The Consequences of Love [Paperback]

Under the hot sun, the Jeddah streets make a scene from an old black-and-white movie: the women dressed like long, dark shadows and the men in their light cotton tunics. Naser's friends have all left town for cooler climes but he can't get away: he's an outsider in Saudi and he needs to hold down his job at the local carwash. During his time off, he sits beneath his favourite palm tree, writing to the mother he has left behind in Africa and yearning for the glamorous Egyptian actress he hopes to meet one day. It's hard to adjust to a world that puts up so many barriers between men and women: walls in the mosque, divider panels in the buses and veils on the street. Naser feels increasingly trapped, not least by the religious police who keep watch through the shaded windows of their government jeeps.

A splash of colour arrives in Naser's world when, unexpectedly, a small piece of paper is dropped at his feet. It is a love note, from a woman whose face he has never seen and whose voice he has never heard. She tells him that she will wear a pair of pink shoes the next time she passes so that he can pick her out from the other women in their identical black abayas. Erotic tension runs high; Naser and his 'habibati' begin to exchange letters. But in moments of doubt the pink shoes seem to lead him into a cul-de-sac of thwarted desire, fraught with danger. Relationships between unmarried men and women are illegal under the strict Wahhibism of Saudi state rule - and it's not long before their real, but illicit, love must face the hardest test of all...

It is summer in Jeddah but Naser's life seems bleak. An immigrant in an unfriendly land, his friends have fled town for cooler climes and left him to his dead-end job and the scrutiny of the religious police, who keep watch through the shaded windows of their government jeeps. He spends his time writing to his mother in Africa and yearning to meet a woman - but in a country that separates men and women with walls and veils he feels increasingly trapped. Then, one of the black-clad women drops a piece of paper at his feet, instructing him to follow her pink shoes and suddenly his black and white life blooms into colour.

But relationships between unmarried men and women are illegal under the strict Wahhibism of Saudi state rule - and it's not long before their forbidden love must face the hardest test of all...