Where Pigeons Don't Fly (15 page)

‘Where's the album, Lulua?'

‘What album?' she said coldly as she wrote out her homework.

‘My album. The photograph album in my drawer. Who took it?'

She didn't answer, just shrugged and frowned. He went into his mother's room. She was in the bathroom. He waited and when she emerged, her wet head wrapped in a white towel, he attacked her with questions about the album. She replied
that she knew nothing about it. He hunted through the house like a wounded wolf, inside which other wolves lurked and howled. He didn't know who he was any more. What was his name? Where had he come from? Where would he go and where would he stay? Who were these people, moving around all about him?

The next day, having searched the yellow rubbish bin without finding anything, Fahd came back inside, his head bowed and miserable, and sat on the entrance steps with their covering of artificial green grass. He was looking up at the neighbour's window where a pigeon fluttered and perched. He turned his eyes right towards the wall, then left at the basketball net hanging on the long water pipe outside the bathroom; he had gone head to head with his father trying to get the ball in that very net, and sometimes, when Suleiman was asleep, he had played against Saeed. He looked to his left, at the unfrequented space next to the low wall that separated off their neighbour's ground floor, and spotted a scrap of paper tumbling as if propelled by an invisible breeze. He stared at it for a moment then rose and picked it up. It was a deep shock when he turned the paper over to see Saeed's eyes and waving hand at Lulua's birthday party. It was a scrap ripped from the complete photograph. Searching for others he found another piece showing his father's coy face and part of the white
mashlah
that he wore on his wedding day. He hunted around but could only find these two pieces. So. One of them had shredded his photograph album, destroyed the lot then taken it out to the street, and these two scraps were all that had escaped the bundle of shredded paper.

He went up the steps, crying and shouting, ‘Who's the bastard, the dog, the son of a dog, who ripped up my album?'

His mother took fright, murmuring prayers and trying to calm him as he ran blindly about the living room, weeping in anguish. ‘God curse your fathers and your forefathers.'

He was insensible to his surroundings; he could not see in front of him. He didn't know how he had acquired this vast strength as he tore the pocket of his house shirt, and kicked at the wooden partition until it shook. He threw himself down the steps shouting, ‘I want to die!'

His mother and Lulua rushed after him trying to stop him. The girl handed her mother a yellow infusion from which wafted the smell of saffron, and Soha began sprinkling it on his face as she chanted, ‘In the name of God, the Compassionate and the Merciful …'

A
jinn
had possessed him, she assumed, and it was the
jinn
that had rolled him down the steps.

The next day Fahd found out that his uncle had asked Lulua to tear up the pictures in her folders, because they were
haram
: they delivered their owner to hellfire and prevented angels entering the house. The Prophet, he told her, had said, ‘No angel shall enter a house in which there is a dog or a graven image,' and had cautioned her about the punishment awaiting those who create pictures: ‘“Verily, those who shall receive the severest torments on the Day of Resurrection are the makers of graven images.”'

Then he had chatted away cheerfully to her until he discovered where the album of photographs was kept and ripped them up one by one.

When he learned of this, Fahd lost his temper and finally resolved to leave the house.

Bit by bit he started to bring his possessions over to Saeed's rented flat, and when Saeed urged him to stay by the side of
his mother and sister, Fahd told him he would go somewhere else if he didn't want to have him as a guest. So Saeed let him have his way until the day came that Fahd told his mother: ‘I hate you, and I hate your damned husband. I even hate this house now: it's got no soul now my Dad's gone.'

‘My husband is your uncle, like it or not,' she replied. ‘No angel will enter the house if there's a dog or a picture in it, and anyway … we don't need pictures to remind us of anything.'

He picked up a new sketchbook that he had left behind. ‘Fine, so if he rips up the photos the angels will troop in, will they?

As he scuttled down the steps like a wolf, he added, ‘And shouldn't the dog leave the house before the pictures?'

Part 3

Love, fear and darkness

Starve me,

So that I become a lioness of discontent in the wildness of the night thickets,

So that I tease your bulging hide with my tooth's keen edge.

