What if Matti really did love her? She knew that was unlikely, but she couldn’t help but think: was she going to give him up for the sake of her family, as Faisal had let her go for the sake of his family? Matti’s problem was much more complex, because according to Islamic law, she couldn’t marry Matti, since he wasn’t a Muslim. Her dad, as a Muslim man, had been able to marry her Christian mother, but Muslim women weren’t permitted to marry non-Muslim men. Could she marry him in a civil ceremony in America? She knew that her parents couldn’t possibly agree to such a thing, no matter how liberated they were.
Anyway, praise be to God that Matti had never broached this subject of love. Perhaps his feelings toward her were no different from the customary affection between friends or between brothers and sisters. Especially since in America it wasn’t generally accepted for first cousins to form romantic relationships. Perhaps her years in Saudi Arabia had so perverted her judgment in these matters that when a man was just being nice and kind to her, she misread it as LOVE.
Her parents decided to take the step they had been postponing until Michelle got her degree from UCSF. As a pretext for making that decision now instead of later, they insisted that with the situation being what it was in post-9/11 America, they were afraid for her to return there for her last two years of college. Michelle had a hunch, though, or more than a hunch, that what she had said about her relationship with Matti, as vague as it had been, was their real motive.
They would all move to Dubai! That was the decision the parents made once they became convinced they could no longer fit comfortably in the prim and prying Saudi society. Michelle had no choice in the matter. If she were to refuse to move with her parents and brother, the suspicions filling her father’s head would only grow more intense. For her part, when she thought about her relationship with her cousin, she didn’t believe he truly loved her. She felt he regarded her as a pampered younger sister whom he tried to make happy—the way he tried to make everyone happy, especially those nearest to him.
Their decision, coming after she completed only two years of her studies at the University of San Francisco, bewildered her. It was clear, though, that her parents had arranged everything in advance. She was to finish her studies in the Department of Visual Communications at the American University in Dubai so that the two years wouldn’t go to waste, as had her first year of university when she moved from Riyadh to San Francisco. Little Meshaal, meanwhile, would enter a private school. Her father intended to make investments in Dubai as many of his friends were doing. Her mother would have more freedom and respect, which had mostly been denied to her in Saudi Arabia.
Even though Dubai was a lot closer than San Francisco, this move was much harder than the last one. This time she would have to say good-bye to her friends without the promise that she would see them again at the New Year’s break. Their home in Riyadh would still nominally remain their home, yet Michelle was certain that she would return to it only if everyone in the family agreed. There would remain no ties to Riyadh except for the relatives who lived there, and her father and mother would not be interested in visiting them, anyway.
Lamees organized a big farewell party at her house. The girls gave Michelle an elegant diamond-studded watch. They cried remembering the days of their adolescence and young adulthood, which seemed to be vanishing with Michelle’s departure from the shillah. Um Nuwayyir reminded her girls repeatedly that phone lines and Internet did exist! She pointed out that they could even converse daily, with picture and sound using a webcam and a microphone. That soothed them a little. Still, they worried that their relationship with Michelle would change once she moved to Dubai, just as it had when she went to America. This would be an even bigger change, for now the separation would be permanent, and so the ember of friendship that had remained constantly warm for years would be snuffed out, no matter how hard they all tried to preserve it.
Lamees was the most grief-stricken of all. Michelle’s departure came at a trying time for her. She was suffering from an accumulation of things: difficulties at the university with some overbearing faculty members, plus her usual problems with Tamadur, who never tired of criticizing her and didn’t conceal her envy whenever Lamees scored some success or other. There were also problems with Ahmad, who, Lamees had discovered, was repeating everything they discussed on the phone to his friends at the university—all those conversations that had nothing to do with their studies! He was passing on everything she told him for their amusement, including stories about her classmates, who then heard about it and got furious and stopped having anything to do with her.
In the last few years, Lamees had grown distant from Michelle. She had gone through a long period of uncertainty and conflicting feelings that came when she compared Michelle to her new, somewhat more sophisticated girlfriends at the College of Medicine. But on the day of the departure, Lamees had the sudden painful realization that Michelle alone understood her, really understood her. Michelle resembled her in so many ways and she had divined her true personality in a way that the others had not. Only she had unlocked her deepest secrets and could keep them safe. Yes, there had been problems. Michelle had put up with a lot; she had every right to feel hurt when Lamees neglected her at the university. But what was the point of dredging any of that up now? Michelle was about to leave and might never return, and so Lamees would lose forever the friend closest to her heart, whose worth she recognized only now.
33.
To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com
From: “seerehwenfadha7et”
Date: September 24, 2004
Subject: Abu Musa’ed and His Fine Print
The Prophet, God’s blessings and peace be upon him, said: The virgin’s agreement to a marriage must be sought by her guardian, but the widow or divorcee has more right to her own person than does her guardian.—The hadith collection of Sahih Muslim, verse 3477
One of the guys reading my e-mails offered to collect them, once the last one appeared, and to organize them into chapters for a book to be published. That way everyone could read them.
Ya salam!* That’s really something. For me to have a novel all my own! A book that would be displayed in bookstores and hidden in bedrooms. A book that some people would beg others to bring from oversees. (That’s assuming that it would be banned here in Saudi.) And would I see my charming photo gracing its back cover—or defacing it!—just like other writers?
I was astonished but also frightened at the suggestion. Astonished because I believe that no one is left in Saudi Arabia who hasn’t received my e-mails. After all, I have been so diligent, using addresses of subscribers to Yahoo and Hotmail and other service providers, that I’ve sent them to all Internet subscribers who had Kingdom of Saudi Arabia mentioned in their online profiles. And after the first few e-mails, I have got thousands of new subscribers to my Yahoo group! And frightened because publishing a book would mean revealing my name, after keeping it hidden from all of you out there for these many months.
Here come the truly serious questions: Do my friends deserve to undergo such a sacrifice? Is it worth all the accusations that will be meted out to me and to them (in addition to those rebukes that have already been kindly sent my way) if my real name becomes known?