Girls of Riyadh

Among the many criticisms that have begun flooding into my inbox are a large number slamming me for quoting lines by the late poet Nizar Qabbani and—way back in my first e-mail—asking God’s mercy on him. I quote Qabbani for a simple reason: There isn’t anything out there today that could compare. I’ve never read any modern poetry that has the simplicity and the clear eloquence of his. I have never felt even slightly moved or influenced by those modernist poets who compose a qasida of thirty lines in which they talk about nothing! I do not get any pleasure from reading about the festering pus on the forehead issuing from behind the haunch of eternal grief. I am in sync only with Nizar’s essential lines, lines that not a single one of those new poets (with all due respect to them) has been able to compose, despite their simplicity.

After Sadeem flunked out of school, which came as a huge surprise to everyone since she was known for her academic excellence, her father proposed that the two of them travel to London for some fun. Sadeem asked him, though, to let her go alone and stay in their flat in South Kensington. She wanted to spend a stretch of time by herself, she said. After some hesitation, her dad agreed, and he furnished her with some telephone numbers and addresses of friends of his who, accompanied by their families, were spending the summer in England. She could contact them if she wanted a little break from herself. He urged her to occupy her free time by signing up for a computer or economics course of some kind so that she could benefit from her time away once she returned to her college in Riyadh.

Sadeem packed away her wound along with her clothes and carried it all from the Dust Capital of the World to the Fog Capital of the World. London was not new to her. In fact, spending the last month of summer there had become a familiar yearly ritual. London this time around was different, though. This time, London was a huge sanatorium where Sadeem had decided to take refuge to overcome the mental maladies overwhelming her after her experience with Waleed.

Before they began the descent at Heathrow airport, Sadeem headed for the airplane bathroom. She took off her abaya and head covering to reveal a well-proportioned body encased in tight jeans and a T-shirt, and a smooth face adorned with light pink blush, a little mascara and a swipe of lip gloss.

Coming from Riyadh’s heat, Sadeem had always enjoyed walking beneath London’s summer rains, but on this trip, all that poured over her was misery. London was nothing but gloom, she decided; the city was as dark and cloudy as her mood. The silent apartment and her empty pillow added to her unhappiness, leading her to shed more tears than she had known it was possible to produce.

Sadeem spent a lot of time crying. She wept tears that burned her eyes, for the wrong, the darkness that had enveloped her, that had shrouded her defamed femininity. She cried and cried, mourning her first love, buried alive in its infancy before she could even find pleasure in it. She cried and she prayed, she prayed and prayed, in hopes that God would set guidance before her in her plight, for she had no mother to comfort and reassure her, no sister to stand by her side in this trial. She still did not know whether to tell her father what had happened between her and Waleed on the last night they had been together. Or whether she should carry the secret to her grave.

All that she had the power to do was seek God’s forgiveness and send one prayer after another into the air, imploring that the despicable Waleed would not scandalize her by revealing why he had divorced her; that, having dumped her, he would not say anything that would drag her name through the mud. “Allah, shield me! Keep his evil from me! Allah, I have no one but You to come to, and You are the most knowledgeable of my condition.”

It was during this difficult time that Sadeem became addicted to songs of grief, pain and parting. During those weeks in London, she listened to more sad songs than she had ever listened to in her entire life before. She would feel transported, even elated, whenever she listened to one of the classic love songs by famous Arabic singers that were full of romance and melancholia.