Driving the Saudis Page 11

  The pressures that all teenagers face as they begin to interact with the world independent of the cocoon of their families can be disconcerting, but the pressures a young Saudi girl faces are much greater than just having her feelings hurt by an unkind remark. Her life can be ruined if she dishonors her family (or, rather, dishonors her father and the men of the family, because that’s the way it is perceived) by committing an act, either intentional or not, that compromises her reputation in any way. Even an innocent conversation with a boy who is not a blood relative could be considered a grievous infraction depending on her age and the temperament of the family. She can be punished severely for any breach of misconduct, and it is her father’s right to punish her however he sees fit, even put her to death, for a major contravention.

  I have a handful of protective brothers (even the one who repeated his friend’s remark probably did it to curb any possible interaction between me and his friend) and a father who was old-fashioned and rather proper, but none of them would ever have felt compelled to punish me to release them from shame. My father wouldn’t have hurt me if he’d found out that I kissed a boy in seventh grade during a game of spin the bottle, much less beat me to death because I had a conversation with a stranger on Facebook—as an aggrieved Saudi Arabian father who felt he had been disgraced by his daughter’s online communications did recently. As I grew to understand more about the culture of the young princesses in my charge, I became protective of them as well. I couldn’t help but be so; I felt it was my duty as a person and as a woman because their future well-being was at stake.

  After lunch, Ava, George, and her nanny drove with the family back to the hotel, and Rajiya jumped in the front seat of the convertible with me while Malikah got in the back. “Please, driver, I would like to see Los Angeles!” Rajiya said to me without looking at me. “Can we go see everything? Is it far to Hollywood? Are there any stars that we can see? Can we see them now? Where is the beach? Where are the best shops? Is there a Jamba Juice nearby? My friends say it is the best. Is it very far? Where is Melrose Avenue? I want to see all the shops. Can we go there now? I want to go to a studio so I can see the making of a movie. I want to go to the Universal City, I have heard it is the best. Is it very far to Disneyland? Can we go there too?” Rajiya spoke into the windshield as if I wasn’t there and she didn’t wait for my answers to her questions; she constantly looked to Malikah for confirmation and approval.

  “Yes, yes, Rajiya,” said Malikah. “We will now go on a tour.” Malikah leaned in to speak to me from the backseat and spoke quietly as if confiding in me. Rajiya had cranked up the music at this point, but Malikah was right on my ear so I could hear every word she said as clear as a bell. “Please, Janni, will you take us to see some wonderful things? This will make Rajiya very happy. This is the first time for Rajiya in Los Angeles so she is in high spirits and wants to see everything. This may seem strange to you, but she is a teenager so this is natural.”

  “Uh, sure,” I said. “I guess we could go to Hollywood if you like, and then we’ll work our way back from there.” I just wanted to go home and get underneath the covers and never come out, and it was only early afternoon. A daunting, oppressive feeling came over me as if I were being locked up in a dark room—the same feeling I used to have when I had to begin a 3:00 P.M. shift at a nightclub that I knew would last until five the next morning. The end seemed so far away. But it was only a few weeks into the job, and I had to keep going. Even though the start of it had already been unfathomably grueling, I had to believe that maybe it would get better. It had to; it couldn’t get worse. Buck up, I said to myself. Just buck up and do it.

  “Perhaps you do not have children?” Malikah asked. This was not the first time this question had come up on the job, and I was gearing up to invent an unfortunate malady that sadly prevented my “husband” and me from conceiving, but there was something about Malikah and the way she asked me that prevented me from doing so.

  “No, no, I don’t have any children of my own,” I said. “But I have lots of nieces and nephews, so I think I know how to make sure Princess Rajiya has a good time.”

  “And are you sure you do not mind to do this?” she asked.

  “No, of course not, it’s my pleasure,” I said.

  “Let us go, and I promise you that we will all have a good time. I will be sure to make this so,” Malikah said as she patted me softly on my shoulder.

  Malikah was on the ball. She’d obviously noticed that I was uncomfortable even though I was trying to hide it. It was distracting to have Rajiya sitting up front, where she constantly fiddled with the radio that she liked to play at top volume. She peppered me with questions but still ignored me completely, she kept on changing her mind about where she wanted to go and what she wanted to see, and she insisted on having the top down even in the midday sun. I had forgotten to put on sunscreen and was getting terribly burned. I also hadn’t thought to put my hair back, so after a few hours in the convertible it was a big tangled catastrophe circling my head. I wanted to tell Rajiya that only tourists drove with the top down before sunset, but that seemed mean, so I held my tongue.

  I drove Rajiya and Malikah around Beverly Hills and Hollywood for several hours, showing them all the important landmarks. This turned out to be fortuitous for Rajiya because she was one of the youngest in the group and had never before been to Southern California. Prior to 2001, many Saudi families came to visit regularly, but that slowed after September 11 and Rajiya’s family had visited America only a few times to go skiing in Aspen. Many of her cousins’ families owned homes in Bel Air and Beverly Hills, which they kept year round, and many stayed in rented estates in the summer months when the Saudis like to visit. The other girls her age knew where to go and what to do and who was who and what was what, but Rajiya did not. She was smarter than they were, though, and a quick study. But she wasn’t sure how to treat me because my position in the hierarchy was ambiguous. At first she completely ignored me, but then she saw that maybe that wasn’t to her advantage. I was a good resource, so perhaps I should be consulted more. After one fast and furious tour with me as her guide and Rajiya paying close attention, she was all over it like cheese on chili fries, as if the little Saudi princess had SoCal in her blood.

