Brownies and Kalashnikovs Page 21

  My graduation ceremony passed in a blur through tear-filled eyes and a broken heart. I was forbidden to see or speak to Adnan. My mother did not let me out of her sight. With barely time to pack my belongings from seven years of student life, I left Beirut escorted on both sides by my parents and sympathetic but powerless siblings. My last contact with Adnan was a stolen, whispered farewell over my dorm’s telephone with vows to reunite no matter what. I don’t recall my flight back to Dhahran.

  Once I was in Saudi Arabia, I made half-hearted attempts to get my father to see things differently and give me permission to marry Adnan. Deep within my aching heart I knew that my parents were never going to consent to our marriage. I was on their home turf and the walls closed around me yet tighter and higher. I was not a person in my own right, merely a physical extension of my parents. My father was crushing me into the mold he had envisaged for me, educated but unaltered. We had never had the best of father-daughter relationships and now it worsened profoundly as he became even more tyrannical and suspicious of my every move. He had never met Adnan to judge him but the idea of my marrying outside of his circle was unthinkable. Under my father’s close watch it became very difficult to contact Adnan or any of his family. The only ray of light was through my own post office box separate from my father’s, which I had received when I became a first grade teacher’s assistant in my old school in Dhahran. Adnan’s brothers Bashar and Hassan lived with their families in Al Khobar, where they both ran successful businesses. All attempts on their part to contact my father in the traditional Arab way were rudely rebutted. Naturally, they stopped trying and turned to Adnan with brotherly advice: “Start looking for someone else.” My father had made it embarrassingly clear that getting him to accept graciously was not going to happen. My mother, basically a kind soul but weak before my father’s anger, put in her own two bits if only to protect herself from any fallout from him. “Stop calling Fadia,” she told my good friend Hana, who was now married to Adnan’s older brother, Bashar. “She doesn’t want to talk to any of you.” I was not told of these exchanges between my parents and Adnan’s family until many years later.

  After exhausting all possible avenues, Adnan wrote to me that there was no other option but to elope. Before I had the chance to write back, he called me on the school telephone one morning in December from Bahrain, where he had gone on assignment for An Nahar. This was the first time we had spoken since my dreadful graduation day in June.

  “Adnan!’’ I yelled, when I heard him across the static.

  “Shshshsh!’ was his endearing reply, “Someone will overhear you,’’ and the line went dead.

  I was frantic with fear. What if someone had heard us? So omnipresent was the feeling that SOMEONE was always looking over my shoulder and now it appeared that way to Adnan. I stared hopelessly at the phone, then it rang again. I picked it up to hear Adnan talking rapid-fire, “Do you accept?”

  “YES!” and I hung up before anyone joined us on the line.

  Adnan’s plan came in the mail. I would meet him in Maidstone, England, where my sister Fatin was studying for her pre-med requirements, and we would fly back to Beirut. He would contact Fatin and tell her the time and place of our rendezvous once she knew when I would arrive. Clear enough, but now came the most difficult hurdle … reaching Maidstone. I had to find a way to leave the country. It could only happen with my father’s written permission and physical presence and there was no way he would let me out of his sight as long as he thought I was still trying to see Adnan. I had to convince him that it was all over between Adnan and me well before the Christmas holidays, when Dhahran School was let out.

  Once I felt I had control over my destiny with hope of finally being with Adnan, I snapped out of my depression and began to interact with my surroundings. As an Aramco employee, I was living in the singles’ efficiency apartment on Seventh Street with a friend from university in Beirut. I had repeatedly rejected the notion of mixing with any of the neighbors. I had no illusions about my popularity in the singles scene with the statistic of one female to every hundred or so males. But I needed to celebrate my window of freedom and to my roommate’s surprise, accepted an invitation to attend a party next door.

  It took just one party for us to decide that watching television, even the sheikhs of hellfire and damnation, was a far more entertaining option. We were met at the door by the already inebriated host, an American engineer, with music, laughter, and the clink of ice cubes in glasses of whisky coming from twenty-five bachelors and three other women.

