Where Pigeons Don't Fly (13 page)

‘That's a political question, Fahoudi.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘It means,' answered his father as he pulled away from the junction of Urouba and Layla al-Akheliya, ‘that it's a tricky question. Look,' he explained. ‘In the beginning there were the tribes.'

‘What are tribes?' Fahd asked.

His father answered hesitantly. ‘Tribes are people who lived together in groups, in Riyadh, Qaseem and Ha'il and so on. Then King Abdul Aziz came along …' He suddenly fell silent, without adding, ‘…and occupied them.'

As they drove past the arcades, Fahd shouted, ‘I wish I were a king!' He stretched out his hand in a military salute. ‘I'd tell them, “Knock the schools down.”'

Suleiman burst out laughing, then Fahd asked, ‘Dad? If you were king, what would you ask for?'

Suleiman was quiet for a bit. ‘Maybe I'd resign!' he said.

‘How do you mean?'

‘I mean I'd say that I don't want to be king.'

‘But why, Dad? You could ask for any toy you wanted.'

There was nothing more beautiful than those distant childhood moments. The only thing that could wreck their happiness was the presence of Soha, who sometimes tried to curb the generosity and child-like lunacy Suleiman displayed around his son, claiming that he was spoiling him and making him unfit for polite company. Even after Suleiman was lying in his grave she continued to reproach him for not raising his son properly, for being unable to refuse Fahd anything and ruining him.

A Sudanese artist called Kamal, whom his father once met in an art gallery on Thalatheen Street in Ulaya and whose pictures, with their searing African palette, had gripped Fahd's gaze and mind, said of the boy as he stood pointing at the canvases: ‘The soul of a great artist sleeps in his depths and it must be awoken.'

Fahd's father gave full credence to this myth—or insane lie—and bought him sketchbooks, watercolours and oil paints while his mother, irritable and seething, muttered that it would distract him from his studies not to mention that the fumes from the oil paint gave Lulua asthma attacks. How Fahd missed him.

Possibly in exchange for penetrating and pleasuring her last thing at night, Fahd's uncle chivvied his mother into ambushing her son and nagging him to put a stop to this outrage with
oil paints that his late father had involved him in. But was it his father who got him involved, or had Suleiman himself been drawn in by the chance remark of a random Sudanese artist?

Stretched out on his bed, Fahd pondered:
How can I become an artist, Father, now that you've betrayed me and left me all alone? How is it, my dear Kamal, that you managed to embroil both me and my father in your prophecy? If only you knew how my pores open and the hairs in my nostrils quiver when I smell the oils; how dizzying it is, how fatal. How worked up I get at the brilliance of the artists I love; how I flow into the tumult of their colours. Do you even realise, painting away so creative and conceited, that I have had to rip the sheet from my sketchpad into pieces no bigger than a postage stamp so that my mother does not find them and lose her temper as she warns of my uncle's rage? I draw trees or birds on those small shreds. I love birds when they're circling in the heavens with rare delight, but I hate them too. I fear them approaching me; I'm scared to touch them. I really hate their feathers: I gag when I see an abandoned feather floating on the water's surface. I can feel them moving over my tongue, the scratchy tip creeping to the back of my throat and I choke on it, like it was a clinging hair, so much so that sometimes I almost throw up.

 

–16 –

T
HE AFTERNOON OF THE
following day Fahd told his mother that he would be going to the stadium with Saeed. She tried persuading him to watch the match on television, then started in with her old lament that he would never do well at his studies and wouldn't get the marks he needed to go to study a respectable subject.

‘Look at Yasser studying medicine. He's going to be a doctor one day.'

He hurried down the front steps cursing Yasser and Abu Yasser as her voice came from the living room: ‘Don't be late.'

Wearing his
thaub
and his team's cap, Fahd walked until he came to Tareeqati Café. When he turned off Urouba Road he didn't see Saeed's Honda and he went into the café and started leafing through a copy of
Riyadh
. He read the provocations and challenges exchanged by the two coaches and club presidents and a few of the statements by former players. His mobile blared out Fairouz's
Remember the Last Time I Saw You?
It was Saeed to say he was on his way, and minutes later Fahd saw the car through the café window. He went out and got in.

