2008 - The Consequences of Love. (33 page)

I collapse.

I
AM BACK in my cell in the same prison. I cannot stand so I am lying flat on my stomach on my mattress. They just threw me here and left me with nothing. It feels as if someone is pouring boiling liquid on the wounds across my back and bottom. I can only pray that the pain will gradually subside. For now my only remedy is to bite the greasy sheets on my bed.

It is a week since I was flogged in Punishment Square. The wounds are still healing, but I know they will leave great ridges of scars on my back. I can barely sleep, because whenever I try, I keep having nightmares about the Square and Abu Faisal.

I still don’t know what is to happen next, what they will do to me, and whether all this will come to an end. Even
Allah
seems not to know. My prayers are not answered. My fate is firmly in their hands.

I am on my own in this cell. Mustafa is not here. He was taken away last Friday while I was in Punishment Square. He never told me why he was in prison. I don’t know if he was deported back to Nigeria or taken to the Square as well. I grieve for his absence. I grieve for my love.

I have been refusing their two meals a day. I only eat and drink once a day to have the required strength to think about her, while waiting for whatever they will do to me next.

And all I do in this lonely cell is remember again and again the last time I told her I loved her.

A policeman enters my cell and asks me to stand up.

“Come here,” he says, standing over me. He adjusts his black gun-belt and joins his hands on top of his belly. I stand up.

He points to the exit. He steps backwards and pushes me out.

I shudder when I realise it is Friday. He leads me out as we zigzag our way around other police officers in the corridor. I follow him as if I were his tail.

We go into an office with three tables and a stack of papers and files and he orders me to sit down. He points at the wooden chair. He walks around the table and passes the phone to me. “Here, you have a phone call waiting,” he says. He stands up and leaves the room.

I hold the phone receiver and without understanding I stare at it silently for a while.

“Hello?”

It is Hilal on the line.

“Hilal?
Ya Allah
, Hilal, I am so happy to hear your voice. What—”

“Listen, Naser. Listen carefully, my friend, I only have a few minutes on the phone. Boy, my heart sank when I saw you running out of the café and I knew your plan had failed.”

“They took me to Punishment Square. They flogged me. I really thought they were going to execute me. What are they going to do to me now?”

“In the name of
Allah
the merciful, listen. It was my
kafeel
who managed to reverse the execution ruling.”

I wipe my tears, thanking Hilal and his
kafeel
over and over again. “It’s OK, Naser.”

“How can I ever thank you?”

“By being strong. I am sorry about you and Fiore.” He pauses for a second, giving me some time to let his words sink in. “But you will have a lot of time to grieve. Now listen to me. OK? They will deport you to Sudan. You are going to Port Sudan. The religious police raided your flat but I made sure I got there first and took all the letters, the notes and your mother’s portrait to my house. Thank the Lord, you never used her real name.”

“Why are they doing this? Hilal, tell me why? I miss Fiore. How is she, Hilal?”

“Naser, be strong. You took a risk when you went to Jasim. I know you had no other option, but now that you are caught you will be sent away. This is no time to feel sorry for yourself. My wife is here. She met Fiore in Al-Nuzla Street; she knew to look out for her Pink Shoes. My wife told her what happened to you.”

“Are her shoes still lighting up Al-Nuzla Street?”

“Fiore told my wife she doesn’t need them any more.”

I bend over, my arms pressing deep into my belly to stop the pain.

I remember my diary. I ask Hilal about it.

“Yes, I found your diary too, I asked my wife to give it to Fiore together with the notes.”

I drop my head in despair, embarrassed by the secrets from my past described in the diary which Fiore now has. But Hilal is oblivious to my worries.

“Now, pay attention. My brother will wait for you in Port Sudan and take you to our house in the city. It will be your return address for Fiore from now on. Once I get your letters, my wife will take them to Fiore. Please remember that I lived in Jeddah for so many years without seeing my wife. Letters were all we had between us. And letters are sometimes all lovers need. The barrier that separates you from Fiore will crumble into the Red Sea with your words. Because no obstacle is big enough to keep the feelings of lovers apart. And whenever you want to talk to Fiore, walk to the beach of Port Sudan and the waves of the Red Sea will take your message to Fiore. Naser? Naser? Are you listening?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Make sure you hide what the police officer will give you really well. You don’t want anyone to take it away from you. May
Allah
be with you, my friend. I will see you in Port Sudan very soon.”

