2008 - The Consequences of Love. (11 page)

Years later, when I rented my own flat, I decided to keep myself to my room whenever I wasn’t working and until I could return to my country, so that I didn’t have to hear his or other men’s poisonous remarks. I didn’t have a TV, so I couldn’t listen to what they said, but I owned a stereo with a big and powerful bass. When the blind imam read his Friday sermons, I closed my windows and played music as loud as I could to drown out the mosque’s amplifiers. And when I walked down the street, or did my job, I bowed my head as if I didn’t live there. If there was a place and time where I wanted to be deaf and blind, this was it.

That Friday afternoon, I blocked out the imam’s voice thundering through the powerful tannoys into my room and as I caressed the girl’s notes, I thought about what I would say to her if the opportunity came my way and I was given a few minutes with her.

The Pink Shoes were all I could see of her that made her stand out in Al-Nuzla. And every time I saw them, I noticed a new detail. They were pointy shoes, with the tips slightly curling upwards. There was a light pattern of small glittering silver-coloured pearls embroidered on the sides. When she walked, sometimes I could see the soles, which were black. In the beginning, they were shiny when her friend had just bought them in the shop, but the streets of Ba’da Al-Nuzla had made them rough and dirty very quickly. But my fear that the tips and the sides of her shoes would get black and dark, as they stepped time after time in the dirty dust of Al-Nuzla, never materialised. Her shoes continued to sparkle as if they were meant to last for ever. Her Pink Shoes continued to contrast with her black
abaya
, the reddish dust of Ba’da Al-Nuzla, and the white houses in the street. Without them, I would have lost her in a world of dark shadows.

S
ATURDAY MORNING I was supposed to go back to work, but I couldn’t abandon so soon what started as a fantasy but now held the promise of love. I had to be in Ba’da Al-Nuzla to meet the girl. So I rang my boss saying that I couldn’t start work yet because I wasn’t feeling well and needed more time to recover.

My boss flew into a rage, saying, “You have to come. Don’t pretend you are ill.”

I quickly lost my temper. Maybe it was because I felt that he was taking advantage of me. After all, I had always worked hard and long hours for him throughout the years and without any complaints. “Naser, you have no family to go to,” he would say, “I have two children. Please work longer and
Allah
will reward you,
insha Allah
.” I would do the work until late just to help him. The previous two years I had even cut my holiday short because I got so bored by myself at home. “Do you remember?” I screamed. “I came back from my holiday early and you didn’t even pay me extra.”

He fell quiet.

“Muhammad, please just give me one week more. Please?”

He didn’t say anything.

I was ready to tell him I would resign and that he could look for another loyal worker like me when he said, “OK, but we will talk about pay when you come back.”

“Oh, thank you, Muhammad. May
Allah
bless your work.”

That afternoon, the girl cheered me up with a funny note.

I saw her coming and I followed her Pink Shoes with my eyes. I enjoyed watching her approach, the way she navigated the jagged ground beneath her, like a performer walking a tightrope.

She dropped the note right next to the rubbish as if it were a piece of litter, just as she always did. I ran to pick up the treasure.

She told me a story that she had heard at college. A few weeks before the summer break, the head teacher visited every class in the college with the same news: the previous day, a boy wearing sunglasses who had been standing across the road from the college had been arrested by the religious police. The boy was accused of wearing sunglasses bought from America. The religious police had informed the head teacher that the boy had confessed that the glasses had special lenses that enabled him to see under the
abayas
and uniforms of the students. The religious police convinced the head teacher that such a thing was possible because, “The evil Americans are capable of doing anything.”

Habibi, it made me realise how great it would be if these magic glasses really did exist. You could wear them and I could walk back and forth in front of you
.

I laughed all the way home.

O
N SUNDAY MORNING, I went to Haraj Market to buy new trousers. I wanted to show the girl with the Pink Shoes that I was making a special effort too. Haraj was the biggest market in Jeddah. It was a place where you could find almost anything you wanted.

It was at the end of the market, past Haraj Textiles selling printed cotton and linen fabric, that I found a nice pair of black trousers, made of light Italian wool with deep side pockets and straight legs for only twenty riyals.

