Adama

by al-Hamad, Turki; Bray, Robin;

  “Are you all right?” his mother said, as his father glared at him. “What’s the matter? Why are you in such a rush? You haven’t finished eating!”

  “Sorry Father, sorry Mother,” said Hisham. “I just remembered that I’ve got a few books borrowed from the public library, and I’ve got to return them this afternoon or they’ll cancel my membership. If you’ll excuse me ...” He dashed off to the bathroom, his father now looking after him with pride.

  “There’s no one like our Hisham,” he said, putting a piece of fried vermicelli in his mouth, “no one like him.”

  “There’s only one God and only one Hisham. God has truly blessed us in him,” his mother said, before adding, “God forgive me, God forgive me,” in a customary expression of humility.

  Hisham hastily washed his hands. Lying had become easy to him ever since he had joined the party; he did not feel as guilty as he used to do. In fact, he could now quickly make up excuses and justifications with enviably steady nerves, and if he still felt the prick of his conscience from time to time it quickly vanished without trace. Back in his room he hurriedly put on his robe, skullcap and headdress and rushed outside. He had hated wearing these clothes, much preferring a shirt and trousers, but his father had occasionally told him off for going to school or visiting family friends dressed like that and would force him to wear traditional clothes. The robe was bearable, but Hisham could not stand the skullcap and headdress, and after a battle of wills with his father it was settled that he would just wear a robe to school and the skullcap and headdress on special occasions and visits. At all other times he could have his own way and wear a shirt and trousers. The strange thing was, after that conclusion, Hisham began to prefer the robe, and wore one most of the time.

  The streets around the small municipal park were almost empty but for a few labourers from Oman and Yemen who were lying down around the walls of the gardens. For some it was siesta time, while for others it was time for afternoon prayers. Hisham disappeared down one of the alleyways off the park and, from a distance, began watching the gate where Mansur stood. Mansur held his satchel and paced up and down, pausing occasionally to crack his fingers nervously before pacing again. He was an odd one, thought Hisham; they’d finished school early that day, so where had he spent the last few hours, given that he didn’t live in Dammam? He must have been with some of the comrades, as he couldn’t afford to eat in a restaurant and had no relatives here.

  Hisham’s thoughts were cut short by the appearance of Adnan in the distance, approaching from the direction of the fish and vegetable market in a grey robe and a red and white chequered headdress despite the extremely hot and humid weather. Hisham pulled his own headdress over his face, adjusted his glasses and began watching closely. Mansur met Adnan halfway and shook hands with him quickly; then they both set off towards the centre of town, Hisham following them with his gaze without their noticing him, despite the fact that Mansur kept looking round constantly. When they reached the car park they boarded a small bus which drove off, heading west along Baladiya Street. Hisham returned home, wondering where they could have gone; he had been determined to go and see the gang, but now he just wanted to be alone without having to speak to anyone.

  34

  During the fortnight before the start of the university term, Abd al-Rahman showed Hisham another Riyadh – a Riyadh that gave up its secrets only to those who sought them out, while jealously withholding them from either lifetime residents or those who were merely passing through. Or both: a person might live in a place from cradle to grave and still remain no more than a transient. This boy knew secrets about Riyadh of which even people born and bred there were ignorant.

  What was left of the standards instilled in Hisham with his mother’s milk fell away in Riyadh; he picked up new ideas and mannerisms completely unrelated to either her fierce virtue or the strict orders of the Baathists. In the party he had learned to lie easily and fluently, with no painful pricks of conscience, thus shattering the principal basis of virtue as taught him by his mother. Those kinds of lies might be entirely justifiable; in fact, seen from a certain angle they might not be lies at all, but rather a necessary part of the struggle required by clandestine activity, as Fahd once explained to him. By the tough standards of his mother, however, they were still lies, justifications be damned. To her the world was black and white, Heaven and Hell, with no grey areas and no halfway points. To not tell the truth, or to distort it, was to lie. But perhaps life did not obey his mother’s criteria or, indeed, any ideal moral standards: life was not something abstract, and was not practised with unadulterated virtue. States lied both to one another and to their own people and called it politics. What was propaganda if not a kind of deceit? What was diplomacy if not an elegant, elaborate and most acceptable form of falsehood? The party did this, too. Was deception a vital part of any organisation? Or was everything relative, were there no absolutes in this life, so that what applied to one situation might not apply to another, and what held true of one thing might not be true of something else? Most of the time Hisham no longer had a satisfactory answer, and found he had lost the certainty he used to think he possessed.

  In Riyadh he smoked his first cigarette and drank his first drop of alcohol. In Riyadh he discovered a taste of women far removed from the romantic notions that framed his relationship with Noura. In Riyadh he learned to flirt with women in the Suwaiqa market and al-Thumairi and al-Wazir Streets. He learned how and when to look for women who sold forbidden pleasure cheaply in the alleys of al-Shumaisi and the neighbourhoods of al-Daira. In all this his teacher was Abd al-Rahman, who showed him every inch of this new, exciting world. Hisham in turn embraced this thrilling universe, filled with desires the likes of which he had never known before and which had come upon him all at once. He could find no clear reason for it. Was it the result of deprivation, of urges pent up for years, which had exploded at the first opportunity? Or was it the sense of having escaped, like a genie from a bottle he had been forced into by his mother? Was it that now he was free to do whatever he wanted? Or was it fear that he was trying to escape, following the exposure of the organisation and others like it, and the subsequent mass arrests? He neither knew nor wanted to know; all he was sure of was this new world of pleasure and excitement, far from the severity of his mother and the harshness of the party. Life in the party had been exciting too, but it was a terrible, frightening kind of excitement, whereas this was pure pleasure.

  In Riyadh everything was forbidden, and everything permitted. Cinemas were non-existent, but he watched the latest films there that were not even screened in Beirut or Cairo. Around any sports club or the film rental shops in al-Murabba and al-Nasiriyya, one could watch or hire any film one wished. In Riyadh he saw the Egyptian film My Father’s Up The Tree, with its scenes of passionate kissing and Nadia Lutfi, whose body oozed desire and sensuality. He watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the first film of Marilyn Monroe’s he had seen, and though he thought her not beautiful, he found her body bursting with the suggestion of pure physical pleasure. From watching these films Hisham developed a new philosophy about women, until now only ever seen in such an erotic light in his dreams since puberty. There were three types of women, he reckoned: the beautiful, the pretty and the sexy. A woman might be extremely beautiful, but lack either prettiness or sexiness or both; a woman who appeared pretty to the eye and pleasant company besides, might have no trace of beauty about her, and she might or might not be sexy; a woman neither beautiful nor pretty might however be desirable, arousing lust in every atom of one’s body. The pinnacle was a woman who was beautiful, pretty and sexy at the same time, but where could one find a woman like that? Even if she did exist somewhere she might be brainless, and in that case she would lose all her appeal as soon as he had any contact with her.

  In Riyadh he saw overtly pornographic films, but after the first few scenes they utterly sickened him. The strange thing about sex was that everyone thought about it and chased after i
t, but seeing the sexual act directly made one feel revolted at the sight of those forbidden zones that had nothing beautiful or erotic about them. It made him realise the sense behind concealing those body parts, even if only with a fig leaf. Despite the fact that everything revolved around them, that everything led to them, that life itself sprang from them, they were ugly. Beauty and erotic appeal did not lie in the body parts and orifices themselves, he was certain, but rather in covering them up, though they might be the ultimate goal.

  One morning Abd al-Rahman came to see him in his room upstairs after everyone had gone to work. Hisham was staving off boredom by flicking through some magazines.

  “Quick, get dressed,” Abd al-Rahman said to him. “There’s something urgent we’ve got to do.”

  Hisham got up hastily and dressed without uttering a word, then flew out of the house behind Abd al-Rahman. His cousin’s old white Mercedes was parked by the front door with the engine running, Abd al-Rahman sat behind the wheel. Hisham got in next to him and the car shot off.

