A Girl Like That(16)
“Hey.” He’d paused by the used-books stall I was standing next to and leaned an elbow across the counter. “You in Class XI?”
In response, I had pulled out a magazine on display and studied the cover—an old copy of Vogue featuring an American pop singer, her bare legs colored over with Magic Marker. Neat black lines followed the curves of her calves and thighs, giving the appearance of leggings.
“Hellooo.” Abdullah snapped a finger next to my ear.
“Not interested,” I said out loud. Good-looking though he might have been, I knew who Abdullah was. I had seen enough of his pictures in the school yearbook, read enough newsletter bulletins about his trophies and track team records. In any case, his last name, on a badge clipped to the lapel of his navy-blue school blazer along with the title Sports Captain was a dead giveaway. There was only one Al-Abdulaziz in the boys’ school who had been appointed to that position that year, and he was the brother of a girl who hated my guts.
“You’re being rude, you know,” he said, following me when I left the stall. “I wanted your opinion on the Independence Day exhibition stalls. I’m writing an article for the newsletter and I wanted an eleventh-grade girl’s opinion.”
“Oh really?” I raised my eyebrows. “Why don’t you ask your sister, then?”
“Well, because she’s my sister, duh,” he said with a grin. “What’s the point of writing an article if you can’t interview pretty girls?”
I couldn’t help smirking. “You’d be guilty of khilwa, you know.”
His eyes widened in mock horror. “Uh-oh, don’t tell me that I found another religious policewoman at QA. I thought Mishal was the only one!”
The joke made me laugh out loud. It stuck with me through the rest of our conversation, as he showed me the Independence Day exhibits and asked questions, taking notes whenever I said something. The Dog Lady always said that if you could make a girl laugh, you could make her yours. Maybe there was some truth to that statement, because at the end of the interview, when Abdullah finally asked for my number, I scribbled it down on his interview sheet along with my name.
*
“You’re fairly brave,” I told Abdullah a week later as I slid into the front passenger seat of his big maroon GMC. “Most guys would be worried about getting in trouble with the cops. Or the Hai’a.”
Unlike the other boys I’d dated, Abdullah never seemed threatened by the religious police, which might have partly been the effect of having a Saudi father with connections in the government. Jeddah, Abdullah told me, was considered Saudi Arabia’s liberal city even though its name translated to grandmother in English. A city seemingly devoid of sentinels from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice: an old lady with mischief up her black sleeves. Here, it seemed perfectly natural for elaborately designed mosques to coexist with giant sculptures of bicycles and geometry sets. Jeddah offered those few courting opportunities that couples were denied in most other parts of the Kingdom, even though few such relationships lasted long. I’d learned from experience that a love story that began with a phone number tossed on a piece of paper at a crowded mall could end abruptly, within days, leaving behind radio silence.
Abdullah laughed at me now. “You’re talking about trouble? You’ll be in more trouble than me if we’re caught. At least I’m a Muslim. You’re not that; heck, you’re not even a Christian. You could die in an accident tomorrow, but you’d still get jack from the government. Let me think—what is the going rate for Parsi chicks found dead in ditches?”
“Three thousand three hundred thirty-three riyals,” I replied. “Not even half your father’s salary, ya walad.”
He laughed even harder at that. “Your Arabic accent is so Indian.”
The comment brought out a question I’d been thinking of ever since Abdullah and I had started going out. “How come you and Mishal didn’t go to a Saudi school?”
Segregation in Saudi Arabia wasn’t limited to gender alone. Apart from rare gatherings to celebrate Eid at offices, there seemed to be a natural divide between the Saudis and the expatriates, each community keeping to itself in matters of education and socializing. The Saudis had their own school system with an all-Arabic curriculum and a focus on Islamic studies. There were also private schools that Abdullah had told me about where wealthy Arabs sent their kids for an English education, whose graduates had the chance to apply to universities in America and Europe. It seemed more likely to me that both Abdullah and Mishal would have gone to one of these schools instead of Qala Academy, which wasn’t that fancy, and where the curriculum mainly focused on South Asians planning to return to their home countries.
He gave me a tight-lipped smile. “My mother wanted it. Father agreed. Besides, I’m half-Indian too, remember?”
There was a brief, awkward silence before he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Want one?” He offered them casually, in a way that told me he didn’t really expect me to take him up on his offer.
“Sure.” I flicked one from the pack and lit up.
He smiled. It was a nice smile, accentuating a cleft in his chin that I had not noticed before. “You’re different,” he said. “Different from any other girl I know.”
“You’re different too,” I admitted. “I’m surprised you’re even related to Mishal.”