Seven years passed, during which the heart of Ali and Noura’s youngest child, Mohammed, was weakened by measles and he passed away aged four. ‘If death let me choose between them, I would ask he take the bird of ill omen,’ Ali muttered bluntly, pointing to his middle son, Suleiman.
Ali’s face never brightened again. As everyone in Muraidasiya knew, Mohammed was the apple of his father’s eye, while his eldest, Saleh, was his right hand, his tongue and his support.
Fahd had been told so many stories about his grandfather. Who could forget Ali’s opposition to the village muezzin? Ibn Dakheel had mounted the first-ever loudspeaker on the village mosque, his voice ringing like thunder when he cleared his throat at dawn. Ali tried urging the congregation to reject this heretical innovation on the grounds that all innovation is deviance and all deviance leads to hellfire. He went further: ‘To remain silent over the truth is to be a devil without a tongue.’
The loudspeaker was affixed to the roof of the mud-brick mosque, facing out over the houses and farms of the village. After dawn prayers the men parted ways, shuffling homewards with drowsiness hovering over their heads, Ali amongst them, leading his sons, Saleh and Suleiman, like two befuddled puppies. No sooner had he stretched out his legs in the breakfast room, sipping at his morning coffee, than Suleiman fell asleep in a warm corner, while Saleh slipped outside carrying the hunting rifle, the .25 calibre pellet gun.
It was his habit to surprise birds in their nests at first light, but now he passed Abu Rashed’s fields, ignoring the calls of the songbirds in the massive thorn trees. He broke the gun’s barrel and taking a small wetted pellet from beneath his tongue, blew hard to remove the last vestiges of his spit and thumbed it into the breech. He clicked the barrel straight as he approached the mosque, took aim at the loudspeaker for a few seconds, then, whispering ‘God is great’ over and over, he pressed the trigger and struck it dead centre. He repeated the dose three times.
The afternoon prayers came and went with no terrifying thunder and no heretical innovation that leads to hellfire. From that day forward, Saleh became a family hero and champion of the Faith, acquiring both social standing and an enormous confidence in himself and his actions, no matter how wrong or reckless.
Suleiman, meanwhile, was little more than a heap of tattered summer clothes bundled up by his mother’s side, confused and uncertain and beset by a sense of injury, injustice and ill-treatment. No sooner had he finished his basic education than he decamped to Riyadh to complete his studies. He did not go to Buraida where his brother had been for years, living with his uncles and studying at the National School—‘the Brothers school’ as it was known—until his father finally moved with his wife and three daughters to Quwai in West Buraida, escaping before God could wipe the village of Muraidasiya from the map. After the business with the loudspeaker, there could be no remaining amongst a people who, as the Book said, ‘have changed what is in their own souls’, for now God would surely change the grace he had bestowed on them with a mighty flood to drown the village, with an earthquake to shake it and turn it on its head, or something similar.
The well dried up and the date palm in Ali’s wall died. Then, a few years later, Ali died as well, proud that no man could accuse him of neglecting the good cause, and proud of the stand he and three other men from Quwai had taken against moral corruption in the winter of 1966, travelling together to Riyadh with a great crowd of citizens from Buraida to stand outside King Faisal’s palace and denounce the opening of a girls’ school, setting up a tent by the main gate until they were chased away.
How proud Saleh was of fighting heresy in Muraidasiya in the 1960s! How proud, too, to breathe into his father’s ear the damaging allegation that his maternal grandfather hid a transistor in his bedroom in Buraida on which he listened to the Voice of the Arabs radio broadcasts. Ali al-Safeelawi, however, held his father-in-law in great esteem, so despite his burning desire to denounce his use of the radio and decry it as a heresy and a deviancy and a blasphemy on a par with harbouring a prostitute, he held the knowledge close and condemned it in his heart.
How Fahd longed for the bravery of his Uncle Ibrahim and his friend the akia, to be able to scream at the Committee man and the thin policeman with his belt and revolver dangling like the head of drowned child, to snatch back the bag of his possessions and demand: ‘When did you presume to own people who were born free?’
