Rajaa Alsanea - Girls of Riyadh

GAMRAH:Fate, I guess.

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

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

21.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: July 2, 2004

Subject: Fatimah the Shiite

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

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

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

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

“Lamees, will you be my best friend?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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