As I walked back to the bus stop, I bumped into Ismael, a motorbike mechanic. He owned a shop close to Al-Nuzla that sold spare parts for motorbikes.

We chatted for a few minutes. He told me that he was working on Yahya’s motorbike.

“I didn’t know it was broken,” I said to him.

“No, it is not. He wanted a new seat fitted. He said he wanted to make it as comfortable as possible for his boy.”

We started laughing.

“Take your time,” I told him, “he won’t be back until mid-September.”

He shook his head, saying, “I know. But he wanted a special hand-made leather one. It is hard work. I don’t want to upset that rhino, do I?”

As soon as I arrived home from the Haraj, I realised I was running late. I changed into my new trousers and walked down to Al-Nuzla Street. The trousers itched my legs, but they made me feel like a man going on a date with his girl. I felt energised.

When I reached the big mosque and looked across the street, I saw a flash of pink. When the sunlight landed on her shoes, I saw the colour flood back into Al-Nuzla, turning everything a shade of rose.

I slowed down and walked at her pace. I saw she had seen me as well. I kept watching her shoes. By now I pretty much guessed what type of legs she had from the way she walked but I didn’t dare to dwell on that too much.

I closed my eyes and imagined we were strolling alongside the sea, a lovers’ walk on the pavement of the Corniche, hand in hand.

When we reached the corner where I usually turned left to get to Ba’da Al-Nuzla, I stopped, but the girl continued marching straight ahead, drawing me along with her.

She was striding now, slowly, as if prolonging the moment. We walked in parallel to each other—she on one pavement and me on the opposite side—all the way to the bottom of Al-Nuzla Street and back.

That day she didn’t drop a note, but the experience of walking on the same street as her, side by side and at the same slow pace, was so lovingly intense that it gave me even more to think back about once I came home.

The following afternoon, it was the last day of July and a week since she dropped her first note in Ba’da Al-Nuzla. She had a new note for me:

Yesterday, when we walked alongside one another, you on one side of the road, and I on the other, I wished for a sudden earthquake so that the wide street that separated us would fall into the open ground and then when the religious police would find us arm in arm, we could say, “This is what Allah wanted when he shook his kingdom.” But then, I swore that slowly I will take myself into my habibi’s arms without such a miracle. This I vow to you
.

Her words were too beautiful to be true. They could only be written by a woman, I persuaded myself. For me, it was an act of belief to think that a woman existed under that
abaya
. For all I knew, she could have been a man wearing a veil pretending to be a woman. I couldn’t be sure. Words were the only thing that I had from her to convince me she actually was a girl.

At times, this type of love drove me mad. When I crouched on my bed with her notes, and when I began to imagine the voice behind the notes, the colour of the feet in the Pink Shoes, the shape of her breasts, her hips, the smell of her skin and everything that made her feel and look like a woman, the desire to touch her would get hold of me. The urge to see a strand of her hair would consume my entire day and night. But all I could do to ease the frustrations ripping my inside was to read her notes over and over again. “Because these words could only be written by a woman.”

Jasim arrived back from his trip to Paris on the first day of the new month.

I went to see him that evening. He looked slimmer, but stronger. He almost lifted me off the ground when he hugged me.

As soon as we went to his room and sat down on his bed, he said, “I was so concerned about you. You must have been so bored.”

There was no chance I would have told him that in fact I was having the most exciting time of my life, it was too dangerous. So I said firmly, “I have been reading a lot.”

“Good. Good,” he said, putting a foot on top of his luggage.

“Why haven’t you emptied your bag yet?” I asked him.

“You are eager for your present,” he said.

“No. It is just that you normally unpack so quickly.”

“Well, my dear, I am travelling again in five days’ time,” he said, sighing.

“Why?”

He stood up and picked a pack of cigarettes from the top of the TV and came back to sit on the bed. He lit one and threw the pack at me. The writing on the pack was in a foreign language. I assumed it was French.

“Do you want to know where I am going?” he asked me.

He leaned forward and took a flight ticket from his briefcase. He put it on my lap. “Here, take a look.”

“You are going to Rome?” I asked him.

“Yes, and then we are going to London, and to Madrid, and to Washington, DC.”

“Who is ‘we’?” I asked him.

