Where Pigeons Don't Fly (14 page)

Moreover, his father followed his progress at school and made sure that nobody upset or belittled him, even if it was no more than mocking or hurtful words in front of his classmates. How shocked Suleiman had been to discover the marks of the Qur'an teacher's beating on Fahoudi's fingers. He had accompanied him back to the school that same afternoon. Only the duty master was around, but Suleiman threatened to make a complaint to the board of education the following day and expose the school in the papers if the teacher didn't offer him a written apology and a promise never to do it again.

To Soha he would say that he didn't want anyone to hurt Fahd, not even to treat him roughly, so that he wouldn't grow up broken inside, but it didn't always happen like that. Despite himself, he had to sit there the time Umm Yasser caught Yasser, Fahd and Hissa's son, Faisal, climbing on the kitchen table and hurling eggs on the ground until the kitchen floor became a sticky yellow. Or rather, she had caught Fahd and Faisal, while
Yasser ran into the street. She packed their eyes with table salt until their wails filled the living room, then Aunt Hissa took them and roughly rinsed them clean with water while Soha, the foreigner, stayed silent and still. Fahd bolted for his father in the men's
majlis
and fell asleep in his arms as he fought back his groans: ‘The old woman in there put salt in my eyes.'

His uncle gave a boisterous laugh and said sarcastically, ‘All the better for you; now you'll see properly.'

It was past midnight when Fahd returned from the stadium, a blue shawl across his shoulders. Opening the door in the wall he went inside and found his uncle sitting on the steps leading up to the house. He gave him a fierce look and Fahd froze in shock, fearing the worst. They were like two wary cats meeting by a rubbish dump, circling one another with their hairs pricked up like thorns in anticipation of battle. His uncle didn't look up again, and his voice came heavy through the midnight air: ‘Where have you been, you wretch?'

‘I was with my friend.'

‘With that Zero-Seven bum?'

‘Saeed Bin Mushabbab, my friend, the son of my father's friend.'

‘A good-for-nothing bum and the son of a criminal.' Then: ‘Where were you?'

‘At the stadium.'

‘So, with all the other bums and dropouts and scum?'

A vision of the presentation ceremony suddenly flared in Fahd's mind. ‘Even the king was there,' he said.

His uncle leapt from his place and Fahd lifted his arm to block the wild blow. His uncle's powerful grip fastened on his raised wrist while his other rough hand crept out and twisted
Fahd's earlobe. He tugged hard and spitefully, gritting his teeth with suppressed rage. ‘Don't provoke me you animal! You and your sick mother have lost me time and business.'

He grabbed Fahd's hair and pulled him closer. The stench from his mouth was foul as he shouted, ‘I swear to God, if I see you in the car with that Southerner again I'll get you both locked up! Do you understand?'

Then he shoved him towards the tall flight of stairs and Fahd ascended, fighting a violent desire to cry and a powerful urge to run from the house. No longer could he bear to live under his uncle's rules. Ever since Abu Essam had handed over the marriage certificate that allowed him into the house he had been despotic and domineering, running the place according to his habits and beliefs.

Throughout that long night, Fahd contemplated running away and experiencing life for himself, as his father had done.

I'll make my own way. I'm not Lulua; I don't have to be ruled by my uncle and his delusions. I'm a man. I'm sixteen, I've got an ID card and I'll be getting my driver's license soon enough. I'll be able to run my own affairs free of that animal!

As was his habit, Fahd kept finding fault with himself and the way he had handled his uncle just a short while before.

I'm bigger than my fat uncle. When he stretched out his hand towards me, why didn't I grab it and push him back? When he pulled at the shawl round my neck why didn't I take it off, wrap it around his neck and squeeze until his beard quivered and his great gut wobbled? He'd raise his hands in surrender and I'd see his eyes bulge and his slack tongue lolling out, then I could shove him off the third step and his fat head would crack against the stone planter. He'd lie there twitching for a moment then his soul would fly down to hell!

