Where Pigeons Don't Fly (9 page)

Suleiman never thought he would return to Buraida, especially with the wretched memory of his detention there, but return he did one dawn in January 1990 with his little family in tow, fleeing the indiscriminate Russian missiles that could flatten his house in a heartbeat and because, following his experience in jail, he had come to believe more than ever in his father's judgment that he was ‘defective'. He asked his wife what would prevent the erratic and unseeing missiles from turning away from the airbase and the vast fortified palaces in Maadhar and landing on a rented top-floor flat in Ulaya, home
to an exhausted father, a miserable mother whose happiness was already deserting her at a young age, and a pair of children like pet kittens who knew nothing of life other than the fantastical, dreamlike stories they watched on a small screen.

The family stayed for several months with Uncle Saleh, in the big house in Buraida's Bashar neighbourhood where he lived at that time. He had three sons, the eldest of whom, Yasser, was ten, while Fahd was six and his sister, Lulua, three. How different their house was! Extremely spacious, with a courtyard where the children played football, a small cornershop that sold ice cream on the street outside, and in a secluded corner of the building next to a bedroom for female visitors, a guest room set aside for the Riyadhis—Suleiman and his family.

Soha would quake when Fahd went missing for more than an hour, maybe because he was young and pale-skinned with an eye-catching coppery tone to his hair. She feared for him in the streets and alleys and from the attentions of her uncle's children.

When the children were standing in front of the tall, hand-cranked washing machine, Yasser would play a game that Fahd found hard to understand, or rather he understood it, but enjoyed it, and so pretended he didn't.

Yasser would try to pick him up from behind, lifting him so he could see his face in the mirror as he roared gleefully. But it was more than childhood fun and games. At noon one day, while the men snoozed before the afternoon prayer, Yasser led Fahd up to the roof to ‘fly pigeons'. He laughed when Fahd said, panic-stricken, ‘I'm scared!' He assumed Fahd was scared of him, but what frightened him were pigeons, cats and any domesticated animal. Yasser pointed through the coop's netting to the nest boxes.

‘The one with the fat breast: see her? That's Velvet. The one standing over there is Fickle and next to her is Dancer. Look at her chick inside the shelter.'

‘Where?' cried Fahd, backing away from the netting. ‘I don't see it.'

Yasser followed him, throwing his dirty white
ghatra
on the ground.

‘You're a dwarf. You'll never grow,' he said, and started pulling at Fahd from behind, lifting the little feet in their Riyadhi shoes off the ground so he could see the tiny fluffy chick. Fear started to prick at Fahd's young heart, not only because of the pigeons, but also because of his cousin's pigeon, which stirred wildly and hungrily rubbed against him. Fahd stood there silently then climbed downstairs, alarmed and bewildered.

His mother was not asleep like he had thought, but had put on her headscarf and the hooded robe she wore to pray and was standing by the door that opened on to the courtyard. The instant she felt him enter the room where his father was sleeping, she crept after him and beckoned him outside. He came out of the room and she led him to the empty women's bedroom and started to interrogate him. ‘Where have you been?'

He lied to her for the first time in his life, telling her that he had been in the men's
majlis
waiting for a guest of Uncle Saleh, but she looked for a moment at his green woollen
thaub
. He was wondering what she was looking at when she surprised him by asking, ‘Who were you with on the roof?'

Then suddenly Fahd broke down and wept and told her what had happened. He felt guilty, scourged by sin, as his mother plucked up a small white feather stuck to the bottom of his clothing.

 

–11 –

T
HE AFTERNOON OF THE
day after his uncle's visit, while Lulua lay on her back watching
Sally
, Fahd was in the men's
majlis
with his schoolbooks, revising for his end of year exams. His mother slipped silently into the room so as not to break his concentration, placing a pot of tea on the table next to him, and before she could leave he invited her to sit for a while.

He had no idea how he would tell her what had happened. She might feel guilty herself for upsetting him and involving him in her problems, she might not be the slightest bit bothered, and she might lash out at those around her. He had no idea how she would respond. She had been suffering bouts of breathlessness since Suleiman had passed away three months previously.

