The Rebel

Amina-3

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I must talk to someone about this madness, but I can’t count on my mother, and certainly not Rafa. I know what to do; I will go to Selina, maybe she or her mother has heard something about the wedding. I cannot interrogate my aunt Nadia, Selina’s mother directly, but who knows, she may have spilled some information about it to her daughter. I must act quickly before someone may think to forbid me to leave the palace. I don’t think my father will come home for a while, and my mother is presently too occupied with her own misery to take care of me. Kareem lives in his own place since he got married, and my other brother, Hamid left home in the early hours, so it’s now or never.

I call Selina, and luckily, she picks up after a few rings. I tell her that I need to speak to her at once, and from the way she is strangely quiet and sighs, I suspect she knows the reason for my call. She immediately offers to see me at their place so that we could talk more privately.

Even though I can drive, I can’t sit in a car alone, and Hamid is not at home to take me, so I ask Omar, one of my father’s drivers to drive me. I hurriedly get dressed, twisting the hijab around my head as I run down the steps. I’m out of breath as I reach the entrance of the palace, and step outside, the heat hits against my face. It’s March, but the thermometer already reads 36 Celsius degrees. Ras-al-Khaimah is the Northest member state of the Emirates, and also, the most beautiful. Here, there are no breath-taking skyscrapers like in Dubai, one and a half hours drive from here, but we have the most wonderful beaches. Desert, oasis, beaches – we’ve got everything, and I normally even love this country, my homeland, but nothing is normal today. Today the hot wind from the desert is choking me, and the grains of sand are eating into my skin.

I close my eyes, take a few deep breaths and try to calm down. I lift the hijab to cover my face when Omar opens the door of the car for me. The way to Selina’s is not long, I only have a few minutes to gather my thoughts and calm down. If aunt Nadia discovers I have been crying, she’ll begin to worry and then she’ll call my mother. I must compose myself before I get there.

＊

“I will call you when you should come to pick me up,” I tell the driver after he opens the door for me.

He nods and is already getting back into the driver’s seat. I turn towards the wide flight of steps, and see Selina running towards me. We haven’t seen each other for a few days, so we would have a lot to discuss even if the end of the world had not set since. We give one another a hug, and I feel close to burst into tears again, but I don’t want to make a scene in front of the staff. I remove the veil from my face. She comes up close and starts staring at me with surprise.

“What happened to your face?” she points to the right side.

“I’ll tell you later,” I say and quickly lift up the veil again.

We have to be careful. The last thing we need is the staff starts gossiping about my face. Selina must think the same, because she begins to drag me quickly inside, to her room. Hand in hand, we rush up the stairs, and she hurriedly tells one of the maids to bring up iced lemonade and something to nibble on.

“Where’s my aunt?” I ask casting low glances left and right, wondering if Aunt Nadia shows up somewhere.

“My mum has retired. The bath has exhausted her,” she rolls her eyes. “Or I may have exhausted her with my questioning.”

“Do you mean you know about it?” I look at her dumbfounded.

She only answers after she has closed the door behind us and pressing me onto a huge, soft cushion.

“Only that you’re getting married. Mum wasn’t willing to share anything more.”

“I’m not getting married,” I fold my arms on my chest with stubbornness.

“Jeez, Amina! So, it’s true? And who is it?”

“Saud al-Hosani sheikh,” I spit out with disgust.

Selina stares with an open mouth, and crouches down beside me.

“The old sheikh whose wife has died?”

“43 years old. And how do you know his wife is dead?”

“At the time, I heard my mother talking about it with her sisters, and I also heard the sheikh is a great fan of greyhounds and camels. Apparently, he has the fastest dogs in the Emirates, and he regularly runs them…”

While she talks, I keep sighing. How can it be, that everyone has heard about my possible husband-to-be, but me?

“Oh, I’m so sorry! I’m so dumb. I’m just going on and on, while you…” she lifts her eyes and pulls the hair out of my face. “Unless I’m mistaken, you don’t like the sheikh.”

“But I don’t even know him! I have never met him in person, at least, I can’t remember it,” I furrow my brow.

