Girls of Riyadh

I am suffering enormously, and have been ever since you went out of my life. I see now that I will suffer for a long time. A very long time. I deleted all your pictures, e-mails and text messages and burned all your letters so that you wouldn’t have to worry that they were around. I was in pain as I hit the delete button and as I watched the fire eat my treasure, but your face and your voice and the memories are engraved in my heart and can never be wiped out. With this message I’m not trying to get back together. I’m not even asking you to write back. I just want you to know how it is with me. I’m in bad shape without you, Sadeem. Really bad…

Sadeem couldn’t even read it clearly. Tears had filled her eyes, blurring her vision, the minute she read the sender’s nickname, which she had been too weak to delete from her phone: Firasi Taj Rasi. My Firas, my Crown.

She barely knew what she was doing as she pressed the button to call the sender’s number. Her Firas answered! Firas, her darling and brother and father and friend. He didn’t say anything, but just hearing his breathing on the other end of the connection was enough to make her weep.

He stayed silent, not knowing what to say. The sound of his car motor partly concealed the tightness in his breathing, as Sadeem went on sobbing in wordless rebuke of what he had done, releasing all that had been packed inside of her, waiting to be unloaded, swelling and growing until it filled her completely. He listened and listened to her painful gasps for breath as he murmured into his cell phone for her to imagine his planting one kiss after another on her forehead.

In one fell swoop he destroyed all the fortifications the resistance forces possessed.

He couldn’t believe it when she told him she was living with her aunt in Khobar, just a few kilometers away from his home! He kept her talking on the phone as he made his way toward her neighborhood. He didn’t know the house she was in, and he didn’t ask her. He told her that he was getting closer to her than she could imagine.

That was a dawn never to be forgotten! Birds cheerfully engaged in their early morning flutter, and a lone car roaming one of the quarters of the city of Khobar, driven by a man worn down by desire and longing for his sweetheart’s eyes. The two lovers lost the last of their reservations after what had seemed a lifetime of denial. Now fate, with the tender love of a father who cannot bear to see his children in torment, gripped their hands and led each to the other.

Sadeem went over to her window and looked out onto the street. She began describing the houses nearby to Firas, since she didn’t know the number of her aunt’s house or its exact location. All she knew was that it had a huge glass front door and on either side of the large door were a few untrimmed trees.

She caught sight of the lights of his car in the distance and felt as though she were floating in a warm ocean of bliss. He saw her at the window, her ash-brown hair tumbling across her shoulders and the creamy skin that he dreamed of kissing. “You’re cream and honey!” he would say to her whenever he stared at her pictures.

He shut off the car engine in front of the house, not far from Sadeem’s window on the second floor. She begged him to move farther off before one of the neighbors coming back from the nearby mosque after Fajr prayer saw him by her window at this early time of the day! He couldn’t care less. He started teasing and flirting with her, singing to her:

Be patient a moment, let my eyes feast!

I’m thirsty for you—melting of desire

Oh you little devil, you are prettier than you ever were then!

But your eyes remained the way I love them.*

44.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: January 7, 2005

Subject: Life after Lamees’s Marriage

Readers were divided—as usual—between those who supported Sadeem’s return to Firas and those who opposed it. But everyone did agree this time—unusually—that come what may, the extraordinary love between these two demands an extraordinary ending to their story.

The hints about the benefits of attachment and stability Michelle heard from Hamdan came in a variety of shapes. He told her his dream was to marry a girl who would be his best friend, and that he was hoping he would find a girl who had exactly her grasp of things and her openness toward the world. (Michelle smiled as she heard him praise her openness, the very same quality she’d heard so much criticism of in her own country.) He was always complimenting her on her elegance, and he noticed the tiniest changes she made to her appearance from one day to the next.