story 9 part 2

Story 9Part 2

A short story

by Wanchain

“I will give you the key to my Maserati when I see you next time.” Abbas messaged Zaliya from his hotel in Thessaloniki. He was hoping that when he did give her his key, he would have the Maserati wrapped with pink ribbons for her. A nice present must be beautifully adorned. He envisioned the Maserati smiling smartly at her as she approached it with the key.

Zaliya did not see that message until she arrived in Istanbul. Thus, they both continued their journeys separately, although somewhat disappointed, as one of the objectives of their trips was to meet each other half way across the globe. Yet, they narrowly missed each other. But he was not at all disheartened. The globe was round, therefore he believed that there would always be another chance to meet again. In his mind, the end of this trip was only the beginning of the next trip, which would be the beginning of their second plan to meet. He loved planning! Although he never realized that he was only good at planning but not so good at executing his plans.

He checked his work schedule. There were a few possible dates that he could request for vacation. He wondered what her schedule would be like. He couldn’t wait to discuss their next meeting plan with her.

A week later, Zaliya was back in Canada and back to work. There were some staffing changes in her workplace, due to changes in management. A few colleagues started to talk openly about changing jobs. Some had started to look around for jobs. She decided to explore the job market as well, now that her colleagues, whom she came to regard as her family members, were contemplating leaving this second home which she had spent the last decade in.

A week after she had started job-searching, her phone began to ring. Some employers wanted to conduct phone screening. Some employers wanted to meet her. For the next couple of weeks, she was busy with applying for jobs as well as attending interviews. Surprisingly, the response rate to her applications was extremely high. Some headhunters would even call her more than three times a day, chasing her for a revised resume and a list of job references, saying that the client was in a hurry to hire, which didn’t make much sense to her as she was only targeting leadership roles which typically would take longer to fill, but she complied anyway. Some headhunters were calling her while they were driving or going somewhere, saying that their clients were urgently in need of an expert in financial reporting, and asking her if she would be interested in a temporary assignment. However, after hearing about the different vacancies, she came to realize that there was a lot of noise in the job market, and she felt that she was lost in the noise. She stepped away from the noise for about a week.

Story 9, part 2 by Wanchain 1

She wondered how she could find a good job amidst all that noise. She began to realize that a good job was as hard to find as a good husband.

Abbas had not talked to Zaliya ever since his stay in Thessaloniki. Suddenly one day, he messaged her excitedly, “Hey Zaliya, I dreamed of you last night!”

Juggling between a full-time job and a job-search could be a bit overwhelming at times, as a new skill called ‘finding a job’ first had to be acquired before Zaliya could actually find a job. In the digital age, recruiters became easily bombarded with high volume of applicants not necessarily due to matching qualifications but rather due to the convenience of the internet, which therefore shifted the paradigm for the seekers on both sides of the job market. Life did not become easier with technology. It only became different. Zaliya replied Abbas a couple days later, when she was finally able to let her mind rest as she sat quietly in the kitchen of her workplace. “Hey Baba, what was I doing in your dream? Tell me!”

“You were sitting in a big office with a very big window. Outside of the window was a very nice view of the city. There was a lot of snow on the ground, but it was very sunny. You were looking out of the window, as if lost in thought. On your desk was a big cup of hot tea with steam still rising from the cup.”

“How interesting! I have an office but it doesn’t have a window.” Zaliya tried to envision the office that he described to her.

“Well, I don’t know. That’s what I saw in the dream. And then I knocked at your door.”

“What? You came to my workplace?”

“Yes. I came to take you out for dinner with my Maserati.”

“Huh? Your Maserati was in Canada?”

“Yes, I shipped it to Canada.” Abbas typed enthusiastically. They had been talking and joking about having a dinner together for a long time.

Zaliya couldn’t stop laughing. She wasn’t laughing at what he said. Instead, she was laughing at the images that appeared in her mind—a Maserati swimming across the ocean from a land covered with sand to a land covered with snow, in an attempt to escape the heat, only to discover that the cold was equally unbearable. Trying to keep it warm, Abbas then wrapped the


Maserati around a couple times with a long pink scarf. It liked the scarf very much and smiled widely.

“Hmm …” She did not share her imagination with him. “Welcome to both of you!”

“Thank you.” He grinned.

She thought again about the office he described. She wondered if there was any special meaning to his dream. She had once heard from a tarot card reader that some dreams could be prophetic. She had only had prophetic dreams a few times, when she asked for them. Most of the time, she was more interested in sleep than in dreams, and hence never entertained herself much with dream interpretation or dream recall.

Very shortly after Abbas told her about his dream, Zaliya received a job offer from a medium sized company for a leadership role in their corporate finance team. After comparing the different openings in the market, she thought that was a pretty good offer, and she liked the hiring manager whom she met quite a while ago. She had almost forgotten the job posting, had the offer not been extended to her. Therefore she accepted the job offer. It was the middle of February. The ground was covered with a thick layer of snow.

After a brief glimpse of life abroad, every day Abbas could not stop thinking of revisiting the foreign land again. He was surprised that people were so open-minded. That was an unbelievably refreshing environment. He loved discussing the different cultures, languages, and religions openly with his classmates. Was that the feeling of freedom? It was extremely liberating! He couldn’t get enough of it. He wanted to discuss his next trip with Zaliya.

Just then, Zoleikha messaged him to inform him about her departure. Her project term was about to end in a month, after which she would return to Canada.

Abbas was first surprised and then sad. He felt that she was leaving him. He didn’t want to be left behind, yet, he had no choice. He was not as mobile as those who came from the West. Not only did he lack the mobility, he also lacked the freedom to meet women freely in his own country. He wished that he could see Zoleikha for one last time before she left, but he knew that it would be nearly impossible to do so as the conservative practice of the Kingdom did not allow unmarried and unrelated men and women to mingle.


“Oh, I am sorry to hear that.” After sulking for a while at the news of her pending departure, he finally replied.

“Don’t be sorry! I am actually quite excited to go back to Canada.”

“Because you miss Canada?”

“Hmm … Well, not really. I usually feel at home regardless of where I am. I don’t mind it here. It’s just that I don’t like wearing this black cloth all the time. It is so clumsy! Especially when I have to eat or drink.” She had previously asked a Saudi female colleague to demonstrate eating with a niqab for her. She was amazed how her colleague was able to do so with such ease. She was told that she was permitted to uncover her face when she had to eat and drink. She was mildly amused by that remark, specifically at the word permitted, as if she was a prisoner whose rights had been surrendered to the Kingdom. In either case, she was not too fond of the inconvenience, as she often found food or juice on her niqab. Although knowing that she could remove the niqab, she had a strong preference for keeping it on in public, not in an attempt to be conservative, but to hide her ethnicity, so that the locals—Saudis and foreign workers—would not stare at her because she looked different. There were not many Asians of Mongolian descent in the Kingdom. On a few occasions, when she first arrived in the Kingdom and had not yet established the habit of covering her face, she found that the Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian foreign workers were especially curious about her. Of the few who managed to strike up a conversation with her, she did not enjoy the conversations, mainly because the conversations were always the same—“Are you Chinese?” or “Are you from China?”— and she got tired of explaining that Kalmyk was a federal subject of Russia, when her listeners clearly had limited knowledge of geography. They had no interest in learning geography. In her mind, these were meaningless conversations.

“Oh I see.” He was getting more and more pensive at the news. He didn’t know what to say.

“Anyway, I got to go. I just want to let you know that I am leaving.”

