Girls of Riyadh

Their conversation flowed easily and pleasantly. Somehow, over the course of the conversation, she forgot that this was the very guy, the very Saudi, whose tongue she had wanted to cut out before he could start spreading gossip about her. She asked him about his university and the topic of his dissertation, and he asked her about her studies and her summer job. When she asked what all the scattered papers in front of them were, he confessed that he had intended to read more than two hundred pages this morning, but, as usual for him, he had not been able to resist the temptation of a fresh, crackly newspaper. With childish naughtiness, he hid from her what was sitting on the chair next to his—another stack of newspapers. She laughed at him. He claimed that all he had bought this morning was Al-Hayat, Asharq Alawsat, and the Times, which he had read cover to cover instead of reading his mountain of academic papers.

As their conversation continued, Sadeem was stunned by his sophisticated appreciation of and familiarity with music and art. When he made her promise to listen to the soprano Louisa Kennedy’s rendition of the “Queen of the Night” aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, she thought that he was one of the most cultivated men she had ever met.

Their conversation shifted to the topic of the amount of Gulf tourists who flowed into London every year in that season. Sadeem let her biting, critical humor go unrestrained. Firas, it turned out, loved nothing more than a good joke. Together they filled the café air with their warm laughter.

The chemistry between them became so thick that it hovered and swooped around their heads like cartoon sparrows. Sadeem noticed that a hard rain had started to pelt the sidewalks, even though the sun had been shining brightly just before. Firas offered to drive her to her flat—or anywhere else she wanted—and she refused politely, thanking him for the nice offer. She told him she would finish her shopping nearby and then take a taxi or bus home. He did not insist, but he asked her to wait a few minutes while he went to get something from his car.

He came back carrying an umbrella and raincoat, and he handed them both to her. She tried to convince him to keep one of them, but he stood firm, so she accepted them with thanks and good wishes.

Before they parted, Sadeem hoped he would be bold enough to ask for her telephone number so that they wouldn’t have to leave the next meeting to chance, especially since she only had a few days left in London before she had to return to Riyadh to resume her studies. He disappointed her, though, putting out his hand to say good-bye and thanking her pleasantly for her company. She went back to her flat, every step carrying her farther away from the happy ending to a story that had not even had a chance to begin.

18.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: June 11, 2004

Subject: A Society Riddled with Contradictions

The noble Prophet, God’s blessings and peace be upon him, married Arab women and non-Arab women; women of his tribe, Quraish, and women who were not of Quraish; Muslims and non-Muslims; Christians and Jews who converted to Islam before he consummated the marriages; women who had been married before and virgins.—Amr Khaled*

I’ve noticed that recently my e-mails have (finally!) begun to get approval from members of my own sex, although most of the encouraging letters I get are from males, bless them! I can just imagine the scenario: your average girl, week after week, sits hunched over her computer every Friday after prayers waiting for my e-mail to come up, and the minute it does she frantically scans it for any sign of resemblance to herself. When she doesn’t find any, she breathes a sigh of relief and then calls her friends to make sure they’re also in the clear, and they all congratulate each other for having safely avoided scandal for yet another week! But should she find anything that remotely resembles an incident she went through some years ago, or a street that one of my characters walked on sounded like the street near her uncle’s house in the suburbs, then all hell would break loose on me.

I get a lot of e-mails that are threatening and scolding: Wallah, we will reveal you the same way you revealed us! We know who you are! You’re that girl, the daughter of my sister-in-law’s uncle’s niece! You’re just jealous because your cousin proposed to me and not you! Or, you’re the big-mouth daughter of our old neighbors in Manfooha, so jealous because we moved to Olayya and you’re still stuck in that awful place.*

Faisal told Michelle half the truth. Sitting across from her in their favorite restaurant, he told her that his mother had not supported the idea of his marrying her, and he told her about the dramatic nature of the exchange, but he left it for Michelle to deduce the obvious reasons behind his mother’s anger. Michelle could not believe her ears. Was this the Faisal who had dazzled her with his open-mindedness? Was he seriously letting go of her as easily as this just because his mother wanted to marry him to a girl from their own social circles? A stupid naïve little girl who was no different from a million others? Was this how Faisal was going to end up? Was he really no different from the other trivial young men whom she despised?

It came as a severe shock to Michelle. Faisal didn’t even try to make any excuses for himself because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to change anything no matter what he said, so his position seemed weak and his reaction cold. All he said was that he hoped Michelle would consider what the consequences would be if he were to challenge his family; there was no power on earth, he said, that could block or lessen the awful things they would do to hurt both him and her, if he insisted on marrying Michelle. She would never be accepted by his family, and their children would suffer for it. He had not even made an attempt to object to his mother because of the utter futility of it. It was not because he didn’t love her, he said. But they didn’t believe in love! They believed only in their inherited beliefs and their traditions from across the generations, and so how could one possibly hope to convince them otherwise?

Michelle remained absolutely silent and still, staring across the table into the face which she seemed no longer to recognize. He held her hands to his face, moistening her palms with his tears before he said good-bye and stood up to leave. The last thing he said to her before he left was that she was lucky, because she was not from the kind of family he was from. Her life was simpler and clearer and her decisions were her own, not those of the “tribe.” She was better off without him and his family. Her wonderful free spirit would not be sullied by their rules; their poisonous thoughts and insidious ways would not destroy her goodness.

Faisal distanced himself from his beloved Michelle. He put before her the ugly truth and then he fled even from his responsibility to deal with her reaction. He left her sitting in the restaurant silent and alone so he would not see the reflection of his own disfigured image in her eyes. Poor Faisal! It wasn’t his pride that made him abandon her. It was just that in spite of everything he wanted to preserve a beautiful memory of her love for him.

With a great deal of patience and will and a sincere desire to surmount grief, and with the help of God, who knew how harsh her suffering was, Michelle began the process of peeling away the pain. Aided by her righteous scorn and her stubbornness, she decided to let the trailing hems of their beautiful past slip through her hands.

She hoped that time would heal her and that her joy in simple things would return to her life. When this did not happen, she took the uncommon step of seeing a shrink. She went to an Egyptian psychiatrist referred to her by Um Nuwayyir, who had seen him during the first stages of her divorce.

She found no chaise longue to stretch out on there; there would be no “free association” allowed. The shrink seemed quite conservative in the way he dealt with her, and he didn’t appear able to handle her grief-filled question whose answer would remain hidden from her for as long as she lived: What more could I have done or said to make him stay?

After four visits, all Michelle discovered about herself was that she needed a more profound cure than anything she would find in the words she heard from this primitive physician. In discussing Faisal’s deception, the good doctor said it all boiled down to the story of the wolf enticing the ewe to his lair before devouring her. Well, she was no bleating sheep and her darling Faisal was certainly no wolf. Was this the most brilliant and cutting-edge insight that the discipline of psychology had produced among the Arabs? And how could a male Egyptian shrink understand the dimensions of a problem that afflicted her female Saudi self anyway, with the enormous gap in social background that their nationalities entailed, since Saudi Arabia has a unique social setting that makes its people unlike any others? In spite of the wound that Faisal had inflicted, Michelle was sure that Faisal had loved her truly and fiercely, and that he still loved her as she loved him. But he was weak and passive and submissive to the will of a society that paralyzed its members. It was a society riddled with hypocrisy, drugged by contradictions, and her only choice was to either accept those contradictions and bow to them, or leave her country to live in freedom.

This time when she proposed the idea of studying abroad to her father, she did not face an immediate refusal as she had a year ago. It may be that the weight she had lost and the paleness that taken hold of her face in recent weeks had an effect on his decision. The atmosphere of their home had become very bleak with her depression and the departure of her brother Meshaal to Switzerland for his summer boarding school. Her parents agreed to let Michelle go to San Francisco, where her uncle lived. On that very day, she wrote to all of the colleges and universities in San Francisco; she was determined to not lose the opportunity to register before the beginning of the new school year.

All Michelle wanted was to hear that she had been accepted in one of the schools there so that she could bundle up her belongings and turn her back on a country where people were governed—or herded—like animals, as she said to herself over and over. She would not allow anyone to tell her what she could and could not do! Otherwise, what was the point of life? It was her life, only hers, and she was going to live it the way she wanted, for herself and herself only.

19.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: June 18, 2004

Subject: Among the Stars…Above the Clouds

My inbox is on fire with exploding e-mails. Some have warned me that I’m getting too close to the red line. Others tell me that I’ve already crossed it and that I will surely be punished for interfering in other people’s affairs, and (worse) for becoming a role model to others who might be tempted to challenge our society’s traditions with such audacity, brazen insolence, and self-assurance.

Hey, don’t shoot the messenger!

On the walkway into the airplane Sadeem wept, as if she were trying to rid herself of whatever tears remained inside before going back to Riyadh. She wanted to return to her old life there, her life before Waleed. She wanted to go back to her university and her studies and her hard work, to her intimate friends and the good times at Auntie Um Nuwayyir’s house.

She took her seat in the first-class cabin, put the earphones to her Walkman on and closed her eyes, as the beautiful music of Abdulmajeed Abdullah, one of her favorite Saudi singers, washed over her.

Among the stars up here,

above the clouds serene

I wash blues with hues of joy

all the anguish I wash clean.

To occupy her time as she flew toward her homeland, Sadeem had chosen a collection of songs that could not have been more different from those that took her to London. This time, she intended to say farewell to the sadness that overtook her when she broke with Waleed. She had decided to bury her grief in London’s dirt and return to Riyadh with the high spirits a young woman of her age ought to have.

After the seatbelt light went out, Sadeem headed—as she always did on any international flight—to the WC to put on her abaya. She could not bear putting this task off until just before the plane landed in the kingdom, when the women were all lined up, and so were the men, down the aisle, waiting to get into the toilets to put on their official garb. The women would put on their long abayas, head coverings and face veils, while the men stripped off their suits and ties, including the belts that they always tightened under their bellies so that one could see how rippling-full of flesh and fat and curds and whey they were, to return to the white thobes that concealed their mealtime sins and the red shimaghs that covered their bald pates.

As she made her way back to her seat, she caught sight of a man who, it seemed to her, was smiling at her from a distance. She squinted and frowned to make out his features more clearly. How much easier it would be if she were able to put in her corrective contact lenses herself instead of depending on the eye specialist at the shop to put them in for her! When she reached her seat, though, only four steps separated her from that young man’s row. She saw who it was! A gasp escaped her, louder than it should have been, loud enough to embarrass her. It revealed her enthusiasm, which of course would have been hard to explain in public.

“Firas!”

She went the rest of the way to him. He rose, welcoming her with obvious delight and then asking her to sit in the seat next to his, which fate had decreed would be empty.

“How are you, Sadeem? What a wonderful coincidence!”

“God sweeten your days! Wallah, seriously, a lovely coincidence. I never imagined I would see you after that day in the bookstore.”

“And you know what? I was on the waiting list for this flight. I mean, I wasn’t sure that I would even be traveling tonight! A God-given grace! But then, thank goodness you got up to go put on your abaya, or I never would have seen you!”

“It’s strange, isn’t it?! And look at you! You’ve got your thobe on before you even get on the airplane.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t like to change my clothes on the airplane. Makes me feel like I’m schizoid. As if I’m Dr. Jekyll about to change into Mr. Hyde.”

“Ha ha! It’s pretty impressive that you recognized me even though I was in my abaya and hair cover.”

“As a matter of fact, you happen to look terribly cute in your abaya.”

Was this man serious? Was his taste really that appalling or did he think she was so hideous that he preferred it when she was covered and wrapped in her abaya to spare him the sight?

“Oh, thank you. I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. By the way, I still have your umbrella and raincoat, you know!”

“Of course. I gave them to you to keep.”

“I hope you didn’t get sick that day because of me.”

“No, Alhamdu lillah, thank God. When you live in London, you get used to leaving your umbrella and raincoat in the car because the weather changes all the time. Anyway, on that day I got right into my car and went straight home. I was more worried about you getting sick from walking in that bad weather.”

“No, nothing, Alhamdu lillah. And it’s all because of your umbrella and raincoat; now I don’t go anywhere without them!”

“Enjoy them!”

“Thanks. By the way,” Sadeem asked hesitantly, “are you staying in Riyadh this time or planning to return to London?”

“Wallah, I still haven’t made up my mind, but until things get a little clearer my time will be divided between Riyadh, Jeddah and Khobar. It makes a certain sense, since Riyadh is the official capital and Jeddah is the unofficial capital and Khobar is the family’s capital.”

“You’re from Khobar?”

“Yup. I mean, originally we are from Najd, but we settled in the eastern region a very long time ago. You know how they say there are no native citizens in the eastern province. Most of us come originally from Najd.”

“Isn’t it tiring to do that, move around so much? Aren’t you kind of beyond that, so much coming and going every week?”

Firas laughed. “It’s nothing. My chauffeur buys the plane tickets for me, I have clothes in both places and even the little things, like toothbrushes, one in each house. At least after all this practice, I won’t have any problems juggling two or even three wives.”

“Ha ha, very funny! So the real you is wicked after all, eh? What’s your birthday?”

“Why? Are you planning to buy me a present? You can bring it by anytime!”

“Now, why would I bring you a present? You’re too old for that kind of stuff. Leave that to the youngsters like me!”

“Thirty-five isn’t so old.”

“If you say so. So, tell me, what’s your star sign?”

“You know about that stuff?”

“No, not much, but one of my friends is an expert, and she got me into the habit of asking everyone I meet.”

“I’m a Capricorn. But I don’t believe in those kinds of things. As you said, I’m too old for that, right?”

During the flight, Sadeem noticed Firas’s care in making sure that none of the flight attendants mistakenly offered her any alcohol or food with pork in it. He didn’t have any, either. But it surprised her that he was so concerned about what she did. She really enjoyed his solicitous attention. And being a Virgo (as Lamees had explained), she was bound to appreciate someone who cared about little details as much as she did.

“I’m sure you’ll find your mother leaping for joy that you’re coming home,” Sadeem said warmly.

“Yes, she would, but actually, she’s still in Paris with my sisters. Poor thing, she was so miserable the whole time I was away studying. She called me every day with the same questions: ‘Are you happy? Don’t you want to come home? Haven’t you had enough? Don’t you want to get married?’”

“Well, she has a point there. Don’t you want to get married?” Sadeem’s question was impulsive and her eyes were fixed on the gap between his two front teeth.

“Hey, this is the second beating—after that you’re too old remark—I’ve gotten in the space of a minute! Can’t a guy get a break? Am I really that old?”

“No, no, I didn’t mean that, please don’t misunderstand me! It’s just that, I mean, I’m not used to seeing a Saudi guy over thirty who isn’t married. Usually our boys start nagging their mothers to find them someone to marry even before they have the faintest shadow of a mustache!”

“I’m a little difficult, I guess. I have very specific qualifications that are hard to find in many girls these days. Frankly, it has been years since I gave my family my description of the girl I would want to be with. I told them, look around but take your time. But they still haven’t found me the right one. Anyway, I’m fine as I am, perfectly content, and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.”

“So, can I hear what these impossible qualifications are, since no one can find anyone with them?”

“At your command. But before I forget, can I make a small request?”

She was studying his white teeth, deep in serious thought. It really was the cutest little gap. Would her little pinkie finger fit in it? “Sure.”

“Can I call you later? I’d like to hear your voice tonight before I go to sleep.”

20.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: June 25, 2004

Subject: Return to Um Nuwayyir

One reader who says she has followed my e-mails from the beginning was extremely thrilled by the ending of my previous e-mail and sent me the following message: YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!! Finally! What we’ve been longing for! We were running out of patience waiting for this Firas to make a move! Alf mabrook, many congratulations to Sadeem!

How enchanting this give-and-take is! It compels me to forge ahead with this series of mine, this scandal-mongering, highly committed and seriously reform-minded series. Aren’t messages like this a thousand times nicer than the others I get every day telling me how liberal and how decadent I am?

Some say I speak of the faults of others but claim to be faultless myself by simply removing myself from the events told. No, I’m not making any such claim. I’m not pretending to be some kind of paragon of perfection, because I don’t consider the actions of my friends to be wrong or sinful in the first place!

I am every one of my friends, and my story is their story. And if I have refrained from revealing my identity at present for my own private reasons, I will reveal it someday when those reasons no longer exist. Then I will tell you my whole story, just as you want to hear it, with complete sincerity and transparency. As for now, let’s return to our darling Gammoorah.

All this time Gamrah had been anxiously pondering her unknown future. As Sadeem had done with Waleed, for many weeks Gamrah went on dreaming that Rashid would return to her or at least would make some attempt to contact her after coming to regret how awful he had been, and how terribly he had wronged her. But when that didn’t happen she began to worry about her future. Would she remain parked in her father’s house like an old piece of furniture in the back storeroom? Would she return to the university to finish her studies? Would the university administration even allow that, now that she was a whole year behind her classmates? Or should she sign up for one of the courses offered by private institutes and women’s associations to fill her free time and obtain some kind of certificate? It didn’t really matter what it was.

“Mama, I want some more limes with salt.”

“Too much lime isn’t good for you, my dear. You’ll get a tummy ache.”

“Ufff! I’m just asking for some lime and salt, for God’s sake! What if I was craving something really hard to get? Then what would you have done?”

“I seek God’s refuge from your tongue!” Gamrah’s mother turned to her housemaid. “Bring her this lime, may she get acid tummy for it, then maybe she’ll know how to control her temper!”

Gamrah’s younger brothers, Nayif and Nawwaf, were delighted that she had come home. They were always trying to divert her and cheer her up, inviting her to come and play Nintendo or PlayStation with them. But the severe mood swings that Gamrah suffered—brought on by Rashid and by Rashid’s child, who had begun to rule her life even before he was born—made her tense and ready to argue at the drop of a hat.

“Is this the way I’m going to be for God knows how long? God give you no rest, Rashid! May the Lord not absolve you, wherever you go and whatever you do! May what you have done to me be done to your sisters and daughters! O Lord, make my heart cool down and make his burn and take away the pain from me and put it all on him and his cheap mistress.”

SADEEM GOT in touch with her friends the minute she arrived in Riyadh, and the four girls agreed to meet the next day at Um Nuwayyir’s house. They hadn’t all gotten together for a long time—after all, each of them had been caught up fully in her own circumstances.

Um Nuwayyir offered them cups of chai tea with milk and cardamom sweetened with lots of sugar in the Indian-Kuwaiti style, as she scolded them for neglecting to visit her. Sadeem was the only one who had remembered Um Nuwayyir during her travels: she brought her a luxurious cashmere shawl that absolutely delighted Um Nuwayyir, and she congratulated her on the return of her son Nuri from America, where she had enrolled him two years before in a special boarding school for troubled teens.

