Driving the Saudis Read online

  “It’s the thing you asked for last night, to wash the princess’s hair?” I said.

  “No! It is too late,” she said as she turned from me and walked toward the elevator. “The princess, she does not need now. She said you were to bring her last night. She has left.” Then she disappeared behind the elevator doors.

  I knew Princess Zaahira needed the hair-washing apparatus because I saw her getting dropped off from a doctor’s visit the previous day all bundled up, so she probably had a procedure of some kind. I also knew she was still at the hotel because her armored Mercedes was parked outside. You always knew where the royals were by where their cars were, and of course I’d just passed their security guys and drivers standing around checking out chicks in the hotel breezeway, which seemed to be their primary activity. I was the only chauffeur always working. I’d become the go-to girl, the go-to Internet girl, and now the go-to-get-shampoo-bedpan girl, while they napped in their cars or stood around getting a tan as they practiced their pickup lines. One time one of them said to me, “Yeah, I’d fuck your mother.” I think he meant it as a compliment to me and my mother even though she wasn’t there. I understood the underlying message to mean something like: “You’re kind of old, but still okay-looking so your mom’s probably still okay-looking too. Congratulations! You’re both still fuckable.”

  Later that day, the head security guy pulled me aside and asked me why I hadn’t done Princess Zaahira’s bidding. There had been a complaint.

  “Stu,” I said. “That’s not fair. I told Asra that I couldn’t get it last night; it was way too late by the time she asked me. I got up this morning at 8:00 A.M. to try and find the stupid thing. I had to drive all over Los Angeles; it’s not exactly a regular item. I’m lucky I even found one.”

  “She said you were supposed to deliver it last night,” he said. “Listen, missy, all I know is that the princess is unhappy. You got that? Stay out of the way, and quit doing favors for everybody. It only gets you in trouble. You show off too much. You got that? Remember your place!” he said.

  My place? I thought. I have an education, and now I’m driving around trying to score a shampoo bedpan, so don’t tell me about place. I got that!

  I found out that the secretary was supposed to get the hair-washing contraption thing herself during the day but couldn’t find it, so she pushed the whole problem off onto me—the scapegoat factor and the pecking order, all in one go. I couldn’t help but wonder why she needed to make me look bad; I was already so low on the totem pole that I was no threat to her.

  All my life I had been the kind of person to say: “Yes, I can help. Yes, I can do that. Yes, that is possible.” But I now began to consider that maybe I should join the masses to make my life easier. I realized that many people do not live as I did because it is easier to do nothing, or to pretend to not know something just to get out of further work, responsibility, or potential culpability.

  I tried to steer clear of Asra after that, and even let calls go to voice mail when I thought it might be her trying to reach me, knowing that I might possibly be fired for doing so.

  I figured out later, after the family had left, why I was asked to get the bottles of Hair Off. When a Saudi girl is married—sometimes soon after she becomes a woman, when she is required to begin wearing the abaya, hijab, and veil in public—part of the traditional matrimonial preparation is to wax off all body hair, except from the head and eyebrows but including all the private parts and even those little tiny hairs around the backside. Everything goes.

  This ancient custom, halawa, is in part for the comfort of the man, and I understand and appreciate this. In fact, I’ve spent hours preening and prepping for the pleasure and comfort of men, and often it pays off. The word halawa actually means sweet, and it is also the name of the boiled sugar paste that is used for hair removal. The complete body waxing is also to ensure that the woman is made sweet—that she is clean and pure, and ready for a man. For many Muslim people, removing pubic hair is one of the parts of the fitrah (natural disposition or customs of nature) as enjoined by the Prophet Muhammad.

