Brownies and Kalashnikovs Read online

  I averted my eyes to my lap at this revelation so as not to stare. Yasmine was the image of her mother with the difference of having the olive-colored skin of the Saudis. Yasmine’s mother, understandably, was not too keen on the memory of Princess Sara, so we moved on to different topics, but an important piece of the puzzle was now in place. No wonder Yasmine had kicked up such a fuss to return to her mother. With such a doting Mama, who wouldn’t?

  I looked around at the animated faces of the women in the room and the tables humming with conversation. The Saudi women there were the agents of change in Saudi Arabia, as they worked quietly to overcome the restrictions they were born into. This was the road I had chosen not to take. I had chosen a different challenge, one that fluttered like a diaphanous mirage, there one minute, gone the next, while I tried to make sense of a post-war Lebanon. For Saudi Arabian women, the path was crystal clear and they were already making headway. If it were women leading Saudi Arabia, the nation would be in far better hands.

  These days, the young Saudi Arabs are radically different. Many have had opportunities, like I did, to venture outside of Saudi Arabia for an education that is free of the hatred and anger inherent in the Wahhabiimposed curriculum. I went to a shopping mall with my brother Ghassan who was now in a wheelchair and entered the elevator with a young Saudi Arabian man who helped me maneuver the vehicle. He gazed sympathetically at Ghassan, and then asked him softly what his illness was. Ghassan answered in a matter-of-fact manner: “I was sick as a child and the motor nerves in my brain were destroyed.”

  The young man nodded thoughtfully, “That’s what I thought. I’m a physiotherapist. God willing, a cure will be discovered to help you.”

  Ghassan and I exchanged glances, remembering our run-in with a similarly aged young man who accused Ghassan of being a drunk, many years ago in Half Moon Bay.

  I would see yet more heartening signs that Saudi Arabia was changing. I wanted to exchange some dollars and walked into the first bank I saw in the mall. A young man at the counter smiled politely when I approached, listened to my request, then told me apologetically, “There is a bank next door, Madame, for women. Would you like to step over there and they can help you.”

  I paused, then thought about it and told him, “Okay but if it’s crowded, I’ll come back to you.”

  I walked out of the bank, then decided not to bother and walked back to him again. He saw that I had not gone to the bank next door, gave me a sympathetic look and processed my request.

  I said goodbye to Mama before I left for the airport to return to Beirut. She opened her eyes to give me a sweet smile then went back into her reverie. She was in good hands with two devoted Filipino nurses, Maria and Dolores, and Ghassan who kept a watchful eye over her. Most importantly, my father was always nearby. I climbed into the car with Marwan and we drove to Fahd International Airport in Dammam. My father was in Jeddah and I had not seen him this trip.

  Before reaching the airport, I checked my papers for the fifth time to make sure I had everything I needed. I wanted to go home; I missed my family, the world was always an exciting place in their company. Marwan checked my papers again, permission to travel signed by my father being the most important. Yes it was there. At the airport I kissed him goodbye and insisted that he go home, no need to wait for me. As we lined up for the passports control, a smiling Lebanese businessman stood behind me and asked if it was okay for me to say we were together, since the line for the non-nationals was so long. “Sure,” I chirped.

  It was my turn to present my passport. I gave it to the passport’s official who was dressed in a green uniform, reflecting the official stamp Saudi Arabia was giving to its government employees. I handed him my passport and every paper I had, which included my father’s permission in ten copies, my marriage certificate, permission from my husband that I could travel and, as a safety precaution, the permission Adnan had signed to Marwan to take care of any official signatures I would need in his absence. The Lebanese businessman smiled sympathetically as I gave him a rueful smile. This was 2001 and I was fifty years old.

  The skinny passports officer who had not returned my smile shuffled through my papers then stated in monotone that I did not have the necessary permission to pass through. My heart jumped into my throat.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him nervously, “It says here over and over that I am married to a Lebanese, my father has signed these permission slips and I have the marriage certificate to prove it.”

