2008 - The Consequences of Love. (4 page)

Walking along the beach, close to the water, I had to step over empty plastic bottles and dead shellfish washed up by the waves. In my mind I was already on my rock, in my own world with my mother.

It was a big rock, one of many there. Another rock leaned against it and the top jutted out, giving shelter. As I sat underneath it, I listened to the song of the ‘
oud
player above me.

When I first saw him, even though he was wearing immaculate Saudi dress, I thought he was homeless because whenever I came to the Corniche, day or night, I would find him sitting on his bench. But I soon realised that he was a lover who took refuge in the arms of the sea. In his songs he would describe an Egyptian girl who had given him the happiest days of his life in a café in Cairo overlooking the Nile. But when he told his father he wanted to marry her, the father tore his passport in pieces so he wouldn’t be able to travel. He would sing about how he was planning to go and see her, using his wooden ‘
oud
as a boat; his heartbeat would be the engine and his hands the oars to row.

I kept trying to erase the memory of the
kafeel
, but the pain in my belly and body wouldn’t dissipate. Dawn had broken and I was still sitting on the rock, still staring out over the sea, towards Eritrea. The waves were breaking gently under the rising sun. Now and then, clouds would appear in the sky, hesitating as if lost, before resuming their journeys over Jeddah. Then the waves fell still and the sea reflected the colour of the sky—I felt as if I had supernatural powers like Prophet Moses with his miraculous cane. I squinted my eyes to compress the wide sea into a tiny stream that I could easily cross, and walk all the way back to Eritrea, all the way back to the tender embrace of my mother.

She was sitting on her stool in the compound facing the street, as she always did in the afternoon.

I watched her silently from inside our hut. She sat with one leg crossed over the other, dangling her right foot in the air, her red shoe floating above the yellow sand. She was leaning into the strong breeze. Her long thin face was black as if it was dipped in shining kohl powder; and her cheekbones were like small hills, covered by a smooth skin. When she gazed into the empty space in front of her, her eyes seemed even darker than her skin, and when she blinked, her eyelashes were so thick and long that they spread gently like the feathers of a peacock.

I was seven. I was wearing my white T·shirt and yellow shorts with black stripes. My curly hair was as long as my little finger. I looked to the side of the hut and saw our chicken trying to stab a hole in a sack of grain with its beak. My mother had bought the sack from the market the previous day. I chased the chicken away, picked up the sack and brought it inside the hut and put it behind the door.

I went out into the compound to get a drink of water from the
outer
. I stretched my arms wide to embrace the wind, inhaling the scent of spiced meat. I turned in both directions to find out which of our two neighbours was cooking.

There were two other women living alongside us: Lunilim and Kamela. Each family owned the space on which their hut was built and what was left we all shared: the barn, the three large barrels for water, the rope to dry our clothes which we hung between three long sticks of wood.

There was hardly anything green in our compound except for the huge tree next to our hut, close to Lumlim’s. We sometimes gathered under it to hear her stories and occasionally listen to music from her old radio that dangled from a branch.

I walked over to the
outer
. It was under a small shade we had built to keep the clay pot cool. I picked up the cup and lifted the iron lid. The wind suddenly whipped our wet clothes around the rope, making the sound of an Eritrean
krar
. I turned round to see my mother’s long, thick hair rising up into the air like the wings of a departing black swan.

B
ACK IN MY small flat, with the chemicals of the perfume making my eyes run, I closed my diary. I looked at my watch—it was twenty-five past nine. I was due to meet Yahya at ten. I put the diary back in the drawer but I wasn’t ready to leave. I gulped down the last drops of perfume, and pulled my knees into my chest wrapping my arms around them. I stayed like that for what seemed like a long time.

With five minutes to spare I ran down the street to my favourite tree, in front of my uncle’s old house, where I had arranged to meet Yahya. It was the tree that had grown up with me in Saudi Arabia. About a year after I first arrived in Jeddah, our municipality started planting palm trees in our street. They planted one opposite my uncle’s house. I swore to look after it so that it would grow all the faster and I would be able to hide underneath it in the inferno-like heat. I watered the tree after school with bottles filled from our tap. I watched its small branches grow larger, until it looked like an emperor with a huge crown.

