Girls of Riyadh

Gamrah’s chat style didn’t have the finesse of Lamees’s. All the guys who were so gung ho when they found out she was Lamees’s friend disappeared pretty fast once they discovered she didn’t have her friend’s sense of humor and quick mind.

Gamrah began to form new friendships on her own, though. Online, she met people from different countries and of various ages. Like Lamees, she didn’t want to talk to any females. “We can meet females anywhere!” they used to say. Everyone on their buddy lists was of the other sex.

On one of those boring evenings at home, she met Sultan: a simple, direct, polite twenty-five-year-old guy who worked as a salesman in a men’s clothing boutique.

Talking with Sultan on the Internet was a pleasure for Gamrah, and he seemed in turn to really be interested in what she wrote to him. He laughed at her jokes and he sent her lots of colloquial poetry, which he had composed himself.

As the days went by, Gamrah found that talking to Sultan was better than talking to any other online friends, and he felt the same. He called her by her online name: Pride.

Sultan talked a lot about himself, and she thought he seemed perfectly up-front and sincere and legit. She couldn’t reveal anything about herself, though. So she made do with the name Pride and a little lie. She told him she was a student in one of the science departments on the Malaz Campus. She had always felt that Malaz girls were smarter than Olaisha girls, since they specialized in scientific fields.

Meanwhile, Lamees had met on the Internet Ahmed from Riyadh—a medical student at her university. They were both in the third year. Ahmed started leaving the notes he took during class in one of the photocopying shops where she could pick them up later, and she would do the same for him. After an exam she sent him e-mails with the most significant points the doctor had focused on. Male doctors were always easier on female students and female doctors were easier on male students. Although their classes were separate, the reading materials, homework assignments, quizzes, midterms and finals were mostly the same. The best thing to do, medical and dental students quickly have realized, was to get the notes on what the male doctors were teaching from the female students, and vice versa.

As exams were approaching fast, there were purely practical reasons to be able to get quick answers from each other. There were observations and comments to make about exam topics and the style of this or that professor in the oral examinations. And so despite Lamees’s strict rules for online behavior, the relationship between Ahmed and Lamees somehow took the momentous and forbidden leap from the computer screen to the cell phone.

27.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: August 13, 2004

Subject: Sultan Al-Internetti

If you aren’t up to lovin’, don’t do it!—Mahmoud Al-Melegi*

Not a week passes anymore without my reading some article about myself in a newspaper or magazine or Internet chat room. Standing in line at the supermarket, it really stunned me to see a popular magazine on the rack with bold letters across the cover that said: “What Do Celebrities Think of Today’s Hottest Talk in the Saudi Street?” I didn’t doubt for a minute, of course, that I was that hot subject. Very calmly, I bought the magazine. Once I was back in the car, I flipped through it quickly, flying through the roof out of happiness! Four entire pages crammed full of photos of writers and journalists and politicians and actors and singers and sports stars, each having their little say on the burning issue of the e-mails from an unknown source that have been the talk of the Saudi street for months!

I was most interested in what the literary lions had to say. I didn’t understand a thing, naturally. One said I was a talented writer who belongs to the metaphysical surrealistic expressionist strain of the impressionists’ school, or something like that. The pundit observed that I am the first to be able to represent all these things. If only this big-mouth knew the truth! I don’t have the slightest idea what these words even MEAN, let alone know how to combine them in some meaningful way! But deserved or not, it is indeed gratifying to be the subject of such panegyric. (Hey, at least I can match their vocabulary now and then!) What do I think about impressionist metaphysical surrealism? It’s positively, absolutely PUFFSOULISTIC!

Sadeem, do you think there is any hope Rashid will start aching for his son and come see him one of these days? You know, right, that Rashid’s dad brought Saleh a namesake gift because I named the baby after him, even though Rashid isn’t even anywhere around?”