  “Uh oh,” I warned my roommate, who stood expressionless as she did when she was overwhelmed. “Let’s say hello and sneak out. Five minutes, O.K.?” we agreed as a herd of men spotted us and began plowing their way in our direction.

  We were separated as each of us got our own pack of admirers whose conversation was limited to, “So how do you like it here? There’s a beach party next week, wanna come?”, “Give me the pleasure of this dance, pleeeeeease,” “Dave’s having a barbecue tomorrow, lots of booze, it’ll be a blast. Don’t say no,” and the best one, “I have a very interesting pottery collection at my efficiency just next door. Let’s ditch and I’ll show it to you.”

  I backed into the kitchen, planning to continue on out the back door when I found myself stuck in a corner next to the washing machine by the host. A well-placed kick and I was out the door, with my roommate right behind me as we ran to the safety of our apartment. We collapsed onto our Aramco sofas weak from laughter at our ‘femme fatale’ effect on the poor desperate bachelors of Dhahran.

  Saleh, my friend from university days, called me one afternoon to invite me to meet his brother Khalid and his American bride Sally; both were Ivy League graduates. They had just arrived in Dhahran and Saleh told me that he felt his sister-in-law and I would click. We rang the doorbell to their brand new bungalow, a newer model than the one I had grown up in, sleeker with a larger garden. Khalid opened the door and greeted us jovially, calling loudly for Sally. A big man with thick straight black hair and strong dark features, Khalid was quite different from Saleh who was much milder in approach and appearance, but both shared the same engaging smile and gregariousness. The Turkis were urbane, educated, modest, smart businessmen. Educated in Lebanon, they had attended the same school as Adnan, the Gerard Institute in Sidon, where their elder brother Abdel Aziz left a lasting legacy in soccer then continued on to the American University of Beirut and the United States for further studies to become a major business mover and shaker in Saudi Arabia today.

  I liked Sally immediately on her entrance into the room. As tall as her husband, with a lithe sporty body that moved with purpose and direction, she had an open face and an infectious laugh. It was impossible not to succumb to her warmth and intellect. Saleh was right and we became fast friends. I was instantly taken by Sally Turki, beautiful, vibrant, and thrilled with her new life with her new husband in Saudi Arabia. I privately noted the irony of our situation; she was embracing a life I was trying to leave, meeting its challenges head on after she had fallen in love with her Saudi Arab husband. I was preparing to take a different path in a different kind of Arabness after I had fallen in love with a non-Saudi Arab.

  A few weeks after I met Sally, she invited me to lunch at her house. I walked into an elegant spread in full view of the inviting swimming pool they had just finished installing in their back yard, their “piece de resistance” as Sally laughingly referred to it. Her husband smiled at my delight with the beauty of the layout, “Looks like Sally is wining and dining you, company silver is on the table.” She grinned broadly and dived right in, “Yes, I would like to ask you if you would like to join me in establishing a school here in Khobar.” I was at a loss for words. With this simple suggestion she had unknowingly put my two most intense dreams onto a collision course. The dream of the school had been my passion for as long as I could remember. And now the dream was literally being offered to me on a silver platter. I looked at Sally’s intel
ligent open face, so full of hope and promise and looked inside my heart. I couldn’t do both. Here were the two roads of Robert Frost’s evocative poem, ‘The Road Not Taken,’ laid out before me.

  I returned home that day in deep conflict, mulling the project Sally had proposed over and over in my confused state of mind. Before I reached our house, I turned left towards our green playground across the street and lay on my back in the soft green grass as I had done so many times before in my childhood. As I gazed up at the sky and watched dusk turn to night, a sprinkling of stars began to twinkle in the rapidly darkening sky. A slight breeze playfully ruffled through my hair, as it chased away the humidity of the day, but I was too deep in thought to care. Was I doing the right thing by leaving my home and my family to be with Adnan? I knew I would never belong in Lebanese society; did that matter to me when I had never fitted into the American or the Saudi Arab one? I imagined life without Adnan and all color and enchantment drained from my world. That clinched my decision. I loved him too much, I needed to live my life with him, and we would realize our dreams together. Sally’s school, Dhahran Ahliyeh School, would go on to become the most important school in the area. She too realized her dream with her husband at her side as she effectively negotiated her way through the potential minefield of education for girls in Saudi Arabia.

