Girls of Riyadh

It was not in the least bit unreasonable for Sadeem to be thinking of marriage. Even her friends did not think she was rushing ahead of herself. It seemed the inevitable, fated outcome. His allusions were crystal clear, weren’t they? Even though he didn’t ever say “marriage” right out loud, the idea had been circling around inside his head starting from that day he circled around the Kaaba in Mecca, performing Umrah.*

From inside the sacred enclosure at Mecca he had called her. He was accompanying a small group of VIPs. He asked her what she wanted him to pray for on her behalf. “Pray that God gives me what is in my heart,” she said. And then, a moment later, “And you know who is in my heart.”

A few days later, he told her that hearing this shy confession of hers had submerged his heart in an ocean of pure delight, a feeling he’d never experienced before. Her boldness led him to grow bolder in his own thoughts. From that day on, he began to float along in private fantasy, always moving closer to an attachment to her. A composed and steady man who considered every step a thousand times before taking it, he was unaccustomed to the emotion of being swept away. He began to show his solicitude, his desire to know every little thing happening in her life. He vowed to her that she was the only woman who had been able to slip into his life, manipulate his precise daily schedule and prod him (with barely any effort on her part) to stay up late, neglect his work and postpone his appointments, all for the sake of spending more time with her on the phone!

What was a little odd about Firas was his utter devotion to religion in spite of having spent more than a decade abroad. He showed no signs of Western influence. He didn’t seem at all ill-disposed toward the way things were in the kingdom, unlike many others who spent a few years abroad and came home to despise everything they saw, no matter how fervent they had once been in their praise of their country’s customs and practices. Firas’s attempts to steer Sadeem this way or that on the path of righteousness didn’t annoy her. To the contrary! She found herself strongly inclined to accept all his ideas of making her a better Muslim and primed to embrace them, especially since he didn’t make a big deal of anything. That really pleased her. It was simply a matter of delaying a good-night phone conversation because the time for the dawn prayer had come, or maybe an innocent little hint about wearing the hijab and abaya, like the one he had come up with when they were sitting on the airplane, or an earnest observation about how annoying the young men who followed girls with uncovered faces in the malls must be, suggesting that the face cover protects a girl sometimes from such encounters. That was his way, and gradually Sadeem found herself trying to move closer toward religious perfection so that she would be worthy of Firas, who was so much closer to that perfection than she was.

Firas never made her feel that she needed to work hard to keep him. He was the one always making the effort to remain in touch with her and be near her. He never traveled without telling her where he was going and when he would be back, and he always gave her addresses and telephone numbers to contact him. He begged her pardon for calling her so much to see that she was all right. For them, as for so many other lovers in the country, the telephone was the only outlet, practically, for them to express the love that brought them together. The telephone lines in Saudi Arabia are surely thicker and more abundant than elsewhere, since they must bear the heavy weight of all the whispered croonings lovers have to exchange and all their sighs and moans and kisses that they cannot, in the real world, enact—or that they do not want to enact due to the restrictions of custom and religion, that some of them truly respect and value.

Only one thing disturbed Sadeem’s serenity, and that was the relationship she’d formerly had with Waleed.

When they first got to know each other, Firas had asked her about her past and she had immediately poured out everything about Waleed, the only false step she had ever made, the injury whose wounds she hid from everyone. Her explanation seemed to satisfy him; he seemed very understanding and sympathetic. What bewildered her was his request that she never again talk to him about it. Did talking about her past upset him that much? She wished he could turn the pages in her heart with his own hands so he could see for himself that they were blank except when it came to him. She wished she was allowed to share absolutely everything inside of her, including her history with Waleed, but he was as determined and firm in this decision as in any other. That was the way he was.

“So, what about you, Firas? Do you have a past?”