Behind the Black: Women at Weddings

Persian carpet, Saudi Arabia

It is always the personalities that are the most interesting in any place, but the most treacherous to write about. Both in terms of getting it wrong, and, in the event that they may one day discover your perhaps less-than-flattering description of them, also in terms of getting it right. Fem often shakes his head in bewilderment when I describe people to him; I ask him why, and he says, “But she is your friend,” as if that meant I must cut off my sense of discernment at the root. Of course, at this stage I could quote Jane Austen's Mr Bennett, “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in our turn?” except that, of course, I am entirely without foible myself. But, truth to be told, I like my friends most because of their foibles rather than otherwise, they are more interesting, if necessarily more complex and complicated. 

But before we can even get to characters, there is the context. The first few times I travelled between Saudi Arabia and South Africa, I was viscerally astonished at what was presented to my senses. Initially, all the women in black appalled - it’s not so much seeing one (since you see them in South Africa too) but seeing many, or rather, no-one not in black that is so shocking to your expectations. It’s like gum trees in Australia or snow in northern climes. Not so much the fact of its existence as the fact that there is so much of something in existence that rocks you back on your heels. I think people can become addicted to the unexpected and that is why travel is so thrilling. Other countries are always so exciting and your own so yawn-inducing, until, of course, you have a foreign friend to visit, and then you may discover the truth of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s aphorism that, “It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment. ”

Now, of course, I'm so used to seeing women in black that I have fully adjusted to their presence and simply and blithely ignore them. After all, there is not else you can do; any kind of meaningful public interaction is generally out of the question - even for their own family, children and husbands. It makes the entire entourage appear a very dour lot indeed, trudging along in silence in little compact groups spread throughout the shopping malls that litter the landscape. 

After our first long sojourn in Saudi I remember going to the Brooklyn Mall in Pretoria with my aunt Sylvia and being fascinated by all the flesh on display. Actually, more the fact that it wasn't on display, it was simply present. And therein lies a key difference. You see, if you are always, literally, under wraps, then it appears that when you can flaunt yourself, you do so with great gusto. I've been to two Saudi weddings, and at both the amount of flash, finery and flesh trotted out was quite overwhelming.

As with all weddings, there are the clearly defined traditions which in turn are constantly being elaborated and subverted. The first wedding was very low-key, particularly in comparison to the second, on which literally millions had to have been liberally spent. The first was very conservative and the second more liberal. I had no doubt in my mind which bride I would have preferred to have been; certainly within Saudi Arabia, modernity seemed to have a lot more going for it, from a female perspective, than tradition. 

The first bride was the mandatory many hours late, the second was even later. Weddings typically occur during summer - the very hottest season of the year - and late, very late, at night. After hours of being told, “She’s on her way!” “She’s about to arrive!” all of which came to nought, she finally made her appearance at the top of the stairs down which she was to descend. I have seldom seen such a picture of terror. Tradition decrees that, chest heaving in awful anticipation, she has to make her entrance into the packed room down these stairs, which, like any instrument of torture, have been designed expressly for this very particular task and no other. The steps are both extremely high and very steep, their height and steepness only matched by the equally vertiginous heels she wore, as if she needed to compound her misery.

Now picture this. She has no helper. All eyes in the room are upon her, by virtue of the fact that it is dark and there are spotlights shining on her sweating face and it turns out that this appearance of hers is what we have been spending hours waiting for, with just a few snacks to sustain us, and almost all of them very sweet - think extremely expensive chocolates, wrapped in special foil and chosen especially for the wedding in co-ordinating colours. Another young woman is also on the stairs, in the darkness below the bride. She is dressed Palestinian-style, in jeans and a loose, modest top, her hair covered in a colourful scarf, and she steps carefully around the thick cables that snake around her ankles while video-taping the entire stair-descent. The contrast between the young, dapper, almost masculine woman moving freely in her clothes, and the large, bosomy creature, breasts and tummy and hips all be-swaddled in tight and restrictive clothing, is extreme.

