In the Land of Invisible Women (6 page)

Every Mutawaeen cultivated a religious straggly beard of variable length. This man was no different. His was a religious, untrimmed beard, I learned, which was not cut unless the man could grasp a fistful of hair. The Muttawa wore the same white thobe as the average Saudi man but at a markedly shortened hemline, revealing invariably hairy, unmuscled shins. Over this ensemble he wore a dark brown overcoat called a bisht, made of translucent muslin and trimmed in fine gold embroidery. The delicacy of the material contrasted sharply with his offensive bulk. It was strangely discomfiting. The gold thread was especially disturbing, far too regal for a supposedly ascetic holy man, and so closely reminiscent of the Royal habit, the hallmark of Saudi monarchs, (who also wore bishts) almost as though they were cut of the same cloth.

At the summit of his narrow-browed head, the Muttawa wore a white head covering, draping to his thickened waist. The cloth balanced symmetrically, without any visible traction, minus the traditional black rim of the Saudi male headdress. It came forward over his face, covering part of the brow into a short visor of officialdom. From inside, his vantage was therefore blinkered, his peripheral vision limited by the headdress, a fitting metaphor for his narrow horizons of inflexible philosophies.

In one hand the Muttawa carried a cane, to wield his corpulence along the causeway as he heaved along the tightrope of extremism. His was a path of very narrow and circumscribed dimensions. In his right hand he carried a wooden rosary. It seemed to be a stress reliever, spinning around faster and faster as he became increasingly irritated with Maurag's violation. Overbearing and dangerously arrogant, he began to speak.

“Cover your hair!” he told Maurag firmly. He sounded menacing.

Quickly, worried women around us scurried by, disappearing from view, fearful of being swept up in the fray. How I wished to join them. I watched the scene slightly apart from Maurag, some feet to her right. The Muttawa was accompanied by an emaciated policeman. The officer seemed bored, flitting restlessly behind the obese icon of intolerance he accompanied. Maurag's jaw was set. She was going to retaliate.

“I will not cover my hair! My husband does not require it! He allows me to be unveiled! I will not!” she answered angrily. The opening of her abbayah fell loose and her pregnant belly protruded with indignant authority. Even though Maurag was so angry, she still cited the authority of a man to the Muttawa, rather than exert her own.

“You must cover it!” demanded the Muttawa. “Cover your hair, now!” he repeated, while gabbling an Arabic aside to the bored policeman. Was this perhaps the sum total of his English vocabulary? I began to wonder. The policeman remained mute.

This was the first Muttawa I had seen. Invariably male, I would quickly become accustomed to the patrolling menaces of State-appointed religious police. I was simultaneously repelled and fascinated. And like something horrible, I wanted to take a good, long, forbidden look. The Muttawa was tall and, because of his bulk and his intrinsic power, he certainly looked intimidating. But most puzzling of all, Maurag seemed not the least perturbed and even seemed to pull a face with a sly roll of her defiant eyes. I was surprised by her foolish courage and rightly worried. I couldn't believe Maurag had made us such a spectacle, and on my very first public experience in Saudi Arabia. I was expecting her to be more considerate. Here I was, taking fearful baby steps in my brand new abbayah, only moments out of the store and she was already defying the Muttawa. Instead of being angry with the Muttawa, I was surprised to find I was angry with Maurag.

Grumpily, Maurag pulled her ragged scarf over some of her red hair. She was fuming. The Muttawa began to withdraw, back to the shadows from where he must have been lurking. A sigh of relief fluttered through my veil which I had been clutching up to my face during the scene.

At least the Muttawa had gone. Fearful but relieved, I secured my scarf. No matter how ugly it surely looked, this way it stayed put, firmly tied under my chin with a double knot, a bandage for a head wound. We hailed a taxi to leave.

In one short foray into the world outside my compound, I learned I had made my home in the epicenter of a wasp's nest of intolerance: in Riyadh, home of the Wahabi clergy. The Najd, the central region of Saudi Arabia of which Riyadh was the capital, was the geographic center and the seat of clerical power. In Riyadh the Wahabi schools maintained an uncomfortable status quo with the plebes (of which I was now one) and our rulers, the Saudi Monarchy. This triangular tension of proletariat, princes, and fire-breathing papacy kept the Kingdom grinding onward. During my years in Riyadh, I would remain imprisoned in polyester, avoiding confrontation my primary modus operandi. Fortunately for me, social suicide or not, this was ultimately something to which I could never become accustomed.

SAUDI WOMEN WHO
DANCE ALONE

A
S MY CURIOSITY ABOUT THE Kingdom grew, I began to look outward. Initially my solitary existence was punctuated only by patients and colleagues. I lacked friends and already wanted an exit from the intense isolation. As I walked toward the ICU late one afternoon, I passed the open doors of the hospital library, noticing studious veiled or shemagh covered heads bowed deep in study or peering at computer screens. I was tempted to enter but was already running late. Just as I was about to turn away, I looked up and recognized Zubaidah, the ICU nutritionist, leaving the library and approaching, apparently to talk to me.

