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Summary of the Novel
"Girls of Riyadh"
Author:
Rajaa Al Sanie
An unknown girl in her early
twenties decides to narrate the story of her friends.
She is like a modern Scheherazade that narrates these
stories every weekend. Her motivation is to revenge the
tyranny of life and the society against her friends.
Each chapter in the novel starts with a piece of poetry,
a verse from the Quran, or lyrics from a famous song
that captured the idea of the chapter.
The narrator sends e-mails from her internet group to
the subscribers. Those e-mails as the narrator forecasts
in the novel stir the media especially popular
newspapers in Saudi like Al-Riyadh, Al-Watan and Al-Jazeerah
which happened in real life after the novel was
published. This kind of forecasting added reality and
intrigue to the novel. In one segment, the narrator says
that she will probably be interviewed on Al-Arabiya TV
by one of the most important interviewers in the Arab
World: Turki Al-Dakheel (his style is similar to Tim
Sebastian in Hard Talk on BBC or Ted Koppel on ABC news)
which also took place.
The novel speaks of 4 Saudi girls who are studying at
the university in Riyadh, the Capital of Saudi Arabia:
Sadeem, Qamrah, Lamees and Mashael (her name is similar
to Michelle in pronunciation. She is half Saudi and half
American. Her American mother and friends prefer to call
her Michelle).
The four girls were bound by a strong friendship despite
their differences. Each one of them went into her own
failures except Lamees who succeeded in both her
professional career and her love life. She got married
to a man of her choosing and went with her husband to
Canada to get her Boards in Medicine. Lamees was the
fortune teller of the group. She was consulted by her
friends about their future matches and emotional
relationships. At one point in the novel she had to
sever her friendship with a girl called Fatima due to
religious differences. Fatima was from the Shiites
minority while Lamees belonged to the Sunnites majority.
Lamees liked Fatima’s brother who was studying Medicine
at the same University, but the relation had to end
abruptly after they were both caught in a café by the
Police of Morals and Virtue (dating is not allowed in
Saudi and is an offense punishable by Men of Religion).
Her father was more like her friend and was very
understanding. He insisted that she never meet anyone
outside the university in the future. Fatima’s brother,
on the other hand, suffered at the hands of the Moral
Police and his suffering was compounded since he was a
Shiites.
Lamees had a kind heart. She helped her friends solve
their problems and supported them in times of need. For
example, she taught her ill-treated friend, Qamrah, how
to use the internet, send e-mails and chat online to
break through the isolation that was imposed upon her
after she was divorced and was left with a baby.
The story of Qamrah who married Rashid after an arranged
citing where the two families allowed the prospective
husband to see the girl only once to decide whether he
liked her or not and then if he did, he would marry her.
There was no dating, no exchange of ideas or thoughts.
“See the girl once and make up your mind!” The girl also
used the same chance to see the man and give her
opinion. Since they both agreed, their families
proceeded with the marriage. The story unfolded with
this beginning as the narrator continued to describe the
wedding of Qamrah and how the tape for the walk-down the
aisle music got stuck which symbolically signaled the
failure of that marriage. The newly wed went to Chicago
so Rashid could finish his postgraduate studies in
electronic commerce. Seven nights passed and he did not
care about his wife’s feelings and stayed away from her
without touching her. The quarrels started in the end
and reached a climax when Rashid declared his hate to
his new wife. He eventually forced her to give up her
hijab and she did in the hope she could win his heart
(Moslem women are supposed to wear lose garments that
did not reveal the silhouette of their bodies and they
should not reveal any body parts except their face and
hands). When he saw her without hijab, he thought she
looked very ugly and asked her to wear the Hijab again
to hide the ugliness. Qamrah loved Rashid despite his
cruelty. When she learned of his betrayal with an
American-Japanese woman called Carry, she lost her mind.
She insisted on meeting the mistress and Carry mocked
her by calling Rashid in front of her. Qamrah in return
revenged or may be she thought it was revenge when she
stopped taking her contraceptive pill. She became
pregnant. In the back of her mind, she thought she could
change the behavior of her husband through pregnancy as
her mother advised her. When Rashid found out she was
pregnant, he slapped her and sent her back to Riyadh
followed up with her divorce paper. Her second tragedy
unfolded when Qamrah used the first name of Rashid’s
father to name her new baby in a last attempt to win the
sympathy of her husband (it is a tradition in Saudi that
babies are first-named after the first name of their
grandparents as a gesture of love and respect). The
husband did not care and his family showed callous
reactions as they were not concerned with that new baby.
Qamrah became a single parent and she lived at her
father’s house isolated. Her family prevented her from
going out since she was divorced and such actions from a
divorced woman may bring her ill-reputation. Divorced
women in their opinion only brought problems. But her
friends managed to get her out of that unbearable jail
every now and then.
Sadeem’s story was not less tragic than that of Qamrah.
This girl, who was raised by her father as her mother
died soon after her birth, would lose her first love and
the second one. She revenged both through her marriage
to her cousin Tarik whom she never thought would marry
despite his strong feelings towards her (Consanguineous
marriages are discouraged by Islam but are not
prohibited. In a society that separates men from women
in all social gatherings, there is no chance to see a
woman except those who are relatives which is another
reason why consanguineous marriages make a big share of
all marriages in Saudi). Her first emotional tragedy was
caused by her fiancé Walid who deserted her after they
were officially wed for a few months and before their
wedding party. She gave him herself during one night
considering that he was her husband officially despite
that the wedding did not take place yet. He suddenly
disappeared after that night and never showed up again.
