Memoirist Idol

A Teenage Love Affair

Love, commitment, and heartbreak against the backdrop of 2000s Saudi Arabia

As a post-pubescent boy, growing up in Saudi Arabia around the turn of the century was, in many ways, challenging. For one, the rise of testosterone was at great odds with a conservative culture that censured sexuality and created a vast chasm between boys and girls in every way possible — I can certainly tell you: there was a lot of energy and nowhere to channel it.

I had gone to an all-boys school that didn’t offer sex-ed or the proper guidance on sexuality (at least not without an undertone of shame). This, you can imagine, led to creative yet unhealthy and sometimes perverse ways in which the boys expressed their pent-up sexual energies.

Despite creative activities being a great way to channel the untamed rawness of our teenage libidos, we didn’t have any of that either. Music and many art disciplines were culturally stigmatized and banned in schools. So, despite my creative proclivities, they went largely undiscovered for the first two decades of my life. (I will give it to my dad though, who encouraged my sisters and me to undertake creative activities like painting and playing the violin, but nothing had an impressionable effect, at least not on me).

Anyways, this is not a story about the circumstance of my childhood or how I discovered sexuality, albeit related, but rather a story about how I met a girl and how that changed my life.

Besides my family, I had little interaction with the opposite sex up to eighteen, which was when everything changed.

On one ordinary summer evening, a little after I had started my undergraduate education, my best friend asked me to tag along to meet a friend of his (a girl) and her friend in a Starbucks — this mystery friend, unbeknownst to me, was going to turn my entire life head over heels.

She was an all-American girl, blonde and tall, who took a surreal liking to me: a Saudi boy with countless hours of gaming experience and with literally zero game. As we sat there, she showed no restraint, acting all goofy, cute, and charming.

“Did I die and go to heaven?” I thought to myself. “This can’t really be happening. What’s an American girl doing here in Saudi anyway?”

I was absolutely smitten by her. It was a classic boy-meets-girl, boy-falls-in-love-with-girl situation. But of course, I didn’t know what real enduring love was, only what I’ve seen in the movies.

The next few months ushered in a period of butterflies and rainbows. So much so that we thought we’d be together forever.

It didn’t take long before the idea of marriage was put on the table. I don’t remember how it came about, but it may have been suggested to me by my father after I had spilled the beans about my relationship. I don’t know what I was thinking opening up to my parents about the girl I was dating; either way, I was crazy enough to entertain the idea.

“Marriage? Yes, that sounds like a wonderful idea,” I could only imagine, I thought.

In Saudi, dating isn’t culturally acceptable, and sexual activity is obviously prohibited religiously — the religious police at the time were on a mission to ensure neither happened. So, there was, indeed, an inherent risk of getting caught that evening hanging out in that empty Starbucks. But as a teenage boy with testosterone flying in the air, treading on the edge of danger only added to the excitement.

I walk into the lobby of Le Meridien, donning baggy jeans, a rock-and-roll shirt, and long borderline-shabby hair that dropped across my forehead. I feel pensive, knowing I need to make an impression. It is her stepdad I am meeting after all.

I am convinced he would appreciate an authentic, laid-back dude who isn’t too concerned with cultural appearances. As I sit down and engage in conversation, sharing my accomplishments and ambitions, I sense we’re getting along quite well.

An hour or so passes, and we part ways, after which I patiently wait to hear back on his thoughts and impressions of me.

Thankfully, as it turned out, he liked me and whatever persona I was bringing to the table.

Our families got together, and things moved forward. It was only a few months after we met that we were engaged. Yet, there would appear a big thorn in the road to marriage. As it turns out, the law didn’t permit a Saudi man below the age of twenty-five to marry a foreign woman without special permission from the government — permission which would become a much bigger obstacle than anyone could have imagined.

Our parents thought if we were to settle down, it would help us focus on our studies, keep us from getting distracted by boys or girls, and create a support system for one another. I get that; however, I wish that was the case. Instead, we were both very immature and definitely not ready for that level of commitment.

As her father tried desperately to get the marriage permission, things in my relationship were imminently falling apart. The fights and arguments increased and only got worse. I was miserable and confused about how I could be so unhappy while simultaneously being ” in love.” I swear, at some point, I thought I had the evil eye or was under a magic spell — I just couldn’t make sense of what was happening, just that I had become utterly depressed for mysterious reasons unknown to me.

That is not to say that we didn’t have beautiful moments characterized by love and affection; we did (particularly at the beginning). But also, as is the case in most teenage love affairs, things were wild, fiery, and constantly swinging from one end of the emotional pendulum to the other.