‘Do you know why my uncles came yesterday?'

‘You lied to me, Fahd? My heart told me you were hiding something!'

He started to tell her what the men were planning: how her well-being had become a legal duty, as though they had evidence of her conducting secret liaisons with strangers, or someone had said that they saw strange men entering the widow's house at noon, while her children were at school.

There was a long and dreadful silence, as though she were looking back over her life and what had happened to her. Her
distracted air was intensely provoking to her son, and wheedling suspicions began to circle his heart, goading him like a switch on a stubborn donkey: Was there something linking her with a man other than his father? Had she been so sad and silent these last few years because she was torn between his father and another? Was it possible that his uncle had won her heart, and she his, all those years ago when they were staying in his house in Buraida, fleeing the madness of war? Fahd raised his face to the ceiling:
No. I take refuge with God from doubt and uncertainty!

After a full minute of silent contemplation Soha suddenly started to wail. How could they think of this with her husband so recently laid to rest, the soil over his grave not yet dried by the sun? How could she forget Suleiman's smile, his playfulness and his laughter? How could she forget his voice as he read her verses by Abu Tammam and al-Mutannabi and the poems of Mahmoud Darwish, especially
Ahmed the Arab
and
Praise for the Lofty Shadow
, which he had memorised from a cassette tape given to him by Nabeel Hawamla? And how could they forget how they had mistreated Suleiman from the day of his birth to his death? Were they intent on wronging him even after he was gone?

After Suleiman left prison and was back in Buraida, and once Eid al-Fitr had come to an end, his family arranged a job for him as a correspondent for a small contracting company. Ali al-Safeelawi dashed round to all the families he knew and whose men he trusted in order to get his son engaged in quick order, lest he be drawn after some new dream and lead his family into even more trouble than before. Ali wasn't that worried about Suleiman going to jail, or even being killed, but
he did fear the scandal that had caused one man in Buraida to mock him in a packed
majlis
. He had walked out and now avoided male company.

The families did not answer his plea. A very few confronted him with reality: the reality of the jail in which the expectant groom had languished and the fact that people like that never gave up their ideas, which flowed from them like blood.

‘We don't want our grandchildren to become orphans with no one to provide for them,' said some. Those who were more diplomatic and considerate of Ali's feelings said simply, and with blatant dishonesty, ‘The girl's taken.'

And so Suleiman left his family and his two-faced city forever. Sensing his father's frustration and his concern for the family's honour he decided to relieve him of the burden of his presence and asked his permission to seek a living somewhere else. He returned to Riyadh to work as a driver for a press distribution company, where he had the job of delivering newspapers to government offices. The streets of Riyadh were not as wide as they are now but nevertheless he spent his whole day trekking back and forth between various government agencies, sometimes forced to wait at this building or that because the guard wasn't around to receive the stacks of six daily newspapers. He would spend a few minutes perusing one of the papers as the voice of Umm Kulthoum swelled inside the car, sedate and pleasant in the early morning.

Sometimes he would go for a stroll with a middle-aged guard from Jazan, who worked at one of the agencies and would tell him what went on in this ministry or that institution; how the employees fought over the newspapers and the minister himself had to distribute them himself in instalments. With his yellow teeth and creased orange headscarf the guard
would chuckle, ‘The minister and his deputy have given up public affairs and are working as newspaper boys.' Then he would withdraw to the stove in his room to make tea for himself and Suleiman.

‘They all go home at midday.'

On more than one occasion as he stood outside the Presidency for Girls' Education near the television building, waiting for someone to open the door, Suleiman had seen a middle-aged man dressed in a smart suit, tie-less, with sparse hair and a thick blonde moustache sprinkled with white, adjusting his spectacles as he sat on a sheet of paper on the edge of a plant pot that held an ancient thorn tree. He had a small paper bag, out of which drifted the smell of fried falafel, and he turned the pages of
Sharq al-Awsat
with interest. At first, Suleiman assumed he was some sub-editor who came early for some complex reason of his own, but after an entire month had passed he was certain that the man worked in the Presidency.

