“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.
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.
5
BACK 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 wa
s 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.
2008 - The Consequences of Love. Page 3