Ever since their meeting at Athens airport, they had chatted periodically, but each time, their chat lasted only a few minutes. Zoleikha was not fond of long and especially pointless chat. She was not much of a conversationalist. She had always thought that those who talked a lot did not know what they were talking about, and when she tried to sift through their speech, she would often find that they really had not said anything. She preferred to get to the point when she talked.


From those few short chats, Abbas was able to get to know her a little bit more. He was trying to think of a way to see her again, because he thought, if he could not see someone who was in the same country as him, then he would have much less of a chance to do so when they were not in the same country. He refused to accept that. He wished that he could see whomever he wanted to see. He wanted to rebel. But he feared punishment. In fact, he did not believe that the punishment for this sort of rebellion was just, precisely because he did not believe that it was a sin to meet another human being. Human beings did not come to this planet fettered. In fact, no living thing came to this planet naturally fettered. Yet, some ended up being the victims of imprisonment, mentally or physically, by way of creative human contrivances.

He began to plot.

The following Friday, a weekend in Saudi Arabia, a woman was sitting on a bench at the corniche of Jeddah. A man approached her. He sat down on another bench about ten feet away from her. He was wearing a light blue dress shirt and dark blue dress pants. He took out his phone and started typing a message.

“Hey, I am here. Where are you?”

“I am next to you.” She didn’t look in his direction. Instead, she was looking out toward the sea.

“Huh? Where? Which way?”

She didn’t answer. She giggled. She wanted to cover her mouth, but then stopped herself. There was no need to cover her mouth since she was wearing a niqab. Dress code affected behavior, body language, and posture.

In addition to her abaya and niqab, she also donned a pair of sunglasses, as the reflection of the afternoon sun from the sea was a bit too glaring for her eyes. She was perfectly camouflaged, which was the whole intent of the black garment. She marveled at how she could be invisible in broad daylight. She wondered, what was the effectiveness of a surveillance camera in the Kingdom? She presumed that the dress code might not necessarily reduce crime, but more likely to shift it from one form to another.

She continued to stare at her phone, wondering how long it would take him to figure out which one was her. She was waiting for him to find out on his own.

He looked left and right. There were so many women, as well as men, at the corniche. Some were strolling about. Some were sitting. It was February.


Winter was a comfortable time to sit outside, especially by the sea, in Saudi Arabia. He was sure that none of the women who were strolling about was her. He tried to look for single women who were sitting down. There were three women who seemed to be by themselves. They were equally slender. They were all playing on their phones.

“Give me some hints. There are so many women here.” He messaged her.

“Well, does it matter which one?” She was a bit surprised that he still had not noticed her. Perhaps the crowd had increased the effectiveness of her camouflage. She continued to giggle quietly. It amused her that he looked so lost. This was a hide-and-seek game that she could play with him, knowing that she had a competitive advantage against him. That little advantage piqued her mischievous nature, which she rarely expressed.

“Yes, because I want to see you.”

She didn’t say anything. She started to play Sudoku on her phone. In a hide-and-seek game, no hints would be given. He waited impatiently for her reply. He was not aware that he was participating in a game. He would not have agreed to participate in a game in which he had a competitive disadvantage. He continued to look around. He started to get annoyed that the corniche was so busy on a wintery weekend.

“Hey Zoleikha, where are you? Are you still here?”

“I am playing hide-and-seek with you.” She laughed.

“Please don’t do that. Tell me where you are! Put up your hand or wave or do something.” He was getting more and more agitated. How was he going to seek, when he could not go near any of the women nor touch them? He could ask them a question, but that would seem awkward, and he was not prepared to do anything silly. How could such a handsome man as him do such a silly thing?

His one and only intention was to see her. He had only met her once, when she was sitting quite still, almost like a rock, for the entire time. It was hard for him to discern based on body language and physique, which one of the women was her.

“Wave? Then everyone will know that me and you are here to meet up.”

“Then just put up your hand.”

Zoleikha pondered on that suggestion for a moment. Just as she was doing that, one of the single women got up from the ground. Zoleikha started to get up. She followed the woman, but kept a polite distance from her. Both of


them were walking away from him. While walking, she searched for a way to reply to his suggestion. She could very well put up her hand, but it would make her seemed silly.

“Umm, I am not in a classroom, you know. I am at the corniche.”

“Yes, I know. But which one is you?”

“Well, if you want me to put up my hand, you would have to do one thing for me.” She came up with an idea.

“What?”

“You would have to yell out, very loudly, and preferably very fondly as well, for everyone at the corniche to hear, that you love Zoleikha.”

“Huh?”

“Shout ‘I love Zoleikha’ very loudly.”

“No! Are you crazy?”

“Well, when everyone starts to turn their head toward you, I will put up my hand. Your shout will be a kind of red herring. How’s that?”

“That’s a bad idea!”

“Okay, how about shouting ‘I hate Zoleikha’?” Her playfulness was beginning to show some creativity.

“That’s also a bad idea. Any kind of shouting is just bad.”

“Okay, fine.”

“Just tell me where you are. I only see one single woman sitting at the corniche right now. Is that you?” He continued to scan his surroundings.

“That woman has a green handbag right?” Zoleikha turned around to look for a woman sitting by herself on the sand with a green handbag. That woman was busily typing on her phone. She was at his two-o’clock position, about 15 feet away.

“Yes. So that’s you?”

“I didn’t say that. You will have to find out for yourself if that’s me or not.” Zoleikha was standing at his nine-o’clock position, about 40 feet away from him, on the promenade along the shore, watching that woman. There were quite a few pedestrians of varying dimensions walking back and forth on the promenade which altogether provided an interestingly dynamic shield in the


open area for her. She continued to feel the thrill of the game, and was in no hurry to end it yet.

“Okay, I think that’s you. You have a very pretty handbag.” He looked closer at the outline of her body, her posture, and her handbag. In that country, men typically recognized their female family members or friends in public places by their silhouettes, body postures, and accessories.

She was tempted to say thank you, out of a conditioned habit of responding to a compliment, but she restrained herself from doing so. She did not want to appear as if she was lying. Instead, she grinned. She grinned because he lost the game, which made the game much more fun for her to play. She grinned because it was her first time playing that game, and she felt a sense of excitement and freshness. She grinned because she never realized that such a simple circumstance could create so much amusement, or perhaps so much damage, depending on one’s perspective. While she was playing that game, she came to understand something—a misunderstanding often originated from a simple circumstance going wrong. As she continued to watch the progress of the game, she began to see not just the game itself, but the dynamics of a relationship, of any kind, between two individuals. She did not want the feeling to end. She did not want the game to end. She wasn’t done having fun yet.

Up until the moment he arrived, she had no expectation of how their meeting would turn out. Hide-and-seek wasn’t a game that she intended to play, but since given the chance, her opportunistic personality naturally jumped at it.

“So what are we going to do? Keep sitting like this?” She asked after a while. She wasn’t sure how to continue this game. She came to realize that this was a game that required constant improvisation.

“Hmm … I don’t know. Why don’t we take a walk along the shore?”

“Umm … You want us to be walking side by side?”

“Well, not that close. Maybe you can walk ahead of me?”

“Hmm … I want to sit a little bit more.” Zoleikha looked at the womanly figure with the green handbag. She didn’t think that the figure would move any time soon as she was still quite obsessed with her phone. Zoleikha walked to a spot closer to him, to sit next to a family with six kids running and laughing around them. She wanted to find a crowd to blend in with.

