2008 - The Consequences of Love. (24 page)

The previous day, when we were at the Corniche, Fiore had shown me how to put it on. But when I stood up in front of the mirror that morning, it was much harder to do without her helping hands. I pulled on the black robe, which wasn’t too hard because it resembled the gold-edged cloak that men wore over their
thobes
. It was the head
hijab
that was more difficult. I struggled to fix the layers of cloth with the safety pins just above my ears. I was going to need more practice. I wondered what would happen if it came loose in the street. I pulled it from the other side just to check that it all stayed in place. It seemed fine, for now.

I pulled up the socks, fastened the sensible flat-heeled shoes and put on my gloves. Then, finally, I attached the piece of veil covering the rest of my face. At first I gasped for air. Whenever I breathed in, the veil would stick to my nose, making the flow of air stop. I realised I would have to breathe softer and slower if I didn’t want to suffocate. That worked better.

I looked into the mirror. Nothing of Naser was visible any more; even my trouser bottoms had disappeared. Before we left the Corniche, Fiore had told me, “Naser, you grew up with women. You have seen how they talk. And I know you’ve not forgotten how they move when they walk, and how they dress.
Habibi
, you could easily be mistaken for a girl if you dressed as one.” But this, I thought as I stared into the mirror, is not what the women on Lovers’ Hill looked like.

I squinted through the peep-hole of my front door to check there was no one in the hallway. As agreed, I left my flat dressed in full burqa at two in the afternoon to go to Fiore’s house. The street was empty. For so long I had sat under my palm tree and watched the black and white film unfold before my eyes. But I never imagined that one day I would take the part of one of those mysterious dark shadows myself. “It is so strange,” I thought as I walked down Al-Nuzla Street, “that I am now in a woman’s world, when just an hour earlier I was in a man’s world.” I could switch between roles, and play both white and black.

I began walking faster when I saw the woman in Pink Shoes. I had to tell myself not to run. I had a desperate urge to pick her up and swing her around in my arms.

“It is me, Naser,” I said as I came close to her.

“I missed you, Naser,” she said calmly as she turned around and hooked her arm into mine.

“No kiss on your cheeks?” I joked. “Don’t I look like a woman to you?”

She chuckled as I tickled her. “Naser. Stop it. That’s enough. Naser!”

“OK.” I let go.

“Let’s get going,” she said.

She opened the front door of the building.

The air-conditioned hall was spacious and decorated with shining surfaces. Facing the entrance were three lifts. The walls and floors were laid with beautiful Moroccan tiles. She squeezed my hand. “Are you OK?” she whispered, as we stood waiting to go up.

“I have never felt better,” I whispered.

The lift arrived with two children and their mother. “
Assalamu alaikum
.” Fiore greeted the woman.

“
Wa ‘alaikumu salam
” she replied.

Fiore pressed the number three. I shook my head. “So it is from the third floor that you see everything happening down there?”

She laughed and stood in front of me. I put my gloved hands round her waist and pulled her towards me.

“This is the women’s entrance to our house,” she said. “And that,” she said, pointing to the one further down the corridor, “is for the men. My father arranged it like this the same day he threw out the television.”

She opened the door. The smell of incense hit my nostrils. There was a long hallway. “Follow me,” she said.

The corridor was almost empty apart from a Syrian vase on top of a black marble table and shoes lined up along one of the walls.

At the end of the hall there were three small steps that glided down to a curved mezzanine. “This is my room,” she said, opening the white door. “Stay inside,
habibi
,” she said. “I need to talk to my mother but will come back soon.”

The room smelt like the rooms of the women on Lovers’ Hill: the smell of wet towels hanging by the wardrobe, and the jasmine-scented bra and clothes on the chair. I wanted to take my veil off but I was worried that her parents might come in.

It was a large room. The desk was situated at the centre of the wall facing the door. To the left of the desk in the corner, there was another vase on top of another black table; next to it on the floor was a radio and cassette player. Her bed stood in the far left corner.

