Where Pigeons Don't Fly

by Yousef Al-Mohaimeed

  Lulua was silent for a moment then said, ‘This is my business. Prayer is a comfort and brings one closer to God. Mother needs prayer, Fahd, not Fairouz and Khaled Abdel Rahman.’

  Her impersonation of their uncle irritated him. ‘He’s made fools of you and ruined you. He’s wrecked every loving and affectionate relationship that my father ever made.’

  She sighed. ‘For your information, my relationship with my mother is better than it’s ever been. Prayer and being close to God increases people’s love for one another, but you’re stubborn. You’ve got a head like a rock because you hate my uncle.’

  Lulua opened the lower half of the fridge and took a sealed plastic container from inside the door. She had undone it and smelled the mint’s green leaves, then plucked off a chilled sprig, washed it in lukewarm water and slowly lowered the leaves into the teapot, before swaying over to the dining room where the forty-year-old body lying on the bed had shifted upright. The woman smiled at her daughter.

  ‘Fahd hasn’t called?’

  ‘He called yesterday. He asked after you; he says hello.’

  ‘Do you know if he was able to open the bag?’

  ‘I didn’t ask him. I forgot.’

  ‘Fine, so you’ve no idea what’s inside?’

  ‘Treasure maybe? Gold?’ Lulua laughed.

  –45 –

  FAHD DROVE THE CAR down University Road, inspecting the shops on either side. Tarfah said she didn’t like tunnels; despite the dim red lighting she sensed that she would die in one.

  He laughed. ‘Don’t tell me you’re not Tarfah any more. You’ve turned into Diana without my knowing it!’

  Her laughter died away as she moved her head to his right shoulder and whispered flirtatiously, ‘I love you, Dodi!’

  He had bought her a mocha from Dr Keif and a Turkish coffee for himself. He didn’t like Turkish coffee in paper cups, he said, because Turkish coffee was all about creating the right mood, and that meant somewhere to sit, a porcelain cup and his mother’s wonderful laugh as she whispered in his father’s ear at sunset in their home on the top floor in Ulaya. The coffee’s aroma would steal out of the living room and enter his room, fashioning a warm and intimate atmosphere from his parents’ love. Two cosy lovebirds, until King Death, idly circling over Qaseem Road and searching for a victim, had swooped down on two drivers, one sleepy, one fiddling with his mobile phone, and his father had crashed, his soul flying up into the distant skies.

  In the last tunnel westbound tunnel before King Saud University she told him to take Takhassusi Road. She examined the shops on the side of the road and told him that this road had a history: her cousin Umm Samia had lived there. Running south to where it hit Mecca Road at the Aziziya branch of Panda, the street began with construction supply stores and travel agencies and ended with interior décor shops and the offices of the Bin Baz Marriage Project, before running on into undeveloped plots, the very plots where the Committee once ran into her friend Nada.

  ‘Just imagine, the stupid girl goes for a morning drive down Thamama Road with her boyfriend and on the way back they decide to go into the new developments and suddenly the Committee’s vehicle is right behind them.’

  As she said this Tarfah little realised that a few months later, on a street near Takhassusi Road, she too would fall into the hands of the men from the Committee and would weep and plead to no avail.

  They passed a luxurious décor store and she said the owner’s son had proposed to her through her brothers before she married Abdel Kareem, her brother Ahmed’s friend.

  No one in the family said anything when Ahmed insisted on Abdel Kareem. Tarfah had become a guinea pig in her brothers’ experiments and she loathed them all with the exception of Ayman. He was sweet and calm; nobody felt his presence in the house and nobody called him by his name.

  ‘Come here, goat!’ they’d say. ‘Go there, goat!’

  Anyone sitting with them for the first time would assume they were mocking how tractable he was with his mother and sisters; any one of them could set him trotting ahead of her like a goat.

  Their older brother Abdullah’s fabricated story was another matter. He claimed that when their mother, Qumasha, gave birth to Ayman her breasts had dried up and his desperation for milk had prompted her to hire a black woman as a wet nurse. Unable to continue paying the woman, Abdullah would say, Qumasha had finally let her go after her older brother came up with an ingenious solution: he took the two-year-old and gave him a she-goat’s teat, from which he drank until he became so inoffensive and pliable that on first acquaintance anyone would think he was mentally ill.

