Rajaa Alsanea - Girls of Riyadh

“May God protect you, Saddoomah, dear! Stay away from Building No. 4 which is the oldest and farthest away. They say that Arwa stalks the girls who go there—every one of them!—because the place is so out-of-the-way and deserted that even if a girl were to scream or smash everything to pieces out there, no one would ever hear or know.”

Arwa the lesbo! Good God! Could it be true that she really did graduate from Olaisha? I haven’t heard anything about her for quite a long time. Arwa has become a legend, like all the other myths of this ancient and venerable campus.

After that first term, Lamees and Tamadur moved to the Science Department at the women’s campus in Malaz, where Michelle was already studying computer science. That would last only one term, after which they would move to the College of Medicine for Women, also in Milaz, for two years; after which they would move—their final move—to the King Khalid University Hospital to complete their training. This end station on the road through the educational system was what made them the envy of the other girls. For studying in the very same hospital were the guys coming from their own College of Medicine, as well as the Colleges of Dentistry, Pharmacy and Applied Medical Sciences.

The thought of finally mixing with the the opposite sex was a grand dream for many, many students—guys and girls alike. Some joined these colleges primarily for that reason, even if the mixing that they anticipated so eagerly was heavily restricted. Male doctors taught female medical students and male students were allowed to examine female patients, but it was not allowed for male and female students to share a classroom or a lounge. Contact with the opposite sex would never go beyond some coincidental and transient encounter in the breaks between lectures or at prayer times (facilitated by the fact that the male students tended to pray in the prayer area close to where the female students habitually were), or quick glimpses and stolen glances while walking about the hospital or riding the elevators. Still, it was better than nothing.

8.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: April 3, 2004

Subject: On Those Who Do Not Marvel at the Marvelous

First, I offer all of you my apologies for my unintended tardiness in sending out this e-mail. I had a nasty flu that prevented me from writing yesterday, which was Friday, so you are getting my e-mail on a Saturday instead. Easy on me, Abdullah, because I gave you back your grim Friday afternoon,* after you had grown used to my e-mails lightening Friday’s tedium for you. And, pardon me, Ghada (and by the way I thank you, for being the first girl to e-mail me since this scandal-sheet series began), for not providing you with any material you could talk about all day at the bank this Saturday. And forgive me, Ra’id, you funny guy you, for having messed up your weekly schedule, making you doubt what day it was and what date as well, so you almost didn’t go to work on Saturday morning and your life was a mess and it was ALL because of my late e-mail!

I have brushed on my bright red rouge, and there is a big plate of pickled cucumbers next to me. This time around, I really need some munchies with bite, to keep me reminded of the sharp flavor of what I am about to write in this e-mail.

Gamrah accustomed herself to her new life. It had become clear to her that Rashid’s behavior toward her was not just a matter of feeling shy or embarrassed with the wife who had suddenly assailed his life. It was something more. Gamrah did not have it in her to actually give a name to his doings—not, anyway, the name that echoed in her head, even if a certain string of words kept on seeping out from her mind in spite of herself, and then creeping into her troubled heart: My husband, whom I love, hates me. He wants to throw me out.

Just a few weeks after their arrival in Chicago—and after Rashid’s grumbling about her laziness and how she never left the apartment had grown louder—Gamrah got used to going out by herself to shop for household goods at the end of every week. Rashid himself was not prepared to teach her to drive, but he had no confidence that she could understand and be understood by a foreign teacher with her poor, broken English. So he turned for help to the wife of one of his Arab friends who had offered to teach Gamrah how to drive, for a fee. After Gamrah failed the driving test three times in a row, however, Rashid put a stop to the driving lessons and ordered her to learn how to use public transportation to do what she had to do.

Whenever she went out, Gamrah wore a long overcoat with a hijab. * Even her clothes became a source of irritation to her husband after a while: “Why don’t you wear ordinary clothes like the other women here? It’s as if you are trying to embarrass me in front of my friends with the things you wear! And then you wonder why I don’t take you out with me!”

Neither Gamrah nor her mother could really understand why he was so annoyed. What was the source of the constant irritation and tension that seemed to have overcome Rashid? Yet, in spite of her distress and misery, Gamrah was prepared to do anything to make the marriage work. Or at least to keep it going.

On one of the rare days when they were both at home, Gamrah kept after her husband to take her to a movie, and he finally relented. After they arrived at the theater and he found two seats for them, she surprised him by taking off her coat and hijab before sitting down. She gave him a shy smile, trying to read his thoughts at that crucial moment. He studied her with a sidelong stare, and after just a few seconds, he said, “Taking them off isn’t making you look any better. So just put them on again.”

Before the wedding, her delight about the engagement, and about the groom, who was such a good catch—so totally elegant—and all of the bridal finery from Lebanon with a dowry that no girl in the family had been able to top—all of this was too much to allow any doubts to creep up on Gamrah. But now there were plenty of doubts and even more questions.

So why would he marry me if he didn’t want me? Gamrah asked herself time and time again. She asked her mother whether she had heard anything from Rashid’s family to suggest that he had been forced to marry her. But did it make sense that a man —and he was every inch a man, whatever else he turned out to be—would be forced to marry a woman he didn’t want, no matter how compelling the reasons?

Before the wedding, Gamrah had seen Rashid only once, and that was on the day of the shoufa , the day set for the bridegroom’s lawful viewing of the bride-to-be. The traditions of her family did not permit the man seeking the engagement to see the bride again before the contract signing. Moreover, in this case there was no more than a two-week gap between the signing and the marriage celebration itself, and Gamrah’s and Rashid’s mothers agreed between themselves that Rashid would not see his bride during that time, so that she would have no interruptions as she prepared for her wedding. It was all completely logical in Gamrah’s eyes, except she did find it a little odd that Rashid had not asked her father’s permission to talk to her on the phone so that he could get to know her better like all men do these days.

Gamrah had heard that most young men these days insisted on getting acquainted with their fiancées by telephone before the contract-signing, but her family’s particularly conservative practices didn’t allow for that. As far as they were concerned, marriage was—as they always said—like the watermelon on the knife, you never knew what you were going to get. Her older sister Naflah’s watermelon had turned out to be one of those extra-sweet ones, while her own watermelon and her sister Hessah’s were more like dried-out, empty gourds.