Over the years, its branches became more than leaves shielding me from the sun. They became my companion. They watched over me as I sat underneath them wondering if the girl of my dreams would be amongst the women passing by. And even when the dream appeared an impossible fantasy, I still sat under the tree, because it was a good place to watch the never-ending black and white film of passing
abayas
and
thobes
. Repetitive though it was, it was the only movie in Jeddah that allowed me to imagine that behind the all-black clothes, one of the actresses might bring some colour into my life.

It was a quarter past ten and Yahya still wasn’t there.

Something seemed to be going on over to the left, near the overflowing rubbish bin. I saw Hilal gesticulating at the Asian street cleaner. It was Hilal who had found me my job at the car-wash. He was a Sudanese friend of mine who made his living from commissions he earned placing foreign workers in low-paid jobs, a kind of unofficial labour broker.

I looked away. There was no point in following Hilal into an argument. It would last for a long time.

I looked at my watch, wondering about Yahya. When I looked up, I noticed two women striding out together. Both looked the same height and their identical
abayas
made them look as if one were the shadow of the other, a twin of night. Their heads turned in my direction. Their pace slackened. Was it me they were looking at or something on the wall behind me?

Abu Mahdi, an old man who lived in the nine-storey building, was coming down the street. He was followed by a woman in full veil. She could only be his wife, because he only had sons and they were all married and lived in other parts of Jeddah. I had seen him in the street for the last ten years. Wrinkles now spread all over his face like a spider web. I wondered if his wife had aged too.

I could hear a car coming. I thought it was Yahya’s but it turned out to be the white Cadillac of Abu Faisal driving towards Mecca Street. When the executioner’s car drove by, I shut my eyes until he had gone. I never wanted to see him again.

I had first seen him at work six years ago, two weeks after the
Eid al-Fitr
of 1983. I was on my way to the shopping mall to buy a new shirt with the fifty riyals I had received as a present for
Eid
from a visiting friend of my uncle.

I took the bus to Al-Balad district in the oldest part of Jeddah. From there I walked through the narrow lanes floored with large cracked stones. Most of the buildings in this area were centuries old and built from mud and cut stone. The colourful carved wooden balconies appeared unstable, but they never seemed to fall, as if they were resting on the shoulders of ghosts.

The smell of imported spices floated out of the small shops, which were lined up in front of larger shops famous for their silver Bedouin jewellery.

As I left Al-Balad behind me and approached the modern shopping centre, the streets got noisier. It was about an hour or so after Friday prayers, so the streets were packed with men dressed in clean
thobes
and the still air was saturated with perfume and musk.

Just outside the entrance to the mall, I saw a large crowd gathering in the square, forming a huge half-circle.

I needed to get through the crowd to reach the shops. As I tried to navigate my way past the big bellies of the men I focused on trying not to faint in the sweltering heat. The crowd shoved forwards and I was lifted off the ground, I found myself at the front, surrounded by a men-only crowd. I heard the announcement over the tannoy. An Indian man was going to be beheaded for drug trafficking.

Abu Faisal stepped into the centre of the circle. I stood motionless. I had never seen him at work before. The men around me shouted: “
Allah wa Akbar!
”

Abu Faisal was wearing a black overcoat over his white
thobe
. His
ogal
sat like a black crown over his red
gutra
. He was the tallest man I had ever seen. He was made tall, we used to say at school, so that
Allah
could pass to him messages of strength when he was beheading and cutting off hands.

Behind him a stocky man was holding a long sword that was glistening under the sun. The blindfolded Indian man was led to the square and made to kneel down. Three men surrounded him. One of them sat down and asked him to recite the
shahada
. After a while they hurried away and the man with the sword walked up to Abu Faisal, who was pacing up and down with his head bowed. When he saw the man with the sword approaching, Abu Faisal stood still, straightened up and stretched out a long arm.

