Once we got home, I thought long and hard about my relationship with Faisal. I could continue it in secret, but I knew it would be hard when we weren’t going to the same school.
At some point I would mess up along the way, be caught by Baba again and sent on the next plane to Egypt, or, I could make the very tough decision to end things.
Every time I thought about the second option, I would have to rush myself to the bathroom before I burst into tears. I buried my face into a wad of loo roll, trying to muffle out my sobs. I didn’t want anyone at home to see or hear me crying and wonder what was up. They all assumed things were already over with Faisal.
For those first few weeks back in the Gulf, I didn’t check my email inbox, not even when the coast was clear for me to do so. I needed some time to build up the strength before I sent him an email to tell him I couldn’t carry on being his girlfriend anymore.
The events in Egypt still felt too fresh and I knew that if I saw an email from him now, I would cave in and carry on with our relationship in secret, risking my future.
When we returned after that fateful summer in Egypt, I accepted that my new school may be one of the private Islamic girls’ schools run by Wahhabis—followers of the extremely conservative sect of Islam that was endorsed by the governments in the Gulf.
It would be the type of school that was surrounded by high walls to protect, if not blind, the female students from the outside world. Where students would be wearing the niqab from the age of twelve, but be able to discard it along with their hijabs once they were safely within the inside perimeters of the school. A school where a cast of all female teachers would teach you that it was your absolute duty to obey your brothers, husbands and fathers, and your primary goal in life was to get married and push out babies.
You can imagine my surprise when Baba announced that he was putting Ahmed, Saffa and I in a British school that was co-ed. Instead of moving me further away from the opposite sex I would now be sitting next to them in class just as I had in London. I was confused. Had the events of the summer made Baba see the error of his ways? Was he going to relax and be more like the Baba he was in London?
“You silly girl,” Mum said, when I asked her why he had moved me to a co-ed school instead of an Islamic girls’ school. “It’s cheaper than the last school you went to, that’s why Baba chose it.”
The night before our first day at the new school, Baba sat me down. “You do not sit next to boys during class, and you will not mix with boys at break time. If I hear from anyone that you have been mixing with boys I’ll take you out of school and keep you at home.”
The trouble I’d caused over the summer had not been forgotten, but Baba had stopped bringing up my attempt to throw myself over the balcony in every other conversation. I was allowed to use the house phone under supervision, and I kept in touch with my friend Muneera.
“I turn up on the first day of term, and do you know what they’ve done?” Muneera asked me over the phone.
“No, go on, tell me,” I said.
“They’ve separated the boys and girls into two separate buildings and built a giant concrete wall between them.”
I had a feeling this had been down to me.
*
Baba kept a strict eye on how I dressed and behaved in public. He would give me a once-over every morning before we left to go to school. I ditched my big square headscarves for black rectangular scarves called shaylas worn by the Gulf girls.
“I don’t like these shaylas,” Baba said. “They don’t cover your chest properly.”
But I ignored him and eventually he stopped saying anything.
I started to wear make-up. At the beginning it was just a few coats of black mascara, but I soon made the addition of black eyeliner. All the girls wore make-up to school and I didn’t want to feel left out.
“It’s true that in Islam you’re allowed to wear some black eyeliner, but you’re putting on way too much,” Baba complained. “It’s haram to make yourself look attractive on purpose when you go out in public.”
“All the khaleeji girls wear make-up to school, Baba, I’m not the only one,” I said as politely as I could. I didn’t want to rub him up the wrong way just before school.
“I don’t care what the Gulf girls do. If they leapt into a fire would you join them? You shouldn’t be so easily influenced by others,” he replied sternly.
Perfume wasn’t within the means of my teenage budget, but I would buy scented body sprays and spritz those over my shayla before I went out. The Gulf girls had the real deal—the latest fragrances by Chanel and Dior.
“You do know that Allah and the Prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him, cursed the woman who wears perfume outside, don’t you?” Baba said one morning, as I sat in the back seat of the car on the way to school. “The woman who wears perfume outside is like an adulteress.”
“It’s just body spray,” I mumbled.
“Don’t answer me back!” he snapped, and we remained silent for the remainder of the journey to school, the melodic vocals of the man reading the Qur’an on the radio filling the hostile silence.
My brother Ahmed and I had made a new agreement to stay out of each other’s business. I found out he’d made friends with a group of boys who were constantly up to no good like smoking weed behind the sheds at break times. I used this new-found information to blackmail him into keeping his mouth shut.
Just like me, Ahmed was struggling to settle into this new culture. I felt like Mum and Baba didn’t pay him as much attention as they did our little brother Abdullah.
Abdullah was subservient. We’d moved to the Gulf when he was a young child and he had no idea of the freedoms of the West. All he knew was the blind submission to our parents that was taught to him by his Islamic Studies teachers at Primary School. Unless your parents ask you to leave your religion, you are taught as a Muslim that you must obey them, no matter what. People in the Gulf took this very seriously. A child’s opinion or feelings about a matter were never taken into account. Your parents always knew what was best for you.
