Sadeem started preparing for the wedding, browsing around in the shops with Um Nuwayyir or Michelle or Lamees. Sometimes Waleed would go with her, especially if she was planning to buy nightgowns.
The wedding celebration was set to occur over the summer vacation, a week or two after Sadeem’s final exams, as Sadeem had requested. She was afraid to get married during Eid Al-Adha break, worried that it would interfere with her ability to study for her exams—Sadeem was always a top student, vigilant about getting good grades. But her decision upset and distressed Waleed, who was anxious to get married as soon as possible. Sadeem decided to make it up to him.
One evening she put on the black lace nightgown he had bought for her but which at the time she had refused to try on in his presence. She invited him to come over for the evening without informing her father, who was out camping with friends in the desert.
The red petals she strewed across the sofa, the candles placed here and there, the soft music wafting from the well-hidden music system—none of it impressed Waleed as much as the black nightgown that revealed more of her body than it concealed. Since Sadeem had vowed to make her beloved Waleed happy that night, and since she wanted to erase his disappointment over her insistence on delaying the wedding, she allowed him to go further with her than ever before. She did not try to stop him—as she had gotten used to doing—when he attempted to cross the line that she had drawn, for herself and for him, in the early days after the signing of the contract. She was convinced that he wouldn’t be satisfied unless she offered him a little more of her “femininity,” and she was willing to do anything to please him, the love of her life, even if it meant exceeding the limits she had spent her lifetime guarding.
As usual, Waleed left after the dawn call to prayer, but this time Sadeem thought he seemed distressed and troubled. She figured he must be feeling as nervous as she was after what had happened. She waited anxiously for his usual phone call once he got home, since she especially needed to hear his tender voice after such a night, but he didn’t call. Sadeem didn’t allow herself to call him and waited until the next day, but he didn’t call then, either. As difficult as it was for her, she decided to give him a few days to calm down before calling him to ask what was wrong.
Three days passed without a word from Waleed. Sadeem decided to drop her resolve and called, only to find that his cell phone was turned off. She kept calling through the entire week, at different times of the day and night, desperate to reach him. But his cell phone was always switched off and the private line in his room was always busy. What was going on? Had something awful happened to him? Or was he still angry at her, this angry even after all of her efforts to please him? What about everything she had given him on that night? Had he gone insane?
Had she been wrong to give herself to Waleed before the wedding celebration? Did it make any sense at all to believe that that was the cause of him avoiding her? Why, though? Wasn’t he her legal husband, and hadn’t he been her legal husband ever since they signed the contract? Or did getting married mean the ballroom, the guests, the live singer and the dinner? And what she had done—did it somehow deserve punishment from him? Hadn’t he been the one who initiated it? Why had he encouraged her to do the wrong thing and then afterward abandoned her? And anyway, was it wrong, was it a sin, in the first place? Had he been testing her? And if she had failed the test, did that mean that she was not worthy of him? He must have thought she was one of those girls who were easy! But what kind of stupidity was this? Wasn’t she his wife, his lawful partner? Hadn’t she on that day placed her mark in that big register next to his signature? Hadn’t there been acceptance, consent and commitment, witnesses and an announcement to the world? No one had ever cautioned her about this! Would Waleed make her pay for what she did not even know? If her mother had been alive, she would have warned her and directed her, and then none of this would have happened! And besides, she had heard a lot of stories about young women who had done what she did, and maybe more, after signing the contract and before the wedding party! She even knew of cases where the brides had given birth to full-term babies only seven months after the wedding. Among the people who were aware of such events, only a very few seemed to care. So where was the error? Where was the sin?
Who would draw for her the fine line between what was proper behavior and what wasn’t? And, she wondered, was that line that their religion defined the same as the one in the mind of a young man from conservative Najd? Waleed had criticized her every time she put a stop to anything, saying that she was his wife according to the religion of God and His prophet. Who was there to explain to her the psychological makeup of the young Saudi man so that she could understand what went on in his mind? Had Waleed now come to believe that she was a young woman of “experience”? Did he actually prefer it when she told him to stop? She hadn’t done anything more than go along with him, the way she saw things done on TV and heard from her married girlfriends. He had done the rest! So why was she at fault for following his lead and instinctively knowing how to conduct herself? It wasn’t something that required knowledge of chemistry and physics to figure out! What was it that had taken possession of Waleed, to make him so irrational?
She tried to call his mother but was told that she was sleeping. She left her name with the maid and asked her to inform her mistress that she had called, and then she waited expectantly for a call from Um Waleed that never came. Should she tell her father what had happened on that bitter night? How would she tell him? What would she say? If she said nothing, though, was she going to say nothing all the way to the wedding day? What would people say on that day? That the groom jilted her? No, no! Waleed couldn’t possibly be as horrible as this. He must be lying in a coma somewhere in some hospital. To think of him lying in a hospital bed was a thousand times more bearable than to think that he could be deserting her in this way!
Sadeem was afloat in a state of bewilderment, waiting for a call or visit from Waleed, dreaming that he would come to her on his knees begging for forgiveness. But he didn’t visit and he didn’t call. Her father asked her what was wrong, but she had no answer for him. An answer did come from Waleed three weeks later, though: divorce papers! Her father tried hard to find out from Sadeem what lay behind the horrible surprise, but she collapsed in his arms and exploded into tears without confessing. In anger, he went to Waleed’s father, who denied knowing anything and said he was as surprised as Sadeem’s father was. All Waleed had said to his father was that he had discovered he was not comfortable with his bride and he preferred to break the contract now before the wedding was consummated.
Sadeem kept her secret from everyone. She licked her wounds in silence until the second shock arrived: in her first year at the university, she had failed more than half of her courses.
6.
To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com
From: “seerehwenfadha7et”
Date: March 19, 2004
Subject: Lamees, the One and Only!
Many e-mails have come my way that ask me to reveal my true identity. Am I one of the four girls I am writing about in these e-mails? So far, most of the guesses have veered between Gamrah and Sadeem. Only one guy thinks I’m likely to be Michelle, but then he said he wasn’t sure since Michelle’s English is better than mine!
What really got me howling was an e-mail from Haitham, from Al-Madina, City of Light, in which he slams me for my extreme partiality toward the “Bedouin” girls of Riyadh and my neglect of Lamees, his heart’s darling. You people are starting to act as if you know my four friends better than I do! Don’t let it bother you, dear Haitham. My e-mail today will concern Lamees and only Lamees.