After a quiet pause, habibati, I return to the present to wish you all the great things that love can bring. Your Naser
24
I KNEW IT would happen some time, but I was surprised it had taken so long. The next morning, I was on my way home after I had delivered the imam to the college, and I bumped into Gamal.
“Naser? Is that you?” he asked.
“Yes, Gamal, it is me,” I replied, confidently. He was one of the men who frequented Jasim’s café and he owned a restaurant just off Market Street.
He was wearing a white apron, marked with spots of red and yellow spice. His most famous dish was tripe and liver with ginger, lime, plenty of turmeric, chilli powder, and fresh garlic.
“You should say, Assalamu alaikum” I said, taking in the fresh scent coming from his hands and apron. He was holding four fresh red chillies, and a lime.
He came closer and took another good look at me.
“Your thobe,” he said, “it is short. You are a mutawwa. I can’t believe what I am seeing. What happened?” he asked.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Go,” he said, cutting the conversation short. “Don’t let me see your face again.”
Later that afternoon, I collected Fiore’s letter out of the bag of the love-letter courier. But I couldn’t go home to read it, because after I led the imam to his house, he wanted me to stay longer to take him to the mosque later. “I have an important speech to deliver,” he said.
I knew what was disturbing him. The previous day, he had a visit from a sheikh working in Jeddah’s largest court. The official had told the imam: “Women, ya blessed imam, are becoming disobedient. They are finding ways to entice our boys into their web of evil. I am worried about our young men. A few days ago, may Allah forgive me for saying this in front of you my blessed brothers, a woman from Al-Nuzla unveiled her face in the middle of the street, a face full of powder and paint, to Hamid and winked at him. But Allah was with us, because this cursed creature didn’t know that Hamid is one of our religious policemen. Even though it is sunnah to have a long beard, his won’t grow, but it is a blessing from Allah. Please, ya imam, remind our youngsters how to avoid the enticement of women, tell them that a loose woman is the path to hell.”
“Now, stay with me but keep quiet as I prepare for the sermon,” the imam ordered, sitting on the floor mats.
I looked at him. He was deep in his contemplation. I knew he was soon to make a lecture warning boys to be careful of immoral women. But it was too late for this boy. If only he knew that a proud lover was sitting next to him in his very living room. The thought made me smile.
As I guided the imam to the mosque from his house, he was panting. It was as if I was delivering a raging bull to a ring. I looked up at Fiore’s building. I still didn’t know which floor she lived on, but I hoped she lived as high as possible from the ground floor, because the imam’s speech was going to burst through all the houses. I remembered what Jasim once told me about this imam’s speeches, “You can hide from rain by running under a tree, and if there is a storm you can barricade yourself inside the house and you will be safe, but this imam’s voice is so powerful that not even those inside their houses are safe from his lectures.”
I sat in the front row. I looked to my right and caught Basil staring at me. He clenched his jaw and looked away.
The imam started his speech: “Oh ya Muslim brothers. My heart weeps today. My soul is hurt, my ears are ringing with unbelievable pain. How, I ask myself, did the Prophet’s umma reach such destitution of soul and mind; how, I ask myself, can people whom Allah led to the right path, descend to this unforgivable level of sinning? You are asleep and your daughters and wives are walking around the streets unveiling their faces seeking out your boys, seeking to spread their ills on our future generation, seeking to entice our men into despicable evil. Where are you, oh men of Islam, who once ruled with iron fist from east to west? Where are you, oh men of Islam, who used to be the eyes, ears, heart and soul of your households?”
As I was listening to the imam’s lecture, I felt Basil’s eyes many times on me. Whenever I turned my head to face him, he smiled at me mockingly, shaking his head at the same time.
25
ON TUESDAY AFTERNOON I received Fiore’s reaction to the imam’s speech of the previous day. I had managed to sneak a look at her letter in the imam’s house lavatory, but only could read it properly once I reached home in the evening.
I started to read, knowing that only a hundred metres away from my house, Fiore was in her room, probably doing her homework. How I wished I could order a magical messenger to infiltrate her building, creep up the staircase, tiptoe through the men’s section, slide under the door to the women’s section and into her room, slowly crawl up to her desk and take her voice and run with it as fast as it could, faster than all the men in this city, and bring it to me.
Habibi,
I heard the imam’s speech yesterday. It’s funny he says that the problems in our society stem from women having too much freedom. If I had any freedom, I would come right now to your room and tell you these words in person instead of this rigmarole of writing at night and having to wait a day before they get to you.
Did the imam forget that Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, the trader and businesswoman, was Muhammad’s employer before he became a Prophet? Didn’t she take him under her wing when he was only twenty-two years old and teach him the skills of the business trade? How can he say that the reason women can’t work is because they are inept? Doesn’t he remember that Khadijah was one of the most successful business people in those old days, days in which her tribe buried babies alive if they weren’t boys? Wasn’t she successful in a time when the ruthless bandits filled the path of the trade route from Mecca to Syria, when the traders had to go through swathes of deserts, and when the unforgiving terrain was difficult to negotiate even for the toughest of men? How can he forget that Prophet Muhammad himself always talked about Khadijah’s financial support? As well as being the first convert, she had the wealth that was used to finance the Islamic expansion in those days. Her money helped Prophet Muhammad to free slaves, assist his male companions when they went bankrupt, and it was her wealth that the Prophet used to help with his followers’ migration from Mecca to Medina. How can he have forgotten all of this?
And how can he say that the reason women can’t be rulers is because we are emotionally weak and because we bleed? If he could see, he might climb the minaret of his mosque and look across the Red Sea towards those African countries where many queens have ruled some of the most illustrious kingdoms that ever existed. If someone read him history books from these countries he would learn about Sheba, Cleopatra, Nefertiti, and he would hear that the ancient Nubian kingdom was controlled by queens for many more years than his life time.
Habibi, please forgive me for my angry tone, but I hope you will understand my frustration. Even Khadijah, may Allah bless her soul, who lived over a thousand years ago, had more rights than us girls living in the twentieth century.
Anyway, now back to you. So you told me you are a woman’s son. From now on, when I think of you, when I call your name in my room, I will say: Naser Raheema. I can proudly say: “This cub is from that lioness.”
Will you tell me more about your mother and your life with her? What kind of a woman was she? And about your father, the mysterious Perfume Man?
Tomorrow, when you come to pick up the imam’s bag, can you place your hand that little bit further over his cane; mine will be waiting for you. I want to touch you, so that when we retreat to our separate worlds, we will have something of each other to cling on to.
Kisses from the heart of an angry soul,
Your Fiore
26
ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, the gate opened and I approached the small exit. I saw a gloved hand pushing the imam’s cane in my direction. I stretched out my right arm to receive it and our hands touched.
I froze.
She
pressed her fingers down on the back of my hand, just for a second. I closed my eyes. She squeezed my hand, and then caressed it with the tips of her fingers one at a time. The glove felt warm and velvety, and made the skin that she touched glow. I felt the pores of my skin opening as if they wanted to capture that warmth. I pressed my lips tightly together to repress my excitement.
My other hand loosened its grip of the bag and it fell. She let go of my wrist and the glove disappeared. The sheikh stumbled out of the exit. I was busy examining my right hand. “Naser, are you all right?” the imam asked. I was retracing her fingers’ movements, and replaying her touch in my mind. “Naser? Answer me. Where are you?” I looked at him, he groped with his hands till he found my face. “Ah, there you are.”
I knelt down and picked up the bag and held his arm with my left hand. “Are you all right?” he asked me.
I thought for a moment, then I said, “Yes, ya sheikh, I am but I hurt my right hand earlier today when you were teaching. I know it is not allowed to lead you with my left hand, but can I do it just this once? I am in real pain.”
“What happened, son?” he asked.
I brought the back of my hand closer to my face, and silently kissed the spot where her fingers had touched me.
“Naser?” he said, raising his voice. “I am asking you a question.”
“Yes, ya imam. Please forgive me,” I said, still looking at my hand, as if her finger marks were still there. “I was boiling water and I accidentally spilled it on my right hand.”
“Subhan Allah, pass it to me and let me read the Qur’an over it, it will heal, insha Allah.”
“No, no.”
“What are you saying? Are you refusing to let me read the Qur’an over your hand?”
“No, it is not that. But…”
“No buts or ifs, just pass me your hand, Qur’an is the best medicine.”
I stretched my hand towards his mouth, his mouth was already slightly opened ready to spit on my hand after he’d recited the sura. I pulled it back. “No, ya blessed sheikh, it is not that I don’t want you to read the Qur’an over my hand. It is just that, actually…”
“Actually what?” he demanded.
“Here, ya imam. Read,” I said and shut my eyes.
27
IN MY NEXT letter to Fiore, I told her about my mother and what happened on her wedding day. I also told her that Ibrahim and I were the children of an occasional love affair between my mother and the Perfume Man.
My mother was once almost married to a man called Hagouse Idris, two years before she met my father. But the marriage lasted only an hour.
My mother and her husband consummated their marriage on the night of their wedding, in line with the tradition in our village to the north-west of Asmara, while guests were waiting outside their hut. When the midnight hour arrived, the husband’s best man went inside. He lit an oil lamp and placed it next to the bed. On the pillow he put a square of white cloth.
When he came out, he announced that everything was ready and it was now time for the bride and groom to go inside. All the guests stopped dancing and singing and blew out the other oil lamps in the compound. They stood silent outside the hut waiting for the main news of the night: the piece of cloth soaked with my mother’s virgin blood. The guests heard the first moan, and the best man edged closer to the hut’s door in readiness to receive the cloth.
But inside the hut, the husband had finished making love to his wife but there was no blood. He held the piece of white cloth and he sat there motionless. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked my mother. He didn’t yell, she told me, he just asked her gently.
She responded, “And why do I have to? Did you tell me what you have been up to before our marriage?”
She held his hand. He pushed her away, saying, “But I am…”
My mother didn’t let him finish his sentence. “You are what? A man? And that because you are a man, you can do anything and everything you want. My dear husband, of course I have had other lovers. And I know for a fact that you have slept with other women. The only difference is that you are not condemned because of it.”
He pulled up his trousers. My mother stared at him.
“My dear husband,” she said, “listen to me, please. I know a lot of women who sleep with men before their marriage, and then go to some doctor in Asmara to have an operation and regain their virginity. But I chose not to do that, because my past is mine, just like I would never ask you to erase yours.”
“I was warned about you,” he said to my mother, as he searched for his tie. “I should have listened.”
My mother bowed her head and clutched her hands to her chest in desperation. “But you have been with women too, was that traditional?”
“I should have listened to the other men. But my heart blinded my sense. I refused to believe what they told me. What will I tell…”
She looked up. “Tell who?” She threw the bedcovers away from her. “This is between you and me,” she said. “I believe our hearts are like the ocean. They are deep enough to bury countless secrets, hide the past, and still have the capacity to give. Let’s forget about the past and love each other.”
“But what will I tell our guests? They are waiting outside. How will I face them?”
At that moment, my mother jumped to her feet, put her clothes on and took the oil lamp and the white cloth from her husband’s hand and stormed out.
“What are you doing?” he shouted. “Where are you going?”
She pushed the best man aside, still waiting outside the door, and headed towards the guests. “Here is the cloth,” she said, waving it at them. “And yes, my dear guests, it is still white.”
Moments later my mother’s husband stormed out from the hut and from the village, for ever. Her family also walked out of her life. But Semira, my mother’s childhood friend who lived on Lovers’ Hill, was so overwhelmed by what my mother did that she swore to stand by her.
A year after the failed wedding, and when she was living with Semira and the other girls on Lovers’ Hill, my mother fell in love with a man called the Perfume Man. But he was an Ethiopian man who vowed to lead the life of a traveller. He sold perfume, imported from around the world by sea, in different corners of Abyssinia. Even though they loved each other dearly, he left her a few months after she was pregnant with me. My mother could never really forget him. And when he returned to our village when I was six years old, his visit lasted only for one night, the night in which Ibrahim was conceived.
A week had passed since her college had started, without my realizing it. It was difficult to imagine that I was writing to a woman in Jeddah with all my secrets and dreams, telling her what made me feel happy and sad. I had never been happier. I woke up with the dawn, singing like the birds outside my room; in bed at night, I covered myself with her letters as if they were the gates to her world.
It was all bliss, but it wouldn’t last long. I knew that it was only a matter of time before Yahya, Hani and Jasim returned. Then there was Basil. Every time I saw his face and smile, I remembered the park and the threats I had used against him.
28
THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, I had been asleep for a while when suddenly there was a loud knocking on my door. I sat up. Who could it be?
But then I heard a familiar voice calling. “Naser? Ya Naser?” It was Yahya yelling at the top of his voice. I could hear he was high on drugs. I punched my pillow. I thought he and Hani were due back later. I had no idea how to deal with them. And if Yahya found out I had become a mutawwa, he wouldn’t let me rest a moment in peace. I remembered what he had said when Zib Al-Ard turned mutawwa. He swore that he would hunt out whoever did this to his friend.
I crept towards the door.
I heard Hani’s voice too. “Yahya, it’s one in the morning. Maybe he is sleeping. Let’s go.”
“Let me try one more time,” said Yahya.
He thumped on the door, shouting, “ Yft Naser? Naser?”
A m
oment of quiet, then there was a loud bang on the door once again. I heard Hani shouting at Yahya, “Why do you always have to be so violent?”
“Shut up, Gandhi,”Yahya shouted.
I couldn’t help grinning. I’d missed the boys. I wanted to open the door, but I couldn’t. I tiptoed back to bed and tried to go back to sleep.
I had a sleepless night. I didn’t know what I would do if my friends saw me in the street with the imam. Hani wasn’t really the problem. He worked during the day in his father’s import and export business, and he only came to Al-Nuzla occasionally. He was also more understanding and would leave me alone if I asked for it. But Yahya wasn’t like that at all. He lived off his father’s inheritance. We all used to joke that Yahya’s full-time job was chasing boys, and he put in plenty of overtime. I was bound to meet him on the road before long and I needed to think up an excuse to stop him bothering me.
Tuesday morning, and I still had no idea how to avoid Yahya.
The afternoon arrived. I picked up the imam and as I was walking the sheikh back from the college, I heard some people having a loud argument. I looked around and saw it was Yahya on his motorbike.
I quickly turned my head away. I looked out of the corner of my eye to see Yahya speed away down the road to Al-Nuzla. There was a boy sitting on the new leather seat of his motorbike. Ismael the mechanic had finished the job in time, it seemed. I kept my head down and walked faster. “Slow down, son,” the sheikh urged.
“Sorry, ya blessed imam,” I said. I could only pray that I would be able to avoid Yahya.
But the encounter with Yahya happened soon after. He caught me the following morning. It was the last day of the school week and I was escorting the imam back home. It happened very fast. When I heard the sound of a motorbike behind me, I immediately recognised the spluttering noise. I turned around. Yahya was driving towards us, his eyes fixed on me. He parked his bike and came towards me and the imam. He grabbed hold of my free arm to stop me. “Naser?”
2008 - The Consequences of Love. Page 13