  A young girl, maybe thirteen, fourteen, or seventeen years old, about to be married to perhaps a sixty-year-old man as his third or fourth wife, has all her pubic hair waxed off so that she looks more like a ten-year-old instead of a thirteen-year-old. I couldn’t help but think of Soraya. Perhaps the Hair Off was for her and her wedding? Princess Zaahira had a son who was in his midtwenties, and she was thirty-eight or maybe forty years old—so she may have had him when she was only a teenager. Her husband was over eighty, so he was at least fifty-five when they had a child. And as for Soraya, as the third wife of the man her family had chosen for her, perhaps she had returned home to be married to a man old enough to be her grandfather.

  Then it is the preference for many women to continue to wax in this way every forty days. I don’t know why they do not choose to have the hair removed permanently, but I suspect it has something to do with enjoying and maintaining the ritualistic aspect of an ancient custom—the custom of preparing oneself for a man, just as American women do but in different ways. I started performing similar rituals in high school, way before I’d ever even been with a man, and I like doing them now too and even step it up or change it up depending on who I’m with, or the season or even the circumstances. A week in Key West calls for different ablutions than a week skiing in Vermont. I’ve seen by looking around me in the changing room at my yoga studio that I’m not alone in this and that there is an astounding variation in the color, shape, and style of the private parts landscape. I’ve even seen a pink Mohawked vajayjay, and one that was bejeweled. After a few excruciating experiments and mishaps of my own, I know that pain goes with the territory.

  My Persian friend, Giti, taught me the Farsi expression “Kill me but make me beautiful!” which women say in different languages all over the world. I don’t know of an equivalent expression for men.

  In their travels these modern women must have figured out that Hair Off is a lot less painful than waxing. Now that I know what they need it for, I want to send them cases of the stuff.

  15

  Alhamdulillah

  Janni like Saudi tea?” Maysam asked as she gently tugged at my sleeve one day when I passed her in the hotel hallway.

  “Uhh, sure, Maysam. I’ve had Turkish tea, is it like that?”

  “La [no], la, la, Janni. This is special tea from Arabia. Here, come to the tearoom, sit, sit. I make for Janni.” She brought me into the tea set’s hotel room and I sat down on one of the comfy Parisian chaises that the Saudis had brought with them on the plane. The hotel rooms were already beautifully appointed with Italian silk damask upholstered furniture and walnut tables, but the additional accoutrements that the Saudis had brought made them even more opulent. The Saudis also burned a lot of incense, so their rooms were also filled with exotic and seductive smells that reminded them of home. My clothes often carried the lingering odors of ambergris and orange blossom bakhoor (incense) long after I had visited them.

  I watched Maysam prepare and then infuse the tea. She was not more than sixteen years old but had already worked for the family for many years. Her English was halting, but her intelligence and common sense pervaded everything she did, and I enjoyed her company very much without us ever speaking many words to each other. She was round all over—even her wrists were round—and she wore a constant smile as if she was just happy to be alive. She always hummed to herself as she worked. She moved swiftly but with great grace, as if all her movements were so well practiced that they were now effortless. As she poured the tea into a china cup, she draped a funky-looking root over the spout of the teapot, so that the liquid passed over the root as it entered the cup. It looked like a fat bug with long hairy tendrils and a rank smell even from five feet away; like something from Fear Factor. I hoped she didn’t think I was going to eat it.

  “Whoa, whoa, Maysam, what is that?” I said.

  “This is special s
pice from Arabia. Special for you, Janni. Here taste, taste, taste. You like?” Maysam forced the teacup into my hand, and I had no choice but to take it. I was relieved that the root bug stayed on the teapot.

  I took a little sip and immediately felt woozy. I coughed several times, then was suddenly and sharply clear-headed, as if I had just sniffed smelling salts. The tea was strong, really strong—but good. “Wow, Maysam, this is actually delicious. And it’s what my mom would call this Sergeant Major tea—gives you a little buzz too. No wonder you ladies drink it all day long.”

  “What is this buttz, Janni?” she asked.

  “No, Maysam, buzz, not buttz. Buzz. Well, a buzz makes you happy in the head,” I answered and drank a little more.