He eventually sent her the divorce paper. It was a shock
which she blamed on herself as she did not wait till
after the wedding party. Sadeem never told her family
about that night and she collapsed emotionally onto
herself. She believed the reason that Walid divorced her
was that he thought she had previous sexual experiences
(In Saudi, engagement is different from the West. The
man and woman are considered officially engaged when
their marital vows are exchanged and documents are
signed. The period from the time of signing the
documents till the night of the wedding when they
practice sex together for the first time is the
engagement period. The virginity of the woman is
flowered at that night. There is nothing in Islam to
prevent them from practicing sex before that night as
they are officially wed, but that is considered a big
mistake by the society and men usually get the
impression that the girl is too easy or she had
extra-marital relations with others if she did such a
thing. The second shock was caused by Firas whom she met
in London while she was recuperating from her first
tragedy. She fell in love with him as he did. But his
elite position in Saudi and the fact that he never
married before prevented him from getting married to a
divorced woman as it would have brought him bad gossip
which he did not need (divorced women in the Saudi
society are associated with ill-reputation especially if
they traveled outside the country and met men like what
Sadeem did). Firas married one of his relatives. He
later called Sadeem and offered to continue the
relationship without leaving his wife. Sadeem refused
the offer and became more desperate. Her suffering
increased as Firas continued to call her. She finally
decided to forget all about him and established her own
bridal arrangement company which was on its own an
irony. Her friends helped her establish the company. In
the end, Sadeem found herself in front of her cousin
Tarik who adored her and revered her. She found no
choice, but to marry him and revenge both men in her
past who nearly destroyed her.
Mashael as her real Arabic name or Michelle as her
mother and friends used to call her was more realistic
and more liberal. On the contrary to her friends, she
relatively enjoyed more freedom. Michelle was born to a
Saudi father and an American mother. One day, she
stumbled into Faisal by coincidence when he asked her
along with her girlfriends to allow him to enter the
shopping mall with them as a brother (In Saudi, single
young men are not allowed to enter certain famous
shopping malls to avoid the harassment and flirting they
initiate towards women). This brief encounter was the
start of mutual love and a happy Valentine’s Day for the
first time in her life. After Valentine’s memorabilia
spread every where, the university officially decides
based on the request of the Police of Morals and Virtue
to ban all forms of festivity of Valentine’s Day since
it was a Christian event that ignited unvirtuous
feelings between boys and girls. The love lasted a year
and when Michelle asked Faisal to marry her, he backed
off since his mother refused to allow him to marry a
girl not of the family choosing and on top of that born
to an American mother. She lost her faith in men. After
such a shock, she traveled to San Francisco to study in
the company of her American cousin. They developed
mutual admiration, but things never progressed to frank
love. Faced with this confusing relationship, she
traveled back to her father who decided to move the
whole family to Dubai to avoid the gossip and
ill-reputation that haunted his daughter. He was a
liberal and adored his American wife who lost her uterus
to cancer. They decided to adopt a baby boy whom they
called Mish-´al and they nicknamed him Misho. Being
forthcoming and simple characterized Michelle’s
personality. She hated hypocrisy and lies. When she
moved to Dubai, she worked at one of the satellite TV
channels owned by the father of her Emirati girlfriend,
Jumanah (Emirati belonging to United Arab Emirates where
Dubai is located). She succeeded in her work and lived
freely. Michelle admired a TV director that worked with
her, but remained confused whether she loved him or not.
She asked her father if he would allow her to appear on
TV as there was an opening for a TV hostess, but he
refused and convinced her that her appearance on TV
would lead to reverberations that might reach Saudi and
his family. He also pointed out to her that he did not
want that kind of headache. Michelle did not speak
Arabic fluently and always used English words when her
Arabic failed her. She revenged from Faisal when she
attended his wedding uninvited and left him a message on
his cell phone telling him that she was in the ball
room. Michelle bewildered him. After some delay, he
entered and found Michelle dancing among the girls. He
started to worry: “what next?”, but Michelle left before
others recognized her. She felt so happy after what she
did.
There was one more character that was connected to the
four girls: Um Nowayer. In the Arab World, the mother
and the father are nicknamed after their offspring as a
sign of respect. The offspring name appears preceded by
a prefix Abu for the father and Um for the mother. Um
Nowayer was a Kuwaiti lady that was married to a Saudi
who left her and her son after 15 years of marriage. She
opened her house to the girls to meet when they could
not find a place to meet. She became a friend to all of
them, helped them in times of need and worked sometimes
with them. Um Nowayer was in her 39th year, a bald woman
who was able to face her only son’s problem with
courage. Her son’s name was Nouri, but he was gayish and
that made people call him Nowayer which is a feminine
name close to Nouri. Consequently, everyone called her
Um Nowayer instead of Um Nouri. At first, she did not
bear ridicule, but she defied her neighbors and insisted
later on being called Um Nowayer. She sought medical
treatment of her son’s condition. One doctor told her it
is a psychological problem and not a physical one which
may be related to the loss of the parental figure in the
family. The son eventually grew out of it after two
years of psychological treatment.
The title of the novel is full of irony. It was taken
from a song by a very famous Saudi singer and the
internet address of the group was called “Memoirs
Exposed” which is a twist on the name of a famous TV
show called “Memoirs Disclosed”. The novel was also full
with humor and laughs as the narrator commented on the
events with her witty style. For example, she described
how the girls danced in the wedding in a hilarious way
and the way women looked at each other with jealousy.
She also described how men walked in their ugly
underwear in the house after marriage and made fun of
that.
The novel ended with one success which was the marriage
of Lamees to her colleague in Medical School. As it
seemed Lamees learnt from the mistakes of her friends
and never repeated them. In fact, she planned a strategy
to win her colleague’s heart after she saw him and fell
in love with him from first sight. She used everything
at her disposal to lure him into her net. Her successful
strategy culminated with a lovely marriage and a trip to
Canada to obtain her boards in Medicine. |
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