Yousef Al-Mohaimeed - Where Pigeons Don't Fly

She was certifiable, he told himself; how could she speak so brazenly next to her brother? Her innuendo was transparent: hand cream was the lubricant and gloves were the rubber sheath.

‘Gloves. What symbolism! Completely crazy!’

Her recklessness called for revenge, he told himself. The next time they met he found a choice spot behind the front door to the flat where he hid and held his breath, with some idea of singing her hair with his lighter. She called out his name repeatedly and he didn’t answer, so she punched his number into her phone and his mobile rang suddenly in his pocket. He emerged from his hiding place laughing, ‘Damn you. It was too late for me to put it on silent!’

She embraced him, her head encircled in her hijab , and passionately received his mouth.

In the lift he moved closer to hug her and lifting her veil she snatched a final kiss. ‘I’m really worried for you, Fahoudi.’

She feared loss, loathed it: the loss of the father who had hated her and never stopped beating her, the loss of Abdel Kareem who left without telling her he would never return, the loss of Khaled who had slept with her for three years until his wife had discovered what was going on from his mobile phone and he had decided to abandon Tarfah and never see her again.

Tarfah took Fahd’s hand and laid it on her cheek. ‘Promise me you won’t leave me, Fahd?’ she whispered fearfully.

He nodded gratefully, lost in the ripe tenderness of her cheek.

— 46 —

ONE NIGHT ABDEL KAREEM didn’t return from Sudairi Mosque.

He called Tarfah to say that he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow: he was going on a trip for two days. But he didn’t return after two days or three days or a week or a month.

After a fortnight of waiting and weeping in the flat she went back to her family. Ahmed avoided looking at her. At first he accused her of tiring Abdel Kareem out with her demands. Withdrawn from the world, pious and god-fearing, Ahmed believed that life held nothing worth fighting, boasting and struggling for. His life was the life of the soul and required no hardship or suffering. Yet after two weeks of searching and questioning friends and family and the worshippers at the Fantoukh, Sudeiri and Sanei Khairi mosques, Ahmed discovered that Abdel Kareem had made a clandestine trip to Syria with two acquaintances from Eid Mosque in Suwaidi.

His mother wept for a long time, as did Tarfah, who had assumed that God was compensating her for the suffering of her bitter childhood and two years of a failed and bloody marriage, with a man worthy of sacrifice and love.

But he had betrayed her and she hadn’t fully realised it at the time. In the second month of their marriage, Abdel Kareem had received a young man at the flat in the most mysterious manner. His phone rang once and he jumped to his feet and went down to see him in his jellabiya .

Rushing over to the window of the men’s majlis that looked over the street, she switched off the lights and spied on them from behind the drawn curtains. On the other side of the road she saw a tall young man with long hair reaching nearly to his shoulders, talking away as he sat behind his open car door with the engine running, and at the same time she saw the back of Abdel Kareem, absorbed in their discussion.

At first, she asked her husband who came and went like that without being invited up to the majlis , to which he replied that he was one of the Brothers from the nearby Eid Mosque. When she began asking closer questions about his name and his job and how Abdel Kareem had first met him, he said, ‘He’s a childhood friend, from primary school,’ and she understood that he didn’t like her asking about things that didn’t concern her.

He locked his phone with a password and grew jumpy whenever the message tone sounded. He persuaded her that this was men’s business and that she had no right interfering and prying. ‘Do you lack anything?’ he asked her and when, unsmiling, she said she didn’t, he added, ‘Do I deny you anything?’

But she would smile again and change the subject. ‘Can I make you coffee?’

When he stripped and went to the bathroom to take a long shower before the first call to Friday prayers, Tarfah tried to open his phone, entering all the numbers she thought might work and give her access to his inbox, but she never succeeded.

She was amazed by how much time he spent on the Internet in that second month. One evening his friend called him from the street and he hurried out, leaving the computer on. She ran over and jogged the mouse before it could close and leave her needing a password to open it. Opening a few files on the desktop she found maps of Syria, Northern Syria and the region around Raqqa and Deir Azzur.

‘Is he thinking of marrying a Syrian?’ Tarfah thought to herself, before coming across a map of Iraq. She closed the file quickly. She noticed another labelled Expelling the Infidel from the Arabian Gulf and then some documents: Training Regime for the Mujahid from the al-Battar online magazine, various texts from the Maqrizi Centre’s website and fatwas from The Voice of Jihad. She opened the favourites file in his web browser and quickly scanned the list of sites that Abdel Kareem had saved there: The Maqrizi Centre for Historical Studies, The Islamic Media Resource, The Minbar of Tawheed and Jihad, al-Battar, The Voice of Jihad.

Suddenly she heard his key slip into the keyhole in the flat’s front door and she came back out.

‘Why are you so late?’ she asked with loving concern. ‘I hope nothing went wrong.’

Put on the back foot he said something about the mosque needing help with its library and replacing the air-conditioning units. Would he like coffee or tea, she then wanted to know, or would he wait for supper?

Going into his little office he noticed that the screen hadn’t shut down. He had been gone for more than twenty minutes and it was set to switch off if left inactive for two minutes. It must have been her; she had spied on his things, Abdel Kareem whispered to himself.

She came in and set a cup of tea on the table. He looked at her. ‘Tarfah, where were you a moment ago?’

‘In the kitchen,’ she answered, pretending not to understand.

‘When I was downstairs with my friend, I mean.’

‘I was here,’ she said, and pointed. ‘In the living room.’

He rose from his chair, went out into the living room and sat on the sofa, where he picked up a little book. To make a mistake was no sin, he told her, but lying was. ‘Don’t lie, Tarfah!’

‘You keep everything from me!’ she shouted, losing her temper. ‘I don’t go near your computer or your phone. People I don’t know come and visit you and when I ask you who they are you dodge the question. It’s my right to know. I’m your wife.’

‘My life isn’t your personal property, woman, understand? Don’t stick your nose into things that don’t concern you.’

He slammed the door on his way out and two hours later returned carrying bread, milk and a box of sugared dates. She rose to greet him and kissed his head. Then they went to bed.

When Abdel Kareem vanished, Tarfah stayed in the flat, waiting. Every time she heard a car stopping in the street outside and a door slamming she would peer around the curtains. When she heard the footsteps of the man who lived in the flat next door her heart would stop beating for whole seconds, waiting — longing — for Abdel Kareem’s key to slip into the lock and turn twice, for him to push the door slowly open and come in, weary with travel, or from some long and arduous retreat. She would kiss his head, remove his rumpled shimagh then undo the buttons of his thaub and take it off so he might go into the bathroom and stand for long minutes beneath the pulsing spray while she dashed to the kitchen to make him supper and prepare two pots of tea — one with red tea, the other ginger — and pour some honey into a little dish with a few olives. Overjoyed, infatuated, she would wait for him in the living room and consider whether she should phone her family to breathlessly inform them, ‘Abdel Kareem’s back!’ or call his mother first.