Driving the Saudis Read online

  The first pillar of Islam is the profession of faith, or shahada, and in keeping with the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, Maysam had to believe that I was going to burn in hell if I wasn’t a Muslim. But my belief is that life is hell if one carries around that kind of bigotry and racism inside your head and heart. I didn’t want to live my life that way, and I didn’t wish that kind of hell on my young friend either, just as she didn’t want me to suffer an eternity of damnation.

  Maysam always ended our conversations with, “I will pray to Allah for you, Janni, and for the health of your husband who you love very much. Alhamdulillah [Praise be to God]. Alhamdulillah.”

  22

  Go, Nanny, Go! Run for Your Life!

  In many ways, the job allowed me to witness or experience things that were startlingly new for me and that I am beginning to fully understand only now. I have traveled a little bit and have noticed that when I am away from my own country and immersed in a different culture, I often see and understand things in an unexpected way, perhaps because I am looking for and open to a new experience. The role of a chauffeur afforded me this opportunity here in my own homeland on a daily basis. All I had to do was watch and listen.

  I regularly delivered goods to Princess Zaahira’s hotel room, and two of her personal servants, who spent almost all of their time in the Presidential Suite, invariably answered the hotel room door. As I still knew only a handful of Arabic words and their English was equally limited, we’d never exchanged more than a word or two. But after weeks of deliveries, it was as if we knew each other well, and we commiserated with each other by our warm and tired smiles of greeting. They were both diminutive and delicate, like little doves, and I learned that they were from Eritrea. They rarely joined the other North African servants on outings, and I assumed this was because their workload was so great, but one day when I was in the hallway near the princess’s suite, they timidly asked me to drive them downtown to the market. I had already taken some of the other girls to the Fashion District, where clothing and material are sold wholesale, so I knew this was the market that they meant. When they had a few hours off one afternoon, we headed there.

  I tried to make conversation, but it was pretty rough going; they seemed happy just to be in the car and watched everything we passed with great interest. They did ask me about my ailing imaginary husband, and I said that he was feeling much better. Thank goodness, no one ever asked to see a picture of him because I didn’t think to carry one. Also, whose picture would I have used? A brother’s? That would be weird. An ex-boyfriend’s? I wouldn’t have wanted to do that. I have few pictures of ex-boyfriends anyway, and I wouldn’t want to carry any of those men around with me, literally as well as figuratively. I made the mistake of dating an actor once, which I almost never do, and at the same time that I was trying to break up with him, he booked a commercial campaign. For months as I drove around Los Angeles, I was bombarded with 20- by 60-foot billboards of his face bearing down on me. It gave me the willies.

  I decided to drive east on surface streets, avoiding the freeway in case there were any residual images of him darkening the skies. As we cruised along Pico Boulevard through what Angelenos call Little Ethiopia, we drove by an old Spanish-style mission when suddenly the two girls erupted in cheers and cries; I quickly pulled the car to the side of the road thinking something was amiss. They pointed at the building and exclaimed something like, “This church, this church!” They were ecstatic. I looked up at the mission and saw colorful mosaic tiling along one side and Amharic writing on the front with the words Ethiopian Christian Fellowship Church written in English just beneath it. In my ignorance, I had assumed all of the African girls were Muslim, but this wasn’t true. And even though these girls wore head coverings, they were Christian. I pulled into the parking lot to see if we could go inside.

  It was a weekday afternoon, and the place looked deserted, but I stood at the side door and rang the bell several times while the girls stayed in the car and watched eagerly. I glanced back at them as I waited at the door; they were so tiny that I could barely see the tops of their heads bobbing around in the backseat of the car. Just as I’d given up and was headed back to the car, the pastor came out of one of the buildings and walked toward us. I explained who we were and introduced the girls to him; they had now become very still, looking at him with fervent attention. The pastor leaned in the car window and smiled reasssuringly at them. He didn’t speak any Arabic, but he did speak Amharic and a little Tigrinya, which they appeared to understand. He told them the service schedule, asked them to come back, and offered encouraging words to them. They looked like five-year-olds listening to a fairy tale being read out loud to them, eager but very relaxed at the same time. It was sweet to see him engage with them, although I couldn’t understand most of what was said.

  When we drove away, I promised to take them there the following Sunday morning, and their faces gleamed with pleasure. I knew that a morning service was early enough that it wouldn’t interfere with my other duties, and even if it did, I would have asked a friend to drive them if I’d had to.

  The following weekend, I reminded them of my offer, and they thanked me but were warily noncommittal, then shied away from the topic the following weeks whenever I saw them again. I assumed this must have been because they weren’t able to get the time off, so I didn’t press it. I thought back to when they were so delighted to see the church as we drove by it. They were as thrilled as children on Christmas morning.

  I knew that they were forbidden by law to practice their own religion in Saudi Arabia and could be severely punished for doing so. They probably hadn’t been home to their own countries in years, and perhaps for a moment they were caught up in the possibility of a happy communion with a community that they missed—one that wasn’t even exactly their own but still close enough. It was comparable to my going into an English pub in China just to be near some people who might be a little like me, but not really, so that I would feel comforted in an unfamiliar place far from home. But they couldn’t be comforted in this way because they weren’t allowed a Sunday morning off.