Ahmed, like Saffa and I, remembered what life was like in England. He remembered what it was like to go to a school where teachers actually cared about their jobs, children had some freedom, and were asked for their viewpoints by adults. In England there were all sorts of extra-curricular activities and clubs you could join outside of school time. I joined the drama club, while Ahmed joined the football club. A child’s life in England felt full of promise.
In the Gulf, it was just go to school and then home. The teachers at my new school were mainly from India and Kenya. They weren’t on good salaries and had zero enthusiasm. No wonder I counted the hours until school was over.
Ahmed had just turned thirteen and it seemed almost overnight that he lost all his puppy fat. The chubby cheeks Mum had once loved kissing became a distant memory and his voice transformed from that of a chirpy boy to a gruff young man. He insisted on having his hair fully shaved. He hated his brown, curly Egyptian locks and instead he modelled his look on his hero, Vinnie Jones.
He remained relatively polite and well behaved at home, but acted up at school. Almost every week Baba would get a phone call from the deputy head teacher asking him to come in because Ahmed and his friends had made a teacher cry. Ahmed and his friends were known for being disruptive in class and making fun of the teacher’s Indian accent. Once Ahmed had shoved a teacher out of his way just because they’d caught him bunking lessons.
“He’s on his last chance now,” the deputy head teacher told Baba. “One more act of misbehaviour and we’ll expel him.”
All Baba did was gave him a lecture. It wasn’t fair! Every wrong step I took was met with severe measures. But it was only so long before Ahmed pushed Baba too far.
On a relatively calm Saturday afternoon, Baba received a call from the local police station. He jumped up from the sofa and shuffled his shoes on.
“Who was it? What’s wrong?” Mum asked when she saw the panic on Baba’s face.
“It’s Ahmed, he’s been arrested,” Baba said before he stormed out of the flat, slamming the front door behind him.
“Oh God,” Mum said, her eyes raised as if she were pleading to the heavens. “There’s never an end to trouble with you children.”
It was late in the evening before we heard the key turn in the lock and Baba strode in with Ahmed walking behind him, his head hanging low.
“Caught for stealing chocolates from the local supermarket. The supermarket manager called the police,” Baba told Mum.
He held Ahmed up by his t-shirt and marched him into his bedroom, shutting the door behind them. I winced, knowing what was coming next.
The first two whips of Baba’s leather belt were met by what sounded like something in between a yelp and a laugh from Ahmed.
“Are you finding this funny?” Baba shouted, followed by more audible strikes of the belt. “You steal and you ruin my reputation and all you can do is laugh about it?”
“I wasn’t laughing!” Ahmed replied.
We heard a thud and Mum, now worried, walked over and opened the bedroom door. Saffa and I tiptoed behind her, staying back far enough to not get noticed. Ahmed was lying on the floor and his face was scarlet.
“Move,” Baba said to Mum, and pushed her out of the doorway. “This is all your fault. You treat your children like they’re your friends and they have no respect for their father!”
He stormed off to his bedroom and locked the door loudly behind him. As soon as Baba was out of sight, we crowded around Ahmed.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Mum asked, helping him to his feet and placing him gently on his bed.
Ahmed held the side of his face. ‘“It wasn’t me who stole the chocolates. It was my friend Omar. I was with him and the police arrested me too. I tried to tell them and Baba but no one wanted to hear me out.”
“Wasn’t there any CCTV?” Saffa asked.
“Yeah, and it clearly shows Omar stuffing the chocolate bars into his pockets and up his hoodie, but apparently in this country, being with a friend who is committing a crime makes me an accomplice and guilty too. The police gave me a warning.”
“But it was just a few chocolate bars, not an armed robbery,” I said.
Mum tutted. “That’s not the point, Sara. It’s chocolate today and then cars tomorrow!”
Ahmed was grounded for two weeks and Baba made him promise he would stop being friends with Omar.
*
It had been two months since my last email to Faisal and my mind was made up. My heart was racing as I sat in my IT lesson and instead of doing my work I opened my email inbox. I clicked ‘Sign In’ and saw 50 unread emails from him, one for almost every day since I left Egypt. I was scared that if I opened them my dissolve would crumble. I opened a new email to write back to him.
Dear Faisal,
I know you have been waiting for weeks to hear from me. I’m sorry. My dad found out about us while we were on holiday in Egypt and was going to leave me behind to live with my aunt. The only way I was able to come back was to promise to end things with you. So, as much as it kills me, we can’t be together anymore. I hope you understand. I will never forget you or the special time we spent together. Promise me you will be brave and grab the first opportunity you get to be free and live independently of your dad. Sara
I read through my email several times. It was still not too late to discard it. But then I shook my head, closed my eyes, took a deep breath and clicked send. Once I made sure it had been sent successfully, I deactivated my email account.
“So what’s the story behind you and your signature red lipstick?” Sophie asked.
Today we were strolling along the South Bank by the River Thames. Springtime had finally arrived and she was wearing a t-shirt while I was wearing a flowy long-sleeved kaftan. It felt like summer even though it was early April.
“For some reason red lipstick was one of those trivial things that really tipped my dad over. It was a little act of rebellion I was brave enough to carry out,” I said. “It started when I was at university.”