Where Pigeons Don't Fly (27 page)

‘Goodness!' the balding man said sarcastically. ‘All this in your pockets?'

‘Yes, sheikh.'

‘The brother is a Saudi?' he asked, scrutinising Fahd's features.

‘Of course! The ID card's in front of you!'

‘I know that. I can see it. But you don't look right.'

‘Maybe your mother isn't Saudi,' said the strongman with the massive face.

‘That's right, she's from a Jordanian family.'

‘So you're a mongrel?'

‘Half Saudi, then!' he said, chuckling happily.

Staring at the papers and receipts the balding man said, almost in a murmur, ‘Half a man, in other words …'

Fahd sat there, trapped by the three men. One of them studied his ID card. ‘Which branch of the al-Safeelawis is this?'

‘The Qaseem lot.'

The balding man peered at him mistrustfully. ‘Where in Qaseem?'

‘My family is from Muraidasiya.'

‘Do you know Abu Ayoub?'

‘Sheikh Saleh …' the hawk-eyed man said by way of explanation.

‘He's my uncle!' He almost added, ‘And my mother's husband!' but a lump rose in his throat and he fell silent.

‘Blessings!' said the hawk-eyed man, then added offensively. ‘On him, not you.'

‘As for you, who cares?' said the strongman.

Pips of sweat had started to appear on the bald patch of the man with the uncovered head. He drew a pen from his pocket and sliding the point beneath the string linking the widely
spaced prayer beads he lifted them towards his nose and gave a tentative sniff, his eyes blinking rapidly and anxiously, then slowly moved them across to the hawk-eyed man and lifted them to his nose. The hawk-eyed man sniffed twice, moved his head back, then leant forward and sniffed again, his eyebrows raised. The balding man slowly transferred them to the nose of the strongman.

‘What's this?' he asked Fahd.

‘Prayer beads.'

‘Why are they all coloured like an African necklace?'

After a period of silence Fahd replied, ‘I painted them. I'm an artist.'

The balding man slowly raised his eyes towards him. ‘You draw human beings?'

‘Everything.' Even nudes, he almost added.

An Indonesian entered carrying pots of tea and coffee, placed them on a table in the corner of the room, then poured coffee for the three men. Having put the prayer beads into a small envelope, the balding man rose to his feet and tipped a few drops of coffee on to his thumb, unwilling to wet it with his tongue after it had touched the beads lest the black magic pass to his mouth, then into his body, and he die. He wiped the moistened thumb on to the glued flap on the envelope and pressed it shut.

The strongman whispered a few words in his ear and he nodded in agreement. The hawk-eyed man, who had heard nothing of this but clearly understood the secret message, nodded in turn.

Fahd stayed staring towards them anxiously. He remembered a newspaper report he had read a year back about a witch who had been seen by the men from the Committee,
fleeing her flat on a broomstick after they had raided it and discovered prayer-beads, amulets and charms.

Witch arrested in Medina; Den of black magic raided

Ukaz,
29 May 2006

Yesterday morning (Monday) members of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice received a surprise when they raided a den of black magic in the neighbourhood of Ard Mahbat, near Seeh in Medina, and found more than twenty women in the company of an African witch, naked as the day she was born.

The real surprise was not her refusal of the blanket provided to cover her nakedness, but that she flew from the room like a bird and disappeared from the flat to the amazement of more than twenty members of the Committee who were present.

A terrifying landing

The chase was on.

Committee members set out in pursuit, hunting for the witch through the upper and lower levels of the four-storey building, the sorceress having vanished from the second floor. During their search they came across a citizen in his pyjamas with his children behind him, appealing for help from his fellow residents. The citizen informed them that a naked African woman had dropped from the bedroom ceiling into the middle of his sleeping children, terrifying them and setting them screaming and wailing.

‘When I went to see what was going on in the bedroom,' he added, ‘my children told me about the bizarre scene they had just witnessed and when I realised it was a witch we all fled from the flat.'

