2008 - The Consequences of Love. (20 page)

Yesterday, after my argument with my father, my mother tried to make me feel better by saying that women with eyes as beautiful as mine do better to be veiled. I went into my room and locked the door
.

I thought about you
.

I took a blank piece of paper and a box of coloured pencils out of my drawer and put them on the bed. I took your drawing from inside my bra and put it on the bed too
.

Then I stripped off my clothes and stood naked in front of the long wall mirror. I examined my body, from toe to head. To draw a very honest self-portrait, I decided to take an exact reading of my body, with all its birthmarks, spots, unhealed wounds, finger scratches, beauty spots, curves, and the length and width of every bit of me. I even wanted to study my behind very carefully. But as I turned around, my hair blocked my sight, so I pulled it up and tied it together
.

But when it was finished, I decided not to send it to you, because I remembered my vow to bring myself to you. I will keep the drawing and will only send it if I fail to deliver on my promise
.

Tell me that things go better with you
.

Your Fiore

The next morning, I went to the imam’s house carrying a letter that told Fiore of my urge to see her and be close to her, my hope that one day I would see her take a shower, so I could watch the water dripping over her body like the Niagara Falls. I asked her if we could find a way to meet or at least somehow find a way to talk. I was ready to do anything to hear her voice.

At the imam’s house I found Basil in the living room browsing the bookshelf. He was holding a long thin stick. I wanted to confront him and ask him what he was up to. But there was a lump in my throat and I didn’t dare say anything.

I sat on the floor mat, watching him in silence.

He selected a book and started reading; it was as if I wasn’t there.

I wanted to leave, run before it was too late, but I tried to concentrate on him and pick up any clues. But he didn’t say anything else. He just closed the book and shouted to the imam in the other room that he was leaving and would see him later in the evening.

Basil was killing me slowly. When he smiled, it was as if every tooth was a bullet he was firing at me. Every time we met, he created new holes in my body. I was being drained of everything that made me live, and Basil was watching me vanish with that smile on his face.

When I was about to leave his house that afternoon, the imam asked me to stay again because he wanted me to take him to see his friend, a sheikh who lived on the way to old Jeddah, after he’d taken a nap. I had already taken the letter from Fiore out of his bag. I was still thinking about my encounter with Basil early that morning and I wanted to be in my room by myself with Fiore’s letters. I had no choice but to obey.

When the imam lay on the that and his soft snoring assured me he was fast asleep, I started reading her letter.

Habibi
,

I feel so sad. Sadness, which has been knocking on my door for a long time, has finally burst inside and inhabited me last night. Normally, I would stay up most of the night re-reading your letters, but tonight I will be in my bed with my eyes closed, giving myself up to the illness of sorrow and loneliness. I wish you were here next to me. Anyway, I am sorry this is a short letter, but my hands don’t have the energy to write much more, my darling
.

Salam from the heart
.

I brought her letter close to my lips and kissed it, not knowing what else to do with all the sadness of Fiore in my hands. I had the urge to avenge
habibati
, to burn everything and everyone who stood between me and her. But I could do nothing. I felt useless and angry with myself.
Habibati
was hurting yet there was nothing I could do. What was the use of words written over half a page offering heartfelt support if all she needed was someone to be there next to her, to listen to her and to give her a hug.

Tuesday morning, my mind was preoccupied with Fiore’s sadness. I went to the imam’s house with a letter to try to console her. I slipped my letter inside the black leather bag and we set off to the college as normal.

As I helped the imam through the gate, I could see Fiore’s gloved hand stretching to receive his cane. I wanted to touch her again, but she withdrew her hand quickly. I put the black bag under the imam’s arm. But he banged himself accidentally against the door and the bag fell to the floor. “Please, Naser, get the bag,” he ordered. I knelt, expecting her to take the opportunity and stoop too. She didn’t. She stayed hidden.

