2008 - The Consequences of Love. (28 page)

I wanted to tell her not to hold me. I couldn’t talk, fearing they might hear my voice. I released my hand from her grip. This time she didn’t take my hand again.

Everything under my veil felt so dark. I felt hot and suffocated, as if I was trapped in a dark, airless lift. I wanted to scream for help, tear off the veil over my face and run for fresh air.

Suddenly I heard a loud crack. Instinctively I turned my head towards the Jeep. It had run over a bottle and broken it into a thousand pieces. I saw Basil in the passenger seat. I almost slipped on some wet litter. “Naser, for
Allah’s
sake, pay attention,” Fiore hissed.

I steadied myself. The Jeep suddenly increased its speed before slowing down again, and then turned off its engine. It parked a few metres ahead. Why are they stopping? Are they waiting for us? Basil got out and stood next to the Jeep, a stick under his armpit.

“Let’s go back,” I urged Fiore.

“No. If we go back and if they are suspecting something then that will just confirm it to them. Let’s just go ahead.”

I mumbled a prayer, “Please
ya Allah
help us.”

We walked slowly. We were like deer walking towards a trap set by seasoned hunters. And we couldn’t run back because there might be hungry lions behind us. There was no way out.

I
REGRETTED NOT having given Basil what he wanted from me in the park that first time. Had I done that, he might have gone back to his street life because he wouldn’t have wanted to hang around with the imam after that. And if Basil was gone, I wouldn’t have had a religious policeman breathing down my neck. “But maybe now I have a second chance to get rid of him?” I thought, remembering my promise to see him later that night in the park.

Hamid joined Basil next to the Jeep, and both stood in our path. Would they notice Fiore’s Pink Shoes? Would they see them as out of keeping with the black and white movie, and pull
habibati
away from my side for ever?

We got to where they were standing and Hamid and Basil moved aside to let us through. I held my breath. I was almost side by side with Basil. As he turned, he dropped his stick. It fell in front of me. I wished I could have stamped on it with my foot to break it into pieces. But I stopped short to avoid running into him as he knelt to pick it up. Fiore had already walked ahead. I was trapped.

Hamid was on my left and Basil took for ever to collect his stick and move out of the way. Was he checking under the hem of my
abaya
to confirm his suspicion that I was a man? I couldn’t remember if my
abaya
was long enough to hide the tracksuit I was wearing underneath.

I looked down.

Basil straightened up and took a lifetime to turn and move out of the way.

I felt my veil sticking to my face, sucked in by the sweat, and by my gasping for air.

I caught up with Fiore.

We safely turned into Mecca Street.

I couldn’t take it any longer. He was always out on the street. How many close encounters did I have to have with Basil before my luck ran out? I had to act before I was left face to face with this man.

It had to be either me or him in Al-Nuzla Street. And I would do whatever it took to make sure of that.

The best solution was to leave Jeddah. Fiore and I had already talked about leaving when we took the walk along the Corniche and sat on the bench looking out to the sea.

Even without the threat of Basil, what did our future look like if we stayed? Everything around us was run by men. The shops were owned by men, the cars were driven by men, all of the offices, government departments and banks around us were staffed by men, and all ministers were men. Where did Fiore think she might fit? I asked her. There wasn’t a role for me in such a place either. The best of everything was kept for Saudis. No foreigners were allowed to attend the universities. The best jobs were for Saudis. Even dignity was reserved for Saudis.

Fiore had said in the past that she wanted to leave for Egypt or Lebanon. And now as we walked parallel to the flyover, down to Mecca Street, I told her that this couldn’t go on any more and that we had to be serious about leaving rather than just dreaming about it. I told her everything about Basil, about the park and about what I had had to do to recruit the blind imam as our love-letter courier, to prove how serious this was.

“He wants to meet me in the park tonight because he wants sex, Fiore,” I said.

“What?
Ya Allah…
”

“I know your life in this country is hard because you are a woman. But I can tell you if you are a certain kind of a boy, it is also…”

“I am not…”

“I don’t want to talk about what happened to me. I am telling you this thing about Basil because I want you to help me think about how to get rid of him. I can no longer do it myself. And I want us to escape.”