The emotional turmoil of my relationship spilled over into other areas of my life, including my friendships and education. My grades plummeted as a first-year freshman; they were abysmal, reflecting my emotional state almost to a tee. (I got two academic warnings due to a sub-2.0 GPA).

Throughout our engagement, which only lasted a year or so, we had a few mini breakups; nothing we couldn’t weather. However, eventually, there came a big enough storm that we stood no chance, and, eventually, it became the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

Breaking up wasn’t easy, especially since I’d been accepted into a new family like the son they never had. Fuck, I was in a pickle my 18-year-old psyche wasn’t ready to handle. It was too much to bear, and I just wanted to tuck myself away in a gaming cafe with my buddies playing War Craft or Command and Conquer. But instead, I had to face the music.

Despite being wishy-washy for most of my relationship and lacking discernment and clear values, which unintentionally caused my fiancée a ton of pain, this was one decision from which there was no turning back.

I’ll spare the details of the breakup finale, but one thing was certain: it was rotten (tomatoes).

She still loves me, and I probably love her too, but I need to do this for the sake of my sanity. I need to do this with the hope I can begin to feel some semblance of happiness.

It is official now. We are broken up (for good this time).

Holy shit, the pain of ending this relationship is the most heart-wrenching thing I’ve ever had to do. And now I am left in its aftermath with a big hole in my heart.

I need a distraction. I need to focus on something other than what was once all of me and now is none.

I know. I’ll pour my heart into my education. Maybe the textbooks and lecture notes would help drown out the shards of broken thoughts and emotions.

Soon after the breakup, my sophomore year began, and as planned, I directed all my emotional agony and despair into my studies.

At that point, I knew it was going to be an uphill battle to lift my GPA out of the gutters. But the distraction worked, and I did it.

I studied and hustled to end each semester with a GPA of at least 3.5/4.0. And when I graduated five years later, I earned a cumulative GPA of 3.1 and an honors distinction in chemical engineering.

Ironically, after everything was said and done, the government approved the permission for our marriage (the universe sure had a twisted sense of humor).

I spent the next couple of years partying and chasing girls (albeit keeping them at arm’s length from my heart) before I had the courage to stop numbing, avoiding, and face the truth of my situation.

I was a teenage boy with no direction or clear values to define me. I was infatuated with a beautiful exotic girl and the unprecedented attention she had given me. I said yes to everything when I should have said no because I was afraid of losing love and because I hated myself and felt unworthy. I was a teenage boy who inadvertently let a girl define the person I’d become and, in the process, lost the little of myself I had left.

It all made sense. As good-intentioned as we were, it all made sense why I had become so miserable and lost; why I couldn’t live with or without her.

Yet, in many ways, the relationship only exacerbated what pain was already there, lying dormant. And having grown up in Saudi Arabia was part of that, including the stigma and shame around sexuality, which undeniably influenced my decisions and the trajectory of this teenage love affair, for better or worse.

But as it turned out, facing this truth had become the single greatest catalyst in my life, propelling me into a profoundly transformative journey of self-discovery and authentic and vulnerable self-expression.

And here I am today, a decade into this journey, expressing myself authentically and vulnerably (as I am in this very article), and with an intention to connect with you, remind you that it’s your deepest pain that becomes your biggest strength, and, perhaps, gives you hope in knowing that you are not alone in your suffering.

Note: A lot had changed in Saudi from when I was a teenager (particularly over the last five years). I want to elucidate some of these positive changes:

1. The religious police have been stripped from their power and the authority they once had.
2. Boys and girls are allowed to mingle in public, but cultural sensitivities regarding public displays of affection must still be considered.
3. Women are permitted to drive and issue driver's licenses.
4. The country has opened to international non-Islamic tourism.
5. Women can leave the country and complete all government procedures without the permission of a male guardian.
6. The ban on cinemas, concerts, and music festivals was finally lifted.
7. Women are no longer required to dress in the traditional cloak and head scarf (the abaya); however, are still required to dress modestly in public.
8. The government now promotes sponsored scholarships for high school students in the creative arts, including music and film.

Thank you to KiKi Walter and The Memoirist for holding The Memoirist Idol competition.

And I’d like to thank Cliff Hightower for his excellent article I Am My Father, My Father is Me. I particularly enjoyed the way he transitioned between past and present tenses, pulling me into his narrative, as well as the creative way he laid the scenes of his story.

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