Our bride has her breasts front and forward, and they heave spasmodically with her sighs, setting all the sequins a-glitter, while sweats pours down her face from which Kohl-reddened eyes stare. Her mouth once or twice twitches in a rictus of terror that could be a distant cousin to a grin, but this is grim work and she takes it very seriously indeed. My friend whispers to me that she has to count to some number like 30 between steps, so as to prolong the agony for us all. Like a behemoth, she bears down upon us inexorably and there is no vestige of any saving grace in her movements. Clumsily, tortuously, slowly, she negotiates the stairs. I had to avert my gaze; it was too much for me. I think a small, collective sigh of thankfulness went up to the heavens when at last she thudded final foot to the ground. I just hope they edit out her heavy breathing and heaving from the final sound-track for the video.

Bride the second was as slender, willowy and graceful as bride the first was none of these things. Bride number two wears something very chic and floaty and elegant and is, most astonishingly! accompanied by her husband down the stairs, so has his arm to hold onto. We, that is, the group of Saudi Aramco women Munira invited to the wedding, keep on being told they are a very liberal, and liberated couple. It is clear they know each other well already, and talk to each other all the time in quiet companionship. The stairs are not in the centre of the proceedings, but are placed at one side. On top of which, the stairs only arrive, literally, at the event just before the bride and groom appear. First there is much music, and then the stairs, set on mechanical wheels, and with much fanfare, make their appearance from a panel in the side of the tent and slide into place, albeit slowly and with a jerky moment or two. More fanfare, and an open elevator is suddenly espied behind the stairs which brings the bride and groom to the top of the stairs. Many drum-rolls and an entire set of pretty fireworks go off, in sequence, starting from the bottom of the stairs and ending at the top. As the bride and groom come down the stairs, their video images are projected onto many massive flat-screen TVs hung all around the inside of what they euphemistically called a “tent” but is a multi-volumed elaborate extravaganza of an affair. Even the portable loos (toilets) assembled for the evening have marble floors and wall-to-floor and wall-to-wall mirrors, and set all about at the vanity area are hairbrushes for you to use (no thanks) and about 40 to 50 extra large bottles of extremely expensive perfume you can squirt liberally and at random upon your person (thank you very much indeed).

They were clearly a golden couple, or were to be projected as such. Once they had negotiated the terrain to the stage at the front, and the groom stands there waiting to receive and be received into her family, the large screens circled through the mandatory videos of him and her, growing up. He was often portrayed, even as a little boy, in the golden robes indicative of high birth which inevitably leads in this land fraught with family and tribal politics, to concomitant high office, while she looked willowy and winsome in a variety of poses and clothes, jodhpurs and jeans being much in evidence. I don’t know the Saudi equivalents for “aw, shucks” or “shame” but I’m sure they were being said.

The only discordant notes in the song of the golden couple were the fact that the groom was clearly balding and two of his sisters were grossly large - almost wider than they were tall. His mother was not a small woman, but merely extremely overweight, not ponderously, stupendously, earth-shatteringly obese as his sisters were. His slim slip of a wife was entirely eclipsed by her sisters-in-law - mind you, so was he. I sometimes joke to Fem that Saudi women seem only to come in two sizes, extra-petite and extra-large; certainly if you only had photos of this wedding to go by, you would concur.

Our golden couple had flown in one of Lebanon’s most famous singers for the occasion, and she was preceded by two other sets of Saudi musicians. The groom stayed for much of the Lebanese lady’s singing; one gathered she was a favourite of both of theirs and one assumes he figured he was entitled to a little personal enjoyment after all this shelling out. In his tribe, we were told that it is traditional that the groom’s family mostly pays for the wedding; the concept of who pays for what differs greatly between tribes. Some of the Saudi ladies expressed displeasure at the groom’s staying so long, I’m not sure why, since 10pm to 430am seemed ample enough time for visiting and dancing for me. One can but assume it was the principle of the thing. Or maybe they felt like dancing to those particular songs sung by that very special singer. In Saudi, one’s will is so often thwarted you get a knee-jerk response to any added evidence of further frustration, whether deserved or not. So your entire stance becomes fashioned into the passive-aggressive crouch of the easily aggrieved which switches into a bovine, dumb acceptance of your fate if your will is denied, despite your strenuous objections to it. 

