Where Pigeons Don't Fly

by Yousef Al-Mohaimeed

  Had the hand that drew the wavering blue line beneath these words in Milestones really been shaking as it seemed? Was it his father’s hand? Was it some sign, something his father wanted to keep before him at all times? Was it really some precocious and successful attempt at prophecy?

  In recent days Fahd had opened the leather satchel, stuffed with documents and diaries, stories and memories, specialist books and picture books, secret pamphlets, pens, the olive stone prayer beads and a picture—how it had been taken and by whom he had no idea—showing his father and fellow inmates in the prison yard. These mementoes of his father had yet to claim his attention, with the exception of the green volume, a black line across the middle of the cover and on the first page a title in thulathi script that read Milestones with the name Sayyid Qutb in beautiful farsi typeface in the top right corner, then the words Dar Dimashq Publishing. The handwriting inside was in his father’s hand, notes in the margins written long ago.

  Back then his father, or perhaps just the author, believed that all societies existed in jahiliya, a state of godless ignorance, and were either … atheistic communist societies, pagan societies in India, Japan, the Philippines and Africa, or Christian and Jewish societies that followed their deviant creeds.

  Within this definition of jahiliya societies he included those that professed to be Muslim, but in fact submitted to an authority other than God. It was as though the words in the book Fahd leafed through were being uttered by his cousin Yasser. Was this the well from which his father, his uncle and Yasser had all drunk? The common source for all those that followed the call to wage war on society, to the extent that some of them abandoned their normal lives and took up residence in ghettos for their kind?

  Haraa Sharqiya on the outskirts of Mecca, the neighbourhood where the families of the Divine Reward Salafist Group lived, was little more than a chaotic assemblage of houses and buildings, between which ran exceptionally narrow alleys like cattle pens, scarcely wide enough for two people to pass at the same time. Their homes were ferro concrete structures with three doors. The rear entrance of each house led directly to the front door of the house behind it, and was commonly used by the women to meet, hold whispered conversations and swap favours and cooking ingredients—they were also the doors through which many of them fled during the raids carried out by the security services shortly before the occupation of the Grand Mosque.

  Suleiman al-Safeelawi was brave and reckless, returning at night with rare courage to a neighbourhood under surveillance and making his way inside via the back door that opened on to the whip-thin alleyway, to rescue his bag containing his proofs of identity—his ID documents and certificates from primary and secondary school—before slipping away while the detectives and soldiers stood watch over the front doors.

  He could hear his own heart thudding as he crept to the house of the group’s leader, silent as a butterfly as he passed through the darkness to the men’s majlis where he slept at night, to find his bedding folded up as he had left it and beside it his black leather satchel. He picked it up without opening it and, fleeing to the cattle pen behind the house, made his way out of the sprawling district, most of whose modest dwellings housed members of the group—Brothers as they called themselves—along with a few students from the Islamic University.

  That moment, back at the time of the second wave of arrests and now sunk in dread and silence and forgetting, did not permanently distance young Suleiman from the group. Even so, he began to attend lessons with the blind sheikh at Imam Mosque in Deira in the company of a young man of a similar age, before being joined by a third student, then a fourth. The group’s military commander sent a messenger to warn against keeping company with government sheikhs lest they draw attention to themselves, unaware that the young men had grown impatient with the group and its impetuosity. Nevertheless, when Suleiman met Mushabbab that afternoon outside the Kutub Watania publishing house he almost flew with joy to learn that the leader was asking after him and expected him to arrive on the tenth of Ramadan; joy, because the leader’s eye only singled people out if he had confidence in them, when their abilities and talents set them apart from the rest.

