Yousef Al-Mohaimeed - Where Pigeons Don't Fly

‘So that’s your level, is it?’ Fahd asked.

‘No. I just want you to be jealous.’

‘Jealous of what? That you want to be a whore?’

She cried and hung up.

When Fahd lost his temper, he spoke with his mother’s accent. His mother had done the same. Whenever she had been irritated with him as a child, her speech would transform into a Palestinian-Jordanian dialect like that spoken by the inhabitants of the West Bank.

— 23 —

FAHD MESSAGED THURAYA TO say he wasn’t prepared to meet. It was Wednesday and the week’s end sent the Committee’s cars roaming the streets of Riyadh like venomous snakes.

‘I can’t shake this fear,’ he told her, and she replied that he hadn’t made his mind up about having a relationship with her. She kept insisting that he, a young man in his twenties, wasn’t interested in her because she was nearly forty, even though she had taught him so much and he had certainly enjoyed their last meeting.

He ignored his mobile for a while then found three unanswered calls and a couple of texts that he hadn’t noticed. He explained that he had spent an hour trying to call her but her phone was off. She had been in the bathroom taking a shower, she replied, and hadn’t wanted any of her sons and daughters to open her message inbox and ‘see the scandals’.

‘So … what do you say? Shall I make a move?’

‘Where?’

‘You’re such an idiot, Fahd,’ she said. ‘Didn’t I tell you last week that I was invited to a wedding in Suwaidi? Will you come and pick me up there?’

‘OK. I’ll need half an hour at least.’

‘Oh, that’s so long! Where are you at the moment?’

‘Maseef. Up north.’

He started his friend’s car and sped off. He took out the little bottle of cologne from the side pocket and poured a little into his palm, dabbing his neck and behind his ears. He took King Fahd Road. It was eight o’clock exactly, which meant he had taken the wrong road for rush hour. The cars flowed slowly along like a river. His phone rang.

‘Shall I get going, Fahd?’

‘No, just bit longer. Wait until I’m at least halfway there.’

Five minutes later she called again. Then a third time. ‘Where are you?’

He looked out at the skyscraper alongside him. ‘Past Faisaliya.’

Then he told her to come out of the same hairdresser’s as before. After waiting with the Bangladeshi limousine driver for seven minutes she called and said, with an air of issuing instructions, ‘Look. I’ll wait for you at Haram Mall on the ring road.’

When the southbound King Fahd Road came to an end, Fahd took the Southern Ring Road heading east and, passing the first exit, he turned right off the slip road for Ha’ir and Batha. At the lights beneath the flyover she told him that she had left the mall on the ring road and taken the Iman Hospital road heading north. Before he reached the end of the road, she told him, ‘look left and you’ll see a hairdresser’s. I’ll wait for you in there.’

He jolted over the speed bumps without noticing and saw a police patrol car, lights flashing, race past in the opposite direction. Turning at the end of the street he pulled over at the World of Dreams hair salon, then called her. She only answered after it had rung five times.

‘Hold on a moment and I’ll be out,’ she said quickly.

He looked to the right, where a Bangladeshi workman sat on the kerb outside the newsagent’s that was next to the salon. Pulling himself together he turned left and noticed the patrol car pulled over in front of a van.

Thuraya emerged and hurriedly climbed in. Her eyes were rimmed with kohl and he was unable to make out what eyeshadow she was wearing because her niqab was tilted slightly forwards.

‘How come you were so late?’

Tenderly, she took his hand. Her palm was hot and its surface so fine that the yielding, silken skin almost sloughed off when he rubbed it with his thumb.

He set out for the Southern Ring Road, but the street didn’t continue on ahead and only two directions were available: right towards Batha Road and the jaw-dropping traffic by the lights beneath the flyover, or left, past the beauty salons, spare parts suppliers and the new district with its stench of overflowing drains.

He went right and looking over at the other side of the street she said, ‘Don’t go back! Just look at the traffic!’

The tunnel took him by surprise and he turned right, then turned again and re-entered the neighbourhood they had just left. Passing World of Dreams he decided to take the left-hand road this time in the direction of the new district where he could do a U-turn under the bridge and take the Southern Ring Road heading west towards Shamaat al-Amakin event hall.

In the new district there were open plots of land and whole floors of translucent darkness despite the putrid stench that crept through the air conditioning vents.

‘Fahd? Shall I uncover?’ she drawled.

He nodded, and she struggled to unfasten her head covering from behind, then looked over at him, a wanton catamite. She moved closer in the darkness and the car swayed slightly. She brushed his lips with a kiss that was fleeting and timid, as the darkened road had now come to an end and other cars suddenly appeared. Fahd decided to return to the ring road, turn beneath the bridge and head west.

‘Well, I don’t know where I am!’ she said. ‘The most important thing is to get me away from Khanshlaila!’

She took his hand and laid it on her chest.

‘See how hot it is?’

The small potholes in the road were filled with filthy water that gave off an acrid smell. Fahd tried to avoid them in the soft gloom.

On the ring road the cars raced crazily. He tried keeping to the middle lane, avoiding hassle from the lunatics to his left and the influx of new cars on the right. He was not that skilful a driver yet, and cars in Riyadh moved as chaotically as blind ants fighting over crumbs.

‘Do you love me?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘Of course, and I desire you.’

‘Ahhhh!’ she sang with the madness of a forty-year-old child.

Her middle finger was toying with his fingers and every time he looked at her he saw her staring hungrily back.

‘Will you marry a Jordanian or a Syrian?’ she asked and he laughed out loud, then suggested she marry him to her daughter in middle school.

She remembered her husband and her mood suddenly clouded. He was a dog, she said: He beat her!

‘No one does that without a reason …’

‘OK then, I’ll give you an example and you be the judge: the last time I caught a slap from that bastard. For twenty years I’ve been trying to get him to buy us a house. Not for my sake, it’s for his kids, not that he ever cared about them! He always refused and asked me whether I lacked anything? This one time I decided to call his best friend and ask him to persuade my husband and help him buy a place, but on the condition that he mustn’t say it was me who called. More than once I told him: “Please don’t say that I called to ask you!” He gave me his word, but unfortunately he lied and told my husband about the call. My husband returned home like a raging bull. He came into my room, chucked the kids out and closed the door, then he flogged me with his aqqal until I wept.’

‘You’re in the wrong because you got his friend involved,’ said Fahd, boldly. ‘If you can’t persuade him yourself then that’s the end of the matter.’

‘Well of course, that’s not all that happened.’

‘Sorry for interrupting … This is Exit 25. Shall I get off here?’

She was silent and he turned towards her to find her devouring him with her gaze.

‘So, you’re going to leave me so soon, are you, Fahoudi?’