Once past the mosque his heart thumped in alarm and he turned back and parked the car. He got out, frightened and confused, removed his shoes at the entrance to the mosque and glanced briefly at the size of the sandals by the door. He put his right foot in one—‘It’s my father’s size!’—and reaching out to the door he felt a shiver run through his body like cold water and the hairs on his skin prick up.
Very slowly, he opened the door and in the far west corner of the mosque, next to the mihrab, he saw a body wrapped in a hair mashlah and apparently asleep, its face turned towards the qibla. He considered walking quietly round to see the face. He was frightened that he might wake, but he was determined and he moved forward with slow steps, alert to any rustling from his thaub. Reaching the mihrab he took a look at the sleeping man’s face, but he had covered it with his shimagh. He thought of making a loud noise to wake him up, but instead retraced his steps to the door, turning every few paces towards the qibla where the man lay.
He peered at the sandals for a while. They looked like the ones his father and Mushabbab had taken turns wearing in prison whenever one of them was summoned for interrogation, until that heavy day had dawned and Saeed’s father had donned the leather sandals and gone outside and neither he nor the sandals had returned. Were these sandals, lying like a witness outside the door of the mosque, the sandals that Saeed’s father had slipped on a quarter of century before?
He left the alley in the direction of the street where flowers were sold and drove south until he reached Jazeera Mall, then took a left towards Iblees Street where the Bangladeshis had their shops, selling illegal satellite dishes and receivers and cards for encoded porn channels. He crept into a little street behind Sadhan Mall and, at exactly ten in the morning, carrying all the necessary forms and his plane tickets, he stopped outside a company issuing travel visas to Britain.
When he presented his papers, having passed through the routine security check at the door, the long-haired clerk asked him a number of questions, sent him to a room where his thumbprint was taken, then handed over a receipt stating that Fahd’s application would be processed in two days.
Fahd left. By the outer gate he breathed a sigh of relief and wondered what had happened to Tarfah. Had they handed her straight back to her family or taken her to the women’s shelter? What was her family’s view of what had happened, especially that of her brother Abdullah? What had they told Sara about her mother? Good God, how merciless this country was! How exorbitant the cost of a coffee with a random girl!
Fahd muttered to himself as he made for Tahliya Street, where he stopped at a Dunkin Donuts to drink a cup of black filter coffee with a bear claw pastry, taking out his mobile every now and then to check that it was working and that he hadn’t received a message.
The Filipino closed the long curtains as the afternoon call to prayer sounded and Fahd went back out to the car. As he was turning the key in the ignition, the mobile buzzed like a cockroach and he opened its message folder: I swear to God I’m going to create a scandal in front of everyone, at every exhibition, at every artists’ gathering, you rat!
Selecting ‘Reply’ he wrote: Screw you, screw ‘everyone’ and screw your country, too.
He imagined Thuraya the Hejazi, waking late to the sound of her squabbling children, feeling the air conditioner wash against the semi-naked body that gave off the powerful, penetrating fragrance of her perfume. There was no man beside her to ravage her, and she wrote to curse the young man, the immature stranger, who failed to fill her life, who refused to surrender to her will. The phone buzzed again: See here, Syrian. You’ve got the right to swear at me and other people, but I’ll be saving that comment about my country. It’ll get you fucked up.
My God, thought Fahd. How can people bear to live in a racist, conspiratorial society, a society that hates and cheats and dupes and gossips and steals and murders, a society for which I have a representative sample at my fingertips: my uncle, Yasser and Thuraya? True, there are selfless friends like Saeed, and there are those in search of certainties and absolutes, like my father, Mushabbab and Abdel Kareem, and then there are those, like me, like Lulua and Tarfah and Sami, who are lost. But just thinking of it makes me want to vomit.