What freedom? he asked himself. When his own father tasted the bitterness of long years in jail just for being careless enough to pass out pamphlets to worshippers in the Grand Mosque? Was he dreaming of being a leader in the fight against corruption and the collapse of our values and moral code? Did he dream of silencing song and stilling the instruments, of preventing women and female singers from appearing on television? Were he and his comrades going to fill the earth with justice after it had brimmed with injustice and tyranny? Or did he just want to say to Ali, his father: Here I am! Here I am. The one you mocked and whose fate you saw in the moon! I came to show you that this is more than a childish game, more than a paltry rifle that young boys use to hunt sparrows or, like my older brother, destroy with its puny pellets a loudspeaker in some remote village west of Buraida.
Father, did you want to make them pay attention to you? Did you? Then may you go to hell, you and your senile father and your outdated, backward ideas, for you will bring this ignorant country nothing save more ignorance!
Apologies for this anger, Father. It makes me sad to think you lost your youth when it was you who later taught me the joys of literature and the arts, to watch the films of Walt Disney. You looked after me with love. Saeed, too, son of your friend Mushabbab, who was executed at the dawn of a new year; Saeed, my closest friend who, when confronted with tragedy would always find the strength to burst out in laughter, creating a flagrant, riotous uproar in Tahliya Street.
–5 –
SO PAINFUL, THAT MOMENT, long ago, when they shoved Saeed’s father, Mushabbab, into the cell. Suleiman al-Safeelawi didn’t recognise his friend, though they had met at the farm a year before to pick up the secret pamphlets. When Mushabbab entered the cell his clothes were torn, his hair was wild and his face covered with dust. Barefoot and utterly exhausted he threw himself down and slept for five hours like a dead man. Suleiman tried to rouse him for sunset prayers but he did not wake, turned on his side like a corpse.
Years later, Suleiman was to wonder why Saeed’s father had deceived his pregnant wife and mother and brought them north on a journey to disaster, to a doomed war in the Grand Mosque. Suleiman hadn’t told his young son, Fahd, a thing. Saeed’s father has gone on a long journey, he’d said. He’s entrusted us to look after his son and keep him safe.
Every Friday morning he would ready himself early for prayers, then Fahd would sit alongside him in the wine-red Caprice as they drove to the neighbourhood of Jaradiya, south of Central Hospital, where he would park in a narrow road and order Fahd to get out and knock on a small steel door beneath a concrete awning. The roar of the air cooler mounted on two pipes in the street would suddenly cease, then the door would open and out would come Saeed in his wrinkled shimagh, his face still drowsy despite the droplets of water that clung to it. He would get in and they would drive to Ulaya, to pray at Sheikh al-Islam Mohammed Bin Abdel Wahhab Mosque near the house.
After prayers, Suleiman would go to the Afghans selling toothsticks and buy a long stick, which he broke into three. He would sharpen each piece and hand one to Saeed, one to Fahd and silently chew the third as he walked to the car, the two boys scurrying behind him like tame kittens. He would drive to nearby Urouba Road, pulling over just before the Layla al-Akheliya traffic lights outside Alban Zaman dairy to purchase a five-litre container of sour drinking yoghurt and milk, before going in to the Sulaimaniya supermarket and picking up a copy of Sharq al-Awsat, while the boys, beside themselves with joy, got a cold can of Pepsi each.
Holding their cans, the paper tucked beneath Suleiman’s arm, they would
climb to the second floor of their small rented flat and after lunch the two boys would stretch out in Fahd’s bedroom to watch cartoons—Lady, Sally and Falouna, and occasionally, The Iron Man—though Fahd, making sure Saeed didn’t notice, would move his pillow from beneath his head and hold it in front of his face to hide his eyes, frightened by the creatures that he feared might reach out through the screen and attack him.
