2008 - The Consequences of Love. (21 page)

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.

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.”

“How would you know?” he snapped.

“I grew up surrounded by women.”

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” the woman said to us. “I’m Nahid. My husband and I are just moving in.” She pointed to the building behind her.

I recognised the accent. She was Egyptian.

“A woman is speaking to us? Oh
ya Allah!
” Hani cried, as he turned to her and fell down to his knees. “Oh please don’t ever wear the
abaya
”.

Fahd shook his head and barked at Hani, “Look at you; I have never ever seen you pray. Not even once. Don’t you know that only to
Allah
we bow and submit ourselves? Get up.”

She laughed and said, smiling, “Maybe I’ll see you soon, guys.” Fahd and Hani looked at each other and Hani said, “Maybe you will see us but we won’t see you. Next time, you will be covered.” They shook their heads.

She walked away. Our eyes rolled with her hips, as she walked back to the entrance of her new home. The door slammed shut, and we were denied another moment’s sight of her hair, her jeans, her swaying hips, her long neck. We were back in the blind world of men.

I got into the front seat of Hani’s car, with Fahd in the back. “Hold this,” Hani said, giving me the Pepsi can, and he put on a tape of an Egyptian singer. “Let’s be silent. I want to dedicate this song to the Egyptian woman,” he said. “I can still see her walk with her high heels, throwing her hips to the mercy of the wind.”

Fahd laughed and said, “Just drive. You will die from frustration. Miracles stopped happening here.”

He was just about to pull out, when I glanced in the side mirror and noticed a pair of shoes. My hand shook and I dropped the Pepsi can.

I opened the door and looked again at the shoes. The Pink Shoes. I almost lost my balance as I left the seat.

“Naser, what’s wrong?” asked Hani.

“I am fine,” I stuttered. “Wait for me at the Pleasure Palace, I’ll catch up with you there.”

“Oh come on. Where are you going now?” Hani asked me.

“I’ll see you in a minute,” I said firmly.

They drove off. My eyes were still on the shoes. Was this really Fiore? The woman who had deserted me? Or was this some sort of trick? I looked up and her gloved hand was beckoning me. I hurried towards her. She turned back and went down a side street. We took a long walk down Helm Street. We passed the grocery shop, a restaurant, the Afghan bakery and the Pakistani electricity shop. She crossed the street to avoid a small café where men were congregating outside. She turned right into a narrow street, and as I followed her I let out a cry of recognition. We were back in Ba’da Al-Nuzla. She had taken a different route to the one I made in the days when I used to pick up her notes by the rubbish bin. But surely this had to be Fiore?

There were a few boys playing football. This was the place where the street turned narrower; we were reaching the dead end. She ducked into an old doorway, set back from the street. I caught up with her.

There was no one around. I had to speak.

“
Habibati?
It is you, right? How are you? Where have you been? Why didn’t you explain? Just one note would have been enough for me.”

She stood motionless.

“Fiore, I missed you so much,” I whispered. “All I want is a small touch, all you need to do is walk out of here and bump into me by mistake. We are human, we all make mistakes. I want to smell you and touch you. I want to hear your voice. I want to know that you’re real.”