Indeed, she had dialed our house phone number so insistently that she had practically scratched out the buttons on the phone. She drummed up a trial against me, with an imaginary panel of ten judges. I was accused of bad behavior on the basis of shutting my door and turning off my cell phone as well, and then additionally of alarming the servant.
Now I’ll become the champion of the oppressed and it will all be because of you, she said. I asked her what she wanted in a voice that did not hide the hurry I was in. She wanted me to stay over at her house tonight. The time of Hiba’s call, and our phone conversation itself, sent a vague sensation of anxiety moving through my insides, despite the clear enthusiasm in her voice. It was not normal for her to call me at a late hour on a Wednesday night asking me to come and stay over that very night. Indeed, it was very unusual for me to be anywhere but at home overnight, unless it was summer vacation or a Ramadan night, since the timing of everything, and everyone’s schedules, was turned upside down during Ramadan. I put my middle finger to my forehead and, my eyes wandering, smiled vaguely toward Dai, who for her part stopped surfing the TV channels. Her question took me by surprise.
What do you think of Sundus?
Several years before, when I had begun to attend summer religious courses, Sundus was a popular and familiar face to all, year after year. Gradually, our reticent smiles had turned into greetings offered from a distance, and then into handshakes and a friendly, casual companionship. Finally, she asked me to work with her, writing for a magazine called
Dawn
. With Hassan’s encouragement, and after some hesitation, I agreed. Sundus was the female bridge connecting me to Aqil, her brother and one of the managers of the magazine.
Months later, Sundus and I had weathered the year of true terror: the third year of high school with its awful exams. Together, we were accepted to the College of Sciences in Dammam. My turn came to take the initiative just as she had, and I invited her to join up with us at the Hussainiyya. As I was new to the place, everything there was completely foreign to me; in Sundus I saw a shield to protect me, someone whose confident steps my wary, uncertain feet could follow. (Naturally, when I had offered the same possibility to Hiba—for she was my closest friend—the reaction was a loud guffaw.) Hidaya, for whom the Hussainiyya was a family-founded religious endowment, and who was related to my mother, treated me like the group’s spoiled daughter, especially as I was the youngest among them. She did not reject Sundus’s membership. In fact, she welcomed her warmly, perhaps because her reputation as a writer in a religious magazine had preceded her.
The two of us remained wrapped up in our own little cocoon. We mixed with the other girls, but we were equally able to do without them. Perhaps this was because of the unmistakable age difference between us and them, with the exception of Dai, who was about our age. At that time, though, Dai made no friendly overtures toward us. And even though the relationship between Sundus and me had not taken on any special warmth, in her I perceived one of those people who make you embarrassed because of the extreme humanity you find in them.
We thought alike. I didn’t have to explain myself twice for Sundus to get what I was saying, even if the ways we expressed ourselves differed. Sundus’s take on things was that you had to look at everything with reflection and patience. You couldn’t even hope to get close to your goals if you did not give them a lot of deliberation. These sorts of things that we were working on required a lot of time to build. I, on the other hand, found this attitude too lenient, too easy going, and it produced no real benefit. The way I saw it, we had to be forthright about dealing with our pus rather than letting our blood corrupt and rot.
I was really put off by Dai’s
Now I’ll become the champion of the oppressed and it will all be because of you, she said. I asked her what she wanted in a voice that did not hide the hurry I was in. She wanted me to stay over at her house tonight. The time of Hiba’s call, and our phone conversation itself, sent a vague sensation of anxiety moving through my insides, despite the clear enthusiasm in her voice. It was not normal for her to call me at a late hour on a Wednesday night asking me to come and stay over that very night. Indeed, it was very unusual for me to be anywhere but at home overnight, unless it was summer vacation or a Ramadan night, since the timing of everything, and everyone’s schedules, was turned upside down during Ramadan. I put my middle finger to my forehead and, my eyes wandering, smiled vaguely toward Dai, who for her part stopped surfing the TV channels. Her question took me by surprise.
What do you think of Sundus?
Several years before, when I had begun to attend summer religious courses, Sundus was a popular and familiar face to all, year after year. Gradually, our reticent smiles had turned into greetings offered from a distance, and then into handshakes and a friendly, casual companionship. Finally, she asked me to work with her, writing for a magazine called
Dawn
. With Hassan’s encouragement, and after some hesitation, I agreed. Sundus was the female bridge connecting me to Aqil, her brother and one of the managers of the magazine.
Months later, Sundus and I had weathered the year of true terror: the third year of high school with its awful exams. Together, we were accepted to the College of Sciences in Dammam. My turn came to take the initiative just as she had, and I invited her to join up with us at the Hussainiyya. As I was new to the place, everything there was completely foreign to me; in Sundus I saw a shield to protect me, someone whose confident steps my wary, uncertain feet could follow. (Naturally, when I had offered the same possibility to Hiba—for she was my closest friend—the reaction was a loud guffaw.) Hidaya, for whom the Hussainiyya was a family-founded religious endowment, and who was related to my mother, treated me like the group’s spoiled daughter, especially as I was the youngest among them. She did not reject Sundus’s membership. In fact, she welcomed her warmly, perhaps because her reputation as a writer in a religious magazine had preceded her.
The two of us remained wrapped up in our own little cocoon. We mixed with the other girls, but we were equally able to do without them. Perhaps this was because of the unmistakable age difference between us and them, with the exception of Dai, who was about our age. At that time, though, Dai made no friendly overtures toward us. And even though the relationship between Sundus and me had not taken on any special warmth, in her I perceived one of those people who make you embarrassed because of the extreme humanity you find in them.
We thought alike. I didn’t have to explain myself twice for Sundus to get what I was saying, even if the ways we expressed ourselves differed. Sundus’s take on things was that you had to look at everything with reflection and patience. You couldn’t even hope to get close to your goals if you did not give them a lot of deliberation. These sorts of things that we were working on required a lot of time to build. I, on the other hand, found this attitude too lenient, too easy going, and it produced no real benefit. The way I saw it, we had to be forthright about dealing with our pus rather than letting our blood corrupt and rot.
I was really put off by Dai’s
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