Girls of Riyadh

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.

50.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

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

So you ask: What’s new?…

Nothing has changed, ever since you left me.

Are you happy to hear that?

Nothing has changed, alas,

To this day I’m in your hands.—Thikra

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.

Two 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.”