Girls of Riyadh (26 page)

To: [email protected]

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: February 11, 2005

Subject: Graduation Ceremony

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.

I
n 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.

To: [email protected]

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

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.

T
wo 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?”

S
ADEEM 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!”

T
he 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.