Where Pigeons Don't Fly (40 page)

The man had smiled, until Fahd could almost see the cutting beak behind his mouth, and mockingly said, ‘My goodness, are the whole family ex-convicts?'

Fahd was in a desperate situation, the man went on. The charges against him were solid, especially since the woman's brother had made a complaint on her behalf that Fahd had bewitched her so that she would go out with him against her will.

Damn
! Fahd thought to himself.
Wasn't it she who had pursued me? Hadn't my desire for her faded? Hadn't she been the one who proposed meeting to console me for my mother's death? Now who will console me for my death, when it comes? Will I have to stand in some public square like Saeed's father, Mushabbab, wearing a hood that bears the reek of impending death before my head is sent flying? The penalty for sorcery is beheading by the sword, so kill every sorcerer, but I, sheikh, am not a sorcerer. My father was the one who got me in this fix; he was the one who bequeathed me his effects that I might be mindful of his mistakes and avoid the long imprisonment, the night-time terror of waiting for deferred execution and that was his lot. Look, Father, I've taken a short cut. I'm going straight to the slaughterhouse.

The huge man terrified me, roughly turning the toothstick in his mouth and telling me that my file had been handed over to the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution. There was no way out apart from the Indonesian bringing food and tea. How could I offer him a bribe when I had nothing? I promised him a big reward if he helped me. Not to escape: I just wanted to make a call.

His eyes flickered about as he handed me his battered mobile phone. I hurriedly dialled Saeed's number, terrified that it would be turned off or he wouldn't answer, particularly since he wouldn't recognise the number. The moment I heard his voice I quickly said that I was in the Committee's headquarters, mixed up in a serious case, to which he said in his Southern way, ‘Leave it to me.' The next day the
sheikh with the cream
mashlah
arrived and I was so happy to see him that I almost hugged him. I reproached him for leaving me, for not listening to my story and the story of the coloured prayer beads, and he smiled, patting my shoulder and telling me that I would leave once I had drawn up a confession of being alone with a woman other than a relative and signed it, pledging that I would not commit the same sin again.

Feeling that I had been set free, I almost fainted. A murderer condemned to death, out in Chop-Chop Square, and just before the sword is raised through the air to split him with its maddened whistle, just before it sinks into the flesh and tendons of his neck and sends his head flying, one of the crowd cries out, ‘I release you in God's name. In the name of God Almighty, go, you are free,' and the people gathered there praise God and noisily rejoice, while the condemned man is led back to the car, his hood removed, and seeing life anew, signs away his right to appeal in the courts.

And so the worthy sheikh saved me from execution. I could have fallen on his head and kissed him and I could have embraced Saeed when he came to collect me. My eyes were flickering all over. I had no idea how he'd managed to arrange things, more easily than I had thought possible.

As soon as Fahd saw Saeed he asked him how he had done it.

‘Get in and I'll tell you,' Saeed said.

‘But how? How come they changed their minds so easily?'

‘Connections, my friend. Connections over and above the law …'

‘What connections?'

‘Your uncle.'

‘Damn you and my uncle!' Fahd bellowed in a rage, trying to open the car's locked door. He raised a pointed finger at
Saeed and screamed, ‘I swear if I'd known this when I was back there I'd never have signed the pledge, even if they'd condemned me to death. I've nothing left to lose!'

‘Fahd, listen to me. If things had been left to grow and spread it might not have been a death sentence, but you could have gone to prison for a long time and been robbed of your life and your studies.'

‘What, Saeed? There's no one left to help me off their rubbish-tip except my murderer of an uncle?'

‘Because your uncle has ties to them. Don't forget, he knows their top guys and most of them pray at his mosque. They've got interests in common.'

‘Fine. Where is he then?

‘He came after making a few calls and finished your paperwork, then he left again.'

‘He left? Really? Without saying anything? He didn't make any problems for me?'

Saeed avoided the question and turned his gaze towards the shops in the street. He would go back to the flat, he said, so Fahd could take a shower and change his clothes and celebrate his release at an expensive restaurant.

