Princess (10 page)

When I could no longer endure the sounds of terror that continued to filter up to our floor, I crept back down the stairwell. I was desperately trying to think of a course of action when the doorbell rang. I saw Ali answer the door to an Egyptian woman, about forty years of age. He handed the woman fifteen Egyptian pounds and asked her if she had more daughters. She said that she did and that she would return tomorrow. Hadi ushered out the weeping child. The mother, showing no emotion, took the child, who was limping, tears streaming down her face, by the hand and closed the door behind her. Ahmed did not seem surprised when Nura, angry, told him the story. He pursed his lips and said he would find out the details. Later, he told Nura that the mother herself had sold her child, and that there was nothing he could do. Even though caught in this shameful act, Hadi and Ali acted as though nothing had happened. When I sneered at Hadi and asked him how he could be a religious man, he laughed full in my face. I turned to Ali and told him that I was going to tell Father he was attacking young girls, and he laughed even harder than Hadi. He leaned toward me and said, “Tell him. I do not mind!” He said that Father had given him the name of a man to contact for the same type of service. He smiled and said young girls were more fun, and besides, Father always did the same sort of thing when he came to Cairo.

I felt as though I had been electrocuted; my brain felt burned, my mouth hung open, and I stared blankly at my brother. I had my first thoughts that all—All—men are wicked. I wanted to destroy my memory of that day and lapse once again into the innocence of the mists of my childhood. I walked softly away. I came to dread what I might discover next in the cruel world of men. I still cherished Cairo as a city of enlightenment, but the decay brought by poverty caused me to rethink my earlier notions. Later in the week, I saw the Egyptian mother knocking on doors in the building, with another young girl in tow. I wanted to question her, to discover how a mother could sell her young. She saw my determined look of inquiry and hurried away.

Sara and I talked with Nura for long hours about the phenomenon, and Nura sighed and said that Ahmed told her it was a way of life in much of the world. When I shouted indignantly that I would rather starve than sell my young, Nura agreed, but said it was easy to say such things when the pangs of hunger were not in your stomach.

We left Cairo and its woes behind us. Sara finally had the opportunity to realize her visions of Italy. Was her radiant look worth the travail that had freed her to come here? She dreamily proclaimed that the reality soared above her fantasies. We toured the cities of Venice, Florence, and Rome. The gaiety and the laughter of the Italians still ring in my ears. I think their love of life one of the earth’s great blessings, far overshadowing their contributions to art and architecture. Born in a land of gloom, I am consoled by the idea of a nation that does not take itself too seriously.

In Milan, Nura spent more money in a matter of days than most people earn in a lifetime. It was as if she and Ahmed shopped in a frenzy, with a deep desire to fill some lonely void in their lives.

Hadi and Ali spent their time buying women, for the streets of Italy were filled, by day or by night, with beautiful young women available to those who could pay. I saw Ali as I always had, a selfish young man, concerned only with his pleasure. But Hadi, I knew, was far more evil, for he bought the women yet condemned them for their role in the act. He desired them, yet hated them and the system that left them free to do as they would. His hypocrisy was to me the essence of the evil nature of men. When our plane touched down in Riyadh, I prepared myself for more unpleasantness. At fourteen, I knew that I would now be considered a woman, and that a hard fate awaited me. As precarious as my childhood had been, I had a sudden longing to cling to my youth and not let go. I had no doubt that my life, as a woman, would be a perpetual struggle against the social order of my land, which sacrifices those of my sex. My fears regarding my future soon paled with the agony of the moment. I arrived home to discover that my mother was dying.

Chapter Seven: Journey’s End

Our one certainty in life is death. As a staunch believer in the words of the Prophet Mohammed, my mother felt no apprehension at the end of her life’s journey. She had followed the pure life of a good Muslim and knew her just reward awaited her. Her sorrow was intertwined with her fears for her unmarried daughters. She was our strength, our only support, and she knew that we would be tossed in the wind at her passing.