  “Aiwa [yes], Janni, aiwa! Take, take. More for your beautiful buttz.”

  Sometimes I was assigned to drive Maysam and the other servant girls if they had a few hours free in the evening while the Princess Zaahira and the entourage were at dinner. Most of them were teenagers from North Africa or the Philippines who worked night and day for the family, with no days off ever that I could see. The North African girls (many from Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sudan) were Muslim and always wore colorful hijabs that covered their hair and neck, and modest clothing of many layers comprising long skirts, shawls, and tunics over long pants. These were usually geometric or floral patterned matching ensembles that covered their legs and arms completely. Some of them were stunning, with exotic good looks and nubile full figures that were alluringly silhouetted by their garments. Many times I saw the doormen and valets at the hotel gape at them with open-mouthed appreciation. Even covered from head to toe, the girls knew how to captivate an audience, and they were adept at casting their eyes this way and that to receive and acknowledge the attention.

  When attending to Princess Zaahira or one of her sisters or cousins, the girls always maintained a demure and quiet demeanor. They made soft clicking and clucking sounds that punctuated any brief communication signifying understanding, agreement, or dissatisfaction. At first they were this way with me as well, but I worked hard to win their favor and open communication. Eventually when we were out on our own, in the safety of the car, they were lively and full of energy, and chattered away cackling with good cheer. I played my favorite Senegalese and West African artists for them, and they were impressed that I had such music. The vehicle bounced and swayed with the accompanying rhythms that they made with their bodies and voices; it was like having a twelve-piece band, percussion and all, traveling with me. I snuck my computer and blank CDs into the car so I could make copies of their music, which were always live versions of famous Arabic performers—when we played those, it really felt like there was a live concert in the car—and copies of mine for them.

  They were delighted by their new free musical acquisitions, and I was too by mine. Their music was wonderful. I had some of the Arab music lyrics translated for me by a friend. All of the songs were achingly romantic: “I am always with you. You’re always on my mind and in my heart. I never forget you. I always miss you. Even if I am with you.” My friend who did the translations said, “Of course, the man always sings about love to the woman, and she sings of love to him. There is nothing else.” The girls would weep with happiness as they sang along.

  When they saw that I was computer savvy, they asked for help with the hand-me-down laptops that the family had given them. I showed them how to use Google in Arabic and other languages so that they could read and understand what was going on in their own countries; I mapped out and printed short, safe walks that they could take in the neighborhood when they had a half-hour free and set up Skype accounts for them so they could see and talk with their families back home. One of the youngest girls waited anxiously for me to download a version of Skype that would interface with her laptop’s dated operating system, and then cried all evening after she had talked with her sister for the first time since she’d left home, probably several years before.

  The girls told me that they loved me.

  They liked to go shopping too, just like the rich Saudi ladies whom they served. When I saw that they were buying things to send back to their own countries, things to make their families’ lives better and gifts for their little brothers and sisters, I got the idea to take them to the 99¢ Only store, which is famous in Los Angeles as a discount megashop that’s amazingly jam-packed with a myriad of low-end goods, all for ninety-nine cents. It’s commemorated in a renowned Andreas Gursky photo taken in 1999 at the 99¢ Only store in Hollywood, which sold for $999,999.99. I performed in the legendary Los Angeles yearly holiday spectacle, Orphean Circus’s “The 99¢ Only Show,” a brilliant and bizarre musical pageant in which all of the colorful costumes, scenery, sets, and props are from the store. My gown was crafted from shower curtains, paper tablecloths, balloons, baby swim floaties (as cap sleeves), crystal garland, and tinsel. My headdress was a tower of picnic plates, knives and forks, plastic flowers, and plastic fruit almost three feet high. I had to cover my body in baby powder every night to keep my costume from sticking to me permanently.

