“O Allah, I seek Your help in finding out the best thing to do about Ubo Musa’ed’s proposal by invoking Your knowledge; I ask You to empower me, and I beseech Your favor. You alone have the absolute power, while I have no power. You alone know it all, while I do not. You are the One Who knows the hidden mysteries. O Allah, if You know that marrying Ubo Musa’ed is good for me in my religion, worldly life, and my ultimate destiny, then facilitate it for me, and then bless me in my action. If, on the other hand, You know this thing is detrimental for me in my religion, worldly life, and ultimate destiny, turn it away from me, and turn me away from it, and decree what is good for me, wherever it may be, and make me content with it.”
Mudi informed her that she would not necessarily have a dream that would guide her to the right choice, as she had thought. It was by repeatedly seeking to do what was right that God would relieve her bosom of care and point the way to what was right; or He would make her chest seize up and she would know that this particular decision was not for her own good and then she would know to abandon it. Gamrah went on repeating the prayer for seeking what is right, time and time again, day after day after day, without finding herself really guided to a decision.
After ten days or so, one night when she had performed her ablutions and prayed and gone to bed, Gamrah dreamed that she was sleeping in a bed that was not hers. She was covered in a thick quilt with only her head and feet showing. In the dream, she was gazing at her own face, as if she were staring into the face of her friend Sadeem, except that she was absolutely certain that the sleeping body stretched out along the length of the bed was her, even though the facial features were strangely “Sadeem-morphed.” The sleeping woman’s hair had grayed to the point of white and she had a long white beard (and what was really strange was that during the dream, Gamrah didn’t have any odd feelings about that beard on her face). Then she observed the scene, as if she were waking herself up, her sleeping self, by screaming at her. Get up, get up, prayer time has come! But she just tossed restlessly on her mattress until she woke up, in the dream and also in reality.
When she told her dream to Mudi, the woman contacted one of the sheikhs she knew who were expert in dream and vision interpretation. She wanted Gamrah to describe her dream to this specialist in her own words. The dream had come to her, Gamrah told him, when she was seeking God’s guidance about a prospect who had proposed to her. The sheikh asked her if she had been married. “I was, sheikh, but then I was divorced.” He asked her if she had children from that marriage, and she said, “I have a son.”
“This sleeping girl is truly you and not your friend as it seemed to you in the dream,” he told her. “I advise you, my daughter, before all else to strengthen your faith, in which is protection against every scourge and salvation from every evil. The blanket itself is the security and stability you had in your first marriage and appear to have lost. Seeing your hair as well as your head uncovered is a clear indication of your husband not returning to you. And that is better for you, because the gray hair tells us that he was an immoral person and a traitor who betrayed you. As for your beard, this gives you the good news that your son will be a man of weight and position, with God’s leave, among his family and people. Not waking up in time for prayer means that there is a difficulty in the matter for which you sought guidance. I advise you not to accept this man who has come forth to ask for your hand. Good is in what God chooses and God is the most knowledgeable.”
Gamrah began to tremble when she heard the sheikh’s interpretation of her dream. Her whole body shook and she hurried to inform her mother, who told her brother, who made a scene and threatened them all. But Um Mohammed, with her long experience in such matters, just absorbed his anger until the whole thing was over and everyone had finally averted their eyes from this engagement whose conclusion, and consummation, God had not written and decreed.
34.
To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com
From: “seerehwenfadha7et”
Date: October 1, 2004
Subject: Mourning
The series of enticing offers continue, as do all sorts of propositions, and I cannot distinguish the sincere from the scam. One Saudi producer sent me a proposal to transform my e-mails into a Ramadan TV series of thirty episodes! Why not? If we were already talking about publishing it as a novel, why not film it for TV? I concur with our own Abdullah Al-Ghadhami,* that the literature of the written word is bourgeois while the image is democratic. I prefer the series to the novel, because I want the stories of my friends to reach everyone. This would certainly be a beginning.
But here the crucial question intrudes. Who will agree to act in my series? Must we rely on actresses from the neighboring Gulf states and lose the grand and refined Saudi accent of give and take that underlies the plot? Or will we disguise Saudi boys to take on the roles of young women,** and thereby lose the audience?
The home of Sadeem’s senior uncle on her father’s side filled with mourners. Sadeem’s father, the much-respected Abdulmuhsin Al-Horaimli, had passed away in his midtown office following a sudden heart attack that did not allow him much time to linger on death’s door.
In the most out-of-the-way corner of the reception room sat Sadeem. Gamrah and Lamees were on either side of her, trying to comfort her even though their tears were flowing more abundantly than hers. How would Sadeem live now, already without a mother and suddenly without a father to watch over her? How would she sleep at night when there was no one with her in the big house? How would she manage living under the care of her uncles, who without a doubt would force her to move into one of their households? These were questions they couldn’t answer, even though, at this awful time, they could not help but ask them. Her mother had died before Sadeem could even know her, while her father had died when she was most in need of him. Verily, we are God’s, and to God all must return, and to that there can be no resistance.
Um Nuwayyir stood beside the wives of Sadeem’s paternal uncles and her maternal aunt, Badriyyah, to receive all the women who came to mourn. Frequently her eyes sought out Sadeem, wanting to see how she was bearing up under a trial that was enough to tear a person’s heart in two.
Sorrowfully, Sadeem examined the women crowding the room. No signs of true sadness showed on any of their faces. Some had come made-up and dressed to the hilt. Some shamelessly lost themselves in meaningless chitchat. She could hear suppressed laughs coming from various parts of the room. Were these the people who had come to keep her company in her awful loss? Was she sitting there to receive the condolences of people who in fact had no sympathy for her at all, while others who felt her grief could not get close enough to embrace her?
Sadeem fled from this room where no one felt the pain squeezing her heart. The only person who understood her was her Firas. No one really perceived how strong her relationship with her father had been except Firas. He alone would be capable of lightening this awful load; he was all that was left to her after her father’s departure. How much she needed him!
His text messages on her cell phone didn’t stop. He tried regularly to make her feel his presence at her side and to remind her that he shared her grief and sense of loss. Her father was his father, and she was his soul, and he would not abandon her, no matter what.