2008 - The Consequences of Love. (3 page)

But back then I didn’t know that my true love was waiting for me in the folds of Jeddah’s wedding dress.

I
T WAS ALMOST 8.30 when I got home from Jasim’s café. I had arranged to meet my friend Yahya later. He was about to leave for a camping holiday in the mountains of Abha and we decided to spend his last night in Jeddah at our regular place, the Pleasure Palace.

I had some time before our meeting so I decided to do some reading. I sat at my little desk facing Jasim’s sketch of my mother. When Jasim, who was trained as an artist agreed to draw a portrait, he sat in front of me with a large blank paper and a tin of drawing pencils. As best I could, I described every feature of the beautiful face I had missed so much.

I told Jasim that she loved the colour red so he framed the drawing in flames, which made her look like a speeding star. I never tired of looking at this picture.

As I was about to take out my book from the drawer, I noticed my diary. I put the book aside and took it out.

I opened one of the perfume bottles I had brought back from Jasim’s café and sat on the floor. I put the diary next to me and took in a mouthful, holding it in my mouth for a while before I swallowed it. The sparkles on my tongue engulfed the back of my throat and my nose. I could smell the chemical in my nose, and my lips and tongue felt as if they were burning slightly. I grasped my nose and squeezed it tightly in an attempt to control the sensation. Slowly, I started feeling dizzy as I drank more of the alcohol.

Ever since I arrived in Saudi, I had been writing in my diary. As Mr Quiet once said, “I feel you never want to say anything because you are waiting for a special person. Someone who will understand the trapped mutterings inside your chest. Until you find that person, you should write it all down. Diaries are made for people like you.”

It’s true to say that I had no woman to share my life with, no woman to make plans with. In Jeddah there was only the unrelenting drudgery of a world full of men and the men who controlled them. My diary was a link to my hopes, the keeper of my secrets, a sacred place where my heart beat with a soft, hopeful murmur.

I opened it at a random page. The entry said, “Spring, Saturday, 21
st
April, 1984.” I took another sip of the perfume and my mind travelled back to that day, when I was fifteen.

That Saturday I woke as usual at six o’clock and was getting ready to go to school when my uncle came into our room. My uncle was a religious man and a conformist who hated my mother. But he was also the only person in the world who cared enough to help my brother and me—still, living with him was only slightly better than our days in a tent in the camp.

“Is Ibrahim taking a shower?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I replied, with some weariness.

“You’re not going to school today,” he said. I didn’t know how to respond to the news. On the one hand, I hated school and was about to jump with happiness at the thought of spending a day away from lessons. But at the same time, it was too good to be true. My uncle hit me whenever I suggested to him that I would rather miss school than sit through some classes which taught me to hate others who didn’t have the same religion or the same interpretation of Islam.

I was far more suspicious than joyous, and I asked him, “Why’s that? What’s the special occasion?”

“Because—” He was interrupted by my little brother barging into the room, washed and dressed and looking just like a good Saudi boy. He already looked a lot older than his eight years.

“Ibrahim, wait outside. I am talking to Naser now.”

“OK, Uncle,” Ibrahim said, the good little soldier. As he turned to leave, he looked at me and shook his head as if to say: “And what have you done now?”

Uncle continued, “I want you to take our
iqamas
to our
kqfeel
, the Blessed Bader Ibn Abd-Allah. He asked that you bring it yourself. We need to renew our residency permits.”

I had long known that every foreigner in Saudi Arabia has to have a
kafeel
—a Saudi man sponsoring their stay in the Kingdom in return for an annual payment. But it only became clear to me that day that the
kafeel
therefore has full control over the lives of those he sponsors. I found this out when I said to my uncle, “Why don’t you go? You always do it.” I was about to storm out with my schoolbag, when he pulled me by my arm. He began to sweat.

