was happier than she had felt in Matti’s pleasant company but much less happy than she had felt when she was with Faisal. She was quite sure that Hamdan carried in his heart stronger feelings for her than she had for him, and so she deliberately missed his hints and tried to get him to sense her hesitation about taking their relationship further than friendship. She was able to do it without completely severing the strands of his hopes (and hers) for the future. Hamdan gracefully accepted that Michelle wasn’t yet ready to talk about commitment.
He was perceptive enough to know that talking may be the best way to express what is in one’s mind, but expressing what is in the heart is more eloquently done in other ways. He knew from his university studies in nonverbal communication that when a person’s words conflict with tone of voice or gestures, the truth almost always lies in the way words are said rather than in what is said.
That he was free of the mental complexes that usually cripple men’s brains was one huge attraction for Michelle. Even though he possessed many of the qualities that seemed to make other men self-obsessed—he was handsome and had strong principles and was materially and socially successful—he appeared to her to be amazingly well balanced. She found him intellectually stimulating, engaging, sophisticated and emotionally enlightened.
And even so, even with all of this, Michelle realized that she could not really love him. Or maybe she was unable to allow herself to try. She had had two tries already, and that was plenty for her. If her family was going to refuse her relationship with her American relative because he wasn’t one of them, and the people of Saudi Arabia were refusing one of their own sons to her because she wasn’t one of them, what was there to guarantee that this run of misfortune would be broken now with Hamdan the Emarati guy? After the first experience, she had fled to America, and after the second, she had immigrated against her will to Dubai. Where would she be exiled if she were to fail for a third time?
Everything in her life seemed to be going brilliantly except when it came to love and marriage. Michelle did not believe that she and destiny would ever agree on a suitable man, for Michelle had been quarreling with her destiny for time immemorial. If she found a man she liked, destiny plucked him away from her; and if she detested him, destiny threw him at her feet.
LAMEES ANNOUNCED that she would officially start wearing the hijab after returning from her honeymoon. In Saudi, as everyone knows, women have to wear some form of hijab—some kind of head cover to conceal their hair and neck—but women have the choice to take it off, even in front of unknown men, within the confines of houses and as soon as they cross the country borders. Lamees decided that she would start to wear it whenever non-Muhram* men were around, following the rules of Islam. She would wear it in front of her cousins and coworkers and whenever she traveled outside of the kingdom. Her friends all congratulated her on this bold spiritual step—except for Michelle, who tried to dissuade her from her decision, reminding her how hideous hijab- wearing women usually looked and how the hijab restricted a girl from being fashionable because it also required covering her arms with long sleeves and her legs with long pants or skirts. But Lamees had made her mind up absolutely, and she had done so before seeking anyone else’s thoughts on the matter, including Nizar’s. Lamees felt that she had had all the liberation she wanted before her marriage and during her honeymoon. Now it was time to pay her dues to God, especially after He had granted her such a wonderful husband, one who was just right for her and whom she had dreamed of finding, and whose love and tenderness toward her made her the envy of all her friends.
Lamees’s life with Nizar was truly a picture of married bliss. They were in greater agreement about everything and more in tune with each other’s needs than any of the married couples around them. They were totally complementary. For example, it was really difficult to get Nizar upset about anything; Lamees, on the other hand, was highly strung and sensitive. But she was more judicious and more patient than he was when it came to anything related to home or budget. So Nizar relied on her to take care of all household affairs, while always lending a hand, every day, in cleaning and washing and cooking and ironing. As long as they had no babies, they both preferred not to have a maid.
Lamees was very attentive to her relationship with her husband’s family. She worked hard to please them, especially his mother, whom she called Mama—something none of her Najdi friends would ever do.* The excellent relationship between Lamees and Um Nizar strengthened Nizar’s attachment to his wife even more as time went on.
Nizar would randomly bring home a bunch of red roses for Lamees for no special occasion. He posted little love letters on the fridge door before going off to his on-call shifts at the hospital. When he was about to take his rest break there, he always called her before going to bed. And when he returned home, he would take her out to a restaurant or shopping without the slightest anxiety or embarrassment about the possibility of running into one of his friends while his wife was at his side (a hang-up many Saudi men have). She made him sandwiches and salads, leaving them in the fridge when she set off to do her own hospital rounds. He waited impatiently for her to be finished so that they could spend the rest of their day together, like newlyweds still on their honeymoon.
THERE WAS a question haunting Sadeem that no one could answer to her satisfaction. She put her question regularly to Gamrah and Um Nuwayyir, leaving them feeling at a complete loss as to how to help their Sadeem. Is it a blessing or a curse for a woman to have knowledge? she wanted to know—referring to both academic knowledge and the practical experiences of everyday life.