  One day soon after this, I was out driving Rajiya and Malikah, and we picked up Princess Aamina at the doctor’s office after a checkup. She’d had several procedures a few days before, so she was strapped up with fierce white bandages holding everything tight in place. She was completely covered up in a long white diaphanous dress, a Hermès silk scarf tied around her face and neck making her look like a chic aviator, and a broad-brimmed white hat. Her steps were slow and careful, but otherwise you could barely tell that she’d just had surgery; she looked like she was stepping out to have lunch in Saint-Tropez after a lovely day at the beach. She handled it like a pro, and she never complained a bit even though she must have been in serious pain, because I knew that she had major work done, more than a few nips and tucks. Malikah told me Princess Aamina had various procedures done several times a year, all over the world, but Beverly Hills was her favorite place for the big stuff. Whatever she was doing was working for her and she looked fabulous, not at all like a surgery victim.

  Princess Aamina preferred the front seat of the car, just as her daughter did; she always sat next to me and would chitchat during our rides together. I knew that she liked me and had come to count on my good judgment and assistance, and she relied on the fact that I was careful with my precious cargo, her daughter. She spoke with a refined continental accent and was a gracious woman who treated everyone around her with a great deal of warmth and respect. She was extremely agitated on this trip, however, because of family news that she had just received.

  “Oh, my good heavens! I am just sick about it! How terrible, just terrible!” she said.

  “What’s happened? Are you okay? Are you hurt?” I asked as I helped her lower herself gently into the front seat.

  “No, no, of course not, I am fine. This is nothing. Thank you. It is just that my beautiful friend, Princess Hadeel, has had terribl
e trouble. You see, she left Los Angeles early, before the family, to spend a few days to enjoy New York. It was agreed that she would take a flight from John F. Kennedy Airport to Geneva, and then she would wait for us to join her there. She has a beautiful baby girl, Badra. You have seen her, such a comely child, and a young nanny. I do not recall her name.”

  “Yes, I think I met them last week,” I said. Princess Hadeel was lovely, tall, and graceful like a languid gazelle with a kindly and calm gaze. She had smiled genially at me when we passed each other in the hotel lobby. The nanny from Eritrea was tiny, painfully thin, and didn’t appear to be more than sixteen years old. She looked as if she could have been a sister of one of Princess Zaahira’s servants and had a high noble-looking forehead that is typical of that region, but she had a ghostly pallor in spite of her dark pecan-colored skin. She looked down always, her eyes combing the ground as if she were searching for something that she’d dropped.

  “Last night,” continued Princess Aamina, “Princess Hadeel was with the baby Badra and the nanny in line at the airport security—first class, of course. Princess Hadeel was ahead holding the baby Badra, and the nanny was behind them in line with the carry-on bags. Hadeel must give the nanny her passport to present to the official, and so they were in line and they are holding their passports. The official first speaks with Hadeel, and then he gives her the stamp, and then Hadeel turned to the nanny—and the nanny is gone! She has run away! Can you imagine? In the blink of an eye, she is gone. How terrible for Hadeel! How terrible! And the nanny took the nappy bag! Princess Hadeel had no nappies. Of course, she cannot possibly fly, so she has checked into the Pierre Hotel, and we will pick her up next week with the family plane, and then we will all go to Geneva together. How terrible! How terrible for Hadeel! The nanny just ran away!”

  I had just heard that one of the Filipina servants had also escaped. She fled in the middle of the night by throwing her suitcases over the hotel balcony to a newly acquired American boyfriend waiting in the bushes below. Somehow she slipped away without being seen and met him down the street after he had secured her bags. The girl’s disappearance wasn’t discovered until the next morning, and by then she was long gone, secreted away by her boyfriend.

  Princess Aamina turned to me, carefully and as best she could being bandaged from hips to ears, with tears in her eyes. “How could this happen?” she asked me.

  I mumbled something to her about how inconvenient it all was, how unfortunate, how inconsiderate, but inside I was screaming, GO, NANNY, GO! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! You got your passport! Yeah! Go find your friends and family in Queens! Make yourself a new life! Maybe your other two friends from Eritrea can join you soon, and you can all go to church together whenever you want!

  And I was sure that Princess Hadeel and the baby Badra were fine. They were in a suite at the Pierre waiting for the family’s private jet plane to pick them up, probably watching Dancing with the Stars and eating shrimp cocktail.

  23

  How Many Bras Are Too Many?

  Just before the family was scheduled to leave, Princess Zaahira’s secretary, Asra, summoned me and showed me a brassiere that the princess’s cousin, Princess Basmah, had recently purchased and liked very much. It was sweet and sexy—the $500 kind of brassiere made of satin and lace with delicate detailing. Understandably, Basmah wanted more of them—a whole lot more. I presumed that she had some boob work done, and if I had new boobs, I know I’d want new bras too. Asra said Basmah wanted as many as I could get of the same bra but in all the colors available—baby pink, pale blue, black, nude, butterscotch, and ivory—and she needed them all before the family was scheduled to depart the following afternoon. Great, I thought. Another last-minute all-important extra-special assignment: bra reconnaissance. For Basmah, no less.