  The passports officer did not change his expression and repeated in monotone, that I did not have the necessary paper, and he did not have the authority to let me pass; he would lose his job if my papers were double checked by a second airport officer at the entrance to the airplane. The Lebanese businessman fidgeted, the time for boarding had been announced. I stepped aside to let him through. The passports officer stamped his passport absentmindedly not bothering with his non-national status in a national line. I was the one he was after, a Saudi woman trying to leave the country without the original copy of her father’s permission … at the age of 50 … with five grown children. I did not exist in my own right regardless of whether I were the head of the United Nations.

  The passports officer was unyielding, and to get me off his case he motioned to the head officer’s office behind me. I was in a state of panic I had not felt under the worst bombing in Lebanon. A sense of deep insult shook my very being and feelings of being buried alive in a dark locked coffin engulfed me. I took a deep breath and decided to try diplomacy. The official was a tall dark man with an accent that placed him from Central Arabia. My heart sank when I heard his dialect. My chances of a sympathetic hearing had plummeted. And I was right. The man threw my papers back at me with a brief dismissive, “Go back home and come back with your father.”

  That did it. I stood at his office door to make sure every national and non-national and passports officer and airport janitor could hear me and let my voice soar about my unjust treatment as a Saudi woman and about his unfairness in blindly following edicts that did not make sense. The officer said nothing, only repeating what he had been ordered to say. A young pleasant-faced Saudi Airlines employee approached and asked me softly to follow him. I did. When he was out of the airport officer’s hearing range, he expressed his support for my case and apologized for my pain and insult.

  “You have been wronged,” he told me sympathetically, “I will do what is in my official power to get you on board.”

  I was touched by this young man’s empathy. My countrymen were as anxious for personal freedom as my countrywomen. Unfortunately, he was unable to get the edict reversed. It was written in stone by the official Saudi government law that I, as a Saudi Arab woman, could not leave the country without the original copy of my father’s written permission or any male custodian, even if I were a hundred years old. Defeated and depressed I called my brother and returned to Dhahran crying myself to sleep from feelings of subjection.

  The next morning I hauled my suitcase into Marwan’s car once more. We were going to try to make it out of Saudi Arabia through the Bahraini borders. Marwan had suggested the idea.

  “They usually just wave us through,” he had encouraged me. “I’ve never needed to show my passport entering Bahrain; it’s always on the way back.”

  Heartened, we drove listening to the Beatles and Bob Dylan and reminiscing about our childhood days. We slowed down at the Saudi Arab passports cubicle on the mouth of the bridge that connected mainland Saudi Arabia to the island of Bahrain. There was a traffic snarl as a busload of non-nationals was checked. We would never make my flight at this rate. Finally our turn came up, Marwan held up his Saudi passport and I held up mine while Marwan called out “Ukhti” (my sister), in reference to me. The Saudi officer nodded and waved us on. The euphoria I felt was the same we had felt when we had driven with Fatin to Half Moon Bay. Freedom. I recalled the modern, sophisticated, professional Saudi women that I had met, so tasteful, graceful and well spo
ken. Before any of us could benefit from any political reform, we needed to be recognized as equal citizens first. To enshrine women’s rights Saudi law did not need to look very far for the correct implementation of the law within the Islamic parameters. The Shari’a, as Abu Bashar had explained to me, gave Muslim women legal rights which even their Western counterparts didn’t have.

  I sat back overwhelmed with feelings of intense relief. Saudi Arabia was awash with foreign and American interests who lived their lives freely within their compounds, and we, the subjects of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, were forced to live in tightly locked cells. Oil profits depended on working with those forces that could guarantee political control over Arabia and those forces were the Al Sa’uds and their Wahhabi ‘ulema. Saudi oil was more important to the West, for all its discourse about democracy and human rights, than the equality of Saudi women.

