The Ruins of Us (10 page)

Faisal took hold of the now-empty bottle and stood up. His eyes settled on the sharp edge of the vanity’s marble top. Abdullah snorted and turned onto his back, his stump resting on his stomach. It was a pitiable sight, making Faisal hesitate, loosen his grip on the bottle. Because the drinking happened secretly, because so many people did it and everyone looked the other way, the hypocrisy had become just another part of life in Saudi. But it was not enough. Other men could go to hell, but not Abdullah. Faisal was determined to save his father from his own habits, for wasn’t God forgiving and merciful?

Faisal closed his eyes and listened to his father’s wet breathing. He raised the bottle over his head and brought it down forcefully against the edge of the vanity. It broke loudly, and he felt a small shard hit his face. His father grunted awake and rustled the sheets as he sat up. He looked at Faisal, his eyes bleary with confusion.

“Shame on you, Baba,” Faisal said, his heart pounding.

He raced from the room, shutting the door behind him, and ran up the stairs, down the hallway, into his room, and then into his bed, where he lay still; his heart expanding in his throat. Dizzily, he pulled the photograph of his grandfather from the band of his shorts, looked at his coffee-stained teeth and hawk’s nose. He thought of Abdul Latif as a child, living in a tent, eating nothing but goat meat and sheep’s cheese, falling asleep beneath a velvet sky. Abdul Latif’s story had become a fable, one Faisal had heard many times. How Abdul Latif had left the desert as a young man, turning his back on the sea of black Baylani tents stretched from Yemen to Southern Iraq; leaving Asir for the Arabian Gulf, the city, and the new money that had started to pour in from all over the world.

Closing his eyes, his head light as cotton, Faisal let Abdul Latif materialize from the darkness, carrying the old dagger he took with him everywhere. He recalled the bitter morning they had gone hunting for falcons, the sky dead with cold. Abdul Latif had wrapped him in a long black robe and handed him a Shebriya dagger, its jeweled handle a shock of color against the sand. It was Abdul Latif’s prized dagger, not the simple Khanjar knife he used for slaughtering goats. Faisal could feel the burn of the handle’s rubies against his cold skin. He was twelve at the time, and Jadd Abdul Latif had lifted up his thobe to reveal a smooth, pink island of young-looking skin in his sea of brown wrinkles. Taking Faisal’s small hand in his, Jadd had run it over the knotted scar. To Faisal’s young mind, it felt like a jellyfish washed up on the beach, firm and smooth.

“My father did this to me,” Jadd had told him. “It was my first experience with real pain. I was twelve and spending most of my time with my mother and sisters. When I was with Umma, I was all in all. I was the youngest boy in my family, and I meant nothing to the men. Baba wasn’t being cruel, just preparing me for suffering, teaching me to bear it with dignity. He knew as well as anyone that life in the desert was hard. Afterwards, the men welcomed me.”

That day, Faisal had recoiled, thinking his grandfather had brought him into the desert to teach him pain, but instead, Abdul Latif had handed the dagger to Faisal and hugged him close. In his bed Faisal thought of his grandfather’s old wound and touched his abdomen. He remembered Abdul Latif complaining good-naturedly about his wives’ teasing. He said that they laughed at him because he could never fall asleep on the expensive mattresses they imported from Denmark. Instead, he slept on the floor on a rough woolen blanket next to the bed. “Comfort is the devil’s elixir,” Jadd often said. How had Abdullah grown so louche with Abdul Latif as his father? The only scars Abdullah had were clustered around his stump, the flesh there spackled with gray from when it had absorbed some of the gravel from the Italian road where his father claimed to have fishtailed out of control on a borrowed Ducati. He had probably been drunk.

Faisal desperately hoped for sleep. He began reciting God’s ninety-nine names: Al-Rahman, Al-Rahim, Al-Malik, Al-Quddus, Al-Salam, Al-Mu’min, Al-Muhaymin, Al-’Aziz, Al-Jabbar, Al-Mutakabbir, Al-Musawwir, Al-Ghaffar . . . He watched the bedside clock as he moved down the list. After several minutes, he was finished. None of his friends could do the whole list—not even Majid—but when Faisal thought of Majid’s thin arms holding an automatic rifle, the only one of the boys who had ever
fought
for something, Faisal felt his own triumphs to be small and cerebral. He felt the sadness coming on again, sparked by the idea that Abdullah, the man who had first taught him how to kneel and pray, might not be able to save himself from eternal suffering. Faisal tried to clench his mind tightly against these thoughts, but still he saw his father tumbling in blackness, falling, a trail of howling demons chasing him down in the dark.

