Rich, gorgeous, single, and most importantly,menwho have the freedom to do whatever they want.
I had never met them in person. Only Abdar has ever visited Rheadur[3]. I guess the others, judging by the lifestyle they lead, didn’t find the idea of traveling to our country particularly entertaining.
And speaking of traveling, I think once again about how unfair life is.
Where is it written that we, women, must be content staying home while the boys can do whatever they pleaseuntil the moment they’re expected to officially commit to theirchosen bride?
I remember my English teacher, Miss Elsie Corbyn, who lived in Rheadur for more than three years to teach me the language. She’s the one to blame for making me want things I theoretically wasn’t allowed to have.
Behind my father’s back, my beloved former Sheikh Kamran[4], and behind my mother’s back, who was one of his wives, Miss Elsie told me about her youth in the United Kingdom, filling my mind with dreams and frustration.
Ever since then, I’ve wanted to attend a university in another country, make friends from different cultures, travel, and date without needing to be trapped in a relationship that would send me straight to the altar.
Not that I don’t want to get married someday. I do. And I want lots of kids too. But first, I need to enjoy life a little, even if I don’t fully understand what that means. What I do know is that I don’t want to jump from adolescence straight into a husband’s arms.
I’ve always been determined, and when I was seventeen, I came up with a plan: I volunteered to perform the raq? bládi[5] dance with my best friend, Adeela[6]—who, by the way, just got engaged to my future sheikh and brother, Kaled—at my father’s eightieth-birthday celebration.
I don’t want to sound full of myself, but I know I’m my father’s favorite daughter, which is a real accomplishment, considering I have so many half-sisters I’ve lost count[7].
I’m not ashamed to say I used that card—being the favorite—to my advantage, because I hoped that making him happy would earn me what I wanted most: permission to study abroad.
Unlike my best friend, who always wanted to stay in Rheadur forever, my dream was to see the whole world—and preferably alone. That last part wasn’t a dream but pure delusion, because not even Kaled, my beloved brother and far more liberal than the other men in our country, would ever allow such a thing.
Long story short, the plan worked perfectly. My father loved the dance performance, and I got a free pass to study in the United Kingdom.
The big problem was that on that same night, my father handed the role of sheikh to his eldest son, my brother Naim, and then my whole world collapsed. Not only mine but the world of every woman in our emirate.
Under my father’s rule, Rheadur was considered progressive compared to neighboring countries, especially regarding women’s rights. Once Naim took power as sheikh, the emirate was dragged a hundred years into the past.
Not being allowed to study in the UK became the least of my problems.
During his entire rule, my father allowed women to decide whether or not to wear the hijab[8]. Many of us did it out of modesty or out of respect for our fathers and husbands, but above all, it was a personal choice, not an imposition.
I’d already heard rumors, even before Naim became sheikh, that he planned to go to the extreme of enforcing mandatory burqa[9] use, which would be absurd.
He tried, but even the eldest council advisors, known for being strict with women’s rights, were against it. Naim had to settle for the chador[10], which still made me furious.
After that, everything went downhill. A small restriction here, another rule there, and soon the world began to hear that Rheadur was no longer a safe place for women to live in or even visit. Tourism plummeted, which hurt our economy, since our gold market[11] is famous worldwide.
I had dreamed of the day I would leave before all that, but after Naim became sheikh, that desire turned into desperation. I saw a bleak future ahead.
He and Adeela’s father, the detestable Arif Ghazal[12], somehow convinced my father to indefinitely suspend the permission for me and my friend to study abroad. That was the tip of the iceberg. After that came rule after rule. The internet was shut down, and so were the foreign magazines and newspapers we had always had access to.
I suspect I know the reason. Even with the ban, I still managed to get magazines secretly, and many times I saw Naim plastered across the covers, always partying on his yacht, always surrounded by women. None of them—needless to say—were his wife.
Now he has vanished[13], and no one has the slightest idea what happened. And according to the law, my brother Kaled will take his place.
I don’t wish for Naim to be dead, which is what most people are thinking, since he’s been missing for more than two months, but I’m not a hypocrite. It will be much better for Rheadur to have Kaled as sheikh. My brother is smart and kind-hearted, just like our father, and that’s what a good leader needs to be.
However, even though the situation in Rheadur is far from ideal for us women, that’s not the reason Adeela and I came to Europe. We came because we had to run from her father, who wanted to marry her off to an old, cruel man.
So our reason for being in Paris at first was not fun, but in the end, everything worked out better than expected: Adeela and Kaled are engaged, solving two problems at once: a wife for my brother, who needed to marry, and protection for my best friend.
With those worries gone, because Adeela will no longer be forced into anything she doesn’t want, I’m very ready to enjoy life during these weeks I’ll be in Europe before returning home. However, I need to have a little chat with a certain model to clear some things up.
Kaled has a past that includes an endless list of ex-girlfriends, and today, one of them, a completely unhinged one, is here threatening my friend’s happiness. Not because my brother encouraged her. From what I understand, he had already broken up with the two-meter-tall runway giant, but the woman apparently didn’t grasp the meaning of “he’s engaged,” even though Adeela is wearing a diamond on her ring finger the size of the moon.
Chapter 3