2008 - The Consequences of Love. (19 page)

Since both of us are single, I thought, according to the law, we would be lashed in Punishment Square. It made me think back to the deep lines of fire on my shoulders after the religious policeman lashed me that day when I stood outside Fiores building with a note in my hand. He lashed me more times than I could count, each time on the exact same spot where the previous one landed. I feared I would end up in two halves.

And I’m a foreigner, I thought, my heart beating a step faster. If they find out I used the imam as a courier of love letters, my punishment will be even harsher. Would they deport me? What might they do to me?

What about Fiore? I recalled what Mr Quiet had told me when the religious policemen strode past us in the shopping mall looking out for illicit love. “If two unmarried lovers get caught,” he said, “then the man will be flogged but will live a full life. He will say I am sorry,
ya Allah
forgive me, and that’s his ticket to a happy and a normal life. But the woman, she will find out that once the pain of the lashes subsides, she will endure a greater pain. She will be shamed for ever. No man will touch her, no man will want to be her husband, and she will live like a dog with rabies, because if a bullet didn’t kill her, then the pain of loneliness and rejection will.”

THE BLACK JEEP

I
HAD WONDERED whether I should write Fiore a last letter to say that this all was too risky for both of us, and tell her about my suspicion of Basil. But it was too late. She had become my obsession and I couldn’t imagine living without what she gave me, for even if it wasn’t physical love, the idea that I was in love was enough. I decided that it was better to continue holding on to an idea, even if it was dangerous, in the hope that it would one day become more, rather than continue living in a loveless world.

“Isn’t life temporary?” I reminded myself to gain strength.

Saturday morning, and I left my flat for the imam’s house, with a new letter to Fiore in my pocket.

I saw her in the distance, in her Pink Shoes, walking behind her father. They were coming towards me. I walked slowly, so I could be with her on the same street for as long as possible. I saw a beam of pink light reflecting off a piece of broken glass that she pushed aside with her right foot. I imagined that Jeddah’s sky was ablaze with fireworks, as though her shoes were the cannon from which this pink was fired up to brighten a normally sad sky with happiness.

I felt that she was whispering to me with her shoes, “Good morning,
habibi
. I hope you slept well.” I felt it was like seeing her uncovered with a big smile on her morning face.

I remembered the drawing of my face that lived between her breasts, caressing them with every step she took to her college. I hoped my picture would crawl up along her neck and give her a passionate kiss on her lips and then whisper back, “And good morning to you too,
habibati
”

I rejoiced, feeling happy that I had not lost my nerve.

I planned to breathe in the morning air greedily when I passed her, hoping to catch a whiff of the scent of her shampoo and body lotion.

I looked at her father and noticed he was walking as if he was a living king on Al-Nuzla Street. I studied his face, trying to find more clues about his daughter in his features.

I was wrapped up in my thoughts when I saw the familiar Jeep pulling up behind Fiore. It was enormous, taking up almost the entire width of the street.

It drove alongside Fiore, its thick dirty tyres nearly touching the pavement on which the blessed Pink Shoes were walking. Fiore turned her head towards the Jeep, but as she did, her ankle twitched and the side of her shoe touched the dust. Her shoes spoke to me of her fear. “Please, Fiore, hold your nerve too,” I prayed. I kept walking, my eyes fixed alternately on her and the Jeep, but the Jeep passed Fiore and beeped its horn. Fiore’s father looked at the Jeep and bowed his head, touching his chest with his right hand in respect. A hand stuck out of the Jeep to wave back. When Fiore and her father had passed me, I heard my name:

“Naser?”

I pretended I didn’t hear, looked ahead, away from the Jeep, and kept walking.

“Naser?”

Basil’s voice was too loud to ignore, and I turned my head to face the new religious policeman of Al-Nuzla.

“Come over here,” he said.

I did as he asked. In the distance, I could see the Pink Shoes disappearing. That was the right thing to do. We had to be as careful as possible. There was no room for errors, and hasty and frequent back-glances are certainly a big giveaway for the religious police.

