Where Pigeons Don't Fly

by Yousef Al-Mohaimeed

  In prison emptiness towered as tall as the minarets in the Grand Mosque and we had nothing save the dream of books and newspapers. I amused myself breeding cockroaches. Whenever a particularly fat one came near me I would hit it with my sandal until it lay flat and a small sticky sack burst from its rear. I would peer at it for a while then lift the sack in my hand and put it in an empty yoghurt carton and a few days later I would enjoy the sight of tens of tiny cockroaches pouring out of the sack. I’d bore a hole in the carton’s lid for ventilation and the cockroaches would keep growing and growing and with them grew my sadness, until one day I decided to kill them all.

  Later, I wanted a string of beads to count out my prayers, or the members of my family lest I forget them, or the Brothers who had been executed. Asking for a luxury like prayer beads was difficult and so I began saving up olive stones until I had enough to fill my palm. I grated the stone’s tip against the cement floor so the hollow centre showed, then turned it over and did the same to the other end until I had a pierced bead. I then cleaned out the core, and when I had thirty-three beads I pulled a thread from the matting, arranged the stones along it and tied the ends together.

  Was I in such dire need for prayer beads or had the emptiness driven me to find something to entertain myself, to disperse the endless hours, coiled like a hibernating serpent?

  After a year had gone by they asked us what books we wanted and I asked for a collection of al-Mutanabbi’s poetry. I was full of joy as I soared with the verses of vainglory and wisdom. I memorised half the collection as well as fifteen juz’a of the Qur’an.

  One man memorised The Delight of He Who Longs To Journey and after they took it back he decided to write it out in its entirety upon the white walls. Using the metal tabs from fizzy drink cans he inscribed it with the utmost care. The oldest man in the cell, an old illiterate fellow who had saved up the drink cans, could not understand the words, but he took his pleasure from the beautiful lines and the man who had written them decided to teach him the alphabet.

  The walls told us tales of times past and we told them of our sadnesses, our loneliness, and our great fear of the unknown. After they started allowing us family visits, one man’s relatives brought him cologne. He gave it to Daghaylaib, who was a kind man, and he perfumed us all. He sprayed the cheap shimaghs we had been given after a year inside. That night I wrapped the scented head cloth over my face and no sooner had I fallen asleep than I saw nightmares, the like of which I had never seen and never will again. I saw them take me, blindfolded, to Justice Square. They stood around me and one read out my sentence: one of the corrupt of the earth, to be beheaded by the sword. Hearing the sword slither from the scabbard I trembled and recited the shahada. Then, without warning, the executioner pricked my side with the point and I hunched my back in fright, my neck stretched out like the scrag of a bird. The briefest instant, then the unsheathed blade split the filthy air and cut into my frail neck. My head flew off, rolling like a football while my eyes stayed open, looking out at the crowds.

  I woke up, sweating and afraid, and opening my eyes I stared at the cell walls until the cramped chamber seemed a shady Paradise. It was truly the happiest moment of my life to find myself breathing evenly and to see the beautiful prison walls, a happiness only to compare with the instant of my release.

  For my first visit, my father and Ibrahim came. They were happy that they had found me at last and that I was still alive. The time after that it was my mother with my father and brother. The trip from Riyadh to Jeddah was sleepless and exhausting for them, and so it went on until the order was given, three and a half years into my sentence, to alleviate these hardships by distributing the prisoners according to their home regions.

  I returned to the Ministry’s prison in Riyadh where I lived among new cellmates, before they moved me to Ulaysha Prison. I sensed that they would release me, then. It was wonderful there: we read newspapers, listened to the radio and knew what was going on around us.

  I found it hardest to sleep at Eid and just afterwards, because the release orders were issued towards the end of Ramadan and when the list of names was published, ten or fifteen prisoners, or sometimes just one, and I did not find mine among them, I would enter a state of severe disappointment. At the end of a year’s hardship, injustice, tedium and anticipation, I would be hanging on the small and nebulous hope of the Ramadan to come.