  I drove Rajiya along the Sunset Strip and showed her the music clubs: the Whisky, the Roxy, the Viper Room, and then the Sky Bar at the Mondrian (that really wowed her), and of course the Chateau Marmont Hotel. There was a modeling shoot going on there, and she was in heaven. We checked out Grauman’s Chinese Theater, where I pointed out the costumed superheroes in front of the theater posing for pictures with sunburned potbellied people in shorts and T-shirts that said “Made in Hollywood.” I offered to double-park so she could get out to walk closer, but also intimated that she probably wouldn’t want to get too close to the polyester-caped aged Spiderman. She looked at him and frowned, then nodded her head in affirmation. We went to the Roosevelt Hotel, where the Jimmy Kimmel Show is filmed, and I told her I could get her tickets from a friend if she wanted to go see it or to any other show that sparked her interest. We went to the original Fred Segal on Melrose Avenue, where we had ice cream in the café and saw a slew of stars; then I took her down Melrose to the funky hip stores, to the Pacific Design Center, and to the trendy shops in the Robertson area where the celebutantes shop: Kitson, Lisa Kline, and Curve. We didn’t do any shopping then, just made quick hits only so that Rajiya could get a sense of where she was and what was going on in La-La Land.

  Rajiya would speak to Malikah in Arabic whenever she didn’t want me to understand what she was saying or when she didn’t know the correct words in English. On the way back from our tour, they talked softly in Arabic for several minutes, and then I heard Malikah say in English, “Perhaps you should ask her then?”

  Rajiya finally looked at me and asked, “Why are you my driver?” By this time, she knew that I had gone to Cornell as an undergrad (we had passed the Tesla studio on Santa Monica Boul
evard and I’d pointed out that he had done much of his most important work at Cornell) and then to graduate school at Harvard (she heard me talking to George about the razing of the Tasty, a classic greasy spoon that’s no longer in the Square). I was so markedly different from most of the other chauffeurs she had ever met that she couldn’t put it together. “Well, I’m between jobs, as we say. I’m in the entertainment business, so sometimes there are lulls in employment and I have to do other things to make ends meet. That’s not unusual,” I said. I didn’t want to elaborate any further. The truth is I felt that I had sunk pretty low. And Rajiya was only a teenager who was too young to understand how debilitating money troubles can be, and she was certainly never going to have that problem anyway. She’d have her fair share of difficulties, I’m sure, different from what I would ever know, but probably money would never be one of them.

  A short while after this conversation, Rajiya saw me in a late-night rerun of a television show. “If you are a TV star, why are you here as my driver? Why are you not with the show every time?” she asked me.

  “I’m not a TV star, and I was just a guest star on that show, not a series regular, which means you’re on the show every week. Unfortunately, I was on it only a few times,” I answered.

  “So they did not want you to be the series regular in every show?” she asked.

  That hurt because I knew it was true. “No, I guess they didn’t.”

  “But why did they not want you?” she continued.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just really don’t know.” That was the truth. It’s an absolute mystery to me why some people make it in the entertainment business and some people don’t. But there I was explaining to a girl one-third my age why NBC didn’t want me acting on their show so I was acting as a chauffeur instead. I cringed inside.

  Rajiya began to watch my every move and constantly quizzed me on my opinions about everything from David Beckham to limited-edition collector sneakers so she could get a better read on me. She went on the same mega-thousand-dollar shopping sprees that the older ladies loved and then modeled the clothes for me to get my take on her purchases. She never openly agreed with me and barely acknowledged that she was even taking in my views. In fact, sometimes she was even coldly dismissive, but I noticed that she still clocked everything that I said to the extent that I began to be careful about sharing my views.

  More than once, I heard her repeat a paraphrased version of something I’d said the day before: “I must drink fresh grapefruit juice every night so that I can lose weight! That is what all the stars do!” I heard her say to one of her friends. She was referring to my “Hollywood Royal Flush” cleanse, which contains whole fruit only, not juice, which is basically just a glass of sugar, and she forgot a crucial step: massive amounts of caffeine. I would have been more careful about my choice of words if I’d known I was going to be quoted as a diet expert. Also, it saddened me that she felt she had to lose weight anyway because she had a perfect little figure; but like most teenage girls, she was starting to worry about her curves.

  I decided to be more judicious in my speech and figured she didn’t need to know that I thought all celebrity idolatry was bullshit and that stars are just like real people—many are deeply flawed—or that the only reason I’d ever wear someone else’s name emblazoned across my chest or ass is because they are paying me to advertise them, not the other way around. She was enamored of American pop culture, and I decided to let her enjoy it; she was, after all, only thirteen.