“Okay, we’ll sit for a bit longer then. Would you like something to drink?”

Zoleikha laughed again. “Why do you ask?” She noticed that he liked to ask meaningless questions.


“Well, usually people sit down to have a little bit of something to drink, so I thought you might want to drink something too.”

“Hmm … well, not right now, thanks.” She was afraid that he would suggest her to go get a drink, as she did not have a remote control to get the womanly figure to move an itch.

“Okay.”

Three of them sat quietly, by themselves, each lost in their own imagination and amusement. The womanly figure with the green handbag amused herself with her phone. Abbas amused himself with the thought that the woman in front of him was the one he wanted to see. Zoleikha amused herself by watching the idiot near her.

In any human relationship, there exist three perceptions in each individual: of himself, of his companion, and of his connection with his companion. In this scenario, the three perceptions were very disjointed, and thus Zoleikha and Abbas were disconnected even when they were sharing the same space.

Zoleikha and Abbas continued to chat randomly about meaningless stuffs. All the while she wondered if and when he would find out that he had been staring at the wrong person. Then, suddenly, the woman with the green handbag stood up from the sand, while Zoleikha was typing on her phone.

Oops! She thought.

“Hey, are you leaving?” He asked.

“Yes. My butt hurts too much from sitting on the ground.” Zoleikha also got up from the family with six children. She wasn’t sure if she should follow the figure or not. She had no idea how to continue this game.

“Where are you going?” He was surprised and puzzled. His eyes continued to follow the woman.

“I am really not sure!” She typed as she watched the figure who was supposed to be her. She didn’t follow the woman. Instead, she was standing in the middle of a couple of running children. One of the children grabbed her arm, inviting her to play along with them. She patted the head of the child and gently said, in English, “No, I am not done with my hide-and-seek yet.”

“Come back here!”

“Uh … I can’t!” Zoleikha said. At this point, she didn’t know what to say.

“Why not? Can I follow you?” A sense of abandonment began to attack him.


“Follow? What? Are you going to stalk me now?” Zoleikha was worried that he would actually stalk the woman whom they both didn’t know.

“Then don’t go!”

“Sorry, I’ve got to go! But we can still talk on the phone.” Zoleikha didn’t know how to explain the situation to him. She thought at this point it might be easier to just play along with him. She typed hastily as she watched the womanly figure walk toward a car with a driver in it.

“Who’s that?”

“Who’s what?”

“The man in the car.”

Umm … I don’t know! Zoleikha was watching the man and the woman in the car, wondering, what was their relationship? Husband and wife? She was never so curious about another stranger off the street until now. This game was beginning to challenge her. What was she going to say now? Came clean?

Both of them continued to watch the two strangers, quite intensely but separately. This was perhaps one of the side effects of being inconspicuous. The woman sat in the passenger seat of the car, and was chatting with the driver. Both Abbas and Zoleikha began to wonder what they were talking about, what were they going to do next, where were they going to go next. An innocent curiosity grew within them.

“Well, of course he’s my driver.” Zoleikha gave him a simple answer, as she was not sure how to improvise at this point, without risking any contradiction at a later point.

“You have a driver?”

“Uh? Hello! Did you just arrive in Saudi Arabia today?” Actually, she wanted to ask if he had just arrived on planet Earth today. Who in the world would not know that Saudi Arabia was the only country on the planet where women were prohibited to drive?

“Oh yeah, well, I know that. I just thought that you might come by taxi.” In fact, he had not thought about how she had gotten there until now. He was too excited to see her that he had forgotten the inconvenience of women in that country.

“It’s more convenient to hire a driver on a monthly basis.”

“That’s true. But somehow he doesn’t look like your driver.”


“Then what does he look like?”

“He looks like your husband.”

“How so?” The car had already left. Zoleikha was still standing amidst the family of children, undecided as to where she should go next. Abbas was further away from her now. He had walked closer to the car as he hoped to get a better look at the strangers. He was interested in knowing more about Zoleikha. He wanted to know what her lifestyle was like, what kind of a driver she had, what kind of a car she sat in, and so on. His interest in her stemmed from the plain and simple face with Asian features that he saw at the Athens airport. Something in her had attracted him from that moment. That something had bloomed into a friendship. And he felt that her departure would jeopardize that friendship.

“I don’t know. It seems like you have known him for a long time.”

“Hmm … Yes, that’s kind of true.”

“So he’s your husband?” He was shocked at the direction of her message. It sounded affirmative to him.

“No, I mean I do know him for quite a while now.” She was thinking of her relationship with her own driver.

“But is he your husband or driver?”

“Okay, think whatever you want to think. I got to go now.” She was not interested in him being so insistent on knowing about her personal life. Although she had no issue with others knowing her marital status, she did have an issue when they paid undue amount of attention to it. Had he been an innocent colleague who simply wanted to get to know the person whom he was going to work with, she would willingly and happily share her personal life with him. But if he behaved like a stalker, and obsessed over her every detail to satisfy his unusual fascination, she would respond quite negatively. In fact, she was quite disgusted by people with such perversion. For that reason, as soon as she sensed any strange curiosity by anyone, especially men, about her, she began to be evasive and secretive. In the past, she had several times been the target of perverted men. Although no actual harm was done to her, it was psychologically unsettling, as she felt that the men were mentally prying and inspecting her, ogling and salivating at the sight of every inch of her in their mind, and making some rather disturbing remarks. Perhaps for that reason, she did not mind wearing the black veil required in the Kingdom. However, even though the Kingdom could control how people behaved, it could never control how people thought. Yet, it was precisely the thought that repulsed her, not the behavior which was simply the expression


of the thought. A behavior without thought was not repulsive. A behavior with an innocent thought was not repulsive. A child could ogle at her and touch her, and she would not be repulsed by him.

“Hey, why are you not answering my question?” Her response surprised and confused him. He sensed her annoyance, but he didn’t know what was so annoying with his question. He merely wanted to clarify a fact. He didn’t think it was rude to ask such a simple question.

“It is an utterly pointless question. What does it matter, really? Bye.” Zoleikha left the corniche. She did not expect herself to end the game like that. But the meeting got complicated, no doubt due to her playfulness. She was afraid that he might get mad at her, and she had no idea how he would respond when he was mad. The uncertainty also made it hard for her to come clean.

He was frustrated by the way she skirted his question. He could not understand why women were so unpredictable and incomprehensible. He had met a few women in the past. In his honest opinion, all of them without exception, had something wrong with them. They were all hard to get close to, hard to understand, and hard to please. He sometimes wondered, why couldn’t they just be as sweet as a teddy bear—sit there and smile at him all day?

Upon that forever unsolvable question, he left the corniche grumpily.

Abbas was back at his relatives’ house in Jeddah. Feeling a bit disappointed about the meeting, he wasn’t sure if he should leave for Riyadh the next morning or hang around a bit more in Jeddah. While pondering on this question, his cousin asked him, “Would you like to go to the fish market with me tomorrow?” He thought for a couple seconds and agreed. Then he wondered, perhaps he could ask Zoleikha to go to the fish market tomorrow too.

“Hey Zoleikha, are you free tomorrow?” He messaged her. He believed that his idea was brilliant. He could not contain the excitement of seeing her again.

“So so. I got some things to do, but they’re not going to take all day. Why?”

“Would you like to go to the fish market tomorrow?”

“Hmm … I don’t like wet floors.”


“Oh, okay.” He pondered for a couple of seconds, and then asked, “Then would you like to go to a market with dry floors?”

