Yousef Al-Mohaimeed - Where Pigeons Don't Fly

Fahd stood up and made for the doctor, then turned, bewildered, towards the emergency ward’s entrance. Grabbing the arm of the dark-skinned security guard he said in a harsh voice, ‘An Egyptian beat my mother to death. Call the police.’

The man moved away and made a call, speaking for several minutes as he took notes on the table by the outer door. Fahd’s mobile barked and, choking on the horror of the situation, he explained to Saeed what had happened: ‘My mother’s been killed, if you can believe it.’

Alarmed, Saeed said that he was on his way and advised him to investigate. ‘You have to find out what happened, Fahd. Aunt Soha was as much my mother as she was yours.’

— 50 —

FAHD PACED LIKE A wolf outside the emergency ward, passing back and forth before the glass door as though it were an iron cage standing between him and freedom.

He saw his friend Saeed rushing down the west-most steps from the uncovered parking bays, looking bewildered and lost as he advanced. Saeed hugged Fahd to his chest, pulling his head towards him and kissing it as he muttered in distress, ‘May God console you and give us strength in times of trouble.’

He began comforting him with commonplaces: this is the road we all must travel, maybe her passing gave her relief from the suffering of her illness.

‘But it’s murder, Saeed, not natural causes.’

‘Fine, so what now?’

‘I’ve brought in the police and the detective’s here now.’ He pointed inside. ‘He’s interviewing my uncle at the moment.’

They went into reception. Yasser was leaning against the corridor wall looking right to where his father sat before the detective, talking to him with intensity and conviction and gesturing with both his hands, tugging every now and then on the shimagh as it slipped to the back of his head. Yasser was watching his father but couldn’t hear him.

A fat man next to Fahd suddenly rose to his feet, the bottom half of his plump calves showing beneath the hem of the white thaub . ‘Peace be upon you and the mercy of God.’

Raising his head, Fahd saw a stout-bodied Egyptian with a pale, round face beneath which a carefully trimmed black beard lay coiled, and a miswak that he chewed continuously and anxiously on both sides of his mouth. Fahd answered without holding out his hand. The man went over to the glass door and spoke to the security guard who pointed towards Fahd. The Egyptian sheikh came towards him, breathing unevenly, and warmly shook his hand, extending his condolences, invoking God’s mercy on the deceased and insisting on the inevitability of death and fate.

Throwing his hands up in the man’s face Fahd screamed, ‘How could you kill a sick and frail woman, you criminal?’

His rage and wild cries were met with calm and dignity.

‘God grant you the best reward,’ the sheikh intoned, crushingly emotionless, until the guard intervened and took them both outside. Fahd continued to call down eternal torment and hellfire on his head while the sheikh kept his features as impassive as the dead. ‘God guide you,’ he said, his glassy eyes staring into space and avoiding looking directly into Fahd’s face.

After Fahd had calmed down a little and asked him why he had done it, the sheikh embarked on an explanation that the Prophet, too, had performed Qur’anic readings, then informed him that her husband, Fahd’s uncle, had also taken part in the assault. He described it in detail.When the demon’s harsh voice was first heard, Abu Ayoub had shouted at Lulua to fetch him a heavy stick: ‘Give us the broom handle.’ She had searched the kitchen and found it behind the door. She asked him what was the matter and he replied that the jinn had begun to speak and that the sheikh would now flog it until it left Soha’s body. As he explained this he was rushing over to hand the broom to the sheikh, who requested that Soha’s arms and legs be held down and started to beat her, first on her back, then upon her shoulders, since the demon was known to stand on the left shoulder. She was wailing in a voice eroded by exhaustion and effort until it sounded like the lowing of an ailing cow, the sheikh thrashing at her savagely before handing over to Abu Ayoub, who beat her calf muscles then her feet. Finally, with Soha cursing him listlessly, the Egyptian whispered to Yasser to hand him a scalpel, which the latter took from his pocket as if prepared for this very moment. The sheikh sliced her thumb and out flew sticky black blood, the blood of both the infidel demon and Soha’s spirit, after which she slept peacefully.

The sheikh said that she would wake the next day a different person, her health transformed; all they had do was cover her face with a light blanket until noon the following day.

But she slept forever.

Invisible birds swooped down over the body stretched out in the dining room, while Dr Yasser, his eyes as round as an owl’s behind his glasses, gazed at the corpse with pride: all the knowledge and learning he had accumulated over the course of seven years at the College of Medicine in King Saud University had failed. The only true medicine, he now knew, was the Qur’anic cure.

— 51 —

ABU AYOUB’S FACE HAD darkened, either from grief or from his anxiety over the investigation and the questions about death and crime. Yasser trailed him like his shadow as the detective summoned the Egyptian sheikh, who handed over his residence permit. The detective jotted down a few pieces of information and began questioning him about the events of the previous night.

How painful for Fahd to recall the previous evening: dust settling thick over Riyadh, the city swimming in heavy layers of dust that clogged eyelashes and flew up nostrils to enter the brain, dust caking the heart.

He thought of how he had gone out after midnight and begun gloomily circling the streets, unable to sleep or breathe. He remembered stopping at the traffic lights at the junction of the Urouba and Ulaya roads, thinking that he would visit his mother if it weren’t so late. Had that been the moment, the instant her breath grew still? Had she looked at the qibla , towards Mamalka Tower where Fahd sat, and given up her soul? Had he not seen, for instance, a butterfly fly through the grime, or a blinded pigeon stagger into the lampposts by Ulaya Mall, or maybe fall at the feet of the security guards by the entrance to the parking bays of Mamlaka Tower? Might his mother’s soul have been flapping away, sad, listless and content, scornful of the world, of people, of this extraordinary country? Was her soul yet to depart, the thick staff at that very moment lifting into air full of dust and dirt to descend with the lisping whistle of a high wind fleeing the backstreets?

Through the door of the emergency ward came a man in his forties carrying documents and dressed in civilian clothes and a shimagh . He passed quickly inside and greeted the doctor, speaking to him for a few moments, before going to stand over the detective and leafing through the ten sheets of paper loaded with sadness and anger, where Soha’s name was listed like that of a soldier struck down by a stray bullet before ever reaching the field of battle.

Yasser suddenly materialised alongside the man and appeared to discuss something important with him. Fahd approached, leaving Saeed sitting on a plastic chair like those usually found in public parks. The man in the civilian clothes, who was the senior detective, was explaining to Yasser the procedure that would be followed in this case: the body would be transferred to the morgue at Shamesi General Hospital where it would be dissected to establish the cause of death. Yasser was trying to persuade him to bring things to a close without carrying out the autopsy, since the family wouldn’t permit his aunt’s body to be exposed to the gaze of strangers, its sanctity and dignity violated by the surgeon’s scalpels. There was just no need for it.