Driving the Saudis Read online

  She and I had frequent long conversations as we waited together outside a prestigious learning center in Beverly Hills where Rajiya took tutoring classes. The teenager had made a deal with her mother, Princess Aamina, Princess Zaahira’s sister-in-law, that if Rajiya took classes three mornings a week, then she’d be free to pal around with her girlfriends the whole rest of the day. Rajiya’s mother knew her daughter wanted to be admitted to college in the States, so she was making sure that Rajiya was receiving the extra schooling that would make that easier. Rajiya was the only one of her friends who was taking classes, so my chauffeur hat’s off to Princess Aamina; she had the vision to help prepare her daughter for globalization and a rapidly changing world.

  Malikah and I sat with each other in the café next door to the learning center, with Malikah’s eagle eye fixed firmly on its door, guarding her charge. She had been the little princess’s nanny since Rajiya was an infant, and was a sibling’s nanny before that; she loved them all dearly and had a vested interest in Rajiya’s success and future happiness.

  She was from Lebanon and had been a nanny for the family for most of her adult life. When Malikah was a young woman, civil war devastated her homeland, and her parents were killed. Thereafter, she supported her family and had even put her three younger brothers and sisters through college. Perhaps because of this she had never married. My biggest worry was whether I could pay my cell phone bill and still have any money left over to buy organic grass-fed New Zealand beef at Whole Foods for eighteen bucks a pound, and she’d put a whole family through school on a nanny’s salary. She also gave away a substantial amount of what she made as alms to the poor and would never have considered not doing so. One of the five pillars of Islam is zakat, almsgiving, and Malikah took this very seriously. She had a sunny nature too in spite of all that sacrifice. She was eternally good-spirited, tolerant, and charitable and acted as a sort of den mother to all the household staff. It was through her, and her serene teaching, that I was able to understand much of what I saw happening around me. She became a heroic figure to me.

  Malikah patiently answered many of my questions, just as Fahima had done, by explaining the Islamic custom compelling women to cover. But I wanted to know more about why it was so important to the women to do so, especially Malikah. She often told stories to illustrate a point.

  “Okay, okay, Janni. So, you love salad, nam [yes]? Yes, I love salad too. I could eat it every day. I love a beautiful salad with many different delicate lettuces and vegetables. A very good salad has everything you want and expect, and then something else that completes it in a way that you cannot expect. For me this is the lemon. The final addition to a delicious creation that makes it more complete. Yes, it is very, very good with just the oil and salt, but it is the lemon, at the last moment, that makes it more complete.

  “For me, the hijab is like this, Janni, the final ingredient. I do honor to Allah with all my deeds, but it is the final act of wearing the hijab every day that makes all my other actions more complete. This is why I cover.”

  “But why is it up to the woman?” I asked. Fahima had already explained that women are temptresses, but I wasn’t buying that. There had to be more to it.

  “Janni, in Islam both men and women are asked to behave with modesty and decorum; that is the word, nam [yes]? But the woman is considered more desirable in every society; look at the beautiful paintings all over the world and you see that this is true. So she wears the hijab when out of the home to protect her but also, more important to me, she wears this so the attention must be drawn to her personal qualities rather than her physical qualities. So that her actions are considered, not just her physical beauty.

  “Everywhere in Los Angeles, you see the vulgar exploitation of women, and men and children as well, and the human body for marketing purposes and pornography. This can only end badly, Janni. Sexuality is a natural human expression, but it is a private concern, meant to support a happy home life. It is not meant to sell toothpaste, it is not meant to sell sneakers, it is not meant to sell at all. Nam, nam.”

  As many women do, I struggle with objectification and the desire to be heard and respected regardless of my beauty (or lack of), but in spite of that, I also spend a lot of time and attention on the care of my physical self to try to make myself as beautiful as possible. Granted, I am often rather lax in my beautifying efforts, but it’s a constant conundrum. I think this is so ingrained in the feminine psyche that it was true even for Malikah, in spite of what she said.

