The Consequences of Love
SynopsisPlot
Naser and his younger brother were sent to Saudi Arabia to avoid the war back home, but though they live with their conservative Muslim uncle they remain under the watchful, wrathful eyes of the religious police, who monitor the community’s every action, govern the near indestructible boundaries between men and women–walls in mosques, panels on buses, separate visiting quarters in houses, and, of course, the black veil, or abaya, that adorns the women–and punish any disobedience by public beating or death. But a splash of color arrives in Naser’s world when unexpectedly a small piece of paper is dropped at his feet. It is a love note from a girl whose face he has never seen and whose voice he has never heard. To identify her among the sea of veiled women, she instructs him to look for a pair of pink shoes peeking out from under her draped abaya. Intrigued and encouraged, Naser rebels against Wahhabist Islamic convention and begins a clandestine correspondence with the girl. Yet even as the barriers that divide them begin to crumble under the weight of their passionate prose and devotion, the lovers’ illicit affair will face the ultimate and most heartrending test.
Story
About this book
Naser is a young Eritrean immigrant in Jeddah, sent to Saudi Arabia with his younger brother to escape war at home. They live with a conservative uncle, though daily life is governed by the religious police, who enforce strict separation between men and women. Walls divide mosques, panels partition buses, and women move through the city covered in the black abaya. He stays behind to work through the hot season.
His routine shifts when a folded note lands at his feet. It comes from a girl he has never seen or heard speak. She tells him to find her by looking for pink shoes beneath the hem of her abaya. A secret exchange of letters follows, carried out against rules that punish contact between unrelated men and women with public beating or death.
Addonia's debut novel draws its tension from small physical details: paper, ink, a glimpse of colour, and the narrow gaps where two people can briefly stand near each other. The author was born in Eritrea and lived as a refugee in Sudan and Saudi Arabia, and the book's picture of exile, work, and surveillance is built from that ground.
