Hamid was on my left and Basil took for ever to collect his stick and move out of the way. Was he checking under the hem of my abaya to confirm his suspicion that I was a man? I couldn’t remember if my abaya was long enough to hide the tracksuit I was wearing underneath.
I looked down.
Basil straightened up and took a lifetime to turn and move out of the way.
I felt my veil sticking to my face, sucked in by the sweat, and by my gasping for air.
I caught up with Fiore.
We safely turned into Mecca Street.
I couldn’t take it any longer. He was always out on the street. How many close encounters did I have to have with Basil before my luck ran out? I had to act before I was left face to face with this man.
It had to be either me or him in Al-Nuzla Street. And I would do whatever it took to make sure of that.
The best solution was to leave Jeddah. Fiore and I had already talked about leaving when we took the walk along the Corniche and sat on the bench looking out to the sea.
Even without the threat of Basil, what did our future look like if we stayed? Everything around us was run by men. The shops were owned by men, the cars were driven by men, all of the offices, government departments and banks around us were staffed by men, and all ministers were men. Where did Fiore think she might fit? I asked her. There wasn’t a role for me in such a place either. The best of everything was kept for Saudis. No foreigners were allowed to attend the universities. The best jobs were for Saudis. Even dignity was reserved for Saudis.
Fiore had said in the past that she wanted to leave for Egypt or Lebanon. And now as we walked parallel to the flyover, down to Mecca Street, I told her that this couldn’t go on any more and that we had to be serious about leaving rather than just dreaming about it. I told her everything about Basil, about the park and about what I had had to do to recruit the blind imam as our love-letter courier, to prove how serious this was.
“He wants to meet me in the park tonight because he wants sex, Fiore,” I said.
“What? Ya Allah… ”
“I know your life in this country is hard because you are a woman. But I can tell you if you are a certain kind of a boy, it is also…”
“I am not…”
“I don’t want to talk about what happened to me. I am telling you this thing about Basil because I want you to help me think about how to get rid of him. I can no longer do it myself. And I want us to escape.”
“Habibi, I will never be judgmental. Ya Allah, Naser…I am sorry…I am sorry about whatever happened to you.”
“We are both hurt in different ways. Let’s help each other by getting out of this place. When we are somewhere safe, we will have a lifetime to heal. Fiore, we can’t go on living like this. Look how scared we are every time we see the religious police. We need to make a decision fast. Because if we don’t, Basil will make the decision for us.”
She stayed quiet for a while.
I wondered why she didn’t say anything. Maybe she didn’t love me enough to leave for real and put our dreams into practice. Maybe she thought I was just a restless young boy, maybe she wasn’t ready to make such a big move. But I wasn’t going to give up on her. I loved her too much.
As I walked by her side down Mecca Street—lined with palm trees and bright lamps—I told her, “Fiore, look at us, we are barely twenty and we have effectively retired from life already. Outside Saudi they say life starts at our age. There, we can love freely, we can focus on life instead of finding ways to dodge arrest when we want to be together.”
Finally, she talked. “Naser, I told you many times that I wanted to leave, but it is just impossible. I don’t have any money. I don’t have a passport. How would I get out?”
I held her hand and said, “I know a way.”
As we continued walking, I laid out my plan. I told Fiore that we could get to Europe; that Hilal had told me about Haroon, the servant of my kafeel, who had been smuggled to Germany by a businessman, and that I knew where to find more information.
But it wasn’t leaving Jeddah that was bothering Fiore. She wanted to go to Cairo instead of Europe. But even to get to Cairo, I told her, we would have to be smuggled since she didn’t have a passport and she needed her father’s permission to get one.
Then she said in a low voice, “I am scared, Naser. How can I leave my mother?”
I pressed her gloved hand and whispered, “Don’t be scared, my darling. Goodbyes are always sad, but I will be with you. We will make it easier for each other.”
I told Fiore how I used to ask myself, how can a mother send away her children whom I know she loves so much? But slowly I realised that the ultimate responsibility of a parent is to seek out life for their children and to do what’s best for them. I understood that it was my mother’s love for her children that made her give the camel men everything she had to smuggle me and my brother out of Eritrea, while she stayed behind to live under the bombardment. She wanted us to find life elsewhere, because she feared if we stayed, our lives might be cut short. How could I not admire my mother for this ultimate sacrifice? I knew that Fiore’s mother would also understand because she would realise that her daughter was leaving her to search for a better life.
We got back to her building with the rain dripping from our abayas and our face veils, like infusers, filtering the rain water into our mouths.
In her room I gave her a quick hug. I reached for her hand, pulled her closer to me. I knew how she felt. But we had to put aside our feelings for now. We had to deal with Basil first. We couldn’t have him around, popping up all the time as we tried to execute our plan. What was I going to do if he ever came to my room again? How was I going to explain to him the banned books, the veil, the woman’s shoes and socks and the gloves? But if I threw away the abaya, how on earth was I going to get to Fiore’s house?
50
I WENT SEARCHING for the Jeep in Al-Nuzla Street.
It didn’t take me long to find it parked a few blocks away from the big mosque.