He let go of my arm and said, “Please don’t be stubborn, Naser. We have to obey our
kafeel
and do as he asks. I need you to renew our residency permits, please. He asked for you to go. If we don’t do as he says he will be angry and that will be the end for us in this country. Please, Naser. I am begging you.”

I hesitated. He had never begged me like that before. My poor uncle, burdened with the sons of a sister he despised, working as a migrant in this rich country, yet barely able to make ends meet.

But then I thought to myself: Why am I resisting? When I come back, I will have the rest of the day to myself.

“OK,” I said to my uncle. “I’ll go.”

He handed me the
iqamas
.

“What about the money?” I asked him.

“Sorry?”

“The two thousand riyals that I need to pay him when we renew our
iqamas
”

“I don’t have the money. But he said he would overlook it this time, may
Allah
bless him.”

I tried to smile to please my uncle. But we both knew that nothing was ever free for a foreigner in Saudi.

I rang the bell of the villa and a smiling Eritrean servant named Haroon answered in Tigrinya. He asked me to use the back door because the
kafeel’s
wife and the daughters were about to leave the house. I nodded and walked slowly along the tree-shaded alleyway and knocked at the back entrance. Haroon opened the door, still smiling, and asked me to come into the large and spacious courtyard. He told me to cross the yard by the small path bordered with small fruit trees.

“
Ya
Ali,” Haroon shouted as he walked behind me, “tell the Blessed boss that the boy is here.”

Ali came out from a room at the other side of the yard and told me to wait. There were toys and small bicycles lined up outside. The wall of the courtyard was painted with fine abstract designs against a bright turquoise background, providing a pretty contrast to the green plants. A strong smell of incense hung in the yard as golden light pierced the garden trees. I looked up and counted four floors. Where I was standing was just one tiny part of the
kafeel’s
palace.

Ali came back and told me that the
kafeel
was ready for me. “You go,” he said, bowing his head. “Where? Why don’t you take me?”

“It’s OK, just go, over there,” he said, his head still bowed.

I walked ahead, trying to figure out where to go. I turned back to Ali.

“Which of the rooms is he in?”

“There,” he said, pointing to the big door next to a lime tree. “There, there. Enter.”

The door swung open and a large man dressed in expensive heavy robes was standing there on the steps like a statue. I had seen him a couple of times before when I was much younger, but this morning was the first time I had been to his house on my own. He looked at me with great intensity.

“Welcome, Naser,” he smiled broadly.

“Thank you,” I said as I bowed my head to kiss his hand.

I smelt the Arabian incense as I entered the
majlis
. There were thick mattresses against the wall, piled up with large cushions, and colourful rugs on the floor.

I waited until he sat down.

“Sit,” he said. He seated himself on the mattresses and as he rearranged the cushions behind him to sit more comfortably, he added, “Have you got the papers?”

“Yes,” I replied, as I handed him the forms with our official photographs, and sat down.

He flipped through the
iqamas
and I looked up to see his portrait hanging on the wall behind him. He was looking down at us, wearing a gold-edged cloak over his sparkling
thobe
. His face looked calm and serene.

How does he manage to have these boyishly smooth cheeks at his age, I was thinking to myself when he asked me: “And the money?”

“What money?”

“Yes. It’s gone up, you know? It’s three thousand riyals now,” he said in a low voice.

“I thought you told my uncle you would not charge him this time.”

“Look, son. I said that to your uncle because I feel sorry for him. He is looking after you and your brother even though you are not his children. Just think of the money he already spent bringing you to this country, the money he spends on your clothes and food. He pays all of this from a job that earns him only eight hundred riyals a month. In the name of
Allah
, he is a kind and a good man.”

The light coming from the courtyard made his cheeks glow. “I don’t understand,” I said.

“Let me be straight with you, Naser. I think you should pay for the
iqamas
this time. You are fifteen now. You should help your uncle and contribute, if not every time, at least this time.”

“But how?”

“Think about it. Don’t you want to help your uncle?”

“Of course I do. But I told him that I will pay him when I finish school. I told him that as soon as I get a job, he will never have to work again.”

