Heartbreaker: Love, secrets and terror

by Nick Louth

  ‘Rifat, it is just a trip for you and me. Neither of your mothers, nor your brothers or sisters are coming. You are my eldest boy, my pride and joy, and I have need to speak to you. You are approaching manhood, and this will be a test for you, and for your faith.

  However, for all the expected hardships and excitement of the trip, the greatest shock to Rifat came from a completely unexpected direction.

  * * *

  It came on the evening of the third day in the empty quarter, after a meal of barbecued lamb and couscous, when the fire had burned down and the cooling night breeze had swept away the memory of heat and chilled the sweat on their bodies. Rifat was looking up at the carpet of stars, a vast canopy of the Milky Way that hung heavy with radiance and gave the desert a cold luminescence. His nostrils were full of the smell of wood smoke, his belly warm with a filling meal. Rifat’s father adjusted the unfamiliar white ghutrah he had wrapped around his head to keep off the fine blowing sand and cleared his throat several times, a signal for paying attention. Rifat returned the satellite phone which he had been toying with to the dust-proof plastic Zip-loc bag. He made a mental note to clean off the lamb grease and attendant sand which had now stuck to it. Reluctantly he turned his glance to the man who had brought him up, his greying beard, deep-set brown eyes and proud forehead. He felt that some momentous declaration was coming, something that would explain this exciting trip. His first thought was that perhaps it was about the marriage of one of his sisters, but then it occurred to Rifat that perhaps it was his own marriage that was being discussed. A bride selected for him. He found the thought unbelievably exciting.

  ‘Rifat, there is something I need to tell you, something that I have neglected to tell you. You may recall asking me two years ago why Mother Umniya, and Mother Badriyeh and all your aunts began to veil themselves in front of you?’

  ‘Yes. But I don’t remember what you said.’ Rifat remembered the conversation, because he was just proudly showing the battery-powered lighting circuit he had built for Mother Badriyeh’s wardrobe, which lit the inside when the door was opened. His excited voice had become croaky and intermittently deep as he was explaining how it worked, and Mother Badriyeh, after congratulating him, said that ‘the time had come,’ and pulled her hijab close around her face.

  ‘I am in some ways glad you don’t recall,’ his father said. ‘I talked of our guardianship, kafala, of you that requires this. You will have noticed that the mothers of friends at school do not cover in front of them.’

  ‘I thought that this was because of the blood line.’

  ‘It is. Where there is no blood in common, they must cover.’

  ‘Well, I understand this with Mother Badriyeh, because she is your first wife, and not my mother. But I do not understand why my own mother does. Is Mother Umniya not Mahram?’ Rifat had understood the lines of kinship in which the Koran had laid out the Maharim, the women of blood ties whom he could never marry, and who did not ever need to cover in front of him.

  ‘Mother Umniya is not among your Maharim. Neither is she Rada because you were weaned before she began to look after you.

  ‘Is there some secret in Mother Umniya’s blood line?’ Rifat asked.

  His father looked directly at him. ‘No, Rifat. She is my lawful wife. But I have to tell you something that is bound to come as a shock. She is not your birth mother. And I am sorry to have to tell you that I am not your father either. You are a duty of kafala for us, as the Prophet, peace be upon him, requires of us.’

  Tears started into Rifat’s eyes. ‘Am I not of your blood? Am I not of our family at all. Am I not really Rifat ibn Juluwi Aziz al Khalifa?’

  ‘You are of my blood, and I regard you as my child, as dearly beloved as any of your brothers and sisters. But your mother is my younger sister, whom you know as Amma Tazi. So you are actually my nephew.’

  Rifat was stunned, speechless. He remembered receiving extravagant gifts in childhood from Amma Tazi, a bicycle and just two years ago a fantastic top of the range Nintendo games console. He thought he could remember his amma a lot from when he was young. How she would cuddle him, and call him ‘my special little dove’. She was his favourite aunt, and indulged his childish kisses. But he didn’t recall seeing her for some years, though she always made a point of talking to him over the telephone during Eid. All he remembered was that she was very pretty, and other-worldly, like a film star. He had often looked at the photograph on the wall in the dining room, admiring her cheeky smile, big challenging eyes and her thick dark hair spilled daringly from the loosely cast hijab. He had always thought of her as a wayward and affectionate older sister. The stories about her travels and work were often bandied about at the table, with some pride by his father, but met with sullen indifference by both his mothers. Just once, when he was young, he had overheard Mother Badriyeh scolding her ten year old daughter Mariam for playing with boys in the street. When she had finished, and the girl had left in tears he heard Mother Badriyeh say under her breath. ‘Carry on like this you will end up a sharmuta like Amma Tazi.’ Rifat had never heard Mother Badriyeh spit such a word, and though he didn’t know what it meant, he felt it must be something very bad. Mother Badriyeh, who seemed much older than his own more strict Mother Umniya, was usually soft and kind in her words. Rifat rushed to look up the word.

  Whore. A common, dirty whore. This had made his aunt sound more enticing, more intriguing. But now, if this woman was his birth mother, that was different. That was disastrous. Son of a whore. Suddenly, Rifat found himself an outcast, dependent on the charity of a better branch of the family. Cut adrift from the network of blood ties that provide the network of all Arab society.

  ‘If Amma Tazi is my mother, why did she not want me. Why does she no longer come to see me?’

  His father sighed. ‘This is a difficult question, and one I think she needs to answer. But as you know Amma Tazi is married and lives in Europe. She has spent time in her life to become educated, and fulfil all of the promise that Allah puts into a woman as much as the man. She has seen her duties in a way that many here would not approve of, yet she is my sister and I admire and support her in what she has done. It was always a difficult path for a woman in our country, and without my late father’s enlightened attitude, may his spirit remain in our lives, it would have been impossible. He encouraged her to travel, and to study abroad. When she asked me to look after you, to bring you up, it was something that I could do. It was written as a duty in the Koran, and I could not reject it. And would not have wanted to.’

  The sparkling firmament above dissolved into a blur as Rifat’s eyes swam with tears. Anger and upset mixed with a feeling of being lost and unwanted.

  ‘So who is my real father?’ Rifat persisted, letting a handful of sand course through his clenched fist.

  There was a long and awkward silence. ‘That I cannot tell you. However, Amma Tazi has at my request promised to tell you everything now you are becoming a man. I am flying to Athens in two weeks’ time to see her. You will come too. She will meet you there, and answer all your questions. I am sorry that there are so many unanswered questions. However, I am relieved that we could wait until you were on the brink of manhood before having to explain. It would have been much harder when you were just thirteen.’

  Rifat turned to the man who had been his night and day through all his young life. The man who had fed and clothed the whole family, a scion of the royal house of Saud, a man of standing in the world. Rifat had worshipped him, taking his aloofness as a sign of his importance, of the blood they shared. But now he was cast adrift. A mere nephew to the man he loved, fathered by some faceless man somewhere in the hidden history of an aunt he had only rarely met. Bereft, he held out his arms to seek comfort. But the man who he had always regarded as his father had already turned away to clear up the dishes.

  * * *

  A week later, back in his room in Medina, Rifat had a revelation. It was just after dawn but still dark when the distant amplified
blare of the muezzin tore Rifat from the arms of another world, a delicious embrace in which he was being held close. A remembrance of a perfume, of comfort and love, permeated all of his senses. The wisps of the dream retreated like curtains in a breeze, the light of day evaporating precious images. But one bilious taste was left. Shame. The shame of illicit desire. Something was very wrong. He knew immediately that he must have been dreaming about Amma Tazi. In fact, the familiarity of the receding scent now convinced him that he had dreamed of her before, many times. Why had he not known this? How could this have been so hidden? Then there was more, a reminiscence stirred by the scent. From deep in his childhood, perhaps even when he was a baby. He was feverish, sick, lost in a huge bed, never-ending dunes of white pillows and quilts. In his nostrils was a comforting scent, one quite different from the sandalwood that Mother Umniya used. Silhouetted against the window was a woman, wavy dark hair uncovered, holding her arms out to him. ‘My little dove,’ she cooed, sweeping across the white hills of pillows, a giant, powerful comforting presence. ‘Let me hold you.’ She descended on him and he surrendered to her warmth, her perfume. On his cheek he felt the heat of her lips. The power of the memory forced a choking sob from him. The muezzin, crying for his attention to God, for Fajr, was overwhelmed.

  * * *

  Rifat’s upset had turned to a cold fury by the time he was on the flight to Athens. The novelty of being on a jet for the first time, of seeing the scorched browns of Arabia turn to the blue of the Mediterranean so far below, were not enough of a distraction from the humiliation he felt. The son of a whore, abandoned and hidden away. And no father at all. He had read and had discussed with friends at school the rumours that western women would sleep with men before marriage, sometimes many men. One of his friends who at the age of fourteen had been lucky enough to visit London said that the Internet there was an ocean of whoredom, with offers of free sex from girls all over the world, and naked pictures that would send you mad with lust. There were no such sites on the Internet in Saudi Arabia. He and his friends had spent enough time looking to be sure of that. Another friend had disclosed that his own father who was working in the oil fields in the east of the country would drive across the causeway to Bahrain at the weekend instead of coming home, and that in the hotels of Manama, Russian and Filipina whores would knock on your door at midnight to negotiate a price. The friend’s mother had found a condom packet in the car and there had been a hell of an argument with his father. The infidel world, with all its Satanic temptations was known to be on the doorstep. Rifat had grown up with that reality and accepted it. But for that world to have tainted him from birth was a horror he didn’t think he would ever recover from.

  In the taxi to the hotel, his father pointed out the Acropolis, and other sights of Greek antiquity, but Rifat was becoming ever more morose and angry. His father had noticed his mood, and admonished him, but that just made him more determined to punish the woman whose actions had made him kalet, a bastard.

  ‘I’m surprised you are taking this attitude,’ his father said. ‘There was a time when you couldn’t take your eyes off her.’

  ‘I don’t really remember her.’

  ‘Don’t you recall what you said, at Eid one time. You can only have been nine. She gave you a present, and you said that when you grew up you would like to marry her.’

  ‘It is not true!’

  ‘Oh, Rifat,’ his father laughed gently. ‘Don’t be upset. One day you will understand, I promise you.’

  No, he thought. You are wrong. I never will.

  Amma Tazi had chosen an expensive restaurant and was already there at the table with her Greek husband when they arrived. As Rifat walked nervously across the dining room by his father’s side, he saw a woman in her mid-thirties in a loosely-tied hijab of blue and gold, her thick dark hair spilling across her shoulders. Her husband, a smiling portly man at least fifteen years older than her made the introductions in English, referring to his wife as Taseena and gestured for them to sit. Amma Tazi took off her sunglasses and smiled warmly at Rifat. She leaned across the large linen-covered table, took his hand and addressed him in Arabic. ‘Rifat. I am so very happy to see you after so many years. I have much to say to you, and so many apologies to give.’

  Rifat had promised himself that he wouldn’t talk to her, wouldn’t smile at her, or react to her in any way. But he was shocked to find himself unable to resist a small smile, unable to avoid staring into those dark, expressive eyes, around which just a few fine lines were showing. She was undeniably beautiful, his mother. How she had betrayed him. He suddenly pulled his hand back, tore his gaze away and looked through the window. The table, the best in the house, had views across a marina packed with enormous white yachts, where women reclined semi-clad on many of the sunny decks.

  ‘Rifat,’ his father said sternly. ‘Don’t be childish.’

  Rifat saw that Amma Tazi was smiling wanly at her husband, who was saying something to her in Greek, and stroking her shoulder. The awkwardness was broken by the arrival of plates of food: salad, humous and pitta bread, thick yoghurt, olives in garlic and a spinach tart called spanakopita.

  Rifat’s father and the Greek started filling plates and making small talk in English, while Rifat alternated between looking out of the window and glowering at his mother.

  ‘Is he my father?’ Rifat said in Arabic, gesturing at the Greek.

  ‘No, Nico isn’t your father. He is my husband. We have two children of our own, much younger than you.’

  ‘Is my father a Muslim?’

  ‘No, Rifat. Neither is he an Arab.’ She watched his face, and then said. ‘You know, it isn’t easy for me either. I wasn’t able to look after you when you were young. I couldn’t give you the home or the care that you had a right to expect. I was very fortunate that my big brother is such a kind and generous man to be a guardian to you. He and I have made sure that you wanted for nothing in your childhood.’

  ‘Except a mother,’ Rifat said, tearing a piece of pitta bread and chewing it.

  ‘You had two mothers, Mother Umniya and Mother Badriyeh, who both looked after…’

  ‘Well, actually, Mother Badriyeh says you are a sharmuta.’ Rifat wanted to hurt her, to wound and maim just as she had wounded him.

  Rifat’s father immediately seized him by the arm. ‘Get up. You stupid donkey. Out.’ He had rarely seen him so angry. Rifat walked with his father out onto the balcony of the restaurant and glanced back as he did so. Amma Tazi, Taseena, his mother was wiping tears from her eyes, while the Greek comforted her. Good, thought Rifat. She should weep for what she has done. And if she won’t tell me who my father is, inshallah, I will find out. How could he abandon me without a care?

  * * *

  Taseena was still crying in the taxi on the way home with Nico. Her husband’s arm about her only added weight to the guilt that shrouded her like the darkest niqab. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘I had wanted to wait until he was older, then at least he might be old enough to understand. But the decision was forced upon me by those women.’

  ‘It’s very tough on him, Tas,’ Nico said. ‘To cope with all these revelations at once. To discover he is adopted and that the woman who was an adored aunt is actually his mother. Even adults would struggle with the emotions this unleashes.’

  ‘Badrieh and Umniya have poisoned him against me. Turned him into a little zealot. They couldn’t wait to let him know. They just couldn’t wait.’

  ‘They’re just jealous, Tas,’ Nico said, running his hand over her hair. ‘They’ve always envied your freedom.’

  ‘I’ve had to fight for my freedom, Nico. You know that. But to them all I am is a bad mother and a bad Muslim.’

  Nico turned to her. Even with a tear-stained face, and reddened eyes, she still took his breath away. ‘Tas. He will soften. Given time. There will be plenty of opportunities to let him understand. He’s intelligent, and underneath it all he adores you. When there is love, there is always h
ope.’

  * * *

  Rifat may have been forced to apologise to Taseena, but that didn’t change anything. She was no longer Amma Tazi to him, and he rejected her as a mother just as she had rejected him, rejected his love that had been there for the taking. He had something now to focus on, something to turn his mind to. And a long flight back to Medina to think what should be the next step on this long, slow-burning plan. First, he would start with his birth, 12th September 1990. Was this a true date? If so, it was a question of working out exactly where this hateful Taseena was based at the time, and who she may have been involved with.

  Back home, a few subtle questions to Mother Umniya in the kitchen as she was preparing a meal brought forward a cascade of revelations, secrets that she said had been bottled up for too many years, and which she was now more than happy to share with him now that he was a man in the sight of God, and could be righteously guided by the Prophet, peace be upon him. She confirmed that she had seen Rifat’s birth certificate, and the date was accurate. Rifat had been born in a hospital in Lebanon and she had gone over with his father to pick him up, when he was a few days old. Amma Tazi had pleaded not to see the child, because she hadn’t wanted to become too attached. She had said that the man who was the father knew she was pregnant, but didn’t want the child. The son of a dog was married already to someone else. He had made Amma Tazi promise to have an abortion. At this, Mother Umniya shuddered, and said that this as much as anything was the reason that she and his adoptive father had agreed to kafala, and were happy to be his guardian. Rifat became paralysed with a cold hatred as the horrible truth emerged about his mother. That this heretical woman, with her cavalier disregard for Islam, could have considered an abortion, ending his life before it had even begun, was like an icy dagger in his heart.