  But Qumasha, who smiled whenever Abdullah told this tale of his, said that when Ayman’s uncle found out that he was the only one of the children to be raised on powdered milk, he started calling him ‘son of a cow’. This became ‘son of a sheep’ and the children took up this nickname and toyed with it like a lump of clay until it turned into ‘son of a goat’. His siblings almost forgot his real name, and he became ‘son of a goat’, until his mother became exceedingly cross at the indignity of being described as ‘the goat’ and his name changed again, becoming simply ‘goat’.

  Ayman had left her by the Paris Gallery entrance of Granada Mall and she went in, giving the impression that she was late as usual for her two friends, Nada and Fatoum. But instead she snuck out of the mall: going into a couple of shops then leaving via the main entrance where her lover waited for her. She took great care that no one recognised her. Though enveloped in her black abaya and veil, there were those who might guess it was her from the way she wore her robe, from her slow, funereal steps, from the exaggerated confidence with which she looked about her and from the plump white hand which Fahd was addicted to kissing.

  Fahd switched on the car’s secondary lights as she walked out, happy that there was no security guard at the entrance, not that he would have noticed that she had arrived in a black Camry and driven off in a blue Hyundai Accent. Given her fear of the average security guard’s keen powers of observation she was careful to go in by one entrance and leave by another; when she entered by the Paris Gallery she would go out by Carrefour, Extra, the main entrance, or the rear door that led to the neighbourhood of Granada.

  ‘I worry that my aunt and her daughter might drop by the house, decide to join me at the mall and call me on my mobile to find out where I am,’ she had said, but the only call she got was from Ayman, which she answered immediately, convincing him that she would be late and would give him a ring as soon as she’d finished walking with her friends.

  Fahd was parked outside the mall’s main entrance and he started the engine as she approached. She walked slowly over, her handbag in one hand and a pink carrier bag in the other. Climbing in she said that she didn’t want to do anything with him, they would just talk, but his hand mounted hers and she took it, bringing it beneath her black veil and slowly kissing it. In no time she was sucking his fingers one by one.

  Fahd slowed outside the entrance to some furnished flats and saw a fat, young, bareheaded Saudi sitting on a chair in reception. He didn’t stop. Saudis scared him because they were more curious than Sudanese or Indian receptionists. He might co-operate with the Committee or inform for pay and turn them in.

  They entered the bedroom of another furnished flat like a pair of thieves. She started to kiss him as usual and, intoxicated, he surrendered. She took a red rose from the pink carrier bag. It had no cellophane wrapping, as though it had been freshly plucked from a garden. She said that she had taken it from a flower shop inside the mall. He handed her a small, container and a carton slightly larger than a matchbox. Smiling shyly she opened the container and looked at the strip within: three bubbles sealed with tinfoil. He told her to rip one open and smell it. She broke the seal, sniffed and said, ‘Oh! Wonderful!’

  It was the smell of fresh strawberries.

  She took hold of him by his head and as though it might be their last time together, moved over every inch of him until
every pore in his body came alive and his mouth sprang forward searching for the rain cloud. Her rain cloud. She rained torrents, he would tell her, and her soul laughed lightly as she mischievously asked, ‘Even in summer?’

  He chuckled and whispered in her ear, ‘Even in summer: no rain dance needed. Just passing next to it makes it pour.’

  On her way home she talked to Fahd on the phone as she sat alongside her brother, telling him he hadn’t given her the hand cream or her gloves. Then she laughed. He only realised she was sitting next to Ayman when the steady blip of the Camry’s speed monitor sounded. Hastily, he said goodbye—‘When you get home, call!’—and hung up.

  She was certifiable, he told himself; how could she speak so brazenly next to her brother? Her innuendo was transparent: hand cream was the lubricant and gloves were the rubber sheath.

  ‘Gloves. What symbolism! Completely crazy!’