Witch hunters

Ascending to the fourth floor the Committee members located the completely naked witch in a citizen's flat and loudly recited the call to prayer and the
Ayat al-Kursi
to paralyse her. One Committee member then threw a blanket over her until her clothes could be recovered, and once dressed she was arrested.

A source at the Committee stated that the operation to arrest the witch and her accomplices was led by Sheikh Faheed al-Oufi, head of the Committee's centre in Harra Gharbiya. Recovered from the witch's room were prayer beads, amulets, written charms, magical knots, instructional videos for the practice of black magic and a belt of the sort worn around the skirts of female primary school pupils, indicating that a schoolgirl had been bewitched. A Qur'an was also found beneath the witch's chair.

Part 5

An old black bag

 

–37 –

I
N THE MONTHS THAT
followed his father's passing Fahd discovered drawing in pastels and for some time afterwards he stayed devoted to the technique. At that time he didn't use an easel.

Closing the door to his room he opened the box of colour-graded sticks and with lunatic preoccupation pushed the pastels in every direction over the paper; at times he even felt that the pastels were moving of their own accord, guiding his hand about. Here a long road, shadowed with a storm cloud, there a solitary bush, an old upturned cart and a murder of crows wheeling at the top of the sheet.

He laid the pastel aside and used his thumb to smudge the road's far end into the darkened sky. The horizon merged. His fingers became tinted with colour until they almost turned into pastels themselves and he was unable to judge which was his forefinger and which the chalk. He was eager and felt that he was panting as he pulled and pushed the pastels.

Just before dawn he grew drowsy and his heavy head slumped over the page. He came to mid-morning, his drool spread out over the sheet in the shape of a rectangular trunk, a
jinn
's smoky body sprouting from the upturned cart.

After giving up pencils, then pastels, Fahd became addicted to oil paints, brushes, easels and palettes, but here he was,
sketching away with his pencil as he sat at the Tea and Coffee Pot Café, across from Carrefour in Granada Mall.

He had chosen a seat next to the window, its opaque plastic film shielding the customer inside from the mall's bustle. By the chair he had selected this film had split, a small gap through which he could spy on the shoppers.

He ordered Turkish coffee and water, took from his pocket a piece of paper and a 0.5 millimetre gauge pencil and surveyed the scene through the window. Women in
abayas
that failed to hide their jeans, some pushing trolleys that were empty or contained a sprawling, playful child clutching the string of a helium balloon, others trailing an Indonesian maid pushing the trolley after them, while yet more clustered around the ATM machine by Samba Bank, ringed with mischievous children.

The Filipino waiter set down a small brass pot on the table and as Fahd gripped the handle to pour the thick coffee the waiter peered at the page and said that it was beautiful. Fahd thanked him, and sipping at his green porcelain cup he stared at what his hand had made.

A small car stopped at revolving door number four and Tarfah got out, walking calmly and confidently and gazing at the drivers sitting on the small square plots of grass near the security office. She walked inside.

To her left were the shops whose layout she knew well, while on her right lay Carrefour's open doors and the khaki-clad security guards chatting to each other through the crowds of shoppers. She passed the women gathered around a cash machine and glanced over at the café, walking straight ahead until she reached the spacious court next to the escalators, then doubling back to let her see more easily into the café's
curtained-off men's section and look for Fahd. She didn't want to call him; she wanted to catch him unawares.

Walking past, Tarfah saw Fahd busily smudging the pencil with his thumb and swung right, approaching the exposed patch of glass and rapping suddenly at the window with her ring. As Fahd turned she withdrew a little and all he saw were her eyes, smiling through her
niqab
.

He hurriedly drained the water from his bottle and walked outside, accompanied by his mobile's message tone. He opened the message:

Beware of the following phrases if uttered by someone older than you:

1.
 
Let's go bird hunting.

2.
 
Would you like me to teach you how to wrestle?

3.
 