With the arrival of the family entourage, male that is, whose arrival at the event indicates to the wife that she is now married (her father is proxy on her behalf) the festivities clearly come to an end for most of the females in the audience, while it is at this stage that the females of her family come out to preen and dance on the platforms that comprise the dancing arena, all the better to meet the new man in the family. At this particular event the dancing stage was shaped like a cross. Of course I find this fact particularly interesting and amusing. Recently the Aramco Public Relations department saw fit to ban the 15-year old logo of the Oasis Quilt Guild because, in the middle of it, set between the palm fronds, you can apparently espy a cross, particularly if you stand on one leg and squint at the same time. Not a crucifix, merely a plus sign. My mother wants to know if Aramco will soon ban addition too.

Nonetheless, up on the stage shaped like a veritable Christian cross, the ladies danced, or rather, paraded to the serenades. The reason for the ramp-like qualities of the stage only became apparent to me once I had read Rajaa Alsanea’s Girls of Riyadh, and after that it was obvious. According to her, the girls, and it is indeed the young unmarried girls who go onto the stage first and last, literally parade themselves on high before prospective mothers-in-law. It’s like they've been taken out of a box and set on a table to spin and turn and dance. So although they may ask you to dance with them, in reality, you dance alongside them, prancing like horse-flesh at an equestrian show, showing off your paces. Of course, there are others jauntering along likewise both directly behind you, and in front, and then you also have to contend with those coming in a directly opposite direction to you as well as those intersecting at right angles into you. So the dancing is undertaken slow-motion style, wherein you advance slowly and, needless to say, elegantly, and a few unintended bumps here and there are given and taken in the best of spirits, particularly since no other spirits are available for consumption.

Generally any collisions occur when two meet face-to-face and make little mous of astonishment and press check to alternate cheek, talking all the while, and blocking the forward passage for those behind them, so stationary prancing must be undertaken or manoeuvring around. The greeting process can be prolonged by up to twenty or thirty air kisses. I asked my friend at the first wedding why there were such discrepancies between the number of kisses that are placed in the air to the side of the participants, and which can range from a perfunctory two or three to many tens of kisses, since I, after all, was in the queue to meet the mother of the bride and didn’t want to appear too awkward culturally. She said it depends on how many questions you ask, which in turn denotes the closeness of your relationship, “howisyourfamily, howarethekids, youarelookingsolovely, mashallahbutisn’tyourdaughterbeautiful,” rapid fired off without any real expectation of an answer, or at least nothing more than, “fine, fine, thankyou, thankyou”. If it is the mother of the bride who is being thus accosted, she is generally seated near the entrance to the event and is obliged to reply politely to all the questions while acknowledging those who are next in the queue with expressive eyes.

The mother at the second wedding kept on being treated to sounds of ululation by the older women, that was their tradition of acknowledgement, but I didn’t notice any younger women greeting her thus, unless I was being particularly unobservant. I got the feeling, though, that it was mostly Munira, our hostess, who has her own museum of Saudi artefacts at her house, who was most desirous of keeping up the old traditions. What is interesting, though, is that she’d cover her mouth with her one hand, almost like she was making a moustache, but with all four fingers while the thumb brushed the side of her cheek whenever she ululated. Munira even sometimes dances “old-style” with her scarf and abaya, to the older tunes – apparently, the old ladies used to essentially wave their black scarves around to the beat of the music, and waggle their shoulders and hips while essentially remaining in one spot, feet rooted to the ground, or at least that’s the way Munira dances it. In her own way, she’s a living museum. 

In many ways the flash exhibited is more brazen than the flesh, since what I find so interesting is that the women were, almost without exception, dressed up like a Fairy Princess. While the fabrics from which the outfits are fashioned are absolutely gorgeous – soft colours from the whole of the rainbow zone, soft, pretty pastels, their sartorial sensibilities, on the whole, appear entirely evocative of those of a little girl dressed up in her fantastic, best, pretty outfit for Halloween night. I could but assume that there are clearly differences when you are dressing-up, literally, only for other women. However, the Saudi interpretation definitely leans towards Fairy Princess while other Muslim groups of women undertake different interpretations.

