Kingdom of Strangers (7 page)

Now deeply annoyed, she watched two women making their way down the street. They had just stepped out of a cab. If she hurried, she might be able to catch it. She grabbed her purse and
abaaya
from a hook behind the door and raced down the stairs.

The taxi had waited. It was parked at the corner like an animal catching its breath after a run. The driver had gotten out to buy cigarettes at the corner store. When he saw Amina racing toward him, he swung open the back door and invited her in. She thanked
him, told him to take her to the Jamjoom Center, and they were off.

Rashid hated it when she took taxis. It was unsafe to get in a car with a strange man, especially a foreigner. It wasn’t so bad if she was with friends, but she was absolutely never allowed to do it alone, and yet here she was, squirming in the backseat while the driver blew smoke into every corner of the car and refused to roll down the window because he didn’t want the hot air coming in. The AC wasn’t strong enough, so Amina was sweating, and every time she tried to open the window just an inch, the driver rolled it back up. She thought of Rashid finding out and simply decided that he wouldn’t. She tried calling Jamal again and this time left a message: “I’m in a cab going to the Jamjoom Center, and you’d better meet me there in two hours or I’m going to tell your father and he’ll take away your car.” Rashid would not take the car away. He had never punished the boy in his life. But Jamal might want to spare her from his father’s anger if he were to find out she’d taken a cab.

Two hours later, she stood on the sidewalk outside the Jamjoom Center with three enormous shopping bags at her feet. She hadn’t bought the soda, but she’d found everything else, plus three gifts for her niece now wrapped in floral paper with gold ribbon. She’d also found a dozen things she hadn’t meant to buy and decided she’d run the rest of her errands later. There was no sign of Jamal. She called twice and got no answer.

He has absolutely no understanding of things
, she thought, glancing at the taxi queue. She wanted to take a cab—had put aside the money to do so, just in case—but Rashid was going to be at the party, and she couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t see her getting out of a cab, or even coming through the door with all of the shopping bags and Jamal nowhere in sight. He would know at once what she’d done. She tried calling her nephew. This was becoming an emergency. She had to be at her sister’s house in ten minutes, and
it would take thirty to get there. Her nephew didn’t answer. What was it with these teenagers? They were the mobile generation. They used phones like a third hand. But if you called them, they never answered.

She tried again and again. She wasn’t going to call her sister. Johara would be frantically preparing for the party so would delegate the problem to someone else and word would get back to Rashid.

Finally, annoyed beyond belief, Amina tossed the phone in her purse, picked up the bags, and headed for the queue.

K
atya sat in a giant armchair, trying not to slide too deeply into its recesses, while she waited for the bank manager to finish her conversation, then her phone call, then her studious typing at the computer. Katya had been watching her for twenty minutes from behind the glass partition. The manager was oblivious to the presence of the six long-suffering customers seated in her waiting area. When one of them got up and said she’d been there for forty minutes and would appreciate being seen sometime this century, the manager looked as if no one had ever dared make such a brazen request.

“How should I know how long you’ve been sitting there?” she cried. “I don’t keep track of these things. You’re just going to have to wait your turn!”

At the counter, customers were arguing about deposits, credit amounts, late payments. The privacy screens were pathetic, and Katya could hear everything—even the bank clerk in the corner who hummed Nancy Ajram every time she counted bills. The front door opened with a whoosh of hot air, rustling the succulent leaves of the potted plants and swirling
abaayas
around bodies. A woman entered, her high heels clattering angrily on the polished marble floor. She walked straight into the manager’s office and was greeted with cloying adulation. The manager rushed out to fetch coffee and dates. The new arrival dumped an obnoxiously large Dior purse on the desk. A few of the women in the waiting area began to grumble, and one sighed loudly in exasperation.

