The wedding planner called out to Sadeem, who was hiding behind the curtain with her friend Gamrah. In her singsong Lebanese Arabic, Madame Sawsan informed Sadeem that the wedding music tape was still stuck in the machine and that efforts were being made to fix it.
'Please, tell Gamrah to calm down! It's nothing to worry about, no one is going to leave. It's only 1am! And anyway, all the cool brides these days start things on the late side to add a bit of suspense. Some never walk down the aisle before 2 or 3am!'
Gamrah, though, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She could hear the voices of her mother and her sister Hessah shrieking at the events manager from the other end of the ballroom, and the whole evening was threatening to be a sensational humiliation. Sadeem stayed at the bride's side, wiping beads of sweat from her friend's forehead before they could collide with the tears that were held back only by the quantity of kohl weighing down her eyelids.
The voice of the famous singer Muhammad Abdu finally blasted from the amplifiers, filling the enormous hall and prompting Madame Sawsan to give Sadeem the nod. Sadeem poked Gamrah.
'Yalla, let's go.'
With a swift movement Gamrah wiped her hands along her body after reciting some verses of the Holy Qur'an to protect her from envious eyes, and raised the neckline of her dress to keep it from drooping over her small breasts. She began her descent of the marble staircase, going even more slowly than at the rehearsal, adding a sixth second to the five she was supposed to count between each stair. She murmured the name of God before every step, praying that Sadeem wouldn't stumble on her train causing it to tear, or that she wouldn't trip over her floor-length dress and fall flat on her face like in a comedy show. It was so unlike the rehearsal, where she didn't have a thousand women watching her every move and assessing every smile; where there was no annoying photographer blinding her every few seconds. With the blazing lights and all those dreadful peering eyes fixed on her, the small family wedding she'd always disdained suddenly began to seem like a heavenly dream.
Behind her, Sadeem followed her progress with utter concentration, ducking to avoid appearing in any of the photos. One never knows who might be looking at the photos from the bride's or groom's side, and like any decent girl, Sadeem wouldn't want strange men to see her in an exposing evening dress and full make-up. She adjusted the veil on Gamrah's head and gave a tiny jiggle to the train after each step Gamrah took as her radar picked up fragments of conversation at nearby tables.
'Who's she?'
'They say she's an old friend.'
'She seems a good girl - since we arrived I've seen her running around taking care of all sorts of things - it looks like she's carrying the whole wedding on her shoulders.'
'She's a good deal prettier than the bride. Can you believe it, I heard that Prophet Mohammed used to send up prayers for the unlovely ones!'
'God's blessings and peace be upon him. It must be true, because I swear, the ugly ones seem to be in demand these days. Not us, what bad luck.'
'Is her blood pure? Her skin is so fair.'
'Her father's mother was Syrian.'
'Her name is Sadeem Al-Horaimli. Her mother's family is married into ours. If your son is serious, I can get you the details about her.'
Sadeem had already been told that three ladies had asked about her since the wedding started. Now she heard numbers four and five with her own ears. Every time one of Gamrah's sisters came over to tell her that so-and-so had been asking questions, she murmured demurely, 'May good health knock on her door.'
It seemed to Sadeem as if Gamrah's marriage might indeed be 'the first pearl to roll off the necklace', as Auntie Um Nuwayyir put it. Perhaps now the rest of the girls would be just as lucky.
The bride took her place on the platform. Her mother and the mother of the groom mounted the stairs to congratulate her on the happy marriage she had embarked on and to have their photos taken with the bride before the men came in from where they were celebrating in an adjoining room.
At this traditional Najdi wedding, where most people spoke in the dialect of the country's interior, Lamees's sophisticated west coast Hijazi accent stood out as she whispered to her friend Michelle. 'Hey! Check her out. The pharaohs are back!' The influence of Lamees's Egyptian grandmother was always readily apparent in Lamees's sharp tongue and manner.
She and Michelle studied the heavy make-up that coated the face of their friend Gamrah, especially her eyes, which had turned the colour of blood from all the kohl seeping into them.
Michelle's real name is Mashael, but everyone, including her family, calls her Michelle. She answered Lamees in English. 'Where the hell did she get that dress?'
'Poor Gammoorah, I wish she had gone to the dressmaker who made Sadeem's dress instead of this mess she came up with herself! Just look at Sadeem's gorgeous dress, though.'
'Oh, whatever. By God, her make-up is painful! Her skin is too dark for such a chalky foundation. They've made her practically blue - and look at the contrast between her face and her neck. Ewww\u2026 so vulgar!'
'Eleven o'clock! Eleven o'clock!'
'It's 1.30.'
'No, you idiot, I mean, turn to your left like the hands of a clock when it's 11 - check out that girl - she's got talent, all right!'
'Which talent - front bumper or back?'
'Are you cross-eyed? Back, of course.'
'Too much. They ought to take a chunk off her and give Gamrah a dose on the front, like that collagen stuff everyone is using.'