Recently I attended a Chaand Raat event at the Women’s Group, for the ladies of the Desi (women of Indian and Pakistani origin), in their women-only celebration of the first night of Eid, wherein they gather together, dance, drum, clap, sing and paint henna onto their hands. They dressed up in close-fitting salwar kameez, showing off every elegant curve and that were clearly tailored as figure-hugging in the extreme. However, three nights later, we were out at a family event run by the same group, and there they all were back in loose salwar kameez, still lovely and colourful, but infinitely more modest than those flaunted to other women. My mother, attending a Ghazal evening of Urdu poetry at the Women’s Group noted all the happy wives and colourful clothes after having spent some time in shopping malls and noted wryly that if she had to be a Muslim wife she’d far prefer being Pakistani than Saudi. 

I had always noted these gorgeous fabrics in shops all draped beautifully on models and I wondered what the final clothes would look like. But I was nonetheless fascinated by the results, since I found it quite sweet and sad and strange to see these large, grown women dressed up as Princess Barbie. But maybe I am just too culturally biased to appreciate what I was seeing. The silent applause that accompanies the aged Italian matron still dressed in the latest trends and finery I find appalling, and in myself discern clearly the patterns of a bias that smacks of an English distaste for “mutton dressed as lamb”. However, all the Italians (thought admittedly, the Italian community on Aramco is only four-strong) enthusiastically endorse precisely such brazen displays of aged flesh in tight, trendy, sexy gear.

To each her own, as the saying is.

The drumming of the traditional wedding songs is amazing. I went to an Arabic Speaking Women’s group event recently and there on stage, surrounded by fantastic drummers, was Nabeeda, looking as butch as anything, dressed all in black in what looked to be a man’s suit, hair cropped close to her skull, with this amazingly earthy, husky and vibrant voice. She had a major fan club in the form of very young ladies there, who, whenever she stopped singing to have a drink of water, something to eat, would start singing out her name, all the while clapping, but not in a desultory simple fashion, it seemed each person at the table clapped a different rhythm, so it was most akin to drumming – some even clapped and then drummed on the table. Nabeeda looked gratified and amused at the antics of her entourage. 

There are clearly a lot of differences that are covered up by the black.

Bride the first’s husband finally entered to the cries of, “The men! The men are coming!” at which stage the members of her family remained uncovered and the other women started to cover themselves - some most intently and anxiously, hastily placing barricade after barricade of clothing upon themselves to protect against the unbidden glance, others in a desultory, oh, here we go again, kind of fashion, half-threw a scarf on their heads and pulled their black abaya over their shoulders. My friend, Iman, who I had met in hospital when one of my boys was so sick and who spoke to me for ages through the barrier of the curtain, advised me that since I didn't cover in the ordinary course of affairs, it wasn’t necessary for me to cover myself now, and as for her, well, they can’t even see her here in the half-dark, far from the floodlit stage so she wasn't going to bother too much. But I also think, in her own way, she enjoyed these little acts of rebellion and defiance, and quite enjoyed having me, on her behalf, cock a snook at the establishment, so to speak, and since I was an entity that couldn't be contained, thanks to Saudi courtesy which errs towards the extreme, I was to act a bit as proxy on her behalf as to what she really thought about it all. As a friend, I obliged her, since Saudi courtesy, after all, decrees that I should obey her injunctions, particularly since I was there as her guest. And so she had a merry old time and I a less comfortable one, while her black eyes flashed and took it all in, and she gloated, exultingly to me, that she is sure she saw some of the men on the stage note my blonde hair in the half-dark and far away in amongst the sea of black and must have wondered. Of such events are life’s small amusements made.