I looked down both sides of the road. In the distance I saw a new boy guiding the blind imam to his house; the late afternoon prayer had already finished. I wondered if he was genuinely a mutamva, or a desperate lover like me, who had fallen in love with a girl from the college. It is possible, I thought. Al-Nuzla Street must be full of thwarted lovers.
I took a deep breath and walked a few yards towards my tree in front of my old house. I had abandoned it and had stopped watering it for a while because my heart was too preoccupied with Fiore. The branches that once crowned it were now dry and without life. I touched the trunk, and remembered how I used to bring my brother here to sit with me in the tree’s shade. This had been a safe place to tell him about our mother, because my uncle forbade me to mention even her name in his house.
It had been five years since he had been taken by my uncle to Riyadh. I wondered whether I would still recognise him if I bumped into him. I wondered whether he’d become a mutawwa like my uncle wanted, and whether he still counted me as a brother even though in my uncle’s eyes I was an apostate.
I straightened up, put my hands in my pockets and looked over to the Jeep. Basil was standing next to it. I saw Hamid leave the Jeep and go into the Yemeni shop. I crossed the road and walked towards Basil.
“Make it quick,” he said, as I approached him. “I don’t want Hamid to wonder why I am talking to an apostate like you.”
Me an apostate? I wanted to tell him how disgusted I was by his hypocrisy, but I couldn’t show a sign of it. “If you want me to come to the park with you tonight,” I said, “you will have to make more of an effort.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want you to shave your beard,” I said.
“What?”
“Do you remember your life before you converted to the right path? The pretty boys? You never had a beard then.”
“I won’t shave and if you don’t come, I will take you in.”
“B
asil,” I said brashly, hoping that I was right, “you can’t hold anything against me. Where is your proof? I am not afraid. I have nothing to lose.”
“You know I can’t shave my beard. What will I tell the chief of the religious police?”
“It’s your choice.”
“OK. OK,” he said. “I will shave. Come to the park at eleven o’clock. No one goes there at that time. We will jump over the fence.”
I arrived at the park and waited under a light post just to the right of the gate. I could see two cars driving side by side, racing each other into the far distance. It was eleven o’clock exactly. I heard the sound of a motorbike. I turned around and could see nothing but a stark yellow light moving closer. The noise of the engine shattered the silence and the motorbike screeched to a stop in front of me. I jumped away. The first thing I saw were the feet in open sandals. Moving up, I could see no thobe, only a yellow tracksuit and white T·shirt. The face had no beard. I looked at him, stunned. “Good, you came,” Basil said.
Now the beard was gone I could see signs of his earlier life that I hadn’t noticed before: a big knife-scar across his right cheek, a long cut over his chin. But I recognised the expression of hungry lust.
He got off the motorbike and parked next to the gate of the park. He turned around and stood in front of me. For a moment I forgot that this tall boy, who now trembled in excitement as he took my hand, was the same Basil, the religious policeman who terrorised me in his Jeep. As he turned around to lead me to the park, I could hear the sound of another bike approaching.
When I returned home from the park a couple of hours later, I took a shower before I went to bed. I stayed awake most of the night thinking about the escape plan.
The following day, a warm Thursday morning, I set out for the only Eritrean café in Jeddah. It was the place where one could get the latest news about the war, and it was the place where smugglers came to do business.
The café was full of Eritrean men sitting around the blue tables. I walked to a waiter and spoke to him in Tigrinya. He pointed to a man sitting at the back of the café. The man was wearing a two-piece suit, with an Eritrean gabi draped over his right shoulder. His gabi was as white as his hair and moustache. He saw the waiter direct me to him and he stretched out his hand as I got to his table. There was another man sitting with him.
“Assalamu alaikum,” I said.
“Wa ‘alaikumu salam” both replied.
“Sit down please, son,” said the man wearing the gabi. “What’s your name?”
“Naser,” I replied.
“My name is Hajj Yusef. This is Mossa,” he said, introducing me to the man next to him, who was balding and had a heavy black moustache.
I pulled up a chair and as I sat he asked me, “How are you?”
“Alhamdulillah.”
“The time has come to leave, ah?”
I nodded.
“Don’t worry, son, Allah said that after hardship conies ease. Where do you want to go?”
I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Anywhere. I want to leave this country. I can’t go back to Eritrea, so any safe country that’s far enough away from here.”
“We’ll find a way out. Everything will be OK,” he said. I noticed his wrinkles, the scarf draped on his shoulder, and a newspaper in Tigrinya by his side. He turned to Mossa and said, “Please remember him in your prayers. It hurts me to see someone moving from one country to another prolonging their exile by going even further away. But it is what Allah wished for our son, Naser.”
“It is not Allah’?, wish,” Mossa said sternly. “Forgive me for saying this, Hajj, but it is the people in this country who have the power who are responsible.” He paused before adding, “Two boys I knew were caught last month without papers and are now in the Jeddah detention centre waiting to be deported. They are still kids, ya Hajj, who came to this country fleeing war. Who would send people back to a war zone, especially when they are so young?”
“No, they are not going to send them to Eritrea, they will send them to Sudan, most probably,” contested Hajj Yusef.