  It took many dress rehearsals on my own before I gathered the courage to go ahead with my plan for escape from home. Finally I broached my father and informed him solemnly that I was through with pining for Adnan. He listened intently and told me I had made a wise decision, I was Saudi after all. Silently I retorted, “Saudi as in a female Saudi?” Despite making my decision to leave Saudi Arabia, maybe for good, I continued to spend long hours in lonely debate. I could not burden any of my Arab friends with the very personal and lawbreaking step I was about to make.

  It was in the midst of this ongoing silent battle with my demons that Anne, the teacher I was assisting in Dhahran School, approached me. She had noticed that something was seriously preoccupying me and gently asked if I would like to talk. I had liked Anne from the first day of my job. She had gone out of her way to guide me at work and gave me engaging and challenging assignments once she discovered my affinity for children. I let out a deep sigh of relief as I looked into her kind, honest eyes and could only see her as an angel sent from heaven to help me assuage my fears. I told her of the painful decision I had decided to make and my qualms over the negative and long-term repercussions it would have on my future relationship with my parents. I can still remember her thoughtful smile as she in turn, took a deep breath, and told me her own story. She had been a nun before she came to work in Dhahran School. Saudi Arabia was the farthest point she could find to escape the wrath of her strict Catholic family and community in Midwestern America for the life decision she had made and that was to break her vows of lifelong celibacy, remove her habit and marry.

  “I can only tell you what I feel. Today I am happier than I have ever been in my life. I will continue doing what I set out to do in this world but without the nun’s habit. It’s really nobody’s business and when the dust settles they’ll all go back to their lives and you’ll be stuck with their decision for your life. So let them go on with their lives while you go on with yours. Go for it, Fadia. I’m sure this young man is worth it if you love him all that much.”

  After what I felt was a reasonable amount of time since I had told him about my break-up with Adnan I asked my father for permission to visit Fatin in England. He stared into space for what seemed like eons then grudgingly gave it, but with one condition. My mother would be at my side as his “trusty liaison officer” as he so endearingly put it. On December 26, 1972, my mother and I flew to England. My mother chattered happily throughout the seven hour flight from Dhahran to London about our upcoming holiday with Fatin and Marwan while I sat consumed with guilt over what would await her in the next twenty-four hours. If only my marriage to Adnan could have happened under happier circumstances.

  When we arrived at Heathrow we picked up our bags and rushed expectantly outside to see Fatin and Marwan. They were nowhere to be seen. How could that be possible? They knew the exact time of our arrival. After waiting for an hour we decided to board a bus to Maidstone, not knowing what else to do. We reached Fatin’s two-up two-down bed-sit in a picture-book cottage tucked into a quiet cul-de-sac in Maidstone. Her old landlady greeted us at the door, surprised to see us without Fatin and Marwan. They had left Maidstone early that morning to make sure they would be on time for our arrival, she told us.

  “They’re probably right behind us,” my mother remarked to me and went upstairs to my sister’s room to unpack. As I watched her bustling around the room chattering, I thought in silent panic, “What if something terrible had happened to them on the highway? It would be entirely my fault.”

  Nightfall came and there was still no sign of my sister and brother. My mother was climbing into bed when I exploded, unable to contain my anxiety any longer. “Why aren’t you worrying?” I cried out in exasperation, “What if something terrible happened to them?”

  She answered me uncharacteristically quietly with a rueful smile and small shrug, “Go to bed, Fadia. There is nothing in our power now. What will be, will be and it is in God’s hands. God willing they will be here soon, maybe Fatin took a wrong turn. They’ll turn up. If they don’t come by morning, all we can do is check with the police.” And with that she closed her eyes and fell asleep leaving me alone with my private agony and despair as I did not share her enviable belief in Fate. Despite all efforts not to fall asleep, I nodded off with terrible visions of what could have become of my sister and brother and of Adnan waiting forlornly for a Fadia who would never arrive.

