Black Book of Arabia by Hend Al Qassemi Page B

touch with reality. Reality struck when the prince told her that Lulu, the Saudi student who had moved in with her family, had used Sheikha’s pictures, interests, and even voicemail message to lure him into an engagement. All this was overwhelming and emotionally draining.
    Sheikha felt partly to blame for the fiasco with the prince. Preoccupied with the preparations for her marriage, she had largely ignored Lulu for almost a year. They had stopped going out together and spoke at home only when they met by chance. Not that Lulu seemed to mind. Once she failed in school, she simply stayed at home, treating the palace as a well-appointed, free hotel, coming and going with little or no attachment to Sheikha or her family. When finally asked to leave, Lulu would cry and say she felt more at home and loved than she did in Saudi Arabia and would promise to study harder and succeed, because she did not want to return to her home country. Sheikha realized that if she had been closer to Lulu, her friend might not have concocted her crazy plan, or, if she did, she might have discovered it. Regardless, the time had come for a quick, clean break.
    Sheikha confronted Lulu and asked her to leave. Lulu was in tears. She said she did not mean to hurt Sheikha. All she had wanted was a bridge to reach her secure home, and she sincerely believed the prince would have loved her eventually—it happened, or at least it
could
happen. She only needed an opportunity to marry her prince. Simple.
Only
an introduction. The end justified the means, did it not? And everyone would end up happy. She felt she had earned the right to borrow her friend’s character, face, status and all else if the character, face and status she wanted to be with in order to be happy required this entrance. Pure Machiavellianism at its best. After all, was Machiavelli’s book not called
The Prince
?
    Lulu apologized to Sheikha for stealing her identity but stubbornly clung to her justification for her behavior. Everyone, she said, would have been happy in the end. Sheikha smiled at the thought of Prince Sultan being happy with Lulu as his bride. A few minutes over the phone with him were enough to know that Lulu was everything he would not have wanted in a woman.
No sense arguing
, Sheikha thought, and, although it broke her heart to be so cold to someone she once loved, she told Lulu she was no longer welcome in her home. Lulu was to collect her travel documents and belongings and leave immediately and quietly. The family need not know of her fiasco. Sheikha, who had already scheduled a flight to Paris, would pay for Lulu’s flight back to Saudi Arabia. When she returned from Paris, Lulu needed to be gone.
    The night before Sheikha’s flight, Lulu stood outside her door and begged to speak with her again. Sheikha had locked the door to her bedroom and welded closed the door to her heart. Her fiancé spoke to her that night and she told him that Lulu was leaving. He had never liked Lulu and was pleased, especially since he had thought Sheikha was feeling sad at having to soon leave her family and her friend behind. Lulu had betrayed her in ways no one ever had before, embarrassing her in front of another royal and country. Sheikha never wanted to see or even think of her again. As Lulu whined and cried outside her door, Sheikha deleted and blocked her from WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Viber, and Twitter.
    Sheikha left for Paris early the next morning, while Lulu was still in bed. At the airport, she again recalled the phoneconversation with the prince. When the plane lifted off, Sheikha relaxed for the first time since the prince’s call. At last her worries were behind her.
    Sheikha made the rounds of her favorite designers in Paris and London, choosing a few select items of the latest designer wear to complete her dream trousseau. She and her groom would be going on an extended honeymoon, and she needed the wardrobe of a young married woman,