THE NEXT MORNING,
Faisal awoke to a sharp rap on his door.

“Zool?”

It was Mariam.

“Leave me alone, I’m sleeping,” he said.

“If you’re asleep, how are you talking?” Before he could answer, she burst through the door. “Hurry and get dressed. Umma and Baba want to talk to you about last night. I think a robber came.”

She was clutching the small press notebook that she carried everywhere with her. Recently she had purchased a poster of a towering Christiane Amanpour in field khakis and a flak jacket, as well as several long, thin reporter notebooks from a paper store in downtown Al Dawoun. She talked incessantly about Faizah al-Zahrani and Sabriya al-Seif, two of the Kingdom’s most prominent female journalists. Sabriya wrote for the Western papers, but Faizah worked at
Saudi Times
, where their uncle was the boss, and where Mariam worked as an intern one afternoon a week. He’d heard A’m Nabil complain once that Faizah was the one to get them in trouble with the censors, always trying to get in a line or two of “too much truth,” as Nabil had put it.

“You have an overactive imagination,” Faisal said, rolling over in bed to face away from her. He waited to hear the sounds of her leaving, but she didn’t move. “There’s nothing to report here, so just put your little notebook down and go away.”

Quickly she was at his side, her knee pushed hard into his back.

“No. I’m going to sit right here until you agree to be interviewed. I want to know what it’s like.”

“What what’s like?” he asked, swatting at her leg.

“To love God so much it rules your whole life.”

“Simple. Without God, no life. Now, get off my bed!” He turned and sat up, swinging his arm to swipe her off. “I hate to tell you, little sister, but your life is not a news story. And if it were, it would bore everyone to death.”

She stuck her lip out and gave him a hurt look. He waited for her to walk away, but his victory didn’t last long.

“And if you did anything besides play video games and read the Koran, you’d notice that life was happening all around you.”

“I’ve got plenty going on, things you couldn’t imagine,” he said.

“Yeah? Like what?” She had her hands on her hips, her head cocked sideways.

He’d never told her about the Sahwi websites he visited, about Lewis Attiya Allah and the other religious men who discussed Islam on the Internet. She didn’t know about the plans he had, about Majid’s big ideas.

“You act so superior just because A’mi gave you a job at the paper and now you get to go in and pour tea for people,” Faisal said.

“I do more than pour tea,” she said. “A’mi has me writing. And last week, Faizah al-Zahrani asked me to look over her editorial piece. At least I’m out there, trying to make a difference.”

He rolled his eyes at her.

“If I did ever grant you an interview, I could tell you things that would make your head explode. It’d be the biggest scoop
Saudi Times
had ever seen.” So what if it was a hollow boast at the moment? She would never know that, and besides, he was sure that one day it would be true.

His mother appeared behind Mariam.

“Zizi, did you hear anything last night?” she asked with the most urgency he had heard in her voice in a while.

He hated all the nicknames that his family used for him. He was almost seventeen years old, and still it was “Zool” and “Fez” and “Zizi.”

“My name is Faisal.”

“I need to know if your sister has been telling stories again.”

“Umma,” Mariam protested.

“What? Remember that time with the El Ali boy? Now be still and let your brother talk.”

He couldn’t take living there much longer, not with his mother and sister buzzing around like this. Since Abdullah spent so much of his time with Isra, the house had become an intolerable world of female squawking. He felt as if his already-sparse goatee was retreating entirely into his chin. He got out of bed and pushed past them. Abdullah stood at the bottom of the staircase, and Faisal noticed that the smell of whiskey had traveled with his father from the spare bedroom into the foyer.

“Baba? What’s all this about a break-in?” He would press the matter a little bit, just until his father squirmed.

“Your sister says she heard someone breaking in last night. I’m sure it was nothing.”

“It’s funny actually. I
do
recall hearing something downstairs. Late. Around two o’clock in the morning?” Faisal narrowed his eyes into his best glare. A week ago, he never would have spoken to his father this way, though he had wanted to on many occasions. But hearing his mother scream herself hoarse in the driveway last night had emboldened him. Since news of Isra broke, none of the old rules applied anymore.

“Never mind the noise you heard,” Abdullah said, red-faced.

