Girls of Riyadh

Hamdan was twenty-eight. The most handsome thing about him was his nose, as sharp and fine as an unsheathed sword. He had a trim, light beard and a truly infectious laugh. He was as stylishly turned out as Michelle always was. Usually, he wore a nice pair of jeans and a name-brand T-shirt to work, but sometimes he showed up in his white kandurah* and isamah.** Even though he was relentless about keeping up his urbane appearance, he could never endure having his head wrapped up for more than an hour at the very most. So he would inevitably yank off the carefully wound turban, revealing his hair, which was longer than Michelle’s, since she had gotten her hair cut short like Halle Berry’s—a style Faisal forbade her to adopt because he didn’t want to lose her lovely long hair with its delicate soft curls which he loved to wrap around his fingers.

Hamdan and Michelle had long conversations about all kinds of things, not least the TV program and their goals at the station. Because their work demanded it, they began going out to various places together—restaurants, cafés, shops and local events. Hamdan often invited her to go out hunting with him or on fishing trips in his speedboat (the one thing he was even more infatuated with than his Hummer automobile). Though Michelle enjoyed these kinds of expeditions, she always declined his invitations, limiting herself to looking at his photographs and listening to him as he talked about his adventures.

41.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: December 17, 2004

Subject: A Message for “F”

Anyone can become angry—that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, with the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not easy.—Aristotle

A lot of people have written to me asking to know more about Sadeem’s sky-blue scrapbook that I mentioned a couple of e-mails ago. Some have asked how it is that I managed to see what Sadeem wrote in it (and of course the subtext here is: if you aren’t Sadeem, that is.). They’re just DYING to figure out if she and I are one and the same. Others are just curious about what is written in that scrapbook.

To the curious ones out there, I say: I will read to you, and with you, more of Sadeem’s musings from her sky-blue scrapbook. To those who are nosy and have made it their business to “out” me, I say: Just drop it.

When she couldn’t seem to find an appropriate job after graduating, Sadeem decided to start a business with a portion of her inheritance. She had for some time been thinking about becoming a party and wedding planner, since there certainly was a demand for it—hardly a week would go by without her receiving an invitation to someone or other’s wedding or dinner party or reception. During summer—the high season—it was not uncommon for her to get invitations to two or three different occasions on a single evening. She and many girls her age, whenever they felt bored or cooped up, would arrange to get invited to a wedding—it didn’t matter whose. They could dress up and deck themselves out and put on heavy makeup and spend the evening dancing to music played by live bands or DJs. It was the closest you could get to an evening in a nightclub, albeit a very respectable and entirely female nightclub.

Sadeem’s idea was to start by arranging small get-togethers for her relatives and friends and then to gradually expand until she got good enough to organize weddings. For years she had noticed that the party-organizing sector was pretty much a monopoly held by a small group of women, all Lebanese, Egyptian or Moroccan, who demanded enormous sums of money but did not provide excellent service in return. Sadeem was electrified at the thought of having the opportunity to plan every detail of an event herself, from A to Z, and modifying the plans to fit the type of occasion and the budget. She already knew the restaurants, florists, furniture shops and clothes makers that she would want to work with.

Sadeem proposed to Um Nuwayyir that the older woman take charge of the Riyadh office, with Gamrah as her assistant. Sadeem would assume control of the eastern region, where she was about to move, and Lamees, if she wanted, could set up an office in Jeddah, where she would be moving with her husband, Nizar, after her graduation. They could even arrange with Michelle over in Dubai to hire some singers who would make special recordings of songs suitable for wedding processions or graduation parties.

Um Nuwayyir welcomed the idea. It would fill the hours of loneliness she faced daily when she got home from work, which would be lonelier still after Sadeem’s departure. Gamrah was very enthusiastic as well. She and Sadeem began setting up small gatherings to which they invited their acquaintances. Tariq, Sadeem’s cousin, helped them take care of official tasks, obtaining a commercial license and other necessary documents. Since women are not always permitted to take care of legal matters with banks and other offices themselves, Sadeem made him their official agent for legal affairs.

The evening before Sadeem left for the eastern province, Gamrah produced invitations to the wedding celebration of a relative of a friend of her sister Hessah, and so Gamrah, Lamees and Sadeem went along with Hessah to the wedding. Hessah took her seat at the table reserved for the bride’s friends, while the three girlfriends sat up on the dance floor. That was where all young single girls customarily sat, magnets for the roving eyes of matrons who were mothers of eligible young men.

When the tagagga crooned into the microphone, the three girls stood up, ready to dance to the familiar Saudi ballad. All of the girls sitting on the raised space started to move as the drumbeats began to throb. The sound roused the entire hall as the taggaga’s voice soared.

Sadeem was dancing in place, shaking her shoulders softly and moving her head from side to side with her eyes closed as she drummed her fingers in time to the song. Gamrah was moving her arms and legs in a random rhythm that had no relation to the beat, her eyes staring upward. Lamees shook her hips as if she were belly dancing, singing the song lyrics along with the singer, as opposed to Gamrah, who did not memorize song lyrics, and Sadeem, who considered showing off how in tune you were with the music while you danced to be a bit overdone.

When the song was over, Lamees went off to chat with an old friend from her school days that she had happened to bump into. The friend had been recently married and Lamees wanted to ask her how she was finding marriage so far, and what the wedding night was like and what kinds of birth control she had tried, and other such particulars that were concerning her now that her own wedding had been booked for the midyear break.

Sadeem remained with Gamrah on the dance floor to dance to a song she loved by Talal Maddah:*

I love you even if you love another

and forget me and stay far away

because my heart’s only wish

is to see you happy, every day

The gentle words and mournful tune pierced straight through Sadeem’s heart. The image of Firas clouded over her mind, and though she was surrounded by people on the dance floor, she danced as if it were only Firas who was watching her.

When it was time for dinner, they all filled their plates from the buffet and started talking about Sadeem’s departure the next day. Sadeem was feeling so sad that her chest was constricted in sorrow, and she did not know how she would ever emerge from the ordeal whole again. As they talked and ate, one of the cell phones lying on the table beeped twice, indicating that a text message had been received. Every one of the girls dove for her phone, hoping that she would be the one who got the text from someone who had remembered her at that particular moment. Lamees was the lucky one. Knowing that his darling was attending a wedding party, Nizar had written from home saying: “May our wedding be the next, habibti!”**

HOURS LATER, Sadeem stared at the suitcases and boxes that filled her room, ready to be shipped to Khobar. She felt a lump rise in her throat as she traced the scratching she had made on the edge of her desk as a child and gazed at the magazine pictures of celebrities and her friends’ photos plastered on her closet door. She picked up her sky-blue scrapbook and pencil, and wrote.

Letter to F: It is now 3:45 a.m., local kingdom time.

In a few minutes the dawn call to prayer will echo through the city of Riyadh. You must be on your way to the mosque at this very moment, since your prayers in the eastern region start a little earlier than ours do here. Or are you in Riyadh right now? I don’t even know whether the two of you are living here or there.

Do you still always go to the Friday prayer service? Or has the pleasure of sleeping at her side made you lazy about getting up and performing what is due to God?

I’m dying to hear your voice. If only I could wake you up right now! Without you, the world is a gloomy place. The night is darker than it should be. The silence is worse, and lonelier.

Oh, God…how much I love you!

Do you remember when you called me from your private jet as you were on your way to Cairo? I don’t remember the reason we argued that day, but I do remember how depressed I was that you were traveling somewhere when I was still so upset.

About half an hour after I got your text message saying good-bye from the airport, I got a call from a long and unfamiliar phone number. It didn’t occur to me that it could be you. I screamed when I heard your darling voice, I was so happy! Your voice washed my heart clean of whatever pain was there. Firas, my love! I yelled. Didn’t you leave?

You told me that your body was up in the air but your heart was on the ground with me, trying to soothe me. You went on teasing me and flirting with me for a whole half hour. I practically melted away, I was so madly in love with you!

I wish you were with me right now.

Today, I went to a wedding party. I danced there imagining you standing in front of me, and I reached out to you but of course you weren’t there.

I lament you at night like twenty death rites, while you’re by her side,

May God not forgive you, nor forgive her through life,

Nor bring you back to me, nor give her bliss

I love you…

My love who I HATE!

Did I tell you that I am traveling to you tomorrow?

Finally, in Khobar, I will live by your side. That city has brought us together again: me and you, and now Madame Wife, too!

How am I going to drive down that road, all the time remembering when you went by, on the same road, three years ago, beside my car, guarding me from afar? I can’t imagine myself on the highway heading east without you. No, it’s more. I can’t imagine myself in any place without you. I can’t imagine that I will be able to go on in this life without you. It’s all because of him! God punish you, Waleed, who ruined my life! God get my revenge on you.

42.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: December 24, 2004

Subject: Lamees Marries the First and Only Love of Her Life

From a sensitive woman’s heart springs the happiness of mankind.—Khalil Gibran

One reader—she didn’t give her name—tells me she doesn’t know how I can be so naïve as to exalt love. And how can I be so proud of my clueless friends who go on pursuing this hopeless quest and probably will do so for the rest of their lives? There is nothing better, she proclaims, than a respectable fiancé who, as they say, “walks in through the front door.” The two families already know each other, there are solid ties and since it’s all done through family channels the bride is certified as a good girl and everyone agrees on everything. There is no room for nonsense or deception as there is with this “love match” thing. This method is beneficial to the girl, since it guarantees that the guy won’t have any suspicions as to her past, which might well happen if they had had any sort of relationship before marriage. How could any rational girl kick away an opportunity like that and run after something not guaranteed?

Your opinion, my friend, is one I respect. But if we lose faith in love, everything in this world will lose its pleasure. Songs will lose their sweetness, flowers their fragrance, and life its joy and fun. When love has been in your life you see that the only true, real pleasure of life is love. Every other thrill arises from that basic source of pleasure. The most meaningful songs are those your lover hums in your presence, the prettiest blossoms are the ones he offers and the only praise that counts is your beloved’s. In a word or two, life only goes Technicolor in the very moment love’s fingers caress it!

O God, we—the Girls of Riyadh—have been forbidden many things. Do not take the blessing of love away from us, too!

After a three-week engagement and after waiting four months after the contract-signing ceremony, Lamees’s wedding day arrived.* It was the first wedding to be planned by Sadeem, Gamrah and Um Nuwayyir, in collaboration with Michelle, who had come from Dubai especially to attend her friend’s wedding on the fifth of the month of Shawwal, the month after Ramadan, when the marriage business booms.