After all, if I think about it, I may have met him at the large family gatherings, I just didn’t care. He is not in my age, only one of my father’s married cousins, and there are two dozen of those. The family is large, I don’t even know the name of some. Of course, we have a better idea about the men our own age. Although not officially, but Selina and I have thoroughly investigated about her own future bridegroom too. Her husband-to-be can’t even be compared to mine. I don’t mean financially, as the wealth of Saud sheikh is way beyond Farid al-Sharif’s, but in every other way. First of all, Farid is twenty-three! Twenty-three, not forty-three. Secondly: Farid is kind of cute and smiles a lot. I wouldn’t say he is a really handsome, but he can’t be compared to some sheikh with a double chin. He was educated in the States, and a year ago, when he moved back to the Emirates, with his brother, he took over the management of his father’s oil company. He travels around a lot on business, yet, Selina recently had the opportunity to talk to him in person. According to Selina, the young al-Sharif did not show much interest for her, he even seemed apathetic, which fills me with wonder, as there’s hardly anything he should dislike about Selina. My friend was a bit dejected when she later told me about the meeting, but what could she do? The marriage was already arranged when Selina turned fourteen, but thank heavens, Farid had shown no intention to marry up to now. The wedding will take place sometime next year, but the date hasn’t been set. Until now, I was convinced that from the two of us she will marry first, but my father’s announcement today has turned everything upside down. Saud sheikh is rushing the wedding so much that I hardly have 5-6 weeks to get used to the idea: I’m getting married to a man twice my age. I blink twice and find myself in his bed instead of working on my photographer’s degree. By now Selina has also comprehended how sick I feel of the whole issue.

“I swear, Amina, I’ve always thought your father was much more lenient than mine. Do you know how jealous I was when you could go to England to study, and I was only allowed to attend the local school? What’s got to your father?”

“Good question. I’m asking myself the same since morning. What’s got to my father?”

I throw myself on my back on top of the cushions, exhale loudly, and stare at the artistically carved, inlaid ceiling. Gold everywhere, gold and wealth. Golden bars of a diamond-decorated birdcage, for birds with broken wings.

“You should have seen him. He was furious, almost howling. I swear, I thought he was going to blow his top. For some reason, this issue is terribly important to him, but I have no idea what.

“What did you say to him?” she asks, pulling a face.

Selina knows my character; she knows I say a lot of things at home that would be out of the question for her.

“That if I get married, it can only be for love.”

She covers her mouth.

“Did you say that to your father?”

I shrug my shoulders. Thinking back about it, it really does sound kind of drastic, but I believe that in that moment the news shocked me so much that I couldn’t use my head.

“What else could I have done?”

“And what did he say?”

“Things like, love is some humbug invented by the West that fools women. And that the supervision of a wise man like Saud sheikh will do me very good.

“His supervision?”

“Yeah.”

“Uhh.”

“And of course, he mentioned England, what a big mistake it was that he sent me there, because in those schools, kids forget obedience and respect for their parents, and so on,” I sigh.

She sits down cross-legged in front of me, putting her head into her palm, and shakes her head with resignation.

“I don’t know what to say, Amina. I’ve never thought this would happen to you, of all people.” Then, her eyes begin to glitter, as though she had found the solution. “What about your mother? What did she say?”

I lift my hand to my face where I can still feel where I was slapped, then point to the reddish spot.

“My mother thinks exactly the same.”

“She hit you?” she asks with disbelief, as she knows that had never happened before.

“Twice.”

She throws herself on her back on top of the cushions next to me and takes my hand in sympathy. Our fingers interlock as if we were sisters. Our fathers are second cousins and our mothers have always been friends, so we technically grew up together, and our close relationship wasn’t broken even during my years at boarding-school. Her support and affection mean a lot to me. True, my relationship with my brother Hamid is also very good, to me he is like a link, a secret passage to the world of men, and yet, that is something different. Since we grew up there are some unpassable lines between us that simply originate from our different sexes.

We are silent for a while and just stare at the ceiling, without a clue. Then I remember that I haven’t even said the most important thing yet.

“There’s something else I haven’t told you, and what is even worse than Saud sheikh.”

She pushes herself onto her elbows and looks at me with a frown.

“Go on, tell me. You drive me nuts.”

I sit up and lean my back against the edge of the settee. I don’t even know how to start.

“A very strange thing has happened, and I don’t even know what to think, I mean,” I scratch my forehead, “maybe I know very well, and that’s what terrifies me so much. I may have always suspected something, deep inside,” I prod my chest fervently, and Selina stares at me as if I suddenly had two heads.