When Saeed tried to park the car outside Buhasli restaurant on King Abdullah Road, Fahd objected, remarking that he hated the whole street, its shops, restaurants and cafés. He had barely recovered from his unpleasant memories of Starbucks, he said, so Saeed drove on to Saraya, the Turkish restaurant on Thalatheen Street, and as they were waiting for their food, Fahd asked, ‘Tell me. What happened?

‘Basically your uncle asked me to tell you that he never wants to see you again.'

‘To hell with him. I don't want to see my mother's killer anyway.'

‘There's something else.'

Saeed fell silent, poking holes in his paper napkin with a fork and considering how best to explain. ‘He took a copy of your case file at the Committee and asked them to keep a record of your pledge.'

‘Why? So he can haggle with it whenever he wants?'

‘No.'

‘You sure?'

‘He told me he was taking your sister to live with him because you are untrustworthy and incapable of looking after her.'

Fahd said nothing for a while, briefly peering out at Thalatheen Street as if he was struggling with his eyes to stop a sudden tear springing forth. He saw pigeons wandering around over the broad pavement. One of them hopped on a tub containing a wilting bush while the rest continued to circle the tightly packed paving stones, pecking away as if reading their painful life stories. He returned his gaze to the gloom of the restaurant and whispered in a sad, defeated voice: ‘God damn him.'

‘A week ago you were thinking of emigrating. When I asked you about your sister you said she was the same as your uncle and she didn't concern you any more.'

‘She's all that's left of my family, Saeed, do you understand?'

His voice changed, becoming strangled. A grief-wracked sob rose from his chest and he cried a little. Knotting his hands on the tabletop he laid his head on them and wept for a long time, silent and full of sadness. Saeed let him be for a few minutes and then reached out his hand and laid it on his head.

‘Be brave, Fahd. You're a man, you have to confront life and its challenges.'

Leaving the restaurant, Fahd saw a Starbucks on the other side of the street with its famous green sign and shouted in a mocking voice so Saeed could hear, ‘Bye-bye Starfucks!'

Saeed laughed as he opened the car door. ‘That's a global company. You'll find it on every corner in the world, maybe even in that village you're planning to live in in Britain.'

‘Very possibly, but you know something? The difference is that there's no Committee there, nobody watching your every move and counting your breaths. No, “Where are going? Where have you been? Who's that girl with you? Your mother, your sister or your lover?”'

Saeed let out a long whistle. ‘Well, I hope life over there agrees with you.'

 

–62 –

F
AHD DROVE HIS SMALL
car towards Ulaya Street, past the Pizza Hut in Urouba Road and into the narrow side street called Sayyidat al-Ru'osa, from where he entered Zuhair Rustom Alley, stopping briefly by the black door behind which his childhood had passed like a dream. This door, from whose threshold he had bade farewell to his father Suleiman as he started the car and headed off to Qaseem, never to return. This door, through which his gypsy uncle entered with glassy eyes and a belly fat with care and deliberation, to expel not just Fahd, but Fahd's whole life, from this contented household. This door, through which he passed for the first time carrying his satchel, headed for the unfamiliar faces of pupils and teachers at Al-Ahnaf Bin Qais Primary School. This door, scuffed by the feet of his grandfather, his grandmother and his mother's three brothers. This door, from which they carried the body of his mother, fighting for life after being subjected to a savage beating. This door, ponderous, melancholy, scowling. This door, broad-shouldered as a gorilla, not wide enough to admit the dreams of one small family that began its life with an ill-starred association with the Divine Reward Salafist Group, the breadwinner spending years in prison for taking a risk and handing out pamphlets inciting rebellion before returning to live his life with honour, shunned by respectable families. This door that opened smoothly and didn't creak, unlike
his grandparents' door in al-Muraidasiya, which shamed them with its vibrant squeak, reckoned a kind of singing by the local congregation, some manifestation of the Satanic pipes that must be stilled. This door, witness to a life which flew past in a demented rush, never pausing to look over its shoulder.

Fahd raised his eyes to the fogged glass of the car window: maybe he would see his sister's ghost. But he saw nothing there save silence and slow death, nothing save a pot with its withered plant.