When the counselors informed Um Nuwayyir that Nuri’s condition was psychological rather than physiological, and that it was a temporary phase any adolescent might go through—especially one who was experiencing family problems—Um Nuwayyir breathed an enormous sigh of relief. She was well aware that even if showing signs of being homosexual might not be considered an illness in America, in Saudi Arabia it was an utter calamity, an illness worse than cancer. She had almost fainted when the doctors told her, at the start of it all, that her son was “defining his sexual identity.” Over time, they said, he would choose between masculinity and femininity. And when Um Nuwayyir asked what would happen if his choice rested on femininity, she was aghast to hear them say that at that point it was possible to intervene medically to help him with a surgical operation and hormone treatment along with psychological counseling.

Nuri stayed in that school for two years, before deciding on masculinity, at which point he was promptly returned to his mother’s embrace. Her spirits soared when she saw that her only child had grown into a man she was proud of, someone she could stick in the eyes of his father and everyone else who had slandered and despised her and her son. Especially all those female relatives and neighbors and coworkers!

Once the girls were reunited, Michelle could talk of nothing but the corruption of Saudi society, its backwardness, its benighted rigidity and overall reactionary nature. She was bursting with enthusiasm about traveling in two days’ time to begin a new life in a healthy place—somewhere other than “this rotten-to-the-core, toxic environment that would make anyone sick,” as she put it. Sadeem, meanwhile, cursed Waleed after every sentence she uttered. As for Gamrah, she kept up a steady stream of complaints about her mother’s constant harassment; she moaned that her mother forbade her to go out the way she used to, just because she was now a divorcée and, her mother claimed, all eyes were fixed on her, waiting for a single misstep and prepared to spread the most lurid rumors about her.

Gamrah believed her mother trusted her but was too concerned with what other people thought. Her mother had never learned the truth of the old adage that anyone who tries to watch all the people all the time will die of exhaustion. Dozens of times every day, Gamrah was told the same thing: “What? Did you forget you are a divorcée?” Of course she hadn’t forgotten it, not for a single second. But wasn’t that painful enough without having her freedom so horribly curtailed? And without spending so much time worrying about all the busybodies and their stupid chatter? Believe it or not, this was the first day that she had been allowed to leave the house since her return from America three weeks before, and she did not think her mother would let her repeat an outing like this anytime soon.

Late as usual, laid-back Lamees had pranced in balancing a platter of lasagna in one hand and a pan of crème brûlée in the other, and swearing they would love both. The three girls glared at her as Um Nuwayyir got up to help her carry her load to the kitchen. Lamees asked her why everyone was in such a bad mood.

“Honey, look, these girls—every one of them is up to her eyebrows in troubles, and then you come sailing in without a care in the world and bugging them with trying your macaronis and your sweets? You never quit, do you?”

“What harm can a little comfort food do? So, am I supposed to be like them and act suicidal, too? May God give them something better, sure, but this is no way to be! Look at them, every one of them sitting there with a scowl on her face. Reliving their stories only brings more grief!”

“Don’t say that. You don’t know how heartbroken each one of those girls is. Damn men! Bastards! They have always been such a pain and headache!”

But Lamees was determined to snatch her friends from the abyss of misery. She pulled from her handbag the latest hot-off-the-press, thin-as-toast book by Maggie Farah on the zodiac, which she had ordered from Lebanon. The girls immediately became more animated when they caught sight of their source book for love. They began their usual give-and-take.

SADEEM: Lamees, please check out the traits of the Capricorn man for me.

LAMEES: “The Capricorn man is emotional by nature, but he has very little ability to awaken feelings and emotions in the other partner. He is a rational creature who does not react quickly, but when he does react he loses his senses completely and he can’t control his behavior. The Capricorn man is exacting; he holds fast to customs and traditions and doesn’t go in for adventure and risk. He is never led by sentiment and rarely influenced by his feelings. Family attachments are important. Among his flaws are pride, egotism, and careerism.”

MICHELLE: What’s the success rate for a Leo woman and a Cancer man relationship?

LAMEES: Eighty percent.

SADEEM: Is Virgo a better match with Aries or with Capricorn?

LAMEES: With Capricorn, of course! I don’t even have to go to the book to know that! Look—see what’s written here. “The degree of harmony for the Virgo woman with the Aries man doesn’t get any higher than sixty percent. Between the Virgo woman and the Capricorn man it won’t go lower than ninety-five percent.” Way to go, girl! Obviously, you are getting over Waleed in no time! C’mon, spell it out, Yalla, who’s this Capricorn you’re interested in?

GAMRAH: Listen to a little advice from me, girls! Just stop dreaming. Forget all this and leave it to God. Don’t get your hopes up when it comes to men, because you’ll get the exact opposite of what you were hoping for! Believe me.

LAMEES: So if he’s the opposite of what I hope for, what’s going to force me to take him?

GAMRAH: Fate, I guess.

MICHELLE: Let’s be honest with each other here. If Rashid hadn’t appealed to you, you wouldn’t have accepted him. You had the right to say no, but you didn’t. So you better drop all this “fate” theory, all this stuff about us not having any hand in any of our life paths. We always act the role of the helpless females, completely overcome by circumstances, and as if we don’t have a say in anything or opinions of our own! Utterly passive! How long are we going to keep on being such cowards, and not have even the courage to see our choices through, whether they’re right or wrong?

The atmosphere immediately turned electric, as it always did when Michelle jumped in with her sharp views. Um Nuwayyir, as usual, intervened to try to calm them down with her jokes and comments. This was the last evening the three of them would be with Michelle before she left to study in America, and so everyone was managing to overlook her biting candor. But Gamrah found herself shrinking, secretly and silently, from the painful remarks Michelle always directed at her whenever the two of them were with the rest of the clique.

21.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: July 2, 2004

Subject: Fatimah the Shiite

I am dedicating this e-mail to two Shiite readers, Jaafar and Hussein, who both wrote in to inform me that even the Shiite community is devoutly following my story every week. It got me thinking how hard it must be to be different in a unicultural, uniethnic, unireligious country like Saudi. I feel sorry sometimes for those of us who are in some way…different.

Lamees’s move to the College of Medicine in Malaz put a serious strain on her friendship with Michelle. Each tried to ignore the new tension, but some pervasive, negative thing had begun to seep into their relationship. It all came to a head over Lamees’s new friend: Fatimah.

“Fatimah the Shiite”*—that’s what the shillah called her. But Lamees was completely confident that deep down none of her friends really cared whether Fatimah was Shiite or Sunni or a Sufi Muslim mystic or Christian or even Jewish; what bothered them was that she was just different from all of them, the first Shiite they had ever met, a stranger in their midst, an intruder in their close-knit Sunni circle. The long and short of it was that for people in their society, hanging out together went way beyond the simple matter of friendship; it was a big deal, a deep commitment that aroused all kinds of sensitivities, a social step more akin to engagement and marriage.

Lamees recalled her childhood friend Fadwa Al-Hasudi. Lamees did not usually gravitate toward people like Fadwa; she tended to befriend girls like herself who were lively and spirited. But one morning Fadwa surprised her with a question.

“Lamees, will you be my best friend?”

The proposal came just like that, without any preliminaries, like a marriage proposal in a Western country. And just as quickly Lamees agreed. She couldn’t have imagined that Fadwa would become the most jealous girl around.

Lamees “went with” Fadwa for several years and then she met Michelle. At first her relationship with Michelle was based on little more than sympathy for a new student who knew no one, but then they grew close. Fadwa became maliciously jealous and began to launch attacks on Lamees denouncing her around the school. The reports quickly reached her: “Fadwa says you talk to boys!” “Fadwa says your sister Tamadur is smarter than you are and you cheat off your sister to get better grades.” What really embittered Lamees was that Fadwa was two-faced; she kept proclaiming her innocence to Lamees’s face. There was nothing that Lamees could do except be cold to her until finally they graduated from high school and went their separate ways.

Lamees’s relationship with Fatimah was altogether different. It was founded on mutual attraction. Lamees marveled at Fatimah’s strength and sparkle, while Fatimah loved Lamees’s boldness and quick mind. All it took was a short while until, somewhat to their surprise, each had become the other’s closest friend.

After screwing up her courage, and then wondering how to phrase it, Lamees gently asked Fatimah about some things that baffled her when it came to Shiites. One day during Ramadan Lamees took her Fotoor* meal to Fatimah’s apartment so that they could break the fast together once the sun had gone down. On the way Lamees remembered (with a smile on her face) the days when she was afraid to eat any of the food offered to her by her Shiite classmates at the university. It was Gamrah and Sadeem who were always warning her to avoid the food; they insisted Shiites spit in their food if they knew a Sunni was going to eat it, even going so far as to poison it to obtain the blessing due to someone who slays a Sunni! So Lamees would accept the sweet pies and pastries from her Shiite classmates politely and then once out of sight toss them into the garbage can. She was even afraid that wrapped candy and pieces of gum had been doctored. Lamees never trusted any food from a Shiite until she met Fatimah.

Now Lamees put a small plate of dates in front of Fatimah to break the fast. But after the dusk call to prayer signaling the end of the fast, she noticed that Fatimah didn’t tear into the dates as she had expected. In fact, she was so busy preparing the Vimto** drink and the salad that she didn’t break her fast with so much as a single bite until twenty minutes later. Fatimah could see Lamees’s surprise. Sunnis break their fast as soon as the sound of the Athan*** makes its way to their ears from the nearby mosque. But Fatimah told her friend that their custom was not to eat the moment they heard the call to prayer by a Sunni Imam,§ but to wait awhile in order to be certain of nightfall, in a way of striving for accuracy.

Now Lamees’s curiosity about Shiite traditions was really roused. She plunged in, asking her friend about the decorations hung on the walls in her apartment. The elegant Arabic script suggested some religious meaning. Fatimah explained that the decorations were hung for some rites that the Shiites celebrated every year halfway through the Arabic month of Sha’ban, the month right before Ramadan.

Then Lamees asked Fatimah about some photographs she had seen in the wedding album of Fatimah’s older sister. At the time, she thought they were strange but refrained from asking about them. There were photos showing the bride and groom dipping their bare feet in a large silver basin, coins scattered around the bottom. Two grandmothers were pouring water over the couple’s feet. This was just one of their wedding traditions, Fatimah told her, akin to the practice of drawing patterns in henna on the bride’s hands or the elaborate unveiling ceremony. They would rub the bride’s and groom’s feet in water that had been blessed by having verses from the Qur’an and certain prayers recited over it. Coins were tossed in front of their feet as alms to bless their marriage.

Fatimah answered her friend’s questions simply and directly, laughing at the surprise and wonder on her face. When the conversation started to go too far, though, they both sensed the tension in the air. Either one of them could at any moment say something that would appear to disparage the other’s version of her faith. So they stopped the question-and-answer session and moved quietly into the living room to watch the popular sitcom Tash ma Tash the Saudi TV aired every Ramadan after Fotoor time. At least that was something that both Sunnis and Shiites in Saudi Arabia agreed on!

Tamadur was first to reject her sister’s relationship with this rejectionist. She made it very clear to Lamees that all of the girls she knew at college were making fun of the friendship.

“Lamees, wallah, I heard the girls saying things about her that are really bad! She lives by herself! Her family is in Qatif* so she can do whatever she wants while she’s in Riyadh for school. She goes out whenever she wants and comes home whenever she feels like it. She visits whoever she wants to, and whoever she wants visits her, too.”

“They’re lying. I went to her place and I saw how tough the security men were over there. They don’t let anyone in, and she can’t leave the place on her own, no way. Her brother has to be there for her to get out.”

“Lamees, whether it’s true or not, why do we need to be involved in this? If everyone is talking about her today, tomorrow they’ll talk about you, and they’ll say you’re a bad girl just like her! What is it with you? From Fadwa the psycho to Sarah the princess to Fatimah the Shiite? And the best friend you ever had is an American rebel that doesn’t worry about what people think!”

Lamees frowned at her sister’s mention of Sarah, the girl from the Saudi royal family who enrolled at their high school for senior year. Lamees had genuinely adored Sarah. The princess bewitched her with her modesty and her high principles—bewitched her in part because Lamees had never expected a princess to be anything but arrogant and pushy. She didn’t care in the least about what the girls said about her relationship with Sarah. They snickered about the fact that Lamees gave the princess wake-up calls every morning. But there was a perfectly good reason for it: Sarah was afraid that, with the huge palace she lived in and the large number of people in it, the servants would forget to wake her up on time. Lamees also used to finish some of Sarah’s homework for her—but not on a regular basis, as certain people claimed. And she only did it when she observed that Sarah was occupied with more important matters, official occasions and family rituals and social duties that Sarah would tell her about in advance. Lamees would invite Sarah to study in her own modest home on the days preceding the exams they had every month, so that Sarah could concentrate on her studying more than she could in the palace. As for the hurtful rumors going around among the girls at school which Tamadur would confront her with—that she was the princess’s servant and would do anything for her—they had no effect—if anything, they brought her closer to her new friend and made her even more anxious to prove her devotion.

With Fatimah, Lamees found herself for the first time friends with a girl so much like her that it was almost uncanny! The closer she got to Fatimah, the more she felt as though she were face to face with a soul mate. As usual, what others said about her didn’t bother her much, except that this time she did worry about how Michelle would feel. Michelle had forgiven her for her relationship with Sarah when she saw the way Sarah dropped her once they graduated. Sarah traveled to America, and she never again spoke to Lamees. At the time, Michelle had felt her own power, witnessing Lamees’s regret, hearing her plea for reconciliation and knowing how badly she wanted to regain the old friendship. But what would Michelle do now, if she felt Lamees had abandoned their friendship a second time? A better solution, as Lamees saw it, was just to hide the relationship from Michelle and the rest of the shillah. Her strategy backfired, though, when Tamadur, who had long been aggravated at what she thought of as her sister’s perverse ways, took it upon herself to inform the girls of everything.

So Michelle now knew the real reason for Lamees’s inexplicable disappearances. For weeks on end Lamees had been hiding behind a host of excuses: that studying medicine was so time-consuming, that the work was so difficult, that she had so much to learn! Now the hurtful truth was out—Lamees had been choosing her new friend’s company over that of her old shillah.

Lamees tried to justify her position to Sadeem, who was far ahead of everyone else in their clique when it came to being understanding, even indulgent, about such things.

“Try to see my side of things, Saddoomah! I love Michelle. All our lives we’ve been friends, and we’ll go on being friends, but she doesn’t have a right to keep me from getting to know other girls! Fatimah’s got a few things Michelle doesn’t have. You love Gamrah, but she has her faults, too, and if you found what she lacks in another girl, you’d get attached to that girl, right?”

“But Lammoosah, after all these years! It isn’t right to dump your lifelong friend just because you suddenly decide her personality is lacking some vital quality that you think you’ve just found in some other girl. That precious something didn’t matter to you before, though, because you lived years without it and you had no problem. Besides, the two of you are supposed to stick together through thick and thin. Suppose you were to get married and your husband turned out to be missing a certain something. Do you go and look for in other guys for what he’s lacking?”

“Yah, maybe! And if he doesn’t like it, then let him go find whatever he’s lacking and spare me the effort!”

“Wow, you’re one tough lady! Okay, look, I have a really serious question that’s bugging me so badly I’m about to burst. It’s about the Shiites.”

“What is it?”

With a twitch to her lips that gave away her mock-solemn expression, Sadeem asked: “Do Shiite men wear Sunni pants under their thobes?”*

22.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: July 9, 2004

Subject: Michelle Meets Up with Matti

I’m sitting down in my La-Z-Boy with my feet stretched way out, just like I do every weekend when I write down these e-mails. And yes, my hair is fluffed and my lips are painted red…

It was about ten o’clock in the morning when the airplane landed at San Francisco International Airport. This was not Michelle’s first visit to the city, but it was the first time she had been there without her parents and her little brother Meshaal.

She breathed in air saturated with moisture and freedom. People in all shapes and colors, from everywhere in the world, were flowing around her in every direction. No one paid any attention to her Arab-ness, or to the fact that the person standing next to her was African. Everyone was minding his own business.

She made sure her visa was in plain sight. That piece of paper confirmed that she was a student from Saudi Arabia who had come to study at the University of California, San Francisco. The woman in Customs told her she was the prettiest Arab girl she had seen in all her years working at the airport.

After Michelle got through all the necessary official stuff, she searched the faces of the people waiting in the reception area. She caught sight of her cousin Matthew at the edge of the crowd, waving to her, and she started toward him, delighted.

“Hi, Matti!”

“Hi, sweetie! Long time no see!”

Matti gave her a warm hug, asking about her mom and her dad and her brother. Michelle noticed that he was the only one from her uncle’s small family who was there at the airport to meet her.

“Where is everyone else?”

“Dad and Mom are at work and Jamie and Maggie are at school.”

“And you? How come you came to meet me? Don’t you have lectures?”

“My morning lectures today were canceled for the express purpose of coming to meet my darling cousin at the airport. We’re going to spend the day together until everyone else gets home. Then I have to go give a lecture in the evening. You can come with me if you want to, and I can show you around the campus, and you can get a quick look at your room in the dorm. By the way, are you still insisting on living in the dorm instead of at our house?”

“It’s better that way. I’m really dying to try it out—living with some independence.”

“As you like, but hey, my condolences. Anyway, I’ve gotten everything ready. I chose a room for you; you’ll be rooming with one of my students who I think you’ll like a lot. She’s your age and she’s as saucy as you are, but you’re a lot prettier than she is.”

“Matti! Aren’t you ever going to stop spoiling me? I’m older now and I can handle things on my own.”

“We’ll see about that.”

He took her on a tour of Fisherman’s Wharf. They spent the day walking and window-shopping. Despite the smell of fish clinging to the air, Michelle took pleasure in everything she encountered: the merchandise displayed in open-air stalls and artists and singers everywhere you turned. When they felt hungry they ordered clam chowder and it came in a huge bread bowl. They enjoyed themselves thoroughly.

Later on, Matti helped her organize her things in the dorm and advised her in choosing the courses to take that term. She decided to begin by following in her cousin’s footsteps and major in communications, after hearing him praise it. Among the classes she signed up for was the subject he taught, nonverbal communications.

Michelle began to immerse herself in her studies and other university activities. She hoped she would forget what had been, and eventually she got her wish. With so much going on, and a new life in a new country that kept her occupied every day, bit by bit she was finally able to think about Faisal less and less.

