I tried to convince myself to stop waiting and to stop thinking about her. “I must go back to work tomorrow morning, and beg my boss for forgiveness,” I told myself. “I must forget about her. It’s over.”
16
BUT ON SATURDAY morning I woke up smiling. I had had a beautiful dream and it had given me my strength back. Some dreams you can easily let go of, but others get hold of you so tightly that even as reality uproots them, you can find another spot to replant them and start all over again.
I had an idea.
I will go where she lives, I thought. I will go to the nine-storey building and wait for her. I would write her a note myself. There must be a way to get a message to her safely. “That’s right,” I told myself enthusiastically, “it is my turn now to tell her that she has cast a spell on me ever since she told me I was the only flower in the garden of her heart for all these weeks and months.”
And that day, another journey started, as I went in search of the girl. “This time, I will not fail,” I said to myself as I rinsed my dirty clothes.
Just then my boss phoned me. He said he had been ringing me for the last few days and shouted, “What kind of a foreign worker are you? Do you know how many people across the sea would give their lives to come to this country to work? I have men coming to me every day begging me for a job and you treat me like this.”
I said nothing. I just listened to him venting his anger; my mind was elsewhere. I was already beginning to compose a letter to her, struggling over whether to scorn her for her disappearance or dedicate the entire letter to how much I missed her words and shoes.
“Naser? Naser?” he kept yelling. Just before he slammed down the phone, he shouted, “I am tolerating you because of the loyalty you have shown me over the years but if you don’t show up tomorrow, you are fired.”
I hurried to my desk, took some paper from the back of my diary and wrote my first love letter. It wasn’t easy, but I wanted to write something that a poet might be proud of. Like the poems that made our poet in the camp great, and maybe even like the poetry that helped Antara Ibn Shaddad—the pre-Islamic poet and the son of a noble Arab father and an Abyssinian female slave—win the heart of the beautiful Abla. It took me various attempts to write something on paper that I was finally happy with. Antara would have been proud of me and wish me luck, I thought gleefully. I folded the letter until I could fit it in the palm of my hand, and got ready for a lover’s walk to the place where she lived.
17
IT WAS SUNNY; a beautiful start to the day. Al-Nuzla was bubbling with life. People filled the street, and a chorus of voices swept across it. On my way towards the nine-storey building, a small child raced past me carrying a watermelon.
I arrived at the building, my folded note in my hand, intent on staying there until she appeared.
I stood opposite her building and looked up. The roof was covered with large antennae. Every floor contained two flats, each with a balcony. Air conditioners were attached to the outer wall, in the same place on each storey, forming a vertical line of black boxes. The water dripping from them had made blotchy streaks on the bricks.
All the people entering or leaving the building were dressed in full Saudi clothes. And none of the women were wearing Pink Shoes. I lamented that in all those times I saw her in Ba’da Al-Nuzla, I had focused only on the shoes and not on her other attributes. Why didn’t I take a mental measurement of her height? And why didn’t I notice something else about the way she walked, the width of her shoulders or a particular scent—anything that could have helped me find her again?
At exactly one o’clock, I heard the announcement for the early afternoon prayer beaming over the tannoys from the large mosque. I didn’t move an inch. Even though the second azan had started and the blind imam was already praying, I was still standing there. The only fear I had was that I was maybe chasing an illusion, that there was no girl any more, only a mirage of love in a loveless place.
I turned my head when I heard the heavy sound of an engine pulling up. It was the large, threatening black Jeep of the religious police. I turned away to look at the building. There was another car parking up outside the building.
The black Jeep stopped right in front of me, blocking my view. The shaded windows scrolled down and a man shouted. I heard what he was saying, but I didn’t bother to answer. I craned to see two women getting out of the other car. Just before they went inside, one of them turned her head towards me. She faced me for a few long seconds, before she quickly turned away.
Could that have been her? I thought. Should I try to pass her my note?
“What are you doing here?” shouted the religious policeman from inside the Jeep. I realised the note in my hand was incriminating evidence. I crumpled it and shoved it inside my mouth. I chewed it, mixing it with lots of saliva so the ink would start running, and turned my head away from the Jeep and spat it out. The sweet words I had written for habibati had dissolved in my mouth.
The religious policeman jumped out of the car and walked towards me. I took a deep breath. He was holding his stick. It was made from a thin, flexible wood so that it didn’t break when used.
“Why aren’t you in the mosque?” he asked.
He wasn’t interested in the remnants of the note. I felt relief, but still I was tongue-tied. I looked at him.
He poked me hard between the ribs with his stick. “I am talking to you,” he said. “Why aren’t you in the mosque?”
I kept quiet.
“Oh ya Allah, we ask you forgiveness,” he yelled to the sky. Then he glared at me. “Tell me what is more important than praying, ah? It is the only thing that differentiates us from animals. If you don’t pray you are an apostate.”
I didn’t say anything. I kept my eyes trained on the entrance to the building.
The policeman slapped me on the head. “On your knees,” he barked.
Without talking, I did as he asked, but my mind was elsewhere. As he lashed me with his stick across my back, all I was thinking about was her, my lips quivering with a different sort of prayer: that she might open the curtain at her window, or make a sign to tell me that she was there, that she existed.
They dragged me to the Jeep and drove me away. We stopped outside the big mosque and the policeman who had flogged me took me to the door and threw me inside, hissing, “The prayer is already underway, go and pray, animal.”
I tripped on the thick carpet with its Kabba drawings. Worshippers in straight rows were standing facing Mecca. As they knelt down in unison, I picked myself up and ran to the other end of the mosque and out through the opposite door.
It rarely rained injeddah during the summer, but that evening I heard the rain coming down in streams. I opened my window and felt warm, humid air pump into my room. I wanted to scream over the rhythmic noise of the continuous rain splashing in the street.
It was one o’clock in the morning and I couldn’t sleep. But it wasn’t just the pain in my back from the beating that was keeping me awake. I just couldn’t stop thinking about her.
I sat on my bed and wrote a new note. The words from my first note were still fresh in my memory as if by chewing them I had ingrained them in my head. I folded the note, put on my clothes and made my way to her building in the middle of the night.
I jogged along the empty street, through the rain. When I reached the pavement opposite her building, I stood and read my words out loud to her, even though the rain was drowning out my voice:
Habibati,
Can you leave your sleep and hear me? Can you come outside to your balcony, veil yourself in the darkness, and listen to my words?
Ya princess of the princesses, can’t you hide under the wind to come closer and fly around me? Can’t you find an autumn leaf to carry you far into the dark sky where we might meet? Can’t you take your shower outside under the rain this evening?
My princess of the moon, I wish I was a gypsy singer, I would circle the earth with my ‘oud and collect t
he most beautiful lyrics to sing to you.
Sometimes, I imagine I am a crippled man sitting at your feet, looking up at your face, watching your lips pronounce my name, and your eyelashes swing to my words.
How I wish all of us in this country were blind, so that we were all equally hidden from each other. I would then find you by your scent, and when our faces met, I would kiss you quietly but so passionately.
I saw you in my dream, habibati. I saw you entering a park. All the flowers were drunk with my sadness and their buds fell to the wretched ground.
18
SHE FINALLY REAPPEARED the next day. It was Sunday afternoon. The rain of the previous day had evaporated. It was blazing hot and Al-Nuzla was desolate. I was standing on the pavement opposite the nine-storey building. A woman came out of the building. I looked at her shoes. I stood paralysed. They were pink.
She looked left and right and waved with her gloved hand for me to come towards her. As I crossed the road, she hurried down the street and suddenly let a note drop.
Habibi,
Please forgive me for not having come out earlier. Remember, I warned you that I don’t own my time. So I’m sorry but this might happen again. This time it was an unforeseen event—I had to deal with something personal. I would love to share it with you, but it would need more than a note to tell you everything, my darling.
Anyway, everything is fine for now and I am so happy to be here, walking on the same street as you.
I saw you from my window standing outside in the suffocating heat. I never thought you would take so much punishment for me. I watched when the religious policeman unleashed his wrath on you. Your eyes, habibi, didn’t flinch one bit as his stick landed on your back. And when it rained unexpectedly last night and I looked through my window because I couldn’t sleep, I saw you standing tall. I could see your lips moving. I longed for the wind to carry your words to me, I wanted to stretch out my hand to touch your face, but instead I took out my drawing of your face and kissed you softly on your lips.
Darling, I am still scared to kneel in the street to pick up your notes. I feel ever more nervous of even dropping them for you. A few days ago, a friend told me that a girl she knows was caught by the religious police, just down the road from here, dropping a note to a boy.
But I have an idea. Let’s meet at the Yemeni shop tomorrow at half-past one, after prayers. I will be going there with my mother and everything you say to the shopkeeper will bounce off the walls and dance towards my waiting ears.
Salam from the heart.
I spent the rest of that day and night practising what I wanted to say in the Yemeni shop. I was determined to come up with something that would shake the ground of Jeddah. But I could think of nothing to say. Phrases that I had written for her inside my head evaporated when I tried to say them out loud. I stayed awake all night trying to find the words I wanted to speak to her.
I walked into the shop. The owner was busy stocking the shelf behind the counter with cigarette boxes. I looked up at the clock at the back of the shop: 13:25. As usual the incense swirled in the air, and the amplifier was softly playing suras from the Qur’an. The shopkeeper turned his head and looked at me with a smirk on his face.
I strolled to the back of the shop and started looking around. I picked up a beautiful incense burner made from earthy brown clay. I looked underneath and read that it was from Marib in Yemen, the land of the Queen of Sheba. The shopkeeper snarled at me, “You know that is too expensive for you. Put it back and hurry up and get your Pepsi.”
I stood holding my can in front of the counter. I looked at the clock. 13:35. She wasn’t here yet. I walked back to the fridge and changed my drink. “What’s wrong with the other one?” the shopkeeper asked.
I didn’t respond. I put the can on top of the counter and looked around in silence. A Mecca mural hung next to the cigarette shelf. The next shelf displayed a stack of yellow and white tins of Nido powder milk. On the other side, some colourful Yemeni clothing hung from the wall.
“Come on,” he said, “this is not a museum. Pay and leave.”
Just then I heard footsteps coming inside the shop. I turned my head. There were two women, and one of them was wearing the Pink Shoes.
“Come on,” the shopkeeper said, “I haven’t got all day for you.”
I couldn’t say a word.
I looked at the shopkeeper and then almost immediately I glanced back at the immaculate Pink Shoes which looked so out of place next to the dirty boxes on the shop floor. She was behind the corner of the shelves, out of sight from the shopkeeper. With one of her gloved hands she grabbed her abaya and pulled it up to show her right ankle. For the first time, I saw an inch of skin, her skin. I closed my eyes and gulped. There was a small scar on her ankle. I had doubted her so many times and wondered if I was chasing nothing but a ghost. But yet this woman existed. I saw the proof in the dark, shiny and smooth skin of her ankle. My dream of falling in love was alive. I almost wanted to jump up and down, shouting my happiness. The scar seemed like a small tattoo, it was short and curved, like a jewel of black stones clinched to her skin. I wondered if I ever would hold her feet one day and kiss that scar slowly and lovingly to erase the pain it might have caused her.
Suddenly I began to talk. “How are you?” I slurred at the shopkeeper.
“What? Speak up, boy,” he yelled.
“I said it is a nice…in the name…”
“Wait,” he said as he turned off the radio. “What did you say?”
I straightened my back and said confidently, “I just want to say something that I have wanted to tell you for a long time.”
“Since when do you speak? I didn’t think you had a tongue in your stupid head,” he said.
“That little scar on your ankle has just given me the inspiration to talk.”
“What ankle? Mister…”
“My dear, there is a time for everything. Let me say that it is with so much happiness that I introduce myself to you. My name is Naser, and I am from Eritrea.”
“I didn’t ask and I don’t want to know,” the shop owner said.
“I am twenty years old and I have been living in this country for ten years.”
“Yes, I know that. I have had the pleasure of serving you all these years,” he said.
“And even though I don’t know your name, I will call you Fiore, if you don’t mind, which means flower in Tigrinya, taken from the Italian.”
“My name is Safwan Saad Shakir, ya boy,” the shopkeeper said, leaning over the counter and grabbing my shoulders through my shirt, “as you would know if you ever bothered to talk to me. Now get out before I introduce you to my fist.”
He shoved me hard. I stumbled and fell against a shelf. I lunged back to the counter and added, “I have so much to tell you, so much to share with you, and all I want to do is talk and listen to your voice.”
“Well, I am delighted with that,” he said. “Why don’t I come out and break your back, that way you can sit here for ever and tell me your life story.”
He pushed me out of the shop, saying, “Next time, come to buy your Pepsi. If you want to talk go somewhere else.”
Habibi,
I felt incredible yesterday in the Yemeni shop. How I loved the name you gave me.
What a beautiful name Naser is too; and I loved your voice when I heard you speaking. When I saw you lifting up your chin slightly, your eyes closed for a moment, when I saw a small drop of sweat travelling down from your forehead without you wiping it, I knew then that I had been right all along.
My darling, as you know, September, pregnant with autumn, will soon be upon us. And autumn will bring with it Jeddah’s notoriously sudden and strong winds, which might blow my notes to the wrong feet. But I want to hear more from you, and I want us to write to each other at length rather than these small notes.
The blind imam of the Al-Nuzla mosque is also the religious teacher at our college. It is because he is blind that he is allowed to t
each us. College will open again when September comes and as I am called a ‘leader of leaders’ in our college, I am tasked by the headmaster to guide the imam inside. Habibi, if you could be his guide to the college from his house, and carry his bag, we could use him as our love-letter courier. The procedure would be simple. You would bring him to the door, ring the intercom, and say you are with the imam. Then I would come over and wait behind the gate. I would open the door. But you wouldn’t see me, as I need to stay behind the door. Then guide the imam through the open door and pass me his bag with your letter and I would take him from there. When you come to get the imam again after his lecture, you would find my letter for you hidden in his bag.
For the first time, though, if you manage it, just write a small note to let me know that you have succeeded in recruiting the imam as our love-letter courier.
Your Fiore
Later that day, I phoned Hilal to tell him I wanted to resign from my job and that I would appreciate it if he could tell my boss since I was scared to face his anger. It meant I had to spend my savings, which I still had from my work at Jasim’s café. But I wanted to dedicate myself entirely to this exciting journey. Hilal tried to persuade me to change my mind. “Leaving the job? How are you going to live?” he asked me repeatedly. I just answered that I needed some time to myself and that I had enough savings to pay for a few months’ rent.
“OK, do what you want,” he said, and put down the phone.
PART FIVE
BASIL
19
I HAD LONG been a convert to her ideas. Even though her plan meant I would miss her notes for a while, it made sense to keep the distance between us while I tried to recruit the blind imam as our love-letter courier. I had so much to say to Fiore.
I knew what I had to do if I were to try and get close to the imam at the grand mosque. So I immediately set to work. Although it was years since I had left school, I remembered most of the things I needed to know because each year we had covered religious studies in greater depth.
2008 - The Consequences of Love. Page 10