“Are you jealous now?” He laughed and added, “Don’t worry, I am going with my
kafeel
and his entourage. This time we are going for a month. We are back on the first day of September. But knowing this
kafeel
I wouldn’t be surprised if we stayed longer. Remember two years ago when he fell in love with a lap dancer in Geneva? He made us stay with him for three months until he fell out of love with her.”

He put out his cigarette and holding my hand, he said, “I will miss you if it happens again. To be honest I am tired and I don’t want to go, but you know I can hardly refuse him. He likes my company and he helps me keep my business open. But I am lucky to have an assistant who I can trust to look well after my beloved café. And after all, the prince makes sure his entourage lives like royalty.”

Mr Quiet had told me before that when Jasim first came to Saudi Arabia he used to have a different
kafeel
, a Saudi man who owned two restaurants in north Jeddah. But then Jasim befriended Rashid. “Rashid is the personal assistant to one of the most influential people in Jeddah,” explained Mr Quiet, “and it was Rashid who introduced Jasim to his new
kafeel
.”

But, Mr Quiet said, no one knows the name of his
kafeel
or anything about him except that he is a powerful man. “I assume,” Mr Quiet added, “his
kafeel
would not want his name to be made public in a café like this.”

I tried to find out more about this
kafeel
from Jasim. “So when are you going to tell me who your
kafeel
is?” I asked.

He brought his face closer. “Some things can’t be told, my dear. How many times do I have to say that to you?”

As I stood up to leave, he gave me my present. It was Tayeb Salih’s
Season of Migration to the North
.

I had heard about this book from Hilal. Apparently it was a controversial book and prominent amongst the forbidden literature in the Kingdom because of its sexual content.

“
Ya Allah
, this is amazing. How can I thank you?”

Jasim held my hand and said, “Why don’t you stay the night? I have a lot to tell you.”

“I can’t. I have things to do.”

“Just stay tonight. I am feeling lonely.”

“I can’t,” I said.

He let go of my hand. “OK, OK, just go.”

Her next note took me totally by surprise, and brought me even closer to her.

It was late morning, 4
th
August. I was waiting around in Ba’da Al-Nuzla for the Pink Shoes to appear and I was flicking through the newspaper. As was always the case in
Okaz
, most of the stories were devoted to King Fahd Ibn Abdul Aziz and other members of the royal family. There were pictures of the King opening a new hospital and visiting landmarks in different parts of the country. Anything new that was opened was named after him. My Saudi friend, Hani, once told me how bad it really was. “I am serious,” Hani said, “this King is so self-obsessed. Did you not hear the news last night?”

“What?” I asked.

“The football league will be named after the King and the cup league will be called after his deputy, Abdul-Allah Ibn Abdul Aziz.” He shook his head. “I’m worried that one day the King will insist all of us are renamed after him as well.”

I strode back and forth on Ba’da Al-Nuzla, reading
Okaz
. When I had finished, I laid it on the ground and sat on it. Opposite, on the rooftop, I saw a boy staring at me so I stared back. Several minutes passed and he was still standing on the edge of the rooftop peering down on me. When I heard footsteps, I turned my head and saw the girl with the Pink Shoes coming round the corner. I looked up at the boy and then at the marching Pink Shoes before my eyes returned to the boy. “Please go,” I mumbled to the boy as I stood up. And I wanted to shout to the girl not to drop her note. But she had akeady scampered past and dropped a new note next to the rubbish bin. I looked up at the rooftop and the boy started stepping back. He unfolded a prayer rug and started praying.

I quickly picked up the note and fled home. At home, I read her words aloud and excitedly.

A few years ago, we had a TV, video player and antennae. But then my father had a crisis of conscience and asked the blind imam if it was halal or haram to have these things. The imam ruled that it was haram, and told him about the punishment for those who watch TV and listen to music. So my father came back home, shaking from his trip to the mosque and destroyed everything. He even came to my room and took down all my pictures, and tore up all my photos because they are haram. So I don’t have any photos of me to drop to you with my notes, but habibi, if I am good at one thing it is painting, and I confess this to you: I have made a small drawing of you that looks exactly like a real photo of your face. I tucked it inside my bra between my breasts. I promise you that it will always be attached to my chest like a permanent beauty spot, until it is replaced by the real you
.