  One day when I arrived a few minutes early before my scheduled morning pickup of Rajiya and Malikah, I heard a soft whistle and looked up to see Malikah smiling down at me from one of the upper hotel balconies with her hair uncovered. “Do you see me, Janni?” she called out, and then ducked back inside the room. This was the only time I had ever seen her head bare, and I just stood there for a moment gawking. She had beautiful bright red hair hanging down to her waist, freshly hennaed. She colored it even though it was always hidden underneath her hijab, and no one ever saw it but herself.

  A similar paradox occurs in the wearing and the attributes of the full cover itself. The black covering that women are required to wear in the Kingdom consists of many complicated interdependent pieces, and there is a vast selection in terms of choice of material, variations, and adornments. Some women wear covering that has sparkles, embroidery, or beading, and some even have diamonds or pearls sewn into the material. The most important articles are the abaya, the long black cloak that is the outer layer, and the niqab, the long black veil, which is usually triple layered with fine netting over the eyes that allows for a diffused but sharply limited peripheral view. The hijab and hair covers are often three or four pieces together and are almost always worn, even inside the house, to completely cover the hair and neck. Pins are used to secure the pieces, and these are sometimes valuable pieces of jewelry. There are also gloves, ankle covers, and even gauntlets for the forearms, that a woman may choose to wear.

  The veil and hijab can be used as tools that a woman manipulates to subtly communicate or generate interest—the constant adjusting required to keep them secure and well placed, the seemingly accidental slippage or displacement—these actions force attention on the hair and face, as well as on the woman’s eyes and expression. What is meant to deter a focus on appearances can actually create the opposite result by thrusting continuous attention on the covering itself, as well as constant speculation about what is underneath, real or imagined. Even an escaped lock of hair takes on great significance. The cover has become part of a woman’s allure, because it draws men in as they try to see what treasures may be buried beneath.

  I admire the women for being able to just walk in the abaya and hijab at all, and they did much more than just that. I tried on an abaya and hijab, and I couldn’t even walk across my bathroom in the get-up, and I couldn’t make it down the hallway without crashing into the walls. Malikah was an avid skier, and accompanied the family to Gstaad and Aspen where she hit the slopes in full hijab with a full-length tunic, which reached down to her ski boots, under her parka.

  “Since I was a little girl, I enjoy all the sports,” she said. “Luckily I can practice these activities I love when I am traveling with the family, since it is usually not possible to do so in the Kingdom. It is no more difficult for me with the cover than it is for anyone else. It was I who taught Rajiya how to ski, not the father or the mother. I have even learned how to jet-ski on the water in Jeddah, and I swam in the sea there too, but only in the middle of the night, when everyone else was asleep and no one can see me.”

  The door of the tutoring center flew open, and Rajiya ran out cheering, elated that her daily lesson was finally over, and then we all climbed back into the car and took off to join her cousins. I saw that Malikah was struggling in the backseat: the convertible was whipping her hijab around, and she was in a battle to keep it on. I started to power up the four windows to block off at least part of the wind to protect her but
Rajiya stopped me. “No, Janni. We like to feel the California breeze. We love it,” she said as she cranked the radio. Malikah smiled at me in the rearview mirror and held on tight to her hijab flying in the wind.

  12

  The Real Housewives of Riyadh

  We need twenty-seven bottles of Hair Off®! Yalla [hurry], Janni! Yalla!”

  Princess Zaahira’s secretary, Asra, had just ordered me to get twenty-seven bottles of Hair Off (for “Anti-Irritation and Ultra-Moisturizing Hair Removal”). She didn’t want Nair and she didn’t want Veet; she wanted twenty-seven bottles of Hair Off, and she insisted they were all needed right away. “Yalla!”

  Were they having a Hair Off party? I wondered.

  On my way out of the hotel, Maysam, one of the princess’s nubile teenage servant girls from North Africa, pinched my arm and begged me again to hurry as if her life depended on it. “Yalla, Janni, yalla! The princesses, they need tonight, Janni, tonight, tonight, tonight! Yalla!”

  I went to every Rite-Aid, Sav-On, and Walgreen’s within a 20-mile radius. I went to over 20 stores; most stocked only two or three bottles at once, so I had to drive all over LA County.