He puts down the phone. My fingers lose their grip and the receiver falls on the desk, my head follows and my hands clutch my stomach.

The officer comes into the room and closes the door behind him. He puts his hand into his pocket and quickly takes out a folded envelope. “Here,” he says, stretching his hand.

I stare at him, confused. I snatch the white envelope out of his hand and know it is a letter from Fiore. I can smell her perfume.

The officer taps my shoulder and says, “Hide it quickly. We have to hurry.”

I tuck the envelope deep in the pocket of my shirt, close to my heart. He holds me by the arm and leads me away.

Three police officers—wearing khaki trousers and green shirts—join us in the long corridor. The prison gate opens and the sun welcomes me with its intense heat. I struggle to open my eyes against the white light. I am taken to a waiting police car and pushed inside.

I think about the letter pressed against my sweating body. I badly want to rip it open and read it now.

I
AM IN a police car speeding down a wide, tree-lined avenue. I am looking through the car window. I know we are on a flyover, but I can’t exactly pinpoint where we are as the car is driving so fast and all I can see are flashes of buildings and trees as they get swallowed by the speed.

But I know where I am going. I lean my head against the seat and look through the window, thinking about Fiore.

The car is now driving down the bridge. I see long cranes dominating the sky above the sea.

The smell of the sea is coming in through the car window. I want to do what I did ten years ago, when I first arrived in Jeddah, when I hung out of the window and I inhaled the breeze, full of beautiful dreams. Instead, I shut my eyes, press my knees together and drop my head.

So is this the port I have heard so much about? How come my legs aren’t trembling? I take a deep breath. I smell the silt in the air. I want to look around, but a policeman drags me into an office where a decorated officer sits on a leather seat behind a brown desk full of papers and passports. “Take him to terminal seven,” he says.

I am back in the police car. We drive past the livestock terminals, and the container terminals, before reaching the passenger terminals. The car halts and as I step out I see a large boat. Just yards away, there is another anchored ferry with an Egyptian flag. That ship is loading with vehicles and hundreds of passengers.

“Curse on you,
insha Allah
,” one of the customs officers swears at me. It is only when he says this I realise that I have planted my feet firmly on the ground. They pull me by my collar and throw me behind a man in a grey suit in a long queue leading to the large boat with two decks.

I see the women’s queue to the right, parallel to us. I look at them, hoping for a miracle, that Fiore is one of them. Not all the women are veiled. Most women just look down, some watching their tears fall down on their feet. There are children screaming, but the men stare at the sea in silence.

All of us are being deported.

My queue starts moving. I still can’t walk normally; the places where the stick landed still burn my back, my legs and my arms. I can see the boat rocking, flexing its muscles, daring us to ride on its shoulders.

Allah
is called upon constantly by the women and the men in the queue, and even by the Saudi officials, who mention one of
Allah’s
ninety-nine names in every single sentence, even in their curses and beatings.

“Come on,” I mumble to myself, “move it.” I want to go to the upper deck of the boat and watch the dock. Hilal told me that he would be there to wave goodbye.

T
HE GATE OPENS and we start embarking. There are security guards watching our every step, but we are free to move between decks. I go up to the second floor of the boat to get a good view. I look at Jeddah and as the boat rocks on the waves, the Bride of the Red Sea tilts from left to right as if in a slow dance.

I hear someone shout, “Men and women, listen to me.” I turn my head to see a light-skinned man wearing a Sudanese turban standing up on a bench. I catch his eye and he grins and adds, “My dear people, let’s not give them satisfaction. We are proud people. We have a proud history.” Some of the group start to sing songs about their homeland. I turn back to watch the dock.

