Nawaf texted me that evening.
I just can’t get over how beautiful you are in your hijab and your abaya. For so long I’ve been hoping to meet a woman who combined East with West. The elegance of an Arab woman with the sophistication of a Western woman.
I couldn’t believe that this very important man was mesmerised by me!
Now that I was officially on spring break, I’d no longer have opportunities to make or receive phone calls from guys during the day. I sighed as I texted him about Baba. I felt like I was on autopilot as I told him that I had a strict father and that it’d be nearly impossible for me to call him at home. So he texted back his email address and told me to communicate with him on Windows Live Messenger.
Looking back, two of my biggest flaws in my twenties was my impulsiveness and my naivety when it came to men. I wanted to give every man a chance, refusing to generalise all Gulf men based on an ex’s bad behaviour.
After only two days of chatting on Windows Live Messenger, Nawaf suggested a lunch date. I didn’t play hard to get as I’d been advised to so many times by Heba. I agreed to go out with him straight away.
I’d yet again made it on to the Dean’s list that semester so it would buy me favours from Baba, and he wouldn’t object to me going out with my ‘friends from university.’ We set a date for the following Monday.
I felt very self-conscious about going out with Nawaf. I felt like I needed to be the elegant, sophisticated woman that I was convinced he was used to.
The morning of our lunch date, I slid open the door of my wardrobe and looked at my small collection of four abayas in frustration. I chose the best abaya I owned, the one I kept for special occasions. It was made of a glossy black material and had bat wings. It only had three buttons at the top, so you had to pull it over the top of your head to get it on, like a dress. The sleeves were tight like shirt cuffs and they were studded with fake white pearls. White pearly beads were studded haphazardly over the front and back of the bodice too. It was the best abaya I had and the obvious choice.
I put on full party make-up, knowing I’d get away with it as Baba was at work and Mum had no issues with me wearing it. I put on pink lip gloss, not wanting to risk another episode where I wasn’t able to remove red lipstick before getting home.
I told Nawaf to pick me up at a small shopping mall that was a short walk from our house. I wasn’t having him pick me up anywhere near our house.
As I went out of the front door, Mum called out to me from the living room to be home by maghrib prayer.
Once I’d got around the corner, I took the end of my black shayla, and I used it as a ghishwa to cover my face.
As I left my relatively quiet residential neighbourhood and walked the busy commercial streets, Gulf men slowed down in their cars and stared at me as I walked along the pavement. I suppose with my ghishwa on they assumed I was a Gulf woman, and Gulf women didn’t walk about in the street and cross roads in the sun at midday. Gulf women were chauffeured around from shop door to shop door.
When I got to the mall, I called Nawaf to let him know I’d arrived.
“Come down to the basement parking,” he instructed. “I’m only two minutes away. I’ll be in a silver Range Rover.”
I took the escalator down to the basement level and waited by the automatic doors, where the air conditioning blew directly into my face, not wanting to wait outside in a hot and stuffy car park.
He was fifteen minutes late.
As I climbed into the car, Nawaf motioned at me with his finger to keep silent. He was talking on the phone to someone through an earpiece. We drove off in the direction of the city centre, and a few minutes later he wrapped up his telephone conversation.
“Sorry about that. I had an important work phone call.”
“I thought Gulf men could just come in and out of work as they please?” I asked.
He laughed. “Not where I work.”
“Where do you work?”
“If I told you I’d have to kill you,” he said, and continued to laugh. There was something about his tone that unnerved me. “Where do you want to go for lunch?”
“Honestly, I’m not picky. I don’t mind. Wherever,” I replied.
“Ah, you women, you can never make your minds up!” he said, laughing again.
I noticed when he smiled he bared all his teeth, which were slightly yellow around the edges. He’d told me he was thirty, but sitting next to him, I would have put him at thirty-five or thirty-six. He’d said he was divorced and that he wouldn’t marry a Gulf woman again because they were spoilt and he wanted a foreign wife next time. I’d never dated anyone who was divorced before but it didn’t bother me.
“How about we have lunch at the same hotel we were at for the conference last week?” he suggested. “I know a very elegant Lebanese restaurant there—if you don’t mind of course?”
“Yeah, sure, I like Lebanese food,” I replied.
I wasn’t going to turn down an offer for lunch at a luxury hotel.
There was no one at the Lebanese restaurant, which had an outside terrace that looked on to the hotel’s gardens. Heavy red brocade curtains hung over the windows, and the chairs looked like French chalais chairs.
When Nawaf walked in, the restaurant manager called him sheikh and immediately started kissing up to him. I couldn’t stand it when non-Gulf Arabs who worked in the Gulf did that. I didn’t care if you were Gulf or not, I treated everyone the same.
The moment the restaurant manager addressed Nawaf with the word sheikh it could only mean one thing—he was definitely from the royal family. There were only three reasons why you would call an Arab man sheikh: either they were old (which Nawaf wasn’t), a religious leader (again not applicable), or a member of the royal family.
After the restaurant manager had stopped fussing over Nawaf, he led us over to a table in the family section—which was in a corridor in the restaurant restricted to couples and families. The tables were arranged back to back in rows, with wooden lattice dividers between them that offered some privacy.
The manager handed over just one menu to Nawaf and without asking me what I wanted to eat, he ordered a selection of kebabs and chips for the both of us. It always confused me how Gulf men were gentlemanly and courteous towards women in some aspects, but completely indifferent and inconsiderate in others. I know some women may have found that rude but I didn’t mind. I wasn’t a fussy eater.
Nawaf told me about all the countries he’d visited and I pretended to know about them but truthfully I’d only been to Egypt. I felt like I was in a scene from Pretty Woman.
“Have you ever been camping?” Nawaf asked as the waiter cleared away our plates and brought him a pot of steaming Moroccan mint tea in a traditional Arabian teapot.
“Well, I once did a weekend of activities in the English countryside. We slept in barracks with a Muslim Girls Scouts group before I moved out here.” I took the small round teacup he offered me.
“No, I mean real camping. You know, desert style, like the Bedouins,” he said.
I shook my head.
Nawaf smiled. “I should take you to my family’s camp next week when I’m back from my work trip to London. The camping season is about to finish and our manservants will disassemble the tents soon.”
“Well, I could go for the day, but there’s no way I can spend the night,” I said.
Most of my Gulf girlfriends’ families had their own campsites in the desert, which they spent every weekend at during the winter season, and I’d always wanted to go.
Overall it was a pretty good date. When I got home, I took the cordless phone up to my bedroom. I dialled Heba’s number and told her about Nawaf, speaking in a hushed tone to prevent my family from eavesdropping.
“I thought we agreed no more Gulf guys!” she exclaimed. “They mess you about every time and then you come back to me crying.”
“Nawaf isn’t some little boy like Fahad, he’s a mature man. I’m sure he’s serious about me.”
“Listen,” Heba said in a softer tone. “I love you and don’t want you to get hurt. These guys date us, but they don’t marry us. And you’re the type that wants to get married, not just date.”
Heba didn’t care that I was going to the desert with a guy. Her issue was that he was a Gulf guy.
“Are you forgetting that it was you who pushed me into going out with Aziz, who was a Gulfie too?” I challenged her.
Heba went silent.
“Just be careful, Sara,” Heba said.
“It’ll be fine,” I said defiantly.
Once we hung up, I texted Nawaf to tell him I was free the following week to go on a day trip to the desert with him.
“Another Gulf guy?” Sophie asked.
I laughed. “I was just so determined to get one, despite the warnings.”
“Nawaf seems pretty nice.”
I looked down at my lukewarm cup of tea. “He did, didn’t he?”