In the Kingdom of Men (40 page)

There are times when I wonder whether it is simple solitude that I seek, whether that is what drew me to the desert, the tent, whether what I wanted from Abdullah was anything more than that. Some part of me has always believed that I need only myself to survive—that part that Mason recognized early on—but what woman has ever known such agency and could move through this world without the aid and protection of men? What choice do we have but to try? Every time a woman sins, my grandfather said, she falls again, and I say that in doing so, she claims sovereignty over
her actions. See the two sides of me, then: repentant and refusing to repent. Everything in my life is different, yet nothing has changed.

Like Dickens in his London, the nights such dark thoughts keep me awake, I walk. The city never chills like the desert at dusk, but last winter, in the throes of insomnia, I stepped out, looked up, and thought that the stars were falling. The snow hit my face like sparks from a fire.

I had almost forgotten those winter mornings in Shawnee, my bedsheets iced to the wall. How my grandfather would wrap me in a blanket and carry me to the kitchen, where the potbellied stove moaned its misery so that I didn’t have to. He would tuck me into my chair, rest his hand on the top of my head. “You are a fine girl,” he would say, as though the cold had melted his heart. And then he would pray and spoon the porridge, test it against his own lips before moving it to mine. “Eat, eat,” he would say, and then he would bundle me in wool, sit me on the mule, and lead me to school through the ghostly fields. When the last bell rang, I would find him waiting, ready to tug my hat over my ears, snug on my mittens, and we would follow our own trail home.

Who knows where grace resides? That night in Rome, the miraculous snow coming down, I stopped when the Gypsy fortune-teller called to me. She had no table, only the slick flint road to lay her prophecies upon, and I crouched before her. The card came up, an open palm holding a golden chalice, the
Asso di Coppe
. “Cups are the suit of the heart,” she crooned, “of family, of love. Do you have someone to forgive?” she asked me, her eyes clouded with age. “Do you want to ask forgiveness?” She smelled like the last wilted petals of jasmine, the desert after a rain. She took my fingers, clasped them in hers. “We are all wanderers on this earth,” she said. “It is never too late.”

I let her peer into my face, then slowly drew my hands away. I pulled off my diamond ring and dropped it to her blanket like
payment for my sins. I was blocks away before the regret turned me around, but what did I expect? She was a nomad, after all. She had taken her cards, taken my ring, rolled up her blanket, and was gone.

How long did I search the
vias
and nearby piazzas for any sign of her before I found myself on an unknown avenue whose walls were bolted with forged iron? In an upstairs window, its arched panels opened to the cold air, a light shone through, and I could hear the voices of the choir, practicing their songs of communion. A slender
osteria
anchored the corner, and I hesitated before giving up and walking in, past the old bachelors taking their late meals, to the handsome young barista who followed me with his smoky eyes.
“Una bottiglia di vino rosso, per favore,”
I said, and maybe it was the bitterness in my voice that caused him to bring me the bottle already uncorked. When he offered two glasses, I shook my head, said,
“Solo una.”
He took in my sadness but would not take my
lira
no matter how much I insisted. I asked whether I was his evening’s charity, but he said no, that if I did not accept the wine, he would have to drink it himself, and that might lead him into temptation. He lifted one eyebrow.
“Tu sei la mia salvezza,”
and though I felt like no one’s salvation, I raised my chin, said,
“Grazie,”
and turned for the door before he could see my tears.

Outside, the stone street was cobbled white, and I stepped carefully down the narrow walk. I brushed the snow from the curb, across from the church window, sat down, and lit the one cigarette I allow myself each day, already wishing for another. The doors along the avenue were barred, the roadway free of traffic, not even a bicycle winding the icy street. I wrapped my scarf around my ears and tipped the wine that warmed my throat as the voices rose, the beautiful voices, pouring out through the open window with the light, which was golden, so sacred that I believed I had to witness its genesis.

I hadn’t set foot in a church since leaving Shawnee, and never a church like this one. I rose and stepped to the entryway, but
the door was locked. Late at night, and all of the doors of Rome were locked tight. When I lifted my face, the snow shut my eyes. I opened my mouth, took the flakes on my tongue. I stood with my hand gripping the latch. I couldn’t let go. Dear God, I thought, let me in. The snow is falling. The stars are burning.

All I ever wanted was to know.