“Sure.”

“Where would you like to go? I don’t know the places in Jeddah that well.”’

“Souq Al Alawi.” She thought of the big market in the old city of Jeddah that looked like a maze.

“Oh okay, I will meet you there tomorrow, is that okay?”

“Sure.” She wondered how they were going to meet. That market was almost always busy, especially on a weekend. The first time when she went there, she got disoriented after ten minutes.

Just before he messaged her, she was contemplating on the event that had transpired that afternoon. Was she wrong in being playful? She had no intention to deceive. At what point did a prank become an offense? Or were all pranks wrong?

She was quite aware that he was very eager to see her. Had they picked a quieter public place, she would not have played that prank on him. Since she was about to leave the country, perhaps she should let him see her again, although she had no preference as to whether she saw him or not.

“Hey,” Zoleikha messaged Abbas back.

“Hi.”

“I have a suggestion.”

“What is it?”

“Could you please go to the souq tomorrow as a woman?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, come covered up in an abaya and a niqab.”

“Why?”

“So that we could walk together. Understand?”

“Non, je ne comprends pas.” It wasn’t that he didn’t understand. It was that he refused to understand. He tended to switch to a foreign language whenever he was outraged.

“Oui, tu comprends.”


“Non, je ne comprends pas.”

“Okay, we’ll play hide-and-seek again tomorrow.”

“No!”

“Well, you can think about it. See you tomorrow.” Zoleikha put down her phone and got ready for bed.

“Hey Baba,” Zaliya messaged Abbas on Skype shortly after he finished messaging Zoleikha. Zaliya had just finished her first day at her new job. Her hiring manager asked her to start on a Friday, which was a bit unusual, but he explained that he would be out of town the following week, hence, he wanted her to start on a day that he would be in the office.

“Hi Zaliya, how are you?”

“Good! I want to tell you that I am sitting in an office with a big window.”

“Really? How so? Did your employer suddenly punch a big hole in your office?”

“No. I changed jobs.”

“Oh, congratulations! How’s the view?”

“Great! I can see lots of snow. It’s quite sunny outside. So it’s a very bright and lovely view. I think it is exactly what you saw in your dream.”

“Really? That’s awesome!” He recalled the office he saw in his dream.

“But there’s something missing though.” She sent him a pouting emoticon.

“Oh, what is that?”

“Take a guess.”

“Are you missing a white board?” He was trying to recall what else he saw in his dream.

“No.”

“A door?”

“No.” She laughed at his answer. It seemed to her that he did not bother to filter his thoughts before saying them.

“Air conditioner?”


“No.” She imagined turning on the air conditioner in winter.

“I don’t know. Tell me.”

“A Maserati.”

“Oh, sorry, it’s coming.” He slapped his forehead. How could he have forgotten that?

“Okay.”

“Hey Zaliya, I need your opinion on something.”

“What?”

He confided in her about his dilemma. She burst out laughing. He was utterly lost. She was utterly amused. He kept telling her about his misery. She kept asking him about his intention. He asked her many questions. Was it wrong for a man to dress like a woman? Was it wrong to meet a friend who would be going away, and perhaps never come back and never be able to meet again? What was right and what was wrong?

Morality was merely a set of manmade rules, to guide behaviors. But behaviors originated from thoughts, and an innocent thought could be interpreted as harmful while a malicious thought could be interpreted as harmless simply because the interpretation was not done by the person doing the act but by everyone else. Should a person focus on the superficial behavior instead of the underlying intention?

In the end, she did not give him an explicit answer to any of his questions. In her mind, she had already guided him, although in a somewhat indirect way. She believed that he should come up with the answer himself. She wanted him to make the decision independently, without any external influences, because she wanted him to take complete ownership of his choices. All she did was to point out what she believed was the most crucial factor in making his decision. Unfortunately, he was too overwhelmed by all the noise in his head to have noticed the keyword she gave him.

Nonetheless, the discussion allowed him to verbalize his thoughts in a somewhat linear fashion. It was an exercise of untying a knot, a mental knot in his mind. The human mind tended to be in all kinds of places, with many nonlinear thoughts bouncing back and forth at any point in time. This mental confusion would only worsen in a situation where emotions were entered into the mix. As a listener, Zaliya tried to repeatedly bring him back to one point—his intention.


Her messages calmed him down. He felt lighter. He believed he had arrived at a decision.

“Thanks for the chat. I think I know what to do now.” Abbas messaged and then fell asleep on the bed.

“Zoleikha, where are you?” Abbas messaged her from the souq the next morning. He was surprised to discover that the souq was so big and so disorientating. He parked his car at a parking lot a few blocks away.

“I am in a shop that sells tea.” Zoleikha was sniffing the different tea leaves in the shop.

“Where?”

“Umm …it’s next to a shop that sells dates.”

“Okay, give me a shop name or something.”

She walked out of the shop and looked at the shop’s signage. It was entirely in Arabic. She tried to take a picture of it, but her phone had zero storage space at the moment. She couldn’t delete any of the pictures on her phone, as most of them were job-related. She looked for another signage. Next door, the signage was half in English and half in Arabic. She typed the English name for him.

“Okay, what is the phone number of that shop?”

She typed the phone number that was on the signage.

“Okay, I will phone the shopkeeper.”

“Alright. That shop sells dates, just so you know.”

“Okay.”

Abbas phoned the number that Zoleikha gave her, and asked the shopkeeper if he had a hundred kilograms of dates for sale. The shopkeeper was excited at the business prospect. He said yes. Then Abbas asked him for the exact location of the shop. The shopkeeper said exuberantly, “Oh, for that quantity, you don’t have to come. We will deliver it to you for free. You should give us your address instead.” Then Abbas had to convince the shopkeeper that he had to come check the quality of the dates first. Hence, he got the direction to locate the shop in the souq.

Fifteen minutes later, Abbas stood in front of the sh0p. “Hey Zoleikha, I am here. Where are you?”


“I am here too. Where are you?”

Both of them scanned around the souq. There was quite a bit of foot traffic. He stood in front of the shop selling dates. She stood in front of the shop selling tea. The two shops were next to each other. A few customers surrounded the shop that sold dates, trying to haggle for a better price while munching on the dates on display. At the same time, a small crowd also gathered around the shop that sold tea, arguing about whose son should marry the daughter of the shop owner. Some Saudis had a preference of which tribe they wanted to form ties with, hence a potential marriage could easily become a family discussion or a family argument.

He was looking for a woman carrying a green handbag. She was looking for a man wearing a frameless pair of glasses.

“Umm … are you a man or a woman today?” She asked.

“Well, what did you tell me yesterday?”

“Oh ...” She looked at the black figure at the next shop. The figure had a slightly bulging belly. Its face was fully covered. She walked toward it, and tapped its shoulders lightly with her index finger.

“Hey.” It responded.

“Do you know of a girl named Zoleikha?” She spoke in a hushed voice to the black figure in English. She was not quite sure whether the figure was someone she knew.

“Yes. Are you Zoleikha?” He replied her in English. He looked at her, seemingly a bit disoriented. He was not quite certain if she was Zoleikha, as her face was fully veiled and she wore a scent of perfume that he felt was too heavy to match her plain and simple personality. In addition, she had worn eye makeup, and thus looked quite different from the fresh-faced Zoleikha whom he had met at Athens airport. In fact, she looked a bit punk, which repulsed him.