“I swear I don’t have the foggiest what you’re talking about. Couldn’t you put it a bit simpler?”

I clear my throat and recall our fight in my mind. I’m strongly trying to remember the words my mother was using.

“So, after my father stormed out of the house, my mother came to see me, and we had an argument. She hurled at me that I’m bringing shame to the family if I object, and it’s all because of that damned European blood.”

“European blood? I don’t get it.”

“I also wasn’t getting it at first, but when it escaped her mouth that I should be happy that a prominent man like the sheikh is interested in me regardless my bloodline, it began to make sense.”

Selina looks at me dimly and begins to chew on her nails. If her mother saw this, she would definitely smack her.

“What’s wrong with your bloodline? After all, your father and the sheikh are first cousins.”

“I said exactly the same,” I nod, and begin to stir on the cushion. “The sheikh could only have something against my bloodline if I wasn’t a member of the royal family, that is, if I wasn’t my father’s daughter. And that is only possible if mum cheated on my father.”

Selina lifts her hand to her mouth.

“That’s absolutely out of the question,” she says in the firmest voice in the world. “How can you say such nonsense?”

“This was the first thought that came to my mind, but I realized soon that it was a stupid idea. Plus, my mum gave me a big slap, she felt really hurt. But that means there is only one answer.”

I go quiet and just stare at her. I think, I expect her to say it, so it might not sound so very horrible.

“Are you saying that you may have been adopted?”

What? Adoption? Now it’s time for my chin to drop, because this would be a third option that has never crossed my mind.

“Ehm… no, that’s not what I was hinting at,” I groan, taken aback.

“You mean, your father is your father, but Nasirah may not be your birth mother?”

All I can do is nod, because of the possibility that I might not be a blood relation with either of them, chills me to the core. However angry I am with my father; I still love him and my siblings. Kareem, maybe not so much, but the others I do love. I burst into tears, while Selina settles next to me and puts her arm around my shoulder.

“Oh, Amina! Please don’t worry so much, it might well be that you are only talking yourself into all these things.”

“Come on. Can you give any other reason why the sheikh would have a problem with my bloodline?” I look at her with teary eyes, and she just shakes her head. “And anyway, Nasirah didn’t even deny any of it,” I realize with a shock that I don’t even call her my mother anymore, but I call her by her name. “When I began to question her, she only said that she couldn’t give any more away, because my father would kill her if it gets out. That means there is definitely something that can get out.

＊

My head is sore with all the crying, yet I can’t calm down. I don’t even know if I should be more desperate about the prospect of my marriage or the dark secrets of my family.

This uncertainty drives me crazy, yet I can’t hope my mother would enlighten me. As it happens, she’s already deep in trouble because she has leaked something I wasn’t supposed to know. I have no other choice but to go back into the lion’s den, and call my dad to account. It’s a suicidal enterprise after what happened between us in the morning, yet I have to do it. It’s strange, because I had never felt scared of my father, never felt that Tariq al-Hosani might be my enemy ad I should be afraid of him. If he is ready to sacrifice his daughter’s happiness on the altar of some business deal, tradition or family expectation, he would ruin my faith with that. Since I became familiar with the Western world, I have no illusions about the subordinated situation of Arabian women and their lack of rights, yet I’ve always considered myself lucky with my father and the men around me. Kareem is the only one without whose presence I would still be happy, but from the others I’ve always experienced care and attention. At times I wished my brothers would go to hell as they guarded my honour blatantly, but I’ve always known that there was a firm, strong family behind me. I’ve never doubted that dad and Hamid wanted the best for me, and that’s the faith which has been shaken today. And it really breaks me.

And, regarding the other thing, somewhere deep in my soul I have suspected that there was a secret surrounding me. Now seriously, there was always something different about my looks. It’s not a big thing that the colour of my eyes are unique and they are not the same as anybody else’s in the small family. They are grey, with light, honey-like stripes at the very edge of my irises, but genetics can produce strange things, after all. But my hair colour is also much lighter than my parents’ and my siblings’. Kind of brown, with honey-like shades that can hardly be defined. The wild, always rebellious nature I possess is another addition, and my mother has always been asking why I can’t be like my sister.

Chapter 2