Where Pigeons Don't Fly (32 page)

He chuckled and whispered in her ear, ‘Even in summer: no rain dance needed. Just passing next to it makes it pour.'

On her way home she talked to Fahd on the phone as she sat alongside her brother, telling him he hadn't given her the hand cream or her gloves. Then she laughed. He only realised she was sitting next to Ayman when the steady blip of the Camry's speed monitor sounded. Hastily, he said goodbye—‘When you get home, call!'—and hung up.

She was certifiable, he told himself; how could she speak so brazenly next to her brother? Her innuendo was transparent: hand cream was the lubricant and gloves were the rubber sheath.

‘Gloves. What symbolism! Completely crazy!'

Her recklessness called for revenge, he told himself. The next time they met he found a choice spot behind the front door to the flat where he hid and held his breath, with some idea of singing her hair with his lighter. She called out his name repeatedly and he didn't answer, so she punched his number into her phone and his mobile rang suddenly in his pocket. He
emerged from his hiding place laughing, ‘Damn you. It was too late for me to put it on silent!'

She embraced him, her head encircled in her
hijab
, and passionately received his mouth.

In the lift he moved closer to hug her and lifting her veil she snatched a final kiss. ‘I'm really worried for you, Fahoudi.'

She feared loss, loathed it: the loss of the father who had hated her and never stopped beating her, the loss of Abdel Kareem who left without telling her he would never return, the loss of Khaled who had slept with her for three years until his wife had discovered what was going on from his mobile phone and he had decided to abandon Tarfah and never see her again.

Tarfah took Fahd's hand and laid it on her cheek. ‘Promise me you won't leave me, Fahd?' she whispered fearfully.

He nodded gratefully, lost in the ripe tenderness of her cheek.

 

–46 –

O
NE NIGHT ABDEL KAREEM
didn't return from Sudairi Mosque.

He called Tarfah to say that he wouldn't be back until tomorrow: he was going on a trip for two days. But he didn't return after two days or three days or a week or a month.

After a fortnight of waiting and weeping in the flat she went back to her family. Ahmed avoided looking at her. At first he accused her of tiring Abdel Kareem out with her demands. Withdrawn from the world, pious and god-fearing, Ahmed believed that life held nothing worth fighting, boasting and struggling for. His life was the life of the soul and required no hardship or suffering. Yet after two weeks of searching and questioning friends and family and the worshippers at the Fantoukh, Sudeiri and Sanei Khairi mosques, Ahmed discovered that Abdel Kareem had made a clandestine trip to Syria with two acquaintances from Eid Mosque in Suwaidi.

His mother wept for a long time, as did Tarfah, who had assumed that God was compensating her for the suffering of her bitter childhood and two years of a failed and bloody marriage, with a man worthy of sacrifice and love.

But he had betrayed her and she hadn't fully realised it at the time. In the second month of their marriage, Abdel Kareem had received a young man at the flat in the most mysterious
manner. His phone rang once and he jumped to his feet and went down to see him in his
jellabiya
.

Rushing over to the window of the men's
majlis
that looked over the street, she switched off the lights and spied on them from behind the drawn curtains. On the other side of the road she saw a tall young man with long hair reaching nearly to his shoulders, talking away as he sat behind his open car door with the engine running, and at the same time she saw the back of Abdel Kareem, absorbed in their discussion.

At first, she asked her husband who came and went like that without being invited up to the
majlis
, to which he replied that he was one of the Brothers from the nearby Eid Mosque. When she began asking closer questions about his name and his job and how Abdel Kareem had first met him, he said, ‘He's a childhood friend, from primary school,' and she understood that he didn't like her asking about things that didn't concern her.

He locked his phone with a password and grew jumpy whenever the message tone sounded. He persuaded her that this was men's business and that she had no right interfering and prying. ‘Do you lack anything?' he asked her and when, unsmiling, she said she didn't, he added, ‘Do I deny you anything?'