What actually happened before coming the souq was that Zoleikha went to her neighbour’s house to have breakfast. Both the husband and wife in that house smoked. In an attempt to cover the smell of cigarettes, Zoleikha had asked the wife if she used any perfume. She gladly responded in the affirmative, and very eagerly introduced to Zoleikha a new brand that she had recently purchased. Zoleikha tried to feign interest and ended up with a generous amount of the perfume sprayed all over her. While they were at it, the wife also mentioned about the eye makeup she had recently purchased due to a deep discount. Again, Zoleikha feigned curiosity, and ended up with her eyes drawn in various shades of black. Although Zoleikha generally did


not like makeup, she was quite curious about the effects of it. She thought she would show it to Abbas, and see what he thought. After all, the whole point of being made up was so that someone else could appreciate it.

She was surprised at his hesitation. She was now standing right in front of him, yet he couldn’t recognize her. Was the makeup so transformative? She decided to test him.

“No. I am her colleague.” She answered, wondering how he would respond.

“Oh … Hi. Where is she?” He customarily greeted her, but showed no interest in knowing more about her. Normally he would be quite interested in meeting specimens of the other sex, but today, he was quite intent on meeting only Zoleikha, because after all, she was the reason that he was a transvestite today. He was very cautious today. He was also very nervous today. He felt like he was committing a crime, out in the open, in broad daylight, for everyone to see. He wished that there would not be such a crowd around him.

She was appalled at his response. She was still looking straight into his eyes. She was standing about two feet in front of him. Yet, he responded with disinterest as soon as she mentioned that she was a colleague. She did not expect that response. She thought he would inspect her more closely, and insisted that she was Zoleikha. She thought that he would recognize her.

She hesitated. Should she just stare at him for a second longer, hoping that he would recognize her? Or should she just tell him that she was the person he wanted to see? Yet, he had already turned his gaze away from her. He was searching their surrounding, looking for Zoleikha.

He did not anticipate that she would appear as a different person today. In his mind, she was a plain and simple woman who was comfortable without makeup and needed no makeup. In fact, it was her simplicity that first attracted his attention. This woman in front of him not only did not look like Zoleikha, but also did not feel like Zoleikha. She had a completely different aura. She looked like a wild party animal. He was not attracted to her at all.

“She had just gone to the washroom. She said she had a stomachache.” She decided to go with the flow.

“Oh … Did you come with her?”

“Yes. Are you Abbas?”

“Eh … Well, better call me by a different name today. I don’t want anyone here to know that I am a man today.” He said in a low voice. Since they were both speaking English, a language that would naturally catch the


attention of passer-bys, he wanted to make sure that whomever could understand English would not know that he was a man that day.

“Okay. What shall I call you today?”

“Sam.” Abbas thought of a female character in a Hollywood movie that he had just seen lately.

“Do you mean Samantha?” Zoleikha tried to suppress her laughter.

“Sure.”

“So Samantha, would you like to walk around a little?”

“Maybe we should stay here. I am afraid that Zoleikha might not be able to find us if we wander off.” His nervousness intensified his impatience that day. He couldn’t wait to see Zoleikha. More precisely, he couldn’t wait to see the Zoleikha whom he had in his mind, not the one who was standing in front of him.

She could sense the edginess in him. She almost wanted to tell him she was Zoleikha. But alas, she felt a bit estranged by his aversion. Was her makeup that ugly? She wondered.

“Well, the washroom that she is going to is quite far from here. We could go there to meet her instead.” She continued to pretend to be whom she was not, while he continued to wait for his imagination of her to appear.

“Oh, okay.”

They walked side by side, quietly. Abbas saw the beige handbag that she was carrying. It had a very plain and minimalistic design, quite different from the design of the green handbag he saw yesterday. The green one was much more flamboyant, both in color and in design. He thought that the green one looked much nicer, perhaps because he thought it belonged to Zoleikha. Was his preference influenced by his earlier impression? Had he first seen Zoleikha with the beige handbag, would he like the beige one more? Did he like something because it was associated with someone he liked? Or did he like something regardless of whom it was associated with?

Abbas walked a bit clumsily. One side of the niqab seemed to be tighter than the other side. It was his first time walking in an abaya and niqab. While he was walking, his niqab started to come undone. The wind blew against his face, revealing half of his manly face.

“Umm … Samantha, you need to cover your beard.” Zoleikha said laughingly.


“Oh my lord!” He gasped, and immediately covered his five o’clock shadow with his hands.

“Shhh …” She put her index finger to her lips while trying to shield his face from public view as much as possible.

In the middle of the street, the two black figures scrambled to re-secure a piece of black cloth on one of their heads.

“Did you use a sewing pin?” She asked, trying to figure out how to secure the niqab on his head.

“No.”

“Oh, then how did you wear this thing?” She had seen niqabs of varying designs, but the one that was falling off his face was truly an unusual one.

“I don’t really know. I just stole some black cloths from my aunt’s closet this morning after she went to the fish market with my cousin. Then I put them on myself.” He further described the awkward and somewhat gruesome process of standing in front of the mirror, watching himself slowly being transformed into a woman, while trying to figure how to secure the fabric in place. He said he had contemplated using staples at one point, to hold the fabric in place, but then decided against it, as he did not want to puncture holes in his aunt’s clothing. He also explained that he normally would not wear the men’s headpiece, saying that it was unnecessarily cumbersome, so when he had to wear the women’s one, he was truly challenged.

He also mentioned his deliberation. He wasn’t sure how he was going to tell his relatives that he needed to dress like a woman that day. He wasn’t sure how they would react to the idea. He also did not want to raise their suspicion unnecessarily. So he had no one to turn to for help in dressing like a woman.

She was glad that he had the experience to dress like a woman, not because she wanted him to be a transvestite, but because she wanted him to feel the trouble that society had unnecessarily imposed on women.

“And then you came by yourself in a taxi?”

“I drove.”

“Hmm … isn’t that very dangerous?”

“Yes, I know. I didn’t realize it until I was actually in the middle of the road, and the other drivers were staring at me.” He recalled his trip to the market. He broke out in a cold sweat a few times when he was being honked at, but


luckily no religious police came after him. In retrospect, he realized that his plan was really not well thought out.

“Hmm … where is your handbag?” She started to survey him more closely.

“I don’t have one.”

“So where do you put your money?”

“In my pockets.” He showed her the pockets on his abaya. Aside from a wallet, there were also keys and phone in his pockets.

“Oh I see. Be careful that they don’t fall out of your pockets. Your pockets are not very deep.” In fact, the pockets were only designed to slide his hands in, not to carry things in. She secured the niqab for him with a sewing pin that she retrieved from her handbag.

“Okay, I will be careful. Thanks.”

“I suspect that you grabbed the wrong cloth. This looks more like a table cloth than a veil for the face.” After fumbling with his niqab, she was quite convinced that it was not a niqab.

“Oh really? I have no idea. I don’t usually touch this kind of thing. I just grabbed whatever looked black in my aunt’s closet.” He was unaware that her aunt had bought some black fabric, with the intention of sewing a full niqab, with two layers, one of which was meant to flip over the head. The niqab that he grabbed was a work-in-progress. It was missing the elastic tie and the slit, so he hung it below his eyes, and attached it to his hijab with an alligator paper clip on the right side and a wooden clothespin on the left side. He could not find another alligator paper clip anywhere in the house, and he was not prepared to turn someone else’s house upside, so he substituted it with the wooden clothespin which he conveniently found in ample supply next to the clothes line. The side that fell was previously secured by the alligator paper clip, which was not designed to clip fabric, and thus glided off the sheer fabric easily.