'The most talented of all of us is Sadeem - look at how feminine she looks with those curves. I wish I had a back bumper like hers.'
'I think she really needs to ditch a few pounds and work out like you do. Alhamdu lillah, Thank God, I never gain weight no matter how much I eat, so I'm not worried.'
The bride noticed her friends sitting at the table nearby, smiling and waving their arms at her while they tried to cover up the question that lurked in their eyes: 'Why isn't it me up there?' Gamrah was ecstatic, almost intoxicated with this precious moment. She had always seen herself as the least favoured of any of them, but now here she was, the first of all to get married.
Waves of guests started coming up to the dais to congratulate the bride, now that the photography session was over. Sadeem, Michelle and Lamees all stepped up and hugged Gamrah while whispering something into her ear: 'Gamrah, wow! Mashaa Allah, God's will be done! So-o-o gorgeous! 'My God, girl, you're spectacular. A vision! Best-looking bride I've ever seen.'
Gamrah's smile grew broader as she listened to her friends' praise and noted the envy half-hidden in their eyes. The three of them posed for photographs with the bride. Sadeem and Lamees started dancing around her while the eyes of all those older women who devote themselves to arranging marriages were glued to their bodies. Lamees was proud to show off her distinctive height and her gym-toned body, and she made sure to dance slightly apart from Sadeem, who had expressly warned her beforehand against dancing next to her so that people wouldn't compare their bodies. Sadeem was always longing to have her curves liposuctioned so that she could be as slim as Lamees and Michelle.
Suddenly the men came shooting through the doors like arrows, the fastest arrow of all being the groom, Rashid Al-Tanbal, who headed straight for his bride on the dais. The women retreated en masse, desperately searching for whatever they or their friends had that would conceal their hair and faces - not to mention any other revealing body parts - from the eyes of those men on the march.
When the groom and his companions were just steps away, Lamees yanked up the corner of the tablecloth to cover her cleavage. Her twin sister Tamadur used a shawl that matched her dress to cover her hair and open back, while Sadeem whipped on her black embroidered abaya and silk veil, enveloping her body and the lower half of her face. Michelle, though, remained Michelle: she stayed exactly as she was and eyed the men one by one, paying no attention to the mutterings and truly sharp stares that she drew from some of the women.
Rashid ploughed towards the stage along with Gamrah's father, her uncle and her four brothers. Each man tried to download as many female faces as he could on to his mental hard drive, while the ladies, for their part, were staring at Gamrah's uncle, in his forties, who bore an unmistakable resemblance to the handsome poet Prince Khalid Al-Faisal.
When Rashid reached his bride, he flipped the veil back from her face as his mother had rehearsed with him, then took his place by her side, giving way for the rest of her male relatives to pass on their good wishes to her. He settled himself next to Gamrah and then the other men crowded around them to congratulate the couple on their blessed, auspicious and fortunate marriage.
The voices of the bride's friends floated upward in the ballroom's hot air. 'A thousand blessings and peace be upon you, beloved of Allaaaaah, Mohammed!' the bride's friends chanted, and the piercing sound of women's trills filled the room. The men, except for the groom, soon left the place, heading home as their part in the females' celebration was over and their own celebration - which was only a big dinner - had finished before the females' party even started. The couple, followed closely by every female relative, headed towards the food tables to cut the cake.
It was then that Gamrah's friends started chanting at the top of their voices. 'We want a kiss! We want a kiss!' Rashid's mother smiled and Gamrah's mother blushed red. As for Rashid, he sent the girls a scathing stare that sliced them into silence. Gamrah cursed her friends under her breath for embarrassing her in front of him, and cursed him even more for embarrassing her in front of her friends by refusing to kiss her!
Sadeem's eyes welled with tears as she watched her childhood friend, her Gamrah, leave the ballroom with her new husband to go to the hotel where they would spend the night before heading off for a honeymoon in Italy. Immediately after the honeymoon they would leave Riyadh for the United States, where Rashid was to begin studying for a PhD.
In her room at the Hotel Giorgione in Venice, Gamrah sat on the edge of the bed. She rubbed her thighs, legs and feet with a whitening lotion of glycerine and lemon that her mother made for her. Her mother's Golden Rule was spinning in her mind. Don't be easy. Refusal - it's the secret to activating a man's passion. After all, her sister Naflah didn't give herself to her husband until the fourth night, and her sister Hessah was more or less the same. But she was setting a new record: it had been seven nights and her husband hadn't touched her - even though she had been quite ready to ditch her mother's theories after the first night, when she took off her wedding dress and put on her nightgown. Her mother's delighted approval had filled Gamrah with confidence and pride, even though she knew that the expression on her mama's face was a bit overdone.
But on her wedding night she came out of the bathroom to find him... asleep. And although she could have sworn that he was faking it, she decided to devote all of her energy to 'leading him on', especially since her mother had recently announced to her on the phone that the policy of withholding had decidedly backfired in this case.