Preparations were in full swing all through Ramadan. The biggest share of the burden fell on Um Nuwayyir and Gamrah, since they were the only ones in Riyadh, where the wedding would take place. Sadeem took on some light duties such as ordering the chocolates from France, while Michelle was responsible for using her connections to record a CD of songs written by some of the famous singers she knew personally. A custom-made CD for Lamees and Nizar to play during the party, and then copies could be handed out afterward to the guests as a keepsake.

Gamrah would begin working every night after she performed the evening Ramadan prayers at the huge mosque downtown. Shopping malls rarely open in the daytime during Ramadan, but they make up for it at night, opening until three or four in the morning throughout the holy month.

She always brought Saleh with her to the mosque when she went to pray—she wanted to be sure to inculcate in her little boy, who was now three years old, a sense of religious devotion early on. Saleh was happy to come, and would throw on his miniature black woman’s abaya, which Gamrah had cut and hemmed to his size after he demanded that she buy him one exactly like hers. He wouldn’t be put off about the abaya, and so she had relented, shrugging off Um Nuwayyir’s repeated warnings about giving in to his desires. Gamrah would remind Um Nuwayyir that Saleh was growing up in different circumstances than those in which her Nuri had been raised. Her little Salluhi was growing up among all his uncles, and so there was no cause to fear that he would lack adequate male role models just because his father wasn’t around. Anyway, he looked so cute, gathering the folds and ends of the voluminous black abaya around his little-boy clothes, his head covered all the while in a traditional shimagh.

During the prayers, Saleh would stand next to her imitating every one of her moves, from the very beginning with saying “Allah Akbar”* to reciting to bending down and prostrating himself on the carpet-covered floor. When he got bored with imitating her, he would twist his head and contort his upper body toward her as she bent and knelt, trying to peer into her eyes and those of the rest of the grown-ups lined up for prayer, seeing if he could make them laugh. Kneeling in front of them, he would lean so far forward that he would topple over on his face, and then he would roll over onto his back, still grinning his wide grin and waiting for someone to smile back, any one of those gloomy-looking women in the row who tried to avoid meeting his gaze and keep their concentration on the prayer. Losing hope, he would take the opportunity of their kneeling and bending to the ground in prayer to give every one of those frowning women a little pat on her rear end, before going back to stretch out on his back in front of them, laughing and totally proud of his achievement!

The women complained about his naughty behavior and ordered Gamrah to send him over to the men’s section to pray. Gamrah found his little antics adorable but would try to reprimand her son in front of the other ladies, fighting to keep from laughing. Saleh would give her one of his cute smiles, encouraging her to let out the laughter she was suppressing, as if he knew that she didn’t mean to scold him.

Riyadh Tarawih prayers* usually ended around eight-thirty or nine P.M. and the shops opened their doors right after that. Gamrah would make her rounds, from the seamstress who was sewing the tablecloths and chair coverings for the wedding hall to the restaurant where she tasted new dishes every evening in order to select what pleased her most for the wedding buffet. She had visits to the florist and the printer who was doing the invitations, and many others, in addition to her many trips to the mall with Lamees to get whatever Lamees was still lacking for her trousseau.

Gamrah wouldn’t get home before two or three in the morning, although during the final third of the month she would return an hour or two earlier, in time to do the Qiyam prayers** at the mosque with her mother and sisters. At first, Gamrah’s mother wouldn’t let her go out on these work missions alone, but she began going easier on her daughter when she noticed how seriously Gamrah took it all. What most impressed Um Gamrah was when she saw her daughter make her first profit—for arranging a dinner party in the home of one of Sadeem’s professors at the university—and hand it over to her father, who finally was persuaded of the suitability of his daughter’s odd work. Her mother had tried to force her sons to accompany their sister in her nightly outdoor activities, but they refused, one and all, and she eventually let it drop. So Gamrah was free to go about her work, sometimes in the company of her sister Shahla, or with Um Nuwayyir, or—most of the time—with Saleh and no one else.

On the long-awaited day, Lamees looked more gorgeous than ever. Her long chocolate-brown hair flowed down her back in pretty waves. Her mother-of-pearl-studded gown dropped softly from her shoulders, draping gracefully in front and revealing her upper back before widening gradually until it reached the ground. Her tulle veil flowed from her head down her bare back. One hand held a bouquet of lilies and the other clasped Nizar’s hand. He was softly invoking God’s name over her before every step and helping her lift the long train of her gown.

Lamees’s friends could see the unadulterated joy in her eyes as she danced with Nizar after the procession, amid a circle of women, his relatives and hers. Their friend Lamees was the only one who had fulfilled the dream they all had, the dream of marrying the first love of their lives.

GAMRAH: May God’s generosity put us there next! Just look at those two blissed-out faces out there on the dance floor! Ah, how lucky is the girl who gets a Hijazi man! Where are our men when it comes to these romantic gazes of Nizar toward his bride? I swear to God, a Najdi would kill you if you said to him, sitting up there on the bridal dais, “Just turn toward me a little, and smile, for God’s sake! Instead of sitting there frowning as if somebody had dragged you here against your will!”

SADEEM: Remember how Rashid reacted when we told him to kiss you during the wedding? And look at this Nizar, all he does is kiss Lamees’s forehead every couple of minutes, and then her hands and her cheeks. You’re right, men from Jeddah are a different species.

GAMRAH: And look how considerate he is, he’s happy to let her stay in Riyadh while he’s in Jeddah, until she graduates and can move there. I swear to God he’s a real man, God bless both of them and make them happy.

MICHELLE: But isn’t that the way it should be? Or did you think he was not going to let her finish her studies, or that he would force her to finish in Jeddah because he’s there? This is her life, and she’s free to run it as she wants, just as he’s free to run his as he wants. Our problem here is that we let men be bigger deals than they really are. We need to realize—assume, even—right from the start that things like letting us graduate are not even optional, it’s just what makes sense, and our eyes should not fly out of our heads if one of these men actually does something right!

SADEEM: Shut up, both of you. You two are giving me a headache! Let’s just watch those lovebirds over there. They look so cute when they’re dancing together. Just look at how he looks at her! His eyes are glazing and he looks like he’s going to die of happiness. Oh, my poor heart! That’s what I call love.

GAMRAH: Poor Tamadur. Don’t you think she must be jealous because her twin sister got married before she did?

SADEEM: Why should she be jealous? Tomorrow her own luck and fate will show up. And by the way, have you noticed how well groomed these Hijaz guys are? Nizar is positively glistening, he’s so clean and tidy! Just look how perfectly trimmed his goatee is. Every Hijazi bridegroom I’ve ever seen has a goatee precisely that shape, and not too heavy. You’d think they all go to the same barber!

MICHELLE: Those guys get a scrubbing, a Turkish bath and facial threading so they won’t be too hairy, plucking and a pedicure and sometimes even a waxing. Not like the guys from Riyadh, where the groom looks just like all the guests except for the color of his bisht.*

SADEEM: I couldn’t care less whether a guy is well groomed or not. In fact, I prefer a man who is a little untidy. It’s so much more masculine—he doesn’t have the time or the vanity to dress up and buy the latest fashions and act like a teenager who has nothing better to do.

UM NUWAYYIR: God have mercy on the old days! The days when you used to fall all over yourself when it came to good-looking men. Even Waleed, how your eyes were full of him!

SADEEM: True, but after Waleed I got Firas, the untidy devil who filled my eyes with nothing in the world but him.

GAMRAH: Basically I’d take any guy, whoever he is, clean or filthy, tidy or messy. Who cares? As long as he’s there. I’m ready to be happy with any man. I’m so bored, girls! I’m fed up and I can’t stand it. A little more of this and I’ll go insane.

When it was time for the bouquet toss, the young single ladies lined up behind the bride, eager to find out who would get to board the sparkling marriage train next. Lamees’s and Nizar’s relatives crowded in, mixing with the rest of her friends. After her mother insisted, Tamadur sulkily joined them. Sadeem and Michelle stood front and center, and were hurriedly joined by Gamrah, who was quick to comply with Um Nuwayyir’s encouragement to stand among the young bachelorettes; even if she was married before, she was technically single at the moment of the bouquet toss and more than ready to remarry again.

Lamees turned her back to the girls, having earlier agreed with her three friends that she would try to throw the bouquet in their direction. She tossed it high in the air and the crowd of girls surged to grab it. After a lot of pushing and shoving and kicking and hitting, Gamrah got hold of what was left of Lamees’s bouquet, a few green leaves tied with a strip of white lace. She raised it high, giggling ecstatically. “I caught the bouquet! I caught the bouquet!”

43.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: December 31, 2004

Subject: Today He’s Back

Today he’s back

as if nothing happened

and with an artless child’s eyes

he’s come back to tell me

I’m his life companion,

his one and only love

He came bearing flowers,

how can I say no,

my youth sketched on his lips

I remember still, flames through my blood,

taking refuge in his arms

I hid my head within his chest

like a child returned to his parents…—Nizar Qabbani

Happy New Year! I don’t feel like writing any little introduction this week. I’m going to let events speak for themselves.

Firas came back!

When Sadeem heard from Firas again, she tore out that day’s page from her little daily diary and enclosed it gently in her sky-blue scrapbook, where it nestled among the pages so full of his photos and interviews.

Firas came back to her, only two days after she had longed for him at the wedding. He came back, a few days after his marriage contract was signed and a few weeks before his wedding was to take place.

Sadeem was in Khobar. After spending the evening at a relative’s wedding, she had returned to her room at Aunt Badriyyah’s, and was unable to sleep. The air of Firas’s city polluted her lungs and the glaring streetlamps that lit the road blinded her eyes, and it seemed as if Firas was everywhere—as if he had spread out his black bisht, the cloak he wore on top of his thobe, in most of the official photographs, over the entire city, so that everything underneath it was cast in his shadow.