–63 –
INSIDE THE LOCKED OFFICE in the Committee building, Tarfah contemplated her moment of shame. She imagined what might have happened had they taken her to the women’s shelter and placed her on the register, to spend the following day sitting in front of a sheikh with knotted brows who would question her about the crime of going out to drink cappuccino with a stranger. She imagined the supervisor calling her broken-hearted mother to inform her of the incident, requesting that her father come to pick her up:
Her mother is completely thrown and decides not to tell Abdullah for fear that he might lose his temper and exact revenge on his sister. She hastily rounds up Ayman and the two of them drive off, following the supervisor’s directions. They lose their way more than once and Ayman pulls over to question passers-by, once by the Passport Office and once by the Girls’ Education building, asking them if they know where the women’s shelter is.
When they arrive, her mother goes in to see the supervisor and requests that she might take her home.
‘Not allowed, auntie!’
‘I’m her mother!’
‘Sorry, only her father can pick her up.’
‘Her father’s dead, my girl.’
‘Well, her legal guardian, then, and he has to bring the original of his custody document and a picture of the girl.’
‘Her brother’s the guardian!’ says her mother, then adds, ‘Her brother’s outside with the security guard.’
‘Does he have a court-certified custody document in his name?’
‘No, her guardian’s the older brother.’
‘Then he has to come here and pick her up in person.’
Damn! It was as though they were arranging Tarfah’s death, quite blithely and in cold blood. Her mother imagines Abdullah coming with a killer’s calm taking her away—forgiving, understanding, affectionate—without mentioning the subject, as though he didn’t care. Then he would drive her home, apologising for having refused to let her study at the nursing college. But not to worry, a friend of his would make sure she was accepted on to the course. On the way, he would drive her to dark parking lot in the basement of some building, butcher her with a huge, razor-sharp knife and put her body into a black bag, which he’d heave on his shoulder and throw into a large yellow skip.
Tarfah imagined her mother contemplating her fate for a few moments, thinking of a way to get out of this fix.
‘Her older brother’s travelling,’ her mother says.
‘She’s stays with us until he’s safely home again.’
‘Listen, my girl, he’s gone abroad on a study trip. Anyway, Tarfah has a young daughter at home. She can’t sleep at night unless her mother holds her. God have mercy on your parents, my girl,’ she pleads. ‘God watch over you in this world and the next.’
Tarfah heard the rattle of a key in the lock and sat up, alert; she was in the Committee building, not the women’s shelter. Wrapped in serenity, the man in the cream mashlah entered in the company of a lightly bearded youth with shaven temples, who was holding a sheet of paper and a blue ink pad. The sheikh told her that the Committee would protect a guilty woman for a first offence but for a second offence—God forbid!—she would go to the women’s shelter and be handed over for questioning there. She might stay there for six months or a year, and if convicted and sentenced, she could be sent to women’s prison.
‘This is a pledge. Place your thumbprint here, promising not to commit any more offences against the law, and we will keep it safe with us, in complete confidentiality. We might need it again if, as I mentioned, you engage in any immoral act a second time.’
The sheikh turned to young man beside him. ‘Brother Saad will take your confession and help you sign it. I am going to call your family so they can sign
for your release.’
The sheikh went out, leaving the door open behind him. The bearded youth approached, placed the sheet of paper in front of her and pointed at a sentence at the bottom of the page: Write your name here. He handed her the pen and she wrote her name, her hand shaking. He uncovered the damp blue fabric of the inkpad and placed it on the table beside her, then taking her full white hand, he spread her left thumb, pressed it on to the pad then held it next to her name for a few seconds, fondling her hand until she pulled it away from him. He coloured instantly.
‘So, what’s fine for him is forbidden for me?’ the young man said.
She scolded him, harsh and self-assured: ‘Fear your Lord, sheikh!’
She knew he was no sheikh, but wanted to give him a rank he respected and would be ashamed of dishonouring. Alarmed, he ran from the room and Tarfah rubbed her thumb against the underside of the table’s edge to remove the loathsome ink.
