O-Negative: Extinction (4 page)

“Gerry’s talking to Major Jacobson now, and for the record it’s been almost 10 years since I left the Army.   Anyway I guess we’ll find out sooner or later what it is now that people are beginning to talk.”

“Ok solider boy” Wendy said teasingly. “Doesn’t look like we’ll find out too much else this evening so are you coming over to Greg’s party.”

He saw that time was getting on.  He agreed with Wendy that they were unlikely to get any further information this evening and he was certainly in the mood for a drink after a day spent cataloguing redundant equipment.  “I am.  Ok I’m logging off now.  See you in a couple of minutes”. 

The slap was hard enough to bring tears to her eyes.  She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry but her efforts had been in vain.  The tears came less from the slap as from the frustration and humiliation she felt at being treated like an ‘abd’.  She brought her face up and looked her attacker in the eye before spitting out the word ‘la alaik’ - never.  The second slap knocked her from her feet and she heard her mother cry out behind her.  Nevertheless her mother didn’t move to help her.  Her mother knew better than to interfere.  Such direct interference would only increase his rage.  As it was she didn’t think she’d ever seen him this angry, not since Musa their driver had been caught in Layla’s room.  Musa had been sacked on the spot and sent back to his family in Hejazi.  Layla had been whipped in the courtyard of the compound.  Every member of the household had been required to stand and witness.  Layla had then been deported back to Egypt in disgrace.  She could still remember the dark stains on the back of Layla’s abaya as she was manhandled into the family’s Land cruiser never to be seen or heard of again.  The image of her father and the stony eyed look on his face while the punishment was carried out stayed with her a long time.  He’d looked like one of the wrathful angels mentioned in the Koran.  He hadn’t smiled for a month afterwards and even years later a dark look came into his eyes if he heard the name Musa or Layla.

The fact that he now stood over her looking as he had that day five years ago was almost enough to make her acquiesce, but she knew that if she did she’d never forgive herself.  She picked herself up and faced him, her eyes meeting his, this time she didn’t say anything preferring instead to steel herself for the next blow.

The blow never came.  Instead her father shouted, almost screamed, “You will marry him Javeira and one day you’ll thank me for it”.  Following these words he turned and stalked from the room.  His pristine white thawb swinging behind him as if blown by an angry wind.  The look on his face was enough to make her twin brother Abdullah jump three feet to one side to give his father room to pass.

Abdullah smoothed his own thawb and adjusted his dish dash which had slipped to one side during his haste to move out of his father’s path.  “Javi I don’t understand you, Hassan is a Mahfouz, one day he’ll take control of his father’s banking interests – he’s the most eligible bachelor in Jeddah”.

She gave him a contemptuous glare and said scathingly. “If he’s that wonderful you marry him?”

Her mother intervened at that point, moving between the two of them breaking their defiant stares.  “Javeira you know this arrangement means a lot to your father.  He’s invested a lot of time and a not inconsiderable sum of money with the Mahfouz family to make this happen.”  Her mother paused and then sighed “You’re so alike that’s the problem, stubborn to the core.  When he looks at you he sees himself, that’s part of the problem.  He wants so much for you Javi.  You know he loves you without question?  Anyway come on let’s go and take a look at that face.  You’re going to have to wear the niqab you hate so much for a few days so no one can see the bruises.”

She started to refuse but instead began to cry again, this time in relief.  She knew that despite what her father had said he wouldn’t make her marry Hassan.  It wasn’t in his makeup.  Her mother knew it as well, which is why she hadn’t continued to press her on the issue.  As well as his love for his only daughter he was also deeply religious in his own way and the Koran was quite clear about women having the right to choose their own husband.  If she said no then there was no way the marriage could go ahead.

The next day she went to work as normal.  The family office was located in a gleaming office block situated in a prominent position on the corner of King Abdullah Street and King Fahd Road, an area of town considered to be at the heart of the Central Business District.  Her second cousin Salem had dropped her off.  The fact that she had to have a male relative drive her to the office was somewhat of a constant reminder that women did not possess the same rights as men in Saudi Arabia.  She’d heard that the Council of Ministers were considering the most recent proposal to allow women to drive but she’d heard similar things before.  The problem was that the Council was made up entirely of old men.  Men who were afraid to let women drive their own cars, supposedly because of the risks to their honour but mostly because too many of the Ministers male relatives would be left unemployed.  If there was one thing the notables of the Kingdom of Saud feared more than anything else it was large numbers of young men with too much time on their hands.  They knew that unemployed men provided easy fodder for the extremist Islamists who’d like nothing better than to overthrow the Kingdom’s hereditary monarchy.