  So far I’d had only a few encounters with Princess Basmah, and she did not wow me. She was very much like her younger cousin, Princess Anisa—petulant and sulking. I had decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and told myself that she was probably shy and that was why she appeared so standoffish. Basmah was in her late twenties and looked like many of the other Saudi women: truly full-figured, perfectly coiffed, and painstakingly made up at all times with heavily painted maroon lips, kohl-rimmed wide-set Arabian eyes, and carefully shaped high-arching eyebrows. She went through a lot of makeup. I’d already been on numerous runs to replenish her supply of lip and eyebrow pencils, and you could see that she was wearing in one day as much makeup as an average woman would wear in a year. Her face looked like a perfectly painted seductive mask, and she had very little facial movement or expression, perhaps so as not to disrupt her maquillage.

  Basmah had bought the original bra at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills, so I started my search there. The very helpful lingerie saleslady, Sheila, sounded like she was from the Bronx. She had a big bouffant of back-combed frosted hair, enormous black Gucci eyeglasses, and blood-red lipstick applied in a thick, wet coat. Sheila immediately knew who I meant when I mentioned that a woman from a family (again I said this with great gravitas; while the thrill of being affiliated with one of the wealthiest families in the world was long gone, I knew that it could still garner results) had been in the store the previous day and had purchased some lingerie.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “I couldn’t forget her. That was a good day yesterday, lemme tell ya. She spent thousands of dollars. And she didn’t even try anything on. Now she wants more bras? She already bought a lot. How many more does she want? I don’t have much in stock. I’m gonna have to make some calls. When do you need them?” Her speech sounded like machine-gun fire.

  “I need them now actually. And she wants as many as I can get of one particular bra in all the different colors,” I said. Asra hadn’t let me take the prototype on my bra search, probably just to make my job more difficult. I started to describe the $500 undergarment as best I could, wanting to provide as much detail as possible with the hope that Sheila could correctly identify the style without the bra in hand, but she stopped me almost right away.

  “C’mon, I remember what she bought yesterday. How could I not? You’re talking about the Chantilly. Did she want the one with the pearls at the cleavage?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “Yes, she wants the one with the pearls.”

  There were hundreds of bras on display, but Sheila turned toward one of the racks right near her and pulled out the exact one that Asra had shown me.

  “This it?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s it for sure. Wow, you really know your bras.”

  “Tell me about it. So whaddya mean as many as I can get? How many?” There was a flicker of movement on her forehead as if she had begun to raise her eyebrows at me but had then thought better of it. I studied her face for a moment and then remembered the New Yorker cartoon hanging in my dermatologist’s office depicting the Grecian theater masks of Comedy and Tragedy: both the masks had flat nonexpressions, and above them was written “Theatre of Botox.”

  “Really, I think she’ll take as many as you can get—at least five or six in every color if possible.”

  “You sure? That’s a lot. What’s she gonna do with all of them? Wear them on top of each other?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she’s afraid she won’t be able to ever find them again.”

  “She’s right. They’re constantly changing styles. If you find a bra you like, buy a boatload of them because tomorrow they’ll be gone, let me tell ya. Okay, we’re looking for a size 44 DD, right? That’s not gonna be easy. That’s a big bra. We don’t keep too many of that size in stock, especially not in the Chantilly. It’s a little fragile for that big a load.”

  She pointed to a cushioned ottoman near her. “Sit down on that pouffe over there. You look like you could take a load off. I’ll make some calls after I check the back. I’ll see what I can get my hands on here. You sure you want as many as I can get?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Really. As many as you can get, please.”
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  The lingerie department at Neiman’s had soft lighting and a soothing atmosphere. I immediately sat down on one of the pouffes, as directed, and relaxed. I could tell that Sheila was going to hook me up. At eye level across from me was one of the most gorgeous negligees I had ever seen. It looked like something that only an ancient blind Italian seamstress could have sewn, and it would have taken her twelve years. It was a three-layered silk slip that fell just above the knee, with a softly structured embroidered bodice that would have been perfect for my figure. The innermost layer was a pale pink sheath, the second layer was even paler pink, and then the topmost layer was a finely woven lace brocade in ivory with a sheer ruffled skirt that started at mid-hip. All three of the layers met in the back with overlapping crisscrossed ties that secured the garment in a gentle three-layered corset. It was $2,500, and if I’d had the cash in my hot little hand at that moment, I would have had to cut off my arm not to buy it.

  Sheila came out at that moment and saw me looking longingly at the negligee. I asked if it might ever go on sale. She looked at me, then at the garment, then looked at me again and said, “Fuggetaboutit.”

  She had several bras draped over her arms. “Listen, all I have are these. There’s only eight. I’m gonna have to try our other stores. Newport Beach, Woodland Hills, and San Diego. You wanna go to San Diego?”