  In many ways, Rajiya was oddly inexperienced and naive, even for a thirteen-year-old. She noticed that I kept a supply of energy bars in the car for myself since there were often huge gaps between stolen mealtimes, and she asked me to take her to Whole Foods so that she could buy some for herself. At the store she chose box after box of different varieties, costing over $300, filling up the shopping cart. I pointed out that she could buy just one bar of each, taste them and see which flavors she liked, and then come back to buy more. She scoffed at me when I suggested this; it was unseemly. It was un-princess-like. Buying just one bar would appear as if the whole box couldn’t be hers if she so desired.

  Malikah used the opportunity at Whole Foods to educate Rajiya about the use of physical currency, which she would need to know if she attended university in the United States. Malikah knew that Rajiya had her heart set on this and was thinking ahead for ways to help prepare the teenager. At the register, the princess gleefully counted out and then placed several hundred-dollar bills on the counter. Then she walked away, satisfied with herself for a job well done. The surprised cashier laughed and called out to Rajiya, “Hey, you forgot your change!” Malikah stopped her and explained that there was change due, and that Rajiya had to wait for the cashier to give her the difference in what she had paid and what was owed. Rajiya was mortified, and stood before the cashier red-faced and shaking. She was pained with shame. It was a surreal moment. My heart went out to her even though a moment before I had silently been disparaging the prodigious supply of energy bars and her wastefulness.

  Recently I watched my four-year-old niece buy her first ice cream cone with the three dollars her mother had given her, but my niece had negotiated her first purchase better because she had seen her parents do it many times. Rajiya had probably never had that everyday experience. She was thirteen years old and had never paid for anything in her life nor had she watched her parents do so because the servants always took care of such mundane tasks.

  Rajiya had a nanny and her own maid, and several other household servants also waited on her. When she’d come home at night, she’d strip off her clothes as she walked and leave everything on the floor to be gathered by the servants. She didn’t do anything for herself.

  When I was just a year or two older than Rajiya, I had a summer job at a chain restaurant near my home. My parents were generous and provided everything we needed, no small feat in such a large family, but it was the children’s responsibility to earn any extra spending money for things we wanted but weren’t necessary. I had started to play golf, and I wanted a new set of Ping golf clubs. I really, really wanted them, and I was sure that new clubs that were sized just right for me, instead of the lousy rentals or my brother’s old clubs that I’d been using, would make me a much better player, maybe even shave twenty strokes off my score. I was optimistic about that. My dad suggested that I get a summer job and promised to match whatever I saved as a contribution to my golf club fund. I already had some part-time work experience doing filing and working the phones at his office during previous summers and holidays, but this restaurant job was my first foray outside a protected family environment.

  The café was jammed from sunup until midnight; there was never any downtime when I could actually learn my duties and figure out how to do them well with any semblance of expertise. To top it off, I had to wear a uniform from hell—a truly hideous gray polyester dress with orange trim that was tight in all the wrong places and made my skin itch as if I were wearing a hair shirt.

  One morning, I was assigned to make the iced tea that would be served for the busy lunch crowd. I made several pitchers successfully, but then a glass pitcher shattered when I was filling it with boiling water; it exploded all over me, silencing the entire restaurant in a shush of shock. I can still practically feel the thing vibrating and then bursting in my hands. The front of my gray and orange hair shirt was soaked with black tea (it looked like I had peed on myself), and I felt completely humiliated. I was so shaken that I couldn’t finish the rest of the shift, and the manager sent me home. Of course, I didn’t want to go back to work the next day, but I had to; I was hired for the summer and obligated to stick it out. The next morning, a kindly older waitress showed me how to put a silver spoon in the pitcher before filling it slowly to prevent the glass from cracking. Other messy mishaps followed, but somehow I kept the job and even made enough money to buy myself the new set of Pings, a new golf bag, and even snazzy new white leather golf shoes. My da
d didn’t contribute at all; I paid for everything myself. It was truly a rite of passage, and I remember a flooding surge of pride when I showed off my new gear to my family. As I watched Rajiya at the market, I saw that it was unlikely that she would ever have that same rush of accomplishment if everything was always given to her—as if anything and everything was hers to possess, in a way, but not to truly enjoy because she hadn’t earned it.

  Rajiya hid her face from me the rest of the day and did not speak to me again until the next afternoon. I understood that in her eyes, her first attempt to operate as a normal American teenager had transpired badly. She appeared particularly upset that I had witnessed the incident. I know that she was confused and conflicted about who I was and my role in the palace hierarchy, and this must have deepened her embarrassment.

  In spite of her privilege, Rajiya was never mean-spirited or unkind in any way, at least not purposely. When we arrived back at the hotel late at night, Rajiya would always turn down the music as we neared the hotel entrance. At first, I thought this was because she had finally grown bored with the repetitious station selections, but then I realized that she was doing it out of consideration for others who were sleeping. Many of the hotel balconies and windows faced the circular driveway entrance, and the thumping music from the car radio could easily have woken guests up if their windows were open. I credit Malikah for that because she took great care in showing the young girl the importance of being a thoughtful and polite person, and she always set a tremendous example for her as well. Just being around Malikah could make anyone a better person, and I loved spending time with her.