23.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: July 16, 2004

Subject: An Adventure Not to Be Forgotten

The Qur’an verses, hadith of the Prophet—peace be upon him—and religious quotations that I include in my e-mails are, to me, inspirational and enlightening. And so are the poems and love songs that I include. Are these things opposite to each other, and so is this a contradiction? I don’t think so. Am I not a real Muslim because I don’t devote myself to reading only religious books and because I don’t shut my ears to music and I don’t consider anything romantic to be rubbish? I am religious, a balanced Saudi Muslim and I can say that there are a lot of people just like me. My only difference is that I don’t conceal what others would call contradictions within myself or pretend perfection like some do. We all have our spiritual sides as well as our not-so-spiritual sides.

Lamees first encountered her friend Fatimah’s brother one day when she gave Fatimah a ride to the train station. Ali was four years older than the girls were, and was, like them, a medical student. Because his car had broken down, he decided to join his sister on the train. They met at the station.

Fatimah was not very close to her brother Ali even though they were living within the same city of Riyadh. They seemed to spend very little time together. He lived in an apartment with his friends and his sister lived with her friends in another apartment far away. Ali didn’t come to visit her very often and every weekend he took his car or got a ride with a classmate going to Qatif, while Fatimah always took the train with her Qatifi classmates.

The first thing that really pleased Lamees about Ali was his height. At five foot seven, she was taller than most of the guys she came across. But Ali was a full six feet tall, maybe even a little bit more. And then there were his looks! He had a tanned complexion and very thick and dark eyebrows, and he positively exuded masculinity. He even seemed to Lamees to be, strangely, a little magical.

A week after they met, Lamees bumped into Ali in the hospital where she and Fatimah had gone to buy some reference books. It was before they had their rotation in that hospital later on. Many of the girls in the freshman class had met nice guys—colleagues—there by pretending they needed tutoring to understand the difficult medical courses, and Lamees used the same ploy with Ali, who was a senior. They met within the confines of the hospital at first and later on outside in one of the nearby coffee shops.

Somehow none of her friends caught on to their relationship. In front of her friends, Lamees acted as if nothing were going on between the two of them, that he was just tutoring her every now and then. Only Fatimah knew, because her brother told her. It turned out that he had asked her to arrange that meeting at the train station. He had seen Lamees’s photo framed in his sister’s room at their home in Qatif and he was smitten with her. In the photo, Lamees, Fatimah and some other classmates, all dressed in white lab coats, posed next to a corpse they had dissected in the anatomy lab of the Medical College for females in Malaz—a horrifically depressing room in which you could smell the mingled odors of formalin and cheap bukhour* that the workers burned all the time in their attempts to mask the strong odor of the preserved bodies.

Ali was in his final year of medical studies and he was supposed to start his internship immediately after graduation. He would be assigned to one of the hospitals in the eastern part of the country. Lamees and Fatimah were still in their second year of university.

One day, as Lamees and Ali sat together in a café on Al-Thalatheen Street, a band of men from Al-Hai’ah** swooped down on them and led the pair off swiftly to two separate SUVs and headed immediately for the organization’s nearest bureau.

There, they put Lamees and Ali into two separate rooms and began interrogations. Lamees could not bear the hurtful questions put to her. They asked her in detail about her relationship with Ali. They used coarse language and they forced her to hear words that would have embarrassed her even in front of her most intimate girlfriends. After trying for hours to appear self-confident and completely convinced of the rightness of everything she had done, she collapsed in tears. She really did not believe that she had done anything that was cause for shame. In the next room, the interrogator was putting pressure on Ali, who lost his cool completely when the man asserted that Lamees had confessed to everything and that he might as well come clean.

The senior officers contacted Lamees’s father. They told him that she had been apprehended with a young man in a café and was being held at their headquarters and that he must come and get her after signing a promise that his daughter would never again engage in such an immoral act.

Her father arrived, his face so pale from the sudden call. He signed the necessary papers and then was allowed to take her. On the way home, he tried to suppress his anger and to console, as much as possible, his sobbing daughter. He vowed he would not tell her mother or sister what had happened, on one condition: she must never again meet that boy outside the hospital building. Yes, he admitted, it was true that she was allowed to go out on her own with her male cousins and the sons of his friends and her mother’s friends in Jeddah. But in Riyadh, things had to be different!

Lamees worried about Ali. At the headquarters, she had heard a policeman whispering into her father’s ear that they had found out the boy was “from the rejectionist sect.” He was a Shiite from Qatif and so his punishment would certainly be worse than hers.

That day marked the rupture of Lamees’s relationship with Fatimah as well as Ali. From then on, every time their eyes met, Fatimah repudiated her with a burning stare, as if she blamed Lamees entirely for the whole thing. Poor Ali. He had been such a sweet guy, and frankly, if Lamees had been allowed to continue seeing him, and more important if he hadn’t been Shiite, she might actually have fallen in love with him.

24.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: July 23, 2004

Subject: Firas: The (Near) Perfect Man!

I am so tired of getting these boring responses that try to dissect my personality after every e-mail. Is that really what matters most to you, after everything I have written? Whether I am Gamrah or Michelle or Sadeem or Lamees? Don’t you get that it doesn’t matter who I am?

I didn’t know that shopping for the baby could be so much fun!” Sadeem said to Gamrah, her voice laced with enthusiasm. “These baby things are so adorable! If only you would agree to ask your doctor about the sex of the baby during your next ultrasound—then we would know what we are shopping for!”

Because Gamrah’s two older sisters, Naflah and Hessah, were so busy with their husbands and because her little sister, Shahla, was so preoccupied with her high school studies, Sadeem offered to go with her pregnant friend to buy whatever would be needed for the newborn. And occasionally, when Gamrah’s mother’s arthritis was acting up, Sadeem would take her place and accompany Gamrah to the gynecologist for the periodic checkup.

“It doesn’t matter to me if it is a boy or a girl. Let’s buy the basic stuff now and the rest can come after it’s born.”

“Don’t you have any feelings about all of this, Gammoorah? You sound so cold. If I were in your place, I couldn’t wait to know what sex it’ll be!”

“Sadeem, you just don’t understand. I’m not eager to have this baby! This little thing is going to change my whole life. And then who will be willing to marry me? Nobody wants a full package! So tell me—is this the way my future is supposed to be? I’m going to live out my life saddled with this kid whose father doesn’t want it and doesn’t want his mother, either? Rashid goes off to live his life free and without any ties. He can fall in love, he can get married, he can do whatever he wants, while I have to live with this aggravation and trouble the rest of my life! I don’t want this baby, Sadeem. I don’t want it!”

They were in the car, on their way back to her house. Gamrah burst into tears of utter despair. Sadeem couldn’t find anything convincing to say that might comfort her. If only Gamrah would return to the university to study with her! But Gamrah had been insisting that she didn’t have the energy for it. Her body, which used to be so perfectly slender and sleek, was bursting at the seams from so much lying around. Of course, she suffered from boredom, imprisoned in the house as she was. Even her younger sister Shahla had more freedom than her! That’s because she was not a divorced woman. Meanwhile, Mudi, her cousin who came from the conservative city of Qasim to live with them while going to college in Riyadh, never ceased to annoy her with all her criticisms. She disapproved of Gamrah’s neatly tweezed eyebrows and the fact that she wore an over-the-shoulder abaya instead of the abaya that you drape over your head that covers your figure completely. As for her older brothers, Mohammed and Ahmad, they were completely engrossed in their friends and the adventures they had endlessly inundating girls with their phone numbers. There was no one left to entertain her but Nayif and Nawaf, who were only ten and twelve. Pitiful!

What could Sadeem possibly have said to Gamrah? How could she have comforted and distracted her? After all, there was nothing worse than a person who claimed to be filled with sympathy, to be all there for someone drowning in grief, when streams of happiness were so obviously glistening in her own eyes! If only she could have faked a little misery, thought Sadeem. But how could she possibly have managed that when she had Firas?

Yes, in Firas, God had answered her prayer. After she went through the breakup with Waleed, how often had she begged God to return him to her. But the fever of her prayers had cooled gradually, until finally, praying for Waleed’s return turned into praying for Firas’s presence. This Firas was no ordinary man! He was an extraordinary, marvelous and divinely made creature, and Sadeem felt she must offer her thanks to God for him night and day.

What did he lack, after all? He must be missing something. There must be some hidden defect—something, anything, to detract from his total gorgeousness. No human being could be this perfect, for perfection belongs only to God! But Sadeem was unable to figure out just what that crucial defect could be.

Dr. Firas Al-Sharqawi was a diplomat and a politician, widely connected and respected. A successful man with a fertile brain and a forceful personality, he was known to be someone who leads and is not led, who rules and is not ruled. Very soon after his return from London, Firas’s reputation spread. In his capacity as a counselor in the king’s cabinet, the royal diwan, his face often shone out from the pages of newspapers and magazines. Sadeem regularly bought two copies of every newspaper or magazine containing an interview or a news item about him. One copy she bought for herself and the other for him, since he was too endlessly busy to follow his own coverage in the press. Moreover, from what Sadeem could pick up, his parents weren’t particularly intent on reading newspaper stories about their son. His father was a very old man who suffered terribly from various physical ailments, and his mother was a housewife who didn’t read or write very well. As for his sisters, the last thing to interest them would be politics and its great men.

In Sadeem’s eyes, such family circumstances only made Firas’s stature seem even higher. Here was the man who had risen by his own efforts, who had crafted so much from nothing! Here was an extraordinary individual who would one day ascend to the very highest positions. She made a point of reading to Firas every single word she could find that anyone had written about him. Secretly, she made a scrapbook of articles and photos of him. She had a plan: she would give him the scrapbook on their wedding day.

It was not in the least bit unreasonable for Sadeem to be thinking of marriage. Even her friends did not think she was rushing ahead of herself. It seemed the inevitable, fated outcome. His allusions were crystal clear, weren’t they? Even though he didn’t ever say “marriage” right out loud, the idea had been circling around inside his head starting from that day he circled around the Kaaba in Mecca, performing Umrah.*

From inside the sacred enclosure at Mecca he had called her. He was accompanying a small group of VIPs. He asked her what she wanted him to pray for on her behalf. “Pray that God gives me what is in my heart,” she said. And then, a moment later, “And you know who is in my heart.”

A few days later, he told her that hearing this shy confession of hers had submerged his heart in an ocean of pure delight, a feeling he’d never experienced before. Her boldness led him to grow bolder in his own thoughts. From that day on, he began to float along in private fantasy, always moving closer to an attachment to her. A composed and steady man who considered every step a thousand times before taking it, he was unaccustomed to the emotion of being swept away. He began to show his solicitude, his desire to know every little thing happening in her life. He vowed to her that she was the only woman who had been able to slip into his life, manipulate his precise daily schedule and prod him (with barely any effort on her part) to stay up late, neglect his work and postpone his appointments, all for the sake of spending more time with her on the phone!

What was a little odd about Firas was his utter devotion to religion in spite of having spent more than a decade abroad. He showed no signs of Western influence. He didn’t seem at all ill-disposed toward the way things were in the kingdom, unlike many others who spent a few years abroad and came home to despise everything they saw, no matter how fervent they had once been in their praise of their country’s customs and practices. Firas’s attempts to steer Sadeem this way or that on the path of righteousness didn’t annoy her. To the contrary! She found herself strongly inclined to accept all his ideas of making her a better Muslim and primed to embrace them, especially since he didn’t make a big deal of anything. That really pleased her. It was simply a matter of delaying a good-night phone conversation because the time for the dawn prayer had come, or maybe an innocent little hint about wearing the hijab and abaya, like the one he had come up with when they were sitting on the airplane, or an earnest observation about how annoying the young men who followed girls with uncovered faces in the malls must be, suggesting that the face cover protects a girl sometimes from such encounters. That was his way, and gradually Sadeem found herself trying to move closer toward religious perfection so that she would be worthy of Firas, who was so much closer to that perfection than she was.

Firas never made her feel that she needed to work hard to keep him. He was the one always making the effort to remain in touch with her and be near her. He never traveled without telling her where he was going and when he would be back, and he always gave her addresses and telephone numbers to contact him. He begged her pardon for calling her so much to see that she was all right. For them, as for so many other lovers in the country, the telephone was the only outlet, practically, for them to express the love that brought them together. The telephone lines in Saudi Arabia are surely thicker and more abundant than elsewhere, since they must bear the heavy weight of all the whispered croonings lovers have to exchange and all their sighs and moans and kisses that they cannot, in the real world, enact—or that they do not want to enact due to the restrictions of custom and religion, that some of them truly respect and value.

Only one thing disturbed Sadeem’s serenity, and that was the relationship she’d formerly had with Waleed.

When they first got to know each other, Firas had asked her about her past and she had immediately poured out everything about Waleed, the only false step she had ever made, the injury whose wounds she hid from everyone. Her explanation seemed to satisfy him; he seemed very understanding and sympathetic. What bewildered her was his request that she never again talk to him about it. Did talking about her past upset him that much? She wished he could turn the pages in her heart with his own hands so he could see for himself that they were blank except when it came to him. She wished she was allowed to share absolutely everything inside of her, including her history with Waleed, but he was as determined and firm in this decision as in any other. That was the way he was.

“So, what about you, Firas? Do you have a past?”

She didn’t ask in order to uncover a wound in his heart that might match hers and put him on the same footing. Her love for Firas was too strong to be affected by a past, or a present, or a future—and anyway, she knew that of the two of them, she would always be the one furthest from perfection! Her question was merely a simple and perhaps naïve attempt to see if she could find some little scratch on Firas’s knee that would prove he was as human as she was.

“Don’t ask me this question again if you really care about me.”

Just drop it! she told herself. Who cares about his past? He is mine now. And to hell with curiosity!

25.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: July 30, 2004

Subject: It’s a Boy!

Well! So it is I who calls for vice and dissolute behavior! What do you know? I am the one who promotes moral corruption and hopes to see fornication and abomination spread through our paragon of a society! Moreover, it’s I who has a mind to exploit pure, undefiled and noble sentiments, turning them away from their most honorable intentions! Me??

May God be merciful with everyone, and may He remove from their eyesight the grim affliction that compels them to interpret everything I say as morally depraved and wanton. I have no recourse but to pray for these unfortunates, that God might enlighten their vision, so that they would truly see at least some of what is going on around them, as it really is, and guide them to the ways of respectful dialogue, without attacking others as unbelievers, without humiliating them, and without rubbing them in the dirt.

Gamrah’s labor went on for five shifts, as the position at her bedside rotated among her mother, her three sisters and Sadeem. It was not really a difficult birth, but it was her first one. And the first one, as her mother was always saying, comes out with more difficulty than the second, or the third…

Um Gamrah spent the last seven hours of labor in the birthing room with her daughter, working hard to calm her and make things easier for her. Gamrah screamed with every bout of pain.

“O Lord, may Rashid suffer from whatever I am suffering from right this moment and more!”

“I don’t want his son. I don’t want him! Just leave him inside of me! I don’t want to have a baby!”

“Mama, call Rashid…Mama, tell him to come see me…Mama, shame on him, how could he do this to me?…Wallah, I didn’t do a thing to him…I’m tired, I’m so tired! Mama I can’t stand this!”

And then Gamrah would burst into sobs, bitter sobs, her voice gradually fading as she got dizzier and the pain got worse.

“I want to die! Then I’ll be rid of this! I don’t want to have a baby and why does this have to happen to me? Why, Mama? Why?”

After thirty-six hours in labor, the cry of a newborn sounded from Gamrah’s room. Thrilled, Sadeem and Gamrah’s sister Shahla, who were sitting outside the room, jumped up. They were eager to know what sex the baby was. A few minutes later, the Indian nurse told them it was a healthy beautiful boy.

Gamrah refused to pick up her baby when she first saw it, all splattered with blood, its head elongated and its skin wrinkled in a really scary way. Her mother laughed at her and held the baby after the nurse had cleaned him. She repeated the name of God over him. “Ma shaa Allah. He looks exactly like his darling little mother!”

Hours later, as Sadeem gazed softly at that tiny person in her arms, that tiny face with eyes shut tightly, and as she searched for his soft fingers to get them to close around her finger, she asked her friend, “So what have you decided to name him?”

“Saleh, after Rashid’s dad.”

Rashid was still in America when Gamrah gave birth. His mother visited her at the hospital and then later at home, several times, and his father—Saleh—came by twice and was thrilled that the child was named after him. Still, Gamrah sensed that these visits from his family and the gifts and the money were the very most that Rashid was ever going to provide her and their child.

By summer, Gamrah’s mother decided to do something to cheer up this daughter of hers who had grown old before her time. They traveled together—with the rest of the family—for a month to Lebanon, leaving the nursing child with his eldest aunt, Aunt Naflah.

In Lebanon, Gamrah submitted to the makeover procedure called “tinsmithing.” It began with a nose job. It ended with sessions of facial chemical peeling. The regime also consisted of a strict diet and exercise program under the supervision of an extremely elegant specialist, and Gamrah topped it all off with a new hairstyle and coloring at the hands of the most famous and skilled hairdresser in all of Lebanon.

Gamrah returned to Riyadh prettier than when she had left. To spare herself the disapproval of her conservative relatives, she told everyone who saw her before she managed to strip off the dressing on her nose that her nose had been broken in an accident while she was in Lebanon, which had resulted in reconstructive surgery. Not cosmetic surgery—since cosmetic surgery is against the laws of Islam.

26.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: August 6, 2004

Subject: The Chatting World: A Whole New World

And to Allah belongs the unseen of the heavens and the earth, and to Him return all affairs (for decision). So worship Him and put your trust in Him. Your Lord is not unaware of what you do.—Qur’an, Surat Hud

(chapter of the Prophet Hud), verse 123

Everyone, everywhere, seems to be talking about ME, and I love to listen in. I often enter the discussion and offer up what I expect, what I predict, who I think it is, just as they do. At home, I print out the e-mail I send all of you weekly, and I read it out loud to everyone in the house. Mind you, no one at home knows that I am the one behind these e-mails! In other words, I do exactly what every other girl is doing at exactly the same time! In those moments, I feel such intense pleasure. It’s as good as the feeling you get when you are twirling the radio dial in a moment of boredom and suddenly you are surprised by your favorite song, soaring out of the radio, and you even get to hear it from the very first notes!

Lamees’s relationship with the Internet began when she was fifteen years old, when her father began accessing the World Wide Web via Bahrain. When the Internet was introduced to Saudi Arabia two years later in 1999, her fascination with this seriously cool online world had to take a backseat to her high school studies and maintaining her GPA. But once she graduated, it wasn’t long before Lamees was spending no less than four hours every day on the Internet, 99 percent of it in random chat rooms, Yahoo, ICQ, mIRC and AOL.

With her sense of humor and her saucy mouth, Lamees gained quick fame among chat room regulars. Even though she was careful to change her nickname regularly, there were more than a few out there who were able to figure out that “The Caterpillar” was also “The Demongirl,” “Black Pearl” and “Daddy’s Sweetheart.”