Akl Awit,
The Freeing of the Dead

 

–19 –

A
PPROACHING BISHOP'S STORTFORD THE
train slowed. A few people got aboard and passed by the ticket inspector with his small handheld device that stamped the day and date on the tickets of new passengers. The old lady offered Fahd a piece of gum. He took it and thanked her. His mind was a little calmer. He looked through the window at the empty wooden seats on the platform and the policeman who stood holding a big dog on a lead.

The train set off and Fahd's memories galloped in its wake, wild and panting. He was thinking that it was no easy matter to rebel and to take risks with your life but if you didn't do it when you were a teenager or a young man then you never would. That is how it had been with him: there had been nothing worth fighting for, nothing worth preserving. He hadn't rebelled like his father. He hadn't done what Suleiman had done and clashed with government and society. His father would have taken up arms, had he not slowly withdrawn, using Imam Turki's mosque as a way to escape the Salafist Group, going to listen to the blind sheikh's speeches and sermons at sunset prayers every day until he dropped out of the reckoning altogether.

Fahd's decision to leave the family home forever was painful and devastating. Even if initially it was not on a permanent
basis—spending first one night away then two, then more—it still saddened his ailing mother. What would she do at night? Would Lulua wash her forehead using water infused with the saffron ink from Qur'anic verses inscribed on white paper? Would she take three small gulps then rest her bandaged head on the pillow in search of sleep? Would she take a sleeping pill in order to drift off like the dead?

Fahd and Saeed had gone out together many times, loafing around Tahliya Street and Faisaliya Tower and pursuing the frisky girls who drew their admirers after them like panting dogs. They chased their lusts in a trance, like children chasing brightly coloured birds or butterflies, bewitched by a beguiling glance from behind a
niqab
, by eyes painted with kohl and maddening eye-shadow, by laughter, by shoulders jostling as the girls swayed, lascivious and lustful, and pointed mischievously towards the two young men.

Saeed become another person when girls teased him. Whenever he got the chance or came across some sheltered spot he would almost rub up against their
abaya
-clad bodies. He was indifferent to the presence of Indian and Filipino vendors and tried to avoid the looks of Arab street sellers—the Lebanese, Syrians and Egyptians—but when he caught sight of a Saudi walking behind his wife he would keep his lunacy completely under wraps. Alone with a girl, however, he would become demented and reckless.

One night he surged forward like a tiger towards two juicy morsels standing by the elevator and giggling in his direction and took them both in his arms. One of them hit him on the head with her handbag and he came back over to Fahd out of breath and laughing. ‘That bitch. She's the one who gave me her number.'

Fahd could never match his wildness. He would follow after a girl full of trepidation but if she so much as glanced at him he would retrace his steps, stumbling like a bunny rabbit.

‘Your problem is that you take life seriously, even though it's not worth it,' Saeed would always tell him. The truly incredible thing was that Saeed's extensive culture and learning could coexist with this demented pursuit of lust. When Fahd questioned him about the contradiction he'd laugh. ‘There's no contradiction: it's all culture.'

One girl, Noha, was exceptional but Fahd was not in love with her. For her to leave the house meant mobilising the ‘Armies of Christendom' as he put it; she was unable to go out without being accompanied by her entire family, and so he steered clear, until he discovered some comfort for his own misfortunes in her voice and past. She started calling him every day on the landline in the flat (the ‘den' as Saeed called it) then got hold of his mobile number.

One day she left home in the company of the horde, all their vast baggage and retinue in tow, and arranged to meet Fahd at Mamlaka Tower in the afternoon. He stood staring nervously at the Rabei flower shop until she appeared before him and, flustered, shook his hand. Fahd grew increasingly disconcerted as she closed her eyes behind the
niqab
and trembled like a madwoman. He left her after a few minutes. Later, she confessed that she had nearly taken him in her arms: ‘I just love your eyes! she said, then added, ‘Not to mention your golden moustache.'

He chuckled. ‘Golden, or ginger?'