“But Baba, it was glass,” Mariam said. “Breaking glass.”

“Baba, tell me what you know about hudud crimes,” Faisal said. “Adultery. Defamation. Theft. Public intoxication. Yes, I believe there’s eighty lashes for public intoxication.”

Abdullah turned to face him, his right hand clenched into a fist. He brought it down hard on the banister.

“If you do not shut your mouth immediately, I’ll lash you myself,” Abdullah said. “I do know how the Prophet, peace be upon Him, feels about insubordinate children. Now, I’m going back to bed and I don’t want to be disturbed.”

Faisal saw a vein pop from his father’s temple. Faisal longed to keep pushing, but he decided against it. If he disrespected his father entirely, what then? He needed Abdullah, even Rosalie, but he needed them to be a certain
way
. Namely to be good, responsible parents who weren’t always off doing anything and everything they pleased. It had been so long since he actually felt like either parent had looked at him and taken the time to
see
him for who he was. And wasn’t that a parent’s only real job?

“But Baba, what if the intruder . . .” Mariam said.

“Enough, I said. I want silence in this house, and if I have to bind and gag you all, I will.”

Abdullah scratched his head as if he wanted to draw blood and walked off in the direction of the other guest bedroom.

“Why does no one in this family listen to me?” Mariam whispered.

“Hummingbird, I’m sure if anyone had tried to break in, the alarm would have gone off,”

Rosalie said. “And your brother wants to protect this family as much as you do. Isn’t that right, Zool?”

She looked to him for affirmation and he nodded vigorously. In this house of avoidance, it was easy to go along with what people wanted to believe. His parents were in orbit—untouchable planets in a galaxy that was, very obviously, not his.

“Faisal, Mimou and I are going out. We’ll see you later today.” She patted him on the shoulder.

“I’m still going to get that interview with you,” Mariam said as she walked past him.

“Whatever,” he said.

His mother and sister walked to the garage, where the two drivers slept in an adjoining room. There should be a perfect symmetry to their family—a mother and daughter, a father and son. But now there was Isra, and there was always whiskey—both things that consumed his father’s every moment, when he wasn’t at B-Corp. Faisal exhaled and walked slowly to the bay window in the living room. Parting the heavy drapes, he looked out to the courtyard. Lately there had been heavy windstorms, and a layer of sand muted the day’s colors. He would leave a note for Yasmin about the mess in the guest room. He never directly addressed the servants, especially not the women, but he appreciated their precise movements as they dusted the intricate teak screens and jade statues Rosalie brought back from trips to China. She had started with tiny Buddhas and forest-colored combs, then small jade horses. Now life-sized emperors in rippling stone robes littered the women’s sitting room, their mustaches delicate, belying their obscene size. Since Islam forbade representational art, it was difficult to smuggle them into the country, but she told Faisal her secret: She had worked out a system with Miteb Biltagi and she had her statues shipped to Biltagi Brothers’ Grocery in huge vegetable crates. Customs never explored beyond the “Eggplant” stickers.

While she had explained, he’d winced at every flat, foreign vowel that made it so painfully obvious she had not grown up learning Arabic in a Saudi school. For all her years on the State Oil compound, she might as well have been in Texas, so far removed from Saudi culture was the expat experience. Yet, there was a time when he had loved her voice and the way it tumbled over the words too fast. It reminded him of an oud played underwater, the notes full of feeling but garbled. When she read to him as a boy, it had been beautiful, her head moving up and down for emphasis, her red hair like God’s burnishing. As a child, he remembered thinking the hair must have been how his father found her, glowing amidst a sea of dark heads. Umma, the lighthouse. Now he felt that her red hair was just another indicator of her extravagant taste. He could hardly blame his father for taking a second wife whose Arabic was flawless, whose hair fell dark as the night sky over the Rub’ al-Khali.

The jet of a sprinkler machine-gunned its way across the sliding-glass door leading to the courtyard. He checked his watch. The house was still as dawn. He stood from the sofa, glided along the tile floor and through the Moroccan archway separating the living room from the foyer. The house had begun to frighten him. Its opulence felt contagious. If only he’d been born poor and pious in the mountains of Lebanon or the wadis of Jordan, life would be far less complicated. There, he would only have prayer, and America’s presence would have been less strongly felt. In Switzerland, when he’d told the Turkish cabbie where he was from, the man had scoffed and said “America, Arabia, same-same. Same-same,” shaking his hand like he was throwing something away.