Basil leaned out of the Jeep window and smiled at me.

As I walked towards him I wondered again what could have motivated him to become a religious policeman. Revenge or genuine desire? Part of me couldn’t help thinking that all he was doing was posturing, that he was trying to impress me, like he must have done when he was competing for pretty boys’ hearts. It is possible, I thought as I examined his face, hidden by his thick beard. Being a religious policeman would give him the authority to force anything on me, even the very thing I had refused to give him in the park.

Deep inside me, I hoped that this was the case, that Basil was overcome by lust and nothing else. I could handle that, I thought as I approached his Jeep.

But his words didn’t instil much hope in me. “Greet the imam,” he said, “and tell him that Basil will never let him down. That he, with the help of
Allah
, will crack down on anyone who dares tarnish our blessed way of life and deviates from the right path.”

In my letter to Fiore that morning, I didn’t mention anything about Basil or his becoming a religious policeman. Perhaps it was my fear that I might lose her at any moment that made me want to tell her now about my deep-seated desires. I wrote choosing the most beautiful and precious words, weighing each sentence ten times before I committed it to paper.

For the first time, I realised I had started to think about her sexually. This was a person I couldn’t see, hear or touch, and yet I knew she existed because of the inch of skin she had shown me in the Yemeni shop, her letters and the Pink Shoes. And the longing her sudden presence in my life had instilled in me was making me adore her with the same fastidiousness a pious man might feel towards his invisible God.

Fiore
,

I hope that you will take kindly to my foolish manners but today I have decided to talk to you not about earthly matters but instead focus my energy to admit to you my desire. The moment for this might be inappropriate and the forwardness of what I will say may make you regret knowing me, and even give you reason to reject me as a man of ill manners. A man who started to twist pure love into a medium for desire. But I have decided that if I am to be as faithful to you as lovers must be to one another then I must convey to you all the feelings inside me
.

It has been so often the case that wherever I am, be it walking down the street, waiting for the imam at his house, in the mosque or outside the college, all I think about is you
.

On occasions, I travel with my mind far into the distance, to a place where you are waiting for me in the middle of the desert. So I come rushing towards you. At first you appear covered. But as I come closer to you, the black cover turns out to be nothing but your dark skin under the searing sun of the desert. You are alone. Like a plant in the desert, keeping yourself alive, self-sustaining. Your feet stand firmly on the yellow sand like roots with a thousand years of history, and your chest and neck look up to the sky with the pride of an Abyssinian queen
.

When I reach you, I am breathless, like a man who has been wandering this earth with only one aim: to find the woman of the legend, the lover about whom men talked, and whom women feared, for thousands of years. The myth that men passed on from generation to generation with the same lust shaking their bodies as when they first heard it from their fathers
.

When I found you, your magic was that you were able to fill the sky with countless stars and turn the desert into a bed of flowers upon which we lay naked, our bodies meeting for the first time. As we kissed, you confessed to me the truth. “I might be mentioned in a legend,” you said, “but I am new to the land of lovers because I have been all alone for my whole life waiting for you to come
.”

“
We are both novices then,” I reply. “Virgins like one another. But we have a lifetime to teach each other how lovers make love, beginning from now, habibati
.”

T
HE FOLLOWING MONDAY afternoon, I collected the imam from the college as usual, knowing a new letter from Fiore would be inside his bag. The police Jeep approached and parked just in front of us. I stopped abruptly. “What’s the matter?” asked the imam. I let go of his hand and pulled the black bag tighter under my arm. “Naser, tell me, why are we stopping?”

Two religious policemen got out of the car and headed towards us. One of them was Basil. He shouted, “
Ya
imam,
ya Allah’s
lover.
Assalamu alaikum
.” Both hugged the imam and then Basil turned to me. But this time he didn’t smile as he usually did.