It gave Lamees a good laugh to hear the boys she chatted with sounding so skeptical. None of them believed she was really a girl.

“Okay c’mon, stop it! U r NOT a girl!”

“OK, fine, y are u saying that tho?”

“Hey brother, girls r boring and they have NO sense of humor and u r clearly high on some good hash!”

“So, what you’re saying is, I have to make myself a pain to listen to so you’ll believe I’m not a guy?”

“Exactly! If u r really a girl, let’s hear your voice then!”

“LOL! No Way Jose:-p!”

“Gimme a break, just gimme a quick ring and say hi, OK? And if u don’t wanna use the phone just go with the mike, how abt it, just 2 prove 2 me you’re a girl ur not a guy.”

“Forget it sweetheart. That is just a line u guys use 2 hear a girl’s voice.”

“Ahhhhhh. You make my heart ache! OK. I believe u, I believe u’r a girl! That word sweetheart coming from ur mouth was as sweet as honey.”

“Hehehe. No, forget it, just think of me as Mr. better than starting 2 flirt with me!”

“I swear 2 God u r the most gorgeous Mr, I mean Ms, I mean…I’m CONFUSED!:–C”

“Best thing:-p”

“Okay, so now lemme ask u a question and then I’m really gonna know if u’r a girl or a guy.”

“So ask.”

“Are your knees dark or not?:-p”*

“LoooOOooooL! That’s a good one! Okay I’ve got one for you too!:-D”

“Ask away, baby.”

“What about your toenails? Are they disgusting or not?:-p”

“HAHAHAHA. OUCH! Good one! Actually, harsh but good! LOL!”

“Look at that! Black knees you say, hah! Get outta here, baby, take care of your own gender’s screw-ups first and then you can make fun of our dark knees!”

By this kind of chatting, Lamees got hold of an unbelievable number of telephone numbers from guys who wanted to continue the discussions on the telephone. By the hundreds, they raved about how totally cool they found her personality, and by the dozens, they professed their love. Lamees didn’t waver from her firm conviction, though, that chat was only for some silly laughs and light entertainment. It was a great way to meet guys and joke around with them, in a society that didn’t provide any other venue for clowning around, but it wasn’t anything to take seriously.

With the help of Lamees, Gamrah got to know the world of chatting. In the beginning, Lamees would ask her if she wanted to accompany her into the chat room. That way, Lamees said, she could introduce Gamrah to her friends online. Little by little, Gamrah got addicted to it. Soon she was spending all hours of the day and night chatting away with some guy or other.

From the start, Lamees was up front with Gamrah about the realities and hidden pitfalls of chatting. She made sure Gamrah was wise to the wiles and glaringly obvious pranks of savvy young men, which might trap a newcomer to the Net. Lamees even read out to her friend a few conversation histories with various Web buddies that had been automatically saved on the computer.

“Look here, Gammoorah, dear. All these guys have the same style, but there are some simple variations they use. For example, guys from Riyadh are a little different than the eastern province boys, and they’re different from the western province and so it goes. Let’s start with the boys-of-Riyadh style, since they are your main interest.

“The first thing he’ll say to you after Hi would be: May I please know your name? And of course you are not going to give him your real name, you just give him any name you like, or you say to him, sorry, I don’t want to give out my name. The way I handle it is, I dig down and I give him some name, whatever comes into my head. But you have to pay attention and remember which name you’ve given to which guy! My advice is to do what I always do—write them all down in a notebook so you don’t get fouled up. Or you just choose one name and stick with it. But I find that pretty tame.

“So then, what happens next is, a few days after he gets this name of yours, he’ll say to you, I am really so into you and I have never seen anyone like you, so, can we talk on the phone? He’s going to pick on you and pester you and of course you are not going to agree, but he is going to give you his number anyway. And then a few more days go by, and he’s going to demand that you two exchange pictures, but in the end he’ll get impatient and he’ll send it along even though you never send yours.

“And then you’ll see one of two: a guy sitting behind his desk in a nice office, with a Montblanc pen in his hand and a Saudi flag on a pole right behind him, a ‘classic picture!,’ or a guy who’s making himself out to be a big strutting Bedouin and sitting old-Arab-style on the floor with his head wrapped up in a shimagh—Bedouin-style—and he’ll have one knee lifted off the ground with his elbow resting on it. All he’s lacking is a falcon on his shoulder and he’ll be ready to go on one of those Bedouin TV series!

“Next, he’s bound to tell you that he was really in love with this fabulous girl two years ago and then she got married. She was totally, totally in love with him, but a good man proposed to her family and she couldn’t say no to it. And he—apple of his mommy’s eye!—was still so young and fresh and couldn’t set up a household and so he didn’t have a choice and he stepped back for her own happiness. Anything just to show you what a great, trustworthy and noble man he is!

“Then after all these confessions, he’ll start leaving offline messages for you whenever you’re not there—a nice song or poem or a URL of a romantic story or an article that talks about love and how wonderful it is, whatever, and then after just a week or so, it will all come out: He will confess that he is in love with you! He’ll say, I’ve been looking for a girl like you for so long and I want to get engaged, but we have to get to know each other better and talk on the phone. What’s really on his mind is arranging things so he can go out with you, but of course he doesn’t say that to you, all he’s trying to do at this point is to get your phone number. That’s enough to start with, and he doesn’t want to scare you.

“Then it creeps up, slowly. The tiresome stuff starts. You get stuff on your screen like: Why are you avoiding me? Why do you take so long to answer my message? You’re not talking to some other guy, are you? I don’t want you talking to anyone but me. I warn you, I’m a very jealous man. If you don’t find me online, you don’t have to stay. Log off!—and other stuff like this that will make you so sick of him that you put him on block or ignore or even delete him from your buddy list altogether! That will teach him to never use that manly attitude with you ever again, ’cause you’d go off and find someone else who doesn’t cause you a headache.

“The most important thing, Gammoorah, is that you don’t trust anyone and you don’t believe anyone. Just keep in mind that it is nothing more than a game and that all these Saudi guys are cheats and all they want to do is fool dumb girls.”

Gamrah’s chat style didn’t have the finesse of Lamees’s. All the guys who were so gung ho when they found out she was Lamees’s friend disappeared pretty fast once they discovered she didn’t have her friend’s sense of humor and quick mind.

Gamrah began to form new friendships on her own, though. Online, she met people from different countries and of various ages. Like Lamees, she didn’t want to talk to any females. “We can meet females anywhere!” they used to say. Everyone on their buddy lists was of the other sex.

On one of those boring evenings at home, she met Sultan: a simple, direct, polite twenty-five-year-old guy who worked as a salesman in a men’s clothing boutique.

Talking with Sultan on the Internet was a pleasure for Gamrah, and he seemed in turn to really be interested in what she wrote to him. He laughed at her jokes and he sent her lots of colloquial poetry, which he had composed himself.

As the days went by, Gamrah found that talking to Sultan was better than talking to any other online friends, and he felt the same. He called her by her online name: Pride.

Sultan talked a lot about himself, and she thought he seemed perfectly up-front and sincere and legit. She couldn’t reveal anything about herself, though. So she made do with the name Pride and a little lie. She told him she was a student in one of the science departments on the Malaz Campus. She had always felt that Malaz girls were smarter than Olaisha girls, since they specialized in scientific fields.

Meanwhile, Lamees had met on the Internet Ahmed from Riyadh—a medical student at her university. They were both in the third year. Ahmed started leaving the notes he took during class in one of the photocopying shops where she could pick them up later, and she would do the same for him. After an exam she sent him e-mails with the most significant points the doctor had focused on. Male doctors were always easier on female students and female doctors were easier on male students. Although their classes were separate, the reading materials, homework assignments, quizzes, midterms and finals were mostly the same. The best thing to do, medical and dental students quickly have realized, was to get the notes on what the male doctors were teaching from the female students, and vice versa.

As exams were approaching fast, there were purely practical reasons to be able to get quick answers from each other. There were observations and comments to make about exam topics and the style of this or that professor in the oral examinations. And so despite Lamees’s strict rules for online behavior, the relationship between Ahmed and Lamees somehow took the momentous and forbidden leap from the computer screen to the cell phone.

27.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: August 13, 2004

Subject: Sultan Al-Internetti

If you aren’t up to lovin’, don’t do it!—Mahmoud Al-Melegi*

Not a week passes anymore without my reading some article about myself in a newspaper or magazine or Internet chat room. Standing in line at the supermarket, it really stunned me to see a popular magazine on the rack with bold letters across the cover that said: “What Do Celebrities Think of Today’s Hottest Talk in the Saudi Street?” I didn’t doubt for a minute, of course, that I was that hot subject. Very calmly, I bought the magazine. Once I was back in the car, I flipped through it quickly, flying through the roof out of happiness! Four entire pages crammed full of photos of writers and journalists and politicians and actors and singers and sports stars, each having their little say on the burning issue of the e-mails from an unknown source that have been the talk of the Saudi street for months!

I was most interested in what the literary lions had to say. I didn’t understand a thing, naturally. One said I was a talented writer who belongs to the metaphysical surrealistic expressionist strain of the impressionists’ school, or something like that. The pundit observed that I am the first to be able to represent all these things. If only this big-mouth knew the truth! I don’t have the slightest idea what these words even MEAN, let alone know how to combine them in some meaningful way! But deserved or not, it is indeed gratifying to be the subject of such panegyric. (Hey, at least I can match their vocabulary now and then!) What do I think about impressionist metaphysical surrealism? It’s positively, absolutely PUFFSOULISTIC!

Sadeem, do you think there is any hope Rashid will start aching for his son and come see him one of these days? You know, right, that Rashid’s dad brought Saleh a namesake gift because I named the baby after him, even though Rashid isn’t even anywhere around?”

“Don’t waste your time even thinking about him. Didn’t he send money with his mother or father? That’s it—curtains! As far as everybody is concerned, he’s in the clear. What do you want with him anyway, after everything he’s done?”

After her phone conversation with Sadeem, Gamrah started looking at the photo album of her wedding. In picture after picture, she noticed how glum Rashid’s expression was, while her face radiated happiness and delight.

What brought her up short was a photo of herself surrounded by Rashid’s sisters: Layla, married and mother of two children; Ghadah, who was about Gamrah’s age; and Iman, who was fifteen years old. For a few minutes she concentrated on this picture, thinking. She reached a decision. She rushed over to the computer and slid the photo into the scanner. In seconds, the picture appeared on the screen. Using the right mouse click, she cut herself, Layla and Iman. Only Ghadah was left.

In the evening, getting together with Sultan on instant messenger as she did every night, she convinced him that she had finally decided to send him her photo in exchange for the many photos of himself that he had sent her.

She sent him Ghadah’s portrait through IM, trembling as she hit send. She had already told him that it was a photo of her with some friends taken at someone’s wedding. She edited out all the others, she explained, as a loyal and trusty friend who would never expose her friends’ pictures to strangers. As soon as the photo was transferred successfully, Sultan divulged how blown away he was by her good looks, telling her he could never have imagined that she was so gorgeous. Gamrah rounded out her little deception by telling him that her real name was Ghadah Saleh Al-Tanbal!

GAMRAH’S SISTER HESSAH called her older sister Naflah to ask her advice about the never-ending problems Hessah was having with her husband, Khalid.

“Sister, would you believe it, now he’s on my back all the time because of Gamrah! He started calling her names just because he heard that my brothers set up an Internet connection for her at home.”

“He ought to be ashamed of himself, saying things like that! Did you tell Mama?”

“I told her, but you know what she said to me? She said, ‘It’s none of your husband’s business what Gamrah’s doing and you can tell him to stop complaining! The poor girl doesn’t have anything to entertain her. It’s bad enough that she’s shut up in this house day and night. At least, spending time on the Internet is better—for all of us—than having your sister roaming the streets of Riyadh out of boredom!”

“Mama is still so upset about poor Gamrah’s divorce.”

“So, as long as Gamrah has gone and gotten a divorce, do you want me to follow her example and get myself a divorce, too? My Lord, if Khalid hears any gossip at all about Gamrah, anything bad she’s doing online with the guys she chats with every day, anything!, he’s going to throw me out and my children, too. Out in the street!”

“He’d be the only loser! Anyway, don’t you have a family, a home you can go back to, after all?”

“Oh, fine! Just great. Exactly what I want to do, sit around with Mama and Gamrah now! Wallah, the more I see the state Gamrah’s in and this life she’s living, the more I praise my Lord for this creep I have sitting at home. As the proverb says, hold on to whatever you’ve got, otherwise you will get a lot worse. Yallah. Alhamdu lillah and thank God for everything.”

FROM THE MOMENT she sent him the photo of Rashid’s sister Ghadah (or, ahem, her photo), Sultan had hardly left the Net for a minute. He kept after her all the time to let him talk to her over the phone. She stood firm, though. She wasn’t “that sort” of girl, she said. The more she turned him down, the more attached to her Sultan became and the more he praised and glorified her moral rectitude.

In truth, Gamrah had given a great deal of thought to this issue of telephone calls. She simply could not go there, she decided. She thought of two reasons. First, her cell phone was in her father’s name. That being the case, it was very possible that Sultan could and would find out who she really was. He would know that she lied to him and he might spread the news that he got to know one of Al-Qusmanji girls and the ex of Rashid Al-Tanbal through the Internet. And second, she had never really warmed up to the idea of talking on the phone to a strange guy, even if she did feel a kind of closeness to Sultan and sensed that he was sincere and would stick to his word. Still, something inside of her would not relent. She, like the majority of well-raised Saudi girls, couldn’t help but resist the idea and find it improper.

After some long nights of insomnia and many, many tears of contrition over her unforgivable act of exploiting innocent Ghadah’s photo to get revenge on Rashid, and after her mother described the problems Hessah was having with her husband on account of her sister’s addiction to the Internet, Gamrah made a very difficult decision. She would withdraw from the bewitching world of chat. She would take herself out of the range of the good, upstanding Sultan, who did not deserve to be treated in such a thoughtless and cavalier way. He especially didn’t deserve such horrid treatment after he had begun to talk about hoping to marry her.

Without any warning, Gamrah disappeared. All news of her suddenly ceased. So did the messages to Sultan, who went on writing e-mails full of desire and love and entreaty and conciliation for months, even though Gamrah did not respond, not even once.

28.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: August 20, 2004

Subject: Had Matti Fallen for Her? And She for Him?

My reader Ibrahim advised me to create a Web site for myself (or he will create it for me) where I will publish my e-mails, starting with the very first one and going all the way through. Ibrahim says that this will protect them from literary theft or loss, and I can increase the number of visitors with some advertisements and I can make money if I agree to put links to other Web sites on my Web page. Ibrahim explained everything to me in detail.

I am most grateful to you, brother, for your kind offer and generous cooperation. But I don’t know any more about designing Web sites than I do about stewing okra! And I can’t possibly put such a burden on your shoulders, Ibrahim. So I will continue on in my own style, as outdated as it is, of sending weekly e-mails while waiting for a more tempting offer. A weekly newspaper column, maybe, or a radio or TV program all to myself, or any other proposition which your ingenious intellects can inundate me with, readers!

Matti had the power to make Michelle’s life one long, totally cool adventure. He gave her practical help and moral support as she adjusted to her new life. He explained whatever she found difficult in her studies, whether in subjects he was teaching her or in other courses. He was vigilant about keeping up to date on how her dorm life was going, and he tried to help her solve any problem she encountered. She was enjoying her independent life and savoring the taste of a freedom she was experiencing for the first time in her life, but on a daily basis she still spent more time in her uncle’s home than she did in her dorm.

After struggling through the challenges and strains of her first few months in San Francisco and getting used to the university routine, Michelle began getting involved in university activities, drawing in Cousin Matthew (that is, Matt or Matti), who in turn began to include her in his weekly pastimes, as did some of his friends.

There was a university-organized camping expedition to Yosemite one weekend. Matti went along because he was president of the university’s Friends of Nature Club. Out there, in nature’s enchanting embrace, amid beauties Michelle had never seen, Matti was the right companion in the right place at the right time. He would wake her up early for a hike to some small rock outcropping in some out-of-the-way spot where they perched to watch the sunrise. Sitting there, they saw the sun’s rays break across the spray of the surging waterfall directly in front of them. They vied to see who could get the best shot in one captivating photo op after another. She roused his competitive zeal with a photo she took of a pair of lovebird squirrels kissing. A little later, he got her back with a picture of a deer blocking the disk of the sun with its head so that the rays appeared to be golden horns extending as far as the eye could see.

Another weekend—this time a long weekend—Matti took Michelle to the Napa Valley. He had been invited by one of his close friends, whose family owned a famous winery there. At the farm Michelle tasted truly superior freshly made jams, grilled meats and pasta made with grain grown on the farm, accompanied by some wonderful Chardonnays and Cabs.

Such were the weekend breaks. When they had longer vacations (but ones not long enough for her to travel home to Saudi Arabia)—Easter break, for instance—Matti would drive her to Las Vegas or Los Angeles. By San Francisco standards, her uncle would be considered, if not loaded, at least a member of the upper middle class. With Matti’s monthly salary from the university and his father’s help, in addition to what Michelle’s father sent her each month, which was pretty substantial, they were able to come up with some totally satisfying plans for spending holidays in out-of-the-ordinary places.

In Las Vegas, he took her to a performance of the hit show Lord of the Dance. He surprised her with two tickets to the magnificent “O” show of the Cirque du Soleil. In LA, which she had visited before, they switched roles; she became the expedition organizer. She first took him to Rodeo Drive near Sunset Boulevard so that she could pursue her favorite passion: shopping! He began grumbling even before they got there. They spent the evening smoking hookahs at the Gypsy Café. The next day they walked along the beach at Santa Monica and spent the evening at the Byblos Restaurant. There she spotted lots of Saudi men with their Persian girlfriends. Staring at her, checking out her facial features, the Saudis suspected she might be one of them. They were disconcerted to see her there with someone who was obviously not Saudi. As they overheard her chatting with Matti, though, her perfect American accent chased away their misgivings; their eyes, so accustomed to stalking girls from the Gulf, stopped following her.

Back in San Francisco, Matti would take her to Chinatown, where they strolled among the tiny stores window-shopping and wandered into traditional Chinese restaurants. Each time they visited the Chinese neighborhood, they ordered the fruit juice “cocktail” thickened with tapioca, which turned the drink deliciously gluey and gummy.

In the spring they took excursions to Golden Gate Park to view the sunset. He played bewitching songs on his guitar as the sun biscuit dipped into the cup of sea. In winter, he often took her to drink hot cocoa at Ghirardelli overlooking the bay and the infamous island prison of Alcatraz. Sipping their hot drinks, they contemplated its tower in the distance, a notorious silhouette that conjured up a grim past of crime and violence in America.