Sadeem had been lying in bed awake, sighing deeply, at four A.M when a text message appeared on her cell phone, which had all but died since Firas had gone away:

I am suffering enormously, and have been ever since you went out of my life. I see now that I will suffer for a long time. A very long time. I deleted all your pictures, e-mails and text messages and burned all your letters so that you wouldn’t have to worry that they were around. I was in pain as I hit the delete button and as I watched the fire eat my treasure, but your face and your voice and the memories are engraved in my heart and can never be wiped out. With this message I’m not trying to get back together. I’m not even asking you to write back. I just want you to know how it is with me. I’m in bad shape without you, Sadeem. Really bad…

Sadeem couldn’t even read it clearly. Tears had filled her eyes, blurring her vision, the minute she read the sender’s nickname, which she had been too weak to delete from her phone: Firasi Taj Rasi. My Firas, my Crown.

She barely knew what she was doing as she pressed the button to call the sender’s number. Her Firas answered! Firas, her darling and brother and father and friend. He didn’t say anything, but just hearing his breathing on the other end of the connection was enough to make her weep.

He stayed silent, not knowing what to say. The sound of his car motor partly concealed the tightness in his breathing, as Sadeem went on sobbing in wordless rebuke of what he had done, releasing all that had been packed inside of her, waiting to be unloaded, swelling and growing until it filled her completely. He listened and listened to her painful gasps for breath as he murmured into his cell phone for her to imagine his planting one kiss after another on her forehead.

In one fell swoop he destroyed all the fortifications the resistance forces possessed.

He couldn’t believe it when she told him she was living with her aunt in Khobar, just a few kilometers away from his home! He kept her talking on the phone as he made his way toward her neighborhood. He didn’t know the house she was in, and he didn’t ask her. He told her that he was getting closer to her than she could imagine.

That was a dawn never to be forgotten! Birds cheerfully engaged in their early morning flutter, and a lone car roaming one of the quarters of the city of Khobar, driven by a man worn down by desire and longing for his sweetheart’s eyes. The two lovers lost the last of their reservations after what had seemed a lifetime of denial. Now fate, with the tender love of a father who cannot bear to see his children in torment, gripped their hands and led each to the other.

Sadeem went over to her window and looked out onto the street. She began describing the houses nearby to Firas, since she didn’t know the number of her aunt’s house or its exact location. All she knew was that it had a huge glass front door and on either side of the large door were a few untrimmed trees.

She caught sight of the lights of his car in the distance and felt as though she were floating in a warm ocean of bliss. He saw her at the window, her ash-brown hair tumbling across her shoulders and the creamy skin that he dreamed of kissing. “You’re cream and honey!” he would say to her whenever he stared at her pictures.

He shut off the car engine in front of the house, not far from Sadeem’s window on the second floor. She begged him to move farther off before one of the neighbors coming back from the nearby mosque after Fajr prayer saw him by her window at this early time of the day! He couldn’t care less. He started teasing and flirting with her, singing to her:

Be patient a moment, let my eyes feast!

I’m thirsty for you—melting of desire

Oh you little devil, you are prettier than you ever were then!

But your eyes remained the way I love them.*

44.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: January 7, 2005

Subject: Life after Lamees’s Marriage

Readers were divided—as usual—between those who supported Sadeem’s return to Firas and those who opposed it. But everyone did agree this time—unusually—that come what may, the extraordinary love between these two demands an extraordinary ending to their story.

The hints about the benefits of attachment and stability Michelle heard from Hamdan came in a variety of shapes. He told her his dream was to marry a girl who would be his best friend, and that he was hoping he would find a girl who had exactly her grasp of things and her openness toward the world. (Michelle smiled as she heard him praise her openness, the very same quality she’d heard so much criticism of in her own country.) He was always complimenting her on her elegance, and he noticed the tiniest changes she made to her appearance from one day to the next.

Michelle admitted to herself now (having come to depend, in her new life in Dubai, on the principle of being frank with herself) that she could see one of two possibilities. Either she admired Hamdan very much or she loved him very little. His presence left her feeling happy—it was happier than she had felt in Matti’s pleasant company but much less happy than she had felt when she was with Faisal. She was quite sure that Hamdan carried in his heart stronger feelings for her than she had for him, and so she deliberately missed his hints and tried to get him to sense her hesitation about taking their relationship further than friendship. She was able to do it without completely severing the strands of his hopes (and hers) for the future. Hamdan gracefully accepted that Michelle wasn’t yet ready to talk about commitment.

He was perceptive enough to know that talking may be the best way to express what is in one’s mind, but expressing what is in the heart is more eloquently done in other ways. He knew from his university studies in nonverbal communication that when a person’s words conflict with tone of voice or gestures, the truth almost always lies in the way words are said rather than in what is said.

That he was free of the mental complexes that usually cripple men’s brains was one huge attraction for Michelle. Even though he possessed many of the qualities that seemed to make other men self-obsessed—he was handsome and had strong principles and was materially and socially successful—he appeared to her to be amazingly well balanced. She found him intellectually stimulating, engaging, sophisticated and emotionally enlightened.

And even so, even with all of this, Michelle realized that she could not really love him. Or maybe she was unable to allow herself to try. She had had two tries already, and that was plenty for her. If her family was going to refuse her relationship with her American relative because he wasn’t one of them, and the people of Saudi Arabia were refusing one of their own sons to her because she wasn’t one of them, what was there to guarantee that this run of misfortune would be broken now with Hamdan the Emarati guy? After the first experience, she had fled to America, and after the second, she had immigrated against her will to Dubai. Where would she be exiled if she were to fail for a third time?

Everything in her life seemed to be going brilliantly except when it came to love and marriage. Michelle did not believe that she and destiny would ever agree on a suitable man, for Michelle had been quarreling with her destiny for time immemorial. If she found a man she liked, destiny plucked him away from her; and if she detested him, destiny threw him at her feet.

LAMEES ANNOUNCED that she would officially start wearing the hijab after returning from her honeymoon. In Saudi, as everyone knows, women have to wear some form of hijab—some kind of head cover to conceal their hair and neck—but women have the choice to take it off, even in front of unknown men, within the confines of houses and as soon as they cross the country borders. Lamees decided that she would start to wear it whenever non-Muhram* men were around, following the rules of Islam. She would wear it in front of her cousins and coworkers and whenever she traveled outside of the kingdom. Her friends all congratulated her on this bold spiritual step—except for Michelle, who tried to dissuade her from her decision, reminding her how hideous hijab- wearing women usually looked and how the hijab restricted a girl from being fashionable because it also required covering her arms with long sleeves and her legs with long pants or skirts. But Lamees had made her mind up absolutely, and she had done so before seeking anyone else’s thoughts on the matter, including Nizar’s. Lamees felt that she had had all the liberation she wanted before her marriage and during her honeymoon. Now it was time to pay her dues to God, especially after He had granted her such a wonderful husband, one who was just right for her and whom she had dreamed of finding, and whose love and tenderness toward her made her the envy of all her friends.

Lamees’s life with Nizar was truly a picture of married bliss. They were in greater agreement about everything and more in tune with each other’s needs than any of the married couples around them. They were totally complementary. For example, it was really difficult to get Nizar upset about anything; Lamees, on the other hand, was highly strung and sensitive. But she was more judicious and more patient than he was when it came to anything related to home or budget. So Nizar relied on her to take care of all household affairs, while always lending a hand, every day, in cleaning and washing and cooking and ironing. As long as they had no babies, they both preferred not to have a maid.

Lamees was very attentive to her relationship with her husband’s family. She worked hard to please them, especially his mother, whom she called Mama—something none of her Najdi friends would ever do.* The excellent relationship between Lamees and Um Nizar strengthened Nizar’s attachment to his wife even more as time went on.

Nizar would randomly bring home a bunch of red roses for Lamees for no special occasion. He posted little love letters on the fridge door before going off to his on-call shifts at the hospital. When he was about to take his rest break there, he always called her before going to bed. And when he returned home, he would take her out to a restaurant or shopping without the slightest anxiety or embarrassment about the possibility of running into one of his friends while his wife was at his side (a hang-up many Saudi men have). She made him sandwiches and salads, leaving them in the fridge when she set off to do her own hospital rounds. He waited impatiently for her to be finished so that they could spend the rest of their day together, like newlyweds still on their honeymoon.

THERE WAS a question haunting Sadeem that no one could answer to her satisfaction. She put her question regularly to Gamrah and Um Nuwayyir, leaving them feeling at a complete loss as to how to help their Sadeem. Is it a blessing or a curse for a woman to have knowledge? she wanted to know—referring to both academic knowledge and the practical experiences of everyday life.

Sadeem had observed that despite human progress and a general refinement of society’s ideas about life, when it came down to searching for a suitable bride, young and naïve girls tended to hold more of an attraction than girls who had attained an advanced level of knowledge and had a more sophisticated understanding of the world. The fact that it was extremely unusual for a female doctor to be married was a case in point. Men who came from this part of the world, Sadeem decided, were by nature proud and jealous creatures. They sensed danger when face to face with females who might present a challenge to their capabilities. Naturally, such men would prefer to marry a woman with only a very modest education, someone feeble and helpless, like a bird with a broken wing, and without any experience of the world. That way the man could assume the position of the teacher, who takes on the job of forming his pupil into whatever he wishes. Even if many men admired strong women, Sadeem pondered, they did not marry them! So the ignorant girl was in hot demand while the smart and savvy one watched helplessly as her name became slowly etched in a giant plaque in commemoration of spinsters, a virtual list that was growing longer every day to accommodate the requirements of all the insecure men who didn’t actually know what they wanted and so refused to attach themselves to a woman who knew absolutely what she wanted.

45.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: January 14, 2005

Subject: Sadeem’s Addiction

A man who signed as “Son of the Sheikhs”* is furious. He doesn’t understand why I criticized proud and jealous Saudi men in my last e-mail. (The ones who wouldn’t like to expose their wives to strange men, even their own friends, by walking down a shopping mall next to them or dining out in a restaurant with them.) “Son of the Sheikhs” explains this behavior by informing me that it is more embarrassing if a friend sees your wife than if a stranger sees her, because a stranger would not know who the husband is, but the friend will carry your wife’s picture engraved in his head and can call it up whenever he sees you! Brother “Son of the Sheikhs” sums it up with this: A man who is not jealous is not a man. Furthermore (he adds), it is perfectly natural for a man to choose a woman who is inferior to him (especially since all women, in his view, are one level below men in the hierarchy of organisms anyway!). But according to our guy’s reasoning, “a man needs to feel the weight of his own superiority and masculinity when he is with a woman. Otherwise, what would prevent him from marrying someone just like him—another man?”

