The Rebel

Amina-1

Amina

Five days have passed since the great revelation, and tomorrow my confinement will also be over at last, so things are slowly getting back to normal. By normal I mean that the wedding preparations are well underway. My father and Nasirah are fully ignoring my objections, and the female members of both families are busy organizing the wedding. Of course, I could only thank myself again for the room confinement. I don’t know when I will finally learn that I always turn out to lose whenever I openly oppose. On the day following my father’s confession, Saud sheikh’s mother came to visit us to discuss the wedding with Nasirah, and of course, so that she could take another thorough look at me to see if I qualify to fulfil her son’s needs. The last thing I wanted was small talk with my future mother-in-law, so I sent word that I am ill and can’t join them.

Nasirah didn’t fall for it, and stormed into my suite with rage. Saud sheikh is the emir’s younger brother, consequently, their mother is also considered a prominent person. It was an awful act of disrespect from my side that I didn’t want to appear in front of her, especially because Nasirah, my father and Kareem knew there was no illness in question, I was purposely rebelling. Unfortunately, Kareem had just arrived at the palace so Nasirah and he joined forces to drag me out of my room. Kareem threatened me that if I was to show the slightest sign of disrespect towards the sheikh’s mother, I will be closed into my room until the wedding day, and next time I will only see a human face when my wedding dress is being put on me. I had no choice. Although in a rather poor state, but I sat through the meeting with the sheikh’s mother. It was terrible, depressing and humiliating.

During my confinement I only had one visitor, Hamid, who sneaked into my suite one night and brought me a chocolate bar with chips. He said he had read somewhere that whenever women are sad, they only eat chocolate. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Following this logic, I will need several tons of chocolate in the following days to counterbalance my depression somewhat.

＊

I am officially over the rock bottom part. Days after the end of my confinement I still didn’t feel like leaving my suite, I had no appetite either, and I wasn’t even in the mood to get out of bed. My parents had called the doctor to me who prescribed vitamin drops, evening walks and physical activities in the open air.

Vitamin drops! Now, really? I think they were beginning to fear that if things go on like this, the value of their investment – that is, me – will decrease, so now they want to please me, they even had the cook make my favourite dishes. I guess, they even called Selina to shake me up a little, so now we are lying down in the glass-walled inside garden, while she puts nail polish on my toes, and we discuss the big truths of life.

“The most horrible thing of all is that he won’t tell me my mother’s name, he won’t give me any information at all regarding her, other than the fact that she is a reporter.”

“You mean, she was one, 20 years ago,” she corrects me while focussing on wiping the smeared polish off my skin, sticking her tongue out.

“Damn it, you’re right,” I snort with anger and pull my foot to the side. “After so many years she could easily have a different job, which means I really know nothing about her other than that she is blond and her eyes are blue. Oh, I forgot about the freckles on her nose,” I add rolling my eyes, while Selina sighs significantly.

“This will at least reduce the number of potential people to 8 million,” she tries to joke, and in my misery, I even laugh. She strongly grabs my ankle and pulls it back into her lap. “Please stay calm, or I can never finish your nails.”

I throw my head back and watch the sky through the glass.

“Why the hell do we put polish on our nails, at all? No one else sees them but us.”

Selina cast a reprimanding eye at me, but she is not telling me off. She knows it’s the tension talking through me. She begins to blow at my toes so that the polish will dry quicker, and while studying the result with a tilted head, she begins to speak musingly.

“There has to be some written record. I mean, even if you were born in Kenya your mother is a British citizen, they had to issue a birth certificate. Without official papers, your father couldn’t have brought you into the Emirates.”

I am chewing on my nails and think about what she has just said. Indeed, there has got to be some document regarding my parents’ identity, even if my mother gave me birth in Africa. Knowing my father, I can be sure it was a hospital birth, and it didn’t happen in some bush in the middle of the desert. It was about his own offspring, so he wouldn’t have taken such a risk. With the help of family lawyers, he probably arranged the issue of guardianship, but he still had to bring me into the country somehow. If my birth certificate indeed exists somewhere and I could take a glance at it, my mother’s name would come to light. I am more and more excited about the thought, even though at this point I have no clue what I would do with the information.

“But even if there is something like that… here could it be? Where does my father keep it?”

Selina is chewing on her lips and makes a face innocent as a lamb. Her voice is much less innocent.

“Well… my father keeps every important family document in the big safe, which is in his study, in our villa.”

I look at her with a frown, our gazes meet, and I already know we are thinking about the same thing.

“But my father doesn’t have a safe.”

“The fact that you don’t know about it, doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one,” she says with importance, hitting the nail on the head again.

The men of the family keep us, women as if we are children. They don’t mention serious issues in front of us as if we had to be protected from all things essential. How frustrating!

“Coming to think of it, I don’t know my father’s suite in much detail. Quite possible, in there somewhere— “

She makes big eyes, looking at me incredulously.