  The girls loved the store. They went nuts. They bought dozens of pairs of baby flip-flops, yards and yards of hair ribbon and handfuls of hair bows, piles of tiny socks and baby panties, Sweetee girl dolls, giant magic bubble wands, sippy cups, battery-operated plastic swords that lit up and made swooshing noises, toy cell phones and machine guns, mechanical pencils, Hershey bars, Tootsie Rolls, nail polish, toenail clippers, and bags of Cheetos that they’d eat on the way back to the hotel in the car, licking their sticky orange fingers with satisfaction.

  I noticed that they were careful not to waste their money. They would vigilantly look at one item after another, weighing each one in their hands as if calculating a hidden value, going back and forth comparing the attributes of each, passing the item from one girl to another for inspection, before making a cautious decision to determine which had the most bang for the buck. Even so, I often had to supervise their selections.

  “Oh, no, Zuhur. That’s Spam!!!” I said as I stopped her from putting a dozen cans on the conveyor belt to be rung up by the cashier. “It’s made with pork. You don’t eat that. It’s pork!”

  Zuhur was tall and willowy with freckled cocoa-colored skin and moved languorously but always with surprising efficiency. She demonstrated her command of the English language with pride and often acted as the translator for the group even though she knew perhaps less than a few hundred words of English. She was inventive and imaginative, however, and those few words were put to terrific use in refreshingly ingenious combinations. But she didn’t know what pork was, so finally I made a snorting noise, imitating a pig, and this stopped them all dead.

  “Oh, la [no], la!” cried Zuhur. “Shukran [thank you], Janni! Shukran. Thank you for this beautiful rescue, Janni! We do not want the pork! This is haram [forbidden]! We must not to enjoy the Spam!”

  They were sweet and unfailingly generous to me. Once, when they thought that I had admired a risqué panty in the lingerie aisle of the store—I was actually inspecting the panty from a distance with some trepidation—they later presented me with a gift of three of the same crotchless polyester thongs edged with black fringe in fuchsia, orange, and lime green.

  “Wow, shukran, thank you. I don’t know what to say. These are really quite something. Really unusual. I think you should keep them, though, and take them back to the Kingdom so you’ll always remember all the amazing stuff in the 99¢ Only store,” I said as I tried to push the panties back at them.

  “You must to take, Janni. You must to accept. You must. Is gift!” By this time they were all giggling and hiding their laughter behind their hands. They were teasing me, but I saw that they also delighted in purchasing and handling for a moment something that was clearly illicit to them and then passing it off for me to enjoy. I was touched that even though they had so little money, they wanted to buy something for me that they thought I would like. This happened more than once, and I learned not
to pick up or even look at any item when they were shopping, or it would invariably end up as a gift to me.

  Once I spotted them all together in a huddle hovering over a display right next to the feminine hygiene section. No one moved. They just stood quietly, frozen, with their heads slightly cocked to the side as if listening rather than watching. I went over to investigate and saw that they were standing directly in front of an abundant selection of condoms. There were rows and rows of colorful boxes, but there was also a huge pile of loose single condoms placed in a big bin as if they were five-cent condom candy that you could grab by the handful. Out of modesty, the girls were averting their gazes, but it was apparent that they were spellbound. They couldn’t help but stand inert before the display just so they could take it all in—a staggering assortment of colors, sizes, and attributes. They glanced wordlessly at me as I approached. Then one of them pointed to the exhibit as if it wasn’t clear what had transfixed them. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud.

  I knew they couldn’t read the print on the boxes and also very likely didn’t want to touch them either to do their usual hand-over-hand investigation. I picked up a few of the boxes and a fistful of loose condoms from the bin and clumsily conveyed to them that some were flavored (banana, chocolate, strawberry), others had ridges, some glowed in the dark, were textured, or lubricated, had extra headroom, offered a snugger fit. The more complicated condom styles were more difficult to depict, but I made a determined effort to be clear. They just looked at me, unblinking, following my every word.