Sadeem had observed that despite human progress and a general refinement of society’s ideas about life, when it came down to searching for a suitable bride, young and naïve girls tended to hold more of an attraction than girls who had attained an advanced level of knowledge and had a more sophisticated understanding of the world. The fact that it was extremely unusual for a female doctor to be married was a case in point. Men who came from this part of the world, Sadeem decided, were by nature proud and jealous creatures. They sensed danger when face to face with females who might present a challenge to their capabilities. Naturally, such men would prefer to marry a woman with only a very modest education, someone feeble and helpless, like a bird with a broken wing, and without any experience of the world. That way the man could assume the position of the teacher, who takes on the job of forming his pupil into whatever he wishes. Even if many men admired strong women, Sadeem pondered, they did not marry them! So the ignorant girl was in hot demand while the smart and savvy one watched helplessly as her name became slowly etched in a giant plaque in commemoration of spinsters, a virtual list that was growing longe
r every day to accommodate the requirements of all the insecure men who didn’t actually know what they wanted and so refused to attach themselves to a woman who knew absolutely what she wanted.
45.
To: [email protected]
From: “seerehwenfadha7et”
Date: January 14, 2005
Subject: Sadeem’s Addiction
A man who signed as “Son of the Sheikhs”* is furious. He doesn’t understand why I criticized proud and jealous Saudi men in my last e-mail. (The ones who wouldn’t like to expose their wives to strange men, even their own friends, by walking down a shopping mall next to them or dining out in a restaurant with them.) “Son of the Sheikhs” explains this behavior by informing me that it is more embarrassing if a friend sees your wife than if a stranger sees her, because a stranger would not know who the husband is, but the friend will carry your wife’s picture engraved in his head and can call it up whenever he sees you! Brother “Son of the Sheikhs” sums it up with this: A man who is not jealous is not a man. Furthermore (he adds), it is perfectly natural for a man to choose a woman who is inferior to him (especially since all women, in his view, are one level below men in the hierarchy of organisms anyway!). But according to our guy’s reasoning, “a man needs to feel the weight of his own superiority and masculinity when he is with a woman. Otherwise, what would prevent him from marrying someone just like him—another man?”
Um, no comment…
The Sadeem who came back to Riyadh to visit her friends over the weekend was very different from the Sadeem who had left for Khobar in such misery a few weeks earlier. Gamrah was sitting in Sadeem’s old home, watching her friend closely. She didn’t doubt for a moment that Firas had something to do with Sadeem’s sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks; and the smile sketched across her face contained an adorable element of complete inanity: here were the well-known symptoms of love. “You cannot be balanced when it comes to expressing emotions, can you! It’s either a frown down to the ground or a smile that splits your face!” said Gamrah.
Sadeem’s return to Firas, or her acceptance of his return to her, wasn’t something that had been carefully considered and worked out. There were no documents containing clauses of agreement or compensation stipulations, not even a prenup. This was not one of Sadeem’s clever schemes. It was simply the insane, bell-pealing spontaneity of love. The rapture that held the two of them in thrall after their return to each other was epic, and it was more powerful than the sting of guilt he felt from time to time, or the sting to her dignity that she experienced whenever she thought about what he had done.
But Sadeem’s happiness did not stretch so far as to include forgetting and forgiving the past. Hers was a joy whose brittle edges had become curled from cruelty, a sweetness masking a bitter core. Feelings of pain and abandonment still haunted her, lurking deep inside, ready to leap out and announce their presence at any moment. By allowing Firas to come back to her, Sadeem was conceding a large part of her honor and self-respect. But, like so many women before her, she did it because she loved him.
Neither Sadeem nor Firas wanted to spend whatever time there was left before his wedding apart from each other. It was as if they had been told he had a fatal disease, with only a few more days to live, and they were determined to live their final moments in pleasure. They decided that they would remain together until the date of the wedding, which would take place in less than two months. It was a strange agreement, but they clung to it.
His love for her, which had not subsided in the least, was what compelled him to call her the moment he finished speaking to his fiancée on the telephone. Her love for him was what allowed her to wait until after he was done flirting with his fiancée on the telephone every night, so that he would be free to flirt with her.
He refused to talk about his fiancée in front of her. He refused even to mention her name or to give any hints about her personality, just as he refused to inform Sadeem exactly what the date of the wedding was. Every time it came up she would blow up at him, quieting down after he soothed and calmed and comforted her—a job he was becoming very skilled at performing.