Before I offer my gratitude to the many people who had a role in this book’s creation, I want first to acknowledge that, though this story relies upon and incorporates historical elements, it is very much a work of fiction, its characters and situations conjured from my imagination. The Saudi Arabia of 1967 is gone, a place impossible to go back to, and those readers who are familiar with that land and time may find certain of my details and logistics inconsistent with their memories and experiences. Those readers who know the contemporary Arabian landscape, populated by high-rises and luxury hotels, may find it difficult to imagine that the eastern edge of the peninsula could ever have been so barren. Likewise, the political, cultural, and religious environment of Arabia has changed a great deal since the 1960s. Because of the closed nature of the Saudi society and the doctrine of exceptionalism that directed early Aramco, I often found it difficult to access truly objective accounts of life inside (and outside) the American compounds and oil towns. What I offer you, then, is Gin’s story as I have invented it. All my hours of reading and research brought me to a new appreciation of just how complex the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia is. If, as Yash says, the events in these pages add up to the “education of Mrs. Gin,” they also represent the education of this author. Outside of the political gravity of what I discovered, the one impression that remains with me is the spirit of genuine friendship that developed—and
continues to develop—between those Arabs and Americans who have worked together over the years.

While researching and writing this story, I have relied upon a blessedly generous circle of family and friends. To Robert Wrigley, the poet who has my heart, shares my tent, and muses with me in our aged hot tub, another glass of champagne to all those nights with our bodies in the water and our eyes on the stars as we trekked through the imaginary desert together, following the windblown trail of this story. To our children, Jace, Jordan, and Philip, and my mother, Claudette Barnes, thank you for your gift of time, support, and inspiration. My aunt and uncle, Coleen and Wayne Cook, and my cousin Terry Cook, whose memories of their years in Abqaiq spurred this story—thank you for the time you gave me, answering my endless and sometimes odd series of questions. William Tracy, former contributing editor of
Aramco World
, offered his expert reader’s eye and Arabian memories—thank you, Bill and Marjorie, for your confidence, coffee, and cookies. Lois Wolfrum, who lived and worked as a Singles girl in Arabia, brought to this story her love of the Saudi people and her flag of fierce independence. I relied heavily on an engaging personal online journal written by Aramco expat Colleen Wilson, who, even in the face of personal hardship, took time to offer me details of her experience in the camps. Other Aramcons, including those with whom I connected on Facebook, impressed me with their deeply felt love of Arabia and its people.

Sayantani Dasgupta endured a long series of my embarrassingly uninformed questions about India and responded with endearing patience, as did Bharti Kirchner, whose culinary expertise I relied upon and who generously read and responded to sections of the manuscript. Morning conversations with my sister-friend Claire Davis about writing and every other thing in our world became my daily bread, and her uncanny ability to pull me up, dust me off, and point me in the right direction kept me from losing my
way. To my Free Range Writers—Collin Hughes, Buddy Levy, Lisa Norris, and Jane Varley—thank you for twenty years of rare trust, good friendship, and hard reads. To Jeanne Amie Clothiaux and Kelly Madonna Quinnett—may the Three Tall Women forever meet to wonder, imagine, and create.

Grazie mille
to the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio and the Liguria Study Center at Bogliasco for the glorious gift of time and space, and to my resident mates there, thank you for sharing with me your intelligence, humor, and creative energy. Thanks to my colleagues and my students at the University of Idaho for their faith and support.

To my editor, Jennifer Jackson, and my agent, Sally Wofford-Girand, who have journeyed beside me as I made my way through the desert—a thousand thanks for your steadfast direction and reassurance. Many thanks, too, to family members and friends who offered their memories, knowledge, insights, and encouragement, including Greg and Judy Barnes, Keith Browning, Brittney Carman, Betsy Dickow, Anthony Doerr, Bob Greene, Robert Coker Johnson, Annie Lampman, Brian Leekley, Sam Ligon, Martin Mallinson, Daniel Orozco, Joy Passanante, Brandon Schrand, Mark Spragg, Jess Walter, and Gary Williams.

A very special note of gratitude to the independent booksellers who keep me in their hearts and on their shelves.

Finally, I have researched a small library’s worth of material over the years of this book’s composition and have been informed and directed by the novels, memoirs, scholarly texts, government reports, articles, journals, letters, diaries, blogs, and oral histories I have read. I want to make special mention of the brilliant Italian photographer Ilo Battigelli, whose artistic (not personal) life inspired the creation of my character Carlo Leoni. You can learn more about Mr. Battigelli’s masterful photographs and biography through the searchable archives of Arab News (
http://archive.arabnews.com
), Aramco Services (
http://​www.​aramcoservices.​com/​news-publications
),
and the Center of Research and Archiviation of Photography (
http://www.craf-fvg.it/eng/index.asp
).