“
Habibi
, I will never be judgmental.
Ya Allah
, Naser…I am sorry…I am sorry about whatever happened to you.”

“We are both hurt in different ways. Let’s help each other by getting out of this place. When we are somewhere safe, we will have a lifetime to heal. Fiore, we can’t go on living like this. Look how scared we are every time we see the religious police. We need to make a decision fast. Because if we don’t, Basil will make the decision for us.”

She stayed quiet for a while.

I wondered why she didn’t say anything. Maybe she didn’t love me enough to leave for real and put our dreams into practice. Maybe she thought I was just a restless young boy, maybe she wasn’t ready to make such a big move. But I wasn’t going to give up on her. I loved her too much.

As I walked by her side down Mecca Street—lined with palm trees and bright lamps—I told her, “Fiore, look at us, we are barely twenty and we have effectively retired from life already. Outside Saudi they say life starts at our age. There, we can love freely, we can focus on life instead of finding ways to dodge arrest when we want to be together.”

Finally, she talked. “Naser, I told you many times that I wanted to leave, but it is just impossible. I don’t have any money. I don’t have a passport. How would I get out?”

I held her hand and said, “I know a way.”

As we continued walking, I laid out my plan. I told Fiore that we could get to Europe; that Hilal had told me about Haroon, the servant of my
kafeel
, who had been smuggled to Germany by a businessman, and that I knew where to find more information.

But it wasn’t leaving Jeddah that was bothering Fiore. She wanted to go to Cairo instead of Europe. But even to get to Cairo, I told her, we would have to be smuggled since she didn’t have a passport and she needed her father’s permission to get one.

Then she said in a low voice, “I am scared, Naser. How can I leave my mother?”

I pressed her gloved hand and whispered, “Don’t be scared, my darling. Goodbyes are always sad, but I will be with you. We will make it easier for each other.”

I told Fiore how I used to ask myself, how can a mother send away her children whom I know she loves so much? But slowly I realised that the ultimate responsibility of a parent is to seek out life for their children and to do what’s best for them. I understood that it was my mother’s love for her children that made her give the camel men everything she had to smuggle me and my brother out of Eritrea, while she stayed behind to live under the bombardment. She wanted us to find life elsewhere, because she feared if we stayed, our lives might be cut short. How could I not admire my mother for this ultimate sacrifice? I knew that Fiore’s mother would also understand because she would realise that her daughter was leaving her to search for a better life.

We got back to her building with the rain dripping from our
abayas
and our face veils, like infusers, filtering the rain water into our mouths.

In her room I gave her a quick hug. I reached for her hand, pulled her closer to me. I knew how she felt. But we had to put aside our feelings for now. We had to deal with Basil first. We couldn’t have him around, popping up all the time as we tried to execute our plan. What was I going to do if he ever came to my room again? How was I going to explain to him the banned books, the veil, the woman’s shoes and socks and the gloves? But if I threw away the
abaya
, how on earth was I going to get to Fiore’s house?

I
WENT SEARCHING for the Jeep in Al-Nuzla Street.

It didn’t take me long to find it parked a few blocks away from the big mosque.

I looked down both sides of the road. In the distance I saw a new boy guiding the blind imam to his house; the late afternoon prayer had already finished. I wondered if he was genuinely a
mutamva
, or a desperate lover like me, who had fallen in love with a girl from the college. It is possible, I thought. Al-Nuzla Street must be full of thwarted lovers.

I took a deep breath and walked a few yards towards my tree in front of my old house. I had abandoned it and had stopped watering it for a while because my heart was too preoccupied with Fiore. The branches that once crowned it were now dry and without life. I touched the trunk, and remembered how I used to bring my brother here to sit with me in the tree’s shade. This had been a safe place to tell him about our mother, because my uncle forbade me to mention even her name in his house.

