“No, believe me, there wasn’t any problem like this. The problem is that for a while now I’ve been noticing that he gives me these really strange hints about our relationship. One day he says to me that his family has found him a good bride, and another day he says, ‘If a well-matched groom shows up for you, don’t send him away!’
“How can his heart allow him to say things like that when he knows I love him so much? At first I figured he was joking, just to torment me a bit. When I saw him in Paris, though, I told him that a friend of Papa’s wants to marry me to his son. Really and truly, I wasn’t lying about that. I figured that he would get upset and worried and would knock on my father’s door the very same day. But what happened instead was that he gave me a smile as cold as the nighttime desert and asked me if the man was a good fellow. He said, ‘Make sure your father asks around about him, and if he turns out to be okay, then put your trust in God and go ahead!’”
“He really said that?” asked Gamrah, her tone disbelieving.
“So what did you say when he said that?” asked Lamees impatiently.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” All the girls spoke at once.
“My brain seized up! I couldn’t get what he was saying! I just sat there staring at him. I couldn’t say a word and I must have looked like a complete idiot. My eyes teared up and then I said, ‘Sorry, I have to go.’”
“So what did he say?”
“He said, ‘Don’t be angry,’ and he made me swear that I wouldn’t leave! He said, ‘Look, if you go now, I am not going to speak to you ever again.’”
“So you stayed?”
“Ya, I sat there until he finished eating and then we both got up and left the restaurant together. He then fetched me a taxi to the hotel.”
“So are you guys still together?”
“Together, but nothing has improved since then. He is playing with my nerves and I don’t know what to do to change him back to what he was before. Why is it always like this with me? Why do guys always change totally after they’ve been with me for a little while? There must be something about me! What seems clear is that the minute I start feeling comfortable with them they start getting really uncomfortable with me.”
Men’s insistence on calling the shots, Lamees believed, didn’t just come about in a vacuum. It happened after a guy stumbled on a woman who really liked that kind of domineering behavior and encouraged it.
“I believe that men aren’t scheming to tell lies or to deceive us,” she said. “It’s, like, they don’t intentionally do that. It comes from their nature. They’re just kind of wicked. A guy will begin backing off from a girl and even trying to escape as soon as she seems available. Because then he feels, Okay, I don’t have to do anything to get her. She is no longer a challenge. He doesn’t say this to her face. He doesn’t let her figure out that he is in the wrong, no way! He makes her believe that she is the one who has problems, not him. Some of them give the girl hints, hoping she will end the relationship herself, but we stupid girls never pick up on them. We go on working on the relationship until it kills us, even if we’re pretty sure from the start that it’s a total disaster. That’s why in the end we make fools of ourselves. We’re the ones who don’t hold on to our pride from the start to get out with our honor intact.”
Next, Michelle gave Sadeem her own logical analysis of the situation. “Sweetie, this is the escape strategy of an immature little boy. You find that he has given it some thought and then tells himself, So why should I take someone who is divorced when I haven’t ever been married? Even divorced men are looking for girls who haven’t been married, so why would I end up with a woman who has been previously married? You’ll find him weighing her in his mind and saying, If I want to become a government minister or some other high official later on, I need to find a woman who will give me some standing, a woman to help me with her family name and her looks and her genealogy and her social position and wealth! I’m not going to take one who’s flawed from the start cause she’s been divorced, and then watch people devour me with their waspish tongues. This is the way our men think, unfortunately. No matter how impressive he is or how refined his thinking is or how much in love he is, he still considers love something that can only happen in novels and films. He doesn’t get it, he doesn’t conceive of love as a foundation that builds a family. Maybe he’s even a really cultured and highly educated guy who’s been around. Maybe he knows deep down that love is a basic human need, that it isn’t shameful for a man to choose his partner in life himself, as long as he’s completely sure she’s the right one. But he is still afraid. It worries him to even think about following a path different from the path his father followed, and his uncle, and his grandfather before them. And anyway, he’ll think, Those old men are still living with those shut-up women of theirs. So something must have gone right. What they did was successful. It’s got to work because everyone else has done it. So he follows their steps and doesn’t go against their way of doing things. That way, no one can come along someday and rub it in that he failed because he strayed from the path of his ancestors. Our men are just too scared to pay for their own decisions in life. They want others to follow, others to blame.”
Not one of the three other women had any idea where Michelle obtained her theories of how guys think. But they felt that her words evoked strong echoes in all of them. They didn’t know how she had reached her conclusions, but they knew, in their hearts, that she was right.
32.
To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com
From: “seerehwenfadha7et”
Date: September 17, 2004
Subject: The Migrating Bird
To those who have totally annoyed me by declaring that I do not represent the girls of Saudi Arabia, I say: How many times do I have to repeat myself? I am not writing anything incredible or bizarre or so weird that you people absolutely do not relate to it or can say it’s not true! Everything I say, the girls in my society know very well. Every week, every single one of them reads my e-mail and exclaims, “This is me!” And since I am writing to give a voice to those girls, I ask those who have nothing to do with what I say to quit sticking their snouts into what’s not their business. And then, if they are so eager to offer a perspective other than mine, they’re welcome to write their own e-mails. But don’t ask ME to write only what YOU approve of!
Michelle discovered that the epidemic of contradictions in her country had gotten so out of control that it had even infected her parents. Her father, whom she had regarded as a rare symbol of the freedom in Saudi Arabia, had (himself!) now smashed the pedestal she had put him on, thereby proving the truth of the proverb: Anyone who lives with a people becomes one of them!
Her father exploded in a way she never would have anticipated, when he heard her suggest how much she liked her cousin Matti. Even her mother, who had only the one brother, Matti’s father, and loved him devotedly, and considered his children as precious as her own limbs—even this woman was totally, shockingly upset by her daughter’s unmistakable words.
Michelle would never have believed it of her parents, but there was undoubtedly a religious impulse behind their blowup. Her father had never been among the hard-liners when it came to religion. And her mother, who had become a Muslim after her daughter’s birth, had never been one to strictly follow religious strictures. So why did they treat her so ferociously now, trying to force her to believe that Matti wasn’t right for her? Her parents, it seemed, had absorbed their share from this garden of contradictions where they had put down roots in recent years.