Fahd was sitting by his wardrobe and listening to the muffled sound of his father's voice from behind the clothes. He always felt that the voices of the dead would sound strangled, as if bubbling up through water. His dead father was telling him off. ‘And then what, my young Fahd? You kill your uncle and they haul you off to prison for years, until your uncle's youngest son has come of age. Then they charge you with murder and you'll find yourself in Justice Square before the black-clad executioner, sharpening his long sword and sending your head rolling away like a football. You will die and leave your mother and sister grief-stricken not just at my loss but at yours as well.'

Fahd rolled over on to his left side and spoke to his father from his depths.
‘It makes no difference, Dad. Kill him and be killed for it or not, I'm going to run away. I'm going to leave this house. I'll take your picture with me and hang it on the wall of another house without fear. I'll arrange my canvases and easel in the middle of the living room and fill the house with the smell of oil paints, just the way you remember it. I'll have no more of the stink of agarwood and incense that my uncle has filled the house with, so that I feel I'm living in a morgue or graveyard
.

‘
I swear to you, Father: I'll have satellite channels once again, and I'll watch the nine o'clock news on al-Jazeera just like you used to do. I'll follow the investigative reports on al-Arabiya and I'll enjoy the weekly movie. Fairuz's voice will wash through the chambers of my heart and the walls of the house where I live, as it used to when mother and you would play it in the early morning. Do you know that even Mum has changed since you've gone? She's forgotten Fairuz and the long-handled pot she used to make Turkish coffee. It's lying upside down and neglected in an unused kitchen drawer. Maybe she'll use it as a piss pot for my uncle when he's too old to reach the
bathroom. There are religious cassettes scattered through the house. I can't understand how this tyrant got my sister to memorise religious anthems and simple-minded myths.

‘
Everything has changed so much. Our life has turned completely upside down. Lulua's childhood has been brought to an end; now she's a woman who wants only to be a good, pious little wife when once she dreamed of being a television presenter. Do you remember her seventh birthday, when she went with you to Toys “R” Us and you bought her a pink tape recorder with a keyboard and microphone? Do you remember how she'd switch it on in the living room and you'd ask us to listen to her? How she once sang,
I loved you and forgot to sleep, I'm scared that you'll forget me
and read out a made-up news report? How you laughed in delight as you clapped and the report became crazier and crazier? That's all dead now, Dad. Now she dreams of being a corpse washer, or one of those female preachers, doing the rounds of gatherings and get-togethers and delivering Islamic lectures, telling women to fear God and the torment of the grave, to set aside the sinful habits of those who have fallen by the way, to invite them to organise themselves. Sometimes I imagine her joining some militant Islamist group. If the terrorists changed the way they worked and brought in women as partners and operatives, they'd be enthusiastic fighters for the cause, strapping on bomb belts to blow away anything they regarded as sinful and become martyrs, flying straight to Paradise.'

‘Is that what Princess Lulua has done?'

‘No, not that bad! I don't think she's ambitious enough for death!'

 

–18 –

T
HE FIRST PHOTOGRAPH
: a husband and wife, spreading out a plastic mat beside a small white car. Between them sits a boy of two, playing with a plastic bag. His mother lets down her luminous red hair while his father gives a fleeting grin between his heaving breaths, having placed the camera on a box, set the timer, and run back to his wife and child. On the reverse of the photograph a flowing hand has written:
Suleiman and Soha – Nisf al-Qamar Beach, Sharqiya, 1986
.

The second photograph: a pedalo, licensed to hold two adults only. The husband and wife and their two children all wear yellow lifejackets, inflated and tied around their chests. The father looks worn out by his exertions as he pushes pedals with his feet. Next to him, his wife holds her one-year-old daughter in her arms. The father has his arm around the boy, who looks scared, as though he wants to cry, or has just stopped. There are traces of chocolate ice cream around his mouth. On the back:
Suleiman, Soha, Fahd and Lulua – The Jeddah Corniche, 1989.

The third photograph: a pretty little girl sits in front of a cake with four candles on top. Next to her is a laughing boy with his arm flung round her neck, his other hand moving as though to grab a candle or snuff it out. Behind them children laugh, boisterous and gleeful. On the back:
Lulua (4), Fahd (7) and Saeed – Lulua's birthday, Funtime, King Fahd Road.

