Yousef Al-Mohaimeed - Where Pigeons Don't Fly

Fahd felt remorse that he had been ignoring her, claiming that he was busy, that his studies took up all his time and that his friends wouldn’t leave him alone.

Haha , she would chortle in her text messages. Your friends, or your little girlfriends? I admit it, see? I know you’ve got girlfriends. Just give me a little of your time!

When she sensed that he wasn’t interested in her, she turned her conversation to art, and asked him about the sketches. Had he liked them? Very politely and extremely embarrassed he answered that she had conveyed her ideas very directly, and most of them were highly romantic and sentimental.

— 22 —

FOR THEIR NEXT MEETING Thuraya asked if they might sit together a while longer, in other words that she come out in his car and the two of them take a little drive. It would be easy, she said. ‘I’ll get in at the hospital entrance at evening prayers and we’ll go anywhere we like or just drive around in the car.’

He was hesitant and unsettled. Saeed hooted when he heard him prevaricating, and when he hung up, gave a wild laugh. ‘The classic case of the village boy who falls for an older woman. My friend, she’s the same age as your mother.’

Fahd smiled and blushed. He took the bottle of Givenchy cologne, tipped a few drops into his palm and rubbed his hands together.

He borrowed Saeed’s car and as he got in his phone was hit by a message. He headed out for the Eastern Ring Road. He had no idea where Iman Hospital was and was embarrassed to ask, so he called telephone inquiries and got the number. A Sudanese employee answered who gave an awful description of the route.

‘I know it’s in the South, not the East,’ he said, then handed the receiver to a young colleague who gave Fahd precise directions.

Ten minutes before the appointed time, Fahd was there. He passed through the Medical Institute’s gates with its domes like wind-filled sails, assuming it belonged to the hospital.

I’ll take a look around and get to know the neighbourhood in the few minutes that are left , he said to himself.

Worshippers were pouring into the mosque next to the hospital. Fahd felt that his bladder would burst. He looked around for another mosque. There was a large one facing the hospital, with Pakistani, Indonesian and Sudanese workmen clustered around the entrance to its toilets. He passed a Sudanese worker who had raised the hem of his thaub to avoid getting it wet as he sipped water from a palm cupped beneath a large cold-water tap. The droplets flowed in a long line along the bottom of his arm and dripped from his black elbow.

He pulled up at the domed gateway.

‘Where are you?’ she asked. ‘I’m at the gate.’

‘Look to your right!’

But the woman in the embroidered abaya did not turn round.

‘The gate’s the one with the domes like tents, right?’

‘No, you’re at the Medical Institute. Keep going.’

He started the engine and found her looking out through her niqab . She got in next to him.

‘At last. Those kids were hassling me.’

She took a large bottle of scent from her bag and sprayed away at her chest and hands for a few seconds, then put it away and held his hand between her palms. Her hands were soft and finely lined, her long nails untended and untouched by red or silver nail polish. His fingers were curled to form a ring that she mischievously poked her thumb in and out of until he heard her moan.

He grew bolder and reached for her chest. Her bra was the rigid kind and he couldn’t tell if what it concealed was sagging or firm. Not firm, he guessed, or else why wear this horrible contraption?

She said that she had had her children young.

‘Married at sixteen and here I am with six kids. The oldest’s at university; he might be your age or older.’

She laughed. ‘But as you see, I’m not old.’

She had an adorable, seductive roll to her ‘r’ when she spoke.

‘Want to see me?’ she asked. ‘Just go down any dark alley.’

She raised the niqab and turning her head to the window on her right she shook out her short hair and ran her fingers through it. She looked like a lustful young boy. Then she turned to Fahd and fixed him with a lascivious gaze. Her eyes were Javanese, eloquent and eager, while her red-painted lips were large and full, as if bruised by lust. The streets were slightly darker now but what few cars there were still passed them at every turning inside the alley.

‘Forget it, I’m covering up.’

She put the niqab over her face.

‘Khanshlaila neighbourhood scares me. They might know me,’ she said, then added, ‘I want to see your face!’

Fahd turned towards her. Their eyes met for an instant and he realised that she was mewing like a cat on heat. She extended her leg into the small space between them. Its smoothness shocked Fahd. Braver now he went a little further and then forced himself to stop.

‘It doesn’t bother you that your mother’s Jordanian?’

‘Not at all! Does it bother you?’ he said, laughing.

‘On the contrary! Here you are, white and sweet and the way you speak drives me crazy!’

They passed the end of Batha Road and stopped beneath the flyover at the lights for Southern Ring Road. Thuraya spotted a pink neon sign and pointed: ‘Furnished flats! What do you think?’

‘No. It’s not safe.’

‘To hell with you, you beast. It’s me that should be scared, not you.’

Thuraya ordered him back to the dark alley. He went in and saw her fiddling with something in her lap. Then she guided his hand down. Her moans were loud and startling and he was scared some passer-by or passing car would notice, especially since his upper body was leaning conspicuously over towards her.

She loved this, she said.

‘All I’ve got at home is an animal that can’t get it up.’

‘Have you thought about how I’ll drop you off and where?’ he asked anxiously.

‘No. I’m just thinking about being with you.’

Though nearly forty, she was terrifyingly irrational. She never thought with her brain, but rather with her emotions or even her lust, which she described as her ‘mood’. Speaking like a sensible adult he told her: ‘You have to think hard about this so you don’t get discovered and destroy your family.’

She stroked the back of his hand and answered like a reckless teenage girl. ‘Great! Let it be destroyed. Then I can be yours and yours only.’

‘So I can take you all the way home?’

‘No, maybe I’ll take a limousine even though my perfume stinks to high heaven. Maybe the driver will think I’m a lady of the night!’

Fahd stopped at an entrance to a ladies’ hairdresser and spotted an ambulance some way off, its lights doused and a man sitting inside, waiting, as though on the lookout for something.

‘Get out by the hairdresser’s. Go inside for a bit and when I’m gone come out and take a limousine.’

She got out and he drove his friend’s car away with a sigh of relief. Half an hour later he called her. She said that she had taken a limousine driven by a young Saudi, alarming him with the quantity of perfume wafting off her body. He had given her his mobile number and told her that he was at her service. Fahd laughed as he said, ‘So why did you take his number?’

She answered that it was just a business card. ‘The man makes his living from the passengers. Why, are you jealous?’

‘Never,’ said Fahd, cheerfully.

After two days, when Fahd had failed to answer her repeated calls, Thuraya sent him a text threatening to talk to the limousine driver and give him a chance to woo her. When he answered her call on the third day she said that the driver had told her she was lovelier than all those young girls and that he was ready to drop by, take her off in a Mercedes ‘Viagra’ and install her in her own flat.