Yousef Al-Mohaimeed - Where Pigeons Don't Fly

Fahd felt a river running through his heart. He trembled all over and braced himself as a shudder threatened to shake him apart. He was convinced that they felt nothing for the dead, no different to the other objects in the room, a lump of matter that neither felt nor saw. Not one of them could see that Soha had muttered and risen to join him.

The sun is hot today, Fahd. Dying in the heat of summer’s no good, but what to do? It’s the only time I was able to leave my room. The other months, the cold gnaws my bones and I never leave my radiator.

Fahd had never seen his mother so strong and sure, opening the door to his car that was parked on the ring road and telling him, Drive faster than them.

Won’t they look for your body? he said and her laugh rang out.

The body’s in there. It’s your mother’s spirit with you now. Go to Khazan Street then take a right off Suwailam. I’ll show you my primary school, so you might know that I’m the daughter of this ancient place, the daughter of this godless city. My only ties to Jordan or Palestine are roots and names. A man is the son of his present; the son of the place where he lives.’

Yes , thought Fahd later, recalling his mother’s words, he was a son of Great Yarmouth now, son of the dark blue sea, son of the print shop where he worked, son of the little college where he studied, its tall windows open to the cold air and green clouds.

Saeed sent him a brief message: Fahd, we’re to the right of the mihrab . We’ve saved you a place.

Fahd went in and sat between Saeed and Yasser. They performed the afternoon prayer then the sliding door opened on the three bodies. The imam in his cream mashlah walked over from the mihrab to pray over the dead, his bearded face stern and unsmiling, as Soha slept quietly, wrapped in a black abaya . Even in death she had placed the black abaya on her white coffin just as a bride wears it over her white dress. When the imam had finished, the worshippers rushed to the caskets and Fahd ran with them to take up one of the box’s four corners, then hurried to the hearse, leaving his shoes in the mosque and making do with his white socks. Could he join his mother, thought Fahd: could he descend into her grave in his white socks and thaub ?

Does all this whiteness mean I want to remain with you in your grave, Mother?

The men pushed the three coffins into place inside the hearse and a dark-skinned young man weighed down with grief got in, followed by Abu Ayoub. Yasser shoved Fahd from behind.

‘Get in. Hurry up and take your place.’

The driver drove fast, a little recklessly, even.

As though he, too, wants to make sure you’re lying in your resting place without delay. Were you awake just then? Fahd wondered. It was as though I heard you breathing, or perhaps your muffled laughter, your hand held to your mouth. Is the laughter of the dead a little stifled? I sat between them as they recited the shahada , asked God’s forgiveness, prayed. I heard the sound of the rough toothstick grate against my uncle’s loathsome teeth while Yasser’s thick fingers were busy at a string of black prayer beads.

Abu Ayoub hitched his thaub around his waist and descended into the grave, followed by Fahd and Yasser. A shaven-headed man came up and addressed them. ‘This grave hasn’t been dressed with mud brick. Go over there.’

He stretched out his hand to Abu Ayoub, who leapt out then down into another pit. There was a group who had missed the prayers in the mosque lined up to pray over her bier in the cemetery, while Fahd waited with his uncle down in the trench, watching the sun descend into the city’s heart, his head poking over the lip of the grave, his eyes melting as he faced the dreadful moment of burial.

He contemplated death’s awful majesty. At the moment of death a man goes back to being a child. From white cradle to white casket; from the cot’s straps that bind his body so he may do no more than cry, to the coffin, belted lest he leap back up and flee into life, as though the moment when his mother was laid in her cramped resting place beneath the earth and the bonds loosed from her bier was the critical one.

‘Now fly!’ they tell her. ‘The layers of earth above you are nothing. Fly! Fly as a child flies: crawling, walking, running. Stir your angel’s wings, beat them through the heavy, second-hand air. Fly over the city, search for some lost body in Khazan Street, in Fouta Park, in Ulaya. A man is only heavy when he’s alive. He cannot fly. With death he becomes weightless, floats and rises from the earth, his feet suspended in the air!’

‘Clean the grave, Fahd!’ Ibrahim shouted. ‘Make sure there are no dry lumps of earth in there!’

Impatient, he pushed Fahd aside and awkwardly clambered down, inspecting the grave from within, measuring the length of the brick with his hand and the width of the grave’s mouth. He instructed Fahd to stagger the rows of brick inwards, but only after the first layer was laid, lest they fall on her corpse. Overhead, Saeed reached out to Ibrahim and he jumped out, knocking a small cascade of soil from the lip of the grave.

They brought you into the cemetery, Mother, carrying your casket like bridesmaids. I took your blessed head and passed it to my uncle then we descended with you to the mouth of the grave. We laid your head facing Mecca and propped your back, worn out by life’s toil and hardship, against a half-brick. Before we lined the grave mouth one of the crowd reminded me, ‘‘Get the abaya !’ and I pulled it hard, until it was all in my hand and I peered up at those standing over me. I saw Saeed ready, so I coiled the abaya round my hand and threw it to him.

Here is your abaya , which I hand to Saeed, who used to clutch the seam on the right, while I clung to its left, as you took us to Central Hospital. I close up the grave with big mud bricks. I do not know how my heart can be so cruel to imprison you inside your grave. How terrifying to lay the last brick lengthwise and shut you off from air and light and life.

I saw myself in there. There was a small glimmer of light from the last hole that remained after the clay-slicked brick had been laid. Who would put the last brick in place and cut me off from all light? It will be my uncle, for certain: he will block life’s light from me. Yet what use is it for the dead to have eyes when all about them is pitch-black and dark? Dear God. I felt myself trying to push the last brick with my foot, trying to free my foot from the coffin, and when I could not I raised both my legs together and shoved the brick, whose mud covering had not yet dried. I gave a powerful scream. There was no one on hand, not even a visitor to the grave or the cemetery guard, to dig out my tomb so that I might emerge, unkempt and singed with a face full of bruises, and flee towards the sun’s disc, like some hero galloping along at the end of a film accompanied by the closing music and the names of actors and technicians scrolling past in fine white font.

Someone gave Fahd a hand and he jumped out of the grave, waiting for Abu Ayoub who was daubing the bricks with clay, while further along Yasser scraped at the edge of the grave so the particles of soil streamed down like the breeze.

So now you’re scraping delicately at the soil, when just yesterday you and your father were flogging my dead mother with a stick to drive out the demon? What a demon you are, and how backward.

Abu Ayoub grabbed him. He had walked away from the graveside to scatter three palmfuls of dust, escaping the crowd to rouse himself and cry. His uncle led him to the shade of a nearby car.