The safest route, Michelle determined, was to stay away from entanglements with men altogether—if her experience with Faisal and her sort-of experience with Matti had taught her anything, it had taught her that. There would be no man at all, not even if that man was as sweet and cultivated as Hamdan, the young producer who was now directing her weekly program and who had studied media production at Tufts University in Boston…
Michelle had to admit to herself that she had been attracted to Hamdan from the start. He had a natural gift for making everyone gather around him as soon as he showed up at a shoot, making one of his usual loud appearances. And whenever he was around, the laughs and excitement level in the air seemed to climb up a notch.
Michelle and Jumana had watched Hamdan from a distance as he was smoking his midwakh* pipe on one of their first days on the job, and Jumana had commented on how attractive he was. But Jumana was in love with one of her relatives whom she intended to marry as soon as he finished his MA in England and returned home, so she had been trying to set Hamdan up with her friend Michelle instead. But Hamdan beat her to it. When he made his interest in her obvious, Michelle wasn’t surprised. After all, out of everyone in the crew it was clear that she and Hamdan seemed to agree on things the most and to be the most in sync. They seemed to be a natural match.
Hamdan was twenty-eight. The most handsome thing about him was his nose, as sharp and fine as an unsheathed sword. He had a trim, light beard and a truly infectious laugh. He was as stylishly turned out as Michelle always was. Usually, he wore a nice pair of jeans and a name-brand T-shirt to work, but sometimes he showed up in his white kandurah* and isamah.** Even though he was relentless about keeping up his urbane appearance, he could never endure having his head wrapped up for more than an hour at the very most. So he would inevitably yank off the carefully wound turban, revealing his hair, which was longer than Michelle’s, since she had gotten her hair cut short like Halle Berry’s—a style Faisal forbade her to adopt because he didn’t want to lose her lovely long hair with its delicate soft curls which he loved to wrap around his fingers.
Hamdan and Michelle had long conversations about all kinds of things, not least the TV program and their goals at the station. Because their work demanded it, they began going out to various places together—restaurants, cafés, shops and local events. Hamdan often invited her to go out hunting with him or on fishing trips in his speedboat (the one thing he was even more infatuated with than his Hummer automobile). Though Michelle enjoyed these kinds of expeditions, she always declined his invitations, limiting herself to looking at his photographs and listening to him as he talked about his adventures.
41.
To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com
From: “seerehwenfadha7et”
Date: December 17, 2004
Subject: A Message for “F”
Anyone can become angry—that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, with the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not easy.—Aristotle
A lot of people have written to me asking to know more about Sadeem’s sky-blue scrapbook that I mentioned a couple of e-mails ago. Some have asked how it is that I managed to see what Sadeem wrote in it (and of course the subtext here is: if you aren’t Sadeem, that is.). They’re just DYING to figure out if she and I are one and the same. Others are just curious about what is written in that scrapbook.
To the curious ones out there, I say: I will read to you, and with you, more of Sadeem’s musings from her sky-blue scrapbook. To those who are nosy and have made it their business to “out” me, I say: Just drop it.
When she couldn’t seem to find an appropriate job after graduating, Sadeem decided to start a business with a portion of her inheritance. She had for some time been thinking about becoming a party and wedding planner, since there certainly was a demand for it—hardly a week would go by without her receiving an invitation to someone or other’s wedding or dinner party or reception. During summer—the high season—it was not uncommon for her to get invitations to two or three different occasions on a single evening. She and many girls her age, whenever they felt bored or cooped up, would arrange to get invited to a wedding—it didn’t matter whose. They could dress up and deck themselves out and put on heavy makeup and spend the evening dancing to music played by live bands or DJs. It was the closest you could get to an evening in a nightclub, albeit a very respectable and entirely female nightclub.
Sadeem’s idea was to start by arranging small get-togethers for her relatives and friends and then to gradually expand until she got good enough to organize weddings. For years she had noticed that the party-organizing sector was pretty much a monopoly held by a small group of women, all Lebanese, Egyptian or Moroccan, who demanded enormous sums of money but did not provide excellent service in return. Sadeem was electrified at the thought of having the opportunity to plan every detail of an event herself, from A to Z, and modifying the plans to fit the type of occasion and the budget. She already knew the restaurants, florists, furniture shops and clothes makers that she would want to work with.
Sadeem proposed to Um Nuwayyir that the older woman take charge of the Riyadh office, with Gamrah as her assistant. Sadeem would assume control of the eastern region, where she was about to move, and Lamees, if she wanted, could set up an office in Jeddah, where she would be moving with her husband, Nizar, after her graduation. They could even arrange with Michelle over in Dubai to hire some singers who would make special recordings of songs suitable for wedding processions or graduation parties.
Um Nuwayyir welcomed the idea. It would fill the hours of loneliness she faced daily when she got home from work, which would be lonelier still after Sadeem’s departure. Gamrah was very enthusiastic as well. She and Sadeem began setting up small gatherings to which they invited their acquaintances. Tariq, Sadeem’s cousin, helped them take care of official tasks, obtaining a commercial license and other necessary documents. Since women are not always permitted to take care of legal matters with banks and other offices themselves, Sadeem made him their official agent for legal affairs.
The evening before Sadeem left for the eastern province, Gamrah produced invitations to the wedding celebration of a relative of a friend of her sister Hessah, and so Gamrah, Lamees and Sadeem went along with Hessah to the wedding. Hessah took her seat at the table reserved for the bride’s friends, while the three girlfriends sat up on the dance floor. That was where all young single girls customarily sat, magnets for the roving eyes of matrons who were mothers of eligible young men.
When the tagagga crooned into the microphone, the three girls stood up, ready to dance to the familiar Saudi ballad. All of the girls sitting on the raised space started to move as the drumbeats began to throb. The sound roused the entire hall as the taggaga’s voice soared.
Sadeem was dancing in place, shaking her shoulders softly and moving her head from side to side with her eyes closed as she drummed her fingers in time to the song. Gamrah was moving her arms and legs in a random rhythm that had no relation to the beat, her eyes staring upward. Lamees shook her hips as if she were belly dancing, singing the song lyrics along with the singer, as opposed to Gamrah, who did not memorize song lyrics, and Sadeem, who considered showing off how in tune you were with the music while you danced to be a bit overdone.