Unable to drive Fahd stopped at the end of the road facing an old wall made out of breeze blocks. He hesitated. Should he switch off the car’s lights in the middle of the street, or would that leave them at risk of a car careering along in the dark? He kept the lights on and maintained a lookout for any headlights approaching from either side or from the rear. Bolder now, his right hand began caressing the softness of that realm of irresistible pleasure.
His phone rang in his pocket and Thuraya grimaced, saying that she’d told him more than once to switch off his mobile as soon as she got in beside him.
‘Seems you’re scared of Mummy!’ she added in vexation. ‘A Jordanian, to boot.’
Fahd laughed openly as he patted her thigh. He checked the number and saw it was Saeed. At a time like this, you bastard? he said to himself.
‘Don’t let it bother you,’ he whispered and they continued their tour of the quiet streets.
‘Go back to that street by the wall!’ she said with relish, but he found a wide road that was more or less dark and stopped the car by a high marble wall. He doused the lights, keeping the engine running and Thuraya surged forward like an enraged tigress in pursuit of its prey.
She was more skilful this time, calmer. This time he didn’t close his eyes but stayed on the lookout. An Indian labourer shot past them on a motorbike then a speeding car whose driver didn’t turn their way. Suddenly a car came swerving right up behind them and Fahd gripped her boyish crop and held her still so she couldn’t rise. Frightened, he snapped, ‘Don’t move.’
Her body stiffened.
‘Don’t be scared,’ he said soothingly, ‘but don’t lift your head up just now.’
Her body stopped moving and became cold as a corpse. The thickly bearded driver crossed to the right-hand side of the road, drove past in his old blue Ford Crown Victoria, then turned left across their car, pausing for a moment while he pressed the remote control for the automatic gate. He was the owner of the house next to whose high marble wall Fahd and Thuraya were parked.
The car mounted the cement ramp in front of the garage door and went inside. Fahd watched the red glow from the rear lights reflecting off the wall until the garage door closed, then switched on his lights and drove away.
‘You’re done?’ she asked.
‘No, but you need the right mood and a bit of peace, not anxiety and fear.’
He entered Aisha Street, always crowded at night, then went straight across at the ring road traffic lights, heading back to the cluster of hotels and passing the old, black women stacking up cans of Pepsi and Seven-Up in front of them, their niqabs hiding eyes that brimmed with the sadness of long years of toil and hardship. A white Toyota Camry estate stopped in front of him and two young black women got out and stared at them.
‘Good God, looks like the whole street’s black!’ said Thuraya.
‘Look’s like you’re a racist,’ said Fahd in a bantering tone, but she replied sharply, ‘Get out of here with your “racism” and your silly slogans.’
He laughed, embarrassed by her aggression and whispered that song he had once heard in the house of his grandfather, Abu Essam: ‘… from the red spirit of the revolutionaries …’
‘“We have set you in ranks, some above others …” she said, then, ‘God, Lord of the Worlds said that, not me.’
Thuraya hunted for a cassette. She found an old tape, blew on it to clear off the dust and put it in the machine. Suddenly, Fahd stopped outside the hotel’s entrance for women where a southern Egyptian was posted in a sky blue jellabiya, his turbaned head lolling forward over his cane. He was overrun by children trying to get past him to the women’s section.
‘I can’t get out unless I’m sure my friend has really arrived.’
She pressed the buttons on her mobile and started talking, waving at him with her left hand to lower the volume on the cassette player. Her friend appeared to have asked her a question, because she said, ‘It’ll be quarter of an hour before I get to the wedding.’
She was lying. She hadn’t told her that she was outside the door at that very moment.
‘Let’s take a quick spin,’ she said.
‘It’s tricky to get out of this area because of the traffic. I don’t think there’s anything stopping you going in and waiting.’
She sensed he wanted rid of her and in a broken, faltering voice said, ‘You still haven’t taken that money out of the bank for me. I told you my sister was coming from Jeddah and I need to go shopping with her.’