“That’s out of the question, Amina!” she shouts, and, less than tenderly, drops my foot from her lap. “Don’t even think about it,” she points to me menacingly.

“Come off it. We wouldn’t do anything wrong.”

“No,” she shakes her head.

“We would only find out if there is a safe in his suite.”

“Amina!”

“We couldn’t open it anyway, but at least we would know if it exists at all.”

She begins to pace up and down, every now and then, nervously glancing at the door.”

“This is crazy! If we are caught, we are finished. Both of us.”

“They won’t catch us.”

“Your father will kill you, that’s for sure. And mine will kill me. Plus, they will ban us from seeing one another ever again,” she says, tensely twisting a long, black strand of hair around her fingers.

I laugh out at her illogical remark, but the desire to explore is already aflame in me, there is no turning back. This is the first time in days that I see a new goal ahead of me. A challenge that brings me back to life from my enervated apathy.

“We will not be caught if you help me. If we do it together, it’s going to be child’s play,” I lean over to her and put an arm around her shoulder. “But I will need your help. Please, Selina! It won’t work without you.”

She looks at me with resentment and heaves a deep sigh. It’s not nice of me to manipulate her emotionally like this, but I don’t really have a choice anymore. The idea is already in the making, but it takes two people to carry it out, and it’s absolutely out of the question to make Rafa a part of it.

“You are nuts, you know that, right?” she says, biting on her lip. “Anyway, how did you think you could do it?”

“I have a plan,” I begin with excitement. She lifts her face to the sky, and I see her mouthing the name of Allah. “We will do it today. Right now.”

“What? Right now?” she screams out, and jumps up as if bitten by a snake.

I grab the edge of her T-shirt and pull her back down next to me. If my calculations were correct, it won’t be dangerous, but if it will, then Selina’s predictions will come true: we face death. What’s more, they will ban us from each other. In this order.

“Listen to me and relax. First of all, today is Wednesday, and my father always gets home late because he goes to see Kareem in the evening. On a day like this, he rarely comes home before 10. Secondly, Hamid is at the university, and even if he comes over today, it will be late in the afternoon. Thirdly,” I say, counting my reasons on my fingers, “Rafa is probably in her room, or if she is not, then with my mother.”

“Your mother is away to the hammam with my mum. I heard my mother talk to her on the phone this morning.”

“That’s right,” I slap my forehead. “Today is hammam day, you see, even that is helping us. This means that we still have…” I glance at the large clock on the wall, and make a silent calculation, “about two hours before they get back. That is plenty of time to do a little exploration in the east wing.”

“I don’t know…” she says, twisting a lock of hair between her fingers at a dangerous speed. “What if— “

“Everything will be okay if you do what I say. You will keep guard at the corner of the hall while I sneak in.” Excited, I get up from the floor and pull her up with me. I pick up her mobile from the little table set with mosaic patterns and out it in her hand while I pocket my own. “If you see anybody coming, you simple give me a buzz. You ring my phone, right? That way I will know that I have to leave my father’s suite at once.”

“Didn’t you say nobody is at home who could see us?”

“Nobody from the family, but the staff is also here. Theoretically, they will not be walking around in that part of the house when my father is out, but you never know if they are doing cleaning there.”

I grab her hand and pull her towards the door before she would change her mind, or before I would chicken out. After all, what could happen, even if they catch us? – I shrug my shoulder mentally. Confinement? It’s already happened. Will they marry me to an aging sheikh? Oops.

Selina squeezes my hand wildly as we sneak barefoot along the west wing corridor towards my father’s suite. My heart is also beating in my throat, not that we are investigating the data of the Israeli Secret Service’s agents, but considering our confined little world and our mutilated female rights, this is actually a big thing. At the landing we almost collide into a staff member who has probably been with us for only a short while, because his name completely escapes me. I am almost paralyzed by surprise, and we just stare at each other with the young, bare-faced man. Neither of us wears a hijab, so he soon averts his eyes from us.

“Do you need anything, princess?” he asks, gluing his eyes to the floor.

Not a sound leaves my throat in my shock, even though it’s all just nonsense, after all, by walking the corridors we are not breaking any rules. Thank God, in this moment, Selina speaks up beside me.

“Amina wishes to visit Sultan at the stables, so we need a lot of carrots. And… what else does Sultan like so much?” she nudges me, as I finally manage to speak.

“Apples.”

“That’s right. We also need a lot of apples. And we would appreciate some orange-cinnamon flavoured iced tea with ginger,” she adds, lifting a finger.

Just then, it dawns on me what she’s doing, and slowly life returns into me too.

“I’d rather have some minty lemonade. But not too sweet. And some snacks would also be nice. Like—”

“Dates.”

“And maamouls with almonds.”

“A lot of maamouls,” Selina nods, and I give the coup-de-gráce, smiling inside.