Yousef Al-Mohaimeed - Where Pigeons Don't Fly

Fahd replaced the document and took up another yellowed sheet of paper, which he realised was a long poem in the classical style. He read the opening:

Through a dark night a servant ran,

With his piety, fleeing the faithless,

Fleeing the feuding that beset him round,

The warring of happiness and woe.

He scanned the page and turned it over: there were more than forty lines of verse.

Closing the bag he switched off the car’s overhead light and got out.

He turned the key in the lock. The flat was dark. Saeed hadn’t returned yet, and he decided to open the bag again, picking out the small folder of diary entries. He read on, wide-eyed.

— 42 —

Mecca, 1979

After two days of questioning I was transferred from Buraida to Riyadh accompanied by a soldier who stuck to me like my own shadow, leg irons at my ankles and handcuffs about my wrists. The bolted truck drove down what I think was the old airport road until it entered a gate at the back of an old building and I was placed in a cell no more than 1x2 metres in size.

Fifteen days deprived of sleep. Whenever my head nodded they’d hammer on the cell’s steel door and I would jerk upright in panic. These desperately cramped cells were laid out along a narrow corridor where I was brought, first descending four steps into a room full of soldiers and guards then dragging my leg irons down another four steps to the grim cells themselves.

After they locked me in I amused myself by reading the graffiti on the back of the door: names, dates, a calendrical table for one of the hijra months written by a prisoner to count off the days, a variety of contradictory political slogans reflecting the prisoners affiliations, penises and arses, sexual positions and obscenities. Pushing it in to enter, the cleaner hadn’t noticed what lay behind the door, while the cell doors that opened outwards were subject to constant scouring.

After two weeks I was transferred to Jeddah and from there I was taken to Mecca in a jeep. They bound my eyes with a blindfold made of fabric and did not remove it until I had been sitting in the cell for three hours. When at last I could open my eyes, I saw an old friend of mine, a fellow student from the Grand Mosque Institute.

The cell was about 6x4 metres and was home to five of us. Its walls were covered with a white paint that gave off an acrid smell. It was the new prison in Mecca and I stayed there for five months knowing nothing, without the faintest idea where I was, nor whether I was above ground or below, with no book, newspaper or wristwatch to indicate the time, day, or date. It was as though time had stopped on the first day of Muharram, 1400 AH.

After what seemed like an eternity, I finally saw, one day at noon, some books in the possession of the young prison guard Daghaylaib, who had brought them to the cell. My heart fluttered with joy at finding a window through which it could peer out at a world other than those hateful walls.

Daghaylaib stood there reading out our names in order and handed each of us a Qur’an. After he had gone one of the Brothers noticed that the cover bore a picture of the Holy Kaaba, on either side of which was something like the figure of a man. These were depictions of living creatures on the Noble Book, he told us; God protect us, they must not be permitted to remain there. Three agreed with him and decided to strip off the covers, while myself and my friend begged to differ. We saw no harm in it.

The next morning the guard called out their names, and the three of them were taken out and lined up between the cells. Three troopers came with special clubs and began to beat them, the whistling of the staves stirring the still air of the prison, their voices rising and falling.

In prison emptiness towered as tall as the minarets in the Grand Mosque and we had nothing save the dream of books and newspapers. I amused myself breeding cockroaches. Whenever a particularly fat one came near me I would hit it with my sandal until it lay flat and a small sticky sack burst from its rear. I would peer at it for a while then lift the sack in my hand and put it in an empty yoghurt carton and a few days later I would enjoy the sight of tens of tiny cockroaches pouring out of the sack. I’d bore a hole in the carton’s lid for ventilation and the cockroaches would keep growing and growing and with them grew my sadness, until one day I decided to kill them all.

Later, I wanted a string of beads to count out my prayers, or the members of my family lest I forget them, or the Brothers who had been executed. Asking for a luxury like prayer beads was difficult and so I began saving up olive stones until I had enough to fill my palm. I grated the stone’s tip against the cement floor so the hollow centre showed, then turned it over and did the same to the other end until I had a pierced bead. I then cleaned out the core, and when I had thirty-three beads I pulled a thread from the matting, arranged the stones along it and tied the ends together.

Was I in such dire need for prayer beads or had the emptiness driven me to find something to entertain myself, to disperse the endless hours, coiled like a hibernating serpent?

After a year had gone by they asked us what books we wanted and I asked for a collection of al-Mutanabbi’s poetry. I was full of joy as I soared with the verses of vainglory and wisdom. I memorised half the collection as well as fifteen juz’a of the Qur’an.

One man memorised The Delight of He Who Longs To Journey and after they took it back he decided to write it out in its entirety upon the white walls. Using the metal tabs from fizzy drink cans he inscribed it with the utmost care. The oldest man in the cell, an old illiterate fellow who had saved up the drink cans, could not understand the words, but he took his pleasure from the beautiful lines and the man who had written them decided to teach him the alphabet.

The walls told us tales of times past and we told them of our sadnesses, our loneliness, and our great fear of the unknown. After they started allowing us family visits, one man’s relatives brought him cologne. He gave it to Daghaylaib, who was a kind man, and he perfumed us all. He sprayed the cheap shimaghs we had been given after a year inside. That night I wrapped the scented head cloth over my face and no sooner had I fallen asleep than I saw nightmares, the like of which I had never seen and never will again. I saw them take me, blindfolded, to Justice Square. They stood around me and one read out my sentence: one of the corrupt of the earth, to be beheaded by the sword. Hearing the sword slither from the scabbard I trembled and recited the shahada . Then, without warning, the executioner pricked my side with the point and I hunched my back in fright, my neck stretched out like the scrag of a bird. The briefest instant, then the unsheathed blade split the filthy air and cut into my frail neck. My head flew off, rolling like a football while my eyes stayed open, looking out at the crowds.

I woke up, sweating and afraid, and opening my eyes I stared at the cell walls until the cramped chamber seemed a shady Paradise. It was truly the happiest moment of my life to find myself breathing evenly and to see the beautiful prison walls, a happiness only to compare with the instant of my release.

For my first visit, my father and Ibrahim came. They were happy that they had found me at last and that I was still alive. The time after that it was my mother with my father and brother. The trip from Riyadh to Jeddah was sleepless and exhausting for them, and so it went on until the order was given, three and a half years into my sentence, to alleviate these hardships by distributing the prisoners according to their home regions.