The fourth photograph: a frightened boy on a little pony, his hands nervously placed in front of him on the animal's back, peers towards the camera with tearful eyes. On the back of the picture:
Fahd in Thamama, Riyadh, 1990.

The fifth photograph: a groom with his
ghatra
hanging self-consciously down over his face and resplendent in a white
mashlah
with wide, horizontal stripes, stands alongside a bride in her wedding dress, her white, rose-embroidered veil over her face. On the back:
Suleiman and Soha's wedding – January 6, 1984. May you have a long and happy life together!

The sixth photograph: a young boy stands on a white blanket next to another boy holding a bunch of roses; both are laughing at the camera. On the back:
Saeed after the operation with Fahd – King Abdul Aziz Hospital, 1992
, and then in a shaky hand in green ink:
Memories of an appendix
.

The seventh photograph: three boys bashfully stand behind school desks, one of them shyly ducking his head. In the background is a wall decorated with blue paper and flowers and the edge of a row of lockers beneath a high window. Written on the back:
Fahd in middle school with Muwaffaq the Iraqi on his right and Ziyad the dwarf on his left – Second year, Middle School, Class 2/2
.

The eighth photograph: a boy belted into a high chair. To his right is a man with a carefully clipped moustache, its red hair mixed with a little white, sitting back with a beautiful smile. To his left is a woman wearing a
hijab
who laughs as she puts a potato chip dipped in ketchup into the little one's mouth. On the back of the picture:
Fahd with his grandparents, Abu and Umm Essam – Abu Kamal Restaurant, Thalatheen Street, Ulaya
.

The ninth photograph: a husband, his wife and their two children, with a handsome young man in a jacket and tie
alongside another youth with an open collar and an old man with a white moustache. On the back:
Suleiman, Soha, Fahd and Lulua with Essam, Kamal and Abu Essam – Sham Restaurant, Amman, 1995
.

The tenth photograph: a small picture, 6x4 centimetres, of an eager-eyed boy, his red hair combed backwards, fighting back a grin. On the back:
Fahd Bin Suleiman al-Safeelawi, 1992
.

This last photograph Fahd remembered well. He recalled his father and the Yemeni photographer in Studio Zaman on Thalatheen Street laughing together at the boy's eagerness. He had held his breath before the lens to hold back his laughter and appear a man, for a man does not laugh.

It had been after this picture was taken that Suleiman had grasped his son's hand, and the two of them had walked the length of Thalatheen Street and gone into an art gallery, one of whose pictures Suleiman liked. He had spent a long time arguing with the salesman over the price, then they had walked out without buying it.

Pictures then more pictures, memories coming to life in the photo album Fahd kept in a wardrobe drawer. It felt to him as though they were his memories and his personal history, his whole life, in fact. Nothing took him back to his beautiful past like this album and the songs that summoned up those moments to which they were bound. For Fahd, these photographs were life itself; he had no idea what he would do if one day he couldn't find them. Would he put an end to his existence? Commit suicide? What would he do if, all of a sudden, he became a person without a past? Was the past only present in photographs? Didn't memory inevitably lead back to the past? It did, but memory needed a spur to stir its cells
awake; like a horse pulling a cart uphill it needed someone to apply the whip.

Some nights after the football match, Fahd was sprawled on his bed thinking back to his early childhood, until the memories and his own oppressive longing led him to his father's features and the picture of them together, his father playfully pulling his head towards him in front of the ice cream cart in Thamama.

Suddenly panicking he opened the wardrobe door, then pulled out the drawer looking for the album. He couldn't find it. Maybe his mother or Lulua had taken it to gaze on days that would never return. He rifled through the chest of drawers and bedside table but to no avail. Frantic and frenetic he remembered that he had put it beneath a large suitcase on top of the wardrobe and he mounted a small stepladder and lifted the case. A great cloud of dust billowed out, filling his eyes, and in a single movement he sprang backwards off the ladder and fell on his rump.

Standing before the basin in the bathroom to wash his face and eyes he almost burst into tears. He went out in search of his mother and found Lulua in the living room.