I felt like crossing the gate to take her hand and run away with her. A voice inside my head kept encouraging me: “The door is opened. It is not an electric gate. It is not wired or booby-trapped. It is not manned with armed soldiers ready with their bullets to empty them in your chest. What is it you are afraid of? It is just a gate and behind it is your sad Fiore. Hold her hand and run with her.”

But I looked at the imam. Even though his eyes stared at an undefined point in the distance, and I knew they were not of use to him, I still feared that he would know if I broke the rules. It could mean I would hold Fiore once and then never again. So all I did was put the bag on the other side of the door and scuttle home.

Two weeks had passed since her last note, and Fiore still hadn’t sent me a letter. My last proper letter had been the one where I admitted my deep-seated desires, but I had passed her a few short love notes via the imam’s bag, asking her to write back soon. Even though I couldn’t be sure, I could only hope it was she who stood behind the black gate receiving the imam. When I opened the black bag I found nothing from her, but still my notes were gone.

I was in the dark as to what was going on. The gate at her college seemed to grow higher and wider every time I delivered the imam, and the men standing around in the street seemed to have got bigger and more aggressive. The Pink Shoes had disappeared from Al-Nuzla.

I was waking up in the mornings with a heavy heart. I began to feel angry with her. She doesn’t care, I started to think. If she did she would have written to me at least once just to say she was OK. If she loved me she would know I would be worried about her.

Tuesday, 17
th
October, a month after Fiore had last written to me with her sad note, turned out to be my last day at the mosque.

There was a cool breeze blowing that evening; the leaves and litter shifted softly from one side ot the pavement to the other.

When I arrived, I found the imam sitting cross-legged talking to the group. There were many new faces. The Afghan veteran had moved to Riyadh, and Abdu had left the mosque and gone back to his friends in the street. He said he had had enough of the imam, and he missed playing football, listening to music and watching TV, all of which the imam and Basil had ruled were
haram
.

I greeted the group, kissed the imam on his forehead and sat to his right.

Moments after I sat down, a man came rushing in. I had seen him before with the imam. He was an old disciple of the sheikh and worked at the Emergency Unit at King Fahd Hospital. He greeted all of us, knelt behind the imam, and started whispering into his ear. The imam got up. He put his hand on the man’s shoulder and they both walked to the far corner of the mosque. The man was gesticulating as he talked to the imam and looking increasingly agitated.

Moments later, the blind imam was led back. The hospital worker excused himself and he disappeared at the same speed as he had arrived. The imam sat, crossed his legs and coughed. Everyone hushed. He told us that another life had just ended tragically. He swayed his head side to side, saying, “Because, yet again, one of our precious children has chosen the path to hell instead of heaven. This boy had a car accident. His car crashed into the bottom of the bridge and it was smashed to pieces. But the fire brigade, may
Allah
bless their work, managed to get him out. And when they heard the car’s tape playing a song, they shattered it to pieces. They tended to the boy whose soul was about to depart. One of the paramedics held the boy’s hand and asked him to intone the
shahada
. ‘Son, you are dying, say, there is no
Allah
but
Allah
and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger
of Allah
’ But no, the boy remained mute. The paramedic urged him again, ‘Say it. It is your passport to heaven.’ But his mouth refused to utter the blessed words, and he started singing the song that he was just listening to instead.”

He paused and lowered his head and continued, “You know why he couldn’t intone the
shahada?
Because it is
haram
to listen to music and it is forbidden to replace reading the Qur’an with listening to music. But
Allah
punished this boy for refusing to heed his call. And because of this, this boy’s path is hell.” He thundered the words three more times: “hell, hell, hell.”

Listening to the imam, I felt a low headache starting at the back of my head, just like the time I first left his mosque all those years ago, when I was fourteen. As the story went on, the pain got stronger, and the imam’s words were pounding between my eyes. They repeated themselves in my head, over and over again. I wished I could put my hands over my ears to shut out the words of fear and revenge, of hell and Satan.

I closed my eyes. “Why am I going through this?” I asked myself.