  Couldn’t they just go for a little laser action? I thought. That’s how we do it in Southern California. Two or three visits, and you’ve got a Brazilian forever whether you like it or not.

  I had started work at ten o’clock in the morning, and twelve hours later I was driving around trying to score twenty-seven bottles of cream depilatory. I thought I had become valuable because of my resourcefulness, intelligence, and conscientiousness. Now I was beginning to suspect that it was probably because they didn’t want to send a man on this kind of errand. I was only midway through the time the family was expected to stay, and even though I’d known it was going to be demanding, I wasn’t prepared for this. I had already driven 4,000 miles, sometimes 400 miles a day, pulling 16-hour days, and I was getting 4 hours of sleep a night. I was a wreck. I was afraid there was no way I was going to last seven weeks. But I knew that the Saudis tipped only at the end of the job, so I couldn’t quit. I had to hold out for the tip. I had to keep my eye on the prize. I had to get the Hair Off, but really I just wanted to tell Asra to get on the horn, make some appointments, and get those women under some laser light.

  The Saudi women had come to Los Angeles for plastic surgery; it was clearly one of their main reasons to visit Beverly Hills, the mecca of surgical enhancement. Most of them already had liposuction, tummy tucks, rhinoplasty, mammaplasty, blepharoplasty (eyelid lifting/stretching/cutting), and even vaginal rejuvenation, which I had never heard of before but now know is a startlingly popular procedure.

  There is a glistening 14-foot-tall silver sculpture entitled Torso, by artist Robert Graham, which stands on a high bronze pedestal at the intersection of Rodeo Drive and Dayton Way in Beverly Hills. It has no head; it is a female torso with perfectly proportioned breasts and buttocks. In spite of its beauty, there is a distressing anonymity to the piece, and since it is carefully composed of polished aluminum segmented blocks, it gives the feeling of being built piece by piece, as if the best possible parts were chosen to comprise the most perfect torso. Somehow the combination of the headlessness and the idealized body parts is an enigmatic summation of the power and allure of cosmetic surgery. I find the sculpture cold and disconcerting; it even looks chilly, and I’ve often thought about wrapping it in a pashmina when I drove by it late at night. But the Saudi women would invariably oooh and aaaah with admiration when they saw it, as most people do.

  An older member of Princess Zaahira’s entourage, a prune of a woman whom everyone called Auntie, had full-on bodywork: she had a facelift, chinlift, liposuction, and breast augmentation, all in a few weeks’ time. In the beginning, it was mind-boggling to me, but after several weeks on the job, I saw that for many of the women this was routine. I had wondered at first, as most people do, why the Saudi women, who spend much of their time in the Kingdom covered up in black garments, would spend so much money and time on their appearance that almost no one sees. But of course, they do it for the same reasons American women do: they do it for themselves, they do it to hang onto their youth or to create a body they’ve always dreamed of, and they do it for the rush. One surgery often leads to another, and then another and then another.

  One afternoon I had to pick up Princess Zaahira’s friend, Amsah, after an office procedure at one of the Beverly Hills surgical clinics on Spaulding Drive. Amsah was at least fifty-five years old and was a substantially endowed woman, with dyed mahogany-colored hair, heavily tattooed eyebrows, and coarse piebald skin. She wasn’t exactly a beauty queen, but she was friendlier and more easygoing than most of the other Saudi women I had met so far, and I liked her. I had no idea how many days or hours she’d been at the clinic but was told that she’d be ready for a noon pickup. I waited. In the early evening she was finally escorted downstairs in a wheelchair, drifting in and out of consciousness. The nurse accompanying her gave me instructions on Amsah’s care for the ride back to the hotel and then scurried off. They were hopping upstairs, and she had to attend to other patients. As soon as the nurse walked away, Amsah nodded off.

  “Amsah! Amsah! Wake up. C’mon, Amsah, wake up!” I clapped my hands in front of her face but she didn’t stir. Shit, shit, shit, she won’t wake up. I thought. There’s no way I can get her into the car like this.

