She had had it all planned. She would take him to visit the Victoria and Albert, the Tate, and Madame Tussaud’s. Even though art did not appeal to Waleed the way it did to her, she had figured she would change all of that after their marriage, just as she would force him to stop smoking, a habit that annoyed her greatly. They would drink shoga apple and eat sushi at Itsu on Draycott Avenue. They would slowly drown themselves in Belgian chocolate crepes at the shop near her flat. She would take him to shows at Ishbilia, the Lebanese restaurant, and—of course!—she would not forget to take him on a sea cruise to Brighton. At the end of their time in London she would take him shopping in Sloane Street. She would get him to buy her the latest fashions in clothes and accessories, just as Gamrah’s mother had advised her to do, instead of buying them in Riyadh in advance of the wedding with her dowry.
How very painful these memories were now! Her fancy wedding dress and gorgeous wedding veil (which had been shipped custom-made from Paris) were still lurking in her wardrobe in Riyadh, sticking out their tongues at her in derision every time she opened the closet door. She could not get rid of them. It was as if something inside of her were still waiting for Waleed’s return. But he would not return. And her wedding dress and veil were ugly and ever-present witnesses to her beloved’s low-minded and despicable nature.
Her destination the next morning was an Arabic bookshop. She bought two novels by Turki Al-Hamad, Al-Adama and Al-Shemaisi, after seeing a man from the Gulf who looked to be in his forties requesting them from the clerk. She also bought Sheqat Al Horreya, or Freedom’s Nest, by Ghazi Al-Qusaibi, which she had seen as a TV series on some satellite channel a few years before and liked very much. She took a bus back home to find a voice message from her father. He told her that he had arranged things so that she would have a summer internship in one of the London banks that he dealt with regularly. It would begin in a week’s time.
She liked the idea. Summer work, added independence, and some self-improvement. Beyond the books she had just bought and—now—working at the bank, she had no other plans for the summer. Well, she did have one: to study psychology under the guiding hand of Sigmund Freud, aided by the books she had brought with her, so that she could better analyze Waleed’s personality and arrive at a clear understanding of those factors that had pushed him to no-fault divorce. Meaning, no fault of hers.
Reading the books she had just bought was a pleasure, but it depressed her that she had no idea what she ought to read next. She wished she had a list of must-reads for the cultured and intelligent person.
In the novels of Al-Qusaibi and Al-Hamad, she found a lot of political allusions that reminded her of the novels of the Egyptian writers she had been addicted to as a teenager. She recalled suddenly the demonstration she and her classmates had been prohibited from participating in, in those days, when all of the Arab nations were protesting to show support for the Palestinian Intifada and the Al-Aqsa Mosque uprising. She remembered how a lot of countries started boycotting American and English products a while back, but only a few of her friends in Saudi participated and even the ones who did didn’t stick with it for more than a few weeks. Had politics been within reach of everyone once upon a time, but were now accessible only to generals and rulers?
Why had none of her relatives, male or female, gotten involved in a political cause, supporting it with their very souls as had been the case when Ghazi and Turki were young? Why was it that young people these days had no interest in foreign politics unless it was the scandalous behavior of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky? Or, in domestic politics, only the flagrant corruption at the Saudi Telecom Company? It wasn’t just her, Sadeem—all of her classmates and everyone at their age were on the margins when it came to political life. They had no role, no importance. If only she understood politics! If only she had a particular cause to defend or one to oppose! Then she would have something to keep her occupied and to turn her away from thinking about Waleed the bast…!
11.
To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com
From: “seerehwenfadha7et”
Date: April 23, 2004
Subject: Um Nuwayyir’s Classification of Human Populations
There is no God but Allah, the Mighty and the Clement One. There is no God but Allah, Lord of the Great Throne. There is no God but Allah, Lord of the Heavens and Lord of the Earth and Lord of the Throne most gracious. Everliving, Everlasting, there is no God but You; and in Your mercy we seek succor.—Prayer to release worry, trouble and grief
Over the past two weeks, I have read what has been said about me in some of the famous Saudi Internet forums. Some of the talk was as soft as the granules in my daily facial soap but some of it was as rough as the black stone I use on my perennially problem knees. As I followed these discussions swirling like a sandstorm around me, I felt as though I were watching a bullfight—that is, two bulls fighting. Can any of you out there believe that someone would call for my blood? Well, fine, that’s enough to deal with, but then there is the one who claims to be my sister, which is a whole other deal! She claims to have observed that, every Friday, starting early in the morning, her sister secludes herself in her room, in front of her computer screen. One time when this sister of hers was out of the way, the “sister” who is writing says she searched through her sister’s files for evidence that would confirm her suspicions. And, listen to this! She stumbled across all thirty e-mails. And she is ready to sell them to the highest bidder!
After reading Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Essentials of Psychoanalysis, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, On Narcissism and Totem and Taboo, Sadeem gradually realized that Freud, with all his totems, tomatoes, cucumbers and green salad vegetables, was not going to be much help in solving her problem! Sigmund was not about to yield an explanation of why Waleed had left her.
Sadeem had stumbled across two of Freud’s works, translated, in the Jarir Bookstore in Riyadh. The rest she had asked a university friend to bring her from Lebanon before her own departure for London.
She did not find Sigmund Freud’s thought nearly as convincing—at least, not in explaining Waleed’s behavior—as she had found Um Nuwayyir’s classification of human groups. In a happier time, with Sadeem as her audience, Um Nuwayyir had explained her own analysis of men and women in the Gulf states. It was a complicated system of groups and subgroups that covered just about every personality type, and Sadeem had taken notes so she could remember it all.
Um Nuwayyir classified people of the Gulf and Arabs in general based on a number of factors, including strength of personality, self-confidence, good looks and so forth. These general categories applied to both men and women and were then further subdivided.
For example, “strength of personality” is subdivided into two groups: the strong and the weak. In general the strong usually show a lot of motivation for economic self-improvement. These people watch the examples of success they see around them and seize their opportunity to benefit. The weak, led-by-the-nose types lack initiative and only get off their butts when their family or their entire environment gets an upward kick. But these groups are also subdivided as follows: