When I arrived, I found the imam sitting cross-legged talking to the group. There were many new faces. The Afghan veteran had moved to Riyadh, and Abdu had left the mosque and gone back to his friends in the street. He said he had had enough of the imam, and he missed playing football, listening to music and watching TV, all of which the imam and Basil had ruled were haram.
I greeted the group, kissed the imam on his forehead and sat to his right.
Moments after I sat down, a man came rushing in. I had seen him before with the imam. He was an old disciple of the sheikh and worked at the Emergency Unit at King Fahd Hospital. He greeted all of us, knelt behind the imam, and started whispering into his ear. The imam got up. He put his hand on the man’s shoulder and they both walked to the far corner of the mosque. The man was gesticulating as he talked to the imam and looking increasingly agitated.
Moments later, the blind imam was led back. The hospital worker excused himself and he disappeared at the same speed as he had arrived. The imam sat, crossed his legs and coughed. Everyone hushed. He told us that another life had just ended tragically. He swayed his head side to side, saying, “Because, yet again, one of our precious children has chosen the path to hell instead of heaven. This boy had a car accident. His car crashed into the bottom of the bridge and it was smashed to pieces. But the fire brigade, may Allah bless their work, managed to get him out. And when they heard the car’s tape playing a song, they shattered it to pieces. They tended to the boy whose soul was about to depart. One of the paramedics held the boy’s hand and asked him to intone the shahada. ‘Son, you are dying, say, there is no Allah but Allah and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah’ But no, the boy remained mute. The paramedic urged him again, ‘Say it. It is your passport to heaven.’ But his mouth refused to utter the blessed words, and he started singing the song that he was just listening to instead.”
He paused and lowered his head and continued, “You know why he couldn’t intone the shahada? Because it is haram to listen to music and it is forbidden to replace reading the Qur’an with listening to music. But Allah punished this boy for refusing to heed his call. And because of this, this boy’s path is hell.” He thundered the words three more times: “hell, hell, hell.”
Listening to the imam, I felt a low headache starting at the back of my head, just like the time I first left his mosque all those years ago, when I was fourteen. As the story went on, the pain got stronger, and the imam’s words were pounding between my eyes. They repeated themselves in my head, over and over again. I wished I could put my hands over my ears to shut out the words of fear and revenge, of hell and Satan.
I closed my eyes. “Why am I going through this?” I asked myself.
But then, and for the first time since she had stopped writing to me, I confronted myself with the truth that I didn’t want to face. Maybe, I thought, she had found another boy and was now starting to exchange notes with him. Or, if that wasn’t the reason, maybe she converted to the right path and was now repenting that she ever had anything to do with a bad Muslim like me. Or maybe she saw there was no way of continuing. Writing love letters via the love courier was as far as we could go. “And for how long are we meant to go on writing like this?” I asked myself. “It only makes us want to see each other, and there is no chance of that ever happening.”
I was back to the doubts and questions and the ifs and buts that had almost driven me crazy at the beginning of our love story. I didn’t want to go through all that again. “I should have known. What good could have come of this anyway?” I wondered, trying to force myself to accept that I might have lost her for ever. “That’s it, Naser. It is over.”
Slowly I stood up, in a sweat, and stepped out of the circle of boys, vowing never to step a foot in the mosque again.
What had happened to Fiore that had made her desert me? I didn’t understand. I had become a mutawwa for her, and we had both risked everything to come together. And now she had gone as quickly as she had arrived. She had disappeared back into her concealed world. Jasim’s friend Omar had been right, I was just a rich girl’s plaything and now she had found someone else to torment. I would try my best to forget her.
36
I STAYED AT home for nearly two weeks after leaving the mosque. It was in the seclusion of my room that I tried to grieve for Fiore. But I had very little to remind me of her. I hadn’t seen her face, or even her eyes. I hadn’t even felt her skin, or stroked her hair. Her body remained a mystery to me hidden behind her veil.
All I had seen was that inch of skin; the scar on her dark ankle. But above all, it was the Pink Shoes that kept flashing in my mind. They were what I kept watching for during our entire adventure.
I remembered her deep pink shoes as a rejected lover remembers his loved one’s face. I remembered the small pattern of glittering pearls on the sides of her shoes, as if they were the earrings in her ears, the necklace around her neck, or the glittering belt around her dark hips. I remembered the pink colour as if it was the colour of her favourite lipstick, her bra and underwear. I remembered how the first time the black and white set of Al-Nuzla Street was interrupted by her shoes, she looked like a pink flamingo. For many of the days that followed all I wanted to do was shout to the men of Al-Nuzla that this woman with the Pink Shoes was my girl. With every step she tied my heart to her shoes that bit tighter. Without them my heart could not survive.
Maybe it was my fault that she deserted me. Maybe I should have gone further in my letters. I couldn’t remember whether I ever told her how fond I was of her Pink Shoes. And I certainly couldn’t recall ever suggesting that we both run away. Maybe she was waiting for me to take her by the arm and run with her from this black and white movie.
I wanted to ask her for another chance. I felt like standing outside her building to show her how much she meant to me. But Basil’s constant patrolling of Al-Nuzla Street with his band of religious policemen put an end to that dream.
I must be condemned to live a lonely life, my only company being the memories of those I loved. Everything that was beautiful lay in my past: my mother, my brother, and now Fiore. I even grieved for the friendship I had lost with Yahya and Hani.
PART EIGHT
A SCENE FROM EGYPT
37
I FINALLY EMERGED from my room one night in early November. I went to the Corniche. I was still wearing the Islamic dress that I had been wearing to the mosque, the same short thobe with the deep side pockets in which I had hidden Fiore’s letters.
The Corniche was full of young men. It was as if the Red Sea was the Mecca for lost lovers and they had all made their pilgrimage this night.
Everyone was staring out to sea, which was quietly listening to all who sought relief from loneliness.
As I stepped down to my secret rock, I saw the Saudi lover playing his ‘oud. I admired him for managing to look his best even though everything he used to demonstrate his love was decaying: his ‘oud sounded as if the strings had rusted and his deep voice was cracking. His words were disjointed and he was struggling to connect the lyrics together. His voice couldn’t hide the breaking of his heart. His words brought tears to my eyes:
My love, my days are numbered now that my voice is deserting me.
I will never stare at the sea in silence. If I can’t sing to you what I feel inside my heart then life has no use for me. Oh, habibati, the end is near.
38
A FEW DAYS later, I had taken off my thobe and gutm and gone back to wearing my usual shirt and trousers. I was starting to go back to my normal life. I asked Hilal if I could go back to my old job at the car-wash. “That job is gone,” Hilal said, “it is your fault you left it in the first place. There are so many foreigners coming into the country and they’re all prepared to work for a pittance.”
But he promised he would help me look for a new job. Within the hour, he had called me back asking if I could cover for one of the Indian boys at another car-wash just fifteen minutes’ walk from
my old job. “One of their men is sick,” Hilal said, “but it might not be for long.”
Jasim had finally returned from his long trip with his kafeel.
That evening I went to meet him at his café. The cafe’s tables, which lined the pavement and overlooked the small roundabout and the shoe shops across from it, were covered with new yellow plastic cloths. The terrace was packed, and the two men sitting at the table immediately to my left were playing dominoes.
The waiter smiled at me and gestured with his eyes to Fawwaz sitting at the other side of the small terrace. I understood that Fawwaz was still not married and that they were still lovers.
Jasim was sitting at a table outside, buried under the smoke of shisha leaving his mouth and those around him.
He hugged me and I hugged him back tightly. I just wouldn’t let go. I knew I wasn’t my real self when I heard his whisper: “Ya Allah, Naser, you never hugged me like this before. Never. Does that mean you finally…”
I pulled back and said, “I am just very happy to see you.”
“Can I offer you dinner? I want to tell you about my holiday. I have lots of news.”
“Yes, I would like that,” I replied.
“Let’s leave then,” he said.
“OK.”
He held my hand and squeezed it, but I pulled away.
I called Hani and Yahya to tell them that I had left the mosque. But they refused to talk to me and Yahya even threatened me should I ever call him again.
So I was surprised when one evening there was a knocking on my door and I opened it to find both of my friends standing there. “I am so happy you are here,” I said.
“Let’s go to the Pleasure Palace,” said Yahya. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
At the Pleasure Palace, they fired off hundreds of questions to find out why I had become the guide of the radical imam. But I just kept repeating that I wasn’t the only one and certainly wouldn’t be the last one to join the mutawwa’in and then leave.
“Just like that?” asked Yahya.
“Yes,” I replied. “Look what happened to Abdu.”
“Who is Abdu?” asked Yahya.
I explained how he had wanted to be the imam’s guide, but had then thought better of it and joined the football club instead. Hani nodded in agreement. “In fact Al-Yamani keeps joining and leaving the mutawwa’in in Mecca Street.”
“Anyway,”Yahya said, “I am happy to have you back to normal again. But never let that imam change you again. You hear me?”
If you only knew why I did all this, I thought to myself.
We sniffed glue and Hani and Yahya started talking about our friends Faisal and Zib Al-Ard who were still fighting in Afghanistan. There had been no news of their death so we assumed they were still alive.
“I miss them,”Yahya said.
“I wish there had never been a war,” Hani said. “Our friends would still be here with us.”
How many times I had wished there wasn’t a war in my country. I would never have needed to leave my mother and Semira behind. Tears welled up in my eyes as I thought about how much I missed them.
Fiore was always there. Her smell had seeped out of her letters and conquered the walls of my room. I was colonised by her memory. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I feared I was going mad. I had to talk to someone to save my sanity. I thought of Hilal. I didn’t think he would betray me. He was the only person I knew of who lived his life for one person only—his wife.
And when I finally told him about Fiore he looked at me for a while with his eyes and his mouth wide opened. Then he embraced me and warmly kissed me on my cheeks, saying, “Now I believe in miracles. Love is a supernatural force, like the moon, the sun, or gravity and no man will be able to stop it, no matter how strong or brutal he is.”
But while I was trying to pull my life back together, Basil kept creeping up on me.
Three weeks after I had left the mosque, as I was outside the garage washing a car belonging to one of the local grocery shop keepers, I heard the sound of a familiar engine approaching. I stopped washing the car and looked up behind me. The Jeep parked just yards away with its engine still running.
I pretended to continue scrubbing the bumpers, my hands trembling badly. I looked behind me and saw the Jeep’s front lights flashing on and off. I decided to ignore it and carry on with my job.
I kept glancing back to the Jeep, but nothing happened except the revs of the engine increasing slowly. I was wiping the same spot over and over again, when I heard the Jeep approach and finally halt behind me. There were a few seconds of silence and I had no idea what to do. I just stood there looking at the big car, not knowing what was going on behind its shaded windscreen.
Then Basil opened the door of his Jeep and ordered me to wipe his windscreen. “We are in a hurry,” he said before slamming the door shut again. Without looking at the Jeep, I soaked my cloth in the soapy water and stretched out to wipe the shaded windscreen with it.
I was about to rinse the cloth when I saw the blackened window of the Jeep being scrolled down slowly. Basil leaned out and looked at me silently. He followed me with his eyes throughout the cleaning job. When I finished, he asked me, “Why did you leave the mosque and the blessed imam, ya apostate?”
I didn’t respond.
“No one disobeys the imam and gets away with it,” he said. He drove off without paying.