With the sword now in his firm grip, Abu Faisal swung it in the air to warm up his arm and looked around at the crowd. His eyes caught mine and I remembered the time when his son, Faisal, broke down in front of me because he said his father was going around saying that his son was born to be a beheader; something he didn’t want to be.

The crowd’s muttering receded now. Abu Faisal’s sword was only inches away from the kneeling Indian man. The moment Abu Faisal raised his sword above his head, I turned around and pushed my way out of the circle.

The crowd fell silent.

I was dashing away from the crowd when I heard a high-pitched scream, followed by a chorus of ‘
Allah wa Akbar
.’

I ran inside the mall and sat next to a water fountain opposite the electronics store. I put my hands between my legs, hoping that if I squeezed them tightly together it would stop the shaking of my arms that was making my chest shudder.

The roaring of the crowd outside pierced through the walls of the mall. My eyes were shut and I put my fingers in my ears, wishing that I could get away from the mall. The roars faded and I knew the beheading was over. Some of the crowd drifted into the mall, bringing with them their mutterings and soft shouts of
Allah wa Akbar
.

It was only then that I knew I could go home. I no longer wanted a new shirt.

Yahya turned up about an hour late. He parked his car a few metres away from the tree and got out. I stood up and walked over to him. He was wearing his favourite tight T·shirt with the Al-Ahli football club logo and was holding a Pepsi can.

Yahya lived off his father’s inheritance. Before he died, his father had been one of the richest foreigners in Al-Nuzla. Yahya was famous for touring the neighbourhood on his bike. He used to boast that boys from all over the world loved him, and that he was their number one choice because of his muscles. He was the only person in our neighbourhood who did proper weightlifting, and he was happy to face the heavy traffic and drive an hour every day of the week to get to the only club in Jeddah that had weightlifting machines.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said in his throaty voice. “I was busy packing.”

“It’s all right,” I replied, snatching the Pepsi can from his hand. “Ready for your trip?”

“Yep,” he replied. “Hani and his family are also holidaying in Abha this year, so I will see him but I will still be able to do my own thing, you know.”

Hani was a Saudi friend and like Yahya he didn’t go to school. He worked in his father’s import and export business. Yahya had cut his studies short when he reached year eight, because, he said, he saw no point in continuing if, as a foreigner, he wasn’t allowed into university. “So, when are you and Hani coming back?” I asked him.

“Around mid-September,” he replied.

Just then, the door of the villa opposite swung open and Muhammad Al-Hyrania emerged, wearing his short
thobe
and
tagiyah
, with his
gutm
loosely over his arm. He stood there watching us with unwavering eyes. He spread out his
gutm
on top of his head and started reading verses out loud from the Qur’an. His head was rocking back and forth, his eyes staring at us.

“We are not Mecca, why don’t you face the right direction?”Yahya shouted at him.

The nerd started reciting the same
sum
again, his eyes still fixed on us. When he finished reciting, he shut the door behind him and walked up the road, with his hands crossed behind his back, now and then glancing back at us.

The Pleasure Palace was an abandoned palace that had once been owned by King Saud Ibn Abdul Aziz. He had been deposed about twenty-five years previously in a coup staged by his own family and with the backing of religious scholars.

The palace was only a few minutes’ drive from our street. It was a gigantic place, crumbling under the weight of its own loneliness. Yahya and I left Al-Nuzla and took the familiar shortcuts down to the deserted boulevard that led to the King’s Palace. I was sitting in the front seat and could see the tall towers that stood equal in height to the columns of the surrounding mosques. But this grandeur was an illusion. By daylight, you could see the golden paint peeling off.

We knew that the government or the religious police didn’t want to come near the palace because of King Saud’s history with alcohol and women. It was deemed such an evil place that we could roam around it, drink our perfume and sniff glue confident that the police would not chase us there. When we arrived in the back street behind the palace, Al-Yamani, a Saudi friend of ours who lived in Mecca Street, was already there, waiting by his car.