She might not approve of everything that took place in the country but the last thing she wanted was a bunch of extremists in power.  The lot of women would become even worse than it was now.  At least at the moment women had the opportunity to obtain an education and some degree of choice about what they did day to day.  Sometimes the burden of wearing the abaya and the inability to drive didn’t seem so bad.  Of course in many respects she had it pretty easy compared to many women.  Living in ‘liberal’ Jeddah was much better than living in Riyadh or one of the northern cities.  Though Jeddah was the main transit point for pilgrims visiting Mecca and Madinah this continuous exposure to different peoples and cultures meant women had a great deal more freedom than their sisters elsewhere in the country.  Most of the time she went around with her hijab loosely covering her head and rarely wore the niqab across her face.  She also brightened up her outfit with colourful scarves, almost unthinkable elsewhere in the country.  In addition she had a job and not the sort of job that women were expected to do like being a teacher or working in a hospital.  She was the Vice President of her father’s company.  Even in Jeddah this was frowned upon by some of her father’s contemporaries but he was well known for telling them that ‘Abu Abdullah Ja’far ibn Umar Al Bajubair would employ the most capable people in his company not those with the best familial connections.  Such a statement was an anathema to most of the trading families in Jeddah but they couldn’t argue with the evidence.  The Al Bajubair Company had leapt ahead of their competitors in recent years; to such an extent that even the powerful Mahfouz clan had been willing to marry their most eligible bachelor to Ja’far ibn Umar ibn Muhammad al Hallaj’s daughter.  Her father’s name literally translated was ‘Ja’far son of Omar son of Muhammad the dresser of cotton’.  Her father’s grandfather had been little more than a glorified shepherd yet his grandson was now at the head of one of the largest conglomerates in Jeddah.  No mean feat.

Her role in the continued success of the company had manifested itself by realising there was a vastly untapped resource of well educated women in Saudi Arabia who were prepared to work twice as hard as their men folk for half the cost.  It was her idea to switch the value added luxury goods manufacturing and packaging activities to ‘family businesses’ which basically meant businesses run by women from the comfort of their own homes and compounds.  The corresponding increase in productivity had allowed her father’s company to drop prices and steal a march on his competitors.  She’d also outsourced as many of their non-profitable manufacturing operations as they could across the Red Sea.  The people in Egypt, Ethiopia and the rest of the horn of Africa may still be seen as ‘abd’ by the majority of Saudi Arabians but they had a real hunger (often a literal hunger) that meant they worked long hours and were grateful for the opportunity.  The non ‘family business’ factories they’d retained in Saudi were staffed by workers from south Asia and overseen by ineffective male Saudi managers.  Financially these were at best running at break even.  Most were in fact running at a loss.  Of course with the recent government emphasis on ‘jobs for nationals’ her father had told her in no uncertain terms that it was their ‘fard’ or duty to provide jobs for their fellow Saudi Arabians.  When she’d tried to explain the economics of such a decision he’d looked at her with the look he used when there was no room for negotiation.  “Fard Javeira?  Perhaps you need a further lesson with Imam al-Ju’fi?”.  A monosyllabic lecture from Imam Al-Ju’fi was normally the worst punishment her father had at his disposal for both her and Abdullah.  She hadn’t pressed her point about competitive and comparative advantages linked to labour costs.

At the office that morning she kept her head down and pretended to focus on reviewing the financial forecasts and end of year accounts, which were due to be presented to the board of Directors at the end of the month.  Though they still used the Islamic calendar outside of work in the office they’d adopted the Gregorian calendar.  Her father still recounted stories of when he started the company and the angry conversations he’d had with international clients who’d been expecting orders on a particular date where he and his workforce had been working to a completely different timescale.  The confusion had eventually become too much of a headache and her father had taken the decision to switch to the western system.  The annual report was therefore submitted every ‘January’ to the Directors and major shareholders.

Though she kept her concentration on the lines of numbers displayed neatly across her screen she noticed that Abdullah was in the office.  It was universally accepted that Abdullah would take over the Presidency of the company after her father but up until now he hadn’t actually had that much to do with running the company.  After he’d finished university in Saudi Arabia he’d been packed off to Stanford. Initially to do a law degree and then an MBA which he was now halfway through.  He was back in Saudi Arabia over the ‘Christmas break’ but would be returning after the board meeting.  She almost got up to go and see what he was up to but decided against it.  Hassan ibn Talib Mahfouz was a contemporary of his at King Saud University and her refusal to marry him would reflect badly on her brother as well as their father.  She noticed that he didn’t come and speak to her either. This lack of contact had not gone unnoticed and Sumayya the office manager kept looking over at her and giving her sympathetic glances.  Sumayya had recently been married to a man somewhat older than herself and knew what was going on.  Sumayya had obviously told the rest of the staff not to disturb her as the other staff were being particularly reticent in approaching her when normally they would be all over her in her father’s absence. 

