The assistant, Jacob, is a smart-dressed Filipino man who, back in Manila, was a newspaper reporter for ten years. Imad recruited him to help start an English-language paper, but it failed after six months. Jacob, who reads enough Arabic to understand headlines, ferries pages between the women and the men. He can’t jump ship to one of the two English-language newspapers that remain in the city because Imad holds his passport, as employers must do for foreign employees.

Jacob laughs in the Saudi men’s faces as he hands them their marked-up copy.

“You can’t be alone with your women, but my countrymen and I can. You don’t think we’re men like you?”

“This is our culture,” Imad says. There is a shrug in the men’s voices when they talk about the way things are: between men and women, Saudis and expats, Muslims and Christians, royals and everyone else.

“What would the women say to that?” Jacob says.

“We’ll ask them,” Imad says. And so the women’s weekly column, “Daughters of Saudi,” is born.

They write about too-lavish weddings and Saudi men’s marriages to foreigners and non-Muslims, about Saudi mothers’ overreliance on Filipina nannies, and the significance of Laylat al-Qadr. The one thing Imad tells them not to write about is the driving issue.

“People aren’t ready for that debate.”

“We weren’t going to suggest it,” Azizah says.

Muneer tries to guess which of the women the opinions belong to. He wishes he had a way to speak to Lamees, but she isn’t forward like Saeedah was, so he keeps his eyes down and his tongue quiet on the rare occasions they cross paths on the way to their cars.

One late evening in the parking lot, she calls to him.

“Sayyidi Muneer, I heard you’re leaving for a bit.”

The moon is a pearl in an ocean of sky and the air is cool enough for a blazer over his thawb. He shivers a little. She appears to be in her late twenties, older than most unmarried women.

“Yes. Personal business in America.” The PI’s envelopes stopped coming four or five years ago. Clearly, Fareed thought the search had become hopeless. But Muneer will never give up; he saves up for one or two trips a year.

“You went to college there,” Lamees says. “Godspeed.”

“Would you like something from there?”

“No, no. You’ll be too busy.”

The urge to tell her the truth pushes him a step toward her. She jumps a little in surprise, smiles to cover up the awkwardness. Her driver is waiting for her. She disappears into her car.

That night, Muneer calls his latest informant in the United States from the phone in his bedroom. He tries to whisper, though Mama isn’t home. She eavesdrops on him sometimes, presses her ear noisily against the door, as though she wants him to know she’s listening.