Um, no comment…

The Sadeem who came back to Riyadh to visit her friends over the weekend was very different from the Sadeem who had left for Khobar in such misery a few weeks earlier. Gamrah was sitting in Sadeem’s old home, watching her friend closely. She didn’t doubt for a moment that Firas had something to do with Sadeem’s sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks; and the smile sketched across her face contained an adorable element of complete inanity: here were the well-known symptoms of love. “You cannot be balanced when it comes to expressing emotions, can you! It’s either a frown down to the ground or a smile that splits your face!” said Gamrah.

Sadeem’s return to Firas, or her acceptance of his return to her, wasn’t something that had been carefully considered and worked out. There were no documents containing clauses of agreement or compensation stipulations, not even a prenup. This was not one of Sadeem’s clever schemes. It was simply the insane, bell-pealing spontaneity of love. The rapture that held the two of them in thrall after their return to each other was epic, and it was more powerful than the sting of guilt he felt from time to time, or the sting to her dignity that she experienced whenever she thought about what he had done.

But Sadeem’s happiness did not stretch so far as to include forgetting and forgiving the past. Hers was a joy whose brittle edges had become curled from cruelty, a sweetness masking a bitter core. Feelings of pain and abandonment still haunted her, lurking deep inside, ready to leap out and announce their presence at any moment. By allowing Firas to come back to her, Sadeem was conceding a large part of her honor and self-respect. But, like so many women before her, she did it because she loved him.

Neither Sadeem nor Firas wanted to spend whatever time there was left before his wedding apart from each other. It was as if they had been told he had a fatal disease, with only a few more days to live, and they were determined to live their final moments in pleasure. They decided that they would remain together until the date of the wedding, which would take place in less than two months. It was a strange agreement, but they clung to it.

His love for her, which had not subsided in the least, was what compelled him to call her the moment he finished speaking to his fiancée on the telephone. Her love for him was what allowed her to wait until after he was done flirting with his fiancée on the telephone every night, so that he would be free to flirt with her.

He refused to talk about his fiancée in front of her. He refused even to mention her name or to give any hints about her personality, just as he refused to inform Sadeem exactly what the date of the wedding was. Every time it came up she would blow up at him, quieting down after he soothed and calmed and comforted her—a job he was becoming very skilled at performing.

Every few days—during his milkah period—he would visit his fiancée, who was already his legal wife, since the contract had been signed. Sadeem would discover these visits despite his attempts to hide them from her, and then her last remaining shreds of dignity would fall from her, permanently, it seemed.

Sadeem’s jealousy of Firas’s unknown wife grew deeper and stronger. Firas, who used to be able to melt her with his sweet words, now made her neck burn as if slapped with his coarse and insolent comments. “What’s the matter with you? Why are you in such a bad temper all the time? Must be that time of month!” Firas, who used to moan in pain at seeing a single tear drop from the eye of his Sadeem, began listening unmoved every night as she hemorrhaged her wounded pride in tears that dripped into the phone. “Ma shaa Allah, Sadeem!” he said to her one night, his voice rough and derisive. “Those tears of yours never quit, do they? They’re always ready, at any minute and at any word!”

How had he come to speak to her in such a way? Once she had returned to him, once she had accepted the tainted relationship he offered, did he suddenly see her as third-rate goods? And how had she gotten to such a low point that she had accepted this situation in the first place? How had she come to accept Firas’s love when he was bound to another woman?

One night he told her smugly that his mind was completely at rest about the wife his family had chosen for him. She had all the qualifications he required. The only thing she lacked, Firas said, was that he didn’t love her as he loved Sadeem. But that love, he went on, might show up after marriage; after all, that’s what had happened to all of the men whose advice he had sought. They had all counseled him to drop Sadeem despite his feelings for her and take the more rational, prudent road. He told her he forgave her for not understanding his predicament, for after all, she was a woman, and women think with their hearts, not their minds, in such matters. He kept telling her the advice he received from various relatives and friends who were devoid of compassion and understanding of what prompts a human being to love. She asked herself, if someone doesn’t believe in love, can you expect that person to grasp other high virtues such as nobility and responsibility toward others and loyalty to someone who spent years waiting to marry the person she loves?

Every one of those self-appointed muftis* listened to Firas and then gave him a considered opinion designed to agree with what he was already thinking. They knew he didn’t really want to hear something that contradicted what he was coming to on his own. No, he only asked for advice to shore up his resolve. So they worked hard to bolster his spirits, reassure him and soothe his conscience. They went so far as to warn him to stay away from that young woman who had bewitched him.

“They warned you against me? Me? Are you serious? How do they presume to know me? These guys know nothing about me, or us, and they warn you to stay away from me? And you actually listen to them! So when did you start listening to everyone who came and gave you a fatwa,* a piece of advice as ugly as his face? Or do you just like hearing that you’re not wrong, and that you’re the best, and that this girl you happened to get to know is the one who’s wrong, and that you should leave her because she’s not good enough for you? You, you…who deserve the best! You who have no shame! You come and tell me this stuff after everything I’ve done for you? You bastard, you stupid coward, you ass!”

This time it was Sadeem who broke up with Firas, a mere five days after they got back together. She had no regrets this time, now that she had told him exactly what she thought of him. It was the first time Sadeem had ever raised her voice to Firas, and of course it was the first (and the last) time that she swore at him and insulted him—at least to his face.

There were no tears, no hunger strike, no sad songs—not this time. The end of the long tragic story of forbidden love and loss was more stupid and banal than she could have imagined. Sadeem realized that her love for Firas had far surpassed his love for her. She was embarrassed to remember that she had once imagined that theirs would be among the most heartbreaking and legendary love stories in history.

That night, in her sky-blue scrapbook she wrote:

Can a woman love a man for whom she has lost respect? How many love stories like mine ended after years, in a single night, because the woman suddenly saw the man for what he was?

Men don’t necessarily love the ones they respect, and women are the opposite. They respect only the ones they love!

In the same sky-blue scrapbook that witnessed the blossom of her love for Firas, she wrote down her last-ever poem about him:

What shall I say of the strongest of men

when he’s a little silent drum in his mom’s and dad’s hands?

On his quiet hide they beat the anthem of their tribe

because he’s hollow! He’s empty as the sands

though he had the love that only an ingrate would refuse,

God’s graces be upon him in all the far-off lands!

Then he tells me, I’m a man!

The mind gives me counsel and I’ve listened to it.

So I say to him, and I’m a woman!

I sought my heart’s wisdom, and in the heart I trust!

Sadeem felt for the first time in four years that she no longer needed Firas to survive. He was no longer her air and water. Reuniting with him was no longer the one dream and the hope that kept her alive. That evening was the first, since their initial separation, that she did not pray in the silence of her bedroom for his return. She felt no grief about leaving him. She only felt regret for wasting four years of her life running after the mirage called love.

On the last page of the sky-blue scrapbook, she wrote:

I wanted my love for Firas to continue no matter what, and then with the days passing this love became my whole life, and I started to feel afraid about what would happen if he left, that my life would leave with him. That’s all.

Sadeem realized that she bore a major part of the responsibility—and guilt—because she had refused to receive Firas’s hidden messages, as Lamees had called them. She hadn’t allowed herself to understand the true reason that he avoided real attachment to her all those years. She refused to let her heart perceive how little Firas valued her and how ready he was to forsake her. She had committed the cardinal mistake of the lover, tying her mind and heart in blindfolds so that they could not see unwanted messages from the beloved.

Sadeem was finally cured of her love addiction. But it was a harsh experience that caused her to lose her respect for all men, beginning with Firas and, before him, Waleed, and every man alive after that.

46.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: January 21, 2005

Subject: And Now…Welcome Tariq the Lover

Those who want us, our souls resent them

And those whom we want, fate refuses to give to us.—Norah Al-Hawshan*

Many happy returns on the occasion of the blessed Festival after Pilgrimage, Eid Al-Adha. Since I might not be with you during the next festival, in 12 months from now, let me say it now for always: I extend my best wishes for all of your days to come. May God make all your days, and mine as well, full of goodness, health and love.

When Sadeem moved into her aunt Badriyyah’s home, the person who was happiest about the new arrangement was Tariq, her aunt’s son. From the very first day, he decided that he would be in charge of assuring her comfort in her new home, and he took to the task with an almost alarming dedication. He committed himself to fulfilling every one of Sadeem’s needs. And since Sadeem did not actually demand anything, Tariq tried to offer his services as best he could in other ways, like surprising her with her favorite order from Burger King so the two of them could have their dinner together. Sadeem sensed Tariq’s interest in her, but she couldn’t respond to him in the way he hoped. In fact, she felt uneasy whenever he was in the room, since he never lifted his eyes from her. It began to get increasingly difficult for her to live in the same household with him.

Tariq was one year older than Sadeem. He had gone to elementary and middle school in Riyadh, as his father was working as a civil servant in one of the Saudi ministries at the time. But after retirement his father had moved the family to Khobar so that he could be near his siblings, and Tariq had gone to high school there. Tariq had returned to Riyadh to attend the College of Dentistry at King Saud University, because there were no dental schools in the eastern province at that time.

Sadeem first noticed Tariq’s interest in her when he was a dental student and used to visit them at home on weekends, since he did not generally travel all the way to his own family in the eastern province. She could tell that his admiration had grown stronger over time, but she always knew that she didn’t reciprocate his feelings. Even though Tariq was perfectly pleasant, and even though he spoiled and indulged her every time he came to visit them, and singled her out for attention in his words and glances, there wasn’t anything about him that could make her heart soar the way it had with Firas. Her feelings for him hadn’t changed from the sisterly affection she had developed for him long ago when the two of them had shared toys and games in their grandfather’s Riyadh home.

Only Gamrah knew about the lovesick cousin whom her friend sometimes joked about, though fondly, in her presence. But Sadeem had not mentioned him for a long time, not since her engagement to Waleed. And during her long drawn-out relationship with Firas, Sadeem had actively tried to avoid seeing Tariq. Every time he visited them he would find only his uncle at home. After a few visits when Sadeem was never in the room—on the pretext that she was busy studying upstairs—Tariq had stopped visiting. On the few special occasions when Sadeem had to go to Khobar, Tariq avoided seeing her then as well, and Sadeem appreciated that.

