Girls of Riyadh

To the curious ones out there, I say: I will read to you, and with you, more of Sadeem’s musings from her sky-blue scrapbook. To those who are nosy and have made it their business to “out” me, I say: Just drop it.

When she couldn’t seem to find an appropriate job after graduating, Sadeem decided to start a business with a portion of her inheritance. She had for some time been thinking about becoming a party and wedding planner, since there certainly was a demand for it—hardly a week would go by without her receiving an invitation to someone or other’s wedding or dinner party or reception. During summer—the high season—it was not uncommon for her to get invitations to two or three different occasions on a single evening. She and many girls her age, whenever they felt bored or cooped up, would arrange to get invited to a wedding—it didn’t matter whose. They could dress up and deck themselves out and put on heavy makeup and spend the evening dancing to music played by live bands or DJs. It was the closest you could get to an evening in a nightclub, albeit a very respectable and entirely female nightclub.

Sadeem’s idea was to start by arranging small get-togethers for her relatives and friends and then to gradually expand until she got good enough to organize weddings. For years she had noticed that the party-organizing sector was pretty much a monopoly held by a small group of women, all Lebanese, Egyptian or Moroccan, who demanded enormous sums of money but did not provide excellent service in return. Sadeem was electrified at the thought of having the opportunity to plan every detail of an event herself, from A to Z, and modifying the plans to fit the type of occasion and the budget. She already knew the restaurants, florists, furniture shops and clothes makers that she would want to work with.

Sadeem proposed to Um Nuwayyir that the older woman take charge of the Riyadh office, with Gamrah as her assistant. Sadeem would assume control of the eastern region, where she was about to move, and Lamees, if she wanted, could set up an office in Jeddah, where she would be moving with her husband, Nizar, after her graduation. They could even arrange with Michelle over in Dubai to hire some singers who would make special recordings of songs suitable for wedding processions or graduation parties.

Um Nuwayyir welcomed the idea. It would fill the hours of loneliness she faced daily when she got home from work, which would be lonelier still after Sadeem’s departure. Gamrah was very enthusiastic as well. She and Sadeem began setting up small gatherings to which they invited their acquaintances. Tariq, Sadeem’s cousin, helped them take care of official tasks, obtaining a commercial license and other necessary documents. Since women are not always permitted to take care of legal matters with banks and other offices themselves, Sadeem made him their official agent for legal affairs.

The evening before Sadeem left for the eastern province, Gamrah produced invitations to the wedding celebration of a relative of a friend of her sister Hessah, and so Gamrah, Lamees and Sadeem went along with Hessah to the wedding. Hessah took her seat at the table reserved for the bride’s friends, while the three girlfriends sat up on the dance floor. That was where all young single girls customarily sat, magnets for the roving eyes of matrons who were mothers of eligible young men.

When the tagagga crooned into the microphone, the three girls stood up, ready to dance to the familiar Saudi ballad. All of the girls sitting on the raised space started to move as the drumbeats began to throb. The sound roused the entire hall as the taggaga’s voice soared.

Sadeem was dancing in place, shaking her shoulders softly and moving her head from side to side with her eyes closed as she drummed her fingers in time to the song. Gamrah was moving her arms and legs in a random rhythm that had no relation to the beat, her eyes staring upward. Lamees shook her hips as if she were belly dancing, singing the song lyrics along with the singer, as opposed to Gamrah, who did not memorize song lyrics, and Sadeem, who considered showing off how in tune you were with the music while you danced to be a bit overdone.

When the song was over, Lamees went off to chat with an old friend from her school days that she had happened to bump into. The friend had been recently married and Lamees wanted to ask her how she was finding marriage so far, and what the wedding night was like and what kinds of birth control she had tried, and other such particulars that were concerning her now that her own wedding had been booked for the midyear break.

Sadeem remained with Gamrah on the dance floor to dance to a song she loved by Talal Maddah:*

I love you even if you love another

and forget me and stay far away

because my heart’s only wish

is to see you happy, every day