I paused. Why was I telling him these things? This was between my uncle and myself. I stopped talking and I looked at him, like I did when I prayed to
Allah
, begging Him to be merciful with me and answer my prayers, even though I was a bad Muslim.

He surveyed my face for a while and coughed. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger, and said, “Naser? Think about it, after all, and as far as I know, your mother entrusted you to look after Ibrahim. Did you forget that?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Naser?”

I whispered, “Yes, but I will repay my uncle when I get a job after I finish my school.”

“I am talking about now, Naser.”

“Yes, but I don’t have any money.”

“You have
Allah’s
gift.”

I closed my eyes.

I was imagining that my mother was running towards me, and after every step she would fall down but then she would get up and start running again, only to trip once more.

“Naser,” the
kafeel
said. He was now closer to me and his hand running slowly over my shoulders. “Naser?”

I felt strange. I looked up at him.

“Put it this way, you have something that could be worth the three thousand riyals.”

I closed my eyes again and prayed that my mother would come and take me with her. But she couldn’t get up this time. I heard her say something and I murmured, “It’s OK, Mother. I forgive you.”

“Naser?” The
kafeel
called me over to him.

At around ten o’clock that same night, I was still awake, still shivering. By then I had lost count of how many times I had showered.

I tried to sit in the bath, but every time I sat down I shot up again as if I had just sat on burning coals. I went to my bed and lay flat on my chest, but the pain was fierce.

I turned towards my brother’s bed. I crawled across the floor to his part of the room. I knelt on all fours beside him. He was asleep. I caressed his hair. He turned to the wall and continued sleeping. “I love you, Ibrahim,” I cried.

“I am sleeping, Naser. Leave me alone,” my brother groaned.

“Ibrahim?” I nudged him. “I am in pain, please help me.”

He sat up and called my uncle, screaming his name.

“Don’t shout, I’ll leave you alone. I’m sorry,” I mumbled, returning to my bed.

I lay flat on my front and bit the pillow, clutching the edges of the bed with my fingers. I couldn’t sleep. I thought of my mother and I wanted to be closer to her. I got up and put my clothes on, crept past my uncle’s bedroom and left the apartment. I was going to the Corniche and the secret place that even my friends didn’t know about. It was an hour before midnight and I still had time to catch the last bus.

I paid my fare and shuffled to the back seat of the men’s section, putting my hands under my thighs to support my weight.

I leaned backwards and inhaled deeply. Despite the pain I liked sitting there, because it was closest to the women’s section and even though we were separated by a full-length-panel, their scent drifted into the men’s section through the small window above my head.

During those first months in Jeddah, when I missed my mother and her friends so much, I used to take long rides on the buses just to be close to the women and their world. At these moments, I believed that life in Jeddah could still be beautiful. That many things were possible. I especially liked it during rush hour, because they would be crammed into their tiny section and the mixed smell of perfumed hair oil, sharp incense emanating from their
abayas
, and the scents of meat and fresh herbs from their shopping baskets seeping through the window would be stronger.

A man once slapped me on the head when he caught me glued to the panel, looking through the window at the women in their black
abayas
, standing so close together. The man shouted down to the bus driver to stop and I was thrown off. That day, I got off lightly.

The fountain of Jeddah claims to have the highest jet in the world, and is situated near one of King Fahd Ibn Abdul Aziz’s palaces on the Red Sea coast. My secret place was not far from there.

The plaza around the fountain was wide and full of restaurants and cafes. Normally I would stroll along the Corniche, enjoying the sight of families picnicking on the beach, reminding me that once I too had had someone who cared for me and loved me.

But that night I was closed to the world. I hurried past the lines of parked cars and ignored the calls of the African street vendors, people who had come from across the Red Sea like me.

Further down the street, where I needed to descend to the beach, I could see the singer sitting on his bench and playing his ‘
oud
as usual. I passed behind him quietly and walked down the steep steps.