Mother confessed that she had felt her life ebbing even as we departed on our travels. She had no basis for her knowledge, other than three very extraordinary visions that came to her as dreams. Mother’s parents had died of fever when she was eight years of age. As the only female child, Mother had nursed her parents during their brief illness. They both seemed to be recovering when, in the middle of a swirling fury of a blinding sandstorm, her father had risen on his elbows, smiled at the heavens, uttered four words—“I see the garden,” and died. Her mother died shortly afterward without revealing a hint of what she witnessed awaiting her. My mother, left in the care of her four older brothers, was married at an early age to my father.

Mother’s father had been a compassionate and kind man. He had loved his daughter as he did his sons. When other men of the tribe sulked at the birth of their daughters, Grandfather laughed and told them to praise God for the blessing of a tender touch in their home. Mother said she would never have been married at such an early age had her father lived. He would have given her some years of the freedom of childhood for herself, she believed.

Sara and I were sitting by her bedside as Mother haltingly confided her disturbing dreams. The first of her visions came four nights before we received word of Sara’s attempted suicide.

“
I was in a bedouin tent. It was the same as our family tent of my childhood. I was surprised to see my father and mother, young and healthy, sitting beside the coffee fire. I heard my brothers in the distance, bringing in the sheep from a day of grazing. I made a rush for my parents, but they could not see me, nor could they hear me as I cried out their names. “Two of my brothers, the ones now deceased, came into the tent and sat with my parents. My brothers sipped warm milk from the she-camel, in small cups, while my father pounded the beans for the coffee. The dream ended as Father quoted a verse he had made up about the Paradise awaiting all good Muslims. The verse was simple, yet reassuring to my mind. It went:

Pleasant rivers flow,

Trees shade the yellow of the sun.

Fruit gathers around the feet,

Milk and honey knows no end.

Loved ones are waiting,

For those trapped on earth.”

The dream ended. Mother said she thought little of it, other than that it might be a message of joy from God to assure her that her parents and family were in Paradise. About a week after Sara came home, Mother experienced a second vision. This time, all the members of her deceased family were sitting under the shade of a palm tree. They were eating wonderful food from silver dishes. But this time they saw her, and Mother’s father got to his feet and came to greet her. He took her by the hand and tried to get her to sit, and to eat. Mother said she became frightened in the dream and tried to run away, but her father’s hand tightened. Mother remembered that she had young to care for and begged her father to release her, told him that she had no time to sit and eat. She said her mother stood and touched her shoulder and told her: “Fadeela, God will care for your daughters. The moment is coming for you to leave them in his care.”

Mother awoke from her dream. She said she knew at that instant that her time on earth was passing and that she would soon go to those who went before her.

Two weeks after we left on our trip, Mother began to experience back and neck pains. She felt dizzy and sick to her stomach. The pain was her message; she knew her time was short. She went to the doctor and told him of her dreams and the new pain. He dismissed the dreams with a wave of his hand, but became serious at the description of the pain. Special tests soon revealed that Mother had an inoperable tumor on her spine. Mother’s most recent dream came the night the doctor confirmed her terminal illness. In the dream, she was sitting with her heavenly family, eating and drinking with great gaiety and abandon. She was in the company of her parents, grandparents, brothers, and cousins—relatives who had died many years before.

Mother smiled as she saw little ones crawling along the ground and chasing butterflies in a meadow. Her mother smiled at her and said, “Fadeela, why do you not pay attention to your babies? Do you not recognize those of your very blood?” Mother suddenly realized that the children were indeed hers—they were the ones lost to her in their infancy. They gathered in her lap, those heavenly five babies, and she began to sway and swing and hold them close.

Mother was going to the ones lost and losing the ones she had known. She was leaving us. Mercifully, Mother suffered little at her death. I like to think that God saw she had passed the harsh trials of life as a person of godliness and felt no need to wound her further with the pain of passing.