  They let me go at the end of Ramadan 1404 AH. The head of the prison’s investigations unit sent for me. I was asleep. My cellmates woke me and I sprinted for the bolted door in my underwear.

  ‘Put your robe on, idiot!’ one of them shouted, so I dressed and Daghaylaib led me to the office of Lieutenant Saoud.

  ‘God willing, this is your chance!’

  That’s what he said. They were always mysterious, even though they had become our friends through long acquaintance. He said nothing more, even though my father and Ibrahim were in the room next door finishing up the paperwork.

  There was a detective who was supposed to be standing in a hidden location behind the chair where I sat, studying my features through this mirror-like panel. He was meant to familiarise himself with me, tail me in the first months following my release and write reports on my conduct. Instead, he came straight into the room. The lieutenant shouted at him, threw him out and smiled.

  ‘This lot just don’t get it!’ he said in his Hejaz accent. ‘Idiots, I tell you.’

  Then he explained to me that the man who had just come in had been given the task of following me and warned me at length to keep clear of suspicious activities that might do me harm and to ensure my behaviour was irreproachable.

  ‘Suleiman, you have to prove your good behaviour. Invite the man for a cup of coffee or something!’

  Then he laughed, and I laughed with him.

  My father, my uncle and my brother came to collect me. Walking out with them was a wonderful moment, delightful, but at the same time terrifying. I came out in Ramadan to find my family home transformed into a scene of great celebration.

  Scarcely a month passed before I was swept by nostalgia for my time inside. There, the days had all been alike, but that serenity and calm and one’s reliance on others just did not exist in the city outside. There you were required to work, to scrabble and lie and cheat and dissemble, to get married, to be a good father, to own a house, to…

  My brother said I should travel in order to shake off my depression, but I had no passport; they had confiscated it when I was arrested. I went back to the prison investigations unit and asked the lieutenant if I might have it back. Through half-closed eyes he looked at me and said, ‘You need to go to the Interior Ministry and present a request for reconsideration.’

  ‘A request for reconsideration!’ I whispered within myself.

  As though I had been lost and created anew with no passport or memory.

  I went and wrote out a letter in which I begged them to recreate me as a human being. They are the Creator and we their dependents.

  I forgot to tell you: when I came to use my identity papers they told me, ‘You have to renew your civil status and get a new ID Card, instead of using the old papers.’

  No objections. We’re their dependents, my boy, dependents in every sense, from our nationality to the choking air that we breathe.

  A month after submitting my request for reconsideration I went back to the lieutenant in prison. He rebuked me, ‘You’re the strangest, stupidest prisoner I’ve seen in my life. Prisoners never show their face around us once they’ve left!’

  To myself, I said, ‘I’ve been longing for the days of loafing around, sleeping, reading, writing and having fun inside. It’s an extraordinary blessing to be found nowhere but in your venerable prison.’

  Every five or six months I would go back and ask what had happened to my request for reconsideration, to which the answer would be, ‘Your letter hasn’t come yet.’

  Where has it got to?

  One year and two months later I
was informed they had consented to my request and a week after that I made my way to the passport office and entered the section for Saudi citizens. I stood before the official and submitted my request, which he examined for a few seconds then asked, ‘Is this your first passport, or have you owned one previously?’

  With the innocence for which my brother envied me I answered, ‘I had a passport before!’

  He raised his head from my documents. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘You’ve got it!’ I said, stupid as only I could be.

  He frowned and shook his head. ‘How do you mean?’

  I explained how I had been a political prisoner and he indicated that I should go to the special desk: the desk run by the security services. Off I went and found myself standing before an alert young man with blazing eyes who told me, ‘Your passport has been placed in the archives; it can’t be recovered.’

  I was anxious and almost wept.

  ‘Well, what’s to be done?’ I asked.