It made her weep bitterly when Ayman cried in front of her, repeating, ‘This is the end of my trust in you, Tarfah! I’m the only one who respects you and does what you ask, and now you put me in a situation like this.’
Although he was years younger than her, she could pull his head towards her and kiss him twice as she asked his forgiveness; he did not deserve her deceiving him.
‘You’re the only one who has been there for me after Dad died. I don’t have anyone but you. May God never take you from me.’
In the heat of her fervour she said, ‘I swear I’ll only leave the house to go to my grave!’
His mobile had not stopped ringing from one that afternoon and he eventually answered, telling his mother that he and Tarfah would be late because one of the doctors at the university had been suspended. Tarfah had called him several times from the college, he said, and when his mother asked, ‘Shall I send Abdullah, then?’ he had shouted, ‘No! I’m right outside the college. We’ll be home in a few minutes!’
Tarfah cried for a long time in the car. Ayman didn’t ask her who she had gone to the café with but she was unable to raise her beautiful eyes towards him when he sat with his siblings in the living room.
–64 –
THE DUST WAS CHOKING Riyadh for a third day in succession. The moon’s disc struggled to be seen without any noticeable success. Everything in the city cried out for a lament, for pity.
Fahd was riding next to Saeed as they headed out to the café and feeling almost as if he might fly. He had picked up his British visa and here he was, on his way to meet friends and some other people Saeed had organized as a surprise.
Arriving he found a group, some of whom he knew and others he was meeting for the first time. Saeed introduced him to them one by one: ‘Firas: a friend from the neighbourhood. Saoud, you know: the general director of the Kanoun website. Omar’s an Islamic political activist; he’s been unemployed since he was fired for putting his name to a statement calling for political reform. Ziyad the Dwarf from middle school, the one with a woman’s voice. Ali Bin Abdel Lateef, first in the thaniwiya aama exams at the Najashi Secondary School. And Rashed.’
They sat down and Fahd ordered a pipe of Bahraini apple tobacco and scanned the printed menu, then became aware of the earnest conversation taking place around him. They were arguing with Omar, Saeed having a go at him because he was sitting with an atheist like Brother Firas who believed in nothing. Omar was making it clear that he still believed in the drive to institute reform in the country, even if it ended up fading away or smothered in the cradle. He believed Islam was the only route to this reform, though he rejected both what he called ‘Talibanised religion’ and the form of the faith propagated by the Council of Ministers.
‘Just because there’s a brother without faith like Firas here, doesn’t mean I have to agree with him and nor does he necessarily have to believe in anything himself. It’s a personal matter. It concerns him, his relationship with the world and his view of religion,’
Saeed broke in to say that they had come together to say goodbye to Fahd who was travelling to Britain, perhaps to study, and perhaps to emigrate, temporarily or permanently as it might be.
As he began telling them the story of Fahd’s tempestuous life over the last two years a group of bearded men entered the café, led by a portly man whose body jiggled inside his short thaub, the corner of his shimagh dangling down either side of his face. He halted in the middle of the seated patrons. Some hid their shisha hoses beside them while others hung them on the brackets next to the pipes and got up to leave. Fahd was on the verge of walking out when Omar gestured at him to sit down and whispered to everybody: ‘Please, no one leave. I want you to witness what I’m going to do with your own eyes.’
‘Brothers, the sheikh has something to say!’ bellowed one of the men. Most of them were over twenty. Some carried plastic bags full of free cassettes and little booklets; others ringed the fat sheikh with his round red face and groomed black beard.