  “You remember the girl I told you about who lives in the area?” Abd al-Rahman said as they drove down the dusty road that divided Old and New Shumaisi Streets. “I’ve arranged to meet her by the Umm Salim roundabout.” He looked at Hisham, raising his eyebrows and smiling. “It’s time you tasted some flesh.”

  Hisham said nothing as Abd al-Rahman chuckled and continued driving. His heart was beating violently. This would be the first time he had seen a naked woman’s body in real life. He felt a heat spread through him and concentrate itself in that region where all paths met, a heat mixed with fear and apprehension. How often had his mother warned him about women since the day he had run to her in alarm over the white spurts in the shower? His old feelings of guilt were returning, but he pushed them aside and remembered that he had shattered the idol of his mother when he joined the party; whatever was left of it he would smash to pieces as well, come what may.

  At the Umm Salim roundabout Abd al-Rahman turned down a dusty, narrow street. After he had driven no more than fifty metres a girl appeared, walking slowly and swathed in black from head to foot with only her fingertips showing. Abd al-Rahman drove alongside her and beeped his horn, then passed her, parked nearby and opened the back door. The girl slipped nimbly into the back seat with the utmost self-assurance, shutting the door behind her, and the car drove off in a dust cloud. For a while Abd al-Rahman drove aimlessly through the alleys of the adjacent neighbourhoods, then returned to New Shumaisi Street.

  “What shall we do?” he asked, turning to Hisham. “Where shall we go?”

  “How should I know!” replied Hisham naively. “This is your city.”

  “What do you think about going to your room? It’s secluded and there’s no one at home at the moment.”

  “Are you crazy?” said Hisham, his eyes bulging. “Moudhi and Said are in. And anyhow, it would be wrong.”

  “You’re right,” Abd al-Rahman said. “It was just an idea, anyway. But where shall we go?”

  For a while there was silence, and then Abd al-Rahman cried out: “I know! The only place for poor wretches like us is the Kharid Road.” Without waiting for a reply he turned east, crossing al-Batha, then University Street and Al-Ahsa Street. At the Air Academy at the end of al-Umran Street he headed eastwards along the Kharid Road, the desert spreading out on either side. A short way before reaching Khashm al-An he turned left into the red sands and drove on into the desert for about a kilometre until he reached low ground, and stopped the car.

  “This is the best place,” said Abd al-Rahman with a smile as he got out to open the boot and took out a small blue mat that normally never left the car. He spread it on the soft sands, then opened the back door and asked the girl to get out. She had been completely silent throughout, as though she were not even there. Hisham had practically forgotten about her, but became extremely anxious again.

  “I’m afraid someone will see us,” he said, looking left and right. “That would be a scandal.”

  “Don’t worry,” Abd al-Rahman replied, laughing confidently. “There aren’t even any genies around here. The taste of flesh will make you forget everything, even your own mother and father.” He carried on laughing as he went over to the girl, but Hisham was not calmed.

  The girl had taken off her veil and wrap and thrown them inside the car, revealing her plump figure. She was of medium height and dressed in a long floral dress with an open neck that showed off her large breasts. She had skin the colour of coffee brought to boil over a low flame, and the smoothness of her complexion was apparent from her arms, which were bare almost to her shoulders. Her behind was large but not flabby, and as she walked over to the mat it wobbled with an even rhythm. She was not as pretty as Noura or Moudhi, nor as beautiful as Ibtihal, Adnan’s sister, but she was attractive and sexy according to Hisham’s lately defined standards; her full, parted lips, especially, seemed to offer ‘an invitation to an inferno of kisses’, in the words of Hisham’s favourite singer Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab. Everything about her was large, but in wonderful proportion and in a way that awakened one’s innermost desires.

  The three of them sat down on the mat with the car screening them from the main road. “Really, Abd al-Rahman,” the girl said coquettishly in her Riyadh accent, speaking for the first time and with a giggle, “is this the best place you could come up with?” She had a very delicate voice that lingered in the ear of the listener.

  “Complain to God about it, not me,” replied Abd al-Rahman. “There’s nowhere else to go.”

