Shumaisi
Page 21
Two men in civilian clothes entered. One of them held a piece of paper in his hand.
‘Hisham Ibrahim Muhammad al-Abir, isn’t it?’ he asked, looking at the paper. Hisham answered with a nod. The man told him to get ready to leave.
‘Where to?’ asked Hisham.
‘To where we’re going,’ the man replied offhandedly. ‘Come on, we don’t have much time.’ Hisham put on a skullcap and headdress, stuffed his feet into his sandals and picked up his bag. They all hurried out to a waiting Jeep.
Before the Jeep moved off, one of the guards put his hand into the boot and took out some steel handcuffs, which he handed to the other guard in the back seat, who quickly snapped them onto Hisham’s wrists. Hisham felt utterly powerless, as if a snake had bitten him and the poison was even now oozing into his veins. All he could do was wait for a death as inevitable as it would be slow. A strange coldness held him in its grip, making his limbs shiver violently, despite the heat and the suffocating humidity. The whole way to the airport, images chased one another across his mind with amazing speed. It was as if the monotonous sound of the Jeep’s engine spurred them on in their frenzy. The whole of his life – his friends and acquaintances in Dammam and Riyadh – became a series of rapid images that his mind consumed in a mad rush. Amongst them he glimpsed Suwayr, her belly swollen, and he felt himself contract with nausea and pain.
The smart airport terminal appeared on the horizon. He had been told they would be travelling to Jeddah, that most beautiful of cities, a sort of bride among cities. He still remembered how beautiful Jeddah was, and how rude the people there were, from the time he had gone on the pilgrimage with his parents more than two years ago. When they got to Mecca, everything on the Hajj itself had been fine: the running, walking around the Kaaba, standing on Mina and sacrificing the sheep on the morning of Eid. Even more enjoyable than all that, however, had been Jeddah itself and its beauty – for it had many beautiful qualities you find nowhere else.
The only place to come close to the beauty of Jeddah was Khubar, even though there was a big difference. He’d found there were two sides to Khubar. The Khubar that he knew, where he had spent his childhood and those happy days with his friends, concealed another frightening Khubar, with no beauty and no spirit at all. Could there be another Jeddah just as ugly, or even uglier? It seemed that God and the Devil were not just sharing the universe, but every human soul, and every city and place. Beauty implied ugliness, and good implied evil. How different would that beautiful Jeddah appear? How would the bride look when her wedding dress was taken off? He was afraid even to imagine it …
For the whole two hours of the flight, he smoked without break. He gazed into the darkness beyond the window, as if he was looking inside himself. There was no one in the first-class cabin except himself and the guard, while from tourist class came the happy noise of laughter. He had so much wanted to travel in first class, but he had not known that his wish would come true in this way. Today he wished he was in tourist class, with the passengers laughing without a care in the world. In fact, he wished he could be packed up with the luggage, or hanging on to the airplane’s wing. He hated all first classes …
Jeddah appeared beneath them. How beautiful she was! A shining jewel, lights diffused on the clear surface of the water surrounding it, a sight as bright and beautiful as you could find. He had travelled to Beirut, Damascus and Amman, but there was no city to rival Jeddah in its beauty and warmth, and the fragrance of its nights and its days.
But the Jeddah that he knew was not the Jeddah he was arriving at today. This was another Jeddah, a Jeddah that not everyone saw. He had been destined to see it, and he wished that he had not. He was as afraid of Jeddah now as he had been delighted with it the first time he visited it. How could the same place inspire such fear and such happiness? The plane began its descent towards the airport. Hisham’s heart pounded as they approached the runway. The mysterious heart of Jeddah awaited him, and he knew nothing of its nature.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780863569111
eISBN 978-0-86356-565-6
copyright © Turki al-Hamad 2005 English translation © Paul Starkey 2005
The right of Turki al-Hamad to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988
This edition first published 2005
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