Iman thoroughly enjoyed having me accompany her; she worked as a doctor, and she and a few other, all professional types, working mothers, were dressed in slinky, sexy, little black numbers. I didn’t see one dressed as such at the second wedding, but here there were a few, more remarkable for being the exceptions to the sartorial rule than otherwise. Iman would not have been out-of-place at any wedding in South Africa, she would have fitted right in. But her place in Saudi society seemed anomalous and her clothes seemed to broadcast that.

At both weddings, there was no discernible particular fashion. There were people in pants, people in skirts and tops, halter-necks, all kinds of clothes, but mostly akin to what you see the Hollywood stars trot out on Oscar night. But in so many ways, though I could not decipher the patterns, the kinds of groupings into which you could place the various fashion statements reminded me most of the time I spent in America at the schools there. You see, I had always thought that American schools had no uniform, and thought that might denote freedom. However, once I was there I realised that, certainly within Lake Forest of the 1980s, what they fashioned with their attire, literally, was their identity, and that was so much harder to change out of than any uniform. I remember at the end of my first week my one host sister, ½ of a twin, hissed at me why I was speaking to ‘That girl’? And I, bewildered and out-of-depth queried, ‘Who?’ and then asked, ‘But why not?’ The girl in question was sad and lonely and talkative, which was more than my host sisters were being to me, talkative, that is. They had issues, you may say, with my presence in the family, I think they were shell-shocked at my sudden descent into their midst. My host sister informed me that the girl in question was a druggie, and when asked how she knew that, she told me it is so because she always dresses in jeans materials only. Wow! Bizarre but true. And so I looked around with eyes anew and saw parading in front of me Jocks, Nerds, Preppies, Druggies ... they were all there, they all dressed in well-known uniforms, uniforms dating back way before their time, it turns out even their parents in their time wore such uniforms. I felt set down in a time-warp, particularly against the backdrop of the ugly yellow school buses that are ubiquitous to the American landscape. 

But now the question came about – where did I fit in? Well, I didn’t. I liked my own sense of style, and appreciated it, even if no-one else did. Well, actually, the people I really enjoyed, the kids who had themselves gone on exchange to other countries, who were outgoing and so on, liked me just the way I was. However, my one set of host parents, worn down by trying to take me “shopping” when I, perversely, bought the wrong things, finally resorted to buying me clothes (pretty and preppy, if you must ask) and wrapping them up and depositing all these extremely expensive, little wanted presents in my room. Actually, make that two sets of the three host parents. I was amazed, but I refused to be bowed. But the third host mum was an artist, and while she acknowledged that I was South African and would never fit in, she told me to take the hint. Or rather, MaryLee asked of me that, since my host parents were absolutely desperate for me to “fit in”, like that was possible, that I just wear the clothes. So I wore the clothes, in gratitude and love, but not, I think, entirely as they were supposed to be worn. There were little elements that were missing – the polo necks, the requisite gold necklace with three balls on it hanging over the top of the polar neck, the corduroy pants (don’t like corduroy) and so on. I put the wrong colour combinations together, I didn’t understand that you “never” were supposed to wear article A with article B, and so on. But I wore the clothes nonetheless.

And I learnt to adopt clothes to fit in, or not. Herewith a photo of me dressed up for Chaand Raat. The Pakistani ladies loved my wearing the shawl of the salwar kameez as a belt. They said that I might start a new trend but I’m not so sure. 

Salwar Kameez on Chand Raat

So I could identify with Iman, and sympathise with her and although I’m not entirely sure precisely wherein all her differences lie, the basics are fairly obvious. In the first place, Iman hailed from the border region near to Yemen. She didn’t precisely come right out and say she was Yemeni, but she very possibly was, or at least belonged to one of those tribes which are found in both regions in an ill-demarcated and still fought over area. Furthermore, she was highly educated and she told me how she was brought here in the car, a long trip, by her father, and then deposited at the university for years in which she couldn’t leave the campus, since she had no male relatives in the vicinity. She said that sometimes she and a friend, equally “naughty” to quote her, would sneak out at night. Upon graduation, Iman started working as a doctor at a hospital where she is soon set up by her friend she makes there to marry her brother. Some of her situation became more apparent to me upon reading Girls of Riyadh, which, for all that it is not a novel and shouldn’t be read as such (i.e., don’t expect much of the characters, think chick lit set in Saudi), it makes for fascinating reading from a sociological perspective.