  We slowed down once more at the Bahraini passports cubicle. Marwan waved his Saudi passport smilingly once more. The Bahraini official leaned out of his cubicle and took his passport leafing through it. Despite Marwan’s assurances, my mouth went dry with anxiety, “You’re a Saudi? I can’t believe it. Where did you get the red hair?”

  “My mother’s Syrian,” Marwan laughed.

  “I should have guessed, and your name is Marwan, my favorite name. Have a nice afternoon,” the Bahraini officer grinned, waving us through.

  It was as simple as that. And had the airport official at Fahd Airport wanted it, it could have been as simple as that there too. We sped to Bahrain Airport and were rushed to the flight by the Middle East Airlines Bahraini official.

  “Hurry, Madame, what kept you?” he asked me as we ran to the airplane that had already closed its passenger list. He spoke urgently on the two-way radio and ordered the flight to open its door for one last passenger.

  “We were held up at the Saudi borders,” I breathlessly answered as we ran.

  He laughed at the obvious insinuation, and turned to wink at me smiling, “You’re in good hands here in Bahrain. We don’t hold anyone up.”

  As I buckled up in my airplane seat listening to the chatter of the Lebanese passengers who had the knack of turning any gathering into a festive gabfest, I closed my eyes feeling happier than I had felt in a long long time. There was hope. Tens of thousands of young, educated men and women within Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the Emirates with a strong sense of justice were no longer taking subjugation sitting down.

  Postscript

  Back to the Future

  It is early morning and I am standing on the balcony overlooking Beirut and its airport. This is where I have spent the better part of the past month, since Israel’s latest war on Lebanon erupted on July 12, 2006. The breeze is amazingly soft and fresh this morning, the bougainvillea is in full purple dress. One could surely be forgiven in the midst of all this loveliness if one momentarily forgot the war. But the thick stream of black smoke stretched across the first pink blush of dawn brings me back to the war zone. More than a thousand so far have perished in this latest onslaught. Fat plumes of mottled smoke from bombs on the airport’s fuel storage depot and the persistent buzz of the spy drone defile the clear summer sky above. It is at night that the ugliness of the carnage is brought home. The bright twinkling lights of the airport and the Shi’a southern suburb of Dahiyeh have been obliterated. There is a deathly silent blanket of black instead.

  We had met the first shuddering blasts on the airport’s runways with nervous laughter. Their ‘shock and awe’ was not going to faze us. The only ones with the common sense to feel fear were the dogs. Our three German Shepherds, Leah, Eva and Schwarz, abandoned their sentry duties with sharp barks of alarm to the safety of the most inner recesses of their cages where they cowered, whimpering pitifully. Shnoodles, our Bolognese mix terrier, did not fare much better. He served merely as an early warning system by suddenly jumping from the sofa and squeezing his fat torso under it, seconds before the ‘smart’ bombs ‘pinpointed’ their targets.

  However our uneasy bravado has long since disappeared as bombs continue to crash into the schools, hospitals and civilian homes of Dahiyeh and to flatten entire towns and villages in the south, dawn after dawn after dawn. Pancaked buildings fill the television screen daily, as do images of terrified children separated from their mothers in the panic of flight and those of old people carried on the backs of their sons as they flee on foot.

  It is impossible to think of anything except the war. I look at the book I was reading before war broke out, The Whispering Land by Gerald Durrel, and it just doesn’t make sense to read it any more. The author talks about penguins and Chile and all I want is more information about the war; we are glued to the TV, radio and internet for minute by minute updates.

  The summer of 2006 was slated to be Lebanon’s best since the days before the civil war. Tourists were arriving in droves by air, land and sea. Families scattered across the globe for schooling and employment were reuniting in Lebanon and there was a bumper season of weddings lined up. Cultural events were boasting international heavyweight names, brand new ultra-modern beach resorts of a luxurious standard never seen before in Lebanon, lined the southern coastal road leading to Sidon. Gulf Arabs were pouring into Lebanon, as happy to return to their old watering holes as the Lebanese tourist industry was to receive them. In addition to the party fever gripping Lebanon, there was World Cup soccer fever everywhere. National flags of Fifa’s favored teams fluttered from balconies in every town, village and suburb in a time-honored Lebanese custom of compensating for not having a participating team of their own. Brazil, Germany, France, Italy … and Saudi Arabia were the clear favorites.

