Driving the Saudis Read online

  “Hey, guapos, pueden ayudarme por favor? Um, um, yo quiero levantarla a ella para arriba en dentro el SUV? Por favor?” I said. I don’t know why I was trying to practice my lousy Spanish at that moment.

  One of the guys finally said in perfect English, “Relax, miss, we’ll help you.” They must have been accustomed to dealing with post-op patients all day because they immediately understood the problem. They quickly encircled her and started to lift her up, but it all went way wrong right away. Amsah screamed in pain. I guess they’d never dealt with butt implants. “Cuidado!” I yelled. “No toca el culo! Don’t touch the butt!” Amsah screamed again and passed out.

  It was truly awful. We finally got her into the SUV after a lot of struggling and crying. Sajidah rode back with us to the hotel and suddenly took an interest in her ailing cousin. She prayed to Allah the whole way, wailing and keening, begging for him to save Amsah, acting like Amsah was near death from a sudden and unavoidable accident. It was hard to drive with the racket she was making. Amsah drifted in and out of consciousness, moaning, groaning, and whimpering as her cousin yowled. It was like an episode of The Real Housewives of Riyadh. I didn’t think that this was Amsah’s first time around the surgery block, and she’d probably known what she was in for. In spite of the fact that Amsah was in such pain, I was embarrassed for both of them and wished they’d show a little self-restraint. I doubted it was Allah’s idea for her to have ass surgery, and it seemed inappropriate to be begging for his ministry once the deed had been done.

  As we neared the hotel, security phoned and said they had notified the family doctor to meet us, and instructed me to deliver Amsah near the private elevator that is accessed via the underground parking garage. I was met at the hotel’s driveway by two security personnel who ran ahead of the SUV clearing traffic as I wound my way down—the wrong way down—the garage’s circular ramps so that we wouldn’t be hit by oncoming valets bringing cars upstairs. Down and down we went to the very bottom, the two stalwart men flanking the vehicle as if they were escorting the president of the United States. It was ridiculous, but I was thankful to have them there. By then, Amsah was out cold and had been so for some time. I was worried that maybe she was in trouble and that, as usual, I’d be held responsible. When we arrived at the elevator, the doctor was there waiting and men expertly swooped her up and out of the SUV and into a pillowed wheelchair waiting at the elevator entrance, and they then whisked her away without saying a word to me. Sajidah ignored me as well.

  I just sat in the SUV for a little while enjoying the quiet of the car. I felt as if I had just been through a terrific battle but, miraculously, had walked away unscathed.

  When I had picked up Amsah, I couldn’t help but notice that the waiting room in that medical clinic on Spaulding Drive was packed with women—not just Saudi women but Beverly Hills women, with big rocks on their fingers and platinum hair piled high. The Saudi women were no different from the Los Angeles women I saw walking down Melrose Avenue with huge balloon-shaped breasts and stiff silicone-enhanced monkey lips. They were all doing the same exquisite dance to maintain their value and a happy household, and hopefully their husband’s good favor.

  Later the next night, I was leaving Princess Zaahira’s hotel when one of the family’s Porsche Cayennes pulled up. Several thin effete-looking young men got out, all giggly and excited. Then a tall figure with long black hair and narrow shoulders sidled out of the backseat. All of the other drivers and doormen standing in the hotel breezeway whistled under their breath because this chick had a magnificent ass. Huge, high, and supple, and perfectly round, like a gigantic ripe peach—beautifully displayed in tight, stretchy jeans. And then the figure turned around and we all gasped: she had a moustache. It was a guy, one of the princes in the group. The best ass in the family, the best ass in the whole group, belonged to a young prince. I do not know if his was surgically enhanced, but it was truly awe inspiring.

  Anyway, I don’t recommend ass surgery, not unless you’re a real glutton for punishment.