Saeed always said that the girl who wouldn't go out with you after the second phone call wasn't worth your time. ‘Love is business, my friend,' he would say, before delivering his
famous line: ‘Do you think a businessman would put all his capital into a project that wouldn't turn a profit for a whole month?'

‘Of course not,' Fahd would laugh.

Profit, in Saeed's eyes, meant holding a hand, giving it a squeeze (sometimes a kiss), a playful slap on the buttocks, a breathless embrace, a deep, long kiss and so on. To call moans and heavy breathing down a phone line ‘profit' was ridiculous, hardly worth the effort. Why? Because watching porn and doing the job yourself was a sight better than the self-deception of bringing yourself off to a panting, moaning voice.

Fahd didn't answer the missed calls from his mother and sister but, lifting the receiver of the phone in the flat, he was startled to hear his mother weeping and reproaching him for ignoring them. He gave a deep, tragic sigh and said harshly, ‘It was you who decided where your interests lay. Everything my uncle did was designed to get me thrown out, and you just tried to keep him happy. Perhaps he wasn't the only one who wanted me out of the house!'

Through her tears she said, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Fahd! I'm still your mother and Lulua's your sister.'

She wouldn't hang up until she had persuaded him to come round on those days when his uncle was away, especially now that her illness had become of serious concern. She said, ‘No one knows how long they've got, my son.'

It pricked his conscience and he made up his mind to stop by on the nights when his uncle was sleeping with his other wives. They settled into their routine. Sometimes his mother would beg him to stay the night and despite the appeal of life in the ‘den' he would agree. Everything that was outlawed and
forbidden in his uncle's kingdom was freely available in Saeed's lair. In Ulaya, there were no satellite channels, no glossy magazines or daily papers, no pictures, music or songs, no computer and no Internet; in the flat, there was all that and more.

Soha spent most of her time resting but only slept in her bedroom when her husband was at home; during the day she dozed in the dining room next to the kitchen, a small envelope beside her pillow full of folded strips of paper on which were written Qur'anic verses in yellow saffron. Without opening it she would take one and dip it straight into a glass of water until the liquid changed colour and then she would drink, wetting her chest and stomach and intoning prayers to God on behalf of her lungs that trembled like a pair of birds: ‘Oh God, Lord of mankind, send me strength. Heal me, for You are the Healer, who alone has the cure, the cure that never fails.'

Her view of life had changed and become more religious. Had her illness done this, or was it her new husband, the imam, who had turned their life in this house upside down? The marriage was not contracted to protect his brother's wife or his brother's children. These hadn't even been fleeting considerations. It was done for divine reward in return for making devout a home that had once been immodest, wayward and sinful.

‘How do you feel?' Fahd asked her.

‘It's women's troubles, my son; don't bother yourself about it. Just stay close to me.'

One afternoon, Lulua placed a pot of mint tea before her mother and brother in the dining room with its bolsters and their colourful wool covers. Fahd poured his mother a glass and she asked him to fetch the phone book on the dressing table in her bedroom so she could call a technician to
come and fix the air conditioner in the living room, which had started pumping out hot air.

‘Maybe it needs filling up with Freon,' he said as he went to her room.

Searching on the dressing table and bedside table for the phone book he spied a small religious pamphlet, the kind that were given away free with cassette tapes in mosques and waiting rooms. The glossy cover carried a picture of a tree's branches against a sunset and the title:
The Efficacy of Charms and Herbs in Treating Cancer
.

He skimmed through and read a few lines from the introduction that declared that the best treatment for the most dangerous disease of our times—cancer—was prayer, Qur'anic amulets, incantation and blowing. The pamphlet provided testimonies of cancer victims who had turned their back on the lies and fabrications of medical doctors and placed their faith in God. It claimed that one doctor, an American, had been rendered speechless with amazement when scans showed his patient's body entirely free of tumours, and when he asked, ‘Where were you cured?' the man pointed heavenwards, the smile of true faith on his lips. Fahd quickly shut the booklet, returned with the phone book and called the repairman, who promised to pass by the following afternoon. The van wasn't available at the moment.