One day Suleiman got out of his van carrying some newspapers, and, shaking the man's hand, asked if he was an employee. He was, the man replied in a lovely accent; he had been under contract with the Presidency for twenty years, an accountant responsible for the daybook, the general ledger and the department's expenditures, and an occasional supervisor for inexperienced young Saudis. He asked Suleiman about his job and qualifications. Suleiman told him that he distributed newspapers and that he loved his morning work because he came from a rural family that liked to get up and start work early.

The next day, the man told Suleiman that he, too, was a country boy, a Palestinian, who had emigrated with his family as a young man to study accountancy at the University of
Jordan in Amman before the Presidency had hired him more than twenty years ago.

‘Which city do you come from, sir?'

‘From Qaseem,' Suleiman replied.

‘We've got three from Qaseem, one from Bakeeriya and a couple from Buraida.'

He amazed Suleiman. He knew the people well and he knew the country. He could list the prominent families and their leading men and could reel off the history of Riyadh. This foreigner was an embodiment of the city's memory, a witness to what had taken place here.

Some days later, he invited Suleiman to his office to drink coffee before he continued his morning rounds. Suleiman came in hesitant and shy and the man asked him if he drank Turkish coffee, apologising because he had no Arabic coffee: the employee who made it didn't come until nine o'clock. Suleiman thanked him and turned the coffee down, so he made him a cup of tea and they talked for a while about everything under the sun.

The Jordanian would drop his sons and daughter off at school and would then have to come to work very early to go through the official accounts and expenditures in peace and quiet before the noisy young employees turned up. His son Essam was studying law at the University of Jordan and Soha, his daughter, was in middle school. Twins Ammar and Nabeel went to middle school together.

A few days later, the man convinced young Suleiman to continue his studies at night. ‘Goodness me, you've got free night schools, after all!'

Suleiman began to take night classes at the Farouq Secondary School, and his admiration of this lovable Jordanian began to
grow. Then came the day he stopped seeing him. Given the job of supplying boxes of newspapers and correspondence to various ministries and institutions, Suleiman would dump the newspapers very early indeed and go on his way.

Finally, Abu Essam caught up with him before he could disappear, reproaching him for his absence and for not dropping in to see him. The pair became more than friends and one morning Suleiman thought the time was right to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage. What could the Jordanian do but welcome the offer and salute his self-sufficiency and self-confidence?

But Suleiman felt that he had been far too hasty, and now found himself vacillating before his two obligations: the first, to inform the kindly gentleman of his imprisonment and former membership of a religious group, and the second, to inform his family, even though he believed that no one else had the authority to question his decisions.

‘Haven't you made inquiries about me, Abu Essam?'

‘What are you talking about? I've known you six months and your character speaks for you.'

Suleiman was standing in the kitchen of Abu Essam's house in Khazan Street and he fell silent.

‘Is there anything you want to tell me that I don't know about?'

Stammering, Suleiman told him the tale of his involvement with the Divine Reward Salafist Group seven years before, his four years in prison, then his return to his family and search for suitable employment, up until his arrival in Riyadh.

‘Prison is no shame for a man! What concerns me is what Suleiman has become and how he thinks now. I don't care what he used to be.'

Relief washed over Suleiman and he looked over to Soha, with her laughing face and bewitching dimples and her accent that blended her family's dialect with the Saudi vernacular she had learnt during her nine years at school. Neither Suleiman's features nor his cultured speech gave any clue that he delivered newspapers, an unskilled employee with a mediocre education. He was neat and well-groomed, his light moustache was carefully clipped, and he wore spectacles with clear, round lenses. Of medium height, his face was golden brown and serene. From the very first he set his heart on Soha and loved her dearly, not just as a wife but as a mother, a lover and a friend and for all their time together, the way he looked at her never changed.