In Sadeem’s eyes, Tariq’s problem was that he was way too simple and straightforward. She was amazed that he would let his feelings toward her show in such a straightforward and artless manner. To her, Tariq did not seem more than a big kid, with his baby face, so like their Syrian grandmother’s, his slightly fleshy body and his guileless smile. None of this was really a failing, but altogether these impressions added up so that she couldn’t conceive of him as a real man she could have a serious relationship with.

One evening after everyone else had gone to bed, the two of them were left in the living room, in their PJs, watching a film on one of the satellite channels. When the film ended—and poor Tariq hadn’t taken any of it in, since he was so engrossed in what he intended to say to Sadeem—he turned to her, whispering the name by which he was accustomed to call her.

“Demi?”

“Yes?”

“There’s something I want to talk to you about, but I don’t know how to start.”

“Why don’t you know how to start? Nothing’s wrong, is it? I hope not.”

“Well, for me it’s all good, but I don’t know what you will think about it.”

“I hope it’s good. Just spell it out and get it over with. There are no formalities between us, right?”

“Okay. I’ll just say it straight out, and God give me strength. Demi, we’ve known each other for a very long time, haven’t we? Since we were little, when you used to visit us on holidays, I always looked at you, a lot, and what I saw was the lovely girl with soft hair and pink hair band. The little girl who dressed prettier than any other girl and didn’t want to play with boys. Do you remember how I used to fight with the other kids when they annoyed you? And if I went to the grocery shop I wouldn’t take any girl with me except you so I could buy you what you wanted? We were still kids, I know, but by God I loved you even then!

“When we got a little older, I loved being around you and my sisters whenever you came to visit us, even though I was always the only boy sitting with your small group of girls. I know it didn’t look so great, my being there, but the only thing I cared about was being near you in the hours you spent with us! Can you believe it? I wouldn’t bring my sisters ice cream unless you were there! My sisters got to the point where if they wanted me to bring them something they would say to me, ‘Hmm, we wonder if Sadeem is coming tonight!’

“All this and I knew that you didn’t love me the way I loved you. Maybe you played along a little bit to be nice to me, and maybe you were happy that I was interested in you, and you had the right to feel that way, of course. I would say to myself, She’s got every reason! And what would she love in you anyway? Not handsome, no degree, no money, chubby figure, there’s nothing in you that would attract her, except the fact that you’re crazy about her.

“The day they accepted me in the College of Dentistry in Riyadh, I was in ecstasy! Do you know why? First, because you might respect me more if I became a doctor, a dentist in fact, and second, because I was going to live in Riyadh, where you lived. I could visit you and I could get to know your dad better, so that maybe he would invite me over every day and I could see you.

“When Waleed asked for your hand, I felt like everything collapsed at once! I couldn’t propose to you like he did because I was still a student with no income. My mother told me your father would never turn down the son of Al-Shari in favor of me, the kid son of your aunt, who hadn’t even finished college. Your engagement and milkah periods were absolutely the most horrible times in my life. I felt I had lost every single dream that I’ve had for myself. And then, after you split up with Waleed, the world smiled at me again! I wanted to open the subject with you quickly. I intended to propose to you as soon as possible, but I couldn’t, because right away you went off to London.”

Sadeem’s face was fixed in astonishment as Tariq went on. “When you came back, I noticed you were avoiding me whenever I came to visit, and you wouldn’t answer my phone calls. When I saw that, I said to myself: This girl clearly doesn’t love you. She can’t even stand you! Stay away from her and leave her alone.

“And I really did stay away. But, and God is witness to my words, I didn’t forget you for a single day. You were always on my mind and I resolved to wait for fate to bring us together.

“After your father died, I felt I wanted to be at your side, but I couldn’t. I knew that my mother wanted to bring you here and that you didn’t agree. There was something inside me telling me that the real reason you were refusing to move here was me.

“The day you came, I vowed to myself that I was not going to bother you. I was going to do whatever it takes to cheer you up, but keeping my distance so that you wouldn’t feel like I was exploiting your presence in my home in order to win you over. Even my mother—I warned her not to talk to you about my feelings. She knows how much I love you and she has always longed to get us engaged, sooner rather than later. But I wanted to make sure you’d agree first so I wouldn’t embarrass her in front of you or you in front of her.

“Now it’s been a year and a half that we’ve been here together. I graduated—you know all of that—and finished my internship and I’ve submitted my papers and I’m waiting for a job or a scholarship to specialize abroad. To tell you the truth, my university professors have offered me a teaching assistant position in one of their divisions, but the problem is that if I take it I’ll be sent abroad within a few months, and I just can’t go away until I know what my fate is with you. If we get engaged, I have to get your agreement about this business of traveling, especially since you’re working here and I don’t know if you would want to come with me or not.

“So what I mean is, if travel doesn’t suit you, I can get a job here in any hospital or dental office and drop the idea of doing my residency abroad. But if you are not meant to be mine, I will take that job offer. With me away you won’t have to feel any embarrassment or unease about turning me down; I’ll be away for three, maybe four years, and by the time I get back I’m sure you will be married to somebody else. Demi, I want to be sure you understand that my request isn’t going to affect your living in this house or feeling settled here. I’m not pressuring you, sweetie. It’s up to you, and you have complete freedom to make whatever decision you want to.”

Finally Sadeem was able to say something:

“But Tariq. Sure, we are close, but we were never close in a way that would mean I could make a decision like this! There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, and there’s a lot I don’t know about you.”

“Sadeem, it’s impossible that anything could change the love that’s been in my heart since I was little. But, of course, you have the right to know whatever you want about me. Ask me all the questions you want answered and I’ll give you the answers, about anything at all!”

“You don’t want to know, for instance, the reason behind the breakup between Waleed and me? Or the reason I didn’t pay a lot of attention to you, specially in the last four years?”

“The reason behind the breakup between Waleed and you was that he’s completely insane! Is there anyone with a brain who would sacrifice Sadeem Al-Horaimli for any reason? Demi, I know you, and I know your roots and how you were raised, and that’s enough for me to trust you. If you want to tell me the reason, that’s up to you, but demanding it is not my right, not at all. You didn’t have any obligation to me in your life before, so that I have no right to ask you about anything that happened then; even those years when you were avoiding me, when I figured you probably had a relationship with someone—they don’t mean a thing to me. What’s important to me is our life together from now on, I mean if God has decreed it. About myself, I’m prepared to sit and tell you everything that has happened in my life since the day I was born until this morning! Although there isn’t much to say. But I will tell you, for instance, which ones do I prefer, the girls of the eastern region or the girls of Najd. The girls of Khobar or the girls of Riyadh.”

“Oh, really! So you’ve got experience with both!”

“Just a few girls that I and my friends managed to ‘number’ in malls as teenagers. If you want their names and phone numbers, I’ll give them to you!”

“No, thanks. Well, I have to say that you caught me totally off guard. Give me a little time to think and give you an answer.”

“I’m going to Riyadh tomorrow. I have some people to see there, and I’ll stay a few days so that you can think in peace.”

47.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: January 28, 2005

Subject: The Best Closure Ever

To listen to the song, click here

Why does the first love refuse to let go?

It comes back right away and awakens us to the past.

It grows as we do, yet returns us to the old days.

With insistent reminders, we’re thrown to its flames.

With its fire, it burns us, it burns to the core.

Why does the first love refuse to let go?—Julia Boutros*

The story has almost reached its end. But my friends are still candles that life sets aflame. They melt down, burned away by love and giving. I took you by the hands, my dear readers, to lead you on a weekly tour of these scented candles, flickering desperately. I wanted you to breathe in their fragrances yourselves. I wanted you to stretch out your hands to catch a few dissolving drops of wax so that you would feel their hot sting. So that you would understand the pain they had been through and the fires that lie behind that sting.

I plant a kiss, now, on every candle that has been lit and melted away but in so doing has lighted a way for others—making for them a path that is a little less dark, contains a few less obstacles and is filled with a little more freedom.

When Michelle woke up after the first night she had spent in Riyadh after more than two years away, she did not know that she had come back to the city at just the right time to witness an important event—a very important event indeed in a life that was already full of changes and quick reverses.

Her day began with a surprise phone call from Lamees. “Go into the bathroom and wash your face with a little cold water,” her friend advised her, so that she could absorb the full impact of what she was about to tell her.

“What’s wrong? Why did you have to wake me up so early?”

“Michelle. Today is Faisal’s wedding.”

Silence from the other end of the line.

“Michelle! Are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“Are you okay?”

“What Faisal? My Faisal?”

“Yes, girl, Faisal the scumbag, no one else!”

“Did he tell you himself or what?”

“Here’s the next whammy—it turns out Nizar is friends with the bride’s brother.”

“Your husband Nizar? Knows the brother of Faisal’s bride? Why didn’t you tell me the minute you heard about that?”

“Are you crazy, to ask me that? I swear I only found out about this today. I came from Jeddah to Riyadh yesterday to attend the wedding of one of Nizar’s sisters. I was really eager to come so that I could see you on the same trip. Nizar told me about the wedding a week ago, but I just got the invitation card today, and when I opened it, my eyes just about flew out of my head. I read the groom’s name maybe one hundred times to be sure it was really the same Faisal.”

“…When did he get engaged?”

“I swear to God, I have no idea, and unfortunately I can’t ask Nizar to ask his friend about it because they are not really close buddies. They just know each other from work. Looks like they probably had a bunch of extra invitations, so they invited me. I don’t expect Nizar knows anything more than I do.”

“So who is this girl he’s marrying?”

“Her last name rings no bell. Nothing impressive.”

“Lamees…”

“Yes, darling?”

“I want you to fix me up with an invite. I’m coming with you.”

“What? No, c’mon, you must be kidding. You going to Faisal’s wedding, are you out of your mind? How would you get through it?”

“Don’t worry about me. I can do it.”

“Michelle, honey, I’m scared. What are you thinking? There’s no reason for you to go and make things harder on yourself.”

“I won’t. In fact, I’ll be giving myself the best closure ever.”

Lamees convinced her husband that she had a splitting headache and couldn’t go to the wedding. She told him she would give her invitation to Michelle, who could go in her place.

Michelle turned the invitation card over and over in her hands as the hairdresser worked on her hair: Announcing the Wedding of our Daughter Shaikhah to our Son Faisal.So this is what it comes to, Faisal? A girl named Shaikhah? What a silly, very silly name!

She did her own makeup and put on a gorgeous Roberto Cavalli gown. It was slinky enough to show off her body perfectly.