What do you say we go up to the roof and look at the pigeons?

4.
 
Would you like me to teach you how to drive?

5.
 
Let's go and find some jerboa in the desert.

6.
 
Today, the bill's on me.

7.
 
Let's open the wardrobe.

8.
 
Let me show you my stamp album.

9.
 
Let's stay up and watch a video.

10.
 
Let's see how a gecko suckles her young.

Compliments of the Committee for Fighting Sodomy, Qaseem

Fahd closed his eyes and sighed, clinging to Tarfah's hand for several minutes and then releasing it as they traversed the mall's wide central passage and passed Carrefour. Noticing that he seemed a little put out she asked him what the matter was, but he told her it was nothing. Where were they going,
he wanted to know. Her molten eyes gave her answer, but she added that if he was preoccupied or not in the mood they could grab a coffee and just go for a drive. They stopped at the Starbucks inside the main entrance.

Saeed was just fooling around. Whenever he got a message making fun of Qaseem and its inhabitants he would pass it on to Fahd, who would respond with sarcastic remarks about southerners.

As they bought their cappuccinos, Lulua's mournful voice reproached him: she and her mother had been trying to get hold of him for two days, and their mother was exhausted, worn out trying to track him down. He tried making the excuse that he had been painting for the next spring exhibition and promised that he would visit them both that night.

As soon as they drove off Tarfah's phone rang and she began hunting fretfully for it in her bag. Fahd was miles away, staring up at the advertising hoarding at the traffic lights while she giggled to her friend Wafaa, but he paid attention when she glanced over at him and said, ‘There's a friend of mine who's been doing “short time” with this guy but so far, no action. Looks like she'll end up paying him for it!'

She ended the call and her laughter trailed away as she put the phone back in her bag. ‘She's completely mad.'

‘Who?'

‘Wafaa, my friend. She worked on the programme for eradicating illiteracy for nine years. She studied psychology. And now they've cancelled it; they've cancelled the contracts of more than eight thousand female teachers … Imagine! Just like that!'

‘God! And what did she do?'

‘Nothing. They thought of staging a demo at the Department of Education in central Riyadh.'

‘If they tried that they'd end up wishing they were at home unemployed.'

‘Now she tells me that her friend in the programme suggested they form a troupe of wedding dancers, so Wafaa told her there was a much more enjoyable, easy and quick way to make cash.'

‘And what was that?'

‘Work as a Friday girl. “Short time” for a thousand riyals in furnished flats and in hotels for two and half. Amazing!'

‘Are you serious?'

‘No, I'm joking, you maniac. Did you believe me?'

‘Why wouldn't I? Anything's possible in this country.' Fahd lowered his voice as though speaking to himself. ‘The women are turning into Friday girls and the boys are off to Iraq!' Then: ‘Friday girl! I like that!'

Tarfah laughed. ‘That's what they call them. We once asked Wafaa about her man and she said he was going to Bahrain. We really thought he was travelling, but she laughed at us and said it was code for a guy who drinks too much!'

He didn't spend long with Tarfah that evening. They roamed the darkened neighbourhoods of North Riyadh for a while and he gave her a half-hearted peck. She felt hurt and asked him to go to his mother's; they would meet tomorrow if they could.

 

–38 –

‘S
AY SOMETHING!' SAID LULUA
.

‘Who to?' Fahd answered, setting down the bag containing bread and three cartons of yoghurt that he had bought from the supermarket and the bakery next door.

‘Anyone on planet Earth would be nice.'

‘You mean the
jinn
?' he said, smiling.

‘I know you don't believe in those things but I swear to God I heard it. Its voice was completely different …' Then: ‘I swear it wasn't Mum speaking!'

He wasn't convinced, but when he took his seat beside his mother, prostrate on her bed in the dining room, he handed her a glass of
zamzam
water. She took three sips, then sprinkled a few drops into his right hand and he stroked her brow and head as he muttered a Qur'anic verse.