  At 3 a.m. Fatin and Marwan shuffled in. I never imagined I could be so grateful to God and Fate for their safe homecoming.

  “It was too foggy so we stopped by the side of the road and we fell asleep,” was my sister’s curt explanation.

  “Where’s Adnan?” I whispered anxiously.

  Fatin answered in the same impatient tone she’d used to my other frantic questions, “He’ll be waiting for you in an hour with a cabbie, so get ready.”

  This undercover action had put my sister into extreme militant mode. The hour remaining gave me just enough time to write my mother a letter of farewell in Arabic and two letters in English to my brother and sister to cover up any suspicions of their complicity in this cloakand-dagger scheme. We drank a cup of tea in silence in the remaining fifteen minutes, while my mother snored softly in the bedroom next door. It was going to be as difficult for them as it was for me.

  At precisely 4 a.m. we stepped outside into the cold gray pre-dawn air and looked nervously for Adnan. There he was … a tiny waving figure at the far end of the road. Careful as ever, he had made sure to keep his distance should my mother appear behind me. Hardly believing that all was truly going according to plan, I raced down the road to reach Adnan as quickly as my legs could carry me, leaving my poor sixteen-year-old brother huffing behind me with my suitcase. Just as I was about to fall into Adnan’s arms, my hand was suddenly grabbed and pumped ardently by a very overwhelmed cabbie.

  “I can’t believe I’m part of this, ma’am, I’m so honored.”

  “This is Ben,” Adnan introduced us rather belatedly, raising his voice to be heard over Ben’s emotional outpourings of happiness for us. I gave a final heartfelt and tearful hug to my somber brother and sister who were left to weather the storm that would erupt in the wake of my disappearance, and slipped into the cab finally united with Adnan.

  Whatever Adnan and I had to say to one another after a separation of six months was not going to be said en route to the train station because Ben was not going to let us. He had tips to give us about married life, with especially stern advice to Adnan to forget about taking in three more wives after having gone to so much trouble for this one. At the station’s door, we bade Ben goodbye, touched by the goodness of this man’
s heart. Turning to enter the station, we were stopped by two policemen standing at the entrance door. I knew there was a curfew in Maidstone and that only authorized personnel were allowed to walk the streets before 6 a.m. Our train was the milk train, the first train of the day for milk transportation only and it was leaving at five. If we didn’t make it, we would miss our flight to Beirut. My heart sank. Suddenly the two policemen broke out in smiles, slapped Adnan on the back, and tipped their hats in greeting to me, congratulating us wholeheartedly.

  “You did it old chap, congratulations, ma’am!” They had met Adnan at 3 a.m. while he was standing around waiting for zero hour to meet me and had inquired politely what he was doing loitering in front of the train station at that hour.

  “I’m waiting for my future wife,” he had told them, “we’re eloping.” And that was how they ended up waiting excitedly for Adnan to show up with his future bride.

  “Right this way,” they laughed as they gave us a bona fide police escort onto the train. A surprised conductor greeted the four of us with a raised eyebrow.

  “What can I do for you?” he politely alluded to our illegal presence on his train.

  “Yes, John, these two young ones have a plane to catch or else they won’t get married. You wouldn’t want that on your conscience would you?” the two policemen winked and nudged laughingly.

  “Congratulations! Please take a seat wherever you like,” the conductor beamed, becoming along with our policemen friends and Ben the cabbie another impromptu but significant player in our romantic drama.

  We arrived at London Heathrow simultaneously with the announcement for our flight to Beirut on the public address system. As we ran to catch it we were unable to refrain from nervously looking over our shoulders to double check that we were still in the clear. Meanwhile my sister was busy driving my frantic mother in circles at the other end of London until she was sure our flight had gone. They arrived at the airport just as our flight was taking off. I was now on my way to a brand new life of my choice.