Yousef Al-Mohaimeed - Where Pigeons Don't Fly

His voice changed, becoming strangled. A grief-wracked sob rose from his chest and he cried a little. Knotting his hands on the tabletop he laid his head on them and wept for a long time, silent and full of sadness. Saeed let him be for a few minutes and then reached out his hand and laid it on his head.

‘Be brave, Fahd. You’re a man, you have to confront life and its challenges.’

Leaving the restaurant, Fahd saw a Starbucks on the other side of the street with its famous green sign and shouted in a mocking voice so Saeed could hear, ‘Bye-bye Starfucks!’

Saeed laughed as he opened the car door. ‘That’s a global company. You’ll find it on every corner in the world, maybe even in that village you’re planning to live in in Britain.’

‘Very possibly, but you know something? The difference is that there’s no Committee there, nobody watching your every move and counting your breaths. No, “Where are going? Where have you been? Who’s that girl with you? Your mother, your sister or your lover?”’

Saeed let out a long whistle. ‘Well, I hope life over there agrees with you.’

— 62 —

FAHD DROVE HIS SMALL car towards Ulaya Street, past the Pizza Hut in Urouba Road and into the narrow side street called Sayyidat al-Ru’osa, from where he entered Zuhair Rustom Alley, stopping briefly by the black door behind which his childhood had passed like a dream. This door, from whose threshold he had bade farewell to his father Suleiman as he started the car and headed off to Qaseem, never to return. This door, through which his gypsy uncle entered with glassy eyes and a belly fat with care and deliberation, to expel not just Fahd, but Fahd’s whole life, from this contented household. This door, through which he passed for the first time carrying his satchel, headed for the unfamiliar faces of pupils and teachers at Al-Ahnaf Bin Qais Primary School. This door, scuffed by the feet of his grandfather, his grandmother and his mother’s three brothers. This door, from which they carried the body of his mother, fighting for life after being subjected to a savage beating. This door, ponderous, melancholy, scowling. This door, broad-shouldered as a gorilla, not wide enough to admit the dreams of one small family that began its life with an ill-starred association with the Divine Reward Salafist Group, the breadwinner spending years in prison for taking a risk and handing out pamphlets inciting rebellion before returning to live his life with honour, shunned by respectable families. This door that opened smoothly and didn’t creak, unlike his grandparents’ door in al-Muraidasiya, which shamed them with its vibrant squeak, reckoned a kind of singing by the local congregation, some manifestation of the Satanic pipes that must be stilled. This door, witness to a life which flew past in a demented rush, never pausing to look over its shoulder.

Fahd raised his eyes to the fogged glass of the car window: maybe he would see his sister’s ghost. But he saw nothing there save silence and slow death, nothing save a pot with its withered plant.

He started the car and drove off. Turning left and passing Sheikh al-Islam Mohammed Bin Abdel Wahhab Mosque he looked out at the southern steps where the shelves for sandals stood empty. But lying on the ground he noticed a pair of tattered leather sandals like those of his father, his father’s final pair that had driven him to his death.

Once past the mosque his heart thumped in alarm and he turned back and parked the car. He got out, frightened and confused, removed his shoes at the entrance to the mosque and glanced briefly at the size of the sandals by the door. He put his right foot in one—‘It’s my father’s size!’—and reaching out to the door he felt a shiver run through his body like cold water and the hairs on his skin prick up.

Very slowly, he opened the door and in the far west corner of the mosque, next to the mihrab , he saw a body wrapped in a hair mashlah and apparently asleep, its face turned towards the qibla . He considered walking quietly round to see the face. He was frightened that he might wake, but he was determined and he moved forward with slow steps, alert to any rustling from his thaub . Reaching the mihrab he took a look at the sleeping man’s face, but he had covered it with his shimagh . He thought of making a loud noise to wake him up, but instead retraced his steps to the door, turning every few paces towards the qibla where the man lay.

He peered at the sandals for a while. They looked like the ones his father and Mushabbab had taken turns wearing in prison whenever one of them was summoned for interrogation, until that heavy day had dawned and Saeed’s father had donned the leather sandals and gone outside and neither he nor the sandals had returned. Were these sandals, lying like a witness outside the door of the mosque, the sandals that Saeed’s father had slipped on a quarter of century before?

He left the alley in the direction of the street where flowers were sold and drove south until he reached Jazeera Mall, then took a left towards Iblees Street where the Bangladeshis had their shops, selling illegal satellite dishes and receivers and cards for encoded porn channels. He crept into a little street behind Sadhan Mall and, at exactly ten in the morning, carrying all the necessary forms and his plane tickets, he stopped outside a company issuing travel visas to Britain.

When he presented his papers, having passed through the routine security check at the door, the long-haired clerk asked him a number of questions, sent him to a room where his thumbprint was taken, then handed over a receipt stating that Fahd’s application would be processed in two days.

Fahd left. By the outer gate he breathed a sigh of relief and wondered what had happened to Tarfah. Had they handed her straight back to her family or taken her to the women’s shelter? What was her family’s view of what had happened, especially that of her brother Abdullah? What had they told Sara about her mother? Good God, how merciless this country was! How exorbitant the cost of a coffee with a random girl!

Fahd muttered to himself as he made for Tahliya Street, where he stopped at a Dunkin Donuts to drink a cup of black filter coffee with a bear claw pastry, taking out his mobile every now and then to check that it was working and that he hadn’t received a message.

The Filipino closed the long curtains as the afternoon call to prayer sounded and Fahd went back out to the car. As he was turning the key in the ignition, the mobile buzzed like a cockroach and he opened its message folder: I swear to God I’m going to create a scandal in front of everyone, at every exhibition, at every artists’ gathering, you rat!

Selecting ‘Reply’ he wrote: Screw you, screw ‘everyone’ and screw your country, too.

He imagined Thuraya the Hejazi, waking late to the sound of her squabbling children, feeling the air conditioner wash against the semi-naked body that gave off the powerful, penetrating fragrance of her perfume. There was no man beside her to ravage her, and she wrote to curse the young man, the immature stranger, who failed to fill her life, who refused to surrender to her will. The phone buzzed again: See here, Syrian. You’ve got the right to swear at me and other people, but I’ll be saving that comment about my country. It’ll get you fucked up.

My God , thought Fahd. How can people bear to live in a racist, conspiratorial society, a society that hates and cheats and dupes and gossips and steals and murders, a society for which I have a representative sample at my fingertips: my uncle, Yasser and Thuraya? True, there are selfless friends like Saeed, and there are those in search of certainties and absolutes, like my father, Mushabbab and Abdel Kareem, and then there are those, like me, like Lulua and Tarfah and Sami, who are lost. But just thinking of it makes me want to vomit.