Girls of Riyadh

“As you can see, a certain paper bag has reached me,” the principal said to Lamees, sitting in her office. “However, I promised Ms. Hana that I would not punish you, and I am sticking to my promise. All I will do is take the films with me today, and I’ll return them to you after I’ve watched all of them.”

“Watched all of them? Why?”

“To make sure there isn’t any of that sort of film among them.” She winked.

How rude of her! What sort of film was she insinuating? Each tape had the name of the movie written on it. They were the latest American movies and she was sure that Ms. Elham had heard about each one of them. There were Braveheart, The Nutty Professor and a few others that the girls’ brothers got from Dubai or Bahrain or from American compounds in Riyadh where they sell noncensored movies. She wasn’t carrying sex tapes! Maybe Ms. Elham just wanted to watch the movies for fun! But why didn’t she just ask to borrow them in a direct way instead? In any case, Lamees decided that this horrid principal was not going to get the pleasure of watching her films, after all of the misery she inflicted on Lamees every day.

“I’m so sorry. The films aren’t mine. If my friends knew the films had been taken they would skin me alive, as some of them belong to their brothers.”

“And just who are these friends of yours?”

My God, Lamees thought. Doesn’t this woman ever stop asking these kinds of questions?

“As you know, ma’am, I can’t tell you that.”

“Your problem, Lamees, is that you think you’re the godfather of your own little mafia, willing to take the blame for everything wrong they do. Either you tell me the names of the girls who are with you or I will confiscate the movies.”

Lamees considered the principal carefully. “If I tell you their names, can you guarantee that my friends won’t find out? They will never know that I told on them? And do you promise that you won’t punish them?”

“Yes, Lamees. I promise.”

Lamees divulged the names of her partners in crime, took back the films and after school distributed them to the four of them to watch over the weekend. Where was her hiding place, they wanted to know, and how had she managed to hide this enormous bag? But Lamees just replied with a confident smile and her usual line: “Hey, I’m Lamees! The one and only.”

7.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: March 26, 2004

Subject: The Legends of Street No. 5

Many people have accused me of imitating the way certain writers write, though they say I put all of them together in one big pot and end up writing in an eclectic and strange way. Frankly, this is a great honor as far as I’m concerned, as long as they truly believe I am imitating writers like those whom they mention! Even though, I swear, in truth I am too insignificant to imitate them.

Our Saudi society resembles a fruit cocktail of social classes in which no class mixes with another unless absolutely necessary, and then only with the help of a blender! The “velvet” Riyadh upper class was, to the four girls, the whole world, but it comprised only a tiny fraction of the university world’s enormous diversity.

When the girls entered the university, they got to know for the first time girls who had come from faraway areas about which they had heard very little. If you counted up all of the girls who came from beyond greater Riyadh, they would make up more than half of the entering class of sixty young women. The closer she got to those girls, the more admiration Lamees felt for them. They were energetic, independent and strong. Graduates of public government schools, these girls from the kingdom’s interior had not had a quarter of the resources and support she and her three friends had had in their posh private schools. Yet they had excelled and obtained the highest examination marks, and if it were not for the fact that most of them were weak in English, no one could have told them apart from her friends, except perhaps by the simplicity of their clothing. None of them had ever heard of the famous brands that everyone in the little four-person shillah exclusively bought.