Where Pigeons Don't Fly (20 page)

 

–27 –

A
FTER PASSING GHABEERA ON
Manfouha's main road, Yasser stopped the car outside a dilapidated old building below which were shops for pots and pans and a cheap goods emporia (
Everything for 2 Riyals
). He adjusted his spectacles in order to dial the Egyptian sheikh's number.

‘Peace be upon you, Sheikh Mohammed.'

In stately tones Sheikh Mohammed Abdel Muati informed him that he would be down in a few minutes. Yasser stared out at the road ahead: the female street sellers, the Egyptian women in their
hijabs
out shopping on the high street, two Egyptian youths waiting outside a stall selling sugar cane juice, municipal buses parked by the roadside, Bangladeshi labourers carrying buckets full of water and car-washing gear on their shoulders, Pakistanis in Punjabi dress driving their motorcycles next to the kerb, Indians, Afghans and children queuing outside the Temees Afghan bakery on the other side of the street, an old beggarwoman, black, hunchbacked and tapping on his car window. Yasser pointed his thumb to the sky and his lips moved: ‘God is generous.'

There was a tap at his other window and he swung round in irritation only to find the Egyptian sheikh smiling at him. His face was round and pink, rimmed by a reddish beard, a dark prayer-bruise on his forehead. He wore a pristine and well-pressed white
ghatra
, slightly raised to reveal a sieve-like
string prayer cap, while his collar hung open where he had forgotten to button up his
thaub
. This he now did as the car left Old Manfouha for Ulaya and ‘the Jordanian woman's place' as Yasser called the house of his father's third wife.

The Egyptian was talking about corruption in Manfouha and the Bangladeshis who traded in alcohol, prostitution and other banned commodities.

‘God suffices me and is my best provider!' he exclaimed, combing his fingers through his beard while Yasser expressed his agreement. Then he changed the subject and asked if Abu Ayoub was well. Almost playfully he said, ‘Wouldn't it be better if we found him a jolly young Egyptian girl, Sheikh Yasser? A real salt of the earth type, instead of the hassle and problems of a sick woman who needs her kids, not a husband.'

Yasser nodded, ‘Just as you say, sheikh.'

At home, Lulua was in the dining room with the green bolsters, changing the foam mattress for her sick mother, while Soha walked slowly and listlessly to the kitchen and from there to the bedroom, where she put on a long-sleeved shirt and a black headscarf. Then she wrapped herself in a blue, spotted prayer robe and faced towards the
qibla
, raising hands tattooed with henna and imploring her Lord to treat her kindly or take her to the side of Abu Fahd, who had left one morning never to return. Whenever she thought of Suleiman and their outings in the Riyadh night a tear sprang to her eye and a sob grumbled in her little chest.

The steel gate at the bottom of the stairs creaked and the sound of the Abu Ayoub's coughing and incantations grew louder as he mounted the stairs, a plastic gallon jug of
zamzam
water in his hand, which he set down by the entrance to the kitchen from which wafted the smell of fried eggs.

‘This
zamzam
water's been blessed,' he said to Lulua.

She poured a glass and handed it to her mother, who staggered towards the dining room. Minutes later the doorbell rang and Sheikh Mohammed Abdel Muati entered accompanied by Yasser. The pair of them waited in the men's
majlis
for the five minutes Soha needed to dress herself in her prayer robe, over which Abu Ayoub placed her black
abaya
.

The Egyptian sheikh sat facing her, reassuring her that God had great compassion for His servants and that He, praised be His name, would cure her of what ailed her. From time to time he tugged at his white
ghatra
as it slipped backwards. Then he approached her, and laying his heavy hand upon her head, began to recite
surat al-najm
—‘ “By the Star when it goes down, your Companion is neither astray nor is he misled …” '—first chanting, then muttering, then reciting in his head and blowing so hard that her
niqab
almost flew off.

Soha felt no relief. She sighed to herself, resisting the rough hand that weighed upon her. It was heavy and his breath stank of rotten eggs, but for twenty minutes she kept her composure until he mixed some oil with caraway seed, stirring them together with his thick thumb. He left, having first prayed for her speedy recovery and told her that to show resistance and steadfastness in the face of God's test made amends for any sin committed by man.