She was tempted to tell him that women usually used safety pins or sewing pins to secure the fabric on their heads, but since she did not think he would have the occasion to be a transvestite again, she decided not to share that knowledge with him.

She surveyed him again, up and down, down and up. “Does she have the same physique as you?”

“No, she was fatter and shorter.”


She looked at his legs. No wonder his abaya was revealing four inches of his ankles. He wore knee-length black socks and a pair of men’s black leather dress shoes. She was tempted to ask him if she could take a picture of him, but then she remembered that she did not have any storage space left on her phone.

“I see. Are you comfortable like this?”

“Hmm … I am okay. Not exactly comfortable, but alright.” He meant to say that it was mentally uncomfortable, not physically uncomfortable.

Zoleikha looked at her watch. It was almost noon time. She said, “I need to go to the mosque now. Do you want to come?”

“Oh, okay. I have never sat in the women’s section of the mosque.” He scratched his head, a habit that showed his hesitation. “But don’t you think we should wait for Zoleikha first?”

“Be careful with your head piece. You don’t want it to come undone again.” She slapped his hand gently.

“Oh yeah, I forgot.”

“Well, how about you go to wait at the public washroom? I will rejoin you guys later.” She had yet to determine how to bring the Zoleikha he wanted to meet him. Perhaps she would remove her eye makeup first.

“Hmm … where is the washroom? I want to go too.”

“Are you sure you want to go too?”

“Well, maybe I should wait until I get home then.” He thought maybe it was not such a good idea to go to the women’s washroom.

“Well, I think it will just a bit too awkward for you to be standing and urinating, even if you are in the stall.”

“Yes, I know.” He didn’t need to urinate. He just wanted to check the mirror.

“Anyway, the washroom is to the right of that junction.” She pointed toward an intersection up ahead of them. “I am going to the mosque here.” She pointed to a mosque on her left.

“Oh, alright. I will see you later.” He followed her direction.

She walked toward the mosque. Less than a minute later, she received a message on her phone.


“Hey Zoleikha, are you still in the washroom? I am coming to meet you. Your friend is going to the mosque right now.”

“Hi Abbas. No, I am heading to the mosque right now.” It would not be possible for her to sit in a public washroom for that long, even if she had the most severe form of diarrhea.

“What? I thought you are not a Muslim?”

“That’s correct. I am going to meet one of the women there. I want to give her something before I leave Saudi Arabia. She said she will be at the mosque for the noon prayer, after she finished her shopping. So I want to go meet her.”

“Oh, should I come meet you at the mosque?”

“Sure. Would you like to come in?”

“Hmm … I am not sure.” Abbas never had such free access to the women’s public space in his life. Yet, he did not enjoy the unusual freedom. Although he was interested in women, he was only interested in watching them from the perspective of a man, not the perspective of a sister. However, he doubted that he would want to be a woman again after today. That was his one and only opportunity to explore life from the perspective of a woman. “Well, alright, I will go in.” He thought he could just sit quietly in a corner in the women’s section of the mosque.

He changed directions, and walked toward the mosque. Quite a few people were gathering outside the mosque. A few were already sitting inside. He stood at the mosque entrance, and scanned the compound looking for Zoleikha and her friend. Then he messaged Zoleikha.

“Hey, where are you?”

She didn’t reply. She was talking to a shopkeeper in the souq, and hence did not notice his message.

Ten minutes later, she walked out of the shop, with a gift in her hand, for the friend she was expecting to meet in the mosque. The muezzin had already sung the adhan. The noon prayer had already started. She loitered around outside the mosque. She hesitated whether to go to the washroom to remove her eye makeup. After a moment of hesitation, she went to the washroom at the mosque. She walked out of the washroom ten seconds later. The toiletries she found in the washroom were not adequate enough to remove her makeup. She decided to keep her makeup on, than to have it half on half off.


She would just have to tell Abbas that she was indeed Zoleikha. She hoped that he would accept her explanation. She felt heavy, as if she was about to begin an uphill battle.

She took out her phone, and noticed Abbas’ message.

“Hey sorry, I was buying a gift just now. Are you in the mosque now?” She replied.

Typically, Muslims would not play on their phone while they were praying. So she waited for the prayer to end.

The prayer ended. He still did not reply her. She walked into the mosque to find her friend in the women’s section. She had just finished using a green misbaha, and was placing it back into a small basket on the carpeted floor.

“Hi Nojood, nice to see you here!” Zoleikha smiled.

“Hi Zoleikha!”

They hugged each other and kissed each other on the cheeks. Zoleikha then gave the gift to Nojood. Nojood introduced her husband to Zoleikha. He was standing outside of the mosque chatting with his friends. A few people were hovering outside the mosque after the prayer ended, as a mosque was both a religious place and a social place. Zoleikha chatted with Nojood and her husband for a while before they parted.

Zoleikha continued to look around the mosque. She didn’t find Abbas. She checked her phone. He didn’t reply. She wondered where he went. Just as she was wondering, her stomach started to growl. She browsed on her phone to look for a restaurant in the area with a family section. She found one within walking distance. Since there was no sign of him, she decided to walk to the nearby restaurant by herself.

About an hour later, she had finished her dish of rice in the restaurant. She checked her phone. Still no sign of Abbas. She decided to head home.

After Zoleikha arrived home, she checked her phone again. Abbas still had not contacted her. She was starting to get worried. Did he get abducted by an alien while she was away? If so, did the alien abduct him thinking that he was a woman?

“Hey, sorry, I was busy.” Later that afternoon, he messaged her back. He was sitting in the living room of his relatives’ house, holding a can of Coke. It had been a long day for him. He was relieved to finally be able to sit down and relax.


“Busy? With what?”

“Well, it’s a long story.” He didn’t know how to begin his story. And he was too lazy to type out the entire story on his phone, so he was trying to think of the shortest way to tell her the story.

“My friend said that you came in an abaya and a niqab today. Did you lose part of your table cloth while you were at the souq?”

“No, I managed to keep all the black cloths with me all the while. But boy, it was so clumsy to walk in the cloths!”

“So what happened to you?”

“I ran into a cat.” He thought of the orange furry animal he met today, and smiled fondly. He had spotted the tabby cat while he was standing at the mosque entrance. But knowing that it was not common to find stray animals in Saudi Arabia, and most people did not show much interest in having pets, he became curious about the cat. His first thought was that it might have an owner. He observed the cat for a while, as it meandered around the souq. The cat meowed at him several times in a somewhat melancholic tone, as if saying, I think I am lost. Meow. He then said hi to the cat. It meowed. He petted it. It showed no sign of resistance. Instead, it was quite willing to interact with him.

“So you were enchanted by her all afternoon?” She couldn’t understand how a cat could keep him preoccupied for several hours. She imagined it must be a black cat who lived with a woman who practiced witchcraft, which was banned in the Kingdom.

“Well, Saudi Arabia does not have many organized places for strays. So I wasn’t sure what would happen to her if she was left alone to wander around the street.”

“Oh … So you took her home?”