But then, and for the first time since she had stopped writing to me, I confronted myself with the truth that I didn’t want to face. Maybe, I thought, she had found another boy and was now starting to exchange notes with him. Or, if that wasn’t the reason, maybe she converted to the right path and was now repenting that she ever had anything to do with a bad Muslim like me. Or maybe she saw there was no way of continuing. Writing love letters via the love courier was as far as we could go. “And for how long are we meant to go on writing like this?” I asked myself. “It only makes us want to see each other, and there is no chance of that ever happening.”

I was back to the doubts and questions and the ifs and buts that had almost driven me crazy at the beginning of our love story. I didn’t want to go through all that again. “I should have known. What good could have come of this anyway?” I wondered, trying to force myself to accept that I might have lost her for ever. “That’s it, Naser. It is over.”

Slowly I stood up, in a sweat, and stepped out of the circle of boys, vowing never to step a foot in the mosque again.

What had happened to Fiore that had made her desert me? I didn’t understand. I had become a
mutawwa
for her, and we had both risked everything to come together. And now she had gone as quickly as she had arrived. She had disappeared back into her concealed world. Jasim’s friend Omar had been right, I was just a rich girl’s plaything and now she had found someone else to torment. I would try my best to forget her.

I
STAYED AT home for nearly two weeks after leaving the mosque. It was in the seclusion of my room that I tried to grieve for Fiore. But I had very little to remind me of her. I hadn’t seen her face, or even her eyes. I hadn’t even felt her skin, or stroked her hair. Her body remained a mystery to me hidden behind her veil.

All I had seen was that inch of skin; the scar on her dark ankle. But above all, it was the Pink Shoes that kept flashing in my mind. They were what I kept watching for during our entire adventure.

I remembered her deep pink shoes as a rejected lover remembers his loved one’s face. I remembered the small pattern of glittering pearls on the sides of her shoes, as if they were the earrings in her ears, the necklace around her neck, or the glittering belt around her dark hips. I remembered the pink colour as if it was the colour of her favourite lipstick, her bra and underwear. I remembered how the first time the black and white set of Al-Nuzla Street was interrupted by her shoes, she looked like a pink flamingo. For many of the days that followed all I wanted to do was shout to the men of Al-Nuzla that this woman with the Pink Shoes was my girl. With every step she tied my heart to her shoes that bit tighter. Without them my heart could not survive.

Maybe it was my fault that she deserted me. Maybe I should have gone further in my letters. I couldn’t remember whether I ever told her how fond I was of her Pink Shoes. And I certainly couldn’t recall ever suggesting that we both run away. Maybe she was waiting for me to take her by the arm and run with her from this black and white movie.

I wanted to ask her for another chance. I felt like standing outside her building to show her how much she meant to me. But Basil’s constant patrolling of Al-Nuzla Street with his band of religious policemen put an end to that dream.

I must be condemned to live a lonely life, my only company being the memories of those I loved. Everything that was beautiful lay in my past: my mother, my brother, and now Fiore. I even grieved for the friendship I had lost with Yahya and Hani.

A SCENE FROM EGYPT

I
FINALLY EMERGED from my room one night in early November. I went to the Corniche. I was still wearing the Islamic dress that I had been wearing to the mosque, the same short
thobe
with the deep side pockets in which I had hidden Fiore’s letters.

The Corniche was full of young men. It was as if the Red Sea was the Mecca for lost lovers and they had all made their pilgrimage this night.

Everyone was staring out to sea, which was quietly listening to all who sought relief from loneliness.

As I stepped down to my secret rock, I saw the Saudi lover playing his ‘
oud
. I admired him for managing to look his best even though everything he used to demonstrate his love was decaying: his ‘
oud
sounded as if the strings had rusted and his deep voice was cracking. His words were disjointed and he was struggling to connect the lyrics together. His voice couldn’t hide the breaking of his heart. His words brought tears to my eyes: