“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.
58
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.
59
THE 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 pill
ows, 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.
When the pain becomes too much, I go out. I walk on Al-Nuzla Street, the same street where I once felt like a queen when you looked down at my feet, as if my shoes were the most beautiful thing in the world. But now all that too is gone with you. My shoes are ordinary now, they mean nothing to anyone around here.
I find myself walking on and on, my Pink Shoes passing blind onlookers, and a bus ride brings me to the Red Sea.
I am now sitting on the ‘oud player’s bench, writing this letter to you. It has been a month since you were arrested.
I have come here to tell you that I have finally taken the decision I have postponed making. I have lost hope that a miracle will bring me closer to you; that someone will bring us back together. Hilal told me you were going to Sudan and I did my best to try and borrow money from my friends to pay for a forged passport and a ticket, but they all said they couldn’t help because their fathers and husbands kept their money. I even tried to look for work but my father shut the door on my face saying that no woman in his house works. I even started doubting whether we would ever meet again.
But yesterday afternoon, habibi, I made up my mind. I was sitting here, with my back tojeddah, looking out to the sea over which you had looked out so many times. I felt the spirit of the ‘oud player, whom you told me so much about, sitting next to me, silently staring at the sea. I closed my eyes, fearing the fate that lay ahead of me when I reopened them.
With my eyelids cast down, like the shutter of the window in my room, I saw the life that was waiting for me in Al-Nuzla. I knew that if I went back, I would be buried under men’s rules.
I felt cornered between the raging sea and the men of Al-Nuzla. Which one would it be? Death awaited me in both directions.
I kept my eyes screwed shut, taking myself deeper into the hollowness of my life.
When I opened them, I looked to the sea, and the high tide.
I wanted to rip off my veil and run, run so fast into the water, the mesmerising waves, where I would be like an excited child, naively waving about, shouting, yelling and laughing at the brief freedom, at the shortlived beauty of life, before all of it came to an end once I reached the depths.
But I didn’t move. My feet felt heavy, as if my Pink Shoes had grown roots deep in the sand.
I remembered the promise I made to you the last time you were in my room.
I felt like howling, matching the sea’s roar. But in silence, I found my hand moving to my bag next to me on the bench, containing your diary, your memory. I put it on my lap and bent over it, crying.
I tried to hold back from reading it ever since Hilal gave it to me, but yesterday I needed to hear your words, I needed you close to me to help me out of my situation.
I saw page after page about your life in Jeddah, from the moment you arrived, to the day when you were fifteen and you were sent by your uncle to your perverse kafeel, and your time in Jasim’s café. I saw so much pain, so much suffering chained to the pages and your striving to break free. And when I finished reading, I bowed my head and could think of nothing else but my aching desire to hold you tight, and to tell you how much you mean to me.
I hurried to Hilal’s house, thinking about nothing but being with you. I begged him to help me with my plan. He was shocked and tried to change my mind saying that I shouldn’t trade my dignity, and that patience was the hope of lovers. He offered to ask his aging kafeel Jawad Ibn Khalid, who had left suddenly for medical treatment in America, to help me when he returned from his trip in a few months’ time. But I told Hilal that I could not be sure whether his kafeel would be able to assist, and that I had no time to waste, since my father had recently announced that he had found a husband for me and that this time he wouldn’t let even my mother stop him. What would a husband do to a wife when he found out he wasn’t her first? I had to act now.
He reluctantly took my proposal to your kafeel, Bader Ibn Abd-Allah, who you told me has the power to get me a passport and order customs officers to wave me through without question.
Habibi, as I get ready to give your kafeel what you had to give him when you were fifteen, I know you won’t judge me. I have to do what it takes to get a life that is rightfully mine, I have no regrets whatsoever. I don’t want to think about what will happen. Instead, I only think about when I will see you and remind myself of the promise I made you on our last Friday afternoon together. Can you remember that afternoon, habibi? We had just one candle glowing in my dark room. We were standing naked in front of each other. Half of your face was covered by the darkness, half of you glowed in the candlelight.
“Fiore?” you whispered.
I didn’t respond.
“Fiore? ”
I reached with my hand to the table and grabbed the candle, and held it with both my hands. I examined your face in silence. Our faces came closer, near to the flame. The fire turned your lips a stark yellow. Sweat trickled slowly, like tears, down your lower lip. We became a mirror of each other in our sadness, and love, pain and longing.
And when the candle dropped between our feet, when the darkness claimed the room, when your lips fell on mine like a lid, I wanted to tell you, before you left, that I had no regrets because life is priceless, because I am too young to die, because I will never let them bury me alive, not when my heart still loves you and has so much left to give, not before my eyes that adore you, but still have so much to see, go blind. “Habibi,” I wanted to begin, as your teeth bit on my lips, as your breath accelerated the beating of my heart, as your tongue hypnotised mine. “Naser? Habibi?” I had so much to tell you, but my words were dispersed just like your hands moving over my body. And when we began to twirl around each other as if we were on a sacred dance floor, dancing in tandem, joined from head to toe, and as we continued to move in a circle breaking everything in our path until we finally found the bed, we stopped. I wanted to scream, “Naser, listen to me.” But you put your right hand under my left thigh, your left under my right, and you lifted me off the ground so high that I felt I was about to touch the stars, and when you swung your body, we fell on to the bed like two birds from the sky. My hair fell over your face, my breasts pressed tight against your chest, and when I plunged between your thighs, I whispered a promise in your ear, “Habibi, ifjasim betrays you, and I am left behind alone, I will not succumb. I will not be another anecdote in the imam’s sermons to frighten future lovers. I will not protect my father’s honour, because this is my life. No. I will take myself across the Red Sea just as I brought you to my room. Whatever happens, I will not die. I’ll do whatever it takes, because I haven’t lived yet, because I lust for life. And life, I know, is beautiful.”
Glossary
Abaya: veil—the large, black cloak dress worn by women in Saudi Arabia
Alhamdulillah: thanks be to Allah
Allah wa Akbar
: Allah is great
Assalamu alaikum: a greeting—Peace be upon you. See Wa ‘alaikumu salam
Astaqfirullah: May Allah grant us forgiveness
Azan: call to prayer
Bismillah: in the name of Allah
Eid al-Fitr: festival of fast-breaking marking the end of Ramadan
Gabi: traditional white cotton scarf worn in Ethiopia and Eritrea
Gutra: a traditional Arab headdress
Habibi⁄Habibati: My love
Halal: permissible under Islamic law
Haratn: forbidden under Islamic law
Hijra: migration
Insha Allah: if Allah wills it
Iqama: residence permit
Jallabiyah: a long robe worn by Sudanese men
Kabba: building located within the Great Mosque in Mecca which houses the Black Stone. Muslims all over the world turn towards the Kabba when they pray
Kabsa: classic Saudi Arabian dish made from rice, meat and spices
Kafeel: a sponsor. Every non-Saudi living or working in the country has to be sponsored by a Saudi. The kafeel system gives full control to the Saudis over the lives of the foreigners they sponsor. The kafeel has the power to withhold the passports of those under their control and deport them whenever they choose
Krar: (Tigrinya) a traditional Eritrean musical instrument
Mahram (pi. mahaarim): unmarriageable kin with whom sexual intercourse is forbidden
Majlis: reception room
Masha Allah: what Allah wishes. Often used as a compliment for something good
Mihrab: a recess in a mosque that indicates the direction of Mecca
Minbar: where an imam delivers sermons
2008 - The Consequences of Love. Page 26