What Michelle liked best about Matti was that he always showed respect for her opinions, however different they were from his views. Often, she noticed, she commanded sufficient authority to win him over to her way of seeing things. He always explained, though, that these disagreements didn’t amount to much, just minor differences of opinion. It wasn’t worth the effort to try to change each other’s view just to march in lockstep in everything. In her own country, Michelle was used to pulling back from any conversation when disagreement threatened to boil over into hot verbal conflicts and an exchange of insults. She avoided expressing her opinions strongly except when she was with people she felt close to, such as her most intimate girlfriends. Public opinion in her country, she had become convinced, did not necessarily represent what people really thought. They were reluctant to offer their views on a particular issue because some prominent or important person, someone whose word was practically law, might step in and say a few words and then everyone would rush to support him. At home, public opinion coalesced around a single view—the view backed by the most powerful people.

Had Matti fallen for her? She didn’t think so. So had she fallen for him? It was impossible to deny that spending so much time together for two years, together with all the interests they shared, made them very close. Nor could she deny that there were moments when she imagined herself truly loving him, especially after a poetic evening on the beach, or—more superficially—after she got a really good final grade in a difficult course in which Matti worked hard to tutor her. But deep in her heart, Faisal still lurked, a buried secret that she couldn’t ever reveal to Matti. Knowing nothing about Saudi Arabia, he couldn’t begin to imagine the restrictions that had hindered her attachment to Faisal and had turned the story of her love for him into a tragic tale of loss.

Matti, who came from a country that breathed freedom, believed that love was an extraordinary force that could create miracles! When Michelle was first emerging from girlhood, she, too, had believed that. But that was before she returned from America to live in her own country, where she came to realize that love was treated like an inappropriate joke. A soccer ball to play with for a while, until those in power kicked it away.

29.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: August 27, 2004

Subject: Firas Is Different

Nasser Al-Clubs wrote, inviting me to write for the magazine the Diamond, of the son of Al-Spades, whose editor-in-chief is Dr. Sharifa Al-Hearts.*

Now that I have discovered that the beggar may actually get what she wants when she sets her own conditions, I shall wait until I get an offer to anchor my own TV show just like Oprah or Barbara Walters!

And keep in mind that the better offers you have for me, the happier you make me, the longer e-mails you will be getting from me every week! So, what do you think?

Um Nuwayyir set down a platter of Kuwaiti tahini halvah** and a pot of tea in front of Sadeem, who poured them each a cup. They sipped their tea and nibbled pieces of the rich sesame dessert.

“Can you believe it, Auntie, I didn’t realize Waleed wasn’t Mr. Right until I got to know Firas.”

“I just hope the day doesn’t come when you realize that Firas isn’t Mr. Right until after you get to know the next one in line!”

“God forbid! I don’t want anything from this world but Firas. Just Firas and that’s it.”

“You said exactly the same thing about Waleed, and soon a day will come when I have to remind you that you said that about Firas, too!”

“Ya, but just think about it—think about Firas and then picture Waleed, Auntie Um Nuwayyir. They’re so different!”

“Both of them are losers! As the Egyptians say: Why compare flip-flops to wooden clogs!”*

“I do not get why you don’t like Firas, even though he’s so sweet and lovable. What’s not to like?”

“I don’t like men, period. You’ve totally forgotten the day when I told you I don’t think much of Waleed. You weren’t very happy to hear it then, either, and you have paid no attention to my concerns.”

“I was kind of dumb and naïve. That sick bastard Waleed told me that he had spied on all the telephones in the house—landlines and cell phones both—before our engagement, that he got hold of telephone records and searched through them all, incoming calls and outgoing, for the past six months before his proposal to my father. He gave himself the right to search for anything that might suggest I had a relationship with any guy before him, and I was so brainless that I actually felt proud to know that I had passed that exam! What an idiot.”

“Obstinate! That’s what you were. At the time, I said to you this fellow has a real problem with jealousy, he’s pretty sketchy himself. But you didn’t believe me. You were absolutely blinded by love. I said to you: It’s early days still, and look what’s happening already. You’ll never be rid of these tests he puts you through—it’s not high school final exams, it’s marriage! Do you know what that means? And what if you fail one of his ‘trust checks’? What will happen to you? He’s gonna leave you for sure! To hell with it. To hell with him!”

“But Firas is different, Auntie. I swear to God he’s never put me through anything that suggests he does not trust me enough, he’s never pestered me with questions like Waleed did. Firas has a good clean mind and he doesn’t see everything through a veil of suspicion the way Waleed always did.”

“But Saddoomah darling, it’s not good to show Firas that he’s everything in your life and that you’ll do anything for his sake!”

“But Auntie, I can’t help it! I’m deeply in love with him. I’m so used to having him around. His is the first voice I hear when I get up in the morning and the last voice I hear before I fall asleep at night. All day long he’s with me wherever I am. He asks me about my exams before my father does, and he lists the things I have to do every day before I even realize them, and if I have a problem, he solves it for me in no time by using his connections. If I need anything, even a can of Coke in the middle of the night, he gets someone to bring it. Can you believe it, one time he went to the pharmacy at four in the morning to bring me a pack of sanitary pads because my driver was fast asleep! He went himself and bought it for me and dropped the plastic bag off at our front door! I mean, is it strange, Auntie, after the way he treats me and pampers me, for me to feel like he is everything in my life? I don’t know, I don’t even remember how I ever lived without him!”

“Oh, for God’s sake! You are making him sound like Hussein Fahmi!* I ask God to give you the best out of him and spare you the worst. I’m just not very optimistic.”

“But why? Tell me!”

“Well, if he loves you as you say he does, then why hasn’t he proposed to you yet?”

“This is exactly what I don’t get, either, Auntie.”

“Didn’t you tell me you thought he changed after he found out that you had been previously married to Waleed?”

“He didn’t change, really, but…well, uh, I sensed that he was a little different, maybe. There was the same caring and gentleness and worrying over me, but it’s as if there’s something inside of him that he doesn’t show in front of me any longer. Maybe it’s jealousy? Or anger that he’s not the first person in my life, the way I’m the first girl in his.”

“And who on earth is telling you that you’re the first girl in his life?”

“It’s just a feeling I have! My heart tells me I’m the only love he’s known. Even if he got to know girls before me—and of course he did, given how old he is and all that time he lived abroad—I am sure he didn’t actually really fall in love with anyone and become attached to her and get his life all entangled with hers like he has with me. A guy doesn’t become so fond of someone and go to such trouble and devotion when he’s this age unless he thinks that the one he loves is someone extraordinary! Someone who really suits him. He’s not young anymore, and he doesn’t see things the way a guy still in his twenties sees things. Men of this age, when they fall in love, right away they start thinking about settling down, about getting married. He’s not just fooling around. There’s none of this C’mon, let’s get to know each other and We’ll see how it goes, let’s go with the flow, and all that little-boy stuff. And what proves it is that to this day he has never asked to see me, since those days in London, except that one time on our drive from Riyadh to Khobar in the eastern region.”

“I don’t understand how you dared let him drive right up to you in the next lane when you were riding with your father. You crazy girl! What if your father got suspicious? What if he saw the way that strange guy in the nearby car was looking at you and got furious? What would you have done then?”

“I wasn’t being daring or anything. The whole thing was a coincidence. I was supposed to travel to the eastern province by car with my father to attend a funeral. Firas was going to spend the weekend with his parents like he always does and missed his plane, so he decided to go by car. My father left work early that day and wanted to set off right away. Firas, who was supposed to have left at noon, delayed until late afternoon because of his work. It happened that we were on the road at the same time! We were texting the whole time, asking each other, How many more kilometers till you get there? I was trying to convince him to stop typing on his cell phone while he was driving! Suddenly I found him saying to me, What does your father drive? I told him, A dark quartz Lexus, why? He said, Just look to the left in five seconds and you’ll see me! Aah, Auntie! I can’t begin to tell you what I felt the moment I saw him! I never imagined I would love someone so much. With that creep Waleed I felt I was ready to surrender, to give up anything, just so he’d be pleased with me. But with Firas I don’t feel the need to make sacrifices. I feel I want to give without any limits. Give and give and give! Can you believe it, Aunt, sometimes I get thoughts I’m ashamed of.”

“Like what?”

“I mean, like I imagine myself welcoming him home in the evening once we’re married. And of course, he always comes home tired. I sit him down on the sofa and I sit on the floor in front of him. I imagine myself rubbing his feet under salted warm water and kissing them! Do you understand what this picture I have in my head does to me, Aunt? It drives me mad! I never imagined I could think things like that about any man, no matter who he was. Even when I loved Waleed, I was too proud to imagine such things! Do you see how this Firas has rocked all my thinking and left me loving him in a totally hopeless way?”

Um Nuwayyir took a long breath and let it out as a deep sigh. “Oh, my dear. I just don’t want to see you get hurt again. That’s all I’m saying. May God give you according to your good intentions, my darling, and keep evil away from you.”

30.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: September 3, 2004

Subject: Same Old Same Old Gamrah

And if Allah touches you with harm, there is no one who can remove it but He; and if He intends any good for you, there is none who can repel His Favor which He causes it to reach whomsoever of his slaves He wills.—Qur’an, Surat Yunus

(chapter of Jonah), verse 107

I’m getting many, many responses rebuking and insulting Um Nuwayyir, and censuring the families of my friends who have allowed their daughters to spend a single evening at the home of a divorced woman who lives alone. Wait a minute. Is divorce a major crime committed by the woman only? Why doesn’t our society harass the divorced man the way it crushes the divorced woman? I know that you readers are always ready to dismiss and make light of these naïve questions of mine, but surely you can see that they are logical questions and they deserve some careful thought. We should defend Um Nuwayyir and Gamrah and other divorcées. Women like them don’t deserve to be looked down on by society, which only condescends from time to time to throw them a few bones and expects them to be happy with that. Meanwhile, divorced men go on to live fulfilling lives without any suffering or blame.

Gamrah’s life didn’t particularly change after the birth of her son, since the real burden of caring for him fell onto the shoulders of the Filipina babysitter whom Gamrah’s mother had hired specifically for the job. The mother knew how lazy her daughter was and how she neglected even herself. How could she possibly look after a newborn? Gamrah remained as she was. In fact, she reverted to what she had been before she was married. She was busy enough tending to the profound melancholy that had enveloped her after she cut herself off from chat. She went on thinking about Sultan for quite a while. She often felt a strong yearning to talk to him, but she always retreated as soon as she recalled his situation and her state of affairs. Both would make it very difficult for them to be together in any real sense of the word.

Every evening, her thoughts took her far away. Envisioning her three friends, she compared her life with the lives they were leading. Here was Sadeem, totally consumed with adoring ( full-time) a successful politician and a man about town, who might at any moment rise up to ask for her hand in marriage. That image was based on what Sadeem was telling her about their splendid love and how they saw absolutely eye to eye on everything. Oh, how I envy Sadeem, she thought. She is lucky to get Firas instead of Waleed! An older guy is a lot better than those amateurs who don’t even know what they want out of the world.

Lamees was in her third year of university, and soon she would become a doctor and have the world at her feet! No problem if she was a little late in getting married, since marriage later in life was common in medical circles. In fact, it was so commonplace that one might even hear murmurs of disapproval about the “early” marriage of a female medical student. If a girl wanted to stay single without being labeled a spinster, all she had to do was go into medicine or dentistry. It had a magic ability to turn away prying eyes. But for girls in liberal arts colleges or two-year diploma programs, not to mention those who didn’t even go to a university, those eyes started staring and the fingers started pointing the moment they turned twenty.

Even more, Gamrah thought, Lamees is so lucky with her mother, God protect her! Her mother is very smart and cultivated and she often sits and talks with Lamees, and with Tamadur, too, and they spill their hearts out to her freely because she’s understanding. My poor little mama is so old-fashioned and unsophisticated. Every time we asked anything of her, all she ever answered was no! We shouldn’t do this, we shouldn’t say that! She always criticized everything. Like that day when Shahla went and bought a few thongs and sexy pajamas, saying all her friends had some. Mama really gave it to her. She grabbed it all and threw it in the garbage, screaming, “This is the last straw! You want to dress like a hussy and you haven’t even gotten married!” She went straight to the old outdoors shops of Taiba and Owais*and bought her a dozen old-fashioned, matronly nightgowns and brought them home, insisting that Shahla was going to like them! She handed them over and said, “This is it for you, missy, and those other things you can have only when you’re a married woman.”

Even Michelle, after Faisal dropped her, was luckier than I was, Gamrah thought. Michelle’s family had let her study in America, while Gamrah wasn’t even allowed to leave the house by herself. And in her rare visits to Sadeem’s house, her mother insisted that one of her brothers deliver her in person and bring her back even though the driver was always around. You’re so lucky, Michelle. You can relax and live your life the way you want to! There’s no one shadowing you and breathing down your neck, asking every minute where you’re going and where you’ve been! You’re free and you don’t have to hear people’s relentless gossip.

Whenever she was with her three friends, Gamrah sensed an enormous gap that separated her from them, now that they had entered the university. What had happened to Lamees? She had changed. Why would she sign up for courses in self-defense and yoga? Ever since joining the lousy College of Medicine, she had been acting weird and had grown away from her old friends, especially in her way of thinking.

Meanwhile, Michelle had become truly frightening lately, the way she talked about freedom and women’s rights, the bonds of religion, conventions imposed by society and her philosophy on relations between the sexes. She was continually advising Gamrah to become tougher and meaner in asserting herself and not to give an inch when it came to defending her own rights.

Sadeem was the one Gamrah felt closest to. She seemed to have gotten more mature since spending her summer break in England. Her self-confidence had been bolstered by traveling alone and working and reading, it seemed. Or, more likely, it came from being loved by a man with the status of Firas.

Gamrah felt that she was the only one who hadn’t really changed since high school. Her concerns and interests were pretty much the same. Her ideas had not evolved and her old dreams had not given way to new ones. Her sole aspiration was still marriage to a man who would snatch her away from her solitude and make up for the hard times she had seen. How much she wished that she could draw strength from Michelle, intelligence from Sadeem and a measure of boldness from Lamees! How much she wanted to transform herself over into a personality as magnificent and vivacious as her friends. But, she despaired, as always she was just not able to keep up with them. God had created her with this weak personality, a character she herself scorned. She would always be a few steps behind. All her life.

She went in to have a quick look at Saleh before bed. Entering the room, walking toward his little crib, which lay next to his babysitter’s bed. She crept up quietly so that she wouldn’t wake either of them. And there were the baby’s big brown eyes, wide open, turning innocently toward the source of the sound and light, gleaming at her from the darkness. She put her hands out to him and he clutched at them, as if to ask her to pick him up and hold him. Gathering him up, she felt his wet clothes and his moist thighs. She smelled a piercing odor coming from his tiny diaper. She took him into the bathroom. His bottom was completely wet and covered in diaper rash. Gamrah didn’t know what she was supposed to do. Should she awaken her mother or Shahla? How much would Shahla know about babies, if she herself didn’t know what to do? Should she rouse the babysitter? “God rid me of her!” Gamrah muttered. “It’s all her fault. Look at her—she goes on sleeping while my son drowns in his own pee!” Washing his bottom under warm running water, she handed the baby his yellow rubber ducky and he played with it. He didn’t show any sign of being upset or bothered. For Gamrah, though, this seemed more than a mere skin irritation and it was harder to bear.

Everything was hard on her. Rashid, her mother, her sister Hessah, Hessah’s husband, Mudi, and even her best friends—all of them thought she was stupid and weak and ineffectual. Even the Filipina babysitter had begun to neglect her son after noticing how little the mother seemed to know. Life had taken everything from her and given nothing in return. It had robbed her of her youth and joy, replacing them with an emptiness and a child whose only sustenance in life was her—when she needed sustenance more than he did.

The rubber ducky fell from Saleh’s hand when weeping Gamrah embraced him fiercely, with the force of all the oppression and regret and suffering that lay inside of her.

31.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: September 10, 2004

Subject: Gossiping About MEN!

This story has become my life. Friday has become more sacred than ever. The PC room is now my home, the only place I feel safe. Now I just laugh whenever I feel annoyed by some stupid thing a professor or some girl in class says. These people make my blood boil but who cares! None of it means a thing compared to what I am doing. After all, those bossy teachers and arrogant classmates are glued to their computer screens every Friday just so they won’t miss a syllable of what I write. So what if they annoy me every now and then? I’m plenty satisfied by the joy and pride I feel inside!

The four friends met at Gamrah’s house on the last day of summer vacation. Each brought Saleh a toy or a piece of candy, dangling them in front of him as bait, trying to get him to walk toward them with his little stumbling steps and his cute plump legs.

Gamrah didn’t waste any time, scolding Lamees for the bronzed skin she had acquired in the chalets of Jeddah.

“I swear by God, you are insane! These days, when everyone is going with whitening lotions, you have to go and burn yourself under the sun?”

“Oh, c’mon, guys! You don’t appreciate a good tan! I find it so attractive!”

“Girls! Say something to her—this nut!” said Gamrah.

Michelle, home from San Francisco for the summer, had become accustomed to the healthy look of all the tan, sporty California girls.” Actually, I think it looks great,” she said.

Gamrah erupted. She tried to get Sadeem to back her up. “Sadeem! Just look at these insane girls and what they are saying. Have you ever heard of any mother who wanted to find her son a black bride?”

“Oh, whatever! Everyone to their own tastes. How long are we going to keep doing whatever pleases these old ladies and their darling little boys? I say keep that up, Lamees—just do whatever you want to. And if you ever want to pour kerosene on your hair and set it on fire, go right ahead!”

Gamrah was left spluttering. “Thanks for the help, girl!”

“I mean, seriously,” continued Sadeem, “I’m sick of how we let everyone else control us and lead us through this life. We can never do anything without the fear of being judged holding us back. Everyone steers us along according to what they want. What kind of life is that? We don’t have a say about our own lives!”

“Saddoomah!” her friends all turned toward her and exclaimed. “What’s the matter? Who has been bothering you?”

“Obviously, she’s had a fight with Firas. It can’t be anything else.”

“What did that monkey do to you?”

“Did you see him in Paris?”

Sadeem tried to keep her voice calm, since her outburst had shocked her friends. Slowly, she began telling them what was bothering her. “I saw him once. I mean, he came to Paris for one day just to see me, and of course I couldn’t say no. Okay. I’m not going to lie to you. Frankly, I was dying to see him, too! This whole entire year, I hadn’t laid eyes on him because of my studies and his work, and because the two of us had an agreement not to meet in Riyadh. It’s just too difficult, dangerous and awkward. It wouldn’t be relaxing like it would be if we were abroad. Outside the country, you can loosen up, you can breathe without worrying who’s watching you. Abroad I could meet him anywhere, in any public place, but here, no. In Paris, I met him at a cozy restaurant and we just sat there talking. It was nice.”

