Princess (12 page)

Randa and I had recovered enough to move our feet. We gathered up our abaayas and ran out of the parking lot in fear for our lives. In the process I lost my scarf; when I turned to pick it up, Randa ran straight into me. She fell backward and lay sprawled in the sand, her forbidden legs exposed. When Wafa and Nadia found us, we were breathing hard and leaning against a shop window. They were hanging on to each other, laughing. They had watched us earlier as I struggled to help Randa to her feet.

We whispered our angry words. How could they do such a stupid thing? Pick up foreign men! What kind of fun were they planning, anyway? Didn’t they know that Randa would be stoned and the three of us imprisoned, or worse? Fun was fun, but what they were doing was suicide! Wafa and Nadia simply laughed and shrugged their shoulders at our outburst. They knew that if they were caught, they would be punished, but they didn’t care. To them, their impending futures were so bleak, it was worth a risk. Besides, they might meet a nice foreign man and marry him. Any man was better than a Saudi man!

I thought Randa was going to swoon. She ran into the street, looking up and down for Omar. She knew there would be no mercy from Father if she were caught in such a situation. She was terrorized.

Omar, wary and perceptive, asked us what had happened. Randa fidgeted and started to speak, but I interrupted and told Omar a story about seeing a youth steal a necklace from the gold souq. He had been beaten by the shopkeeper and roughly hauled off to jail by a policeman. My voice had a tremor as I told Omar we were upset because he was so young and we knew he would lose his hand for his act. I was relieved that Omar believed my story. Randa inched her hand under my black cloak and gave me a squeeze of gratitude.

Later, I found out from Nadia and Wafa what they called “fun.” They met foreign men, usually from neighboring Arab countries, occasionally someone from Great Britain or America, in parking lot elevators. They selected handsome men; men they felt they could love. Sometimes the men became frightened and jumped into the elevators, zooming to another floor. At other times they would be interested. If the man they approached was intrigued, Wafa and Nadia would agree to a meeting time, at the same elevator. They would ask him to try and find a van, instead of a car, to pick them up. Later, on the agreed date and time, the girls would pretend to go shopping. Their driver would drop them at the souqs; they would purchase a few items, and then go to the meeting place. Sometimes the men would become wary and not show up; other times they would be nervously waiting.

If the men had obtained a van, the girls would make sure no one was around and then jump quickly into the back. The men would cautiously drive to their apartment and the same degree of caution would be used to secrete the girls inside. If they were caught, the sentence would be severe, quite possibly death for everyone involved. The explanation for the van was clear. In Saudi Arabia, men and women are not allowed in the same car unless they are close relatives. If the mutawas become suspicious, they will stop the vehicle and check identifications. Also, single men are not allowed to entertain women in their apartments or homes. At the slightest suspicion of impropriety, it is not uncommon for mutawas to surround the home of a foreigner and take everyone there, both male and female, to jail.

I was fearful for my friends. I warned them again and again of the consequences. They were young and reckless and bored with their lives. They laughingly told me of other activities they did for diversion. They dialed random phone numbers until a foreign man would answer. Any man would do, so long as he was not Saudi or Yemeni. They would ask him if he was alone and lonely for female companionship. Generally, the reply was yes since there are so few women allowed into Saudi Arabia and most foreign men work there on single-status visas. Once a man’s eligibility was established, the girls would ask him to describe his body. Flattered, usually the man would graphically describe his body and then ask them to do the same. Then Wafa and Nadia would portray themselves from head to toe, in lewd detail. It was great amusement, they said, and they sometimes met the man later, in the same fashion as the parking lot lovers. I wondered how intimate my friends became with these pick-up lovers. I was astonished to hear that they did everything except penetration. They could not risk losing their virginity, for they realized the consequences they would face on their wedding night. Their husbands would return them to their homes, and their fathers would turn them away as well. The mutawas would investigate. They might lose their lives; if not, they would still have nowhere to live.

