Girls of Riyadh

“My Saddoomah, darling, I want you, I miss you. And I need you. I need your love.”

“You need me? What do you mean? Do you really think I’m going to be willing to come back to you and be your lover, just like before, now when you are married?”

“I know that’s impossible. So…I’m calling to ask you…will you marry me?”

SADEEM HUNG UP on Firas for the third time. The triumphant tone of his voice had made it clear that he was expecting her to crumple at his feet that second with a grateful “Yes” at his generous offer to make her his second wife. She turned to Tariq. He had thrown off his shimagh and the eqal that kept it in place on his head. The shimagh sat untidily on the arm of the sofa. Tariq had begun to rub his hair wildly with both hands. She smiled. She went into the kitchen to make him the loveliest surprise of his life.

She came back in carrying a tray with two glasses of cranberry juice on it. He lifted his head to look at her. She lowered her head and smiled with feigned embarrassment exactly like in the old black-and-white movies they had watched together. In imitation of the classic scene when the girl signals that her suitor’s marriage proposal has been accepted, she put the tray down in front of him and offered him a drink. Tariq began laughing and kissing her hands. He repeated over and over, in utter happiness, “If only this phone call had come a long time ago!”

Between You and Me

I do not claim that I have uttered all of the truth here, but I hope that everything I have said is true.

—GHAZI AL-QUSAIBI

The girls of Riyadh went on with their lives. Lamees (who you will recall actually has a different name in reality, along with the rest of my friends) got in touch with me after the fourth e-mail. She wrote from Canada, where she and Nizar are doing their graduate studies, to congratulate me on the wild and crazy idea of writing these e-mails. Lamees laughed and laughed at the name I had chosen for her sister, “Tamadur,” since I knew in advance that her sister despised this name and that Lamees called her by it whenever she wanted to irk her.

Lammoosah told me that she is very happy with Nizar and that she has given birth to a beautiful baby girl named after me. She added, “I just hope the girl doesn’t turn out to be as crazy as you are!”

Michelle was really bowled over and told me she had no idea that I had such a knack for storytelling. She often helped me recall certain events and she corrected details I remembered unclearly, even though she didn’t understand some of my classical Arabic words and was always asking me to use more English, at least in the e-mails that were about her, so that she could understand them.

Sadeem didn’t divulge her true feelings to me at first, and that made me think I had lost her as a friend after telling her story in my e-mails. But she surprised me one day (after my thirty-seventh e-mail) with a really precious gift, which was her sky-blue scrapbook. I never would have known about it if she hadn’t given it to me. She handed it over before signing the marriage contract with Tariq. She gave it to me to keep and told me that I could disclose all that she felt in that painful period of her life. May God bless her marriage and make it a union that erases all of the sadness and misery that came before.

Gamrah heard about the e-mails from one of her sisters, who realized from the very beginning that Gamrah was the intended double of this character, but she didn’t know which one of Gamrah’s friends I was. Gamrah blew up at me and threatened to cut off all ties if I didn’t stop talking about her. I tried to convince her—Michelle and I both tried—but she was afraid people would find out things she and her family didn’t want them to know. She said some really hurtful things to me the last time we spoke. She told me that I am taking away all that might be left of her chances—marriage chances, I presume. And after that she cut off every link she had with me despite my many pleas and apologies.

Um Nuwayyir’s house still serves as a safe haven for the girls. The girls had their last meeting there during the New Year’s break when Lamees came from Canada and Michelle from Dubai to attend Sadeem and Tariq’s wedding. Sadeem insisted on having it in her father’s house in Riyadh. Um Nuwayyir planned the wedding with Gamrah.

As for love, it still might always struggle to come out into the light of day in Saudi Arabia. You can sense that in the sighs of bored men sitting alone at cafés, in the shining eyes of veiled women walking down the streets, in the phone lines that spring to life after midnight, and in the heartbroken songs and poems, too numerous to count, written by the victims of love unsanctioned by family, by tradition, by the city: Riyadh.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS