Looking back to when I was a school boy in the 1980s, I often wondered how boys coped with the impossibility of falling in love. In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, it was by no means guaranteed that a boy might even see a girl, never mind fall in love.
Saudi Arabia, in line with its strict and literal interpretation of Islam, known as Wahhibism, forbids relationships between unmarried men and women and imposes sex segregation in public places. Potential lovers are separated by countless barriers: in buses, panels divide the sexes; amusement parks have different areas for men and for women; and on the streets, women wear full burkas, locally known as abayas. Cinemas and theatres are banned throughout the country and perhaps most absurd of all, engagement parties and weddings are even segregated!
When I was there, the feared religious police patrol the streets and shopping malls, and could pop up almost anywhere. Their mandate was to make sure that Saudi society remains pure and moral in accordance with the teachings; and that any sort of contact between men and women did not take place if they were not family or already married. Those caught practising free love were taken to a public square and lashed. But in a society obsessed with honour, the consequences could be real and dangerous even after the punishment and pain of flogging had long subsided, particularly for the women.
Ironically, the one place the girls gained a relative advantage was on the street, behind their abayas. Through their face veils, they have good views of all the young men and what they look like. Some girls took the opportunity to translate their desires into actions. But these were no ordinary girls. They were bold. They were decisive. They tried to make love possible. They were girls who, despite the consequences, took risks to seek the simplest of pleasures, the pleasure of courting a potential lover. And above all, these girls were creative. In the 1980s, modern technologies like mobile phones and the internet didn’t exist, and in a country where men greedily held access to telephone landlines at homes, girls had to find other ways to communicate with the opposite sex. They did this by dropping secret notes in front of the boys they fancied.
At my high school in Jeddah, we often discussed the exciting phenomena of the love notes. We all prayed that somehow we would end up receiving one but only a lucky few got to be recipients. As well as carrying the promise of love, these notes were also tickets into the alluring, yet hidden world of girls. The notes carried the scent of perfume and the words they contained expressed the sender’s intimate feelings. These notes were also highly seductive and spoke of these girls’ frustrations which exactly mirrored our experience as boys. I left Jeddah without being one of the chosen boys; I wasn’t plucked out of everyday life into an extraordinary love affair. But the idea and symbolism of the love note never lost its significance for me.
My novel is set in that world of Jeddah, during the 1980s, a time when a veiled girl decides to walk out onto the street with a note for her lover. The Consequences of Love is written from the perspective of Naser, a twenty-year-old man who came to Jeddah when he was ten from Eritrea in East Africa. When he was a boy in Africa, Naser was brought up by his mother and lived in a world of women. As he grows up in Saudi, he never forgets the women who have influenced and shaped his early life. The prospect of female company is essential to his search for happiness but in Jeddah he finds himself living with a heart that is longing to beat for a lover.
Naser thinks that he will never find love in Jeddah. Where is he going to find a woman in this gender segregated society? So he lives entirely in a man’s world, and is forced to put aside any ideas of love until he returns to Eritrea – which he hopes to do once his country’s war with its neighbour, Ethiopia, comes to an end.
But one afternoon, when he is resting beneath his favourite palm tree from Jeddah’s searing heat, a girl dashes towards him and drops a note on his lap. It is a note declaring love from a mysterious character, ‘Al-Nuzla girl’ (or ‘Fiore’ as Naser names her later). As Naser reads Fiore’s first note – in which she confesses that she has been in love with him ever since she first saw him, over a year before – all he knows of her is a woman veiled in abaya head to toe. Who is she? What does she look like? Is she married, a widow, old or young? There are so many questions, so many uncertainties. Under the veil anything is possible. Naser gives in to the doubts and reluctantly rips the note apart.
But Fiore is persistent. She comes back again and again. Her determination is clear when she writes:
‘Habibi, I am taking a great risk in doing this. I walked past this tree everyday since last Tuesday, more than once, hoping to find you. But for the past four days, the tree has been alone. I am not sure what you are thinking, but if I have to, I will come to this spot every day for the rest of my life to convince you that you are my special one.’
Fiore follows this note with others written in a poetic, playful and teasing style that begins slowly to draw Naser to her. He is intrigued by the character beneath the abaya and decides to pursue her despite the risks.
Then, Fiore brings colour to Naser’s world. She wears a pair of pink shoes so that he can spot her amongst the other women wearing identical abayas. The Pink Shoes are a secret signal to Naser but they are also an intimate way in to Fiore’s private universe. The colour and the elegant design of her shoes become an erotic sign: maybe pink is her favourite colour, the colour of her lipstick or nail varnish? Maybe she has as elegant a taste in her skirts and dresses as she does in her shoes?
The Pink Shoes also tell Naser that Fiore is a strong woman and knows what she wants: she is making it clear that communicating her love for him in notes isn’t enough. She wants more than that. She is willing to go all the way. As she writes, ‘I swore that slowly I will take myself into my habibi’s arms without such a miracle. This I vow to you.’ Just what has Fiore got planned that she believes she can destroy the obstacles between her and her lover? Will she honour her vow whatever the cost? And what about Naser? Will he too be prepared to risk everything for their love?