‘Brothers, not one of you can claim to be a believer until he desires for his brother what he would want for himself, and, by God, I love you all in God’s fellowship and wish for you what I wish for myself! My Brothers—may God guide you—the smoking of shisha, and tobacco in all its forms, is among those things that are proscribed for the harm they bring, as doctors have shown, and is forbidden by the words of Almighty God, may He be praised: “They ask you what is lawful for them. Say: lawful for you are all things pure and good.” And also: “He commands them to do what is just and forbids them from evil; He makes lawful for them what is good and pure and prohibits them from what is bad and impure.” Tobacco and shisha, my Brothers, are amongst those impure things proscribed by God in His Book, for they are the cause of illness and destruction: “Make not your own hands the instruments of your destruction.” And also, “Do not kill yourselves, for God has been to you the Most Merciful.”’
The sheikh talked on for ten minutes amid absolute silence, some even lowering the volume of their mobile phones, giving him a feeling of great satisfaction and importance. As he finished reciting his final verse, Omar raised his hand and in a loud voice that broke the hush, he shouted, ‘God reward you, sheikh! I have a question.’
The sheikh glanced at him for a moment. ‘Please.’
‘Truly, God reward you for that advice, but might we know your name?’
The sheikh looked him up and down sourly and one of his acolytes said, ‘Sheikh Hamoud Bin Abdullah.’
With a self assurance and courage that was the envy of the silent crowd, Omar said, ‘Naturally, sheikh, you would agree with me that you yourself contain both good and evil.’
The sheikh nodded uncertainly. ‘Indeed …’—while his companions lifted their eyebrows in disbelief.
Omar fired his second volley: ‘And of course, sheikh—God reward you on behalf of us all—you will know that there are those amongst us who will be better even than you.’
Then Omar came to the point, speaking with a crazed bluntness: ‘You came here to speak to these guys, most of whom are unemployed, so that they’d give up smoking but you didn’t ask yourself why they’re here. Don’t you know that most of them don’t have work or a hope of finding it, that they’re poor and struggling? Don’t you think, sheikh, that standing up to tyrants, fighting for what is right before an unjust ruler, is more important than taking on the shisha habit of these penniless men?’
The sheikh was staring at Omar, struck dumb by shock. His face reddened and he began to mutter unintelligibly as he made for the exit followed by his bearded men, while Omar continued to scream in a blind frenzy: ‘Sheikh! Don’t turn your tail and run! Come here, I’ve got something important to tell you!’
Some of the young men in the café chuckled and Saeed shouted, ‘A big hand for Sheikh Omar!’
A roar went up, the youths clapping and whistling with a delight rarely to be found in a city whose dust only cleared when a new dust storm rolled in.
‘For shame, Omar,’ Rashed said. ‘You denied them their heavenly r
eward and the chance to hand out those tapes of theirs.’
‘Can you believe it?’ said Saeed. ‘Everyone’s going to hear about this little session. The minute I get home I’m going to send out the details of what happened.’
Salem agreed. ‘Right. It’s interesting. I reckon it will get a big following.’
Saeed became conscious of Fahd’s unhappy silence and spoke to him as he pointed at Omar. ‘So haven’t you changed your mind about travelling? Instead of pulling out and running off, it’s possible for a guy to confront that lot.’
Fahd shook his head and Saeed went on, ‘I mean, you saw Omar’s bravery; how it made them flee like foxes …’
As Omar preened with pleasure, Rashed objected, ‘Don’t you believe it, my friend. If they could have been certain that Omar wasn’t an undercover cop they wouldn’t have run. They might have made a serious problem for him.’
Saeed agreed with this, as did Fahd. Sipping his tea, Omar pointed out that they were human beings like anyone else: some were genuinely frightened and cowardly, others brave and hungry for fame, well aware that their recklessness might lead to detention or a prison term, and this was what won them supporters and disciples. Some were frankly simple-minded and assumed that these lectures were a way to win heavenly reward. Some even became high-handed and tyrannical, possessed by a need to break and subjugate those around them.
Omar believed that most of his fellow signatories to their most recent statement calling for a constitutional monarchy suffered from a persecution complex that turned them into petty dictators; petty, though their claws were cruel.
‘So I have nothing to lose,’ he said. ‘I can dedicate the rest of my days to exposing them!’
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