  The girl was neither anxious nor afraid, and there was no sign of nervousness about her at all; she was confident and relaxed as though she were accustomed to escapades like this. Hisham’s fear began to subside as he got used to the surroundings; that familiar internal heat had returned, sweeping over him and concentrating in his loins, in Rome ... where all roads lead.

  Abd al-Rahman brought out a thermos full of tea from the car along with three cups, which he placed on the mat. This guy is a devil, Hisham thought. When had he made the tea? Hisham had not seen him doing it. He poured it out and the girl began sipping hers.

  “Is that all you could get, tea?” she said. “Why didn’t you bring some arrack?”

  “Tea’s my limit,” said Abd al-Rahman, laughing in his usual way and gulping the tea down in one go. “If it’s arrack you’re after, you’ll get that with my brother Hamad.”

  “I’d better get to know him, then,” the girl said, sitting up and giving Abd al-Rahman a wink as she put her cup to her lips. Abd al-Rahman took out a packet of Marlboros gave one to the girl. He lit her cigarette and then his own with the same match. They smoked, savouring every drag. Yes, thought Hisham, this boy was full of surprises.

  “I didn’t think you smoked!” Hisham said to Abd al-Rahman.

  “Sometimes, on special occasions,” said Abd al-Rahman without looking at him, smoking away with relish. He looked at the girl with a smile.

  “At last your friend speaks!” she remarked. Her glistening thighs showed themselves as she sat. “At long last we discover he’s not mute!”

  They both laughed cheerfully as Hisham’s face turned into something resembling a squeezed tomato. He smiled, looking at the ground and toying with the sand between his fingers.

  “This is my cousin Hisham,” said Abd al-Rahman. “Don’t worry about him being quiet; he’s just shy. And he’s also a beginner. This is Raqiyya,” he said to Hisham, indicating the girl, “the most beautiful girl in our neighbourhood.”

  “You’re such a hypocrite! But I like it,” the girl said. “I mean, you were a beginner too once,” she went on. “Do you remember that day?”

  “Who told you that?” said Abd al-Rahman somewhat tersely. “I was just a bit tense that day. All your family were at home, and the room was dark. That’s all there was to it.”

  “Are you cross, darling?” the girl said, laughing flirtatiously. “I’m sorry.” She lay down on her right side, leaving her left leg
and a large part of her thigh exposed, while her dress clung tightly to the rest of her body, showing off her left buttock in vivid detail. It was a sight that sent the heat soaring in Hisham.

  At this point Abd al-Rahman got up and called Hisham over to the other side of the car. “So? Do you want to go first, or shall I?” he asked. “You know what,” he went on, without waiting for an answer, “you go first. You are my guest, after all, and one should always defer to one’s guests.” He began laughing. “I’ll go and walk around for a bit. Go on, do us proud.” Abd al-Rahman lit another cigarette and went off into the surrounding desert, laughing and puffing smoke into the air.

  Hisham was extremely nervous. He had no idea how or where to begin. He silently cursed his cousin for putting him in this embarrassing position. If this girl were Noura he would know what to do, a bit of kissing and hugging and talking. But for this girl, it went much further than that. He had no idea how long he remained in that state, unsure of what to do and unable to move, sweat pouring off him and the sun feeling even hotter than it was. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it inside his head.

  “You haven’t gone and left me, have you?” the girl said distantly, impatient. “Where are you, Abd al-Rahman?” Apparently Abd al-Rahman heard her, because he back-tracked some distance and gestured at Hisham to go forward. Hisham dragged himself over to Raqiyya, feeling as though his pores would soon ooze blood, as if his heart somehow did not belong to him. He found her lying on her back with her arms behind her head, her dress pulled right up over her thighs, which were glistening under the burning rays of the sun as though they had been basted with olive oil. Her middle was raised a little off the ground, creating a small gap between her upper buttocks and her lower back, and she was wearing short, blood-red drawers which displayed in graphic detail the place where all her roads met, standing out like a small mound in a valley surrounded by high mountains watered by recent winter rains, the tangled grasses of their slopes plain to see under the fabric of her drawers.