At the entrance to the hall, she contemplated the photos of the bride and groom that formed a dazzling display on a table near the door. She studied his expression, trying to gauge how he felt about the woman standing beside him. She happily noted that Shaikhah was totally not his type! She was of a large build, when what he adored was petite women. Her hair wasn’t black—which he preferred—but dyed a range of tints to the point where it looked like a disco globe reflecting a prism of colors. She had a big nose and a mouth with thin lips. What did they have in common with Michelle’s cute nose and seductive lips?

Michelle paid her respects, in the way one does, to his mother, whom she was able to single out after hearing one of the greeters call her “mother of the groom.” She congratulated Um Faisal on the marriage of her son. Faisal’s scent seemed to waft from this woman who had given him birth.

She found a seat near the entrance where the bridal pair would emerge, at the end of the hall facing the dais. She chose her spot carefully, for this evening she had an important and historic mission to accomplish.

She moved her eyes among his sisters, assigning the names she had heard to them. This one looked the oldest, so it must be Norah. That was definitely Sarah, the loud one. This young-looking one over here was apparently Nujud, the prettiest of the bunch, as he always described her. And there was the mother again.

This time, observing his mother from a distance, Michelle remembered her overbearing power and dictatorial ways and also Faisal’s abjectness before her. Michelle would have expected to feel disgust and hate for this woman, and to wish her the worst that life could give, but in fact she found herself respecting her and feeling scorn for her weak son. She noticed that Um Faisal was examining her from afar and seemed to like what she saw. She imagined this woman considering trying to get her for Faisal’s younger brother who hadn’t gotten married yet, or maybe for one of her nephews! Ah, could fate be that twisted?

Michelle had decided that today she would announce her victory over all men. She would rid herself once and for all of whatever bits of Faisal remained in her heart and soul. She found herself heading for the long corridor of people preparing to dance. This was definitely a first: swirling around the dance floor on the day her true love married someone else.

It wasn’t as difficult as she had imagined. She had the sensation that she had lived these moments before in her mind, time and time again—so that this was merely a déjà vu. She felt relaxed and happy. That night she danced and sang as if she were the only person in that enormous hall. It was her own special celebration—a celebration in her honor—to acknowledge her survival and endurance despite everything. It marked her liberation from the slavery of deep-seated traditions, which had subjugated all the other miserable, pitiful women in the dance hall.

She imagined Faisal in bed that night with his bride, dreaming of reaching out to touch his love Michelle, while Shaikhah crouched on his chest with her large body, her folds of fat keeping him from moving and breathing.

The lights were dimmed in the other parts of the hall, leaving one strong beam spotlighting the entry. The bride crossed it, heading toward the dais, flashing smiles at the invited women, and even at Michelle, who quietly followed her progress from nearby. Michelle was filled with confidence, seeing the bride’s large body stuffed into the wedding gown, which was stretched tightly around her body unappealingly, creating un-sightly folds of skin at her armpits.

When it was announced that the men were about to come in, a truly devilish idea occurred to Michelle and she didn’t waste any time acting on it. She sent a short message from her mobile phone to Faisal’s: Congratulations, bridegroom! Don’t be shy. Come on in. I am waiting.

After her message, the men’s entrance was delayed by almost an hour. The hall was awash in the whispers and mutterings of the women guests, and the poor bride was in a state of confusion. Should she go out? Or stay where she was and wait for her groom who refused to come in? After what seemed an eternity the groom appeared, surrounded by his father, the bride’s father and her three brothers. He came in so quickly that no one could really see him. From afar Michelle smiled. Her plan had worked.

A few minutes later, as the photographer was taking photos of the bride with her groom and the family on the dais, Michelle rose, heading toward the exit, intending to leave. But she made very sure that Faisal would see her, more glorious than he had ever seen her before. She looked at his beard, which had altered the face she was accustomed to. He turned toward her, with a desperate look in his eyes, as if begging her to go away. She raised one eyebrow in challenge, not caring in the slightest about any of the women who were looking at her, and she went on standing there in front of the entryway, playing with strands of her short hair as if to annoy him with her new haircut before turning her face away in obvious disgust and making her way toward the door.

After getting into her car, behind the Ethiopian driver, she could not keep back her laughter as she imagined how the wedding night would go for Faisal after seeing her there. It would be a “night cursed by sixty curses,” as Lamees would have said. And that was the point.

Upon reaching the house, she realized that this was the first wedding since her separation from Faisal where her eyes had not become blurry with tears seeing the bride happy with her groom on the dais. Michelle knew now that behind their smiles, many of those brides and grooms were concealing their own sad and yearning hearts because they had been kept from choosing their life’s partner. If she had any tears to shed this evening, they should be for that poor bride whom circumstances would unite tonight, and all the rest of her nights, with a man forced to marry her, a man whose heart and mind were with that other woman, the one who had danced with such abandon at his wedding.

48.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: February 4, 2005

Subject: The “Getting Over Them” Phase

A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she’s dropped into hot water.—Eleanor Roosevelt

Now, be honest. Haven’t you had enough of me after a year of e-mails? I’ve had enough of myself!

One day Sadeem read a news item on the society page, congratulating Dr. Firas Al-Sharqawi on the occasion of the birth of his first son, Rayyan. It had now been more than fifteen months since she and Firas had parted for the last time. Sadeem tried to think about their relationship, over nearly four years, compared to an engagement, contract-signing, wedding, pregnancy and birth with another woman that had occurred all in a little over a year. It seemed to confirm that Firas was not the extraordinary and discriminating person she had once imagined him to be, but just another ordinary boy, much like Waleed and Faisal and Rashid and countless others. Those claims he used to make about holding his life partner to absolute criteria were nothing more than a ridiculous attempt to flex muscles that were pretty weak in the first place. Or maybe they didn’t even exist at all.

Sadeem was in Riyadh for the celebration of Michelle’s and Lamees’s graduation, and the four girls gathered at Sadeem’s old home. As usual, they launched into their various complaints on the woes of lost love.

“Sadeem!” said Lamees, “how could you have accepted—even run after—a sweetheart who tramples you underfoot? You know what your problem is? Your problem is that when you fall in love, you lose your mind! You allow the one you love to humiliate you and you let him get away with it! No, even worse, you say to him, I like it, baby, give me more! This is the truth, unfortunately, and if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have stayed with Firas all those years when you knew he had no intention of marrying you.”

Everyone was hard on her these days. They were blaming her for getting into a relationship that was bound to fail from the start. At the time none of them predicted that her relationship with Firas would end as it did; they had been as optimistic, basically, as she was. But now, naturally, all of them claimed to have known it all along! She had no recourse but to remain silent. At one point Michelle, who had gone through a similar thing a few years before, shot her a wink. Michelle, of course, had taken a firm and severe decision to walk away from Faisal the moment he revealed his parents’ position on their relationship. And so she had sidestepped the agony and humiliation Sadeem endured up until the bitter end, when her love finally drowned itself in a sea of emotional mendacity.

Sadeem did wish Firas had proven his superiority to the passive Faisal. She had wanted to demonstrate to Michelle that Michelle had made a mistake in letting Faisal go. She wanted to prove that she, Sadeem, a believer in the power of love who upheld the principle that she had a right to marry the person she loved, would end up smarter, more successful and happier.

It hadn’t worked out that way. Having refused to sacrifice her love, she had received the stunning blow that her beloved had sacrificed her. And Firas’s deception had run deep: he had hung hope’s sparkling pendant around her lovely neck and taught her to recite love’s anthem of struggle and persistence long after he himself had stopped reciting it.

“The luck you’ve had, Michelle—you don’t have to constantly see a photo or read an article in some newspaper about the guy you were in love with. The worst thing is for a girl to fall in love with someone famous, because no matter how hard she tries to forget him, the whole world keeps reminding her of him! You know what I wish sometimes, Michelle? I wish I could have been the man in this relationship. I wouldn’t have let go of Firas, I swear I wouldn’t have let go.”

“See? So you haven’t lost a real man, have you?”

Her friend’s sarcastic comment made Sadeem more disgusted than ever with Firas. Did that selfish man even realize the rough treatment she had received from society, on top of the way he had mistreated her and then had abused her further by walking out?

“Sadeem, I didn’t drop Faisal because I was no longer in love with him, as you imagine. I was crazy about that guy! But everyone here was entirely against him and against me. I have complete confidence in myself, and I know I can face whatever hassles stand in my way, but frankly I don’t have the same confidence in Faisal or in any other guy in our sick society. For our relationship to have succeeded, we would have had to be strong. Both of us. I couldn’t have done it all on my own. And even though Faisal went on pursuing me and every so often I got an e-mail or a text message begging me to come back to him, I knew it was only one side of him—the weak side—talking. I knew he hadn’t come up with a solution to our problem. That’s why I went on refusing him and denying my feelings and not letting myself be sucked into his weakness. One of us had to be the strong one. I decided it was going to be me. You can be sure, Sadeem, that Firas and Faisal—even though there’s a big difference in age–are stamped out of the same mold: passive and weak. They are slaves to reactionary customs and ancient traditions even if their enlightened minds pretend to reject such things! That’s the mold for all men in this society. They’re just pawns their families move around on the chessboard! I could have challenged the whole world if my love had been from somewhere else, not a crooked society that raises children on contradictions and double standards. A society where one guy divorces his wife because she’s not responsive enough in bed to arouse him, while the other divorces his wife because she doesn’t hide from him how much she likes it!”

“Who told you about that? Gamrah?” Sadeem asked, aghast.

“Sadeem, you know I’m the last person in the world to even think about gossiping about my friends. Don’t be afraid of me, because I wasn’t raised in this society which doesn’t know how to discuss anything except who said this and who that.”

“If what you’re saying is true, if your refusals only have to do with our young men, then why didn’t you defy everyone and marry Matti or Hamdan?” Sadeem countered.

“Simple. Anyone who has gone through love and knows how far it can go can never ever be satisfied with a love that’s just so-so. Now I can’t settle for less. I just can’t! My love for Faisal—that was the love of my life. Look, even though I threw him out of my life, he still stands there inside my mind like a statue that I measure every man up against, and unfortunately, they all come out short. And of course I’m the one who really loses after such comparison.”

“I wanted a number one, Michelle. The way I saw it was, like, I don’t deserve anything less than Firas. But my number one was satisfied to be with someone less than me, and so now I’m forced to be satisfied with something less than him.”