“
Masha Allah
, welcome to
Allah’s
eyes and ears on this temporary earth,” the imam wailed, beaming. He rarely smiled, and I never heard him laugh. “Because,” he said in one of his sermons, “too much laughter weakens the heart, a heart that must be always strong to love
Allah
with all its might.”

“How are you,
ya Allah’s
slaves?” the imam asked them. “I hear satisfaction in your voices.”

The other religious policeman was taller than Basil, with big hands and broad shoulders. He was young and handsome. He was also beardless, a sign that he was the undercover policeman I had heard about in the imam’s house. Basil addressed him as Hamid.

“
Alhamdulillah
,” replied Basil. “We need to talk to you.”

He took the imam’s hand and as he guided him to the Jeep, the imam ordered me to wait for him where I was.

“Don’t you need your bag?” Basil asked the imam.

I took a step backwards. I looked out of the corner of my eye to see if I could pick out a way to flee, ideally a lane that was too narrow for the Jeep. I noticed the alleyway around the corner from the bakery. It was only half asphalted. I hid the black bag behind my back, holding it tightly with both hands.

“In fact,” added Basil, “we can give you a lift after we talk in the office.”

The imam paused and ran his fingers through his beard, then tilting his head sideways, he nodded and said to Basil, “Can you take my bag from Naser?”

Basil extended his hand towards me. I stared at it then looked up at him but didn’t react. My hands were still behind my back holding on to the bag.

“Does he have the bag,
ya
imam?” Basil asked, without blinking. I pulled out my right hand from behind me and shook his hand firmly.

Basil smiled.

“
Yallah
,” the imam ordered Basil. “Let’s go.”

I had to give the bag to Basil. He stepped into the police Jeep and took Fiore’s letter with him.

T
HAT DAY
ALLAH
was on my side, and gave his blessings to mine and Fiore’s love story. No sooner had the Jeep driven off, and before I even had time to kick the wall in frustration, it stopped and reversed to where I was standing.

The imam climbed out saying that he had forgotten that he was expecting a visitor from the Ministry of Higher Education. He wanted me to guide him home.

I never kissed his forehead as warmly as I did that time, and I thought I even felt tears in my eyes.

Habibi
,

I call my father a mutawwa who sits in cafes. You would think anyone who dares to call himself a mutawwa would go to the mosque and pray day and night. But my father is no devout worshipper. When a real mutawwa is praying and his mouth is busy remembering Allah, my father’s lips are stuck to his shisha pipe
.

A few days ago, I knocked on the men’s door at home
.

“
What do you want?” he shouted at me. “I am busy
.”

“
Doing what exactly?” I replied. He came out thundering. That’s the way to get him out of that room and away from his shisha
.

“
How dare you speak to me like that? What kind of a woman are you?” Then he called my mother, “You see, all of this is your fault. She is becoming disobedient
.”

But soon, he calmed down. “What do you want?” he asked me as he sat on my bed
.

“
I would like to at least have my eyes free in the street. It is not haram for a woman to reveal her eyes. Look, I can read it for you from this book
.”

“
No, you’ve asked me this before. I told you I went to the blind imam but he said if I let you do that I would
—”

“
Go to hell?” I said mockingly
.

“
Don’t be rude and show respect for me and the imam, ya dog
.”

“
I am sorry, Father,” I said. “I swear to Allah, it is allowed for me to show my eyes, even my face. Look, I am not even a Saudi
.”

My mother pinched me for saying this. My father sat on my bed and lowered his head. He stood up and left the room. My mother followed him. After a while, he came back and sat next to me
.

It had been a deliberate strategy to mention the thing about not being a Saudi. That’s when he becomes nicer. He held my hand and said, “I am a second-generation Eritrean and they still won’t consider me a Saudi. Look, I don’t need a citizenship document to make me feel Saudi. I am one. And don’t listen to the girls at your college, when they call you a foreigner. You are a Saudi
.”

I asked him the same question again, “Can I show my eyes, please Father?
”

He quickly answered saying, “No, you might think you are not a Saudi, but hell doesn’t differentiate
.”

He went back to his room and his shisha
.