They were very late and the stadium was full of spectators. They went in but could only find space in the South End
next to the Hilal supporters. As they climbed the terraces the loudspeakers were playing the national anthem:

He who walks barefoot over coals is worthy of you,

And he who waters your seed with sweat, tears and blood is worthy of you
…

‘… is worthy of you,' echoed the swaying crowd, entranced, while Saeed galloped up the steps gleefully and audibly singing, ‘He who waters your soil with the filth of murder and blood is worthy of you …'

Once they had passed the soldiers at the top of the steps and were sitting down, panting and trying to catch their breath, Fahd gave him a thump. ‘You're crazy. The place is swarming with soldiers and cops.'

‘Men, let nothing you dismay,' said Saeed, then joyfully held his arms aloft and shouted, ‘Smile! We're in the pearl of stadiums.'

‘Your father occupied the Grand Mosque and it looks like you're about to take over the stadium,' Fahd whispered in his ear.

Down below the soldiers were drawn up in ranks and the band members were sitting in an area by the back of the goal. The bandleader looked around at his men and gave instructions in readiness for playing the national anthem as the king entered the stadium at half-time.

Opposite the rear entrance to Hammadi Hospital lived Muhannad, Fahd's friend from middle school. One evening, as they played on the Playstation, Muhannad had suggested
that Fahd come to the stadium the next day to watch a match along with him and his elder brother. He asked Suleiman's permission, who reluctantly gave it, though he wavered over whether to go with him or not. At the last minute he backed down and gave Fahd one hundred riyals so he wouldn't have to rely on anyone else.

‘Watch out for yourself, and don't get separated from Muhannad.'

Half an hour before kick-off the three of them spotted a crowd of supporters rushing to the edge of the terraces overhanging the tunnel entrance to lean their heads out and watch the players stride out on to the pitch of Malaz Stadium. Muhannad's older brother, Mansour, suggested they go and see the players up close and in the flesh and the two younger boys were delighted and noisily sprinted off. The crush of people was frightening, everyone striving to wriggle through to the edge of the terrace and hang on to the low cement barricade in order to get a view. Mansour was behind them, guiding and pushing them forward, and they almost suffocated from the lack of air.

As al-Daie and al-Jaber emerged before the screams of the fans, Fahd felt Mansour press up painfully behind him. When he continued to press forward, Fahd tried to step out of the way and shifted a little to the left only for another man to barge into him. He looked round in alarm to find a man with his head swathed in a
shimagh
showing nothing but his eyes, and he swivelled about and dragged Muhannad away, saying, ‘Let's go.'

The episode brought back memories of the incident with the feather from his childhood and he felt very guilty for going to the stadium with someone he didn't know well and for
not taking his father with him. It also reminded him of the time he and his Iraqi friend, Muwaffaq, had climbed on to the tables in the passage that ran past the classrooms during break time, to watch a football match through the curtains of the second floor windows. Muwaffaq was getting very close to him; Fahd understood what he wanted, backed up a little to make room. Muwaffaq slipped between Fahd and the wall like a tame ginger tabby. Fahd pressed against him from behind and the two of them laughed until they were surprised by Nasser, the class monitor, who climbed up on the table to harrass them, putting his hand on Muwaffaq's shoulder and pulling the boy towards him, saying, ‘You can see better from over here.'

Frightened that he might take his revenge, Muwaffaq went with him.

The game began and the crowd roared with one voice, the stadium's terraces transformed in a vast unruly vessel. Suddenly Fahd felt that it really had become a ship, rolling through the swell, and he became almost dizzy.

Every pass drew a shriek from the Bedouin youth in front of them with his long hair and blue shawl wrapped around his neck and shoulders, while the ground beneath three men next to him had become a sea of shelled sunflower seeds. In the dying minutes of the first half, as Fahd stared distractedly at the people around him, everyone started shouting and screaming and jumping up and down and he leapt up with Saeed. He hadn't seen the ball enter the net but he saw Hilal's players running after Sami al-Jaber. It was a moment of overwhelming happiness.

