Girls of Riyadh

Tonight’s the night. The heroes of my story are people among you, from you and within you, for from the desert we all come and to the desert we shall all return. Just as it is with our desert plants, you’ll find the sweet and the thorny here, the virtuous and the wicked. Some of my heroes are sweet and others are thorny, while a few are a bit of both at the same time. So keep the secrets you will be told, or as we say, “Shield what you may encounter!” And since I have quite boldly started writing this e-mail without consulting my girlfriends, and because every one of them lives huddled in the shadow of a man, or a wall, or a man who is a wall,** or simply stays put in the darkness, I’ve decided to change all the names of the people I will write about and make a few alterations to the facts, but in a way that will not compromise the honesty of the tale nor take the sting out of the truth. To be frank, I don’t give a damn about the repercussions of this project of mine. As Kazantzakis put it, “I expect nothing. I fear no one. I am free.” Yet a way of life has stood its ground in the face of all you’ll read here; and I have to admit that I don’t consider it an achievement to destroy it by means of a bunch of e-mails.

I shall write of my girlfriends,

for in each one’s tale

I see my story and self prevail,

a tragedy my own life speaks.

I shall write of my girlfriends,

of inmates’ lives sucked dry by jail,

and magazine pages that consume women’s time,

and of the doors that fail to open.

Of desires slain in their cradles I’ll write,

of the vast great cell,

black walls of travail,

of thousands, thousands of martyrs, all female,

buried stripped of their names

in the graveyard of traditions.

My female friends,

dolls swathed in gauze in a museum they lock;

coins in History’s mint, never given, never spent;

fish swarming and choking in every basin and tank,

while in crystal vessels, dying butterflies flock.

Without fear

I shall write of my friends,

of the chains twisted bloody around the ankles of beauties,

of delirium and nausea, and the nighttime that entreaty rends,

and desires buried in pillows, in silence.—Nizar Qabbani

Right you are, Nizar, baby! Your tongue be praised, God bless you and may you rest in peace. Truth be told, though you are a man, you are indeed “the woman’s poet” and if anyone doesn’t like my saying so they can go drink from the sea.

My hair is now fluffed and teased, and I’ve painted my lips a shameless crimson red. Beside me rests a bowl of chips splashed with chili and lime. Readers: prepare yourselves. I’m ready to disclose the first scandal!

The wedding planner called out to Sadeem, who was hiding behind the curtain with her friend Gamrah. In her singsong Lebanese Arabic, Madame Sawsan informed Sadeem that the wedding music tape was still stuck in the machine and that efforts were being made to fix it.

“Please, tell Gamrah to calm down! It’s nothing to worry about, no one is going to leave. It’s only one A.M.! And anyway, all the cool brides these days start things on the late side to add a bit of suspense. Some never walk down the aisle before two or three A.M.!”

Gamrah, though, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She could hear the voices of her mother and her sister Hessah shrieking at the events manager from the other end of the ballroom, and the whole evening was threatening to turn out to be a sensational humiliation. Sadeem stayed at the bride’s side, wiping beads of sweat from her friend’s forehead before they could collide with the tears that were held back only by the quantity of kohl weighing down her eyelids.

The voice of the famous Saudi singer Muhammad Abdu finally blasted from the amplifiers, filling the enormous hall and prompting Madame Sawsan to give Sadeem the nod. Sadeem poked Gamrah.

“Yalla,* let’s go.”