It was horrible. I had never gotten into a public fight; even in primary school, my sister had been disgusted by my refusal to fight back. I didn’t even know how to return an insult. I finally understood why my sister had complained to Mama about her not letting us play with the street children. I realized the value of becoming hardened to these words and learning how to defend ourselves.
I told K. what these other women had said. I was caught in an untenable situation: gossip about K., the fallout over my decision to briefly stop wearing the abaya, my drinking coffee with foreign male colleagues, my family facing pressure because I was living alone. I asked K. whether he would approach my father to ask for my hand in marriage but we could not get beyond the subject of Aramco and the niqab. Dalia’s words (“You bitch!”) and the contemptuous looks I received from my old university classmate every morning were eating away at me inside. There wasn’t a single person I trusted except my friend Malak, back in Mecca. But she couldn’t help; she was just as confused as me.
Things continued in this vein until Mama came to visit. At the end of her stay, I accompanied her to the Aramco airport. (Aramco has its own airport and aircraft, which the employees and their families can use.) She called me the next day.
“The officer responsible for issuing boarding passes admired you very much,” she informed me excitedly. “He asked me about you after you left. He took my number and his mother called me today to inquire about you and him getting engaged.”
I had long objected to the manner in which these proposals were made, but this one was different: it offered a way out from my daily torment, and that was all that mattered now. “Yes,” I told Mama, “I give my consent.”
She was very happy, and I miserable. I sent a text to K. informing him that our relationship was over: “Someone has asked for my hand in marriage, and I have given my initial consent.” I didn’t get any response, and I knew it was the end.
The next day my mother received a call from a Saudi mother. When she called to tell me, I assumed that the shoufa meeting with the airport employee’s mother had been arranged. But it had been K.’s mother on the other end of the line. “We wish to pay a visit to you and your husband in Jeddah,” she had told Mama.
I told my mother to forget about the first suitor. The date was set, and I booked a ticket to Jeddah to be there for K.’s family’s visit.
After all the sharp-tongued gossip, I was eager for the other girls to learn of my engagement. I put aside thoughts of the arguments about the niqab, about my resignation from Aramco, about everything else. I entered the office the next day with my head held high, and told one of my lunch companions, “K. approached me officially about our engagement.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “I don’t find the two of you at all compatible. And he’s very arrogant.”
I didn’t give her opinion much weight; I didn’t give any opinion much weight. What mattered to me was that the gossip would stop. I hoped that the news would reach Reem and Dalia, and sure enough it did. Reem offered her congratulations to K., and next thing I knew he was calling to berate me. In the midst of screamed insults, I understood one thing: that if the news of our engagement reached any more of his work colleagues, everything would be over.
“Do not ever think that you can ever be my wife while you’re working here,” he told me. “On the day we get married, you will resign from Aramco, and until that day, the subject of our engagement is to remain a secret. I am ashamed that my future wife is revealing her face and working with men.”
On the day of our engagement meeting, he was still angry and we weren’t talking. Mama met his mother and K. met Abouya and my brother.
For the first time, my father offered calm advice. “My daughter,” he said gently, “I don’t think he is a good fit for us. He thinks very highly of himself, what with him being an only son. You will become very weary with him.”
But my father had no idea how weary I already was. “Abouya,” I wanted to tell him, “I am willing to have a man trample my dignity if it silences the girls who are slandering my reputation every day.” But, as always, I didn’t say a thing.
I was also deeply troubled by guilt. I thought I would never be cleansed of my sin unless K. became my husband.
The marriage ceremony was scheduled, but nothing else was resolved. On the good days, I loved him passionately; on the bad ones, I hated him. We screamed and hurled insults and hung up on each other. But there was no going back now. I could not back out of the wedding. In preparation for our life together, I even had surgery to repair some of the damage caused by my childhood female circumcision.
On the day of our wedding, K. wasn’t speaking to me again. I can’t remember why. The problems flowed together like drops of water until they became indistinguishable from one another; all that remained was the fast-moving river that formed in their wake. Even my father’s cousins were unhappy; tribal rules dictated that our family’s girls not marry outside the Ashraf tribe. But the wedding was proceeding.
My father had decided that the marriage contract ceremony would be held at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, with my uncle serving as one of the witnesses. I did not attend my own ceremony. I was sitting in a beauty salon in Jeddah, getting ready for the celebratory dinner afterward. I didn’t stand in front of the sheikh, and wasn’t asked whether I accepted K. as my husband. My answers were of no consequence anyway; the men returned from Mecca with the wedding contract just the same.
“Now you are my wife” were his first words to me after the ceremony. “I won’t allow you to uncover your face after today.”
We had reached a temporary accommodation over my continuing to work: it would be permitted after our ceremony, for the signing of the marriage contract, on April 1, but had to stop once we held our official wedding party on August 26—in Saudi culture, these are two different events and not always held at the same time. In other countries, this period between the marriage contract and the wedding party would be equivalent to an engagement, but in Saudi, a girl may not speak to her fiancé without having her official marriage documents completed and signed. K. knew that I was supporting my family financially. I still paid half the rent of the apartment in Jeddah and all the related bills, still gave Mama and my brother an allowance each month. I had borrowed from the bank twice—first to buy a used car for my brother, and later to buy a new taxi for my father, to replace his run-down old one. I was still paying back these loans. But K. quickly became disconsolate over my continued employment. He was determined: it was either my job or him.