Rajaa Alsanea - Girls of Riyadh

“What about you?” he said. “Don’t you want to ask me anything? Do you have anything that you want to tell me?”

She thought for a few minutes, and finally she said, “Uh…I want to tell you that I have bad eyesight.”

He laughed at her confession and she laughed, too. After a moment, he said to her, a little provocatively, “By the way, Sadeem, you know, my job requires that I travel overseas a lot.”

This time she answered him without a pause, raising one of her eyebrows flirtatiously. “Not a problem. I love to travel!”

He told her that he found her mischievousness and quick wit delightful, and she lowered her head, blushing fiercely and cursing her inability to control her runaway mouth, which might turn out to be the cause of a runaway groom. Seconds later, her father unwittingly came to the rescue by walking through the doorway. She excused herself hurriedly and made straight for the door, giving Waleed a big smile, which he returned with an even bigger one. She left the room with butterflies in her stomach.

She had found Waleed handsome, even if he wasn’t really her favorite type. She preferred darker skin; his complexion was fair with a pinkish hue. His shadowy mustache and goatee and those glasses with the thin silver frames added a lot of charm to his face, though, she thought.

Once she was out of the room, Waleed asked her father’s permission to phone her so he could get to know her better before it was announced that they were officially engaged. Her father agreed and gave him Sadeem’s cell phone number.

Waleed called late that night, and after allowing the phone to ring a decently long time, she answered. He told her how much he liked her. He would speak a little and then go quiet, as if he expected her to comment on what he was saying. She told him that she had been happy to meet him, but said no more. He told her that he really liked her, that in fact he had been bewitched by her and that he found it unbearable to wait until Eid Al-Fitr, after which they could sign the marriage contract.

After that, Waleed called her dozens of times a day—he called the minute he woke up in the morning, before going to work, at work, after work and finally for a long conversation before going to sleep that would stretch on sometimes until the sun was peeping over the horizon. He even woke her up in the middle of the night to have her listen to a song he had dedicated to her on the radio. And every day he would ask that she pick out at the store a pair of glasses for him, or a watch, or cologne—he would immediately buy whatever she dictated, he said, so that everything he wore would be completely to her liking.

The other girls began to envy Sadeem, especially Gamrah, who would become overwhelmed with self-pity whenever Sadeem described to her on the telephone how fond she was of Waleed and how he adored her in return. Gamrah started making up stories about her blissful life with Rashid—how loving he was toward her, how many gifts he brought her.

Waleed and Sadeem signed the marriage contract in a small ceremony. Sadeem’s aunt wept uncontrollably as she thought of her sister—Sadeem’s mother—who had never gotten the chance to see her daughter married. She also cried secretly for her son, Tariq, whom she had always hoped would be the one to marry Sadeem.

During the official proceedings Sadeem pressed her fingerprint onto the page in the enormous registry book after her protest about not being allowed to sign her name was dismissed. “My girl,” said her aunt, “just stamp it with your fingerprint and call it a day. The sheikh says fingerprint, not signature. The men are the only ones who sign their names.”

After the signing ceremony, her father threw a huge banquet for the two families. On the evening of the next day, Waleed came over to see his bride, whom he had not met in person since that one legally permitted viewing. On this visit, Waleed presented her with the customary gift for the engagement period nowadays: a cell phone, one of the very latest models on the market.

In the months to follow, during the milkah period, the traditional time between the official signing of the documents and the actual wedding ceremony, Waleed’s visits to Sadeem grew more and more frequent. Most visits her father knew about, but there were a few little encounters that escaped his attention. During the week, Waleed usually dropped by after the evening prayers, and usually stayed until two o’clock in the morning. On weekends he rarely left before dawn.

Every few weeks Waleed took her out for dinner in a fancy restaurant, and on other evenings he would bring her food or sweets that she loved. They spent their time talking and laughing, watching a film that one of them had borrowed from a friend. Then things began to progress, and they developed far enough that she experienced her first kiss.

Waleed had been accustomed to kissing her cheeks when saying hello and good-bye to her. But one evening his parting kiss was decidedly hotter than usual. Maybe the tragic end of the movie they had watched together ( Armageddon ) played a role in creating the right mood for him to plant that long, needy kiss on her virgin lips.

Sadeem started preparing for the wedding, browsing around in the shops with Um Nuwayyir or Michelle or Lamees. Sometimes Waleed would go with her, especially if she was planning to buy nightgowns.

The wedding celebration was set to occur over the summer vacation, a week or two after Sadeem’s final exams, as Sadeem had requested. She was afraid to get married during Eid Al-Adha break, worried that it would interfere with her ability to study for her exams—Sadeem was always a top student, vigilant about getting good grades. But her decision upset and distressed Waleed, who was anxious to get married as soon as possible. Sadeem decided to make it up to him.

One evening she put on the black lace nightgown he had bought for her but which at the time she had refused to try on in his presence. She invited him to come over for the evening without informing her father, who was out camping with friends in the desert.

The red petals she strewed across the sofa, the candles placed here and there, the soft music wafting from the well-hidden music system—none of it impressed Waleed as much as the black nightgown that revealed more of her body than it concealed. Since Sadeem had vowed to make her beloved Waleed happy that night, and since she wanted to erase his disappointment over her insistence on delaying the wedding, she allowed him to go further with her than ever before. She did not try to stop him—as she had gotten used to doing—when he attempted to cross the line that she had drawn, for herself and for him, in the early days after the signing of the contract. She was convinced that he wouldn’t be satisfied unless she offered him a little more of her “femininity,” and she was willing to do anything to please him, the love of her life, even if it meant exceeding the limits she had spent her lifetime guarding.

As usual, Waleed left after the dawn call to prayer, but this time Sadeem thought he seemed distressed and troubled. She figured he must be feeling as nervous as she was after what had happened. She waited anxiously for his usual phone call once he got home, since she especially needed to hear his tender voice after such a night, but he didn’t call. Sadeem didn’t allow herself to call him and waited until the next day, but he didn’t call then, either. As difficult as it was for her, she decided to give him a few days to calm down before calling him to ask what was wrong.

Three days passed without a word from Waleed. Sadeem decided to drop her resolve and called, only to find that his cell phone was turned off. She kept calling through the entire week, at different times of the day and night, desperate to reach him. But his cell phone was always switched off and the private line in his room was always busy. What was going on? Had something awful happened to him? Or was he still angry at her, this angry even after all of her efforts to please him? What about everything she had given him on that night? Had he gone insane?