Girls of Riyadh

All hell broke loose for some after my last e-mail about Faisal and Michelle. Unfortunately, some people can always be heard over everybody else because they are proud practitioners of the questionable philosophy that the loudest voice beats all. If they are so eager to stir things up, wouldn’t it be a better use of their time for these vengeful types to wag their tongues against repugnant ideas and outdated traditions like tribal prejudice,* rather than against people who merely try to get some discussion going about how offensive these practices are?

Everyone is condemning my bold writing, and perhaps my boldness in writing at all. Everyone is blaming me for the fury I have stirred up around “taboo” topics that in this society we have never been accustomed to discussing so frankly and especially when the opening salvos come from a young woman like me. But isn’t there a starting point for every drastic social change?

And this I believe: I might find a few stray people who believe in my cause right now, or I might not, but I doubt that I would find many people opposed to it if I were to look half a century into the future.

Gamrah’s permanent return to her family’s home was billed as a routine visit. Her mother, who knew everything that had happened, thought it wisest to hide the truth from everyone. “A summer cloud”—that was how she described her daughter’s quarrel with Rashid and his threat to divorce her. Her mother decided not to tell even Gamrah’s father, who was in North Africa on holiday. After all, the man had never taken any interest in the personal lives of anyone in the household and he never would. Gamrah’s mother had always been the organizing mastermind, the mover and shaker of the household, and she always would remain so.

When various women visited, pouring out their congratulations on her pregnancy, Gamrah repeated what she had rehearsed with her mother:

“Rashid, poor man, is at the university night and day—he won’t even take any time off on holidays. The minute he realized I was pregnant, he insisted that I must give my family the good news in person, the darling! A month or so here, and I’ll go back. I know he can’t stand waiting for me any longer than that!”

In private, her mother would say, “There will be no divorce in our family. I don’t care if your brother did divorce his wife. Al-Qusmanji girls never get divorced!”

But Rashid the jerk did not let things go long enough to give Gamrah’s mother time to think of a solution. In a virtual reenactment of Sadeem’s tragedy, the divorce papers were delivered to Gamrah’s father two weeks after Gamrah landed in Riyadh, effectively blocking all possible maternal machinations. It appeared as though Rashid had just been waiting for the moment in which he felt he could justifiably rid himself of the wife that had been imposed on him by his family.

The divorce document was not particularly gruesome-looking in itself, but its contents were indeed pretty horrifying. When her brother handed it to her, Gamrah read the lines of script and collapsed onto the nearest chair, screaming, “Yummah!*Yummah, Mama, he divorced me! Yummah, Rashid divorced me! It’s all over, he divorced me!” Her mother took Gamrah into her arms, weeping and cursing the wrongdoer with vile invectives: “God burn your heart to ashes and the heart of your mother, too, Rashid, like you’ve burned up my heart over my little girl.”

GAMRAH’S SISTER HESSAH, who had gotten married a year before Gamrah and had been eight months pregnant at Gamrah’s wedding, joined her sister and mother in hurling curses, but in her case they were directed at all men. She, too, had suffered since getting married. Her husband Khalid, who had been mild-tempered and tender through the entire engagement period, had turned into another person immediately after marriage, when he became completely aloof and uninterested in her. Hessah complained constantly to her mother about his neglect. When she got sick, he would not take her to the doctor. And when she got pregnant, it was her mother who accompanied her to the standard pregnancy checkups. Once the baby girl arrived, her older sister Naflah had to go with her to buy the necessary baby products. What infuriated Hessah most in Khalid was his lack of generosity with her, since she knew he had a lot of money and he certainly was not stingy about his own expenditures. He refused to give his wife monthly expense money the way her sister Naflah’s husband did and the way her father did for her mother. Instead, he handed money over for each specific item she wanted to buy, and even then only when she had harassed him to the point where she felt humiliated.