  13

  Un-Avoidable

  One day, I was asked to drive Princess Zaahira’s cousin, Princess Soraya, who was seventeen years old. She looked nothing like the other young Saudi girls, who emulated the older women’s fashion look with layers of haute couture, heavy makeup, and lavish jewelry. She was slender with short black hair and dressed simply in a striped T-shirt, pressed jeans, and clean white sneakers. Soraya reminded me of Audrey Hepburn in the movie Roman Holiday, the one in which she plays a European princess who falls in love with an American. The young Saudi girl looked pleasingly fresh, almost impish, but with a serene, composed countenance as if she were older than her years.

  “Thank you, you are very kind,” Soraya said to the hotel doorman as he opened the car door for her. She got in the back of the black Crown Victoria town car and smiled broadly at me.

  “Hello, driver,” she said. She spoke English with a refined, slightly British accent. “My name is Soraya. It is a pleasure to meet you. I would like to visit the Krispy Kreme, please? And I would like to visit the UCLA, please? And I would like to visit the beach, please. Thank you.” As I drove out of the hotel driveway, I could see that she tried to power down the window. It didn’t budge. She frowned and she tried again.

  After a few moments she said, “Excuse me, please, driver? Will you unlock the window, please?”

  I remembered what the colonel had told us about keeping all the doors and windows locked. “I’m sorry, Soraya, but I was told . . . ,” I said as I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw her looking hopefully at me with a beseeching expression as if to say: please, no one will know. I unlocked the controls.

  She beamed at me. “Thank you!” she said. Then she stuck her head half out the window and smelled the air like a big puppy, smiling as we drove down Wilshire Boulevard toward Westwood. I watched her in my side mirrors as she pushed up the drink holder console in the center of the back seat and slid from one side of the car to the other, looking out the windows the whole time. After a long while, Soraya brought her head back inside the car and beamed some more.

  “You are so lucky. Do you like to drive? I would like to learn. I am sure I could learn.” She pointed to a car we passed. “Oh, there is a little car with the sign that says ‘Westwood Driver Education’ on top.” She looked hard at the car. “The instructor is a man?” she asked.

  “Yes, most of them are. Not because they’re better drivers, though.”

  Soraya looked down at her hands for a minute. “It is not possible for me to learn how to drive,” she said. “I must return home to my family soon. It is unavoidable.” She said unavoidable as if it were two separate words. Un-avoidable.

  “I would like to stay here very much. I would like to study here. I am studying philosophy. I like philosophy. I have just come from a summer program at Berkeley, and now I am enjoying a short visit with my favorite cousins.”

  “That’s a great school,” I said. “I’ve a lot of friends who went there and I would’ve liked to as well, but somehow I got stuck on the East Coast hiking through 10-foot snowdrifts with 20 pounds of books strapped to my back. If you fell in that kind of snow, you might not be found ’til spring.”

  She cocked her head at me then. I supposed she hadn’t heard yet about the overeducated female chauffeur. “Oh,” she said. “Berkeley is very warm. I do not think one can fall into a snowdrift there.”

  “Did you like it?” I asked her.

  “I loved it. I learned a great deal,” she said. “It was a course on the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Do you know him?”

  “Yes, I do,” I said. “‘The infinitude of the private man.’”

  “Yes!” she said. “Yes! Exactly! ‘The infinitude of the private man.’ I am so happy you know this. I have been thinking about his belief that it is one soul that animates all men—that we are all part of God. Do you believe this?”

  “I’m not sure exactly, but I suspect that it might be true, or
rather I should say, I hope it’s true. That’s pretty heady stuff that you’ve been reading.”

  “Heady? Yes, I suppose it is,” she said quietly and smiled as if we were sharing a secret. “It has been a wonderful summer. I have been so happy in San Francisco because it is a great walking city, and this was new for me, and I had a very pleasant time enjoying the activities on the Embarcadero. It was immensely pleasurable.”

  “Your English is exceptional,” I said.

  “I am a good student,” she said in the same tone that I recently heard my five-year-old nephew say: “I like myself. I am so proud of myself.” It was declarative and definitive, but not boastful in anyway. Just unquestionably true.

  “I enjoy school very much. It does not seem like work to me,” she said.

  “I felt that way too,” I said.

  “I wish that my father would permit me to stay for this year, but that is not possible. I have asked him many times, but he always says no.”

