Date: January 7, 2005
Subject: Life after Lamees’s Marriage
Readers were divided—as usual—between those who supported Sadeem’s return to Firas and those who opposed it. But everyone did agree this time—unusually—that come what may, the extraordinary love between these two demands an extraordinary ending to their story.
The hints about the benefits of attachment and stability Michelle heard from Hamdan came in a variety of shapes. He told her his dream was to marry a girl who would be his best friend, and that he was hoping he would find a girl who had exactly her grasp of things and her openness toward the world. (Michelle smiled as she heard him praise her openness, the very same quality she’d heard so much criticism of in her own country.) He was always complimenting her on her elegance, and he noticed the tiniest changes she made to her appearance from one day to the next.
Michelle admitted to herself now (having come to depend, in her new life in Dubai, on the principle of being frank with herself) that she could see one of two possibilities. Either she admired Hamdan very much or she loved him very little. His presence left her feeling happy—it was happier than she had felt in Matti’s pleasant company but much less happy than she had felt when she was with Faisal. She was quite sure that Hamdan carried in his heart stronger feelings for her than she had for him, and so she deliberately missed his hints and tried to get him to sense her hesitation about taking their relationship further than friendship. She was able to do it without completely severing the strands of his hopes (and hers) for the future. Hamdan gracefully accepted that Michelle wasn’t yet ready to talk about commitment.
He was perceptive enough to know that talking may be the best way to express what is in one’s mind, but expressing what is in the heart is more eloquently done in other ways. He knew from his university studies in nonverbal communication that when a person’s words conflict with tone of voice or gestures, the truth almost always lies in the way words are said rather than in what is said.
That he was free of the mental complexes that usually cripple men’s brains was one huge attraction for Michelle. Even though he possessed many of the qualities that seemed to make other men self-obsessed—he was handsome and had strong principles and was materially and socially successful—he appeared to her to be amazingly well balanced. She found him intellectually stimulating, engaging, sophisticated and emotionally enlightened.
And even so, even with all of this, Michelle realized that she could not really love him. Or maybe she was unable to allow herself to try. She had had two tries already, and that was plenty for her. If her family was going to refuse her relationship with her American relative because he wasn’t one of them, and the people of Saudi Arabia were refusing one of their own sons to her because she wasn’t one of them, what was there to guarantee that this run of misfortune would be broken now with Hamdan the Emarati guy? After the first experience, she had fled to America, and after the second, she had immigrated against her will to Dubai. Where would she be exiled if she were to fail for a third time?
Everything in her life seemed to be going brilliantly except when it came to love and marriage. Michelle did not believe that she and destiny would ever agree on a suitable man, for Michelle had been quarreling with her destiny for time immemorial. If she found a man she liked, destiny plucked him away from her; and if she detested him, destiny threw him at her feet.
LAMEES ANNOUNCED that she would officially start wearing the hijab after returning from her honeymoon. In Saudi, as everyone knows, women have to wear some form of hijab—some kind of head cover to conceal their hair and neck—but women have the choice to take it off, even in front of unknown men, within the confines of houses and as soon as they cross the country borders. Lamees decided that she would start to wear it whenever non-Muhram* men were around, following the rules of Islam. She would wear it in front of her cousins and coworkers and whenever she traveled outside of the kingdom. Her friends all congratulated her on this bold spiritual step—except for Michelle, who tried to dissuade her from her decision, reminding her how hideous hijab- wearing women usually looked and how the hijab restricted a girl from being fashionable because it also required covering her arms with long sleeves and her legs with long pants or skirts. But Lamees had made her mind up absolutely, and she had done so before seeking anyone else’s thoughts on the matter, including Nizar’s. Lamees felt that she had had all the liberation she wanted before her marriage and during her honeymoon. Now it was time to pay her dues to God, especially after He had granted her such a wonderful husband, one who was just right for her and whom she had dreamed of finding, and whose love and tenderness toward her made her the envy of all her friends.
Lamees’s life with Nizar was truly a picture of married bliss. They were in greater agreement about everything and more in tune with each other’s needs than any of the married couples around them. They were totally complementary. For example, it was really difficult to get Nizar upset about anything; Lamees, on the other hand, was highly strung and sensitive. But she was more judicious and more patient than he was when it came to anything related to home or budget. So Nizar relied on her to take care of all household affairs, while always lending a hand, every day, in cleaning and washing and cooking and ironing. As long as they had no babies, they both preferred not to have a maid.
Lamees was very attentive to her relationship with her husband’s family. She worked hard to please them, especially his mother, whom she called Mama—something none of her Najdi friends would ever do.* The excellent relationship between Lamees and Um Nizar strengthened Nizar’s attachment to his wife even more as time went on.
Nizar would randomly bring home a bunch of red roses for Lamees for no special occasion. He posted little love letters on the fridge door before going off to his on-call shifts at the hospital. When he was about to take his rest break there, he always called her before going to bed. And when he returned home, he would take her out to a restaurant or shopping without the slightest anxiety or embarrassment about the possibility of running into one of his friends while his wife was at his side (a hang-up many Saudi men have). She made him sandwiches and salads, leaving them in the fridge when she set off to do her own hospital rounds. He waited impatiently for her to be finished so that they could spend the rest of their day together, like newlyweds still on their honeymoon.
THERE WAS a question haunting Sadeem that no one could answer to her satisfaction. She put her question regularly to Gamrah and Um Nuwayyir, leaving them feeling at a complete loss as to how to help their Sadeem. Is it a blessing or a curse for a woman to have knowledge? she wanted to know—referring to both academic knowledge and the practical experiences of everyday life.
Sadeem had observed that despite human progress and a general refinement of society’s ideas about life, when it came down to searching for a suitable bride, young and naïve girls tended to hold more of an attraction than girls who had attained an advanced level of knowledge and had a more sophisticated understanding of the world. The fact that it was extremely unusual for a female doctor to be married was a case in point. Men who came from this part of the world, Sadeem decided, were by nature proud and jealous creatures. They sensed danger when face to face with females who might present a challenge to their capabilities. Naturally, such men would prefer to marry a woman with only a very modest education, someone feeble and helpless, like a bird with a broken wing, and without any experience of the world. That way the man could assume the position of the teacher, who takes on the job of forming his pupil into whatever he wishes. Even if many men admired strong women, Sadeem pondered, they did not marry them! So the ignorant girl was in hot demand while the smart and savvy one watched helplessly as her name became slowly etched in a giant plaque in commemoration of spinsters, a virtual list that was growing longer every day to accommodate the requirements of all the insecure men who didn’t actually know what they wanted and so refused to attach themselves to a woman who knew absolutely what she wanted.