“I don’t agree with you there, Sadeem. For me, my number one is gone, but someone who’s even better will come along! I will never sell myself short and I can never be satisfied with the crumbs.”

49.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: February 11, 2005

Subject: Graduation Ceremony

If only I had known how very dangerous love was, I wouldn’t have loved

If only I had known how very deep the sea was, I wouldn’t have set sail

If only I had known my very own ending, I wouldn’t have begun.—Nizar Qabbani

A bittersweet fact. The story that began nearly six years ago is coming up to the present time, and so the end of my e-mails is drawing near.

In one of Riyadh’s grand hotels, a dinner was held to honor the graduates, Lamees and Tamadur Jeddawi and Mashael Al-Abdulrahman. The guest list was restricted to the three of them, plus Gamrah and Sadeem, Gamrah’s sisters and Um Nuwayyir.

Lamees was the unchallenged star of the party with her expanding belly; the fetus was in the twenty-eighth week. Lamees’s rosy cheeks and confident smile announced to her friends that hope still existed somewhere in this troubled business of life. Everything about her, on this graduation day, showed them that at least one of them was a young woman bursting with happiness. Even her fellow graduates, Tamadur and Michelle, didn’t have a quarter of her joy. And why shouldn’t she celebrate and exude all this radiant pleasure? As Michelle said, “She’s got it all!” A successful marriage, a diploma with honors, the promise of a professional future. She alone among her friends had not suffered for trying to obtain what she longed for.

A few moments before leaving the hotel, Gamrah and Sadeem ran into Sattam, the obliging bank employee whom they had met through Tariq. He had worked out the bank transactions for their party-planning business and they had conferred with him a few times after that at the bank. Sattam came into the restaurant with a group of businessmen. He smiled and nodded from a distance, but of course he couldn’t come over to greet them in the company of all those men, nor could the two young women return his greetings when they were in a group of women or, to be exact, when they were in the presence of Gamrah’s sisters, spies who loved nothing more than to snitch on inappropriate behavior.

At the men’s table, Firas asked his friend Sattam in a low voice about the women who had just gotten up from the table not too far away, and whether he knew them. He had caught a whiff of a certain rare dehn oud* that he was very familiar with coming from their direction. Sattam informed him that two of the women were regular clients of the bank and successful businesswomen, even though they were so young. Firas felt his heart tighten sharply when he heard Sattam mention the name of Sadeem Al-Horaimli.

If only he could have searched their faces and not have averted his gaze, he would have noticed that his Saddoomah was among them! His Saddoomah. Could she possibly be his after all he’d done? Sadly he let his eyes follow the backs of their abayas as they moved farther away, his imagination sketching a beautiful innocent face so dear to his heart.

No one knows what went through Firas’s mind that night after the brush with Sadeem. What is certain, though, is that his thoughts ran on for hours as her fragrance continued to tickle his nose. Did it confirm for him that she still loved him, if she was still using the scented oil he had given her two years before?

Firas had never experienced such a wealth of feeling for any woman except Sadeem. His wife, who loved him very much, wasn’t able to make him happy as his Sadeem naturally had. Firas made a sudden decision that night, while he was lying in his marriage bed, next to his wife—the mother of his first son and now pregnant with his second.

50.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: February 18, 2005

Subject: Advice Spun from Gold: Take the One Who Loves You, Not the One You Love!

Click here to listen to the song

So you ask: What’s new?…

Nothing has changed, ever since you left me.

Are you happy to hear that?

Nothing has changed, alas,

To this day I’m in your hands.—Thikra

I confess that my immersion in the story of my friends for an entire year has made me one of those women who know exactly what they want.

I want a love that fills the heart forever like the love of Faisal and Michelle. I want a man who is tender and cares for me the way Firas took care of Sadeem. I want our relationship after we marry to be rich and strong like the relationship Nizar and Lamees have. I want to have healthy children like Gamrah’s child, and to love them, not just because they are my children, but because they are a part of him, my love. That is how I want my life to be.

Two days after the graduation party, Sadeem returned to Khobar and invited Tariq to have coffee with her in his house, on an evening in which she pretended to be sick so she wouldn’t have to go with her aunt and her daughters to a dinner party at the home of a relative. For the first time ever, she found herself completely paralyzed about what to wear in his presence! She stood in front of her mirror for hours and changed her outfit and put her hair up and let it down twenty times. The whole time, she was still trying to figure out what to say to him. He had spent more than two weeks in Riyadh waiting for her to make up her mind about his proposal. Not wanting to rush her by coming back before she was ready. She had begun to feel very embarrassed about how long she was taking, and so she asked him to come back to Khobar, without telling him that she still hadn’t made up her mind.

Sadeem remembered Gamrah’s advice, which Gamrah would give her over and over whenever they were together. “Take the one who loves you, not the one you love. The one who loves you will always have you in his eyes, and he’ll make you happy. But the one you love will knock you around and torment you and make you run after him all the time.”

But then Sadeem would recall what Michelle had said about how true love can never be made up for with any ordinary, run-of-the-mill love. And then the image of Lamees laughing happily at her wedding would come into her mind and confuse her even more. At that point, Um Nuwayyir’s prayer for her would ring in her ears: “May Allah give you everything you deserve.” Then she would calm down a little bit and feel a little reassured. She was sure she deserved a lot and she was sure that Um Nuwayyir was a good person and that God must give her what she was praying for.

When she greeted Tariq, he kept her hand in his longer than usual, trying to read in her eyes the answer she would give to his request. She led him toward the reception room, chuckling at the scene he made behind her as he tried to get rid of his little brother Hani, who was insisting on fleeing from the nanny and going into the living room with them.

This meeting wasn’t like any of the times they’d been together years before. They didn’t play Monopoly or Uno, and they didn’t quarrel over who had the right to have the remote as they sat in front of the TV. They even looked different. Sadeem was wearing a brown knee-length chamois-cloth skirt with a sleeveless light blue silk blouse. Around one ankle she wore a silver anklet and on her feet were high-heel sandals that allowed her carefully trimmed nails and French pedicure to show. Tariq was wearing a shimagh and a thobe, though he never put on this traditional wear unless it was a religious holiday. One thing had not changed: Tariq had not forgotten to bring her the Burger King double Whopper meal she liked.

They had their dinner in silence, each of them immersed in private thoughts. Sadeem was having a dialogue with herself, a bit mournfully.

This isn’t the one I have dreamed of all my life. Tariq is not the person who will make me cry for joy the day the contract is signed. He is a sweet and nice person, in a very ordinary and normal way. Marrying Tariq doesn’t require anything more than a beautiful wedding gown, the usual trousseau and a wedding party in some lavish hall. There won’t be any real happiness or even any sadness about it. Everything will be ordinary and normal, just like my love for him and every day of our future life together. Poor Tariq. I won’t thank the Lord every single morning when I find you next to me in bed. I won’t feel butterflies in my stomach every time you look at me. It’s so sad. It’s so ordinary. It’s nothing.

After they had finished eating, she tried to think of something else to do other than talk about what he really wanted to hear. “Can I get you something to drink, Tariq? Tea? Coffee? A cold drink?”

Her mobile phone, which was on the low marble table in front of them, rang. Sadeem’s eyes widened with astonishment and her heart jumped into her throat when she read the number of the sender there plainly on the screen. It was Firas’s number. She had erased his name from her phone directory since their “last” separation.

She jumped up and left the room to answer this unexpected phone call, particularly sudden and unexpected right at this moment. Had Firas somehow learned about Tariq and called to influence her decision? How did Firas always seem to know everything and show up at crucial times?

“Saddoomah. What’s new with you?”

“What’s new with me?”

At the sound of his voice, which she had not heard for quite a long time, her heart plunged. She expected him to ask her about Tariq, but he didn’t. Instead, he began telling her about seeing her two days before in the hotel with her friends. She watched Tariq rubbing his palms together anxiously, waiting for her.

“So, are you calling me right now in order to tell me you happened to see me the other day?”

“No…to be honest, I am calling to say to you, um, I have discovered…I feel that—”

“Hurry up. My battery’s low.”

“Sadeem! In one phone call you make me happier than I’ve felt all the time I’ve lived with my wife, from the day we got married!”

There were a few seconds of silence, then Sadeem said in a taunting tone, “I warned you, but you were the one who said you could live this kind of life, because you’re strong, and because you’re a man. You think with your head and not your heart, remember?”

“My Saddoomah, darling, I want you, I miss you. And I need you. I need your love.”

“You need me? What do you mean? Do you really think I’m going to be willing to come back to you and be your lover, just like before, now when you are married?”

“I know that’s impossible. So…I’m calling to ask you…will you marry me?”

SADEEM HUNG UP on Firas for the third time. The triumphant tone of his voice had made it clear that he was expecting her to crumple at his feet that second with a grateful “Yes” at his generous offer to make her his second wife. She turned to Tariq. He had thrown off his shimagh and the eqal that kept it in place on his head. The shimagh sat untidily on the arm of the sofa. Tariq had begun to rub his hair wildly with both hands. She smiled. She went into the kitchen to make him the loveliest surprise of his life.

She came back in carrying a tray with two glasses of cranberry juice on it. He lifted his head to look at her. She lowered her head and smiled with feigned embarrassment exactly like in the old black-and-white movies they had watched together. In imitation of the classic scene when the girl signals that her suitor’s marriage proposal has been accepted, she put the tray down in front of him and offered him a drink. Tariq began laughing and kissing her hands. He repeated over and over, in utter happiness, “If only this phone call had come a long time ago!”

Between You and Me

I do not claim that I have uttered all of the truth here, but I hope that everything I have said is true.

—GHAZI AL-QUSAIBI

The girls of Riyadh went on with their lives. Lamees (who you will recall actually has a different name in reality, along with the rest of my friends) got in touch with me after the fourth e-mail. She wrote from Canada, where she and Nizar are doing their graduate studies, to congratulate me on the wild and crazy idea of writing these e-mails. Lamees laughed and laughed at the name I had chosen for her sister, “Tamadur,” since I knew in advance that her sister despised this name and that Lamees called her by it whenever she wanted to irk her.

Lammoosah told me that she is very happy with Nizar and that she has given birth to a beautiful baby girl named after me. She added, “I just hope the girl doesn’t turn out to be as crazy as you are!”