“So far, so good,” said Gamrah. “So where’s the problem?”

“Of course,” Michelle broke in, “right after it, right away, he asked you, ‘How come you feel so comfortable and relaxed about going out with me?’ Or he doesn’t even ask; he just starts doubting you immediately, and by the next day he’s already treating you differently. Different from when you had never agreed to meet him. After you meet a Saudi guy behind your family’s back, behind the society’s back, he loses his respect for you instead of appreciating your move! I know this stupid business really well; these hang-ups are built automatically into the messed-up heads of our guys. They are mentally twisted! Why do you think I left this country to live somewhere else?”

“No, not at all,” replied Sadeem. “He’s never treated me like that. Sure, I’ve noticed sometimes that he seems to have a little bit of this suspicion thing when he talks about girls in general. But he has never doubted me. Firas knows me really well and he trusts me very much.”

“A guy’s nature doesn’t change,” asserted Gamrah. “If he has that suspicion thing in him, then you will suffer from that one day, even if he tries to hide it in the beginning of your relationship.”

“No, believe me, there wasn’t any problem like this. The problem is that for a while now I’ve been noticing that he gives me these really strange hints about our relationship. One day he says to me that his family has found him a good bride, and another day he says, ‘If a well-matched groom shows up for you, don’t send him away!’

“How can his heart allow him to say things like that when he knows I love him so much? At first I figured he was joking, just to torment me a bit. When I saw him in Paris, though, I told him that a friend of Papa’s wants to marry me to his son. Really and truly, I wasn’t lying about that. I figured that he would get upset and worried and would knock on my father’s door the very same day. But what happened instead was that he gave me a smile as cold as the nighttime desert and asked me if the man was a good fellow. He said, ‘Make sure your father asks around about him, and if he turns out to be okay, then put your trust in God and go ahead!’”

“He really said that?” asked Gamrah, her tone disbelieving.

“So what did you say when he said that?” asked Lamees impatiently.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” All the girls spoke at once.

“My brain seized up! I couldn’t get what he was saying! I just sat there staring at him. I couldn’t say a word and I must have looked like a complete idiot. My eyes teared up and then I said, ‘Sorry, I have to go.’”

“So what did he say?”

“He said, ‘Don’t be angry,’ and he made me swear that I wouldn’t leave! He said, ‘Look, if you go now, I am not going to speak to you ever again.’”

“So you stayed?”

“Ya, I sat there until he finished eating and then we both got up and left the restaurant together. He then fetched me a taxi to the hotel.”

“So are you guys still together?”

“Together, but nothing has improved since then. He is playing with my nerves and I don’t know what to do to change him back to what he was before. Why is it always like this with me? Why do guys always change totally after they’ve been with me for a little while? There must be something about me! What seems clear is that the minute I start feeling comfortable with them they start getting really uncomfortable with me.”

Men’s insistence on calling the shots, Lamees believed, didn’t just come about in a vacuum. It happened after a guy stumbled on a woman who really liked that kind of domineering behavior and encouraged it.

“I believe that men aren’t scheming to tell lies or to deceive us,” she said. “It’s, like, they don’t intentionally do that. It comes from their nature. They’re just kind of wicked. A guy will begin backing off from a girl and even trying to escape as soon as she seems available. Because then he feels, Okay, I don’t have to do anything to get her. She is no longer a challenge. He doesn’t say this to her face. He doesn’t let her figure out that he is in the wrong, no way! He makes her believe that she is the one who has problems, not him. Some of them give the girl hints, hoping she will end the relationship herself, but we stupid girls never pick up on them. We go on working on the relationship until it kills us, even if we’re pretty sure from the start that it’s a total disaster. That’s why in the end we make fools of ourselves. We’re the ones who don’t hold on to our pride from the start to get out with our honor intact.”

Next, Michelle gave Sadeem her own logical analysis of the situation. “Sweetie, this is the escape strategy of an immature little boy. You find that he has given it some thought and then tells himself, So why should I take someone who is divorced when I haven’t ever been married? Even divorced men are looking for girls who haven’t been married, so why would I end up with a woman who has been previously married? You’ll find him weighing her in his mind and saying, If I want to become a government minister or some other high official later on, I need to find a woman who will give me some standing, a woman to help me with her family name and her looks and her genealogy and her social position and wealth! I’m not going to take one who’s flawed from the start cause she’s been divorced, and then watch people devour me with their waspish tongues. This is the way our men think, unfortunately. No matter how impressive he is or how refined his thinking is or how much in love he is, he still considers love something that can only happen in novels and films. He doesn’t get it, he doesn’t conceive of love as a foundation that builds a family. Maybe he’s even a really cultured and highly educated guy who’s been around. Maybe he knows deep down that love is a basic human need, that it isn’t shameful for a man to choose his partner in life himself, as long as he’s completely sure she’s the right one. But he is still afraid. It worries him to even think about following a path different from the path his father followed, and his uncle, and his grandfather before them. And anyway, he’ll think, Those old men are still living with those shut-up women of theirs. So something must have gone right. What they did was successful. It’s got to work because everyone else has done it. So he follows their steps and doesn’t go against their way of doing things. That way, no one can come along someday and rub it in that he failed because he strayed from the path of his ancestors. Our men are just too scared to pay for their own decisions in life. They want others to follow, others to blame.”

Not one of the three other women had any idea where Michelle obtained her theories of how guys think. But they felt that her words evoked strong echoes in all of them. They didn’t know how she had reached her conclusions, but they knew, in their hearts, that she was right.

32.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: September 17, 2004

Subject: The Migrating Bird

To those who have totally annoyed me by declaring that I do not represent the girls of Saudi Arabia, I say: How many times do I have to repeat myself? I am not writing anything incredible or bizarre or so weird that you people absolutely do not relate to it or can say it’s not true! Everything I say, the girls in my society know very well. Every week, every single one of them reads my e-mail and exclaims, “This is me!” And since I am writing to give a voice to those girls, I ask those who have nothing to do with what I say to quit sticking their snouts into what’s not their business. And then, if they are so eager to offer a perspective other than mine, they’re welcome to write their own e-mails. But don’t ask ME to write only what YOU approve of!

Michelle discovered that the epidemic of contradictions in her country had gotten so out of control that it had even infected her parents. Her father, whom she had regarded as a rare symbol of the freedom in Saudi Arabia, had (himself!) now smashed the pedestal she had put him on, thereby proving the truth of the proverb: Anyone who lives with a people becomes one of them!

Her father exploded in a way she never would have anticipated, when he heard her suggest how much she liked her cousin Matti. Even her mother, who had only the one brother, Matti’s father, and loved him devotedly, and considered his children as precious as her own limbs—even this woman was totally, shockingly upset by her daughter’s unmistakable words.

Michelle would never have believed it of her parents, but there was undoubtedly a religious impulse behind their blowup. Her father had never been among the hard-liners when it came to religion. And her mother, who had become a Muslim after her daughter’s birth, had never been one to strictly follow religious strictures. So why did they treat her so ferociously now, trying to force her to believe that Matti wasn’t right for her? Her parents, it seemed, had absorbed their share from this garden of contradictions where they had put down roots in recent years.

What if Matti really did love her? She knew that was unlikely, but she couldn’t help but think: was she going to give him up for the sake of her family, as Faisal had let her go for the sake of his family? Matti’s problem was much more complex, because according to Islamic law, she couldn’t marry Matti, since he wasn’t a Muslim. Her dad, as a Muslim man, had been able to marry her Christian mother, but Muslim women weren’t permitted to marry non-Muslim men. Could she marry him in a civil ceremony in America? She knew that her parents couldn’t possibly agree to such a thing, no matter how liberated they were.

Anyway, praise be to God that Matti had never broached this subject of love. Perhaps his feelings toward her were no different from the customary affection between friends or between brothers and sisters. Especially since in America it wasn’t generally accepted for first cousins to form romantic relationships. Perhaps her years in Saudi Arabia had so perverted her judgment in these matters that when a man was just being nice and kind to her, she misread it as LOVE.

Her parents decided to take the step they had been postponing until Michelle got her degree from UCSF. As a pretext for making that decision now instead of later, they insisted that with the situation being what it was in post-9/11 America, they were afraid for her to return there for her last two years of college. Michelle had a hunch, though, or more than a hunch, that what she had said about her relationship with Matti, as vague as it had been, was their real motive.

They would all move to Dubai! That was the decision the parents made once they became convinced they could no longer fit comfortably in the prim and prying Saudi society. Michelle had no choice in the matter. If she were to refuse to move with her parents and brother, the suspicions filling her father’s head would only grow more intense. For her part, when she thought about her relationship with her cousin, she didn’t believe he truly loved her. She felt he regarded her as a pampered younger sister whom he tried to make happy—the way he tried to make everyone happy, especially those nearest to him.

Their decision, coming after she completed only two years of her studies at the University of San Francisco, bewildered her. It was clear, though, that her parents had arranged everything in advance. She was to finish her studies in the Department of Visual Communications at the American University in Dubai so that the two years wouldn’t go to waste, as had her first year of university when she moved from Riyadh to San Francisco. Little Meshaal, meanwhile, would enter a private school. Her father intended to make investments in Dubai as many of his friends were doing. Her mother would have more freedom and respect, which had mostly been denied to her in Saudi Arabia.

Even though Dubai was a lot closer than San Francisco, this move was much harder than the last one. This time she would have to say good-bye to her friends without the promise that she would see them again at the New Year’s break. Their home in Riyadh would still nominally remain their home, yet Michelle was certain that she would return to it only if everyone in the family agreed. There would remain no ties to Riyadh except for the relatives who lived there, and her father and mother would not be interested in visiting them, anyway.

Lamees organized a big farewell party at her house. The girls gave Michelle an elegant diamond-studded watch. They cried remembering the days of their adolescence and young adulthood, which seemed to be vanishing with Michelle’s departure from the shillah. Um Nuwayyir reminded her girls repeatedly that phone lines and Internet did exist! She pointed out that they could even converse daily, with picture and sound using a webcam and a microphone. That soothed them a little. Still, they worried that their relationship with Michelle would change once she moved to Dubai, just as it had when she went to America. This would be an even bigger change, for now the separation would be permanent, and so the ember of friendship that had remained constantly warm for years would be snuffed out, no matter how hard they all tried to preserve it.

Lamees was the most grief-stricken of all. Michelle’s departure came at a trying time for her. She was suffering from an accumulation of things: difficulties at the university with some overbearing faculty members, plus her usual problems with Tamadur, who never tired of criticizing her and didn’t conceal her envy whenever Lamees scored some success or other. There were also problems with Ahmad, who, Lamees had discovered, was repeating everything they discussed on the phone to his friends at the university—all those conversations that had nothing to do with their studies! He was passing on everything she told him for their amusement, including stories about her classmates, who then heard about it and got furious and stopped having anything to do with her.

In the last few years, Lamees had grown distant from Michelle. She had gone through a long period of uncertainty and conflicting feelings that came when she compared Michelle to her new, somewhat more sophisticated girlfriends at the College of Medicine. But on the day of the departure, Lamees had the sudden painful realization that Michelle alone understood her, really understood her. Michelle resembled her in so many ways and she had divined her true personality in a way that the others had not. Only she had unlocked her deepest secrets and could keep them safe. Yes, there had been problems. Michelle had put up with a lot; she had every right to feel hurt when Lamees neglected her at the university. But what was the point of dredging any of that up now? Michelle was about to leave and might never return, and so Lamees would lose forever the friend closest to her heart, whose worth she recognized only now.

33.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: September 24, 2004

Subject: Abu Musa’ed and His Fine Print

The Prophet, God’s blessings and peace be upon him, said: The virgin’s agreement to a marriage must be sought by her guardian, but the widow or divorcee has more right to her own person than does her guardian.—The hadith collection of Sahih Muslim, verse 3477

One of the guys reading my e-mails offered to collect them, once the last one appeared, and to organize them into chapters for a book to be published. That way everyone could read them.

Ya salam!* That’s really something. For me to have a novel all my own! A book that would be displayed in bookstores and hidden in bedrooms. A book that some people would beg others to bring from oversees. (That’s assuming that it would be banned here in Saudi.) And would I see my charming photo gracing its back cover—or defacing it!—just like other writers?

I was astonished but also frightened at the suggestion. Astonished because I believe that no one is left in Saudi Arabia who hasn’t received my e-mails. After all, I have been so diligent, using addresses of subscribers to Yahoo and Hotmail and other service providers, that I’ve sent them to all Internet subscribers who had Kingdom of Saudi Arabia mentioned in their online profiles. And after the first few e-mails, I have got thousands of new subscribers to my Yahoo group! And frightened because publishing a book would mean revealing my name, after keeping it hidden from all of you out there for these many months.

Here come the truly serious questions: Do my friends deserve to undergo such a sacrifice? Is it worth all the accusations that will be meted out to me and to them (in addition to those rebukes that have already been kindly sent my way) if my real name becomes known?

I am anxious to hear your views and advice. Write to me.

Gamrah’s mother prodded her daughter to meet Abu Musa’ed, an army general and a longtime friend of her uncle’s. This Abu Musa’ed was over forty. He had been married, but in the ten years he had spent with his wife, God had not blessed him with children. For some reason, everyone used to called him Ubo Musa’ed—father of Musa’ed—anyway. He had divorced his wife and was looking for another, younger one who would provide him with the son he was longing for. (Incidentally, just as he decided to marry again news reached him that his former wife had gotten pregnant by her second husband.) He put the troublesome issue of finding a fertile wife on the table for his friends to toss around. No sooner did his friend Abu Fahad, Gamrah’s uncle on her mother’s side, hear this than he nominated his sister’s daughter. How utterly devoted he was to his niece’s best interests, he thought triumphantly.

So here she was. When Abu Musa’ed came to call, Gamrah sat a little apart, but not too far away, and went about inspecting him with a scrutiny she had not practiced on Rashid when, three years before, he had presented himself as a suitable husband. She no longer was hampered by that old bashfulness of hers, nor was she in danger of tripping over her own feet.

The man wasn’t as old as she had imagined; he looked to be in his late thirties. No gray in his mustache, but there were a few silver hairs along the temples, escaping from beneath his white ghutra.*

Her uncle knew Abu Musa’ed very well and so her father’s role in all of this seemed of little importance. Her father had every intention of getting up from his chair and disappearing for a few moments (as the mother had advised him to do) so that his daughter would have a chance to talk to this potential fiancé, an opportunity she had not been given in her first marriage. Her father was waiting for the uncle to rise. The uncle did not budge, however. He couldn’t care less about any entreaties from his sister, who was waving furiously at him from behind the door. Gamrah’s uncle simply stayed put, anxious and rigidly alert for the tiniest lapse, the slightest turn or look or whispered sign from Gamrah, that would allow him to vent his anger on her and on her mother, should Abu Musa’ed withdraw from the scene.

But Abu Musa’ed ignored Gamrah’s presence entirely. He turned his attentions to her uncle, chatting with him about the latest share prices. His impolite attitude thoroughly disgusted Gamrah. It was all she could do not to walk out of the room even though she had made her entrance no more than a few moments before. But suddenly Abu Musa’ed set off a bomb that got her to stay long enough to see whether it would blow everything to smithereens.

“Now, as you know very well,” he started in, talking to her uncle, “I’m a Bedouin and a soldier, and I ain’t interested in makin’ clever little chitchat with you fancy city folk. I heard your niece has a little boy from her first husband. So the fine print as I see it is, the boy stays here with his grandmother. To clarify, here, I am not gonna raise a kid who isn’t my own, he is not welcome in my house.”

“But Abu Musa’ed,” responded Gamrah’s uncle, “the boy is still very young.”

“Young or old, that doesn’t matter to me! This is the fine print on the contract. I am just being frank about it and that shouldn’t upset you or her father.”

Her uncle tried to defuse the bomb, even if too late. “Be patient, Abu Musa’ed, and only good will come of your patience, God willing.”

Gamrah was shifting her gaze from her father to her uncle to Abu Musa’ed. It hadn’t occurred to any of these men to consult the person who had the biggest stake in this, and who happened to be sitting there in front of them, even if she was as silent and stiff as a wooden plank.

Gamrah stood up and left the room, but only after giving her uncle a scathing look.

In her own room, she found her mother waiting for her. Her mother had heard the whole conversation. Gamrah fumed about her uncle’s coldness, her father’s passive attitude, and the arrogance of this horrible man called Abu Musa’ed. Her mother made light of it all, though anxiously enough; Gamrah could hear the hard edge in her voice. She soothed her daughter with whatever words she could find, and then she sat silently, having calculated that it was best to remain quiet, now that she had once again bored herself and her daughter by saying the same old things. Gamrah was not to be placated. She went on ranting about this shameless man and his small print, this man who demanded so brazenly that she give up her little boy for his sake—even though the man was clearly not going to produce any children himself! How could he possibly dare to take away her only son? How could he demand that she make such a sacrifice? Who did he think he was, anyway, this Bedouin soldier, that he could speak to her uncle in such a conceited, self-important way? She had heard about those Bedouin men and their difficult natures, but never in her life had she had the bad luck to encounter someone as offensive as Abu Musa’ed.

After the man left the house, indignant that Gamrah had walked out of the room without bothering to come up with a polite excuse, her uncle, with her father behind him, came into her room. Just as her uncle had ignored her presence when they had all been sitting in there with the Bedouin, he ignored her presence now, addressing himself to her mother.

“Your girl has no shame, Um Mohammed! She is so spoiled. I say we go ahead and marry her to this man. There’s nothing wrong with him, and praise be to God, the girl already has a son, that is, she isn’t completely without children to fill her life. And we all know that leaving her here to sit around without a man to shield and protect her isn’t a good thing. People are always talking, sister, and besides, we have other girls in the family who should not pay for what people say about your divorced daughter. God make your life—my dear sister—long for us, God let you raise your children and the children of your children. Gamrah’s boy we can leave here to grow up in your house. His mama can come and see him whenever she wants to, and I don’t think this man will forbid that. So what do you think, brother, what about it, Abu Mohammed?”

“Wallah, you know the man, and you’ve looked him over with your sharp eyes, and that’s enough for me. If you don’t see any problems in him, well, then, we shall rely on God and go ahead.”