She was dressed in a knee-length white coat, fully buttoned up to the throat, and a carefully placed scarf in (what else) regulation black. Underneath the coat, I noticed petrol-gray folds of a chiffon skirt grazing down to her impossibly white feet, carefully dressed in open-toe mules glinting with quiet sophistication. Her toes, I noticed, were unpolished, as was her outstretched hand meeting me in a handshake. Her sleeve lifted a fraction and I saw the unmistakable glint of a dial of Swiss diamonds on her wrist. A single, costly, jeweled band on the ring finger of her right hand indicated Zubaidah was, like me, single.

“Salaam alaikum, Dr. Ahmed,” Zubaidah said as she smiled, “How do you enjoy Riyadh?” Her soft voice lilted, suspended in a mid-Continental fusion of Jordanian and French-Swiss accents, somehow endearing her imperfect English grammar. She actually looked interested in my response, revealing an even, pearly smile of patience as she waited for my response. I searched for a diplomatic answer. How could I tell this lovely woman that so far her country had been less than appetizing? How did she “enjoy Riyadh?” I wondered sardonically. I opted not to answer at all.

“Zubaidah, please call me Qanta. I have been meaning to invite you to coffee for some weeks now. It would be lovely to chat if you have time. Let me give you my number.” I began to scribble my impossibly long phone number, which all residents of the hospital compound shared, followed by the extension to my landline. Zubaidah shared hers, immediately revealing her home to be off-campus, and a mobile number in addition, a very rare commodity in the late nineties. Zubaidah was privileged.

Even in that first brief meeting, which lasted just minutes, I couldn't fail to notice Zubaidah's elegance despite the mandatory veiling, perhaps even magnified because of the veiling. Properly wrapped around her hair, the hijab still exposed her extraordinary face. Her flawless skin was a creamy alabaster, unlined and of indeterminate age. A light radiated from her face, which the drab blackness of a headscarf couldn't extinguish. She greeted me with genuine enthusiasm expressed in the open and friendly arches of fine, honey-colored brows surmounting gray-brown eyes. Zubaidah was incredibly beautiful. As I studied her gaze, I found it was possible that she was just as curious about me as I was toward her.

I had been wanting to speak to this Saudi woman for some weeks, but so far our conversations had been limited to calculations of caloric intake for our patients. In the ICU she was the model of Saudi professionalism, veiling not only her
body
, but, as becomes a true Muslim,
her entire demeanor
in the mixed gender environment of the ICU. I had noticed that she never made direct eye contact with any of my male colleagues, that she always waited to be invited to render her professional opinion, and that she was overall subdued and reticent in public. I had mistaken her retiring qualities for shyness. Now I found her mutual curiosity surprising. I wondered what else I would learn about her.

So began my first friendship with a Saudi woman, one which led to many others. Zubaidah would open the doors into the Kingdom for me. She would show me the lives of others inside this bell jar.

Some weeks after our first meeting, Zubaidah mentioned she was having a party to usher in Ramadan, on the eve of the holiest month of the Muslim year, and she invited me to attend. I had heard that Ramadan was a time when the religious police were especially dedicated to enforcing the difficult Islamic rituals of day long fasting. I was dreading the beginning of the month. And now when even Zubaidah explained Riyadh during Ramadan would be difficult, I was alarmed further. It seemed my expatriate friends, veterans of Kingdom living, were accurate in warning me about the holy month in the Kingdom. Before the austere days of fasting and supplication would begin, Zubaidah was hosting a party as final festivities. The party would be given at Zubaidah's home and would be my first visit there. Delighted and flattered, I accepted immediately.

On the day of the festivities, I worried about my party outfit. What could I wear that would be suitable? I wanted my first foray into the real Saudi Arabia to be a success, and most importantly, not the last. I rushed home to take stock of my limited wardrobe.

In the dull hours of the late afternoon, I surveyed the closet. My livelier and more daring outfits were stowed away in New York, awaiting my resumption of “Life in the West.” Here, in Riyadh, I had brought with me what I believed to be an appropriately conservative wardrobe: wide-legged trousers of every dark color, endless long-sleeved white turtlenecks, long-sleeved shirts, a couple of long, ankle-skimming skirts, and knee-high boots; in sum, one's basic, capsule Wahabi wardrobe. After debating the very minimal choice I did have, I pulled on a pair of beige slacks and a white turtleneck. I dressed the dull outfit up with a shiny belt, some jewelry, and a lively ruby lipstick. This would be fine, I thought; no one would be offended by bare skin or short hemlines. And, after all, it was cool in December, and with the party starting at nine, there would be a chilly desert breeze on the way home.

I cloaked my ensemble with the mask of my abbayah, drowning all my meager efforts at appearing stylish. Firmly tying my headscarf on, I was ready for my first evening out. As I looked at my departing face in the hallway mirror, the only familiar emblem of my dressed-up self was my lipstick, in traffic-light red. Everything else about me was already changed beyond recognition in just these few weeks. I stepped outside my building and waited in the forsaken silence, my cheek caressed by the evening wind. In the glare of headlights a taxi pulled up, with two fellow party goers beckoning me in. This was my ride.