It had been five years since he had been taken by my uncle to Riyadh. I wondered whether I would still recognise him if I bumped into him. I wondered whether he’d become a
mutawwa
like my uncle wanted, and whether he still counted me as a brother even though in my uncle’s eyes I was an apostate.

I straightened up, put my hands in my pockets and looked over to the Jeep. Basil was standing next to it. I saw Hamid leave the Jeep and go into the Yemeni shop. I crossed the road and walked towards Basil.

“Make it quick,” he said, as I approached him. “I don’t want Hamid to wonder why I am talking to an apostate like you.”

Me an apostate? I wanted to tell him how disgusted I was by his hypocrisy, but I couldn’t show a sign of it. “If you want me to come to the park with you tonight,” I said, “you will have to make more of an effort.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want you to shave your beard,” I said.

“What?”

“Do you remember your life before you converted to the right path? The pretty boys? You never had a beard then.”

“I won’t shave and if you don’t come, I will take you in.”

“Basil,” I said brashly, hoping that I was right, “you can’t hold anything against me. Where is your proof? I am not afraid. I have nothing to lose.”

“You know I can’t shave my beard. What will I tell the chief of the religious police?”

“It’s your choice.”

“OK. OK,” he said. “I will shave. Come to the park at eleven o’clock. No one goes there at that time. We will jump over the fence.”

I arrived at the park and waited under a light post just to the right of the gate. I could see two cars driving side by side, racing each other into the far distance. It was eleven o’clock exactly. I heard the sound of a motorbike. I turned around and could see nothing but a stark yellow light moving closer. The noise of the engine shattered the silence and the motorbike screeched to a stop in front of me. I jumped away. The first thing I saw were the feet in open sandals. Moving up, I could see no
thobe
, only a yellow tracksuit and white T·shirt. The face had no beard. I looked at him, stunned. “Good, you came,” Basil said.

Now the beard was gone I could see signs of his earlier life that I hadn’t noticed before: a big knife-scar across his right cheek, a long cut over his chin. But I recognised the expression of hungry lust.

He got off the motorbike and parked next to the gate of the park. He turned around and stood in front of me. For a moment I forgot that this tall boy, who now trembled in excitement as he took my hand, was the same Basil, the religious policeman who terrorised me in his Jeep. As he turned around to lead me to the park, I could hear the sound of another bike approaching.

When I returned home from the park a couple of hours later, I took a shower before I went to bed. I stayed awake most of the night thinking about the escape plan.

The following day, a warm Thursday morning, I set out for the only Eritrean café in Jeddah. It was the place where one could get the latest news about the war, and it was the place where smugglers came to do business.

The café was full of Eritrean men sitting around the blue tables. I walked to a waiter and spoke to him in Tigrinya. He pointed to a man sitting at the back of the café. The man was wearing a two-piece suit, with an Eritrean
gabi
draped over his right shoulder. His
gabi
was as white as his hair and moustache. He saw the waiter direct me to him and he stretched out his hand as I got to his table. There was another man sitting with him.

“
Assalamu alaikum
,” I said.

“
Wa ‘alaikumu salam
” both replied.

“Sit down please, son,” said the man wearing the
gabi
. “What’s your name?”

“Naser,” I replied.

“My name is Hajj Yusef. This is Mossa,” he said, introducing me to the man next to him, who was balding and had a heavy black moustache.

I pulled up a chair and as I sat he asked me, “How are you?”

“
Alhamdulillah
.”

“The time has come to leave, ah?”

I nodded.

“Don’t worry, son,
Allah
said that after hardship conies ease. Where do you want to go?”

I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Anywhere. I want to leave this country. I can’t go back to Eritrea, so any safe country that’s far enough away from here.”

“We’ll find a way out. Everything will be OK,” he said. I noticed his wrinkles, the scarf draped on his shoulder, and a newspaper in Tigrinya by his side. He turned to Mossa and said, “Please remember him in your prayers. It hurts me to see someone moving from one country to another prolonging their exile by going even further away. But it is what
Allah
wished for our son, Naser.”