  ‘My good fellow,’ he said casually. ‘There was no need for you to say you’d owned a passport. If you’d asked the official for a new passport he would have searched the computer and your name wouldn’t have appeared. Your old one predates the computer system.’

  ‘What can I do now?’ I asked him.

  He was dismissive. ‘Come back in a week. Maybe he’ll have forgotten your name and what you look like.’

  Just two days later a colleague of mine at the distribution company suggested I apply at the passport office in Sharqiya and put me in touch with one of his relatives there. I did so and when the passport came through I left the building almost flying. The green passport was paper wings that could take you anywhere in the world. It was my key, my first revelation of the beachfront in Bahrain where the low, gentle waves broke before a bewitching sunset and the sun’s golden rays scattered and tangled in Soha’s hair. There was nothing more beautiful than to stand surrounded by waters that stretched endlessly away. It was as though life itself had no limits, as though the cell no longer surrounded me, though I sometimes had the feeling that it was pursuing me, embedded within me like a tree I could not chop down or break away from.

  Part 6

  No one picks the lock

  He did not turn;

  He did not see any of us,

  But stared at the doorstep and the door

  And surrendered his gaze to the plants on the balcony.

  Bassam Hajjar, A Few Things

  –43 –

  THE SHUBRA DAWN SEEMED calm and mild: a street stretching away east and west, twenty metres wide and lit with dim yellow lamps, a plastic speed bump midway down its length outside Fantoukh Mosque.

  Out of the north door that opened on to the street came Abdel Kareem, the end of his shimagh wrapped about his neck, unable to conceal his anarchic black beard. He descended the steps in his sandals then turned right into the backstreets. Halting at a water fountain by a zawiya, he cupped his hand, took three gulps and went on his way. He greeted Ahmed al-Sameetan in a voice surrendering to sleep and the two of them walked home. Ahmed entered first and courteously invited his friend in. ‘Please do …’ to which the other, passing on, replied, ‘Too kind…’

  They had come together years before, first at Fantoukh Mosque’s Qur’an school and then at Sudairi Mosque where they attended a study circle memorising the Qur’an. Later, they would go in the afternoon to the public library in Suwaidi, borrowing books by al-Albani and perusing the bound volumes of The Meadows of the Righteous and The Guide for the Fortunate. For years now, Abdel Kareem had taken part in meetings and trips with other large groups and his proselytising activities had increased, while Ahmed had begged off, preoccupied with family affairs, his sisters especially, following the death of his father, Ibn al-Sameetan. He often alluded to his virtuous sisters in front of his friend and to his desire to ensure their well-being with an upright husband who would appreciate them and keep them safe.

  The matter of Tarfah’s failed marriage was no trivial matter. Her brothers had got her involved with a failed actor deficient in morals, humour and manners, but the victor in all of this was Ahmed. He felt his view of the matter had been correct, that here was a world of degradation and filth, which encouraged Ahmed to speak directly to his friend after a number of hints and intimations. He took the plunge: ‘As our forefathers said, “Arrange your daughter’s engagement not your son’s.”’

  And with that the offer of his sister Amal was broached. He affirmed his brotherly love for Abdel Kareem and his faith that with him, Amal would be in the hands of one who feared God and sought His reward.

  It wasn’t Amal that Abdel Kareem sought, however, but Tarfah. He wished to deliver her from Satan’s wiles into the kingdom of God and His justice, to bring her back, after two whole years spent astray, to the right guidance of the Creator and His servants who feared Him, His punishment and His vengeance. He would be rewarded twice over: once for his own sake, for completing his religious duty through marriage, and once again for offering protection to a weak woman ensnared by the devil Art.

  So he took her and the three months she lived with him were some of the loveliest of her life.

  Calm and self-possessed, he never hit or betrayed her. It was only that he sometimes felt he was betraying his religion and neglecting his work: his evangelism and his jihad. On warm evenings he would tell her that he appreciated and respected her but feared that growing used to idleness and comfort would divert his attention from spreading the word, the summer activities and retreats, not to mention his longstanding ambition to commit to jihad and not just with financial contributions.

  Three times he took her to Jaffal Centre on King Fahd Road and once she persuaded him to go to Faisaliya Tower, but emerging at the end of a tense half hour spent wandering about he informed her it was her duty to remove herself from temptation and that he, too, must shield his sight from those ornamented women.

  During the first two weeks he ploughed Tarfah twice daily and showered her with such great passion that she fell in love with him and gradually began to change, dressing as he wanted, placing her abaya over her head instead of her shoulders so that her breasts were no longer visible to the naked eye, and replacing her niqab with a full face covering lest her beautiful eyes be an enticement to the weak hearted. After two months of this affectionate relationship, without him asking anything of her or making a single suggestion, she bought black gloves and thrust her hands into them whenever she left the house.

  Following afternoon prayers Abdel Kareem would stay behind at Sudairi Mosque on Sudar Street in Shubra to study with some of the Brothers, observe the sunset prayers and attend a lesson or lecture at the mosque. Then he would return to his flat, in the same street as the mosque, bringing tames bread and either stewed beans or bean paste. These he would eat with his wife after she had brought him stewed tea, two sprigs of mint, a wedge of onion and a couple of slices of lemon. He would fondle her as they ate, then he would take her to bed.

  Returning one evening as usual he came across a copy of Riyadh in the little living room. He glanced at it and asked, ‘Who was here?’

  ‘My brother Ayman.’

  ‘I don’t like that guy. Anyway, you know I don’t like newspapers and magazines in my house.’

  Tarfah asked his forgiveness and kissed his head. He smiled and stroked her cheeks and round face.

  Everything about him was wonderful: his delicacy and playfulness, even his anger was serene and self-possessed.

  His lovemaking was neither too short nor too long, a delightful balance, yet he wouldn’t take her from behind. She had once shifted around during their drawn-out preliminaries, but he had backed off and returned to his familiar missionary position. Tarfah had got in the habit of doing it with her previous husband and learned to relish its pain, knowledge she would pass on to her lover, Fahd, when she slept with him.

  One afternoon, talking to Nada on the phone, she said that she had found the perfect man. True, he was
an extremist and very conservative, but he loved her and worried about her. Nada laughed and said, ‘You idiot, he’s an insecure paranoiac!’

  In Nada’s eyes, men might act in various ways, but they were all paranoid. Tarfah would not accept this.

  ‘Abdel Kareem’s not like that!’

  That’s what she thought: that she would live with him forever.

  –44 –

  THE MODEST HOUSE WAS melting into the darkness as Lulua buzzed about on her own like a bee, lighting the oven in the kitchen, putting a kettle of water on to boil and listening out for the sound of bubbling. All of a sudden a fly began circling about. Lulua had no idea why she became so terrified whenever she saw flies and ants swarming together as if about to feast on a corpse.

  Two days earlier she had made a dash for the can of insecticide and sprayed it at a column of ants marching beneath the skirting board of the wall separating the kitchen from the dining room, telling herself that they were trying to devour her mother, whose body had become as lifeless and limp as an autumn leaf. And here she was now, hunting through the kitchen drawers for the plastic swatter and pursuing the fly like girls in fairytales who chase butterflies through the forest, slapping at it as it perched on the upper door of the fridge. The fly exploded, sticky blood and splayed wings, and Soha’s voice piped up, asking about the noise.

  ‘A fly, Mum,’ Lulua replied. ‘I was only killing a fly.’

  Trying to remove it from the white of the fridge door she felt nausea flip her guts, the opposite of the great satisfaction her father had felt in prison as he executed his cockroaches en masse.

  Fahd was taken aback to discover that Lulua had swapped her ring tone for a prayer.

  ‘God, I am Your servant,’ said the humble voice, ‘born of Your servants, man and woman. We are guided by Your hand, Your judgement carried out, Your verdict just: we beseech You in all the names that You possess.’