Iman’s husband is much older than she and he had only recently divorced a lady from the Netherlands, with whom he’d been married for many years and with whom he lived in I think the Amsterdam area – he was involved in shipping. The ostensible reason for the divorce is simply that they were not able to have children together, despite years of fertility treatment. Hence he decided to divorce her, come back to Saudi, have his sister find for himself a nice little wife and settle down to have a typical Saudi family of multiple children. All very good and well. Iman obviously accepts this and portrays his decisions as incontrovertible social logic. The only problem is that, despite the divorce, his ex-wife went ahead with a final fertility treatment and conceives and bears a little girl. So now Iman, either recently married or recently engaged, has this to contend with. Iman longs for a little girl herself. Her longing is violent, and I wonder how much of it is jealousy-infused, for it is clear that thoughts of this other woman, with whom she has to fight for attention from her husband, since he, “of course” visits his little girl often, dominate her life. She proceeds to have three little boys, the third one Down ’s syndrome. This does not deter her, medical doctor though she is. She still deeply desires her little girl. Hence, she embarks upon a fourth pregnancy, and brings forth a little girl – also Down ’s syndrome but a case far more severe than her brother’s, she has to fight for her life for months. The day I met Iman when she lay on the other side of the curtain in the hospital, she was also in at Emergency, worried that her C-section scar wasn’t healing properly. The doctor was very kind and gentle with her. It was clear from his examination that there was nothing at all seriously the matter with her, and she, as a trained doctor, clearly knew this too. But her little girl was in ICU, just a few weeks old, she was back at home, coming in multiple times during the day, expressing milk, still dealing with the needs of her naughty older boys and the ongoing demands of a baby son with special needs. She had no family there, her mother-in-law helped when she could and she didn't feel she could leave the child-care to her maid. So my feeling was that she was just so overwhelmed it felt like an emergency to her, and indeed they treated it as such.

We began talking when the security guard came in to tell me that I had to leave my boys and move my car since it was parked out in front and yes, this is Saudi Aramco, they have no parking available at emergency. Instead, you are obliged to park in the usual parking and then walk quite a distance to the emergency room. I’m not sure now what the particular emergency was, we’ve been there so often – a broken arm, swallowing a battery, deliberately eating a poison pill ... however, at this stage I had only the two very young boys and since I was forced to carry them both into emergency on this particular occasion, since one was sick and the other too young to walk on his own, I figured the whole bang shoot of them could go hang themselves for all I could care. Particularly since I had a crying child who wanted his mummy and I knew wherein my priorities lay and they weren’t in the parking lot.

That’s when, from out behind the next-door curtain came a flurry of Arabic to the security guard who quivered in its wake. The hidden, soft underbelly of patriarchy, the fear of female emotion, particularly anger, here in Saudi always amuses me.Certainly it can be used to great effect, as happened on this occasion – the security guard came in all pompous, like a puffed-up toad, and departed charming and obsequious. Fem came later and moved the car.

But the more you closet your women away, the greater the influence they have over your son in particular. In Girls of Riyadh, they all lament the dearth of real men in Saudi, claiming that they are all mommy's boys who never do anything that mama won’t like.

Until he gets married, that is, and in turn is able to wield influence over his wife. Poor bride the first! Her husband was an ill-assorted sort of chap, with the hangdog look and crumpled shoulders that bespeak the cowed and brow-beaten. He did manage one little act of rebellion, or fear. When his mother openly admonished him by telling him and told him to kiss his bride, he refused. The audience ascribed it to shyness. I’m not so sure. Saudi matriarchies breed passive aggression second-to-none. In my heart, I feared a less-than-happy outcome for this non-golden couple.

But in the interests of remaining cheerful and upbeat, I’m sure our golden couple are living happily ever after. Probably in America.