“No. I took her to each and every shop in the souq and asked if they knew of anyone who owned that cat.” He recalled picking up the tabby cat. The cat didn’t mind being in his arms, although it was not completely comfortable with the way he held it. He started to carry it around. The cat flipped around a little and meowed softly while it was trying to find a slightly more comfortable position to ensconce itself in his arms. They both wiggled a little as they tried to adjust to each other’s body. The cat finally settled itself down with all its paws facing upward, revealing a furry belly which indicated its trust in Abbas. That was also the laziest and happiest position that it could find. Its front paws were flapping Abbas’ niqab. Abbas shook his head, and said no to the cat. The cat grabbed the niqab with both of its front paws,


and started yanking playfully. Abbas growled at it. Oddly, everyone wanted to play with Abbas. The cat paused for a moment, thinking, is this a threat? Abbas continued to growled. Their eyes met. They held each other’s gaze for a few second. It was assessing his threat carefully. It asked, are you hiding something? Abbas tried to make a fiercer face, but his eyes appeared more distressed than fierce to the cat. Seeing how pitiable he looked, it released its grip, as if it had completely lost interest in his attire, and turned its attention to the sky.

“Hmm … How long did it take you to find the owner?”

“Well, what happened was that one man would point me to another, and then another would point me to another. So I was being kicked around like a soccer ball for about an hour or so.” The people in the souq did not know what to do with a cat, or a pet. Instead of giving Abbas useful information, they attempted their best guesses, as if doing a test in which they could fail miserably without bearing any adverse consequences. Hence, everyone wanted to try the test, although none was actually interested in the welfare of the stray.

“And then you finally found the owner?”

“No, then I saw a pet store. So I went in and asked for advice.”

“Okay. So what advice did you get?”

“Well, it turned out that they had really poor customer service. I told the cashier about my situation. She didn’t offer me any advice. Instead, she told me to browse around the shop while she went to ask her colleagues. I ended up being in the shop for half an hour. I was showing the cat all the animals and birds in the shop. Then I talked to a Saudi man who was shopping for a cat with his wife. He said he wanted my stray cat. I said no.”

“Oh … he wanted a cat for free?”

“Yeah, I think so. But I didn’t want to give it to him, because I was afraid that the cat’s owner would be quite sad.”

“Right.”

“So I convinced the man to buy one instead. But then the man tried to convince me to give the stray cat to him. So I ended up giving him a lecture, you know, trying to get him to understand that it was not right to take other people’s pets; that pets are like family members; they are not material possessions. Then I think his wife told him to leave me alone or something. So after that, I went to the cashier and asked her for advice again.” Abbas was a bit uneasy when he thought about the situation. To him, it was a social


issue, not just an animal rights issue. He was quite disturbed that the majority of the population merely treated animals as a piece of property or a commodity. He remembered when he used to study ancient Greek civilization, the Greek merely regarded their slaves as a piece of property that breathed. Although now that humans had evolved somewhat, some were obviously still hard-wired to disrespect living things. When would humans be enlightened enough to love all life forms on the planet? He felt that he had a duty to educate the people.

“Did she say anything?”

“She said she didn’t know what to do.”

“Didn’t she ask her colleagues?”

“Well, I don’t know. But I did ask her if there was any charitable organization in the area, even though I doubted it. Then I asked her if she knew of anyone who would take care of strays. She said no. So I wasted half an hour in the shop for nothing.” Abbas was quite disturbed that a pet store was only interested in making money off the animals, but was not interested in the welfare of the animals. He was almost tempted to give the cashier a lecture but decided against it, because he felt that it would most likely fall on deaf ears. So he sighed and left the pet store.

“Oh, poor you! Were you holding the cat all the while?”

“In the shop, I let her walk on her own. In the street, I would carry her. Otherwise, I would walk one way and she would walk the other way.” It was a full grown long-haired tabby cat. Within the first few minutes of their meeting, they had already established a friendly bond. It enjoyed being carried by Abbas, and Abbas enjoyed carrying it. The cat had no idea where Abbas was taking it, but that didn’t bother it at all. It just wanted someone to play with. It rarely received much human attention at home, and thus its frisky nature prompted it to venture out of its home. It had no idea what kind of adventure or playmate it could find, outside the boundary of its home, but it was fearless and welcomed whatever awaited it.

Abbas was a caring and gentle man. Although Abbas did not offer to be its playmate, the cat enjoyed his affection. The more he held the cat, the more the cat wanted his cuddle. In that little adventure, they became an unseparable pair.

“Didn’t you buy a leash while you were at the pet store?”

“Oh … such a good idea! How could I not have thought of that?”

“Okay, I guess you didn’t then. So what happened next?”


“I phoned my cousin and asked if he knew of anyone or any place in Jeddah that would take care of strays.”

“What did he say?”

“He was afraid of cats, so he never paid attention to such a thing.” Abbas recalled repeatedly asking his cousin for help, and in response, his cousin repeatedly asked him why he picked up a stray cat. So he ended the call shortly.

“Oh okay. So what happened to the cat?”

“Well, I found it very cumbersome to carry the cat with me, especially when I was walking so clumsily in a big table cloth. So we went back to my car. I took off all the cloths, and put them in my car. Then I continued to carry her around. Just as I was walking out of the parking lot, I saw a fat guy carrying a big bag of cat food. He looked as if he had just finished shopping for a hungry cat. So I approached him.” When he walked out of the parking lot, he was wearing shorts that went down to his knees, and socks that went up to his knees. He knew that his overall outfit was a bit comical, but at that moment, he was too preoccupied with the mini emergency to care about his appearance.

“What did you say?”

“I asked if he knew of anyone I could entrust the stray cat to.”

“And?”

“He said he could take care of the cat for me in the mean time, and then try to ask his friends to find the cat’s owner.” Abbas recalled the fat guy asking him of the location he picked up the cat, and any other relevant information that could help with the search.

“Oh, like a temporary shelter. That’s nice of him. But is he trustable? I mean, what if he turns out to be like the Saudi man in the pet shop who wanted a cat for free?”

“Yes, I trust him. He took out his phone and showed me pictures of his cat. Since he was a pet owner, he should be able to take good care of the cat.”

“Yeah, but how do you know that he would not keep that cat for himself?”

“Hmm … He said he knew how it felt to lose a pet. So I think he wouldn’t do that to another pet owner. Also, since he had experience with owning a cat, he should be able to take care of the cat well, whereas the Saudi man was only interested in having a toy that moves.” Abbas recalled handing the cat to the fat guy. The cat meowed. It tried to scratch his face, but he ducked.


His movement was much swifter without the niqab. The fat guy held the cat, and coaxed him. It immediately turned its attention to the fat guy and did not bother to say bye to Abbas. Just by watching their interaction, Abbas felt assured that the cat would be in good hands.

Abbas petted its head, and said in a saccharine voice, “Bye bye, tabby baby.” It looked at Abbas, as if asking, what did you say? Abbas gave his name card to the fat guy, in case the latter needed to contact him.

“Hmm … interesting.”

“After that, I went back to my cousin’s house, and dumped the table cloths in the washer.”

“Was there a lot of cat hair on the cloths?”

“Yes, that’s why I put the cloths in the washer.”

“I don’t think the washer will wash away the hair.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Abbas heard the washing machine being turned on. Oh, too late, he thought. He would just have to let his aunt deal with the hair, as well as the wooden clothespin and the sewing pin that were still on the cloths.

Shortly after their chat, Abbas took leave of his relatives and began his road trip back to Riyadh. If he drove fast enough, he could arrive home around midnight.