I was back to my old world without her watching over me. Wherever she might be: in the street, at her window, on the bus, or in her father’s car, I had to accept she was no longer looking for me. If she still loved me, she could have followed me, if she wanted to, as I went about my daily activities: walking down Al-Nuzla; going into any one of the dozens of shops in the neighbourhood; drinking tea at the Blue Cafe, just after the roundabout and behind the big supermarket. She could have seen me when I was playing football with my friends up the road in Al-Nuzla in the big space in front of the factory; or sitting under my tree, where she dropped her first note. She would have seen me walking the streets with my head down, looking at all the women’s feet, searching for her Pink Shoes, just in case.
My short job at the car-wash finished when the Indian worker got better, and I begged Hilal to find me another one. I just wanted to forget the summer and keep myself busy. He said he would keep an ear out.
One evening Hilal and I took the bus to the Corniche for a drink. As we sat drinking freshly squeezed juice in a café overlooking the Red Sea, he told me that he had been thinking about me and Fiore, and that he wished I had told him about her before she disappeared. “Naser,” he said, “had I known about this, I would have taken you both to a special place where you could have been alone, where you could be with her and talk to each other without fear of her father or the religious police.” After a pause, he added mysteriously, “It is a secret spot at the other end of the Corniche. Anyway, let’s walk now, I want to tell you about this place without anyone listening to our conversation.”
One evening, I was standing with Hani, across the road from my house. I was holding the Pepsi can so that Hani could pour more glue into it. He was dressed, as always, in a tracksuit and T·shirt; even though he was a Saudi, he hated thobes.
I sniffed the glue and then I took another look at the boy sitting on the hood of his car, Hani’s cousin. His name was Fahd and he was visiting from Riyadh. I was examining his clothes: a green shirt, yellow-striped black trousers, white trainers and black sunglasses.
“What? Why are you smiling?” Hani asked me. He saw me looking. “His clothes, right?” he asked, pointing to his cousin.
I nodded.
“I told you not to be a fashion rebel!” Hani screamed at Fahd. “At least drop the shades. It’s night-time, for Allah’s sake.”
“I am not going to let a boy from Jeddah tell me what to wear,” retorted Fahd. “I am from the capital, my friend.”
Hani bent double, laughing. He added, “Are you telling me you Bedouins dress better
than us in Jeddah? Naser, are you listening to this?”
I was, but for different reasons. I asked Fahd if in Riyadh he had ever come across a boy called Ibrahim who lived with his uncle Abdu-Nur.
But Hani interrupted saying, “I am sorry, Naser. I already asked him. He doesn’t know. The world sometimes is not as small as they say it is.”
“Never mind,” I said. “Anyway, why don’t we go to the Pleasure Palace? Who are we waiting for?”
“Yahya,” replied Hani.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Guys, look. Look.” Hani almost wailed the words.
A few buildings away, we saw a woman entering a house. She came back out and went to a nearby van to collect some luggage and small boxes. The breeze blew her hair about. We looked at each other in disbelief. The only quivering hair that we were used to seeing around Al-Nuzla was that of men’s long beards.
She was wearing tight jeans, and her high heels stabbed the street like knives.
We approached her, moving shoulder to shoulder.
“She is cutting me to pieces,” Hani said, whispering.
“You see, guys. Don’t you regret that you’re not dressed up?” Fahd took off his black sunglasses only to replace them with another pair, this time with gold designs round the edges. “Better to be ready than sorry. Even if it is for a once in a lifetime opportunity. Now who is the fool?”
Hani was dreaming. “I wish I was an endless street for that woman to walk up and down all day long.”
The woman noticed us. A man came out of the building and took the bags from her hands and hurried inside again. She walked towards us.
I looked at Fahd and sweat was falling down his face. He took my hand and squeezed it firmly.
“What are you doing?” I asked Fahd.
“She is coming towards us. Slowly. She is taking for ever to get here.”
“Can’t you speak softer? Anyway, that’s the way some women walk. One step at a time.”
2008 - The Consequences of Love. Page 16