Starting to the right of the desk and going all the way around the adjoining wall making a large letter L, stood high shelves that almost touched the ceiling of the room. The shelves were full of books. I took a quick glance and all appeared to be on Islamic literature. I walked closer and browsed through one of the top shelves. I picked out a book by a radical sheikh from Riyadh. “Why does Fiore have this book?” I asked myself. It was called
A Muslim Woman’s Role in Today’s Society
. But when I leafed through it, I chuckled. The inside of the book was not what its title said it was. It contained erotic art illustrations with figurative explanations on how each drawing was done. So that’s why she says she is good at drawing, I thought. I put the book back, still smiling. Clever girl!

I kept browsing and found more books on other subjects, like art, African culture, and the history of the Middle East. I found books by Nawal El Saadawi. It was at the bottom row of the shelves that I stumbled upon a novel which I had heard about from Jasim but never managed to read.
The Children of Gebelaawi
by Naguib Mahfouz. According to Jasim, it was considered a blasphemy because people thought it depicted the relationship between God and His Prophets, and it had been banned.

I remembered that Fiore had explained in one of her letters that it was her Arabic literature teacher who had given her those books, after she had smuggled them into Saudi Arabia. “It is easy for her, because she travels with her friend, who is the wife of one of the princes, and the customs officials don’t search the royal family.”

Fiore came back wearing her
abaya
, but without her face veil. Her headscarf was still tightly wrapped around her head.

After she had closed the door behind her, she raised her eyes to me.
Ya Allah
, I thought. This is it. We are finally alone.

“
Habibi
, why are you still veiled? Let me help you take that off.” I could feel her trembling hands. “I am nervous,” she said in a low voice.

“So am I,” I whispered.

I had spent what seemed like a lifetime thinking of her. In my mind, I had thought of a thousand ways to touch her. In my room, during lonely nights, I had imagined her lying naked in my arms and making the world twirl around me. But now that the dream had become a reality, we were both overwhelmed by the moment.

But our fears, like blocks of ice over our bodies, soon melted by our desire.

I stretched my hands towards her waist, and then laid them on her hips. I squeezed them softly. I pulled her closer to me. She didn’t have time to take off her headscarf, because as soon as she threw my veil on the floor, her attention turned to my lips. I was gripped by her face. I looked at her in long, adoring silence, taking in her deep brown eyes, her beautiful lips and her shining skin.

We stood facing each other for a long while.

It seemed to take an eternity before our lips met, but when they did, we closed our eyes and resisted the urge to touch one another with our hands; that freedom we gave over to our tongues.

“
Habibi
, let me take off the rest of my veil,” she whispered, turning around.

I stepped back to treasure every second. She undid her headscarf. I put my hand on my chest as she unpinned her hair and watched it unravel to her shoulders at the same time as her black robe slipped to the floor. She didn’t move. Her posture looked like the women on Lovers’ Hill: straight, tall, curvy and elegant. It wasn’t a dream, going back to my village of the past to imagine a woman, to bring back the beautiful Semira. This was real. I was in a woman’s room in Jeddah and she was standing in front of me looking gorgeous and confident.

I remembered the pink dress she wore last time, and how it loosely fitted the curves of her body. Today, she was wearing a knee-length black cotton skirt which embraced her buttocks tightly and a black shirt of the same material.

“It is so hot outside,” she said. Still with her back to me, she added, “Naser, can you close your eyes?”

I knew why she wanted me blind for the next few seconds. So I said, “OK. I promise.”

But this was a promise worth breaking.

She grabbed the towel and knelt to wipe the perspiration from her face and the back of her neck. She put the towel on the side, bent slightly and slipped her hands under her skirt. The pink nails rolled a shining red garment down her dark thighs and long legs; and as she straightened her back, her underwear plunged to her ankles; the red underwear with flower drawings ringed her Pink Shoes. The flowers of Eden were at her feet.

The moment she looked around, I quickly shut my eyes.

I heard her giggle. I smelt her breath. I felt her soft hand on my face. A shiver of excitement rolled down my belly when the tip of her wet lips tickled the loop of my ear with her words: “So you kept your word? You can open your eyes.”