Part 4

The elephant's last dance

 

–28 –

T
WO GUARDS, ONE BALD
, the other short and slender, both wearing the uniform of a private security firm, stood outside Entrance Three of Le Mall inspecting the men and women entering the mall complex through the sliding glass doors. Outside, Fahd reduced speed but instead of turning left at the roundabout by the entrance he continued along beside the wall of Ibn Khaldoun School, then stopped and called Tarfah's mobile. Tarfah, wandering around a shop next to Entrance Three and exchanging a pair of earrings, suggested that he circle the roundabout and stop directly outside the doors. She had taken precautions and entered via Entrance Two on King Abdul Aziz Road and the guards here wouldn't be the same.

Tarfah, or Scarlet—the name she used in the message boards of Kanoun's art page—had got to know him two years before but neither had thought of getting any more intimate than interactions on the site's discussion threads, emails or Messenger.

A phone call had never been an option, despite Scarlet being an active member of the site and her many charming contributions and astute observations. Fahd had even sent her a private message when she first registered, suggesting she change the signature line that appeared at the bottom of her posts—
Suwaidi and Falluja are the two eyes in the face of
terrorism
—and explaining that the website was an art forum and did not permit discussions of security issues and politics. Despite all this irregular correspondence they had never held a conversation until the night he found a request from her to be added to his Messenger contacts. He consented and in the excitement of their late-night exchange she had sent him a mobile phone icon. He paused for a few seconds, unsure whether to write his number.

Forget it! Don't bother!
She wrote, but she had him hooked. He sent the number only for her to respond with a winking smiley.

She was in her thirties, with wide eyes, extraordinary dimples that appeared whenever she smiled, whether shyly or seductively, full lips and a round face of golden skin tinged an olive green. Her hair was black and soft, set in place with the hot air from the blow dryer that never left her room. Her hands, to which Fahd was addicted, were smooth, small and dark with beautiful thumbs; he had once told her that he dreamt of painting a picture made up entirely of thumbs like hers. Always calm and measured, she had an aura of hidden glee about her which hid a profound sadness that lay within her, manifesting itself through bouts of misery and anxiety that surfaced whenever she looked back over her short life: two failed marriages leading to an unshakeable phobia of matrimony, then three relationships, the latest of them with Fahd. During each affair she told herself: this one's my true love; he's the most beautiful; or, this one's my love, he's the most honest. But after months or years the love, or the sexual desire, would start to fade and die, until, finding herself neglected, she would begin all over again, cocooning herself in the affections of another man.

Fahd had teased her.
Why do you have a picture of an elephant in your Messenger window?
he'd written.
Don't tell me you're the size of an elephant!

His taunts provoked her. She started playing a guessing game with him, first putting up a photo of a large eye painted with kohl and eyeshadow, then a pair of plump lips, then a small nose, then an earring hanging from her earlobe and finally her whole face, stunning despite being touched up with Photoshop. Then she restored the little elephant.

In the course of a first phone call full of laughter and noise, she told him she dreamt of riding an elephant and in the madness of the moment he replied, ‘I wish I was an elephant!' She laughed at his indecency, and he laughed at her laughter, and so the hours passed, first in intimate confidences then in debate over the various artists showcased on the forum and the exhibitions scattered throughout Riyadh, at the Shadda Hall outside the Aziziya branch of Panda in Murabba, the Sharqiya Gallery north of the Takhassusi Hospital and the Faisal Bin Fahd Centre at The Capital Model Institute. She didn't paint in oils and wasn't obsessed with buying paintings; she was fond of many pictures but didn't have the extra cash, so her only option was to collect images of these pictures from the forum and save them in a special file.

At first he was scared and unsure. There were signs that Thuraya wasn't going to leave him be. She never stopped threatening him for his failure to create an opportunity for them to meet somewhere alone.

Strange
, he thought to himself, the smell of her still in his nostrils.
Young men are usually the ones who blackmail and threaten girls, so how come this woman's threatening me?