Every few days—during his milkah period—he would visit his fiancée, who was already his legal wife, since the contract had been signed. Sadeem would discover these visits despite his attempts to hide them from her, and then her last remaining shreds of dignity would fall from her, permanently, it seemed.
Sadeem’s jealousy of Firas’s unknown wife grew deeper and stronger. Firas, who used to be able to melt her with his sweet words, now made her neck burn as if slapped with his coarse and insolent comments. “What’s the matter with you? Why are you in such a bad temper all the time? Must be that time of month!” Firas, who used to moan in pain at seeing a single tear drop from the eye of his Sadeem, began listening unmoved every night as she hemorrhaged her wounded pride in tears that dripped into the phone. “Ma shaa Allah, Sadeem!” he said to her one night, his voice rough and derisive. “Those tears of yours never quit, do they? They’re always ready, at any minute and at any word!”
How had he come to speak to her in such a way? Once she had returned to him, once she had accepted the tainted relationship he offered, did he suddenly see her as third-rate goods? And how had she gotten to such a low point that she had accepted this situation in the first place? How had she come to accept Firas’s love when he was bound to another woman?
One night he told her smugly that his mind was completely at rest about the wife his family had chosen for him. She had all the qualifications he required. The only thing she lacked, Firas said, was that he didn’t love her as he loved Sadeem. But that love, he went on, might show up after marriage; after all, that’s what had happened to all of the men whose advice he had sought. They had all counseled him to drop Sadeem despite his feelings for her and take the more rational, prudent road. He told her he forgave her for not understanding his predicament, for after all, she was a woman, and women think with their hearts, not their minds, in such matters. He kept telling her the advice he received from various relatives and friends who were devoid of compassion and understanding of what prompts a human being to love. She asked herself, if someone doesn’t believe in love, can you expect that person to grasp other high virtues such as nobility and responsibility toward others and loyalty to someone who spent years waiting to marry the person she loves?
Every one of those self-appointed muftis* listened to Firas and then gave him a considered opinion designed to agree with what he was already thinking. They knew he didn’t really want to hear something that contradicted what he was coming to on his own. No, he only asked for advice to shore up his resolve. So they worked hard to bolster his spirits, reassure him and soothe his conscience. They went so far as to warn him to stay away from that young woman who had bewitched him.
“They warned you against me? Me? Are you serious? How do they presume to know me? These guys know nothing about me, or us, and they warn you to stay away from me? And you actually listen to them! So when did you start listening to everyone who came and gave you a fatwa,* a piece of advice as ugly as his face? Or do you just like hearing that you’re not wrong, and that you’re the best, and that this girl you happened to get to know is the one who’s wrong, and that you should leave her because she’s not good enough for you? You, you…who deserve the best! You who have no shame! You come and tell me this stuff after everything I’ve done for you? You bastard, you stupid coward, you ass!”
This time it was Sadeem who broke up with Firas, a mere five days after they got back together. She had no regrets this time, now that she had told him exactly what she thought of him. It was the first time Sadeem had ever raised her voice to Firas, and of course it was the first (and the last) time that she swore at him and insulted him—at least to his face.
There were no tears, no hunger strike, no sad songs—not this time. The end of the long tragic story of forbidden love and loss was more stupid and banal than she could have imagined. S
adeem realized that her love for Firas had far surpassed his love for her. She was embarrassed to remember that she had once imagined that theirs would be among the most heartbreaking and legendary love stories in history.
That night, in her sky-blue scrapbook she wrote:
Can a woman love a man for whom she has lost respect? How many love stories like mine ended after years, in a single night, because the woman suddenly saw the man for what he was?
Men don’t necessarily love the ones they respect, and women are the opposite. They respect only the ones they love!
In the same sky-blue scrapbook that witnessed the blossom of her love for Firas, she wrote down her last-ever poem about him:
What shall I say of the strongest of men
when he’s a little silent drum in his mom’s and dad’s hands?
On his quiet hide they beat the anthem of their tribe
because he’s hollow! He’s empty as the sands
though he had the love that only an ingrate would refuse,
God’s graces be upon him in all the far-off lands!
Then he tells me, I’m a man!
The mind gives me counsel and I’ve listened to it.
So I say to him, and I’m a woman!
I sought my heart’s wisdom, and in the heart I trust!
Sadeem felt for the first time in four years that she no longer needed Firas to survive. He was no longer her air and water. Reuniting with him was no longer the one dream and the hope that kept her alive. That evening was the first, since their initial separation, that she did not pray in the silence of her bedroom for his return. She felt no grief about leaving him. She only felt regret for wasting four years of her life running after the mirage called love.
On the last page of the sky-blue scrapbook, she wrote:
Girls of Riyadh Page 23