Although I shudder at the thought, I have a fascination with a place that is so hot that a woman's shoe literally melds into the concrete surface as she is walking across a parking lot. This is what happens at one point in the novel Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris, which is set mostly in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a place I have a curiosity about, but it seems a place filled with exoticism and contradictions. I have ideas of what it might be like, but I am not sure how accurate they are (some probably true others stereotypes). I have this idea that it is not a place I would like to live as a woman, but I still want to read more about. It's not a place that, I think, it is easy for Westerners to travel to (and I am not sure I would even want to), but I found the mystery Finding Nouf by turns maddening, intriguing, and very gripping.
The author is American and lived in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War with her husband at the time who was a Saudi-Palestinian Bedouin and who no doubt inspired the character (and sleuth) Nayir al-Sharqi. The author now lives in the US and has written a further two more mysteries set in Saudi Arabia and featuring Nayir and Miss Katya Hijazi, a pairing which gives a peek at the lives of both women and a man who is more akin with the Arabian deserts than the pampered lifestyles of the elite. It is a relationship that begins with mistrust and misunderstandings, comes with lots of assumptions (and not always true ones), but over time turns into a friendship and perhaps in the other books maybe even something more. The set up of the story is certainly a good way to show a bit of Saudi society to western eyes.
Nouf is one of several daughters of large, wealthy Saudi family who is found dead in the desert outside of Jeddah. Her brother Othman has asked Nayir, who is a family friend, to look into her disappearance and later her death as there are many unanswered questions surrounding Nouf. Nayir knows the desert, it is in his blood and he has served as a guide to the Shrawi family in the past. When they find Nouf, it is not the outcome they had hoped for. It appears she drowned from a sudden flash flood, but more questions are raised. Why was she out there alone? Why would a young woman, just sixteen and soon to be wed, be without her guide in such an inhospitable place?
Othman's fiancé, Katya Hijazi, is somewhat of an anomaly. She works at a lab in the coroner's office. She is lucky in her relationship with Othman as she is almost a spinster by Saudi standards--the ripe age of twenty-eight. She has been known to bare her face in public and she relishes her work. She studied hard to get her education and has worked against the wishes at times of her father (her mother having passed away). She is not really Othman's equal, not being of a wealthy class, yet he seems a good man and they have intentions to marry. Despite his position in society, and perhaps because he was adopted into the Shrawi family himself, he seems open to Katya's more progressive/open ideas. Of course that is not to say that Katya breaks all of society's rules, she just knows how to live within them and bend them slightly in order to work outside the home. There are times in the story when she seems exhausted and it's easy to see why.
Both Katya and Nayir inevitably get involved in the search for answers to Nouf's death, which looks less and less like a simple accident. What is most intriguing about this story, and I have to admit at times utterly exasperating is how Nayir looks at Katya, how little they understand each other yet must try and work together, interact and communicate. Nayir is especially pious, and as a single man with little family and no sisters he finds Katya's behavior at times inappropriate. He refuses to look at her face and will barely make eye contact with her even when she's veiled. It's not just Nayir's reaction to Katya, but the restrictions that are placed on her movements and the difficulties she has working.
It seems such a fine line she walks between living a life as a working woman where everything--her dress, her attitudes, her movements are scrutinized in ways that men's are not. And then Nayir's assumptions on top of that. Of course, that said, sometimes Katya had assumptions of her own that were not correct. Maybe not surprising there is often little understanding and less sympathy for others when there is so little interaction between men and women in a culture like this.
I could happily have tipped Nayir over the side of his boat (he lives alone in a houseboat) on more than one occasion, but I will admit by the story's end he had come around somewhat in how he interacts with Katya and his understanding of what women's lives are like. Why someone like Nouf, who seemingly had everything she could possibly ever want still ended up alone in the desert and ultimately paid for her "crimes". I've got Ferraris's other two mysteries set in Saudi Arabia and look forward to picking up the next one soon.
There doesn't seem to be a lot of contemporary literature that comes out of Saudi Arabia (certainly compared to other countries in the region like Egypt or Turkey), and even less by women. I am waiting in line for a library copy of Manal al-Sharif's Daring to Drive: A Saudi Women's Awakening (she now lives in Australia). Several years back I read a novel by a young Saudi woman, Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea, but I have never seen another book by her released. I am always interested in books by women from this part of the world, so any suggestions are always welcome.
As hot as it is here right now (this week might well see actual temperatures breaking 100F for several days running), it sounds much hotter in Saudi Arabia. I am traveling somewhere cold now, literally and figuratively, as my mystery read is set in Cold War era East Berlin, David Young's Stasi Child, which is last year's CWA Endeavor Historical Dagger winner.