When the song was over, Lamees went off to chat with an old friend from her school days that she had happened to bump into. The friend had been recently married and Lamees wanted to ask her how she was finding marriage so far, and what the wedding night was like and what kinds of birth control she had tried, and other such particulars that were concerning her now that her own wedding had been booked for the midyear break.
Sadeem remained with Gamrah on the dance floor to dance to a song she loved by Talal Maddah:*
I love you even if you love another
and forget me and stay far away
because my heart’s only wish
is to see you happy, every day
The gentle words and mournful tune pierced straight through Sadeem’s heart. The image of Firas clouded over her mind, and though she was surrounded by people on the dance floor, she danced as if it were only Firas who was watching her.
When it was time for dinner, they all filled their plates from the buffet and started talking about Sadeem’s departure the next day. Sadeem was feeling so sad that her chest was constricted in sorrow, and she did not know how she would ever emerge from the ordeal whole again. As they talked and ate, one of the cell phones lying on the table beeped twice, indicating that a text message had been received. Every one of the girls dove for her phone, hoping that she would be the one who got the text from someone who had remembered her at that particular moment. Lamees was the lucky one. Knowing that his darling was attending a wedding party, Nizar had written from home saying: “May our wedding be the next, habibti!”**
HOURS LATER, Sadeem stared at the suitcases and boxes that filled her room, ready to be shipped to Khobar. She felt a lump rise in her throat as she traced the scratching she had made on the edge of her desk as a child and gazed at the magazine pictures of celebrities and her friends’ photos plastered on her closet door. She picked up her sky-blue scrapbook and pencil, and wrote.
Letter to F: It is now 3:45 a.m., local kingdom time.
In a few minutes the dawn call to prayer will echo through the city of Riyadh. You must be on your way to the mosque at this very moment, since your prayers in the eastern region start a little earlier than ours do here. Or are you in Riyadh right now? I don’t even know whether the two of you are living here or there.
Do you still always go to the Friday prayer service? Or has the pleasure of sleeping at her side made you lazy about getting up and performing what is due to God?
I’m dying to hear your voice. If only I could wake you up right now! Without you, the world is a gloomy place. The night is darker than it should be. The silence is worse, and lonelier.
Oh, God…how much I love you!
Do you remember when you called me from your private jet as you were on your way to Cairo? I don’t remember the reason we argued that day, but I do remember how depressed I was that you were traveling somewhere when I was still so upset.
About half an hour after I got your text message saying good-bye from the airport, I got a call from a long and unfamiliar phone number. It didn’t occur to me that it could be you. I screamed when I heard your darling voice, I was so happy! Your voice washed my heart clean of whatever pain was there. Firas, my love! I yelled. Didn’t you leave?
You told me that your body was up in the air but your heart was on the ground with me, trying to soothe me. You went on teasing me and flirting with me for a whole half hour. I practically melted away, I was so madly in love with you!
I wish you were with me right now.
Today, I went to a wedding party. I danced there imagining you standing in front of me, and I reached out to you but of course you weren’t there.
I lament you at night like twenty death rites, while you’re by her side,
May God not forgive you, nor forgive her through life,
Nor bring you back to me, nor give her bliss
I love you…
My love who I HATE!
Did I tell you that I am traveling to you tomorrow?
Finally, in Khobar, I will live by your side. That city has brought us together again: me and you, and now Madame Wife, too!
How am I going to drive down that road, all the time remembering when you went by, on the same road, three years ago, beside my car, guarding me from afar? I can’t imagine myself on the highway heading east without you. No, it’s more. I can’t imagine myself in any place without you. I can’t imagine that I will be able to go on in this life without you. It’s all because of him! God punish you, Waleed, who ruined my life! God get my revenge on you.
42.
To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com
From: “seerehwenfadha7et”
Date: December 24, 2004
Subject: Lamees Marries the First and Only Love of Her Life
From a sensitive woman’s heart springs the happiness of mankind.—Khalil Gibran
One reader—she didn’t give her name—tells me she doesn’t know how I can be so naïve as to exalt love. And how can I be so proud of my clueless friends who go on pursuing this hopeless quest and probably will do so for the rest of their lives? There is nothing better, she proclaims, than a respectable fiancé who, as they say, “walks in through the front door.” The two families already know each other, there are solid ties and since it’s all done through family channels the bride is certified as a good girl and everyone agrees on everything. There is no room for nonsense or deception as there is with this “love match” thing. This method is beneficial to the girl, since it guarantees that the guy won’t have any suspicions as to her past, which might well happen if they had had any sort of relationship before marriage. How could any rational girl kick away an opportunity like that and run after something not guaranteed?
Your opinion, my friend, is one I respect. But if we lose faith in love, everything in this world will lose its pleasure. Songs will lose their sweetness, flowers their fragrance, and life its joy and fun. When love has been in your life you see that the only true, real pleasure of life is love. Every other thrill arises from that basic source of pleasure. The most meaningful songs are those your lover hums in your presence, the prettiest blossoms are the ones he offers and the only praise that counts is your beloved’s. In a word or two, life only goes Technicolor in the very moment love’s fingers caress it!
O God, we—the Girls of Riyadh—have been forbidden many things. Do not take the blessing of love away from us, too!
After a three-week engagement and after waiting four months after the contract-signing ceremony, Lamees’s wedding day arrived.* It was the first wedding to be planned by Sadeem, Gamrah and Um Nuwayyir, in collaboration with Michelle, who had come from Dubai especially to attend her friend’s wedding on the fifth of the month of Shawwal, the month after Ramadan, when the marriage business booms.
Preparations were in full swing all through Ramadan. The biggest share of the burden fell on Um Nuwayyir and Gamrah, since they were the only ones in Riyadh, where the wedding would take place. Sadeem took on some light duties such as ordering the chocolates from France, while Michelle was responsible for using her connections to record a CD of songs written by some of the famous singers she knew personally. A custom-made CD for Lamees and Nizar to play during the party, and then copies could be handed out afterward to the guests as a keepsake.
Gamrah would begin working every night after she performed the evening Ramadan prayers at the huge mosque downtown. Shopping malls rarely open in the daytime during Ramadan, but they make up for it at night, opening until three or four in the morning throughout the holy month.