  Her recklessness called for revenge, he told himself. The next time they met he found a choice spot behind the front door to the flat where he hid and held his breath, with some idea of singing her hair with his lighter. She called out his name repeatedly and he didn’t answer, so she punched his number into her phone and his mobile rang suddenly in his pocket. He emerged from his hiding place laughing, ‘Damn you. It was too late for me to put it on silent!’

  She embraced him, her head encircled in her hijab, and passionately received his mouth.

  In the lift he moved closer to hug her and lifting her veil she snatched a final kiss. ‘I’m really worried for you, Fahoudi.’

  She feared loss, loathed it: the loss of the father who had hated her and never stopped beating her, the loss of Abdel Kareem who left without telling her he would never return, the loss of Khaled who had slept with her for three years until his wife had discovered what was going on from his mobile phone and he had decided to abandon Tarfah and never see her again.

  Tarfah took Fahd’s hand and laid it on her cheek. ‘Promise me you won’t leave me, Fahd?’ she whispered fearfully.

  He nodded gratefully, lost in the ripe tenderness of her cheek.

  –46 –

  ONE NIGHT ABDEL KAREEM didn’t return from Sudairi Mosque.

  He called Tarfah to say that he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow: he was going on a trip for two days. But he didn’t return after two days or three days or a week or a month.

  After a fortnight of waiting and weeping in the flat she went back to her family. Ahmed avoided looking at her. At first he accused her of tiring Abdel Kareem out with her demands. Withdrawn from the world, pious and god-fearing, Ahmed believed that life held nothing worth fighting, boasting and struggling for. His life was the life of the soul and required no hardship or suffering. Yet after two weeks of searching and questioning friends and family and the worshippers at the Fantoukh, Sudeiri and Sanei Khairi mosques, Ahmed discovered that Abdel Kareem had made a clandestine trip to Syria with two acquaintances from Eid Mosque in Suwaidi.

  His mother wept for a long time, as did Tarfah, who had assumed that God was compensating her for the suffering of her bitter childhood and two years of a failed and bloody marriage, with a man worthy of sacrifice and love.

  But he had betrayed her and she hadn’t fully realised it at the time. In the second month of their marriage, Abdel Kareem had received a young man at the flat in the most mysterious manner. His phone rang once and he jumped to his feet and went down to see him in his jellabiya.

  Rushing over to the window of the men’s majlis that looked over the street, she switched off the lights and spied on them from behind the drawn curtains. On the other side of the road she saw a tall young man with long hair reaching nearly to his shoulders, talking away as he sat behind his open car door with the engine running, and at the same time she saw the back of Abdel Kareem, absorbed in their discussion.

  At first, she asked her husband who came and went like that without being invited up to the majlis, to which he replied that he was one of the Brothers from the nearby Eid Mosque. When she began asking closer questions about his name and his job and how Abdel Kareem had first met him, he said, ‘He’s a childhood friend, from primary school,’ and she understood that he didn’t like her asking about things that didn’t concern her.

  He locked his phone with a password and grew jumpy whenever the message tone sounded. He persuaded her that this was men’s business and that she had no right interfering and prying. ‘Do you lack anything?’ he asked her and when, unsmiling, she said she didn’t, he added, ‘Do I deny you anything?’

  But she would smile again and change the subject. ‘Can I make you coffee?’

  When he stripped and went to the bathroom to take a long shower before the first call to Friday prayers, Tarfah tried to open his phone, entering all the numbers she thought might work and give her access to his inbox, but she never succeeded.

  She was amazed by how much time he spent on the Internet in that second month. One evening his friend called him from the street and he hurried out, leaving the computer on. She ran over and jogged the mouse before it could close and leave her needing a password to open it. Opening a few files on the desktop she found maps of Syria, Northern Syria and the region around Raqqa and Deir Azzur.