  I looked around and saw several Saudi women exiting the garage elevators, including Amsah’s cousin, Sajidah, who had been upstairs for a checkup with the same doctor. She was walking stiffly and with great difficulty because she’d had a bunion removed the previous week and wore a special shoe to protect her foot as it healed; she was also sporting a thick white chinstrap, so I guess she was getting work done top to bottom. Sajidah and her cousin looked so much alike they could have been mistaken for sisters, but Sajidah spoke better English. She had family in the States and visited both coasts regularly.

  “Sajidah? Could you speak to Amsah in Arabic, please? To help me wake her up? Tell her I can’t get her into the car unless she wakes up,” I said as I walked over to her.

  “Do not interrupt. I am talking to my son in Washington,” she said, holding a cell phone to her ear as she moved away from me. She had already told me that her son was a hugely influential businessman and that she was very proud of him. As I’ve already mentioned, sons are important in the Saudi family—so much so that when a Saudi woman gives birth to a son, she is thereafter often known by the name of her son, as in Umm Amad, or Mother of Amad.

  “Amad is doing business in Washington. Washington, D.C.,” she said as if I hadn’t known she meant the nation’s capital.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were on the phone. It’s just that Amsah . . .” I knew that she’d been on the phone; I was just hoping that maybe Umm Amad would interrupt her important call for a moment to help her unconscious relative. No such luck.

  “You must wait; my son needs my attention,” she said and walked away. She didn’t seem at all put out by the fact that her cousin was out cold. I considered going upstairs to get backup assistance, but I didn’t want to leave Amsah.

  I called the hotel on my cell phone. “May I have room 1205, please?”

  “What is the name of the guest, please?” said the hotel operator.

  “I . . . I don’t know the name. Room 1205,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, but I am unable to connect you with room 1205 without a hotel guest name.”

  “There is no name!” I said.

  “I’m sorry, but I am unable to connect you without . . .”

  “I mean there are a lot of names. It’s the security room for the family staying on the twelfth floor. The whole twelfth floor, and the eleventh floor, and the . . . Are you new? I work for them. Please connect me right away, thank you.”

  Boyd picked up. My heart pitched. He was a pompous ass, a real thug, and probably a failed Green Beret who now considered himself hugely important because he ran h
igh-security details for visiting luminaries needing protection while buying 300 purses on Rodeo Drive. He demanded to know why I hadn’t yet returned with Amsah when I had other things they were waiting for me to do, implying that I was purposely hanging out at the medical clinic for jollies. He’d obviously heard about my penchant for post-op antics and comatose patients.

  “We’re downstairs in the parking lot and Amsah’s out cold. The nurse brought her down in a wheelchair, and then she just took off. I can’t get her into the car myself, Boyd. She’s at least 180 pounds, and I think she had butt implants! They told me not to touch her butt. How am I supposed to lift her up into the SUV if I can’t touch her butt? You have to send someone to help me.”

  Amsah started to whimper.

  “Oh, I think she’s waking up. I’ll call you back.” I hung up the phone.

  Then Amsah started to cry. “Oh, oh, okay, Amsah, it’s okay,” I said to her. “I’m sure it hurts to sit down, but you’ll feel better soon.”

  Then she murmured something that took me a moment to decipher. It sounded like “. . . the lovely bottom, yours such the lovely bottom.”

  “Oh,” I said when I finally understood. It was thoughtful of her to compliment my bottom when she was clearly in agony, but I knew then that she must have been delusional because it is definitely not one of my best features, in spite of years of doing squats. I wanted to be gracious but didn’t know how to reply to that kind of remark, especially from an older woman who’d just had balloons stuck in her ass cheeks.

  “Shukran [thank you], Amsah. Insha’Allah [if it is God’s will], hopefully your bottom will be as beautiful as mine soon too. Insha’Allah.”

  “Insha’Allah,” she moaned.

  I saw my window of opportunity and I jumped through it: “Insha’Allah, Amsah. But right now, Allah wants you to get in the car. That’s right. Allah wants you to get into the car. Then you can go home to the hotel and lie down in your nice soft bed, I mean lie down on your side, in your nice soft bed. Okay, Amsah? Okay. I’m just going to ask the valet guys to help us.” I ran over to the valet parking attendants nearby.