Lammoosah told me that she is very happy with Nizar and that she has given birth to a beautiful baby girl named after me. She added, “I just hope the girl doesn’t turn out to be as crazy as you are!”
Michelle was really bowled over and told me she had no idea that I had such a knack for storytelling. She often helped me recall certain events and she corrected details I remembered unclearly, even though she didn’t understand some of my classical Arabic words and was always asking me to use more English, at least in the e-mails that were about her, so that she could understand them.
Sadeem didn’t divulge her true feelings to me at first, and that made me think I had lost her as a friend after telling her story in my e-mails. But she surprised me one day (after my thirty-seventh e-mail) with a really precious gift, which was her sky-blue scrapbook. I never would have known about it if she hadn’t given it to me. She handed it over before signing the marriage contract with Tariq. She gave it to me to keep and told me that I could disclose all that she felt in that painful period of her life. May God bless her marriage and make it a union that erases all of the sadness and misery that came before.
Gamrah heard about the e-mails from one of her sisters, who realized from the very beginning that Gamrah was the intended double of this character, but she didn’t know which one of Gamrah’s friends I was. Gamrah blew up at me and threatened to cut off all ties if I didn’t stop talking about her. I tried to convince her—Michelle and I both tried—but she was afraid people would find out things she and her family didn’t want them to know. She said some really hurtful things to me the last time we spoke. She told me that I am taking away all that might be left of her chances—marriage chances, I presume. And after that she cut off every link she had with me despite my many pleas and apologies.
Um Nuwayyir’s house still serves as a safe haven for the girls. The girls had their last meeting there during the New Year’s break when Lamees came from Canada and Michelle from Dubai to attend Sadeem and Tariq’s wedding. Sadeem insisted on having it in her father’s house in Riyadh. Um Nuwayyir planned the wedding with Gamrah.
As for love, it still might always struggle to come out into the light of day in Saudi Arabia. You can sense that in the sighs of bored men sitting alone at cafés, in the shining eyes of veiled women walking down the streets, in the phone lines that spring to life after midnight, and in the heartbroken songs and poems, too numerous to count, written by the victims of love unsanctioned by family, by tradition, by the city: Riyadh.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude toward everyone who has helped me edit the English counterpart of my Arabic novel (Banat Al-Riyadh): my dear eldest brother Nasser, my best friend Aceel, my sister/ my rock Rasha and my wonderful editor at The Penguin Press in New York, Liza Darnton, who all tried their best so that my novel does not get lost in translation.
I would also like to express my deepest appreciation to my role model, Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi, former Saudi ambassador to Britain, current minister of labor and brilliant poet and novelist, for his unflagging support.
Last but not least, I would like to remember the man who taught me how to write, my father, Abdullah Alsanea, may he rest in peace. I hope I would have made him proud.
GLOSSARY OF NAMES
The number 7 refers to an Arabic letter similar to the letter H in English. Arabs use numbers like 7, 3, 5, 6 to refer to certain Arabic letters that have no counterparts on an English keyboard. This is called the Internet language and is also used in cell phone text messages as well.
Seerehwenfadha7et: the name of the mail group created by the narrator. Seereh means memoirs or story; wenfadha7et, wenfadhahet means disclosed or exposed. The name was taken from a Lebanese talk show called Seereh Wenfatahet. It means “a story told” but the name got changed to wenfadhahet to reflect more of a scandalous scene.
I chose the characters’ last names to show where they come from. Just like any other place in the world, in Saudi Arabia you can tell a lot from where the man or the woman comes from.
P.S.Al means the.
Sadeem Al-Horaimli: of or relating to Horaimla, a city within Najd, the center of Saudi Arabia.
Gamrah Al-Qusmanji: of or relating to Qasim, a city within Najd, the center of Saudi Arabia.
Lamees and Tamadur Jeddawi: of or relating to Jeddah, a city within Hijaz, the west coast.
Mashael and Meshaal Al-Abdulrahman: a random name that can belong to any family with unknown roots (i.e., from an untraceable tribe).
Firas Al-Shargawi: of or relating to Sharqiyah, the east coast of Saudi Arabia.
The following family names are Arabic adjectives to describe the personality of each:
Rashid Al-Tanbaclass="underline" the bonehead.
Faisal Al-Batran: the wellborn.
Waleed Al-Shari: the buyer, the purchaser.
Fadwa Al-Hasudi: she who hates to see other people more happy or successful than her.
Sultan Al-Internetti: of or relating to the Internet.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RAJAA ALSANEA grew up in Riyadh, the younger of two daughters in a family of doctors and dentists. She is currently living in Chicago, where she is pursuing a degree in endodontics. She intends to return to Saudi Arabia after attaining her degree. She is twenty-five years old, and this is her first novel.
* A very popular cartoon for the 1990s generation of Saudi Arabian children. Translated from Japanese, it’s a story of a boy trying to achieve his dream of becoming a soccer star.
* An expensive car with completely tinted windows often belongs to a man who does not want his wife and daughters exposed to the eyes of young men looking for fun. Nowadays, tinting is prohibited by Saudi law for security reasons.
* The weekend in Saudi Arabia is Thursday and Friday.
* In Islam, a hijab is any kind of head covering that conceals the hair and neck of a woman.
* The hadith are collections of the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed.
* A famous Egyptian singer from the 1960s.
* The Internet provider company in Saudi Arabia.
* Sheikh Jassem Al-Mutawa’, a famous Kuwaiti Muslim televangelist who hosts a very well-known Arabic TV program called Happy Nests and is the chief editor of several magazines and the author of many Islamic books that discuss relationships between men and women, marriage and family matters.
* Among the different subclassifications of Saudi society, there are the tribals and the nontribals. Between those two classes/sectors there can be no marriages. A tribal family is one that can be traced to one of the well-known Arabic tribes.
*“Mama” can also be used as an expression to indicate surprise or fear (“Oh, God!”).