He started the car and drove off. Turning left and passing Sheikh al-Islam Mohammed Bin Abdel Wahhab Mosque he looked out at the southern steps where the shelves for sandals stood empty. But lying on the ground he noticed a pair of tattered leather sandals like those of his father, his father's final pair that had driven him to his death.

Once past the mosque his heart thumped in alarm and he turned back and parked the car. He got out, frightened and confused, removed his shoes at the entrance to the mosque and glanced briefly at the size of the sandals by the door. He put his right foot in one—‘It's my father's size!'—and reaching out to the door he felt a shiver run through his body like cold water and the hairs on his skin prick up.

Very slowly, he opened the door and in the far west corner of the mosque, next to the
mihrab
, he saw a body wrapped in a hair
mashlah
and apparently asleep, its face turned towards the
qibla
. He considered walking quietly round to see the face. He was frightened that he might wake, but he was determined and he moved forward with slow steps, alert to any rustling from his
thaub
. Reaching the
mihrab
he took a look at the sleeping man's face, but he had covered it with his
shimagh
. He thought of making a loud noise to wake him up, but instead
retraced his steps to the door, turning every few paces towards the
qibla
where the man lay.

He peered at the sandals for a while. They looked like the ones his father and Mushabbab had taken turns wearing in prison whenever one of them was summoned for interrogation, until that heavy day had dawned and Saeed's father had donned the leather sandals and gone outside and neither he nor the sandals had returned. Were these sandals, lying like a witness outside the door of the mosque, the sandals that Saeed's father had slipped on a quarter of century before?

He left the alley in the direction of the street where flowers were sold and drove south until he reached Jazeera Mall, then took a left towards Iblees Street where the Bangladeshis had their shops, selling illegal satellite dishes and receivers and cards for encoded porn channels. He crept into a little street behind Sadhan Mall and, at exactly ten in the morning, carrying all the necessary forms and his plane tickets, he stopped outside a company issuing travel visas to Britain.

When he presented his papers, having passed through the routine security check at the door, the long-haired clerk asked him a number of questions, sent him to a room where his thumbprint was taken, then handed over a receipt stating that Fahd's application would be processed in two days.

Fahd left. By the outer gate he breathed a sigh of relief and wondered what had happened to Tarfah. Had they handed her straight back to her family or taken her to the women's shelter? What was her family's view of what had happened, especially that of her brother Abdullah? What had they told Sara about her mother? Good God, how merciless this country was! How exorbitant the cost of a coffee with a random girl!

Fahd muttered to himself as he made for Tahliya Street, where he stopped at a Dunkin Donuts to drink a cup of black filter coffee with a bear claw pastry, taking out his mobile every now and then to check that it was working and that he hadn't received a message.

The Filipino closed the long curtains as the afternoon call to prayer sounded and Fahd went back out to the car. As he was turning the key in the ignition, the mobile buzzed like a cockroach and he opened its message folder:
I swear to God I'm going to create a scandal in front of everyone, at every exhibition, at every artists' gathering, you rat!

Selecting ‘Reply' he wrote:
Screw you, screw ‘everyone' and screw your country, too.

He imagined Thuraya the Hejazi, waking late to the sound of her squabbling children, feeling the air conditioner wash against the semi-naked body that gave off the powerful, penetrating fragrance of her perfume. There was no man beside her to ravage her, and she wrote to curse the young man, the immature stranger, who failed to fill her life, who refused to surrender to her will. The phone buzzed again:
See here, Syrian. You've got the right to swear at me and other people, but I'll be saving that comment about my country. It'll get you fucked up.

My God
, thought Fahd.
How can people bear to live in a racist, conspiratorial society, a society that hates and cheats and dupes and gossips and steals and murders, a society for which I have a representative sample at my fingertips: my uncle, Yasser and Thuraya? True, there are selfless friends like Saeed, and there are those in search of certainties and absolutes, like my father, Mushabbab and Abdel Kareem, and then there are those, like me, like Lulua and Tarfah and Sami, who are lost. But just thinking of it makes me want to vomit.