Fahd's eyes were raised heavenwards towards the floodlights dispersing the darkness, fixed along the rim of the soaring
white concrete awning where the pigeons flew over spectators' heads, hovering around the powerful lights then settling down beside them on the massive steel crossbeams. Every now and then a feather broke free and slowly drifted down, gently rolling back and forth as Fahd tracked its progress until it came to rest in the crowd or landed unnoticed on someone's shoulder.

At half-time, Fahd asked Saeed if he wanted anything from the cafeteria. Descending the steps and going outside, he was taken aback to find a large crowd around the cafeteria's high counter, their cries unanswered by the bewildered Bangladeshi employees. Fahd dithered: to return without bringing Saeed any water or sunflower seeds would be pretty feeble, especially if he claimed the crowds as his excuse.

Saeed's more than friend
, he thought to himself.
He's a brother, if not my final support now that my father's gone, just as my father supported him in obedience to Mushabbab's wishes. So how am I going to cope with this lot?

He approached tentatively. In front of him a man sat his child on one end of the saddle-shaped counter and screamed in vain at the Bangladeshi. At the other end were four young men. One was wearing a long frizzy wig, another the football shirt of Barcelona's Brazilian star Ronaldinho, while the remaining pair shouted at the employee who was handing out bottles of water and juice cartons and ineptly counting change. When one of the employees went into the small storeroom at the back leaving his co-worker alone at the front, the man in the Ronaldinho shirt plucked up his courage and, vaulting the high counter, took four water bottles out of an open box in front of the astonished employee.

‘Take the whole box!' shouted the one in the wig, so he snatched it and set it down in front of his friends amid cries of encouragement. The remaining employee made a run for it, dodging a water bottle and a volley of loud curses, ‘Bangladeshi animal.'

Fahd returned without water or roasted seeds and climbed the terraces to find the band on the pitch, ready to play, and the loudspeakers blaring out fervent patriotic anthems. Suddenly they fell silent and the stadium announcer proclaimed the arrival of the king. The king waved his hand and the crowd went wild, whistling noisily, and then the national anthem started up accompanied by the players and fans.

Now that the king was inside the guards began conducting intensive searches at the entrances to the terraces. Fahd had his pockets carefully patted down by a national guardsman with a thin, stern face who located his wallet and asked him to take it out and then went through his pockets one by one before handing it back. He asked Fahd for his ticket stub; he took it out of his top pocket, and the man silently waved him through.

Why did the soldiers always have the faces of embittered Bedouin or the inert masks of villagers, dead planks devoid of all expression, anger, hatred or joy? Were they always like this, even at home? How did they greet their wives? Did they hug their children like normal people?

His father would turn tail in terror whenever he encountered one of them. He was once riding in his friend's car when they pulled over outside a Tamimi supermarket. Suleiman got out and was chatting to his friend through the open driver's side window when he heard the traffic patrol's loudspeaker give a sudden squawk and felt the red and blue lights slap his
face. Stopping in mid-sentence, he took off in a comic sprint, clearly terrified, as though he were yet to cast off the anguish of his years in prison and his fear of prison guards. In fact, the older he got the more frightened, anxious and confused he felt at the sight of any man wearing military uniform, even if it was a lowly rank.

The match came to an end. Fahd was already worried about being late home while Saeed wanted to watch the cup presentation ceremony. Patting his pockets and pulling out his phone Fahd was startled to find five missed calls from his mother and a couple of text messages. He read one:
Your uncle's come home and he's asking where you've got to. I'm begging you, my son: don't you be late!

 

–17 –

F
AHD'S FATHER NEVER INSULTED
him. Even when Suleiman was angry he tried to ensure that he spoke clearly and to the point. Fahd's mother had never pulled him by the ear, other than that awful time he had gone out on to the roof of his uncle's house in Buraida when she had twisted it after finding the a white feather clinging to the bottom of his green winter
thaub
.