Yousef Al-Mohaimeed - Where Pigeons Don't Fly

Silence filled the house while Fahd sat on a plastic chair in the kitchen remembering, his groans cutting through the awful hush.

‘Take refuge from Satan, Fahd,’ said Lulua.

She offered some words of consolation as she placed a cup of tea before him, then closed the kitchen door behind her as she headed to the living room.

He felt suffocated. He carried the cup of tea over to the west-facing window and slid it back on aluminium runners. The bridge by the soaring edifice of Mamlaka Tower was lit up. He took a deep breath and wept loudly and bitterly as a black butterfly settled on the peeling paintwork of the window’s metal frame. It took off and landed on the chilly aluminium runners.

Silence filled the dust-choked skies. The heat spilled over and descended on people’s heads. Fahd threw his body down on a bolster and resting his elbows on his knees he knitted his hands together over his eyes and sobbed passionately.

He heard the raucous message tone from his phone. God comfort you and grant your deceased forgiveness! The number was unknown to him and he paid it no mind.

He switched on the air conditioner and closed the window. The black butterfly flew inside, first landing on the fabric of the lampshade in the corner then upon the table’s edge by the cup of cold tea.

What a strange butterfly , Fahd said to himself. A butterfly dark as night. I remember reading once that the souls of the departed become black butterflies, roving about. Are you my mother? Come here my darling one, light upon my heart, or rather, light upon my eyelash and tell me how it happened, how they stopped your heart, how they laughed, the Egyptian, my uncle and my trickster cousin, as the heat began to trouble you and you felt the air about you drain away. You raised the hem of your thaub and the Egyptian laughed, saying, ‘This is what I want!’ My uncle laughed, certain that the hands that raised the thaub were those of the jinn , for you no longer counted for anything. Here, come closer, Mother; tell me all that happened …’

When his hand approached it, the black butterfly flew to a small bookcase by the door. Would it make its way inside a book and re-emerge as Soha?

Just think, Mother, what kind of wasteland we’re living in. A few days ago the Shura Council discussed setting limits on the beating allowed in traditional healing. As easily as that! In other words, it admitted that the beating itself was legal. Just two years ago the Council turned the world on its head when a member, on a whim, proposed a vote on whether to debate a matter so trivial it never deserved debate in the first place: should the Shura Council debate the matter of women drivers, or should it not? Those religious scholars approved beating, which is forbidden by the laws of every land and religion in the world, and because of that your slender, pure body deserved to be flogged to death to exorcise a jinn! Come here, Mother, don’t fly too far. The doors and windows are sealed shut. Come here. Don’t go into the book, I want to talk to you, to tell you of my pain.

This strange country on whose soil we live in fear, at home and in the street, at work and in the car, this strange country, where we never wake without a tremor in our hands or our skin crawling: it ate your heart. It tossed you in the morgue. Wasn’t there something a few days back about an African witch who rode a broomstick black and naked and flew from the second floor to the fourth a Medinan apartment block? Our newspapers printed the story — our glorious press — as if to lend credence to the statements of those moral guardians, the men of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, who saw witches flying through the air.

At times, Mother, I feel that I am not in the real world, but in a dream or film. I sense some legendary creature seated in the heights, winding the reel of some epic movie, enjoying himself at first, then roaring with laughter and thinking how, when the reel is spent, he will throw it in the bin and go on his way, while we hop about like puppies dumped in deep trenches filled with filth, while in the distance the sound of a vast tractor draws nearer, pushing the dirt to send it heaping over us.

Absent-mindedly he reached out to the cup of cold tea and the black butterfly fluttered abruptly from on top of the bookcase and clung to the mirror. It reminded him of King of the Butterflies , a story he had bought with his father at Jarir Bookstore in Ulaya years before. It told of the ruler of the butterflies who flew from his kingdom to find work for his young butterflies and caterpillars. He alighted on a window at the Fara Palace and was just peeping inside when the heavens thundered and torrential rain poured down. Before the servant could close the window he nipped in. He flew to the bedroom and there he found eternal love. In the mirror he saw a brightly coloured butterfly queen, looking much like himself but slightly smaller. Every time he approached her, she drew closer, too. She was his reflection, no more, and when a sudden bolt of lightening and roar of thunder shattered the mirror, the beautiful queen fled. Downcast, the butterfly king returned and told his subjects, who became convinced that the lightning, that bright light, had swallowed up their queen, and from that day forward butterflies have fluttered around any light they found.

Are you searching for the king who flew from you, my mother, my queen? Is it the fate of kings to hunt for that which might hold their kingdoms firm, until like every king in the world before them, they are swallowed by a light that becomes a burning, all-consuming fire?

In the days that followed Fahd would dwell on that night, the night in which his mother slept in the morgue.

As he lay in bed he saw black butterflies flying around him and after rising to drink cold water from the fridge he dozed and saw himself in a dream, asleep, as ants crawled over his body and face, invaded his ears and mouth, tramped over his closed eyelids until his skin shuddered. He saw himself awake in terror and turn over on his right side. Just before dawn warplanes circled above Mamlaka Tower, directing their bombs and cannon fire towards their little building. As the neighbours fled into the street he searched the roof for Lulua. There was a grey pigeon there, barely able to leave the ground, just sprinting about on scarlet legs. He flicked his hand towards him to make him fly before he could leave a feather on the roof or on his thaub .

— 55 —

IT WASN’T JUST FAHD’S mother who was searching for a king. All the tribes were searching for the ancient King of the East, searching for him in order to bring him down and seize his throne, flying on horseback like the wind, brandishing their swords aloft like fate, to pluck the feather from the breast of his dominion, for the feather’s fall means the fall of his kingdom.

Thus have the affairs of feathered countries run their course for long centuries. Thus did the tribe of Ajman tire of the rule of the Bani Khaled and their king Ibn Urai’ar, renouncing their decades-long fealty. The king wished to discipline them and killed twenty of their number, leaving one alive to tell of what had happened. In response, when Ajman came upon seventy of his men, squatting in the desert and peacefully gathering fodder for their horses, they fell upon them and wiped them out, leaving one to tell his king what had happened. Then Ajman came to Radheema in North-Eastern Riyadh, readying themselves for a long war and sounding out the tribes that flocked to join them, for the law of the desert is such that either you attack your neighbour or, if you settle peaceably, you shall be attacked by him.