  This was perhaps the longest conversation I’d had with any of the Saudi royals so far, and for a moment I forgot that I was a lowly chauffeur. I practically gurgled with glee as I drove us north up Westwood Boulevard.

  “Is this the UCLA?” she asked me as she stuck her head out the window again. “Oh, I like it! So many trees and flowers. So many people. This is lovely. I am sure I would like to stay here to continue my studies, but I cannot.”

  “It’s a pity you can’t stay longer,” I said.

  Soraya was quiet for a minute and then said, “I must return home. It is un-avoidable.” As she spoke, she slowly powered the window up and down.

  Up and down.

  Up and down.

  “All my family will celebrate. It is time. It is un-avoidable. I will make my family proud. For this I am happy. I am very happy.” Then I heard her begin to cry softly.

  I watched her in the rearview mirror, her head bowed. I wasn’t sure what to do, and I didn’t want to intrude on her. Eventually I thought to hand her a handful of tissues, which she accepted without comment. I continued driving us west on Sunset for a long time toward the beach, and all the while I could hear her sob; it was the weeping sound of resignation, not indignation.

  When we could go no farther west, I stopped the car along the Pacific Coast Highway overlooking the ocean.

  “Here we are at the beach, Soraya.”

  She wiped away the tears from her face with the back of her hand and looked out the window. “It is so clean,” she said. Then we were both quiet for a while and watched the waves and the surfers checking out the incoming wave sets. Armored in black wetsuits and silhouetted against the setting sun, they seemed like warriors at sea guarding the coastline against attack.

  “They look cool, don’t they?”

  “Yes, they look cool,” she said. “Very cool.”

  I continued to watch her in the mirror, trying not to stare so I wouldn’t disturb her. She was pale with red-rimmed eyes and blotchy tear-stained crimson cheeks. She continued to look out the window as she wiped her eyes again with the back of her hand, pressing the tissues in her other fist as if she were afraid to let them go.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  Soraya didn’t answer right away, but after a while she turned to catch my eyes in the rearview mirror. She knew that I’d been watching her. “I am to be married. My husband is waiting. He is a colleague of my father’s. I am to be his third wife. I was told he is very kind.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “So I am happy, I am very happy. I will make my family proud.”

  Time passed, and we said nothing.

  “Don’t you want to get out?” I finally asked her.

  She seemed surprised by my question. “Oh, no, I will just look. Thank you.”

  “Are you sure, Soraya? Don’t you want to get out and walk on the sand or put your toes in the water?”

  She continued to look out the window. “No, thank you. I will just look. Thank you. I will just look.”

  I drove Princess Soraya around all afternoon. We stopped at the Krispy Kreme on Wilshire Boulevard, where she asked me run in to buy her several dozen assorted doughnuts to take to Princess Zaahira and her family back at the hotel. I got extra of the dulce de leche doughnuts because she said they particularly liked those, and she insisted that I keep a box for myself to take home. In Santa Monica, Soraya asked me if I would like a Wetzel Dog, and I told her that I’d never had one. “You will love it,” she said, then gave me money to buy us a take-out soft-pretzel hotdog lunch at Wetzel’s Pretzels on the Promenade. I double-parked at the end of the alley, and we ate quietly in the car as we watched and listened to crowds of chattering shoppers pass us by. I noticed again that the cops never bothered any Saudi car and especially not a Crown Vic. Soraya nibbled at her lunch as if she were a little bird pecking at seeds. Later I found her half-eaten hardened pretzel sans hotdog in the backseat pocket.

  We spent six hours together, and she never got out of the car. Not once. She just looked out the window as if memorizing everything within her view with a solemnity that suggested she was saying hello and good-bye to it all at the same time.

  I didn’t see Soraya again after that day, even though I repeatedly looked for her. Because I couldn’t speak to Princess Zaahira or any of the royals about her, I asked security and the servants if she had gone home, but no one could or would tell me anything. I even asked the doormen if they remembered the lovely slender girl who now seemed like an apparition, but they did not recall her. I presume that Soraya did return to her family and to the future that awaited there in her homeland, and I hope that she is happy.