Just before sunset Suleiman would take them with his wife and their little sister, Lulua, to Sindbad’s Toy Town next to King Fahd Library, or to Marah Amusement Park on King Fahd Road, where they placed woollen blankets beneath their bottoms and shot with heart-stopping speed to the end of the long, undulating slide before panting back up. No one panted more than Lulua, who suffered severe asthmatic attacks that sent the whole family on frequent journeys to the Children’s Hospital in Sulaimaniya which left Suleiman dizzy, the spinning of his head made worse by the wails of the sick children sat waiting on plastic chairs. The moment Lulua emerged from the oxygen chamber he would hurry away before Fahd could make him stop at the man selling snacks and toys by the large glass door.
Whenever Suleiman was busy, or wanted to meet one of his friends, he would offer to drop the family at the entrance to the Khaima Funfair for women and children then take himself off for two hours or more. Fahd hated this funfair: the vast building and dimly lit halls. He would lose sight of his mother, sometimes for half an hour or more, and when she finally found him, dragging Lulua behind her, she would grab him viciously by the ear and angrily demand, ‘Where have you been, you clown?’
Those times when he was lost, he felt destined to live his life far from his family; he feared a swarthy woman would snatch him up and run off and he would go to live in a gloomy house that never saw the sun. Any mention by his parents of the municipal workers who stole children would set Lulua and him trembling and whenever he caught sight of cleaning staff or the like he would shut his eyes until they had passed by.
‘The ziyoud will get you!’ his mother would tell them.
When he was small he assumed the ziyoud were the men in Punjabi outfits, Afghans or Pakistanis he guessed, but once he was older he realised that they were Yemenis. Every time his father parked outside the supermarket and went in alone, he and his sister would hide beneath the seats in the back, curled up in the footwells out of sight of the thieves.
Could this fear of his date back to the silly rhyme he heard when he was five?
Mummy and daddy loved me,
They went to Jeddah and left me …
He felt that his parents really would abandon the two of them without warning, a fear that grew when they went out at night, leaving them with Asiya, their Indonesian maid. They wouldn’t leave until the children were asleep, but if either woke unexpectedly it was torture. At around ten or eleven Fahd would be thirsty and get out of bed muddle-headed, keeping his eyes barely open, not enough to banish sleep but just sufficient to see his way through the living room to the small fridge in the kitchen. On his return, his anxiety would take him to the door of his parents’ bedroom, which he would open without knocking to find them gone. Was it then that his instincts told him that he would, in fact, lose them at an early age and at more or less the same time?
When Fahd was fifteen, his father had been obliged to travel to Qaseem, a matter of signing court papers to do with Ali’s will. Fahd had woken early, before Suleiman, hoping for a final chance for his father to change his mind and take him along, even though the night before he had stressed to Fahd that it was more important that he remain at home with his mother and sister, tucking a fifty riyal note into Fahd’s top pocket as he smiled: ‘When I get back we’ll go to Thamama so you can learn to drive!’
Suleiman drank two cups of coffee standing up, refusing Soha’s invitation to eat the breakfast she had prepared and telling her he had to make the second court session in Buraida before noon. She handed him a cloth bag with a zipper, containing two thermoses of coffee and tea and a cheese and jam sandwich wrapped in cling film, which he placed in the footwell of the seat next to him before his wine-red Caprice moved out into Zuhair Rustom Alley. Fahd stood there waving goodbye, gazing at the red glow of rear lights as his father tapped the brakes just before Sayyidat al-Ru’osa Street.
Fahd shut the door and returned to the living room and, as he busied himself searching for something entertaining on television, his mother groaned, ‘Your father’s forgotten his bag!’
She phoned him and he came back, turning around on Quwa al-Amn Bridge. Fahd waited for him on the doorstep, the Samsonite suitcase beside him, and when the car pulled up, he opened the rear door, put in the case and jokingly said to his father, ‘Welcome home, Dad.’
Suleiman chuckled and asked for some water. His mother gave him a new bottle of mineral water and as he rushed back down the steps she shouted for Fahd and handed him a glass of water from the fridge in the kitchen. Suleiman drank, his eyes stern.
‘Look after yourself, my man,’ he said. ‘And your mother and sister, too.’
Then he moved off.
These were his last words. Off he went, rushing to make the second court session, but he never arrived. Soha called him half an hour later on his mobile phone as she usually did.
‘The number you have dialled is currently unavailable, please try again later.’