Were men’s banks so infernally slow and bureaucratic? Katya had been in a men’s bank on one occasion, when her mother (bless her), in a fit of outrage at the service in the women’s bank, had marched across the street and pushed past the guards with the intention of speaking to the notorious “man in charge” without whom, apparently, nothing could be decided in the women’s section. She had brought a black pall of silence to the bank’s vast interior. Fifty men had turned to stare at her, their faces cold with disapproval. Katya had scrambled after her, grabbing her arm and pulling her back outside, but her mother, then practically in the death throes of the cancer that had killed her, refused to budge until she spoke to the manager.

Even if they wanted to work, even if their husbands and fathers agreed to let them interact with strange men, even if they had drivers and ID cards and babysitters, Saudi women struggled to find jobs. This grand country, which could import anything it needed, also imported 90 percent of its private-sector workers. She had heard the anti-immigration cry from other countries—Europe wanting to send its Muslims home; America keen to close its doors to the Mexicans—but Saudi had let itself become a kingdom of strangers. It welcomed its immigrants because they lent the illusion that all Saudis could afford hired help, because the immigrants did the jobs that most Saudis would never dream of doing—housekeeping, trash collecting, taxi driving—and because without them, absolutely nothing would get done.

But these bankers were Saudi, part of a movement among more reformist companies to get Saudi women working (albeit in women-only banks). If this was the Saudi-ization of the workforce, Katya reflected, then the country was heading for trouble.

She sat back in the armchair and shut her eyes. She ought to give up waiting and just go home, but this was the first time in a month she’d been alone and without any responsibilities. She hadn’t wanted to face this moment because what was waiting for
her here was a marriage proposal and the man she hoped she loved standing patiently at the edge of her life. Here also was her mind-numbing terror at losing her job.

If you don’t get married
, she thought,
you
will
lose your job
. She had lied and told them she was married because in order to work in her department, she had to be. Only Osama had found out the truth. He hadn’t fired her yet, but the threat hung over her every day. It constituted the greater part of her antagonism for Daher, who had seen her at work late one night and said: “You don’t
act
like a married woman.”

She knew he meant
You’re acting like a man
, but it chilled her anyway, and she found herself worrying about him most of all. Would he find out that she wasn’t married? It would be as simple as his heading down to the records office and running a search.

But a marriage might just turn out to be a pretty, tree-lined avenue to the dead end of her dreams. She thought of Nayir and tried to remember the longing she felt for him, but fear had neutered her desire. Nayir wasn’t the type to be comfortable with her working such long hours. And what if they started having children? How would she work and raise kids—and clean house and cook and tend lovingly to her husband’s needs? He had proposed marriage a month ago. It was a painfully long time to make a man wait, and she still hadn’t given him an answer.

She didn’t have one.

It took her another hour to be seen, then another fifteen minutes of wrangling. They had accidentally closed her checking account, into which she had recently deposited her paycheck. The manager had no record of Katya’s ever having been a patron of the bank. Even the deposit slip Katya produced from her purse had no effect. The manager studied Katya, clearly wondering what sort of scam she was working. With typical efficiency, she drank another cup of coffee and fussed at her computer for ten useless minutes, then got up from her desk and went to talk to her boss,
who was, apparently, the
real
manager of the bank. Half an hour later, she returned, reopened the account, and reassured Katya that all was well. But nothing was well, not when one’s livelihood was stored so tenuously in the memory of a machine, as if one’s livelihood didn’t already face a dozen more powerful forces bent on wiping it away.

He was talking to a neighbor. When he hauled the rope from the water—bent over, one knee on the ground, and his head turned at an odd angle, like a man inspecting the underside of a camel—the fabric of his shirt pulled taut against his back. Even from five meters, she saw the muscles—a landscape of softly cut dunes, elegant, vast. She would normally have averted her gaze, but she let her eyes rest on his back for a moment.
I could touch it
, she thought,
if we were married. I could fall asleep with those great arms around me
. It was illusory, that form. As solid as it was, it would be subject to shifting winds all the same.

