Girls of Riyadh

Late as usual, laid-back Lamees had pranced in balancing a platter of lasagna in one hand and a pan of crème brûlée in the other, and swearing they would love both. The three girls glared at her as Um Nuwayyir got up to help her carry her load to the kitchen. Lamees asked her why everyone was in such a bad mood.

“Honey, look, these girls—every one of them is up to her eyebrows in troubles, and then you come sailing in without a care in the world and bugging them with trying your macaronis and your sweets? You never quit, do you?”

“What harm can a little comfort food do? So, am I supposed to be like them and act suicidal, too? May God give them something better, sure, but this is no way to be! Look at them, every one of them sitting there with a scowl on her face. Reliving their stories only brings more grief!”

“Don’t say that. You don’t know how heartbroken each one of those girls is. Damn men! Bastards! They have always been such a pain and headache!”

But Lamees was determined to snatch her friends from the abyss of misery. She pulled from her handbag the latest hot-off-the-press, thin-as-toast book by Maggie Farah on the zodiac, which she had ordered from Lebanon. The girls immediately became more animated when they caught sight of their source book for love. They began their usual give-and-take.

SADEEM: Lamees, please check out the traits of the Capricorn man for me.

LAMEES: “The Capricorn man is emotional by nature, but he has very little ability to awaken feelings and emotions in the other partner. He is a rational creature who does not react quickly, but when he does react he loses his senses completely and he can’t control his behavior. The Capricorn man is exacting; he holds fast to customs and traditions and doesn’t go in for adventure and risk. He is never led by sentiment and rarely influenced by his feelings. Family attachments are important. Among his flaws are pride, egotism, and careerism.”

MICHELLE: What’s the success rate for a Leo woman and a Cancer man relationship?

LAMEES: Eighty percent.

SADEEM: Is Virgo a better match with Aries or with Capricorn?

LAMEES: With Capricorn, of course! I don’t even have to go to the book to know that! Look—see what’s written here. “The degree of harmony for the Virgo woman with the Aries man doesn’t get any higher than sixty percent. Between the Virgo woman and the Capricorn man it won’t go lower than ninety-five percent.” Way to go, girl! Obviously, you are getting over Waleed in no time! C’mon, spell it out, Yalla, who’s this Capricorn you’re interested in?

GAMRAH: Listen to a little advice from me, girls! Just stop dreaming. Forget all this and leave it to God. Don’t get your hopes up when it comes to men, because you’ll get the exact opposite of what you were hoping for! Believe me.

LAMEES: So if he’s the opposite of what I hope for, what’s going to force me to take him?

GAMRAH: Fate, I guess.

MICHELLE: Let’s be honest with each other here. If Rashid hadn’t appealed to you, you wouldn’t have accepted him. You had the right to say no, but you didn’t. So you better drop all this “fate” theory, all this stuff about us not having any hand in any of our life paths. We always act the role of the helpless females, completely overcome by circumstances, and as if we don’t have a say in anything or opinions of our own! Utterly passive! How long are we going to keep on being such cowards, and not have even the courage to see our choices through, whether they’re right or wrong?

The atmosphere immediately turned electric, as it always did when Michelle jumped in with her sharp views. Um Nuwayyir, as usual, intervened to try to calm them down with her jokes and comments. This was the last evening the three of them would be with Michelle before she left to study in America, and so everyone was managing to overlook her biting candor. But Gamrah found herself shrinking, secretly and silently, from the painful remarks Michelle always directed at her whenever the two of them were with the rest of the clique.

21.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: July 2, 2004

Subject: Fatimah the Shiite

I am dedicating this e-mail to two Shiite readers, Jaafar and Hussein, who both wrote in to inform me that even the Shiite community is devoutly following my story every week. It got me thinking how hard it must be to be different in a unicultural, uniethnic, unireligious country like Saudi. I feel sorry sometimes for those of us who are in some way…different.

Lamees’s move to the College of Medicine in Malaz put a serious strain on her friendship with Michelle. Each tried to ignore the new tension, but some pervasive, negative thing had begun to seep into their relationship. It all came to a head over Lamees’s new friend: Fatimah.