Fahd was carrying no more than one hundred riyals in his pocket. His bank balance was in good shape but he found it hard to swallow that a woman his mother’s age should be exploiting him. True, she was in need, he told himself, but it was unpleasant to be begged from so brazenly. He took her lined hand and kissed it in something like apology.
‘I’ll bring the money next time, before your sister gets here.’
As Thuraya prepared to open the door with a defeated air, he said, ‘Just a minute, I’ll set you down right outside the entrance.’
He wanted to atone for disappointing her; he hadn’t brought the money and he hadn’t found a quiet spot where they could sit together and she could see him properly.
‘I want to see you facing me,’ she had said. ‘The whole time we’re in the car I only see you from the side and you’re concentrating on the road.’
He didn’t really understand what she meant by seeing him properly. He thought of inviting her to Saeed’s flat but he kept having second thoughts, worried that some disaster might occur and he would put his best friend into harm’s way.
He left Thuraya and drove Saeed’s car to Maseef. He told himself he had to get a hot mocha and stopped at Coffee Day on King Fahd Road. Most of the seats were taken. He went to the bathroom, washed his face and looked at his eyes in the mirror, rinsed his mouth out repeatedly, then finally took a seat in a far corner, parallel with the road outside and raised his hand when the Filipino waiter looked his way.
He thought of when she said to him: ‘I was a Hejaz girl, coddled by my family, until circumstances dictated I marry that man from Qaseem. Miserly and filthy. My friend, that man never washes or puts on scent. He doesn’t seem to know that there even is such a thing as scent. I’m the complete opposite. I was always clean and nice-smelling. To this very day I take care of myself and my clothes, and that’s after half a dozen kids. One time I called this sheikh and told him that I couldn’t bear living with my husband and that I didn’t sleep with him at all. “At all?” he asked. “No, but every couple of months or more and I need a man who’s always there and tender.” The sheikh suggested straight out that I ask for a separation. How could I ask for a divorce when I’ve got no job and six kids to look after? And what did he tell me? That he was worried I would fall into temptation and sin!’
Her voice became dreamy: ‘I’m with you now, Fahd. I want you but I know that you won’t marry me, that you’re a young man and I’m a married woman with six children, the oldest only a year younger than you. Remember how I told you at the start that I wasn’t one of those girls who spends her nights in hotels on the outskirts of Riyadh or in furnished flats, that I was scared to weaken before you, your good looks and your youth? Well now I’m ready to open my heart to you. I’ll open everything.’
They were parked outside a stall selling mango juice and he asked her, ‘OK, and what about Fadwa?’
She became agitated. ‘Please don’t speak about her ever. I’ve become jealous of her. When I first told you about her, I said it was because I was looking for some warmth. It’s not as easy for women to meet men as it is to meet women. I got to know her at a wedding in Jeddah. She was leading the band: brown, with a strong yearning voice. I was utterly bewitched when she sang,
O my desire,
My solace,
I love you, how I do,
Why turn away,
Why leave me,
When I love you,
I love you, how I do!’
He told her that it was an old and famous song, and that it had been recorded by Abdel Muhsin al-Mahanna, Ahlam and Asala. He had a nice voice, she said, then continued, ‘Fadwa sang in that voice of hers looking dazzlingly in my direction, so I smiled at her and she smiled back! My relationship with her began then. Of course, my three sisters were with me and they think I’m very pious and strict, mainly because I’ve lived most my life in Riyadh with an old man from Qaseem, so it wasn’t easy to go up to her and talk or get her mobile number. But her looking at me encouraged me to smile. She was watching the bodies of the dancing women as she sang, then she’d steal a glance at me. I’d smile and she would smile.’
Thuraya sighed.
‘My sisters asked me what I thought of her, and I said her signing was incredible, that her voice was wonderful, strong and expressive, that she chose sad, romantic songs, but I didn’t tell them that she had a face like a child, or that her hand slapping the drum was sublime.I wanted to press her to me in a long embrace and smell her breath. Oh Fadwa! My poor Fadwa!’
She turned to him, pressing her lips together.
‘You know, Fahd, I’d love to be with you and her together.’