The recorded message was slurred, heavy and menacing. Ten minutes later she tried again and she kept trying until just before noon.
Panicked, Fahd phoned his friend Saeed and asked him to come over right away. Disoriented and anxious he climbed in next to him.
‘Where to?’
‘The highway to look for my father!’ Fahd snapped.
Saeed hesitated and then made a call that lasted for a few minutes. He suggested they ask at the accident and emergency departments of the major hospitals to find out if anything had happened—God forbid.
Saeed’s Honda Civic gradually descended to King Fahd Road and from there to Khazan Street, taking a left on to Assarat Street and passing through the lights outside the gate to the Central Hospital, before they came to a stop beneath the bridge that led to Aseer Street, where the trees slept still as stones. Trembling, Fahd got out and followed Saeed to the entrance of the emergency ward. They questioned a young man at the reception desk and he directed them to another building that dealt with traffic accidents.
The Sudanese receptionist had a paper cup of tea in front of him, a Lipton label spilling from its edge. He was sprawled out, yawning violently in the summer’s noonday heat. They made their request and he coldly opened a vast leather-bound ledger and turned the pages until he came to the day’s entries, then ran his finger down the morning’s accidents as though scrutinising a menu at a restaurant.
‘His name’s not here.’
Seeing that they hadn’t moved away he returned his gaze to the ledger and asked about the make of car. Fahd told him and the Sudanese placed his finger next to an incident that had taken place that morning on Qaseem Road involving a red Caprice. Fahd’s blood surged, turning to boiling water that flowed down over his feet.
‘Red or purple?’
‘Says red here.’
Saeed inquired about the name of the victim and he spun the ledger around to show them the space reserved for the name, Unknown, then beneath that in the box for the victim’s condition, Injured, which had been scratched out in red pen and next to it added the legend: Deceased.
When Fahd’s eyes fell on the word Deceased his tongue froze, a lump of wood wedged in his throat. Fighting his desire to collapse he asked, ‘Fine, so how do we check this person’s identity?’
Giving a luxurious yawn, the man said indistinctly, ‘See this number? You can go and check in the morgue.’
It was terrifying for these two teenage boys to contemplate going to the morgue with nothing more than a number—No. 67. His imagination ran away with him: the guard examining the number then heading over to one of the drawers and yanking it out as though it wer
e a carpart or some file in a government archive. He breaks open the tape around the head of the cadaver, wrapped like eid candy, and the fabric loosenens. Bit by bit he pulls it back to reveal hair, plastered down like the hair of a mummy, then a face, peaceful and serene.
‘This yours?’ he’d ask, nonchalantly.
They wouldn’t be able to move, their feet paralysed.
How can we bear to see our father, whose laughter, smile and mockery we worship, become a wreck of a corpse. How? The same thought occurred to them both, for Suleiman was not just Fahd’s father; Saeed, who had had no one else to raise him, thought of him as a father too.
Without entering the morgue they lurched woozily out of the door and Fahd almost fell as he stumbled against a street vendor. A white ambulance drove by without sounding its siren: just a sullen light flashing in the glum afternoon. Two women spread out their wares on the pavement facing the accident ward while a lone woman sat in the shade of a small tree by the hospital’s steel wall, latching her child to her breast beneath her abaya. A boy led an old man who was inching his stick along the pavement and a young man emerged from the accident ward followed by a Filipino nurse who guided a drip stand alongside him as they headed for the emergency department.
‘There is no god but God! God willing it isn’t your father! Just the same make of car.’
Saeed was consoling Fahd or maybe he was searching for a small chink of light in the darkness on behalf of them both, because he added, ‘Anyway, there’s a difference between red and purple. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.’
Suddenly Fahd collapsed, sobbing crazily as his eyes flickered back and forth between the people and cars around him. ‘My father’s dead! My father’s dead, people! Dead!’
Saeed embraced him. ‘Seek refuge from Satan!’ he scolded. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself. First we have to make sure it’s him, not someone else, and secondly, you’re a man and you have to act like one in a crisis and make things easier for your mother and your sister at home.’
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