What surprised her was the relief she felt when he stood up and saw her and his face lit quietly with pleasure that even the neighbor noticed and that caused the man to excuse himself. Nayir coiled the last of the rope and dropped it on the ground, a gesture that said firmly that he’d lay down anything for her, and for a very brief moment, her million grains of doubt were blown clear away.

Then she told herself not to be an idiot.

“Sabah al-khayr,”
she said. Good morning.

He averted his gaze and greeted her with a simple “Good morning.” She wasn’t wearing a veil. She didn’t wear one at work, so why should she pretend to be more devout here?

They had talked on the phone, but this was the first time she’d seen him since the night he proposed. He was wearing his favorite well-worn blue robe. He’d taken off his headscarf, and his short curly hair shone black in the sun. A slight redness on his cheeks, a
coating of dust on his sandals, the confidence in his shoulders all told her that he’d recently been to the desert. He took families on desert excursions to help them get in touch with their Bedouin roots or simply to give them the experience of the wilderness. On occasion, he worked search-and-rescue.

“I hope I’m not coming at a bad time,” she said.

“Of course not.” He glanced past her shoulder, a gesture she understood at once to mean
Who escorted you here? And is it all right with him that we’re talking?

“My cousin Ayman gave me a ride,” she said. “He’s just gone to buy cigarettes.”

Nayir nodded, perhaps better able to accept the impropriety of the two of them being alone now that a marriage proposal was on the table. He started walking toward his boat. It was too hot to stand in the sun.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called,” she said. “I’ve been working overtime on a big case.”

“Oh,” he said. If he’d been worried about her lack of response to his proposal, he didn’t show it. Rather, he seemed relaxed, and the poise in his manner that she had ascribed to time spent in the desert might just as easily have been religiously inspired.

He led her onto his boat and she saw, with some surprise, that he’d situated a large beach umbrella above the wooden bench on the top deck. She imagined that he’d planned for this: having Katya arrive at his boat and not wanting to lead her downstairs, where they’d be alone and out of sight. The neighbors might notice and begin talking. She sat beneath the umbrella, feeling oddly pleased, while Nayir bent to a corner and retrieved the next surprise: a small battery-powered fan. He switched it on and coolish air blew across her lap. She smiled.

“This is very thoughtful of you.”

He excused himself and climbed down the ladder, emerging a minute later with a small cooler full of ice, bottled water, and
soda. She took a Pepsi. He sat across from her and turned slightly to the side so that he wouldn’t stare directly at her face. She sipped the soda.

“It sounds like you’re busy at work,” he said.

Yes
, she wanted to reply,
and I have no idea how I’m going to get married and have kids and be a mother and a wife when I’m supposed to be at work twelve hours a day, and sometimes more
. Beyond that, how could she explain that the tedious lab work had lost its appeal? That she was struggling to push herself up a notch by getting more directly involved in investigations? That she had even, last week, taken the bold step of applying to the female police academy? What would he say to
that?

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I wanted to come by sooner, but yes, I’ve been extremely busy.”

He nodded. “Actually, your timing is perfect,” he said. “I was in the desert. I just got back last night.”

“Were you working?”

“Yes. I took a family to the Empty Quarter.”

“I’ve never been out there,” she said.

“It’s beautiful. And safe enough, if you’re prepared for it.” He looked at her then, which she found quite bold. Then he returned his gaze to the sea. She realized that something had shifted in him, as if a deep tectonic instability had rumbled and tossed and was finally settling into place.

She was struck suddenly with panic. She was twenty-nine and she ought to feel some urgency to get married, but instead she was terrified. She could see her father’s disappointed face as vividly as if he were standing in front of her. If her mother were still alive, she would cry to see Katya unmarried at this age.

“Have you thought any more about my proposal?” he asked.

“Yes.” They had reached this point too quickly. She felt them skidding into a crash.

“Ah,” he said.

She was outside all thought. Her only conscious awareness was that if she said no, she would hurt him irreparably.

“I applied to the police academy,” she blurted.