But she would smile again and change the subject. ‘Can I make you coffee?'

When he stripped and went to the bathroom to take a long shower before the first call to Friday prayers, Tarfah tried to open his phone, entering all the numbers she thought might work and give her access to his inbox, but she never succeeded.

She was amazed by how much time he spent on the Internet in that second month. One evening his friend called him from
the street and he hurried out, leaving the computer on. She ran over and jogged the mouse before it could close and leave her needing a password to open it. Opening a few files on the desktop she found maps of Syria, Northern Syria and the region around Raqqa and Deir Azzur.

‘Is he thinking of marrying a Syrian?' Tarfah thought to herself, before coming across a map of Iraq. She closed the file quickly. She noticed another labelled
Expelling the Infidel from the Arabian Gulf
and then some documents:
Training Regime for the Mujahid
from the
al-Battar
online magazine, various texts from the Maqrizi Centre's website and
fatwas
from The Voice of Jihad. She opened the favourites file in his web browser and quickly scanned the list of sites that Abdel Kareem had saved there: The Maqrizi Centre for Historical Studies, The Islamic Media Resource, The Minbar of Tawheed and Jihad, al-Battar, The Voice of Jihad.

Suddenly she heard his key slip into the keyhole in the flat's front door and she came back out.

‘Why are you so late?' she asked with loving concern. ‘I hope nothing went wrong.'

Put on the back foot he said something about the mosque needing help with its library and replacing the air-conditioning units. Would he like coffee or tea, she then wanted to know, or would he wait for supper?

Going into his little office he noticed that the screen hadn't shut down. He had been gone for more than twenty minutes and it was set to switch off if left inactive for two minutes. It must have been her; she had spied on his things, Abdel Kareem whispered to himself.

She came in and set a cup of tea on the table. He looked at her. ‘Tarfah, where were you a moment ago?'

‘In the kitchen,' she answered, pretending not to understand.

‘When I was downstairs with my friend, I mean.'

‘I was here,' she said, and pointed. ‘In the living room.'

He rose from his chair, went out into the living room and sat on the sofa, where he picked up a little book. To make a mistake was no sin, he told her, but lying was. ‘Don't lie, Tarfah!'

‘You keep everything from me!' she shouted, losing her temper. ‘I don't go near your computer or your phone. People I don't know come and visit you and when I ask you who they are you dodge the question. It's my right to know. I'm your wife.'

‘My life isn't your personal property, woman, understand? Don't stick your nose into things that don't concern you.'

He slammed the door on his way out and two hours later returned carrying bread, milk and a box of sugared dates. She rose to greet him and kissed his head. Then they went to bed.

When Abdel Kareem vanished, Tarfah stayed in the flat, waiting. Every time she heard a car stopping in the street outside and a door slamming she would peer around the curtains. When she heard the footsteps of the man who lived in the flat next door her heart would stop beating for whole seconds, waiting—longing—for Abdel Kareem's key to slip into the lock and turn twice, for him to push the door slowly open and come in, weary with travel, or from some long and arduous retreat. She would kiss his head, remove his rumpled
shimagh
then undo the buttons of his
thaub
and take it off so he might go into the bathroom and stand for long minutes beneath the pulsing spray while she dashed to the kitchen to make him
supper and prepare two pots of tea—one with red tea, the other ginger—and pour some honey into a little dish with a few olives. Overjoyed, infatuated, she would wait for him in the living room and consider whether she should phone her family to breathlessly inform them, ‘Abdel Kareem's back!' or call his mother first.

But no one opened the door.

No car came quietly to a halt outside the building.

No voice called from a strange number to tell her he was all right.

Nothing at all, save the longing that gnawed at her limbs and filled her nights with loneliness.