Her wish took him completely by surprise. She desired Fahd and in the same instant longed to have Fadwa for just one night.
‘I want to see her in front of me, smoking and blowing smoke in my face. I love her voice, her face, her body.’
Fahd put the mocha on the café table. His troubled train of thought, uninterrupted by the al-Arabiya report on Saudi stocks and shares on the television, came to end and he left.
–25 –
FADWA WAS A YOUNG woman in her late twenties with the features of a boy. Thuraya was captivated by her eyes and brown skin and loved her firm breasts.
‘Lovely and feminine,’ she told Fahd, adding that she had pursued her until Fadwa had finally consented to meet at a café on the Corniche in Jeddah.
‘She ordered a grape-flavoured shisha and said, “Shall I order you one?” I apologised saying that I didn’t smoke, even though I’d like to, and she took a packet of Marlboro Lights out of her silver handbag and handed me one. I hesitated, but her wink and captivating smile hypnotised me into taking it. She changed her mind and took it off me, putting it in her mouth, swiftly lighting it with her silver lighter and blowing a thin stream of smoke into my face.’
Fadwa’s eyes were grave as she handed her the cigarette. Thuraya saw her lipstick on the filter and put it between her lips with pleasure, feeling dizzy as she tasted the butt that had been in Fadwa’s mouth. She drew in smoke, filling her chest, and coughed violently, resting her head on the table until Fadwa was almost dead from laughter and her eyes wet with tears. She came over and sat next to Thuraya and pulled her head to her breast.
‘I caught this scent that left me light-headed. She was stroking my head and saying, “Seems you’re too old for these games.”’
She was on the verge of tears as she looked at Fahd.
‘Must I lose what pleasure is left to me just because I’m thirty-seven? You can’t imagine the risk I’m taking with my sisters and family by going into that café, the fear I feel when I’m wiping my face with a handkerchief covered in rose-water and spraying heavy Oriental perfume until the smell goes away.’
Was she missing tenderness and warmth? She wasn’t looking for relationships with women, but she needed intimacy and love, to be held tight.
‘What can I do with a man whose entire life is hotels, shisha, friends and satellite TV? Shall I look for another man? “Thuraya,” I tell myself, “at least avoid committing a sin!”’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Fahd. ‘What sin?’
She looked out of the car window at a fat white cat that leapt off a rubbish bin and scurried off as a Yemeni emerged from his room in a loincloth and white T-shirt and threw the leftovers of his chicken ribs in its direction.
‘My darling Fahd, you know a relationship with a stranger is considered adultery and my relationship with you hasn’t gone that far, but I’m scared.’
With a happy childhood and troubled youth in the large family home in Jeddah, Thuraya had been pampered by her late father. In year two of secondary school she had loathed mathematics but the woman who taught the subject, Miss Awatef, gave her such looks of tenderness and admiration that Thuraya followed her lead and passed with flying colours despite knowing nothing at all.
In middle school she had been very interested in her cousin, the son of her paternal uncle. Her brother had married this cousin’s sister, and she assumed she would marry the boy. She went to the house next door, where they lived, and set about ironing his clothes when he was due to travel to Cairo, but she lost hope and consented to marry her husband.
In the beginning her new life was fun. ‘I admit he was handsome. At the start of our marriage he’d drown me in presents but everything broke down after the first year. I remember the time I made up my mind to leave him and go to my family in Jeddah, that thing my mother used to say to me and my sisters came back to me: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, my girl.”’
Thuraya told how in a modest, working class home in the East Riyadh neighbourhood of Salehiya, near Salehiya Roundabout on the right-hand side after the petrol station, there in the house where her in-laws lived, her husband lay sleeping in the dining room. He was due to get up and attend Friday prayers at the mosque with his brothers, and Thuraya, in obedience to his mother’s instructions, laid out the food in the dining room and woke her husband, who opened his eyes with difficulty and then went back to sleep. When she woke him for the third time he sat up on the floor-cushions scowling and sent his meaty palm flashing out towards her. Her soft ear rang and a wobbling tear descended. It was the first time he had laid a hand on her and it wouldn’t be the last.
