Girls of Riyadh

If she needed a new dress to wear to her cousin’s wedding and asked him for three thousand riyals, he would come up with whatever excuse he could find to avoid giving her the money: “No need for the dress, you have lots of dresses.” Or, “Didn’t I buy you a dress six months ago?” Or, “I have barely enough money. Go and get it from your father, he’s always buying one of your brothers a new car, or did they dump you on me so they could rid themselves of your ridiculous demands?” Or some other equally outrageous comment that generally succeeded in getting her to turn her eyes away from whatever it was she happened to need or want. On those rare occasions when he did give her money, he would give her five hundred instead of the three thousand she had asked for, or fifty if, hoping to spare herself his humiliating response, she had only asked for the five hundred in the first place. And for some reason that escaped her, his mother encouraged him. In fact, the Scorpion (as she had nicknamed her mother-in-law) positively applauded her darling son Khalid for being so stingy with his wife. That’s how a good Najdi man should be. It was how her husband, Khalid’s father, treated her all those years.

Gamrah suffered a great deal of pain as a result of her divorce from Rashid. Though Sadeem had told her how excruciating her official separation from Waleed had been, Gamrah was overwhelmed in a way that Sadeem had not prepared her for. Nighttime was the worst. Since returning to the family home, she had been unable to sleep for more than three hours a night—she, who had never found it hard to sleep ten—or twenty—hours at a stretch before her marriage, and even during it! Now she would wake up tormented in anguish. Was this the “emotional instability” that was such a popular topic of conversation among her unmarried girlfriends? She had never once been aware of the importance of Rashid’s presence in her life until he left it.

Lying in bed on her side, she would extend her right leg full length and when her foot would not collide with Rashid’s, she would turn over restlessly. She would recite the two talismans and the protective Throne Verse from the Qur’an and all of the bedtime prayers she had ever memorized, and then she would clutch her pillow and lie on her stomach. Finally, she would doze off, her head at the upper right corner of the mattress and her feet stretched down to the bottom left corner. Only when she lay down on the diagonal like this could she fill the big emptiness that Rashid had created in her bed, but only a small part of the emptiness that he had created in her life.

17.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: June 4, 2004

Subject: All I Need Is Another Saudi!

Have We not laid your chest open for you, and put aside your burden for you, that burden which weighed heavily on your back even as it exalted your mention among people? For with hardship comes ease; indeed, with hardship comes ease.—Qur’an, Surat Al-Sharh

(chapter of easing), verses 1–8

During the past few weeks, I have been reading news stories that talk about me, or let’s say, about my e-mails! Eminent national newspapers are writing about

a prevailing uproar here, and behind it is an anonymous young woman who sends an e-mail every Friday to a large number of Internet users in Saudi Arabia. In these e-mails, she tells the stories of her four female friends, Gamrah Al-Qusmanji, Sadeem Al-Horaimli, Lamees Jeddawi and Michelle Al-Abdulrahman. The girls belong to society’s “velvet class,” an elite whose behavior is normally kept hidden to all but themselves.

Each week, the writer reveals new and thrilling developments, leading her ever-widening circle of eager readers to await Friday noon prayers breathlessly. Every Saturday morning, government offices, meeting halls, hospital corridors and school classrooms metamorphose into arenas for debate about the latest e-mail. Everyone weighs in. There are those who support this young woman and those who object to her. There are those who believe that what these girls are doing is perfectly natural (and also is no secret) and there are others who boil with rage at the revelation of what they consider to be the excesses that are going on around them in our conservative society.

Whatever the outcome, there is no doubt whatsoever that these strange and unusual e-mails have created a furor in our society, which has never before experienced anything like this. It is clear that these e-mails will continue to furnish fertile material for exchange and debate for a long time to come, even after the e-mails cease to appear.