 

–47 –

I
T WASN'T JUST THAT
Tarfah sensed the cooling of her relationship with Fahd; lying on her bed at night and examining her life her intuition would bother her. She began to lose hope of ever seeing Fahd without having to beg him. What was at first a mere impression had become undeniable fact, had become a sort of pleading on her part. There was some mystery she didn't understand. Why was he avoiding her? When she spoke with him he seemed almost tearful with longing for her.

There was a mystery in their relationship that Fahd barely understood himself. He wanted to meet her, to hold her, to sear her mouth with kisses, but he kept going to the bathroom to wash his mouth out, gargling and spitting, sniffing the air almost, as if his very breath smelt foul. It got so bad that when she dragged him down there he almost vomited. How many times had he lingered in the bathroom dousing himself with blisteringly hot water, watching the steam rise up as he scrubbed away?

That evening his directness surprised her, and maybe himself as well: ‘Will I see you today?'

She didn't moan lasciviously, but, coquettish and sly, replied that he should give her an hour to see how she felt. Then, because she had already made up her mind to agree, she became impatient.

On his way over to see her he was eager and full of longing. He was listening to MBC FM and the voice of Abdel Majeed Abdullah streamed sweetly out. As soon as he got close he asked her where he should pick her up.

‘Entrance Three,' she said.

‘Facing the schools, right?' he asked to make sure. ‘The one opposite Nada Alley?'

He called again to tell her to come outside and she took him by surprise, swaying slowly over. Arrogantly, he thought.

She got in beside him, in one hand the olive green handbag embroidered with knights holding lances and arrows and in the other a plastic bag whose shop logo he couldn't make out. She said that she had been going to call him but he had surprised her by stopping the car outside the entrance. There were no shoppers about, just a pair of security guards lighting their cigarettes.

‘It's evening prayers,' she said to him. ‘That's why no one's outside the entrance.'

They drove along together.

He asked if they should take a hotel room or a flat, or hide out in one of the unlit building lots since it was nearly nine and there wasn't enough time to settle down for a long session.

‘Don't mind,' she said. ‘You decide.'

They drove north, searching for a building plot. They passed the first unlit dirt road. She uncovered her face and he kissed her quickly. They decided to look for a flat. She suggested they head over to Fahd Crown Hotel on the airport highway and he explained that there wasn't enough time to enjoy a place like that. They ran through the names of furnished flats they had visited and settled on a new flat in Nuzha that they hadn't used before.

He parked the car, consumed by the worry that Tarfah would search through his things. He always did his best to stop outside the entrance to the flats so he could see her body move if she bent down to have a rummage.

The reception area was spacious and luxurious but no one was there. The door to a side room was ajar and he knocked gently, calling out, ‘Friend?'

An Indian emerged. From his broken Arabic it was clear he was a recent arrival to the country. He rapped out the usual question—‘Family section?'—then picked up the key and Fahd followed him to the second floor. The corridor was clad in expensive marble and the doors on either side gave the impression that the flats within were clean and respectable.

His first impression on opening the door to flat 18 was that it looked like a room in a highway motel. He looked at the bedspread, worn through from repeated washing. In view of the time, which was flying through their fingers, he decided to take the flat and handed over a photocopy of their forged marriage contract and one hundred riyals to an Egyptian employee who had arrived that moment. Tarfah was sitting in the car. He signalled to her that she should come over but she didn't move. He phoned her and asked her to get out.

Taking the key he walked ahead of her to the lift and when the door slid shut she threw herself into his arms. He told her the place was run down and filthy but searching for another and wasting time wasn't an option. Her heart fluttered as did her delectable breasts, a photo of which she had sent to him on the phone that morning, showing two currants, pricked up behind the pink stretch top that pressed against them.

This is me just woken up …
she had written.
Fresh as a daisy!

He had spent half an hour enlarging the area over her breasts in an attempt to read the printed English slogan:
Let's dance the Hula-hula!

He opened the door and shut it quickly behind them. The flat was pitch black. He tried turning on the lights but without success, flicking the switch by the door, in the bathroom and the bedroom, even the button for the air-conditioner. It was no use.