  ‘Is he thinking of marrying a Syrian?’ Tarfah thought to herself, before coming across a map of Iraq. She closed the file quickly. She noticed another labelled Expelling the Infidel from the Arabian Gulf and then some documents: Training Regime for the Mujahid from the al-Battar online magazine, various texts from the Maqrizi Centre’s website and fatwas from The Voice of Jihad. She opened the favourites file in his web browser and quickly scanned the list of sites that Abdel Kareem had saved there: The Maqrizi Centre for Historical Studies, The Islamic Media Resource, The Minbar of Tawheed and Jihad, al-Battar, The Voice of Jihad.

  Suddenly she heard his key slip into the keyhole in the flat’s front door and she came back out.

  ‘Why are you so late?’ she asked with loving concern. ‘I hope nothing went wrong.’

  Put on the back foot he said something about the mosque needing help with its library and replacing the air-conditioning units. Would he like coffee or tea, she then wanted to know, or would he wait for supper?

  Going into his little office he noticed that the screen hadn’t shut down. He had been gone for more than twenty minutes and it was set to switch off if left inactive for two minutes. It must have been her; she had spied on his things, Abdel Kareem whispered to himself.

  She came in and set a cup of tea on the table. He looked at her. ‘Tarfah, where were you a moment ago?’

  ‘In the kitchen,’ she answered, pretending not to understand.

  ‘When I was downstairs with my friend, I mean.’

  ‘I was here,’ she said, and pointed. ‘In the living room.’

  He rose from his chair, went out into the living room and sat on the sofa, where he picked up a little book. To make a mistake was no sin, he told her, but lying was. ‘Don’t lie, Tarfah!’

  ‘You keep everything from me!’ she shouted, losing her temper. ‘I don’t go near your computer or your phone. People I don’t know come and visit you and when I ask you who they are you dodge the question. It’s my right to know. I’m your wife.’

  ‘My life isn’t your personal property, woman, understand? Don’t stick your nose into things that don’t concern you.’

  He slammed the door on his way out and two hours later returned carrying bread, milk and a box of sugared dates. She rose to greet him and kissed his head. Then they went to bed.

  When Abdel Kareem vanished, Tarfah stayed in the flat, waiting. Every time she heard a car stopping in the street outside and a door slamming she would peer around the curtains. When she heard the footsteps of the man who lived in the flat next door her heart would stop beating for whole seconds, waiting—longing—for Abdel Kareem’s key to slip into the lock and turn twice, for him to push the door slowly open and come in, weary with travel, or from some long and arduous retreat. Sh
e would kiss his head, remove his rumpled shimagh then undo the buttons of his thaub and take it off so he might go into the bathroom and stand for long minutes beneath the pulsing spray while she dashed to the kitchen to make him supper and prepare two pots of tea—one with red tea, the other ginger—and pour some honey into a little dish with a few olives. Overjoyed, infatuated, she would wait for him in the living room and consider whether she should phone her family to breathlessly inform them, ‘Abdel Kareem’s back!’ or call his mother first.

  But no one opened the door.

  No car came quietly to a halt outside the building.

  No voice called from a strange number to tell her he was all right.

  Nothing at all, save the longing that gnawed at her limbs and filled her nights with loneliness.

  –47 –

  IT WASN’T JUST THAT Tarfah sensed the cooling of her relationship with Fahd; lying on her bed at night and examining her life her intuition would bother her. She began to lose hope of ever seeing Fahd without having to beg him. What was at first a mere impression had become undeniable fact, had become a sort of pleading on her part. There was some mystery she didn’t understand. Why was he avoiding her? When she spoke with him he seemed almost tearful with longing for her.

  There was a mystery in their relationship that Fahd barely understood himself. He wanted to meet her, to hold her, to sear her mouth with kisses, but he kept going to the bathroom to wash his mouth out, gargling and spitting, sniffing the air almost, as if his very breath smelt foul. It got so bad that when she dragged him down there he almost vomited. How many times had he lingered in the bathroom dousing himself with blisteringly hot water, watching the steam rise up as he scrubbed away?

  That evening his directness surprised her, and maybe himself as well: ‘Will I see you today?’

  She didn’t moan lasciviously, but, coquettish and sly, replied that he should give her an hour to see how she felt. Then, because she had already made up her mind to agree, she became impatient.