The boat’s engine roars. I battle against my tears, leaning over the railing and looking over at the dock. Nothing is moving. I hold my shirt pocket, and I press my hand against the letter. I want to read it now but am scared about what it might say. I will wait a litde longer, until we are far away from the coast.

I look out over the sea. There is a sudden and strange calm on the surface. It looks like a still blue carpet. Just before we depart, a flock of black birds flies over us and heads to the dock. The birds linger in mid-air for a few seconds, flapping their wings frantically, as if hesitating to land. Then like a theatre curtain opening, half of the birds fly one way and the other half go the other. Beyond the cloud of birds I can see the gathering of women on the dock, and in the midst of them, a pair of Pink Shoes.

“
Habibati
. Fiore.”

Her
abaya
quivers like the feathers of a bird. When she raises her hands to quieten her flapping cloth, she is like a black flamingo ready to soar.

“I love you,
habibati
,” I whisper.

The Pink Shoes stand out against the white stones of the dock. She kneels: her head bows first, her shoulders follow and her elegant body folds double. The birds return and cackle around her. She takes off her Pink Shoes and stands motionless against the wind. She brings the shoes to her chest and hugs them tightly. The boat blows its horn and starts its journey. Fiore bends down and throws the shoes into the sea.

The Sudanese group sing on but I cry, silently. I only whisper ‘Fiore’ once, but the ripples of the Red Sea echo her name a thousand times.

I wave. “Fiore, I have your letter. Look…” I take it out and wave with it at her. “I will always love you.”

She blows me a kiss with her gloved hand and turns.

As she walks away from the dock and joins the lines of other women waving at those departing, it is only her
abaya
which is beating a sad goodbye in the air. As the boat pulls out she is lost from sight, she looks just like everyone else. But I can still pick out the shoes on the blue water. They too are leaving Jeddah, the swinging city, and dancing with the waves like two pink lights flashing in the Red Sea. The tide carries them higher and higher before burying them deep in the waves. Jeddah returns to the black and white picture it always was.

Habibi
,

I rehearsed this moment a million times inside my head. Even long before I proposed my love to you, when I used to dream about falling in love, I would imagine what would happen if my lover and I were taken away from each other
.

Sometimes in moments of weakness I wish I had never interrupted your rest under your tree. I often held back from approaching you. I would pass your tree, with you sitting underneath it like a fallen apple, and a flash of love would tickle my heart and I would want to come nearer, but I didn’t
.

For many months, I studied your face every time I saw you, and by the time I had finally overcome my caution, I was convinced that my love for you would be matched by your solidarity. It comforts me to think I was right. I was right to show my love for you whatever the consequences. And it makes me the luckiest girl in the world
.

Habibi, Hilal told me you will be given this letter by your guard. I don’t know where you will be when you read my words, you might be in your cell or on the boat in the middle of the Red Sea, but I know you will be far away from me
.

When I am in my empty room, I look for your memory. When I lie on my bed, I close my eyes to capture the aroma of our love-making, still lingering on my sheets. I press my face into one of my pillows, imagining that your silhouette is imprinted next to the embroideries of unicorns on its cover, hoping that your lips will suddenly surface and kiss me. And I take the other pillow, as if it was your hand, and place it on my heart, because that is where it is hurting most
.

I close my eyes to look for your laughter and words that are still echoing across my room. Sometimes, I stand in front of my mirror all day long, hoping to go back in time. It is then that I feel I am standing in front of you, my back glued to your chest and my hands reaching behind so I can bring you closer to me still. I feel you filling my ears with the words lovers say to each other tirelessly, but when I turn around to say I love you too, I find that my dream has vanished
.

I cry at the emptiness. I scream over the loneliness. My mother comes to my room and wants to embrace me. But I tell her she mustn’t because my body is still tender with your last touches. I try to search for that last spot where you stood, the last place your body occupied. And when she leaves, taking her sorrow with her, I crouch on my bed. Then night falls and when the morning comes I go over it all again. I feel iron bars forming around me, trapping my soul and my heart in the prison of the past
.