  14

  Kill Me but Make Me Beautiful!

  Late one night, I had a run-in with Princess Zaahira’s secretary, Asra, who I’d noticed had watched me with hooded eyes when I performed my little casino pantomimes for the princess. She was an Arab but looked startlingly European, with porcelain skin, perfectly dyed blond hair, pale eyes, diminutive fine features, and a tiny hourglass figure. She looked like a doll, except a doll that furiously chain-smoked. Her English was excellent, and she spoke several other languages as well, including French. Asra was Princess Zaahira’s right-hand woman and was shown great respect by the servants and the rest of the entourage. She was beautiful, but word on the street was that she was treacherous. I knew she had already dismissed several drivers assigned to her, including Jorge, and the rest of the drivers had warned each other to stay on her good side if at all possible. She was not to be trusted.

  Asra was the one who had sent me out for the 27 bottles of Hair Off; later she called me to her room to pay me after my mission. Her hotel suite was near Princess Zaahira’s room, and although it was large and luxurious, it was in complete disarray. There was only one lamp turned on and the room was disconcertingly dark. The television flickered in the corner, muted. Clothes were strewn everywhere, and it stank of stale cigarettes and dead flowers. I wanted to leave immediately. I knew that she was working very long hours tending to Princess Zaahira’s needs, and it seemed apparent that she didn’t want the hotel cleaning staff to disturb her few hours of rest, so the room was much neglected. She reclined on the bed as she spoke to me but did not ask me to sit.

  “Merci, merci, Janni. Je suis fatigué. Please forgive my state of déshabillé. You understand me? Je suis fatigué. I am so very tired,” she said as she covered her bare shoulders in a shawl. I wondered if she had ever called any of the male drivers up to her room.

  “You are so very helpful. I will tell the princess that you are very helpful, and she will be sure to reward you. She is very generous. I am from Paris, of course; that is how I know the princess. I was in fashion. She bought much beautiful haute couture from me, and then she asked me to come work for her. Only me! No one else! I am very happy with the princess, but I am very tired.”

  She sighed deeply, lit a cigarette, and then picked up a tray of Belgian candies from the coffee table. “Would you like some chocolate?” she
asked as she offered them to me but then quickly pulled them away before I could even make a move to take one.

  “These are très delicious,” she said as she bit into one herself between puffs of the cigarette. Bits of chocolate stuck to her lip, and then to the edge of the cigarette. “Now, please do not tell the princess that you delivered these bottles. I will tell her. I appreciate so much that you are so helpful in this way. Now! I need you to do this for me. Let me think how to explain, I need this something to shampoo the hair without the water. Do you know this?”

  “You mean like dry shampoo? The spray stuff?”

  “No, this is not what I want,” she said. “The hair has to be shampooed with the water; this is necessary. But the neck and shoulders cannot approach the water. One does not bathe the body, but still the hair is to be shampooed because of this device.”

  “You mean kind of like a shampoo bedpan? They use that in hospitals when people have surgery?”

  “Yes, yes, that is what I want. I need this tonight, Janni! Tonight! Yalla!”

  “Tonight? Oh, no, I’m sorry. I can’t get it tonight; it’s much too late. There’s nothing open, and besides I’ll probably have to go to a hospital supply store to get one, and they definitely aren’t open at night.”

  “Hmmm, I see,” she said. She looked around the room, her eyes darting from the drapes to the carpet to the door. “That is fine. Please do this and bring to me in the morning, tout de suite. Merci. You are very helpful. Merci, Janni. The princess is sure to reward you.” Then she waved me out of the room.

  The first thing in the morning I went shopping to find the contraption to wash the princess’s hair—a small horseshoe-shaped sink with a short hose to attach to a faucet. As soon as I had it in hand, after scouring five hospital supply stores and finally finding one beneath a dusty pile of home care aid devices, I rushed back to the hotel to give it to the secretary. When I encountered her in the hotel lobby, I thrust it at her, proud of my expediency and resourcefulness. She looked at it disinterestedly. “Yes, Miss. What is this?”