Thuraya stopped and murmured at Fahd, ‘I wish I’d known you ten years ago, back when I had my strength and my desire to take revenge on him. I would have betrayed him and bedded you whenever I liked.’
She married a year before her cousin. When she gave birth to her first son at her family home in Jeddah, and while she was in her forty-day seclusion, she went to the window of her second-floor flat to watch her former sweetheart’s wedding procession. She laughed as she remembered the scene: ‘I was peering from the window like in those television dramas and weeping with grief while my firstborn wailed on the bed. Can you imagine?’
Thuraya spent long years virtually untouched in bed. She imagined her life to be a good one, settled and safe, but from a woman in the neighbourhood and the wife of one her husband’s friends she learnt that they had sex more than once a day. One of them said that her husband would come home exhausted and couldn’t have his afternoon nap without one; the other confided that her husband used to rouse her when she was fast asleep at night to take his pleasure. Looking at them both Thuraya asked herself, ‘What makes them so special compared to me? Their dark skin? Their ugliness?’ But though she might tell herself these things she went through a period devoid of self-confidence, which she gradually began to regain with the adolescent Fahd, before he, too, eventually left her.
Once, she said to him: ‘Don’t go thinking that I’m telling you about my problems and his neglect just to excuse my betrayal or get you to sympathise with me. It’s not that at all, Fahd. You might not believe it, but ten years ago my husband and I abandoned each other. We don’t do any of the stuff that married couples do. My six-year-old girl was a whim of mine. I wanted a little boy or a girl so I went in to see him all covered in perfume, even though he doesn’t deserve it, and that was the last time he did it.’
–26 –
FAHD’S TIME WAS DEVOTED to the art pages of the Kanoun website, his exhibitions, and his worn-out mother and sister, tur
ned in on herself in their house in Ulaya, never seeing anyone and never seen. Her time was divided between caring for their mother, her schoolbooks and writing precocious Islamic anthems. For fun, Lulua would invent rhymes and riddles, raising her voice to make herself feel someone else was in the house as she waited for Fahd to take her out to Cone Zone in his new car to buy toffee ice cream. Their uncle knew nothing about their excursions. They would steal ten minutes to go to some nearby shop in Ulaya Street or Urouba before their uncle returned and so as not to be late back to their mother who had aged painfully quickly in the last two years.
‘Is something wrong with Mum?’
But Lulua never answered. She would dodge the question by starting some new topic of conversation. ‘Have you seen what my uncle’s arranged …?’
Once, as they stood waiting for cream cheese fateer from the Damascus Fateer House on Layla al-Akheliya Street, he cornered her. ‘You throw me out of the house and hide everything from me, even my mother’s disease.’
She told him that their mother had had a tumour in her colon for the last four months. ‘Seems that it’s benign.’
‘Seems!’ he shouted in anger. ‘What do you mean, “seems”? Listen to me, Lulua, I have to know: is it malignant or benign?’
Gradually she told him and finally conceded that it was malignant, though, according to the doctor, it was in its early stages and a cure seemed likely, God willing. But the uncle said that cures came from God and even Yasser the doctor said that the treatment would be painful and psychologically damaging; herbs were healthier and more effective.
After sunset prayers each day their uncle would open the street door and come inside with his bulk and muttered incantations. The cat would flee from the entrance with her kittens, and he would climb the long staircase panting loudly, short of breath and searching for Lulua, who would prepare a glass of water into which she had dipped a strip of fine Hejaz paper dyed with saffron. Having blown over the water for several minutes he would sit down next to Soha, give her three mouthfuls and start blowing on her as he held her forehead in his right hand, tugging at her roughly while reciting Qur’anic verses and puffing at her face and chest until at last she gave a sigh and forcefully thrust his hand away. His strong grip hurt her and no sooner did he desist than she would slump, her eyes drooping, and sleep with the calm of the dead, as though she had run vast distances during his recitation and now he was done she was seeking out the nearest bench in a public park to stretch herself out to nap.
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