Her daughters surrounded every inch of the deathbed—she lay cloaked with the love of her own flesh and blood. Her eyes lingered on each of us, no words were spoken, but we felt her farewells. When her gaze rested upon my face, I saw her worries gather as a storm, for she knew that I, unbending to the wind, would find life harder than most.

Mother’s body was washed and prepared for her return to earth by the older aunties of our family. I saw her as they wrapped the white linen shroud around her thin body, worn down by childbearing and disease. Her face was peaceful, now free of earthly worries. I thought Mother appeared younger in death than in life. It was difficult for me to believe that she had given birth to sixteen children, of whom eleven had survived.

Our immediate family, along with all of Father’s wives and their children, gathered in our home; a verse from the Koran was read to offer comfort. Mother’s shroud-wrapped body was then placed in the backseat of a black limousine and driven away by Omar. Our custom forbids females at the burial site, but my sisters and I showed an unyielding front to our father; he relented on the promise that we would not wail or pull out our hair. And so it was that our entire family followed the car of death, a sad but silent caravan, into the desert.

In Islam, to show grief at a loved one’s passing indicates displeasure with the will of God. Besides, our family comes from the Najd region of Saudi Arabia, and our people do not publicly mourn the passing of loved ones.

A freshly dug grave in the endless desert of our land had already been prepared by the Sudanese servants. The body of our mother was tenderly lowered, and the white cloth covering her face was removed by Ali, her only earthly son. My sisters huddled far from Mother’s final resting place, but my eyes could not leave the gravesite. I was the last child born of her body; I would stay with her earthly cloak until the final moment. I flinched as I watched the slaves push the red sands of the Empty Quarter over her face and body.

As I watched the sands cover the body of one I so adored, I suddenly remembered a beautiful verse by the great Lebanese philosopher Kahlil Gibran: “Mayhap a funeral among men is a wedding feast among the angels.” I imagined my mother at the side of her mother and father, with her own little ones gathered in her arms. Certain at that moment that I would, another day, feel the loving touch of Mother, I ceased weeping and walked toward my sisters, shocking them with my smile of joy and serenity. I quoted the powerful verse God had sent to erase my pain, and my sisters nodded in perfect understanding at the wise Kahlil Gibran’s words. We were leaving Mother behind in the empty vastness of the desert, yet I knew it no longer mattered that there was no stone placed to mark her presence there, or that no religious services were held to speak of the simple woman who had been a flame of love during her time on earth. Her reward was that she was now with her other loved ones, waiting there for us.

Ali seemed at a loss, for once, and I knew his pain was keen also. Father had little to say and avoided our villa from the day of Mother’s death. He sent us messages through his second wife, who had now replaced Mother as the head of his wives. Within the month, we learned through Ali that Father was preparing to wed again, for four wives are common with the very wealthy and the very poor bedouin in my land. The Koran says that each wife must be treated as the others. The affluent of Saudi Arabia have no difficulty in providing equality for their wives. The poorest bedouin have only to erect four tents and provide simple fare. For these reasons, you find many of the richest and the poorest Muslims with four wives. It is only the middle-class Saudi who has to find contentment with one woman, for it is impossible for him to find the funds to provide middle-class standards for four separate families.

Father was planning to marry one of the royal cousins, Randa, a girl with whom I had played childhood games in what seemed like another lifetime. Father’s new bride was fifteen, only one year older than I, his youngest child of my mother. Four months after the burial of my mother, I attended the wedding of my father. I was surly, and refused to join in the festivities—I was awash with pent-up emotions of animosity. After the birth of sixteen children and many years of obedient servitude, I knew that the memory of my mother had been effortlessly disregarded by my father.

Not only was I furious at my father, I felt overwhelming hatred toward my former playmate Randa, who was now going to be the fourth wife, filling the void created by my mother’s death. The wedding was grand, the bride was young and beautiful. My anger toward Randa collapsed as my father led her from the huge ballroom to the marriage bed. My eyes widened as they saw her worried face. Her lips trembled with fear! As a roaring flame is instantaneously extinguished, the sight of Randa’s obvious