Along with archival issues of Aramco (now Saudi Aramco) publications—
Sun and Flare, Aramco World
, the 1960 edition of
The Aramco Handbook
, and the 1981 edition of
Aramco and Its World—
the following is a list of selected sources that I found particularly poignant and from which I drew details and descriptions of life in the desert:
The Belt
, by Ahmed Abodehman;
In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor’s Journey in the Saudi Kingdom
, by Qanta A. Ahmed, MD;
At the Drop of a Veil: The True Story of an American Woman’s Years in a Saudi Arabian Harem
, by Marianne Alireza;
Islam: A Short History
, by Karen Armstrong;
Out in the Blue: Letters from Arabia
—
1937 to 1940: A Young American Geologist Explores the Deserts of Early Saudi Arabia
, by Thomas C. Barger, former president and CEO of Aramco;
Brownies and Kalashnikovs: A Saudi Woman’s Memoir of American Arabia and Wartime Beirut
, by Fadia Basrawi;
Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women
, by Geraldine Brooks;
Big Oil Man from Arabia: From Camel Back to Cadillac—or the Amazing Adventures of Aramco, the American Overseas Oil Company That Is Transforming Saudi Arabia
, by Michael Sheldon Cheney;
The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia
, by David Dean Commins;
The Arab of the Desert
, by H. R. P. Dickson;
A Bedouin Boyhood
, by Isaak Diqs;
Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village
, by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea;
The Qur’an
, translated by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem;
Behind the Veil: An Australian Nurse in Saudi Arabia
, by Lydia Laube;
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
, by T. E. Lawrence;
Lawrence of Arabia
, directed by David Lean (from which comes a slight paraphrasing of “No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees. There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing,” spoken in the film by Feisal);
Honey and Onions: A Life in Saudi Arabia
, by Frances Meade;
Home: The Aramco Brats’ Story
, a documentary film by Matthew Miller, Todd Nims, and Zachery Nims;
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
, by Toni Morrison; the
Cities of Salt
trilogy, by Abdelrahman
Munif (which inspired Abdullah’s description of the destruction of the wadi and a play on this quote: “You go to bed a warrior and wake up a slave”);
Black Tents of Arabia
, by Carl R. Raswan;
Season of Migration to the North
, by Tayeb Salih;
Discovery! The Search for Arabian Oil
, by Wallace Stegner, who first described the American explorationists as “tinkerers and gadgeteers”;
A Vanished World
and
Arabian Sands
, by Wilfred Thesiger (“A cloud gathers, the rain falls, men live. The cloud disperses without rain, and men and animals die”); and
America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier
, by Robert Vitalis (which includes an extensive bibliography and in which I found the quote, “[A] King who thinks like an oil company and an oil company that thinks like a King,” attributed to United States State Department desk officer Richard Sanger). Mason’s articulation of what the Arab workers were striking for is a paraphrasing of a quote from a 1955
Time
article titled, “Alchemy in the Desert,” reported by Keith Wheeler.

Additional selected and suggested titles include
Crescent, Arabian Jazz
, and
The Language of Baklava
, by Diana Abu-Jaber; the writings of Ayaan Hirst Ali;
The Girls of Riyadh
, by Rajaa Alsanea;
Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing
, edited by Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke;
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
, by Robert Baer;
Disfigured: A Saudi Woman’s Story of Triumph over Violence
, by Rania al-Baz;
Thicker Than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia
, by Rachel Bronson;
Oil, God, and Gold: The Story of Aramco and the Saudi Kings
, by Anthony Cave Brown;
Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East
, edited by Edmund Burke III;
Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark
, by Jane Fletcher Geniesse;
A Land Transformed: The Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia and Saudi Aramco
, by William Facey, Paul Lunde, Michael McKinnon, and Thomas A. Pledge, and edited by Arthur P. Clark and Muhammad A. Tahlawi;
Daughter of Persia: A Woman’s Journey from Her Father’s Harem Through the Islamic Revolution
, by Sattareh Farman Farmaian;
The New Encyclopedia of Islam
, by Cyril Glassé;
The Price of Honour:
Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic World
, by Jan Goodwin;
The Writing on My Forehead
, by Nafisa Haji;
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
, by Mohsin Hamid;
Mother Without a Mask: A Westerner’s Story of Her Arab Family
, by Patricia Holton;
The Jewel of Medina
and
The Sword of Medina
, by Sherry Jones;
Black Light
, by Galway Kinnell;
The Kingdom
, by Robert Lacey;
Some Girls: My Life in a Harem
, by Jillian Lauren;
Veiled Half-Truths: Western Travellers’ Perceptions of Middle Eastern Women
, edited by Judy Mabro;
Not Without My Daughter
, by Betty Mahmoody;
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
, by Azar Nafisi;
Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey
, by V. S. Naipaul;
The Energy Within: A Photo History of the People of Saudi Aramco
, edited by Kyle L. Pakka;
Persian Girls: A Memoir
, by Nahid Rachlin;
Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist (1879–1924)
, by Huda Shaarawi;
Sandstorms: Days and Nights in Arabia
, by Peter Theroux;
Arab Women: Old Boundaries, New Frontiers
, edited by Judith E. Tucker; and
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power
, by Daniel Yergin.