Wafa said that in their encounters with these men, she and Nadia never removed their veils. They would take off all their clothes but keep their veils intact. The men would tease and beg and even try to force them to remove their veils, but the girls said they felt safe so long as no man saw their faces. They said if any of the men had become serious, they might have considered exposing their faces. But, of course, none of them did. They too were only having fun. My friends were desperately trying to find an “out” from their future, which loomed before them like a dark and endless night.

Randa and I wept when we discussed our friends’ behavior. I felt a hate for the customs of my land creep into my throat like a foul taste. The absolute lack of control, of freedom for our sex, drove young girls like Wafa and Nadia to desperate acts. These were deeds that were sure to cost them their lives if they were discovered. Before the year was over, Nadia and Wafa were arrested. Unfortunately for them, members of a self-proclaimed Public Morality Committee who roamed the streets of Riyadh in an effort to apprehend people in acts prohibited by the Koran had learned of their forbidden activities. Just as Nadia and Wafa entered the back of a van, a carload of young Saudi zealots wheeled in and blocked the vehicle. They had been watching the area for weeks after one of the committee members, while at work, overheard a Palestinian tell of two veiled women who propositioned him at the ground-floor elevator.

The lives of Wafa and Nadia were spared by the fact that their hymens were intact. Neither the Morals Committee nor the Religious Council, and especially not their fathers, believed their unlikely fabrication that they had simply asked the men for a ride when their driver was late. I guess it was the best story they could concoct, considering the circumstances.

The Religious Council questioned every man who worked in the area and found a total of fourteen who said they had been approached by two veiled women. None of the men confessed that they had participated in any activities with them. After three months of bleak imprisonment, due to the lack of hard evidence of sexual activity, the committee released Wafa and Nadia to their respective fathers for punishment.

Surprisingly, Wafa’s father, the unbending man of religion, sat with his daughter and questioned her as to the reasons for her misdeeds. When she cried and told him her feelings of rejection and hopelessness, he expressed sorrow at her unhappiness. In spite of his regret and sympathy, he informed Wafa that it was his decision that she should be removed from all further temptations. She was advised to study the Koran and to accept a simple life preordained for women, far removed from the city. He arranged a hasty marriage with a bedouin mutawa from a small village. The man was fifty-three, and Wafa, seventeen, would be his third wife. Ironically, it was Nadia’s father who was gripped with a fearsome rage. He refused to speak with his daughter and ordered her confined to her room until a decision was made as to her punishment.

A few days later, my father came home early from the office and called Randa and me into his sitting room. We sat disbelieving when he told us that Nadia was going to be drowned in her family’s swimming pool, by her father, on the following morning, Friday, at ten o’clock. Father said that Nadia’s entire family would witness her execution.

My heart fluttered with fear when Father asked Randa if she or I had ever accompanied Wafa or Nadia on their shameful undertakings. I moved forward and started to voice my denials when Father shouted and shoved me back into the sofa. Randa burst into tears and told him the story of that day so long ago when we had purchased my first abaaya and veil. Father sat unmoving, eyes unblinking, until Randa had finished. He then asked us about our women’s club, the one with the name of Lips. He said that we might as well tell the truth, that Nadia had confessed all our activities days ago. When Randa’s tongue froze, Father removed our club papers from his briefcase. He had searched my room and found our records and membership lists. For once in my life, my mouth was dry, my lips locked as with a chain.

Father calmly put the papers back into a pile on the briefcase. He looked clearly into Randa’s eyes and said, “On this day I have divorced you. Your father will send a driver within the hour to take you to your family. You are forbidden to contact my children.”

To my horror, Father turned slowly to me. “You are my child. Your mother was a good woman. Even so, had you participated in these activities with Wafa and Nadia, I would uphold the teachings of the Koran and see you lowered into your grave. You will avoid my attention and concentrate on your schooling while I will work toward a suitable marriage.” He paused for a moment, coming close and looking hard into my eyes. “Sultana, accept your future as one who obeys, for you have no alternative.” Father stooped for the papers and his case and, without looking at Randa or me again, left the room.