  We were content with our lives. Business was good, our orchards were flourishing, our children were grown and following their hearts and minds in five different directions. We were now the proud grandparents of a new Khayyat, Munira’s son, Nessim, born on October 1, 2005. She had married Heiko Wimmen, a German scholar of the Middle East and he had conceded his name in favor of hers as a last name for their son. Nessim quickly became the primary focus of each and every one of us and Munira was hard put to have private time with her baby without one of us turning up at her doorstep.

  Then war struck.

  The famed Baalbeck Festival was hosting Lebanon’s famous diva, Fairouz, that night in a sold-out nostalgic salute to Lebanon’s dolce vita in the 1960s, when she used to perform there. The audience ended up being captive to more than Fairouz’s voice. With bombs hailing around them, they remained trapped in the only modest hotel in Baalbeck for 24 hours, before a brief respite allowed them to reach their homes.

  That terrible night, Yasmine and Rola were in the midst of arrangements for their summer holiday. Each was heading to a different destination, Rola to Perugia in central Italy for a summer art program and Yasmine to New York to begin her PhD at Columbia in Comparative Literature. Munira and Ghassan were in their successive apartments in Beirut. They too were getting their travel plans in order, Munira to New York for her PhD’s oral defense at Columbia and Ghassan to London for a Master’s degree in Journalism. Amer had long moved out of Lebanon and was now in Aberdeen as an executive account manager with Schlumberger.

  We had just returned from dropping Adnan off at the airport for a short business trip and I was lazily switching from one TV station to the next while I waited to be summoned into the girls’ rooms for further travel discussion. Suddenly, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s Secretary General, appeared on the screen. In his customary calm and clear voice, he announced the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of three others along the Israeli-Lebanese blue line in the south. Nasrallah gave his conditions for the hostages’ repatriation: “Give us back our men and we will return yours,” in reference to Lebanese resistance fighters in Israel’s prisons.

  Bushra and I were on the phone with one another immediately. “It’s war,” we nervously said simultaneously. Adnan immediately tried to fly back to Beirut. But it was too late. Before he
could do any booking that night, the airport was bombed and a vicious air, sea and land blockade was thrown around Lebanon.

  I was immediately on the phone ordering Munira and Ghassan to come to Doha. Although both lived in reasonably safe quarters, I was terrified that the roads would be cut off and they would become unreachable. We had no idea where the bombs were going to fall next. I did not rest until they stepped through the door. Nessim’s wide hazel flecked eyes, toothy smile, and baby bear hug brought me back to all that is beautiful and important in life. He was discovering the world and loving it. We so wanted to keep it that way.

  Ghassan’s MSN messenger tag became “digging up trenches in my backyard.”

  “This is a war like no other and we will win like no Arab has won before,” I repeated to my forlorn husband-in-exile in our hourly updates by phone and to Amer who had cleared his desk in Aberdeen of Schlumberger’s office work to make room for a TV.

  Our first close range bombardment had an electrifying effect on us. I was drifting off to sleep to the voices of the girls’ chatter when a crash of claps of thunder multiplied times a thousand rattled the house and jolted us into breathless shock. The twins ran for their cats, and Munira ran for her sleeping son and stood shaking in the hallway covering his ears. He looked around groggily, saw his mother, and went back to sleep. This was Heiko’s first ever war experience and he was taking it a lot better than the rest us. We milled around in circles desperate to find out exactly how exposed we were to danger. Bashar and Hana called me from their house, 50 meters away from ours. This was their first war experience and they were trying very hard to remain composed. When the second bomb crashed, it had the exact same effect on us as the first.