PART FOUR
PINK SHOES
12
I COULD SCARCELY wait for the next day to go to Ba’da Al-Nuzla and wait for the mysterious girl. It was exactly a week since I had received her very first note.
From an old box underneath my bed, I took out my special trousers and shirt. I hadn’t worn them for a long time—I had bought them to wear at Hilal’s party over a year ago, to celebrate his return from Sudan after his wedding—and a musty odour wafted out as I unfolded them. I washed them in the shower and hung them out the window to dry.
I looked at the note once again. It seemed as if the ink of every word ran, the words sped towards me like a wave, washing the sleep out of my eyes.
As the call for the early morning prayer went out, I suddenly remembered that she couldn’t specify the time of her appearance. She might be there at any time of the day. I got up and took the bottle of perfume from my desk. I held up my shirt and sprayed puffs of fragrance all over it, almost drenching it with perfume. I drank some of it too, making sure that if I had the chance to speak to her while she dropped her note, my words would smell as if they were imported from Paris.
Just after the end of the prayer, I left my flat dressed in my freshly washed trousers and immaculately ironed striped shirt.
I walked with my face looking up at the tallest building in the area, her building. As I strolled past it, my gaze moved across each of the nine floors, wondering where her window was and in which room she was standing, perhaps in front of her mirror fixing her hair and matching her skirt with her blouse, or her earrings to the colour of her lipstick. I imagined her walking down the stairs and all the pedestrians turning their heads from the first moment she stepped onto the street, unveiled.
After walking down Al-Nuzla Street for about fifteen minutes, past the big mosque and Abu Faisal’s house, I turned left into a small side street. On the corner, a short Filipino man stood next to his taxi.
I quickened my pace. I was now entering a different neighbourhood. I left the asphalt streets behind and my shoes kicked up the small stones on the dusty road. The street was full of one-storey houses, with some having the privilege of a waist-high wall separating the house from the street. I entered an even smaller street filled with red dust.
The street turned narrow and I knew I was approaching a dead end. I stood and looked around. I walked past a pile of garbage riddled with flies, the smell of which was barely disguised by the strong incense that seeped from a house close by. This is it, I thought to myself. This is Ba’da Al-Nuzla, and this is the street before the dead end.
In Ba’da Al-Nuzla I transformed into a lover in waiting: my head high, my jaw tensed, hands in pockets, and my shoulders straight.
I could hear someone preparing breakfast in a house nearby: the smell of morning coffee and scrambled eggs was delicious. I inhaled deeply as I leaned against a street lamp and waited.
The sun was rising over Jeddah and its rays left harsh yellow patches on the fading paint of the walls. Before long, I started to sweat. I unbuttoned my shirt to my navel. “Only for a while,” I told myself. I took out the note and fanned myself gently with it.
For years, I had followed the teachings that men should avert their eyes from any part of female passers-by, and that they must not let a second look follow the first.
But now that the girl had shown me her shoes, I was walking everywhere with my head bowed in search of her pink feet. I had already started noticing that I could work out the shape of a woman’s legs despite the loose abaya they wore. Those who walked with their feet parted much wider than their shoulders’ width were either pregnant or had big thighs. A woman whose walk had a rigid, laborious and mechanical movement pointed to a lady with big shins or maybe ankles or thighs, or a combination of all of these. Narrowly parted feet was a sign of a woman with short legs. Hurried footsteps often indicated a woman with long, slender legs. Observing women with thin legs was exciting because their energy propelled their feet into a fast sprint. Watching them race up and down Al-Nuzla was like watching cars on a highway.
“Look at the feet,” I whispered in excitement when I saw the Pink Shoes turning right to the street with the dead end in Ba’da Al-Nuzla. But her subsequent movements confused my new theory. One minute, she came towards me with heavy feet. “She must have large shins,” I told myself. Before I had the time to digest what I thought about this, the movement changed. Her feet were now widely parted. “No, she can’t be pregnant, can she?” The distance between her feet narrowed, but I was sure this wasn’t because she had short legs. But then I noticed she was walking between two potholes and she needed to walk through the tight space. And then her feet gathered momentum, almost sprinting. But this is not because she has thin legs, I thought, it is only because she has finally seen me.
She quickly ran past, and I picked up the note that she dropped at my feet. I hoped she would stop for a second, even just to say hello. But I understood she must have been nervous. “After all,” I told myself, “thinking of the danger in dropping me her notes, what she is doing takes a lot of guts and bravery. I should be happy with this instead of being greedy for more.”
Habibi,
It would have been courteous of me of course to start my note with questions about your day, your health, whether you have been fine and whether life is treating you well overall. But since getting your answers is impossible in the current circumstances, I won’t bother you with such formalities. Instead, you will have to tune in to some sporadic news, like the early evening bulletin.
If I could, I would have given you my phone number. But my father heard stories from his friends about some girls making phone calls to boys when the men of the household are out. So he disconnected our phone altogether. I want you to read my note as if I were speaking the words to you over the phone or saying them to you face to face.
Darling, I will come back here with a note in two 98
days’ time. Later this evening, I am going to Mecca with my parents for two days to do umra and visit the house of a friend of my father.
Salam from the heart.
Two days later, she came to Ba’da Al-Nuzla just before the early afternoon prayer. She turned into the road where I was standing. The only way to really find out the shape of her legs, I thought, would be for me to bring a spade and flatten the street.
In her note, written in such a beautiful hand that I was certain she must have studied calligraphy in Baghdad, she told me that it was her best friend who had noticed me first.
We were coming back from college when she saw you sitting under the tree. She nudged me and told me to look. Since then it has been hard to stop looking.
Habibi, I have collected so many sightings of you: walking, dancing in the street with your friends, playing football, and watering your tree. I have a photo album in my mind’s eye.
And by the way, since tomorrow is Friday, I wish you a good holiday and I hope the blind imam will not ruin your day with his sermon.
When I watered my palm tree later that afternoon, I hummed a song and her words were dancing in my head like whirling dervishes.
The next day, I awoke at the break of dawn and stayed all morning lying on my bed. I was amazed at how time can pass so quickly when all a man does is think about a woman.
My room smelt as if it had had a visit from a woman. The scent of her hands on the notes was slowly being released to fill my bedroom.
I was still thinking about her notes and her elegant Pink Shoes, when I heard the azan for the Friday afternoon prayer.
The pattering of footsteps on the street was echoing inside my room. I opened the curtains and peeped out of my window on the first floor. It seemed as if all Al-Nuzla men were out on the street walking in the direction of the mosque. The men spilled over from the pavement and into the road. Most were talking to each other, but there were some who walked silently, looking straight ahead. The sun reflected harshly against the white thobes. Most women were inside
their houses, preparing lunch while the men were out. They normally prayed at home, as they are not obliged to pray in a mosque.
When the crowd entered the mosque and the street started emptying slightly, I saw in the distance the blind imam being led by a tall man with a long black beard. This must be the Basil that Al-Yamani had mentioned, that night at the Pleasure Palace.
I stopped going to the mosque when I was fourteen. We were all gathered for the blind imam’s Friday sermon. He stood on top of the minbar, dressed in a sparkling white thobe and gutra, and he began by praising Allah and His messenger. Then he announced that today’s sermon was about ‘vulgar pastimes’. His voice started rising.
“Oh ya sons, oh ya Allah’s slaves, for how long will you keep forgetting Him, the almighty? Until when will you ignore His blessings and continue to abuse His mercy? Why do you insist on sinning, day after day, hour after hour, second after second? While your sins mount, forming mountains of the highest altitude on Allah’s earth; while your heart blackens with your daily misdemeanours, leaving no room for Him to be upheld; while your eyes have been blinded with your pursuits of vulgar pastimes, blinding you from the straight path, from Allah, and from His messenger’s message on this earth; and while you have done all of this with such contempt for the Creator, let me remind you of this ya Muhammad’s umma: fire, fire, fire. Oh ya Allah’s, slaves, your bodies will be torn apart, your hearts ripped from your chest, your bones turned into dust by the flame. Because He is the Distresses He is the Avenger, the Harmer, and the Powerful. Beware of His mighty punishments, when He will turn the earth upside down and empty sinners into the inferno one after the other. He, the Almighty, will never forget those who abused His message on this earth. He will pursue you with his fire, fire, fire, from the moment you die to the Judgment Day and thereafter.”
He shifted in his thobe, threw one tip of his gutra over his shoulder and took a deep breath.
He went on:’Oh, ya Allah’s slaves, listen carefully to this story. A bad Muslim man died suddenly. His grieving family buried him according to the Islamic rituals, but that wasn’t the end of him. The graveyard was close to the family home, and every night they heard their son’s screams, howling, listing his past mistakes. “Oh, ya Allah” he would yell, “forgive me. Oh ya Allah, I was mistaken, I should have followed the right path. Oh ya Allah, I shouldn’t have sinned. I shouldn’t have drunk alcohol or smoked cigarettes. Oh ya Allah I should have answered Your calls and prayed for You, the Greatest.”
“ But such cries are like the tears of the crocodile, remorse in retrospect does not befit the Almighty. And thus an Angel responsible for grave punishment descended from Allah’s kingdom with an order to pass Allah’s judgment upon this foolish man. With every word this immoral man uttered, the Blessed Angel plunged his steep, pointed spear into the chest of the apostate. Over and over again he thrust his blessed weapon into the heart of this sinful man with the power granted to him by Allah. ”
By now the imam was weeping with religious fervour. Some of the men listening began to cry as well.
I suddenly remembered his hate sermons against Jews, Shia and Sufi Muslims, Hindus and Christians. I recalled his hundreds of speeches that he repeatedly gave to drum into our heads that women are weak human beings and inferior to men.
I had a strong headache coming on. I felt like my head was about to explode. I didn’t want to be there any more. I could no longer sit and close my eyes and pretend that I wasn’t hearing what he was saying. I could no longer block out his voice obliterating my ears, poisoning my heart. I didn’t want to hate anybody. I didn’t want the imam to make me fear Allah more than loving Him. I remembered what our Eritrean imam in the refugee camp used to say: “Allah is compassionate and merciful. Always remember that Allah is love.” And I no longer wanted to betray my strong mother—the most beautiful person in the world who sacrificed her life for her children—by being in the same place as this man, a man who spread hate and lies against her just because she was a woman.
I just got up and left.
When my uncle came back from the mosque, he took off his belt and hit me for leaving in the middle of the imam’s prayer. According to him, the blind imam could do no wrong. The harder he hit me, the more I remembered my mother and Semira and I knew that the pain of his lashes would fade away as I thought of their love. I wasn’t going back to the mosque.
Years later, when I rented my own flat, I decided to keep myself to my room whenever I wasn’t working and until I could return to my country, so that I didn’t have to hear his or other men’s poisonous remarks. I didn’t have a TV, so I couldn’t listen to what they said, but I owned a stereo with a big and powerful bass. When the blind imam read his Friday sermons, I closed my windows and played music as loud as I could to drown out the mosque’s amplifiers. And when I walked down the street, or did my job, I bowed my head as if I didn’t live there. If there was a place and time where I wanted to be deaf and blind, this was it.
That Friday afternoon, I blocked out the imam’s voice thundering through the powerful tannoys into my room and as I caressed the girl’s notes, I thought about what I would say to her if the opportunity came my way and I was given a few minutes with her.
The Pink Shoes were all I could see of her that made her stand out in Al-Nuzla. And every time I saw them, I noticed a new detail. They were pointy shoes, with the tips slightly curling upwards. There was a light pattern of small glittering silver-coloured pearls embroidered on the sides. When she walked, sometimes I could see the soles, which were black. In the beginning, they were shiny when her friend had just bought them in the shop, but the streets of Ba’da Al-Nuzla had made them rough and dirty very quickly. But my fear that the tips and the sides of her shoes would get black and dark, as they stepped time after time in the dirty dust of Al-Nuzla, never materialised. Her shoes continued to sparkle as if they were meant to last for ever. Her Pink Shoes continued to contrast with her black abaya, the reddish dust of Ba’da Al-Nuzla, and the white houses in the street. Without them, I would have lost her in a world of dark shadows.
13
SATURDAY MORNING I was supposed to go back to work, but I couldn’t abandon so soon what started as a fantasy but now held the promise of love. I had to be in Ba’da Al-Nuzla to meet the girl. So I rang my boss saying that I couldn’t start work yet because I wasn’t feeling well and needed more time to recover.
My boss flew into a rage, saying, “You have to come. Don’t pretend you are ill.”
I quickly lost my temper. Maybe it was because I felt that he was taking advantage of me. After all, I had always worked hard and long hours for him throughout the years and without any complaints. “Naser, you have no family to go to,” he would say, “I have two children. Please work longer and Allah will reward you, insha Allah.” I would do the work until late just to help him. The previous two years I had even cut my holiday short because I got so bored by myself at home. “Do you remember?” I screamed. “I came back from my holiday early and you didn’t even pay me extra.”
He fell quiet.
“Muhammad, please just give me one week more. Please?”
He didn’t say anything.
I was ready to tell him I would resign and that he could look for another loyal worker like me when he said, “OK, but we will talk about pay when you come back.”
“Oh, thank you, Muhammad. May Allah bless your work.”
That afternoon, the girl cheered me up with a funny note.
I saw her coming and I followed her Pink Shoes with my eyes. I enjoyed watching her approach, the way she navigated the jagged ground beneath her, like a performer walking a tightrope.
She dropped the note right next to the rubbish as if it were a piece of litter, just as she always did. I ran to pick up the treasure.
She told me a story that she had heard at college. A few weeks before the summer break, the head teacher visited every class in the college with the same news: the previous day, a boy wearing sungl
asses who had been standing across the road from the college had been arrested by the religious police. The boy was accused of wearing sunglasses bought from America. The religious police had informed the head teacher that the boy had confessed that the glasses had special lenses that enabled him to see under the abayas and uniforms of the students. The religious police convinced the head teacher that such a thing was possible because, “The evil Americans are capable of doing anything.”
Habibi, it made me realise how great it would be if these magic glasses really did exist. You could wear them and I could walk back and forth in front of you.
I laughed all the way home.
14
ON SUNDAY MORNING, I went to Haraj Market to buy new trousers. I wanted to show the girl with the Pink Shoes that I was making a special effort too. Haraj was the biggest market in Jeddah. It was a place where you could find almost anything you wanted.
It was at the end of the market, past Haraj Textiles selling printed cotton and linen fabric, that I found a nice pair of black trousers, made of light Italian wool with deep side pockets and straight legs for only twenty riyals.
As I walked back to the bus stop, I bumped into Ismael, a motorbike mechanic. He owned a shop close to Al-Nuzla that sold spare parts for motorbikes.
We chatted for a few minutes. He told me that he was working on Yahya’s motorbike.
“I didn’t know it was broken,” I said to him.
“No, it is not. He wanted a new seat fitted. He said he wanted to make it as comfortable as possible for his boy.”
We started laughing.
“Take your time,” I told him, “he won’t be back until mid-September.”
2008 - The Consequences of Love. Page 8