Having given his full and detailed opinion in a matter that was not his to decide, her uncle left. Her father also went out. Gamrah remained at home, able only to rant at her mother. Provoked and agitated, she flung her words into her mother’s face. “Why? Why do I need a man to shield and protect me? Does your brother think I’m a disgrace, or I cannot protect my own self? You people do not realize that I am a grown woman now and I have a son! My word should count and I should be listened to! But no! You think absolutely the opposite from how any reasonable family would think. That’s even worse than what you did to me in my engagement to Rashid! And what kind of a husband and father are you married to? He doesn’t have even one word to say about his own daughter in front of your bossy brother? And this brother of yours, what do I have to do with his daughters whom he wants to marry off? He wants to dump me on that old defective junk of a man just so he can be rid of me and clear the way for good men to marry his own daughters? God willing, I hope they never get married! May he and every one of his daughters go to hell!”

“Shame, shame, Gamrah, dear! He is your uncle, after all, he is family. Don’t worry about him now. Seek what is best for you and what the Lord has written will happen. Submit your life to Allah and rely on Him.”

Her mother had not counseled her to seek “what is best” for her in her first marriage. Had Rashid come with such overwhelming qualities that seeking what is best wasn’t called for then? That night, Gamrah performed the nightly prayer followed by the nonobligatory prayer for seeking guidance that Mudi had taught her. She unrolled her prayer rug and began praying.

“O Allah, I seek Your help in finding out the best thing to do about Ubo Musa’ed’s proposal by invoking Your knowledge; I ask You to empower me, and I beseech Your favor. You alone have the absolute power, while I have no power. You alone know it all, while I do not. You are the One Who knows the hidden mysteries. O Allah, if You know that marrying Ubo Musa’ed is good for me in my religion, worldly life, and my ultimate destiny, then facilitate it for me, and then bless me in my action. If, on the other hand, You know this thing is detrimental for me in my religion, worldly life, and ultimate destiny, turn it away from me, and turn me away from it, and decree what is good for me, wherever it may be, and make me content with it.”

Mudi informed her that she would not necessarily have a dream that would guide her to the right choice, as she had thought. It was by repeatedly seeking to do what was right that God would relieve her bosom of care and point the way to what was right; or He would make her chest seize up and she would know that this particular decision was not for her own good and then she would know to abandon it. Gamrah went on repeating the prayer for seeking what is right, time and time again, day after day after day, without finding herself really guided to a decision.

After ten days or so, one night when she had performed her ablutions and prayed and gone to bed, Gamrah dreamed that she was sleeping in a bed that was not hers. She was covered in a thick quilt with only her head and feet showing. In the dream, she was gazing at her own face, as if she were staring into the face of her friend Sadeem, except that she was absolutely certain that the sleeping body stretched out along the length of the bed was her, even though the facial features were strangely “Sadeem-morphed.” The sleeping woman’s hair had grayed to the point of white and she had a long white beard (and what was really strange was that during the dream, Gamrah didn’t have any odd feelings about that beard on her face). Then she observed the scene, as if she were waking herself up, her sleeping self, by screaming at her. Get up, get up, prayer time has come! But she just tossed restlessly on her mattress until she woke up, in the dream and also in reality.

When she told her dream to Mudi, the woman contacted one of the sheikhs she knew who were expert in dream and vision interpretation. She wanted Gamrah to describe her dream to this specialist in her own words. The dream had come to her, Gamrah told him, when she was seeking God’s guidance about a prospect who had proposed to her. The sheikh asked her if she had been married. “I was, sheikh, but then I was divorced.” He asked her if she had children from that marriage, and she said, “I have a son.”

“This sleeping girl is truly you and not your friend as it seemed to you in the dream,” he told her. “I advise you, my daughter, before all else to strengthen your faith, in which is protection against every scourge and salvation from every evil. The blanket itself is the security and stability you had in your first marriage and appear to have lost. Seeing your hair as well as your head uncovered is a clear indication of your husband not returning to you. And that is better for you, because the gray hair tells us that he was an immoral person and a traitor who betrayed you. As for your beard, this gives you the good news that your son will be a man of weight and position, with God’s leave, among his family and people. Not waking up in time for prayer means that there is a difficulty in the matter for which you sought guidance. I advise you not to accept this man who has come forth to ask for your hand. Good is in what God chooses and God is the most knowledgeable.”

Gamrah began to tremble when she heard the sheikh’s interpretation of her dream. Her whole body shook and she hurried to inform her mother, who told her brother, who made a scene and threatened them all. But Um Mohammed, with her long experience in such matters, just absorbed his anger until the whole thing was over and everyone had finally averted their eyes from this engagement whose conclusion, and consummation, God had not written and decreed.

34.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: October 1, 2004

Subject: Mourning

The series of enticing offers continue, as do all sorts of propositions, and I cannot distinguish the sincere from the scam. One Saudi producer sent me a proposal to transform my e-mails into a Ramadan TV series of thirty episodes! Why not? If we were already talking about publishing it as a novel, why not film it for TV? I concur with our own Abdullah Al-Ghadhami,* that the literature of the written word is bourgeois while the image is democratic. I prefer the series to the novel, because I want the stories of my friends to reach everyone. This would certainly be a beginning.

But here the crucial question intrudes. Who will agree to act in my series? Must we rely on actresses from the neighboring Gulf states and lose the grand and refined Saudi accent of give and take that underlies the plot? Or will we disguise Saudi boys to take on the roles of young women,** and thereby lose the audience?

The home of Sadeem’s senior uncle on her father’s side filled with mourners. Sadeem’s father, the much-respected Abdulmuhsin Al-Horaimli, had passed away in his midtown office following a sudden heart attack that did not allow him much time to linger on death’s door.

In the most out-of-the-way corner of the reception room sat Sadeem. Gamrah and Lamees were on either side of her, trying to comfort her even though their tears were flowing more abundantly than hers. How would Sadeem live now, already without a mother and suddenly without a father to watch over her? How would she sleep at night when there was no one with her in the big house? How would she manage living under the care of her uncles, who without a doubt would force her to move into one of their households? These were questions they couldn’t answer, even though, at this awful time, they could not help but ask them. Her mother had died before Sadeem could even know her, while her father had died when she was most in need of him. Verily, we are God’s, and to God all must return, and to that there can be no resistance.

Um Nuwayyir stood beside the wives of Sadeem’s paternal uncles and her maternal aunt, Badriyyah, to receive all the women who came to mourn. Frequently her eyes sought out Sadeem, wanting to see how she was bearing up under a trial that was enough to tear a person’s heart in two.

Sorrowfully, Sadeem examined the women crowding the room. No signs of true sadness showed on any of their faces. Some had come made-up and dressed to the hilt. Some shamelessly lost themselves in meaningless chitchat. She could hear suppressed laughs coming from various parts of the room. Were these the people who had come to keep her company in her awful loss? Was she sitting there to receive the condolences of people who in fact had no sympathy for her at all, while others who felt her grief could not get close enough to embrace her?

Sadeem fled from this room where no one felt the pain squeezing her heart. The only person who understood her was her Firas. No one really perceived how strong her relationship with her father had been except Firas. He alone would be capable of lightening this awful load; he was all that was left to her after her father’s departure. How much she needed him!

His text messages on her cell phone didn’t stop. He tried regularly to make her feel his presence at her side and to remind her that he shared her grief and sense of loss. Her father was his father, and she was his soul, and he would not abandon her, no matter what.

In the late hours of the night, on the phone, Firas grasped hold of a book of prayers and began reciting to Sadeem, asking her to say Amen after him:

“God, may Abdulmuhsin Al-Horaimli be in your care…”

Firas recited the prayer for the dead in a hoarse voice, his heart breaking at the sobs of his Sadeem. But he did not despair of trying to save his beloved from her bereavement. He went on trying to console her with paternal tenderness and utter self-denial, as though he were exclusively there for her, a servant to her every need. Not for a moment did she sense his distance or any inability to truly embrace her.

Firas remained on call for his little Sadeem until she could swallow the first big bite of grief. After that he continued his support, helping her until she could stand on her own and get through the days of her suffering.

35.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: October 8, 2004

Subject: The Aquarius

After my previous e-mail, let me take you away from your grief by invoking a blessing on you this week, on the occasion of the approach of the first day of Ramadan. God has given this blessed month to us yet again, to us and to all Muslims, as He has given us His aid that we may fast the daylight hours all through it and uphold it.

I ask your forgiveness in advance for not sending messages over the course of the coming month. I promise you that I will continue to follow the stories of my friends after the month of virtue comes to a close. I confess in advance that I will miss you. After Ramadan, I will return bearing truly weighty letters, by God’s leave. Wait for me.

After finishing their fourth year at the university, Lamees and Tamadur decided to make the most of the summer break by training at one of the hospitals in Jeddah. Like all students attached to the hospital, female and male, they were not permitted to interact with the patients before they were licensed doctors. Their duties were limited to observing the resident physicians and consultants when they examined the sick and performed operations.

At the hospital with the twins were two male trainees from the College of Medicine and a few students, men and women, who were training in the hospital’s dental unit.

At first, Tamadur felt downright mortified that she and her sister were the only young women among the medical students. She was so uncomfortable with this that in the mornings she made a point of getting to the hospital late, and later in the day she left before the shift officially ended. Lamees was exactly the opposite: precise in her appointments and eager that she should miss nothing in this new adventure.

The doctors and administrative personnel at the hospital were gracious and friendly with the two of them. But Tamadur felt too shy to sit with her two male colleagues in the single small room assigned to the students for relaxation. She kept her distance from them and even found it hard to get along with the female seniors. Lamees was just the opposite. She was bold and adjusted quickly. She angered her sister by making it obvious how quickly she was falling into a pleasant rhythm with everyone who worked in the hospital.

After about a week of summer training, Tamadur stopped going to the hospital. One of the male students also pulled out in order to travel abroad for the last couple of weeks before school resumed. Lamees was the only female medical student left, next to the only male medical student, Nizar. Lamees was immediately conscious of how much she preferred being with one male student instead of two. Before, whenever she had approached the pair of them, she felt she was intruding. But now Nizar was just as alone as she was. Neither of them had any other companion to while away the empty time between patient rounds and operations.

This unplanned proximity allowed Lamees some glimpses into Nizar’s genteel personality. The way he behaved toward her was different from Ahmed or any other of her male friends on the Internet. He acted with a spontaneity that charmed her, even though she initially misunderstood his intentions. The day after his classmate left, for example, he invited her to have lunch with him in the hospital cafeteria. Lamees turned him down, saying that she was in the middle of reading a medical text and would wait a little while before eating. What he did was go to the buffet and return with two plates, one for him and the other for her! He handed hers over very politely, reminding her that the operation the two of them were to observe was going to begin in only an hour. Then he picked up the tray with his plate on it and went to a vacant patient’s room to eat.

Lamees didn’t need very long to get used to Nizar’s impulsive ways and appreciate his well-mannered personality. Their conversations began to go beyond the confines of medicine and various treatments and the latest drugs and surgical techniques. They told each other their dreams and what they imagined life would be like after graduating. Eventually, they talked about their personal lives and families, how many brothers and sisters each had, their daily aggravations and other little tidbits that showed that the ice between them was now completely broken.

At a table in the cafeteria, Lamees pretended to be a seer to guess what astrological sign Nizar had been born under. He threw himself into the game.

“So you are definitely either a Sagittarius or an Aquarius. I expect it is Aquarius…no, no, Sagittarius! No, wait, Aquarius! Yes, definitely Aquarius. Has to be.”

“Okay, so tell me, what is there about my personality that would make me Aquarius and what would make me Sagittarius?” And then, rather slyly, “So that I know which one to choose.”

“No, no, it’s not going to happen. Just tell me, tell me the truth, which sign are you?”

“Guess!”

“I told you already. Sagittarius or Aquarius. You don’t give the impression of being a Virgo—men who are Virgo are really heavy going and hopelessly romantic. They make your blood pressure go up. You don’t look like like a Taurus, either.”

“How sweet of you, madame!”

“Maybe an Aries? Yes! You could be an Aries!”

“Aha? Keep going. What else could I be? There isn’t a single sign you haven’t mentioned. And the whole time, you’re acting as though you know about sign-reading, but you’re just faking it!”

“Okay, I’ve got it now, this is really it. You’re either Aries or Sagittarius.”

“This is really it? That’s the final word?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Hmmm, okayyy…”

“What do you mean, hmmm, okayyy?”

“I mean, I don’t want to let you go down to defeat when I say that I’m an…Aquarius!”

“Ya! Really! From the very beginning I was saying Aquarius, but then it was you who got me all confused!”

“I got you confused! Wait a minute! Wasn’t it you who kept changing your mind?”

“I hate you. C’mon, let’s go. We’ve got a round to do.”

“Fine, so when are you going to tell me what an Aquarius is supposed to be like?”

“Oh, I’ll tell you right this minute. Aquarius men are really awful, they’re snobbish and they think they’re always cool. And the worst part is, some Libra girls make it easy for them!”

“So they’re the lucky ones.”

“Who? Aquarius men?”

“No! The ones they don’t look so bad to. You lucky one!”

When she got home that day, the first thing Lamees did was search her horoscope books to discover the degree of compatibility between Libra and Aquarius. She found that in one book it reached 85 percent and in another it didn’t get any better than 50 percent. She decided to put her faith in the first one. She came to a decision: this time around she would be smart and use her wiles. She would make Nizar fall into her trap. She would prove to Gamrah that it was possible for a girl to dream about the guy she wanted and then, with a little effort and patience, to get him.

That night she didn’t sleep until after the dawn call to prayer, the first of the five prayers, sounded. She stayed up filling her journal with war plans and rules of engagement that she vowed not to break. She felt she needed them for the days to come in case that heart of hers threatened to stray off the path. That was her usual way: to write down her thoughts and ideas on paper so that she would stick to her decisions.

In her journal, she wrote down everything: her general observations about men; the various pitfalls and misfortunes suffered by herself and her girlfriends and relatives; and snippets of advice she had heard or read at some time or other that remained perched in her mind waiting for the right moment. All of her instructions to herself began with “I will not…”

I will not allow myself to love him until I sense his love toward me.

I will not become attached to him before he proposes!

I will not let go of my guard and open up to him and I will not tell him about myself; I will stay vague and mysterious (men prefer that in women, an open-book girl is no challenge to them); and I will not let him feel that he is aware of every detail going on in my life no matter what the urge is to spill out everything!

I will not be Sadeem. I will not be Gamrah. I will not even be Michelle.

I will NEVER be the first to get in touch, and I will not answer too many of his phone calls.

I will not dictate to him what he must do, the way every other woman does with every other man.

I will not expect him to change for my sake, and I will not try to change him. If he doesn’t appeal to me with all of his flaws, then there is no good reason for us to stay together.

I will not give up any of my rights and I will not overlook anything wrong that he does (because he must not get used to that).

I will not confess to him my love (if I fall in love with him) before he tells me he loves me first.

I will not change myself for his sake.

I will not shut my eyes or ears to any signs of danger.

I will not live in a hopeless fantasy. If he does not tell me outright that he loves me within a period not to exceed three months, and give me very clear indications concerning the future of our relationship, I will end the relationship myself!

36.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: November 12, 2004

Subject: Michelle Frees Herself of All Constraints

May God accept your fasting, your night prayers and all those good deeds you’ve been doing during the holy month of Ramadan. I missed all of you, my allies and my enemies, and I was touched by all the messages I got inquiring about me. They kept on coming right through the entire month of virtue. Here I am, I have returned to you like the fasting person returns to food in the month after Ramadan. Some of you thought that I would stop at this point and not continue the story after Ramadan. But friends and foes: I will carry on. The wick of confessions coils long. And the longer it burns, the more my writings blaze.

Michelle adapted to her new life more quickly than she had expected. She welcomed the fresh start and worked hard to put her former life behind her. It was true that all her deep anger and resentment at her world still lay crouched inside of her, but she was able to make enough peace with it so that she appeared undamaged to people around her. It helped that Dubai was prettier than she had expected, and that she and her family were treated far better by everyone there than she had anticipated.

At her new university, the American University at Dubai (AUD), she met an Emarati girl named Jumana who was about the same age and was also studying information technology. The two had several classes together, and each noticed the other’s good looks and perfect American accent right away. Jumana’s dad owned one of the biggest Arab satellite TV channels, and Michelle’s father was delighted to find that his daughter had made friends with the daughter of one of the most successful men in the United Arab Emirates, if not the whole Gulf. Meshaal would tell Jumana every time she came to visit them that she was a carbon copy of his sister: same height, same figure, same hairstyle, even same taste in clothes, shoes and bags. Meshaal was absolutely right. The two girls also had the same outlook on many things, and that helped them become close quickly. Their similar attributes freed them from the nasty issue of jealousy between girls who feel inferior to each other.

At the beginning of the first year’s summer break Jumana suggested to Michelle that she work with her at her father’s TV station on a weekly TV youth program. Michelle agreed enthusiastically. Every day they surfed Arab and foreign Internet sites searching out breaking arts news, which they presented in a report to the program’s producer. They were enthusiastic and thorough, and the producer gave them responsibility for handling the entire arts section on their own. As it happened, Jumana had planned to spend the rest of the vacation traveling with her family in Marbella, so the task fell on Michelle’s shoulders alone.

Michelle threw herself into her new job and continued it even after her fall term started. The program reported news and gossip about Arab and foreign celebrities, so Michelle’s job required her to contact PR managers around the Arab world to confirm this rumor or that or to schedule interviews. She got to know some of the people she reported on personally, and they began to include her in their plans when they visited Dubai. She got invitations to their parties regularly.

A few months later, Michelle was officially made a producer of the program. Then she got her own show to produce. They asked her to be the on-air presenter, but Michelle’s father refused to allow her to host a show that would be broadcast in the homes of his relatives in Saudi Arabia. They ended up using a young Lebanese woman instead.

Working in the media opened up new horizons for Michelle, and for the first time she felt truly liberated from all the restrictions that had always been imposed on her. As she came to know different sorts of people and her network of friends and contacts grew, she began to feel increasingly confident and ambitious at work. Everyone there adored her, which motivated her to produce even better work. Jumana remained her close friend, but she wasn’t particularly fond of the work, so after graduation she took an administrative job at the station.

37.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: November 19, 2004

Subject: A Man Just Like Any Other?

Live your life fully, the sweet and the bitter,

and who knows? A new darling might come along

someone who would treat your sores

so your joy comes back

and you forget old love and me

and move outside the circle of my grief—Bader Bin Abdulmuhsin*

Brother Adel—who, I will hazard a guess, is a statistician—sent me a message criticizing my e-mails for being of varying lengths and not symmetrical like the hems of dresses in vogue this year. Adel says that in order for the lengths of my e-mails to be even, they must show evidence of natural distribution. According to him, natural distribution means that 95 percent of the data contained therein will center around the mean (taking into consideration of course the standard deviation), while the percentage of data outside the area of normal distribution on both sides of the mean does not exceed 2.5 percent in either direction, such that the sum total of standard deviation is 5 percent.

Shoot me!