When he got on to the highway, he suddenly recalled his mother’s request. She wanted him to bring a fish home from the fish market, saying that the fish there were fresher than the ones in the market at Riyadh. But it was definitely too late to go to the fish market or go to anywhere except home right now. He would have to return home empty-handed, although she would not be too happy about that. He knew that she would complain for half an hour, about how he would have forgotten it, why he didn’t try to remind himself by writing it down or setting a reminder on his phone or something, how could she entrust him with more important things next time, etc. Then she would probably ask him, what had he done all weekend, if he hadn’t gone to the fish market even once? He tried to think of a good excuse for that. Perhaps he could say that he was strolling around the corniche, although it would still not make sense for him to say so, since the fish market was just west of the corniche. If he indeed had strolled along it, he would inevitably


have arrived at the fish market. It almost seemed impossible to have missed the fish market if he was in Jeddah, and yet, he did, on both days, by being preoccupied with a woman, a cat, and being a woman. He could not mention two of the three things. And he was not quite inclined to tell her that a cat had eaten his fish. Yet, he had to think of a good enough excuse, otherwise she would keep whining and complaining like a broken record. He wondered if whining was a common characteristic among housewives.

Alternatively, he could consider avoiding her complaint, or just putting on his ear plugs and let her complain to her heart’s content as usual. There were a few options, but none was good enough.

He thought of his cousin in Jeddah. He phoned him to ask if there would be any alternative way to buy a fish, perhaps on the highway. It turned out that his cousin and his whole family only patronized the central fish market; they seldom went anywhere else and thus had no alternatives to recommend.

Abbas wished that he could ask Zoleikha for ideas right now. She always had some unusual ideas. But he decided not to, fearing that her ideas would be too wild to be implemented. Undecided on what options to choose, he decided to pray instead. Muslims were taught that whenever they really needed something, they could pray to Allah, and Allah would answer their prayer. Many people had told Abbas that they had gotten what they prayed for, and advised him to pray for a wife, which he did, but she never came. Nonetheless, since there was nothing else that he could do while driving on the highway, he decided he would try praying. He asked Allah to send him many fish, any kind of fish, immediately. After praying, he felt a sense of peace. He wanted to stay in that peaceful state, so he fumbled through his glove compartment searching for the Islamic music CD. He couldn’t find it. He decided to turn on the radio, and scan for a radio station with Islamic music. While scanning, he came across a radio talk show that talked about a fisherman getting rich, not from selling fish to the fish market, but by making fish cake in a little factory that was ran by his wife and daughter, an idea that he borrowed from the Japanese kamaboko factory several years ago.

As Abbas listened to that success story, he thought about his plan to get rich. He was very confident that success would come to him one day. He enjoyed listening to other success stories, as they inspired and motivated him.

After the fisherman story, he scanned the radio stations again. While doing so, he saw a big pickup truck ahead of him filled with fishing rods in its back. There were at least a hundred rods in the truck. He wondered who would need a fishing rod in interior Saudi Arabia, but then he remembered that there were a couple of rivers and lakes in the land of desert.


He followed the truck for a while. Oddly, the fishing rods had charmed him in such a way that he was reluctant to take his eyes off it even when the truck turned off at a side road. Once the truck was no longer in sight, he shifted his focus to the road ahead and looked again for other things to amuse him.

Another talk show just came on the radio. It talked about a privately funded aquarium project. Apparently there was a wealthy fish lover in Saudi Arabia who wanted to build a mobile aquarium that could tour around the different towns and cities in the Kingdom all year round. His concept originated from the sand. He wanted to bring water to the sand. Specifically, he wanted the people of the desert to have more exposure to water, to learn more about sea creatures, and to appreciate their beauty. However, the project was not quite feasible, so he had came up with an alternative concept of sponsoring aquarium projects at various schools. The purpose of that initiative was to raise awareness, and to bring nature closer to the people. He felt that, as a fish lover, the best thing that he could do was to spread his love for fish to everyone, to introduce to the world that fish need not be a food, it could be a friend too. The talk show was therefore to promote his project, to engage as many schools and children to learn more about fish, and by extension, to love Allah’s creation. There would be a competition across the schools for the best-maintained aquarium, and the winner would be awarded a trip out in the Red Sea on the fish lover’s yacht. On the other hand, every one of the children of the school with the worst-maintained aquarium would be penalized with the task of writing a 1,000-word story about fish. He said that the writing exercise was a way to encourage the children to think about fish, as well as to improve their literary skill.

Abbas was quite impressed by the refreshing idea. He listened intently. He thought that he could be equally innovative too, although not in arena of public education or animal welfare, but in the arena of business venture. His thoughts temporarily shifted to his imaginary business, and to the imaginary financial success of his business. His imagination brought a smile to his face, and he remained submerged quietly in that happiness for the remainder of his journey.

As he approached the outskirt of Riyadh, he suddenly recalled his plight. He returned to his questions again. Was he going to go home empty-handed? Should he think of a very good excuse? Or should he just let his mother grumble for half an hour?

Interestingly, it was easy for him to dream about his imaginary business, but it was difficult for him to think of a solution. As soon as he thought about the problem, he became exhausted, both physically and mentally. He looked at the clock on his dashboard. It was a bit past midnight. He decided to make a quick trip to the supermarket that was opened 24 hours.


There weren’t any fresh fish available in the fish section of the supermarket. There were some packaged fish fillets. There were frozen fish, which he knew for sure his mother would bark at him if he had bought them for her. None of the choices were appealing. He didn’t know what to do. He thought, perhaps he could buy the packaged fish fillet, and explained to her that he couldn’t buy the fresh fish because his car would stink all the way to Riyadh, and it would not be very fresh anyway by the time it reached her. He thought that the excuse was very logical, and hence headed to the cashier with the biggest package of fish fillet he could find.

As he was about to pull his car into his garage, he noticed a big water tank parked in his parking spot. He got out of the car, curiously. He walked into the house. The entire house reeked of raw fish. It almost smelled like a fish market. His mother was mumbling in the kitchen. He wondered if she had already started grumbling even before he told her he had forgotten her request. He asked her what happened.

“Oh my dear son, thank God you are back! Come help me take this bag of garbage out.” She beckoned him to come help her.

“What happened?”

“Your distant uncle from Bahrain suddenly came to visit me today. He brought me several containers of seafood. There are fish, octopus, shrimp, crab, everything you can find in the sea. My fridge is not big enough, so he suggested that I make cakes out of them and sell them. So I am making fish cake, octopus cake, shrimp cake, crab cake, fish-octopus-shrimp-crab cake, and every kind of cake that you can think of.”

“Where did he get all the seafood from?”

“He’s a fisherman. He usually sells his catch to a couple of the vendors in Bahrain, but he had a big argument with one of them and they owed him money, so he decided not to sell his catch to them.” Every inch of her kitchen was occupied. She looked like she was running a fish cake factory. Amidst all the commotion and confusion, she explained the situation to him. “There’s still more seafood in the tank outside the house.”

“Oh …” He stood at the entrance of the kitchen, wondering about the fish fillet that he had just bought. It was still sitting in his car.

Seeing that he stood motionless at the entrance, she turned around to take a closer look at him. “Why do you look so dazed? Come help me quick!”

“Hmm … Do you remember you asked me to buy you a fish?”


“Huh? Did I? Hmm …” She paused for a second, and cocked her head to one side. She was so preoccupied that she could not recall what she had said to him two days ago. After thinking for a second, her hands resumed blending the big bowl of mashed potatoes with the flaked fish, and she said, “Well, if I did, then I really hope you didn’t, because the last thing I want right now is more fish. This is going to be my last batch of fish cake. I have already announced to the rest of the household that fish is banned for the rest of this month.” She raised both of her palms in front of him, and then resumed her blending motion.


story 9 part 2

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