She glanced over at her father’s huge and conspicuously empty corner office.  Her mother had told her he’d gone to Jordan for the week “to calm down”.  Their family had retained strong links to some members of the Hashemite family who’d originally ruled Jeddah before the Sauds had ousted them in the 1920’s.  In fact her father kept a substantial part of his wealth in Jordan.    The banks in Saudi had got a lot better in recent years but her father still didn’t trust the powers that be not to dip into them whenever they needed money.  Or for that matter not to tap rich individuals for funds when circumstance required it.  They’d done this recently as part of a deliberate programme to avoid finding themselves caught up in the ‘Arab spring’.  The money the government had raised from wealthy individuals and the Saudi banking sector; coupled with bumper oil revenues had been used to expand the army and the police.  This had two positive consequences as far as the government was concerned: firstly it meant more young Saudi’s were in employment; and secondly if trouble did breakout then they had a large army and police force ready to quash it.  Unfortunately they didn’t seem to know their history particularly well as most coups or revolutions in the region had come from the armed forces.  She therefore wasn’t convinced that such a policy was really going to help should it get to a point where people were on the streets demanding change.  Her father hadn’t said anything when he’d been ‘asked’ to make an especially generous Zakat donation this year but she’d seen the ‘I told you so’ look it in his eyes.  She had to admit that making themselves appear poorer than they were had been an astute move.  Apart from the government demanding extra non-standard payments from them, if the Al Bajubair family looked like they were getting too rich or powerful then they were likely to come under attack from their immediate contemporaries.  Previously bitter commercial enemies would come together in common cause to attempt to bring the family ‘back to where they belonged’.  As a result their accumulated wealth in Jordan was a closely guarded secret.  Only she, her father and Abdullah knew about their holdings and she was pretty sure Abdullah hadn’t been trusted with the account numbers or location of the safety deposit keys.  There’d been an incident with a credit card during his first year at University in America and Abdullah’s spending abilities had been severely constrained ever since.   In reality much of their wealth wasn’t that liquid, her father preferring to keep their wealth and worth in the traditional way – gold ingots, which were stored in a variety of locations around Amman including in their modest unassuming villa in the district of Jabal Al Luweibdeh. 

Following the midday prayer Dhuhr she wandered down towards Tahaliyah Street.  She should really be getting back to work but instead found herself window shopping, gazing absently into the boutique stores that lined the road on both sides – not the most spiritual of activities to undertake after prayer.  She sighed and decided to walk a while to clear her head, let Abdullah face the constant questions from people demanding decisions or questioning what they should do about this or that.  It would be good for him.  Before long she found herself in Al-Balad the old town.  The area had long since ceased to be the main trading area but though many of the original buildings and winding streets had vanished enough of them remained to support some historic tourism.  The shady narrow streets winding this way and that gave her a feeling of going back to a simpler time.  Of course the shops and traders selling mother of pearl, tortoise shells, frankincense and various other spices had all but vanished and were now dominated by hawkers and shops selling tat made in China.  She was amazed anyone bought the junk on sale but obviously enough of the 2.2 million visitors passing through Jeddah during Hadj did so thereby guaranteeing the continuation of these businesses.  As she turned a sharp corner she unexpectedly came out on to a small plaza dominated by a small house sized concrete block.  Around the concrete block a number of young women were surreptitiously walking – somewhat in the style of the Kaaba the black rock found at the centre of Mecca.  A couple of bored policemen stood to one side studiously ignoring the women who were behaving quite un-Saudi like.  Then she realised what the concrete block was or in fact more to the point what it was covering.  The tomb of Hawwa, or Eve to the people of the book.  The first woman, the first mother and partner to Adam the first man.  She remembered Imam Al-Ju’fi’s lecture about the worshiping of false Gods or idols and how even in Jeddah there had been instances of this hence the authorities’ decision to concrete over the burial place of the first mother Hawwa.  When he’d told her this story she’d let it wash over her as she let most of what he said wash over her.  However now for some inexplicable reason she felt anger at the wanton destruction of such an ancient monument.  Even if it was paganistic in nature couldn’t it have been kept as a tourist site?  She suspected the young women were there seeking Hawwa’s blessing with regards to having children.  One of the problems with the ‘arranged’ marriages in the Kingdom was the tendency to intermarry relatives to retain wealth within the family.  Though this worked it also meant a reduced gene pool and increased genetic abnormalities.  The number of disabled people in Saudi Arabia was a closely guarded secret and substantially under reported but she’d read some reports by the World Health Organisation that the proportion of children with some form of disability was 2 in 20 or 10% - double that of most Western Countries.