Humiliated, I followed Randa to her room and numbly watched as she gathered her jewels, her clothes, and her books into an unruly pile on the large bed. Her face was wiped clean of emotion. I could not form the words that were loose in my head. The doorbell rang too quickly, and I found myself helping the servants carry her things to the car. Without a word of farewell, Randa left my home, but not my heart.

At ten o’clock the next morning, I sat alone, staring yet unseeing out my bedroom balcony. I thought of Nadia and imagined her bound in heavy chains, dark hood gathered around her head, hands lifting her from the ground and lowering her into the blue-green waters of her family swimming pool. I closed my eyes and felt her body thrashing, her mouth gasping for air, lungs screaming for relief from the rushing water. I remembered her flashing brown eyes and her special way of lifting her chin while filling the room with laughter. I recalled the soft feel of her fair skin, and considered with a grimace the quick work of the cruel earth on such softness. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 10:10, and I felt my chest tighten with the knowledge that Nadia would laugh no more. It was the most dramatic hour in my young history, yet I knew that my friends’ schemes for fun, as bad or sad as they were, should not have caused Nadia’s death, or Wafa’s premature marriage. Such cruel actions were the worst of all commentaries on the wisdom of the men who consume and destroy the lives and dreams of their women with emotionless indifference.

Chapter Nine: Foreign Women

After the sudden departure of Randa, the marriage of Wafa, and the death of Nadia, I sank to the lowest possible level of existence. I can recall thinking that my body no longer required the fresh breath of life. I fancied myself in hibernation and wanted to feel the shallow breathing and lowered heartbeat experienced by creatures of the wild that will themselves away for months at a time. I would lie in my bed, hold my nose with my fingers, and pinch my mouth closed with my teeth. Only when my lungs forced the expulsion of air would I regretfully recognize that I had little control over my vital functions.

The house servants felt my pain keenly, for I was known as the sensitive member of our family and had always shown concern for their situations. The meager amounts of cash doled out each month by Omar seemed a high price to pay for being so far removed from those they loved.

In an effort to rouse my interest in life, my Filipino maid, Marci, began to revive my thoughts by telling me stories of people from her country. Our long talks served to thaw the impersonal relationship that exists between master and servant. One day she timidly revealed her life’s ambition. She wanted to save enough money, working as a housemaid for our family, to return to the Philippines to study nursing. Filipino nurses are in great demand worldwide, and it is considered a lucrative career for women in the Philippines.

Marci said that after she graduated, she would return to Saudi Arabia to work in one of our modern hospitals. She smiled as she reported that Filipino nurses made a salary of SR 3,800 each month! (Approximately $1,000 a month, compared to the $200 a month she earned as our maid.) With such a large salary, she said she could support her entire family in the Philippines.

When Marci was only three, her father was killed in a mining accident. Her mother was seven months’ pregnant with a second child. Their life was bleak, but Marci’s grandmother tended to the two children while her mother worked two shifts as a maid in local hotels. Marci’s mother repeated many times that knowledge was the only solution to poverty, and she frugally saved for her children’s education.

Two years before Marci was to enroll in nursing school, her younger brother, Tony, was run over by an automobile and suffered extensive injuries. His legs were so crushed that they had to be amputated. His medical treatments ate away at Marci’s school fund until the small tin can was bare. Upon hearing Marci’s life story, I wept bitter tears. I asked her how she could maintain her happy smile day after day, week after week. Marci smiled broadly. It was easy for her, she said, since she had a dream and a way to realize her dream. Her experiences growing up in a wretchedly poor area in the Philippines left Marci feeling extremely fortunate to have a job and to fill her plate three times daily. People from her area did not actually die of hunger, she emphasized, but of malnutrition that left them vulnerable to diseases that would not have flourished in a healthy community.