I jumped in, careful that my abbayah and scarf didn't entrap me in the car door and turned to greet my fellow passengers. These women were also compound-dwellers who worked with Zubaidah in the nutrition section, both of them dieticians. One was a pretty, blond Irish girl, the other a tall, imposing redhead, Christine, a Canadian. Christine had been in the Kingdom for some time and knew Zubaidah well. We chatted along the way, talking of home (which was always elsewhere, no matter how long anyone had lived in the Kingdom). We shared our common stories of adjusting to life in the Kingdom. I mentioned to Christine how much I missed my duck-down duvet which I had left in New York. I was astounded and delighted when the ladies told me I could pick up a new one at Ikea! In Riyadh? There was a market for Scandinavian furniture here? Somehow, I couldn't imagine a Saudi assembling flat-pack furniture.

As we drove on, I discovered Christine had been in the Canadian army and had been a UN peacekeeper patrolling the Golan Heights before she was a nutritionist here. The diversity of backgrounds amongst the expats was only beginning to come into focus. Everyone was more than they appeared, often having lived in several other countries, and often having more than one profession.

The driver headed away from the compound in a westerly direction, along the Khuraij Road, as he always did. Our compound was at the eastern-most tip of habitable land before the desert engulfed everything in earnest. Tonight we were headed into town and soon joined the fast-gathering traffic jams. Zubaidah's home was in a discreet corner of the residential and commercial neighborhood of Olleyah. Her home was on a road just off Siteen Street, a chic shopping address frequented by locals. She lived in the heart of Riyadh.

Tonight, the night before Ramadan, was everyone's last reprieve in this city of four million. An ambient urgency of compressed pleasures suffused the air. City dwellers were intent to revel, albeit in private, before the gravity of the month-long fasting set in. For many, there was cause to celebrate the arrival of the most holy month of the Islamic year, a joyous and rewarding time for observant Muslims. Repressed excitement mingled with anxious anticipation, forming a critical mass of novel energy in the usually torpid, humorless Riyadh. The air was charged.

As we coursed along the Khuraij Road, a six-lane highway, to the left and right of us cars raced at a perilous speed, leaving us trailing behind as we journeyed at sixty-five miles per hour in the middle, the supposedly slower, so-called “expat” lane. I fastened my seat belt in the rear seat and focused on buildings rather than cars, anything to distract me from the wildness of the traffic that barely grazed past us at deadly speed.

I strained to see everything through the cheap adhesive tint of the taxi windows. We passed the gleaming Lucent building, empty of employees, then Zahid Tractors with rows of shiny, flat-nosed, sunflower-yellow tractors. On our right, we zipped past the Astra compound, also belonging to the National Guard, where our Saudi counterparts lived, separate, divorced from us, the expat population. On the opposite side of the road, car dealerships stretched out, Toyota, Cadillac, Porsche, cars and trucks gleaming in the evening light, each waiting for an eager, first,
male
owner.

Within fifteen minutes we were well into the city. Brightly lit public areas opened out into shopping centers and market places which tonight were spilling over with Saudis carrying armfuls of shopping in overstuffed plastic baskets and boxes. Neon illuminated the night sky from fast food outlets. Aimless urban planning, dominated by arterial, never-ending roads in turn flanked by commercial businesses, was reminiscent of a generic America. Entire developments were perhaps only a block deep, making for a curiously pockmarked landscape; highly developed commercial buildings and vacant lots side by side, the lots nothing more than mounds of partially dug-up, barren land, a galling reminder of what must have been here only a few years before. No grass, no public gardens, no shade of trees could be seen along the entire route. Riyadh was built of concrete, plate glass, and sand secured with a tarry mortar of oil and cheap foreign labor. Entirely man-made, the only animation in Riyadh was the flutter of litter swirling in the wake of the fearsome traffic.

Overhead, even though it was three hours past dusk, it still wasn't dark. The petrol-blue night sky, its vastness accentuated by squat buildings, was darkest sapphire, never black, backlit by strong moonlight and prevailing light pollution. Devoid of clouds, there was nothing to absorb the moonlight. A filigree silhouette of a mosque made entirely of mesh gently impressed its form against the soft pile of the velvet night. What lacked in the department of parks and services was made up for in houses of worship. Almost every other building, if it wasn't selling goods, was selling God.

Myriad round domes and skeletal minarets catapulted me to my new reality—unmistakably Arabia. No amount of fast food pylons or American cars could distract or dilute. As I admired the mosques extending seemingly in every direction, I was surprised to feel an unexpected yearning for lost churches in New York I had left behind. I missed the neighborhood church around the corner from my first apartment. I missed the damp, inviting silence of St. Patrick's, a relief from the Midtown madding. I smiled, recalling my favorite hymn, “I Vow to Thee My Country,” from my distant childhood at a Church of England school. It would never ring out across these plains. Silently I checked. I could still recite the Lord's Prayer, even after all these years. My experience of Islam had been built on a bedrock of books from diverse faiths, foremost among them Christianity. My Islam was not birthed in a monolithic vacuum like this one. Here in Riyadh there was one flavor for all, and only one. Everything else was expelled. Even Islam here was officially of one brand only. I gazed at the multitude of mosques, at once striking and singularly ominous.