Mossa shook his head. “That’s if you have a United Nations passport issued from Sudan. If not, like these two boys, who smuggled themselves from Eritrea to Jizan in the south, then the government will send you back to Eritrea in exactly the same way you came in: on a fishing boat.”
I tensed my jaws. I wasn’t going anywhere on a fishing boat.
Then Mossa turned to me and said, “Go to Europe, son. I sent my children to Sweden. They treat them with dignity there, and they understand the suffering of people like us, so they support us until things get better in our own countries. In Jeddah, they tell us that education is for Saudis only, but in Sweden my children are encouraged to study. Oh ya Allah, just look at the difference. I know it is a cold and lonely place for them out there, but at least they will not see their father being humiliated day after day by his kafeel, beaten up, spat at, with the threat of deportation hanging over him day and night.”
“You can trust us, son,” Hajj Yusef said. “I am an old man and I know a lot of things. I want to help my people. That’s what gives me joy. I can give them advice and put them in contact with people who will find them a better place.”
Every wrinkle of his face seemed to carry a story hidden in its fold, and his kind face made me feel comfortable around him. So I said, “There are two of us.” Without going into detail about Fiore, I told them that we both wanted to leave the country as soon as we could.
“I presume both of you have UN passports,” Hajj Yusef said.
“I have, but she doesn’t have any passport,” I replied.
He raised an eyebrow when he realised that I was going with a woman. He smiled and asked, “How come?”
“She was born here,” I responded.
“Even better and cheaper,” Hajj Yusef said. “She will have no problem going with a Saudi passport.”
I explained that she had never travelled and that even though her father was born here, he had been denied citizenship. Mossa yelled, “How can they forget that in the past they needed other people’s help? How can they forget the first hijra when Prophet Muhammad ordered his companions to immigrate to our land to escape persecution by his tribe? Didn’t our King of Abyssinia ofier them sanctuary, give them land to build their houses, and provide them with everything they needed? They even married our daughters, and yet they treat us like this.”
“Calm down,” Hajj Yusef ordered Mossa. “Don’t carry so much hatred. Hate is like fire and will burn your heart.” He turned his head to me and said, “OK, Naser, let’s talk business.”
“How much will it cost to get to Europe?” I asked him once again.
“It all depends on luck,” he replied. “If the way ahead is smooth, that is, if the businessman is good, the fake passport he gives is good, the visa he fakes won’t raise suspicions, and his business partners on the destination side are not too greedy, then it will cost around two to four thousand dollars. But if he, as sometimes happens, forgets to include a small detail in the visa stamp then you might be caught, jailed or told to go back and check with the embassy. The business of smuggling is unpredictable and can be dangerous, so you should be prepared to pay seven thousand dollars each.”
“Fourteen thousand, oh ya Allah,” I said, burying my head in my hands. “How about Egypt? Can we go there instead? It must be cheaper to get us there, no?”
Mossa intervened once again. “Son, Egypt is a beautiful country. But the country doesn’t have the capacity to look after its own, let alone take any more. Egypt receives aid from America. Plus, I am not sure they will grant you asylum.”
“If I get the money, are you sure the businessman can help me?” I asked Hajj Yusef, holding his hand.
“We are not sure of life itself, son,” he said. “But if you get the money I will arrange everything with the businessman. But prepare yourself for the way ahead. Europe is not as easy as before.”
“Thank you,�
� I said, as I kissed the back of his hand.
After I left the Eritrean café, I walked around the neighbourhood in despair. I had thought it was going to be a lot cheaper—hundreds rather than thousands. Where was I going to get such a huge sum of money? All I had left since I gave up my job was four hundred riyals.
There was no one who could help us. Hilal had spent all his savings to bring his wife over from Sudan and to furnish his new house in preparation for her arrival. Fiore couldn’t get any money from her mother because it was her father who earned and kept all the money.
I must have walked for a long time, because eventually I found myself outside the shopping mall, a long way from the Eritrean café. I went inside and sat by the fountain, silently gazing at the tinkling water.
I looked around. It was so quiet that I could hear the hum of the air conditioning. I saw the reflection of the chandelier on the tiles and my gaze alighted on the jewellery shop and stayed there. I stood up. I slowly moved towards the shop, one step at a time. I slipped my hands into my pockets. This will be easy, I thought. I’m a quick runner. I know all the little alleyways around here. I will have disappeared before the police even get into their cars.
I had promised Fiore I would succeed. This is the only chance to flee with her and be with her for ever. It will be easy. Very easy.
Please help me ya Allah.
The sales assistant was standing behind the glass counter and was speaking on the phone. Everything glowed a sparkling yellow. I walked over to the section where there were watches. I picked one up. Twenty thousand riyals. Two of these would be enough.
“Can I help you?”
I didn’t move. I bit my lip. I looked ahead. Maybe three just to be sure, in case the businessman gets greedy.
“Ya boy, can I help you?”
Slowly I turned around. Our eyes met. The assistant was clutching the phone receiver to his shoulder like a baby.
“Don’t worry, brother,” I said, “I am still browsing. Please finish your call.”
2008 - The Consequences of Love. Page 22