The inevitable finale that Sadeem had closed her eyes to for a full three and a half years finally arrived. A few days after her graduation, after Firas sent over the laptop he had always promised her as her graduation present, he told her in a whisper, the words dripping out slowly like drops of water from a leaky tap, that he had gotten engaged to a girl related to one of his sisters’ husbands.

Sadeem let the telephone drop from her hands, ignoring Firas’s pleas. She felt a violent whirling in her head that pulled her down, pulled her somewhere beneath the surface of the earth. Someplace where the dead lived: the dead whom at that moment she wanted to be among.

Was it possible for Firas to marry someone other than her? How could such a thing happen? After all this love and the years they had spent together? Did it make any sense that a man of Firas’s strength and resourcefulness was unable to convince his family that he could marry a divorced woman? Or was it just that he was incapable of convincing himself of it? Had she failed, after all of her attempts, to reach the level of perfection befitting a man like Firas?

Firas simply could not be just another copy of Michelle’s beloved Faisal! Sadeem saw Firas as greater and stronger and more noble and more decent than that pathetic, emasculated weakling who had abandoned her friend! But it appeared they were cut of the same cloth after all. Apparently, all men were the same. It was like God had given them different faces just so that women would be able to tell them apart.

Firas had called her on her cell phone twenty-three times within seven minutes, but the lump in Sadeem’s throat was too painful to allow her to talk to him. For the first time ever, Sadeem did not pick up when Firas rang, even though she had always rushed to the phone the minute she heard the particular tune of his calls, the Kuwaiti song “I Found My Soul When I Found You.” He started texting her, and she read his messages in spite of herself. He tried to explain his behavior, but her anger, far from dissipating, simply grew more intense with every letter she was reading.

How could he have hidden the news of his engagement from her for two entire weeks, the period over which she had taken her final exams? He had talked to her tens of times a day to make sure that her studying was going well, as if there were nothing out of the ordinary going on! Was this the reason he had stopped calling her on his private cell phone and had begun to use prepaid phone cards? So that his fiancée’s family would not discover their relationship if they tried to get hold of his phone bills? So then he had been preparing for this for months!

He had been determined not to tell her, he wrote, before finding out for certain that she would graduate with honors. That was exactly what had happened: in her final term, she had received the highest grades it was possible to get, as she had generally done ever since she had known Firas.

Firas had considered himself responsible for her studies and her superior grades, and she had handed the reins over to him and contented herself—easily and happily—with obeying his commands, for they were always in her best interest. She had excelled in that term even despite her father’s death just ten weeks before finals began. Sadeem wished now that she had not done so well, had not passed and had not graduated. If only she had flunked, she would not feel this heavy guilt about achieving honors when her father had so recently died, and Firas would not have been able to leave her in order to marry someone else for yet another semester!

Was Firas leaving her now forever, as her father had done a few weeks before? Once the two of them were gone, who would take care of her? Sadeem thought about how Abu Talib, Prophet Mohammed’s—peace be upon him—uncle, and the Prophet’s first wife, Khadija—may Allah be pleased with her—had died in the same year, which had then been named the Year of Grief. She asked God’s forgiveness as she truly felt that her own sorrows this year equaled the sorrows of all humankind since the dawn of history.

She didn’t eat for three days, and it was a full week before she could bear to leave her room—a tormented week that was spent in reaction to the news that had numbed her feelings, paralyzed her thoughts, reopened her wounds and left her, for the first time in years, having to make decisions without consulting the counselor Firas.

In his incessant text messages, he hinted to her that he was willing to remain her beloved for the rest of his life. That was what he wanted, in fact, but he would be forced to conceal it from his wife and family. He swore to her that the entire business was out of his hands; that circumstances were stronger than they were; and that he was in more pain at his family’s decision than she was. But there was nothing that he could do. There was no path before them but patience.

He tried to convince her that no woman would ever be able to replace her in his heart. He told her that he pitied his fiancée because she was engaged to a man who had tasted perfection in another woman and that taste would remain forever on his tongue, making it impossible for any ordinary woman to erase it.

After years of effort on her part to attain a level of spiritual perfection worthy of a man like Firas, he was now kicking it away in favor of an ordinary woman and a banal relationship. To himself and to her, Firas acknowledged that she alone responded to every emotion and instinct within him. He tried to convince her—and, even more, to reassure himself—that this must be God’s will, and they should be submissive to it even if they couldn’t figure out the reasons behind it. All other women were peas in a pod to him now. In his eyes, it didn’t matter who he married, if not Sadeem.

Sadeem responded to the initial shock by deciding to stay away from Firas altogether. For the first time in her life, she ended that conversation without even saying good-bye to him. She refused to answer his calls or acknowledge his imploring text messages, despite the truly demonic pain that had overcome her and that only he could relieve. She hid her grief over Firas inside her grief over her father, which had become fiercer after her breakup with the love of her life.

Sadeem made honest efforts to get beyond her heartbreak without help from Firas. But even the most innocuous events could send her spinning out of control. Sitting down at the dining table with her aunt Badriyyah, barely a moment would pass before she broke down in tears as she stared down at a plate of his favorite seafood dish or a bowl of sweet pudding that he liked. When watching television with her aunt, she would try to choke down the sobs that constantly threatened to escape, but they slipped out despite her best intentions.

Aunt Badriyyah, who had moved in with her after her father’s death so that Sadeem could live at home while she got through her final exams, was insistent that Sadeem come to live with her in Khobar, but Sadeem refused. She would never move to Firas’s native city, no matter what! She couldn’t stand to live under the same sky as him after the wrong he had committed and the pain he had caused. But her aunt swore that she would absolutely not leave Sadeem on her own in Riyadh, no matter what she did and no matter what she said and no matter what excuse she came up with, in her father’s house and among all of those memories that it would be so hard to part with.

Only a few days after the breakup Sadeem began to crave Firas with an intensity that surpassed mere yearning or longing. For years Firas had been the air that she breathed, and without him now she truly felt as if she were suffocating, deprived of oxygen. He was her saint and she used to tell him every detail of her life as elaborately as a sinner making confession. She had told him everything—so much that he used to tease her about her endless stories, and then they would laugh together as he reminded her of those long-ago days at the start of their relationship, when he literally had to drag each word out of her mouth.

38.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: November 26, 2004

Subject: Patience Is the Key to Marriage

Some of you were saddened that Sadeem and Firas broke up. Others were glad that Firas chose a suitable & righteous wife instead of Sadeem, who would not have been a suitable & righteous mother to his children. One message contained the platitude that love after marriage is the only love that lasts, while premarital love is only frivolous play. Do you all really believe that?

Lamees would not have believed that her strategy of playing hard to get to conquer Nizar would demand so much patience! At first, she was convinced that three months would be time enough to ensnare him. It became clear, though, that this was a business that would require a great deal of savvy and patience. And as her admiration for Nizar grew, she found those two qualities diminishing.

She never called him and on the rare occasions that he called her, she tried to not always answer. But with every ring of her cell phone she would feel her usually unshakable resolve weaken. Her eyes would stay fixed on his number, glowing on the cell phone screen, until she picked up or the phone stopped ringing and her heart stopped its accelerated beating.

At first, the results were definitely satisfying. He showed an interest in her that indulged and gratified her vanity. From the start, she made it clear that their friendship did not mean he had the right to interfere or intrude in her life, asking her for an hour-by-hour run down of her daily schedule. And so he was constantly apologizing to her, justifying his concern about knowing when she was free by saying he wanted to be certain of not bothering her while she was busy. She also never returned his text messages. She informed him that she didn’t like to write messages, as she found that a waste of time and effort she didn’t have to spare. (Of course, had her cell phone fallen into his hands he would have found it crammed with text messages, sent and received, from her girlfriends and relatives, but he didn’t really need to know that!)

Gradually his obvious interest in her began to lessen, alarming her. His calls decreased noticeably, and his conversation became more serious and formal, as if he were beginning to set new limits on their relationship. Perhaps the time had come, Lamees thought, to ditch her plan. But she was afraid that she might regret her hastiness later on. After all, she was the one who always criticized her girlfriends for their naïveté and lack of patience when it came to men. She comforted herself with the thought that Nazir wasn’t the easy type—one of the main reasons she was attracted to him. She would be filled with pride if she was the one who ultimately captured his heart.

She tried to maintain her optimism throughout the three-month period that she had set to get the relationship on track. She reminded herself how much Nizar had seemed to like her, thinking hard to recall every single moment or gesture indicating his admiration. It seemed so easy the first month that she was back in Riyadh, when everything that had transpired in Jeddah was still fresh in her mind. He seemed to enjoy anything she said and did even if it was really silly or trivial, like telling a dumb joke or having to brew two cups of coffee first thing every morning. Even their phone conversations during the first month after classes began to imply some lingering, hidden affection, for even though she was often standoffish and disagreed with him openly on many things, he was always the first to call, and to apologize if need be.

As the second month went by, she started thinking about the moments with him that she hadn’t much noticed at the time, but that on deep reflection seemed meaningful. For instance, there was the memory of her last day at the hospital in Jeddah, when they had lunch together in the cafeteria. He pulled out a chair for her, something he had never done. And then he sat in the chair closest to hers, rather than across the table as usual, as if the chair across the table were farther away than he could be on the day of their farewell. And there was the way he so often tried to lure her into saying certain words that he liked to hear from her because of her particular way of saying them, like the word water, since she pronounced the t like a d, sounding just like the Americans. And the way he imitated the way she pronounced the word exactly in her Americanized accent: egg-zak-lee!

As the third month rolled around, Lamees counted two entire weeks since the last time they had been in touch. Two weeks in which she had gotten totally fed up with optimism and strict tactics and strategies, which only someone completely without a heart would stick to, right? But she was still afraid of relenting. After all, looking back, she had covered pretty impressive ground, when you calculated the amount of time actually spent in carrying out her policy. She convinced herself that Nizar would be back on her radar one of these days. But only if he was really meant for her.

Fate didn’t disappoint her. In fact, the plan she was intending to cut short succeeded. He came to her father to officially ask for her hand. Three entire weeks before her absolute drop-dead deadline!

39.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: December 3, 2004

Subject: Pages from the Sky-Blue Scrapbook

Don’t wake up a woman in love. Let her dream, so that she does not weep when she returns to her bitter reality.—Mark Twain

My friend Bandar, from Riyadh, is totally exasperated. He is furious with me because my intent, as he sees it, is to portray men coming from Jeddah (the west coast) as angels who do no wrong, not to mention their being courteous, refined and witty. Meanwhile, rages Bandar, I am portraying Bedouins and men from the interior and east of the country as vulgar and savage in the way they treat women. I also depict the girls of Riyadh as being miserable head-cases while Jeddah girls are up to their ears in bliss which they procure with the flick of a finger!

Hey, Bandar. This has nothing to do with geography. This is a story I am telling just as it happened. And anyway, one can never generalize these things. All kinds of people exist everywhere: this variety is a natural feature of humankind and we can’t deny it.

On a page in her sky-blue scrapbook, where she used to paste the photos of Firas that she collected so carefully from newspapers and magazines, Sadeem wrote:

Ahh, the blemish of my heart, and my only love;

To whom I gave my life past and what’s ahead.

What makes the body stand tall when the heart’s pierced through?

With you gone, I’ve no sense, no sight and nothing said!

O God, O Merciful One—You wouldn’t return him,

But You needn’t make him happy! Or loving her instead!

Make him taste grot and jealousy like me

And go on loving me!

God is generous,

He’ll repay me for the one who sold me off and fled.

Sadeem had never been in the habit of writing down her thoughts. When she met Firas she was inspired to write a series of love letters, which she read to him from time to time (feeding his arrogance so much that he would strut around afterward like a peacock spreading his tail feathers). After Firas’s engagement, though, she found herself spilling out lines of poetry in the silence of the night, during those hours which for the last three and a half years had been devoted to speaking to him on the telephone.

To my best friend, most cherished of mine,

To the star that one day fell down into my palms,

You were so near yet so far, so oppressed, so divine.

The Fates burst us apart! that we meet once again…

My friend, we will become the heroes of tales

We spin for our children, false names assign’d,

The internal struggle Sadeem lived in that period—the way her emotions zinged back and forth between extremes of rage and forgiveness—made her life a nightmare. She was incapable of discerning her own true feelings: she would curse Firas and spit at every picture of him that she could find, only to leap back and plant a kiss tenderly on each photograph as she begged it for forgiveness. She would recall how, through all those years, he had seemed to stand by her, and it would make her cry, but then she would remember the day years ago when he had alluded to broaching with his parents the subject of his attaching himself to a divorcée, and their response, which had hurt her so deeply that she had intentionally “forgotten” it (exactly what Michelle and Lamees warned her not to do). And that would make her cry even more bitterly over the lost years of her life, and wish all kinds of horrible fates for Waleed, who was the true reason behind all of her troubles.

Gamrah, Lamees and Um Nuwayyir began to notice that Sadeem had started to become careless, even neglectful, about performing her prayers. They also observed that she was exposing some of her hair when she threw on her hair cover, which was supposed to leave only her face visible. Sadeem’s religiosity seemed to be in direct proportion to her relationship with Firas. Her anger at him made her angry at everything that reminded her of him, and that included religious duties.

Throughout Sadeem’s whole ordeal, her aunt Badriyyah had been traveling back and forth between Riyadh and Khobar, all the while keeping up her relentless campaign to convince Sadeem to move out east to live with her and her family permanently, or at least until her “fated share” would come to her.

When she saw the daughter of her only sister in such a severe state of depression and still firmly refusing to go to Khobar, Aunt Badriyyah decided to broach the subject of Sadeem’s getting married to her son—Sadeem’s cousin Tariq. Aunt Badriyyah had intended to instill in Sadeem a sense of security and the possibility of some future happiness for her, but she only succeeded in making Sadeem all the more upset and embittered.

So they wanted to marry her off to that adolescent dental student who was only a year older than she was? If they knew her Firas, they would never have dared to make such a proposition! They were exploiting the fact that she was now alone in this world and needed a home she could live in securely without having to face people’s scrutiny and their inevitable gossip about her living alone after her father’s death. Even Aunt Badriyyah wanted to ensure that Sadeem would remain under her supervision by marrying her to her own son. And who knew? Maybe Tariq was already thinking about the money and property she would inherit from her father and was planning how to get his hands on it. Maybe his mother—her own aunt!—was even encouraging him.

It was out of the question. She would not marry Tariq or anyone else. She would shut herself up like a monk in her father’s house. If Aunt Badriyyah didn’t let up in her insistence about not leaving her alone, and didn’t allow her to live in the family home in Riyadh, then she would consent reluctantly to live with them in Khobar. But she would dictate her own terms. She would not allow anyone ever again to take her for granted, as Firas had done.

40.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: December 10, 2004

Subject: Hamdan, the Cute Guy with the Pipe

Nothing is harder than the life of a woman who finds herself torn between a man who loves her and a man she loves.—Khalil Gibran

Whenever I start thinking about the shape my life will take when I bring this story to a close, it stresses me out. What will I do then, having gotten so used to finding all of these messages from you folks out there, e-mails in my mailbox that fill the emptiness of my days? Who will call me every bad name in the book, and who will be there to pat me on the shoulder? Who will even remember me at all? Will I be capable of adjusting to life in the shadows after becoming so accustomed to the glare of publicity, to my role as the spark that sets off the arguments that flare up whenever people in this country get together now?

Even just thinking about what it will be like is upsetting. It’s true that I began with the simple intention of trying to reveal a few of life’s daily realities that pass so many of you unobservant people by. But I’ve become so invested in this story! And I also find myself waiting eagerly—impatiently!—for your readerly responses. I get irritated if I don’t get as many e-mails with feedback as I want; and I’m ecstatic whenever I read about ME in a newspaper or magazine or on a Web page. I’m going to miss all of this attention, there’s no doubt about that. In fact, I might find myself pining for it so fiercely that I don’t have any choice but to start writing again. In that case, what do you all want me to write? I’m standing by, readers, ready and willing: what should be the topic of my next exposé?

Michelle couldn’t believe that her friend Sadeem considered Saudi Arabia to be the sole Islamic country in the world! In Michelle’s opinion, United Arab Emirates was just as Islamic, even though its people were allowed a lot of latitude in their social behavior, and were even allowed to practice other religions. In Michelle’s opinion, UAE was going about it in a much better way. Sadeem tried to make it clear to her that just because a country was “Muslim” did not necessarily mean that it was also an “Islamic country.” Saudi Arabia was the only country ruled solely and completely by the law derived from the Qur’an and the way of the Prophet, peace be upon him, applying that law—the Shari’ah—in all spheres of life. Other Muslim nations might draw on the Islamic Shari’ah for their basic principles and outlook, but as society changed and new needs arose, they left specific rulings to human-made law. Michelle could see the gap between her and her friends widening to the point where at times she wondered how it was that she ever fit in their scene at all—their world didn’t accord in any way with her own ideas about life or the ambitions she had.

And what were those ambitions? Michelle felt she had found her calling working in the media, and she planned to make it to the top. She was going all the way. She dreamed of one day seeing her portrait on the cover of a magazine, standing next to Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp. She fantasized about magazines and radio channels and TV stations vying with each other to get her exclusive scoop interviews with celebrities. She imagined the invitations to attend the Oscars, Emmys and Grammys that would surely come her way, just as the invitations to the Arab awards ceremonies already had. Never mind that her father had not let her attend even one of them—she would convince him with time. It would be over Michelle’s dead body that she would be reduced to the circumstances her poor miserable friends found themselves in: a prisoner of the house (Gamrah), a prisoner of a man (Sadeem) or a prisoner of her vanity (Lamees).

The safest route, Michelle determined, was to stay away from entanglements with men altogether—if her experience with Faisal and her sort-of experience with Matti had taught her anything, it had taught her that. There would be no man at all, not even if that man was as sweet and cultivated as Hamdan, the young producer who was now directing her weekly program and who had studied media production at Tufts University in Boston…

Michelle had to admit to herself that she had been attracted to Hamdan from the start. He had a natural gift for making everyone gather around him as soon as he showed up at a shoot, making one of his usual loud appearances. And whenever he was around, the laughs and excitement level in the air seemed to climb up a notch.

Michelle and Jumana had watched Hamdan from a distance as he was smoking his midwakh* pipe on one of their first days on the job, and Jumana had commented on how attractive he was. But Jumana was in love with one of her relatives whom she intended to marry as soon as he finished his MA in England and returned home, so she had been trying to set Hamdan up with her friend Michelle instead. But Hamdan beat her to it. When he made his interest in her obvious, Michelle wasn’t surprised. After all, out of everyone in the crew it was clear that she and Hamdan seemed to agree on things the most and to be the most in sync. They seemed to be a natural match.