  So Suleiman travelled to see him at a farm in the village of Ammar, west of Riyadh, where some of the Brothers were gathered. The leader took him by the hand and led him to a long narrow room like a corridor and showed him the red string onion bags packed with yellow pamphlets that bore the title of his first message to the umma: Correcting Confusion over the Faith of he whom God Has Made Imam over All People. It was only once Suleiman had driven the bags to their destination that he actually read the contents of this message, at a little house in Mecca, where the leader of the Meccan Brothers, entrusted with handing out the pamphlets in the Grand Mosque, was staying. It was the night of the twenty-seventh of Ramadan.

  That first message, sent fluttering into the skies over Mecca, Riyadh, Ta’if and Qaseem by Suleiman and his zealous companions, made reference to part of a prophetic hadith that contained the following saying of the Prophet, upon him be the blessings and peace of God: ‘The religion of God shall only be established by he who is secured on all sides.’

  Or, as the pamphlet explained: The story of this hadith, for whose sake we have come to divide ourselves into groups, is that the need to keep aloof from those who deny the oneness of God, to expose their enmity and cleave to the truth, was seen by some as an embarrassment and a hardship, an obstacle to spreading the faith that repelled the common people. Some were lax in applying this principle, while others abandoned it entirely. But we say that it is not as they believed, for God has lifted the embarrassment from us and adjured us to this principle, for if there were any embarrassment in it he would not have so commanded us. Listen to His exalted words:

  ‘And strive in His cause as you ought to strive. He has chosen you, and has imposed no difficulties on you in religion; it is the faith of your father, Abraham. It is He who named you Muslims, both before and in this revelation; that the Messenger may be a witness for you.’

  If God Himself has commanded us to strive and made it clear to us that there is no embarrassment in it, and that this is the faith of Abraham, then know that adherence to this principle—striving and following the faith of Abraham—is what sets the true Muslim apart from the pretender.

  And so in their eyes all people were pretenders and hypocrites, and it was their duty to exhort them, unembarrassed, to wash their hands of those who denied God’s oneness, for if they did not, they were of them. The faith was not to be established through sycophancy and silence but by cleaving to the truth and forbearance in the face of suffering.

  The initial wave of arrests sent Suleiman fleeing into the desert in the company of the group’s leader, the two of them wandering the wastes for two weeks living on lizards captured in their burrows. Forty days later, after most of the group’s members had been released from prison and after the second wave of arrests prior to the assault on the Grand Mosque, Suleiman decided that things were now in deadly earnest. No longer was this a matter of a pellet gun puncturing the heart of a loudspeaker, as his brother had done in Muraidasiya, nor was it a handful of boys demonstrating outside the governor’s palace in Buraida. It had gone beyond mere jail terms: they now faced execution by the sword.

  So Suleiman began to shun the group. Like black hawks, accusations of neglecting his duty to the cause eventually caught up with him, but he had vanished from sight, returning to a tiny burrow in Umm Sulaym before deciding to escape to Buraida. He would never leave again, he decided; he would be buried there. That was before the two security agents took him away from the Jurida marketplace to lose four years of his youth in a cold-walled prison. Yet this was certainly more forgiving than standing in Justice Square, waiting for the rattle of a sharp sword.

  And so Suleiman’s fear saved him. He did not join the Brothers in their assault on the Grand Mosque at dawn on the first of Muharram, the first day of the fourteenth century after the Prophet’s flig
ht.

  –32 –

  THE NEXT TIME AROUND Fahd set the alarm on his phone to six o’clock, but only came to when he heard Saeed’s shout beside him, as though issuing from the depths of a cave.

  ‘Your mother called on the landline. She says your mobile’s off.’

  Fahd quickly washed his face, put on his robe and throwing his headscarf over his shoulder said, ‘I’m late, I’ve got an urgent appointment. If she calls, say I have a meeting at the university.’

  Before closing the door he looked back in. ‘Saeed! Tell her I’ve gone to enrol in a summer course.’

  ‘It’s almost sunset, you lunatic!’ Saeed shouted. ‘What university?’

  He shut the door behind him, started the car and set out for Granada Centre in East Riyadh, towards the heavenly face of his beloved, the face that had shaken his weak and ever-eager heart to the core.

  Switching on his mobile, he found three messages.

  From Lulua: Mother’s asking for you. Where are you?

  From Thuraya: All I ask is a word, to say you’re mine and you miss me. Answer me, Syrian!

  From Tarfah: Where are you? I’ve been waiting an hour for your call. Shall I head out? It’s a long journey from Suwaidi, sweetheart.

  He called Tarfah and told her to set off. ‘Sorry baby, I overslept.’

  ‘So, shall I bring anything?’ she asked with delicious playfulness.

  When he burst out laughing she cut him off. ‘No, really. What do you long for most?’

  ‘Your heart!’ he replied passionately.

  ‘Trickster. Hustler,’ she cried in exasperation. ‘You leave me no way out.’

  ‘Your mouth, then.’

  She sighed deeply and contentedly. ‘Now I believe you.’

  When he started the car Rashed al-Majed was singing Oh, Don’t Keep Me from Him! on MBC FM and he thought of Noha, her tears and her choked and hesitant voice. He stopped at a petrol station and asked the attendant to fill his tank while he rushed into the little shop and bought a box of Fine tissues and a couple of bottles of water picked from the back of the refrigerator.

  Tarfah described the different entrances to the vast Granada Mall: ‘Come to Entrance Two. Turn in off the Eastern Ring Road and it’s next to Dr Keif. You’ll see the main entrance in front of you with a picture of Marah Oasis hanging over it.’

  ‘I know the Extra Café at the end on the left,’ he replied. ‘Is it before that?’

  ‘Well, of course it is, and before Paris Gallery. I’m not talking about Entrance One, OK? That’s the one by Costa Coffee and Espresso. I’m talking about Entrance Two. You turn in off theEastern Ring Road and if you look right you’ll see Dr Keif. The entrance right next to it.’

  As he turned at the traffic lights at the Imam Street exit he looked left and saw the green Dr Keif sign. It was nearly eight o’clock. He took a right, then another at the small roundabout facing the main entrance. Passing Entrance Two he saw that it really was a forgotten spot: nobody was about.

  He called her before he stopped the car and she answered eagerly. ‘Where are you?’

  She had gone in via the main entrance then headed into the VaVaVoom Beauty Salon, walking out again a few minutes later and going for a wander that took her past the family section of Starbucks, where she ordered two small cappuccinos. She walked to the main hall and turned right as if towards the up escalator, but marched straight past it in the direction of Etam. Her black bag swinging, she emerged from Entrance Two.

  He took the Starbucks cups from her and slowly moved off. He asked her about the unusually heavy crowds around the main entrance.

  ‘Maybe because it’s a Wednesday,’ she said.

  They crossed the small roundabout and doubling back to escape the congestion around the mall, headed out to the highway.

  Two days earlier, she said, she had gone with her family to an event at a hotel along Qaseem Road in a part of town full of vast building developments, hotels and small farms. She fell silent then suggested they go there. He drove on, past the petrol station on the Medina Road and past Musafir Café and Half Moon Café, then as Yamama College came up on the left he turned right off Quwa al-Amn Bridge and they entered the moonlit night. There were high, long walls with massive locked gates.

  ‘If only we could go inside one!’ he whispered.

  ‘All this sky to ourselves and you’re looking for walls?’

  The car crested a rise heading east and descended. To his right he saw a small tarmacked road into which he turned without noticing the barbed wire and open steel gate at its entrance.

  ‘I don’t know this place,’ she said, cheerful as ever, ‘so I’m not responsible for it!’

  ‘Should I go back?’ he asked her nervously.

  She smiled. ‘No, keep going!’

  It was a very narrow, tarmacked farm road, just wide enough for a single vehicle. On the left sat a small cabin, a yellow lamp suspended from a cable over its door, and next to it a white tent and concrete latrine. Beside them was parked an ancient and dilapidated Hilux pick-up that looked as if it hadn’t been driven in a long time.

  A kilometre and a half further on, the road ran out at a barrier of packed soil. A right-hand fork led to a muddy open space. There was a large piece of agricultural machinery for extracting well water and what appeared to be towering walls of dried alfalfa bales. The tarmac curved to the left and he followed it round until he came to yet another left turn that looked as though it returned to the highway.

  ‘You’re going back to the main road!’ she said.

  ‘We’ll stop here.’

  He found a track cutting across a field of alfalfa and drove in. He switched off the lights and the engine and an awful silence descended. He raised the armrest between them and pressed her to him, breathing in the perfume on her neck. Gasping, she pulled him towards the foot space beneath her. The smell of the fields came in through the windows, a sudden breeze pushing the scent of the purple alfalfa between them. The fragrance was strongest as they reached their peak.

  He plucked out some tissues, handed her the box, opened the door and poured water from a small bottle.

  He got to his feet and bared his chest to the mild breeze. Up on the highway the trucks’ headlights moved slowly and steadily.

  ‘You like the field!’ she teased. ‘You know, I don’t like fields.’

  He laughed as he canted the last drop of water from the bottle. ‘What field? You mean your field?’

  ‘Idiot!’ she drawled, her voice languid and embarrassed.

  He told her that the sky here had its own fragrance, that the crescent moon being wooed by a star above them was waiting for her to perch on one of its points like a child, her legs dangling down: an image inspired by some place or picture he had seen.

  She laughed. ‘Seems the artist inside you has woken up!’ she said. ‘But there’s not much for you to work with: no morning, no light, no harvesting women with sickles in their hands.’

  ‘Tarfah!’ he cried suddenly. ‘I’ve just had the most wonderful idea for a picture: a couple making love in a field beneath a rustic straw awning. I’ll call it The Lovers. What do you think?’

  Then he remembered Van Gogh’s painting of the peasants resting at noon in the shade of a haystack.

  He got in.

  ‘Shall we go?’ he asked.

  She was trying to wind her abaya about herself and muttering, ‘I seem to have put it on wrong.’

  He turned away from the door. She was gazing intensely at him, gratitude in her extraordinary eyes, and a tentative smile forming on her face. He kissed her forehead and she pulled his face towards her and kissed him on the nose.

  She urged him to get going so that she wouldn’t be late for her brother at the mall. He started the car and turned the wheel. Instead of taking the left that would lead them past the cabin with the lamp, through the gate and on to the highway, he went right, guessing that this road ran parallel to the one that brought them here. There was no need for
them to go back the same way.

  At first the road was good, then the smooth surface gave out abruptly on to a track through the fields, two straight lines, evidence of where cars had gone before. The crops were high but he decided to risk it and pressed on at a moderate pace so as not to get stuck and sink into the soil or sand. Suddenly the field ended and he emerged on to a bumpy track. Concerned that the car might stall he kept going. Then he realised they were on the wrong road. Tarfah, who had been enjoying his devil-may-care approach, began to show signs of anxiety.

  ‘Why don’t you go back to the other road?’

  After a few minutes spent circling around, lost and panicking, he said, ‘I don’t think I can find it.’

  He parked the car on a patch of firm and level ground and looked over at the nearby road and the barbed wire. His heart beat faster.

  ‘Take this road,’ she told him. ‘We came from here.’

  And though he knew she was pointing in the wrong direction he did as she suggested, telling himself that her encyclopaedic knowledge of Riyadh’s roadmap must cover even this wilderness. All of sudden he found their way blocked by a vast expanse of ploughed earth and coming to a halt next to the huge furrows he slipped the car into reverse and stepped on the accelerator. The rear wheels spun but the car stayed where it was.

  ‘We’re stuck.’

  He tried again, pressing harder on the accelerator and the car sank deeper. Getting out he bent over the rear tyre. When he touched the soil it was soft as paste. Damn. What was going on?