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A Story in Pithead Chapel

Makeup, morals, and men… in the Kingdom.  Check out “Women Wear for Love,” a short piece now out in Pithead Chapel (Vol 5, Issue 7).  Here’s a teaser!

It’s twilight in the parking lot of the Al-Ghosaibi Mall, and in the back of her father’s car, my cousin is making me a woman.  Tonight is our last training with you.

Nada has begged me for years to let her do this, especially now that she’s leaving in the fall.  A Saudi girl, nearly twenty, she’d scold, who doesn’t know her Lancôme from her L’Oreal?  Fatimah Al-Baiyat, what are we gonna do with you?  What she’d like to do—stuff me in her Louis Vuitton trunk and spirit me away to America for a semester—is not possible.  Getting us hired at Woman Wear For Love, selling lingerie, was her next best thing.  One last summer together, she’d laughed, delighted; why not spend it in scandal?   

“Adil!  The light!” she says to her driver now, and she’s so excited I think for a moment she won’t make us switch to English.  But Adil has wide cheekbones and skin as dark as a ripe date, and North Africans understand so much more than they let on.  He flicks on the interior light and settles deep into the leather.

Our shift begins in ten minutes.  Your plane leaves for Delhi at dawn.

…………

Check out the rest here!  If you enjoyed this, please leave a comment or share it via social media.

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