Although Tarfah had been an acquaintance of his on the website for two years now, doubts continued to attend him, cawing crows hovering over a corpse. Had she been sent by Thuraya to exact revenge? Was Thuraya already online? Was she somewhere in the list of the last ten members to join? He looked over the pseudonyms and found nothing hinting at her name, her personality or the Hejaz origins she boasted about constantly, but still he asked himself why Tarfah had appeared in his life at this moment in particular, just as he was slowly extricating himself from Thuraya's curse. Why had she only now begun writing to him and trying to get closer to him, when both of them had been around since the website started?

As he stopped by the guards in their sky-blue uniforms outside Entrance Three, Fahd caught sight of a woman, walking with excessive self-confidence and lethal and magnificent composure, swathed in a black
abaya
with a small white bear swaying from a loop on the side of her black handbag. She opened the car door and got in beside him.

‘Good evening,' she said shyly, shifting her body and hitching up the lower half of her
abaya
.

Once the car had started moving, she looked at him with alluring eyes. His heart gave an unexpected lurch and he stretched out the fingers of his right hand so they rested between her succulent palms and the cocoon of her own, dark-brown fingers.

‘Go right,' she told him and he turned north into the neighbourhood of New Wadi, with its protective cover of darkness that left all living things suspended in mid-air, raucous and honeyed.

Through his laughter he asked her, ‘How come you know the backstreets of North Riyadh when you live in Suwaidi?'

She giggled and said that her older sister Asmaa had nicknamed her Google and now all her relatives either called her Google or Tarfah.com; even the men of the family, young and old alike, were aware that she knew the lanes, main roads and shops, as though a comprehensive map of the city, its roads, buildings and neighbourhoods, slumbered in her little head.

 

–29 –

T
ARFAH'S VOICE WAS THE
same as it had been on the phone, perhaps a little riper and more musical.

It was noon when Fahd first phoned her, anxious and uncertain, and after three rings her drawling voice had come down the line. A woman's voice in every respect: supremely feminine, pleasant and welling with coquetry and refinement. When she spoke it was like a reed flute sounding sadly in an abandoned palm grove. Powerful and fluid, her voice could detonate passion in anyone's heart. It was nothing like the throaty maternal utterances of Thuraya, or Noha's unintelligible mumbling. More than just her voice, it was the warmth and searing honesty of what she said.

From their second phone conversation it seemed to Fahd that they had been friends since childhood. She told him how she had married a relatively unknown actor and separated after two years of suffering and disagreement. He had developed schizophrenia. Before the divorce she had travelled with him to Jeddah, where he forgot to take his medicine and started riding camels and horses on the corniche, screaming dementedly at her, ‘Take my picture!'

Back in their room her ex-husband had put on swimming trucks, crooning with furtive delight, ‘If only the gold market were lined in silk …' and snatches of famous songs. Pointing
from the high window at the swimming pool below, he said, ‘I'm going fishing.'

Tarfah was astonishingly warm and bubbly. She stole Fahd's heart and made him feel exceptionally close to her, only rarely asking him questions as she told him of her childhood in Dakhna. She only mentioned her first name. He wanted a family name to feel more at ease, and despite her initial hesitation, she gave to him, making it clear that any similarity with the owners of a well-known commercial centre was pure coincidence. ‘Tribesmen!' she called them.

With her chin resting on her fingers, she was beautiful. Her eyes were splendid, defying comparison with Thuraya's Javanese slits, and likewise her tender, angelic voice, utterly dissimilar to the husky tones of the older woman. Even the things they talked about were different. Tarfah spoke like Scheherazade of her life, and that of her family and friends, filling Fahd's heart and memory in the course of single week, while for months on end, Thuraya continued to ask after him and his Jordanian mother, giving him nothing of herself and shielding her life with a man's caution.

He was eager to meet this angelic voice, and he turned his mind to a close comparison of the three: Noha, Thuraya and Tarfah. Which was to be his Mona Lisa? Tarfah of the wide eyes and the beautiful hands that supported her chin like faces in Salvador Dali's paintings, propped on sticks and branches so as not to fall? Was it to be Tarfah's face, burdened with the sorrow of angels, alert and tender and mournful all at once? Would it be Noha with her delicate sidelong glances, snatching fleeting moments to flick out a furtive look from between her Praetorian Guard, single-mindedly marching along the path by the wall of Prince Sultan University? Or Thuraya's
face, bewitched by Fahd's, and perspiring with the force of her desire for oblivion?