Michelle was really bowled over and told me she had no idea that I had such a knack for storytelling. She often helped me recall certain events and she corrected details I remembered unclearly, even though she didn’t understand some of my classical Arabic words and was always asking me to use more English, at least in the e-mails that were about her, so that she could understand them.

Sadeem didn’t divulge her true feelings to me at first, and that made me think I had lost her as a friend after telling her story in my e-mails. But she surprised me one day (after my thirty-seventh e-mail) with a really precious gift, which was her sky-blue scrapbook. I never would have known about it if she hadn’t given it to me. She handed it over before signing the marriage contract with Tariq. She gave it to me to keep and told me that I could disclose all that she felt in that painful period of her life. May God bless her marriage and make it a union that erases all of the sadness and misery that came before.

Gamrah heard about the e-mails from one of her sisters, who realized from the very beginning that Gamrah was the intended double of this character, but she didn’t know which one of Gamrah’s friends I was. Gamrah blew up at me and threatened to cut off all ties if I didn’t stop talking about her. I tried to convince her—Michelle and I both tried—but she was afraid people would find out things she and her family didn’t want them to know. She said some really hurtful things to me the last time we spoke. She told me that I am taking away all that might be left of her chances—marriage chances, I presume. And after that she cut off every link she had with me despite my many pleas and apologies.

Um Nuwayyir’s house still serves as a safe haven for the girls. The girls had their last meeting there during the New Year’s break when Lamees came from Canada and Michelle from Dubai to attend Sadeem and Tariq’s wedding. Sadeem insisted on having it in her father’s house in Riyadh. Um Nuwayyir planned the wedding with Gamrah.

As for love, it still might always struggle to come out into the light of day in Saudi Arabia. You can sense that in the sighs of bored men sitting alone at cafés, in the shining eyes of veiled women walking down the streets, in the phone lines that spring to life after midnight, and in the heartbroken songs and poems, too numerous to count, written by the victims of love unsanctioned by family, by tradition, by the city: Riyadh.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my deepest gratitude toward everyone who has helped me edit the English counterpart of my Arabic novel (Banat Al-Riyadh): my dear eldest brother Nasser, my best friend Aceel, my sister/ my rock Rasha and my wonderful editor at The Penguin Press in New York, Liza Darnton, who all tried their best so that my novel does not get lost in translation.

I would also like to express my deepest appreciation to my role model, Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi, former Saudi ambassador to Britain, current minister of labor and brilliant poet and novelist, for his unflagging support.

Last but not least, I would like to remember the man who taught me how to write, my father, Abdullah Alsanea, may he rest in peace. I hope I would have made him proud.

GLOSSARY OF NAMES

The number 7 refers to an Arabic letter similar to the letter H in English. Arabs use numbers like 7, 3, 5, 6 to refer to certain Arabic letters that have no counterparts on an English keyboard. This is called the Internet language and is also used in cell phone text messages as well.

Seerehwenfadha7et: the name of the mail group created by the narrator. Seereh means memoirs or story; wenfadha7et, wenfadhahet means disclosed or exposed. The name was taken from a Lebanese talk show called Seereh Wenfatahet. It means “a story told” but the name got changed to wenfadhahet to reflect more of a scandalous scene.

I chose the characters’ last names to show where they come from. Just like any other place in the world, in Saudi Arabia you can tell a lot from where the man or the woman comes from.

P.S.Al means the.

Sadeem Al-Horaimli: of or relating to Horaimla, a city within Najd, the center of Saudi Arabia.

Gamrah Al-Qusmanji: of or relating to Qasim, a city within Najd, the center of Saudi Arabia.

Lamees and Tamadur Jeddawi: of or relating to Jeddah, a city within Hijaz, the west coast.

Mashael and Meshaal Al-Abdulrahman: a random name that can belong to any family with unknown roots (i.e., from an untraceable tribe).

Firas Al-Shargawi: of or relating to Sharqiyah, the east coast of Saudi Arabia.

The following family names are Arabic adjectives to describe the personality of each:

Rashid Al-Tanbal: the bonehead.

Faisal Al-Batran: the wellborn.

Waleed Al-Shari: the buyer, the purchaser.

Fadwa Al-Hasudi: she who hates to see other people more happy or successful than her.

Sultan Al-Internetti: of or relating to the Internet.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

RAJAA ALSANEA grew up in Riyadh, the younger of two daughters in a family of doctors and dentists. She is currently living in Chicago, where she is pursuing a degree in endodontics. She intends to return to Saudi Arabia after attaining her degree. She is twenty-five years old, and this is her first novel.

^* A very popular cartoon for the 1990s generation of Saudi Arabian children. Translated from Japanese, it’s a story of a boy trying to achieve his dream of becoming a soccer star.

^* An expensive car with completely tinted windows often belongs to a man who does not want his wife and daughters exposed to the eyes of young men looking for fun. Nowadays, tinting is prohibited by Saudi law for security reasons.

^* The weekend in Saudi Arabia is Thursday and Friday.

^* In Islam, a hijab is any kind of head covering that conceals the hair and neck of a woman.

^* The hadith are collections of the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed.

^* A famous Egyptian singer from the 1960s.

^* The Internet provider company in Saudi Arabia.

^* Sheikh Jassem Al-Mutawa’, a famous Kuwaiti Muslim televangelist who hosts a very well-known Arabic TV program called Happy Nests and is the chief editor of several magazines and the author of many Islamic books that discuss relationships between men and women, marriage and family matters.

^* Among the different subclassifications of Saudi society, there are the tribals and the nontribals. Between those two classes/sectors there can be no marriages. A tribal family is one that can be traced to one of the well-known Arabic tribes.

^*“Mama” can also be used as an expression to indicate surprise or fear (“Oh, God!”).

^* Amr Khaled is an Egyptian Muslim activist and preacher. His popularity has now grown all over Arab countries. He is one of the most influential televangelists and authors in the Arab world.

^** There is an Arabic proverb that says: “Better the shadow of a man than the shadow of a wall.”

^* Manfooha is a very old and urban area south of Riyadh, and Olayya is a bustling area in Riyadh where real estate prices are high.

^* After the death of Prophet Mohammed—peace be upon him—Muslims were split on who should lead them. Khalifah Abu Baker Al-Siddeeq, Prophet Mohammed’s loyal friend, was nominated, but there were those who rejected the choice and wanted Prophet Mohammed’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali Bin Abi-Taleb, to succeed. Shiite Muslims are of the opinion of the last group and thus are referred to by some Sunnis as rejectionists.

^* Breakfast meal in Ramadan.

^** A popular Ramadan drink; juice of grapes, raspberries and black currants.

^*** The call for prayer.

^§ The religious sheikh who calls for prayers at a mosque.

^* A city in the east coast of Saudi Arabia, with a big Shiite population.

^* Of course they do! All men who wear thobes have to wear long white underpants—called Sunni underpants—underneath to prevent the thin material of their thobes from shearing. The name “Sunni” underpants is just a funny coincidence.

^* Arabic incense. Wooden sticks that come from particular trees in India or Cambodia, and when burned, generate strong and beautiful lasting fragrance.

^** Al-Hai’ah is a short name for the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, i.e., the Religious Police.

^*Yalla can mean “c’mon!” or “hurry up!”

^* A short pilgrimage to Mecca undertaken by Muslims. Unlike Hajj, Umrah can be done anytime of the year.

^* Due to their darker complexions, Saudi girls tend to have darkened knees. Guys always pick on girls because of that, although they have the same problem! However, due to the hot climate of Saudi, dryness and the frequent use of Arabic sandals, ni’aal, guys tend to have very dry feet and dirty toenails. Girls pick on that, in return.

^* Egyptian actor. The line comes from a famous black-and-white “classic” Arabic movie.

^* Anonymous last names to protect the identities of those bold enough to offer a writing job to me!

^** Tahini halvah: a type of dessert made of sesame paste.

^* A saying used when you compare two things that are both worthless.

^* A handsome, well-known Egyptian actor who starred in many Arabic romantic films.

^* Taiba and Owais is a massive outdoor flea market where cheap goods are sold.

^* Oh, wow!

^* Male’s head covering in Saudi. Similar to a shimagh but has a plain white color instead of red and white checks.

^*Ma shaa Allah is an Islamic phrase that one says in order not to jinx someone’s luck.

^* Famous Saudi critic.

^** It is generally frowned upon for young Saudi women to be actresses.

^* Saudi prince and famous poet.

^* A type of tobacco pipe popular in the UAE.

^* Male garment in UAE, similar to the Saudi thobe.

^** Turban.

^* Old and famous Saudi singer.

^** My love.

^* Many native Hijazis prefer to shorten the engagement period and lengthen the time between the marriage contract-signing and the wedding, i.e., the milkah period. Unlike Najdis, who would not mind a long engagement period but do not like a long milkah period, when the couple are considered officially married and have the right to meet and go out even before the wedding ceremony takes place.

^* God is Great. The starting line in every prayer.

^**E Wallah means swearing in God’s name that something is true.

^* Nonobligatory prayers held right after Isha prayers during the whole month of Ramadan.

^** Nonobligatory prayers held in the last third of night during the last ten days of Ramadan.

^* Traditional black cloak that men wear on top of their thobes for important occasions or events.

^* By Nabil Shu’ail, a Kuwaiti singer.

^* Muhram men are men whom a woman is allowed to go without hijab in front of; e.g., male members of her immediate family.

^* While Hijazi girls call their mothers-in-law Mama, Najdi girls find that disrespectful to their own mothers, so they call the husbands’ mothers Aunt.

^* Here, Sheikh refers to the patriarch of an Arabian tribe or family.

^* Jurists.

^* A legal opinion or ruling.

^* A female Saudi poet.

^* A rephrasing of her name to make an affectionate nickname.

^* A Lebanese singer.

^* Expensive oil perfume that is extracted from trees in limited parts of Asia.

^* An abaya is a long, loose black robe worn on top of clothes whenever a woman is outdoors.

^* Unlike in the United States, medical school in Saudi Arabia starts right after high school and lasts for seven years.

^* Saudi men’s garments; a thobe is a long white loose dress, while a shimagh is a red and white triangular-shaped cloth worn on the head topped by an eqal to hold it in place. An eqal is a thick round, ropelike sash. Nowadays the shimaghs and thobes are designed by such famous names as Gucci, Christian Dior, Givenchy and Valentino.