I did immediately, wrapping my arms around her waist. I kissed her. It was only when my hand found the zip of her skirt that I stopped. I knelt down in front of her, pulling her skirt with me, the last barrier between us.

I closed my eyes. I wanted to inhale her before I saw her. I moved with my head closer between her thighs. I breathed in deeply, and seconds later, I was still holding my breath making sure that this unique scent trickled to the depth of my lungs. I had drunk and smelt what Jasim called the most expensive and best perfumes the French had ever created. But this was different. This was so exotic, so mysterious.

“
Habibi
.”

She stroked my head. Her fingers crawled to the back of my neck; caressing the back of my ears, and then the lines of my jaw.

“
Habibi?
” She stretched her hand, I gave her mine and intertwined my fingers into hers.

Holding my hand, she led me to her bed.

Suddenly everything seemed so daunting. It wasn’t like when we were on the Westerners’ only beach. This was different. It was as if her bed was a foreign land, unfamiliar and frightening. Perhaps it was the weight of excitement. It could have been the nervousness of beginners, of not knowing when to touch and how. But I had never trembled like that day when I lay next to her in her bed for the first time; and nor had I ever seen someone look so tense as she did.

My body finally thawed and my hands and fingers grasped her breasts, only for me to let go when I heard a soft scream. Was she enjoying this? Did I hurt her? Should I stop?

I tried with my mouth instead, just softly I thought as I circled her erect left nipple with my lips. Again, I heard her gentle cry. This time, I stopped.

I stretched full length; lying on my side facing Fiore.

The feeling of her skin on mine paralysed me even more. I didn’t expect that we would be so stiff next to each other that we couldn’t even say a word.

My mind suddenly dwelled on the next stage, what would happen after the kisses, and after the touches. I remembered Omar telling Jasim and me at the café, “When lovers, a boy and a girl, manage to somehow do the impossible and meet somewhere private and want to have sex, they have a term for it: “Making love like men make love to each other.” A girl must maintain her virginity. Can you imagine what would happen if she didn’t?”

I looked at her. Holding my hand, Fiore whispered, “I am sorry. This is harder than I thought it would be.”

She then fell quiet. Small beads of sweat shimmered across her face, her neck and her chest in the low candlelit room. We looked at each other without saying a word.

She pulled my leg and pushed it between hers. It felt warm and wet on my thigh. We stayed like this—my leg stuck between hers and my hands glued to her body for the rest of our time that afternoon.

It would take another three days before we talked about our first afternoon in her room. We kissed but we avoided going further. When we talked, it would be about safe things, like the book she was reading, or about my friends from Al-Nuzla, whom I hoped to introduce to her one day.

Then, on the third day, a Friday afternoon, we realised that we couldn’t let the fear of physical love get between us. We had no time to lose.

That afternoon, as we entered her flat, she told me to keep my veil on and to close my eyes. “I have a surprise for you,” she whispered.

The room was filled with the smell of food. She led me to the bed. I sat on the edge, waiting. I could hear her footsteps leaving and entering the room, backwards and forwards. “Don’t look yet,” she would say whenever she came back into the room.

After a while, I felt her warm breath through the light cloth over my face as she said in a low voice, “Now you can take
off
your veil.”

I opened my eyes and saw her standing in front of me, towering above the bed. I looked down at the black high heels she was wearing. Her curly hair was pulled back. She was wearing tight jeans and a black shirt with its sleeves rolled up. The top buttons were undone. A long silver necklace dangled way down between her breasts.

“Enough looking at me,” she said, laughing softly. “Look at this.”

Her table, which was usually piled with books and homework material, was now cleared and laid with two plates, a bottle of fruit juice, glasses, cutlery and candles.

I threw off my
abaya
. She switched off the light. Even though it was daytime, Fiore had drawn the thick curtains across the windows for safety’s sake. Her room was as dark as night. I watched her as she moved around the room to light the candles. Soon, haloes of yellow light were spilling around her from all sides, as she floated by me.