Where Pigeons Don't Fly (10 page)

And then, what no one could have predicted: Suleiman's own brother, the imam, turning up out of the blue fifteen years later to take his wife into his bed, the same brother who had threatened that he would empty three shotgun cartridges into Suleiman's head when he found out he was marrying a foreigner. That's what Saleh had written in his letter: he would take his bird gun and send his brother's head flying because he had brought bad luck and scandal upon them. And here he was, after all that, marrying a destitute foreigner of whose background and breeding he knew nothing at all.

It had been more than just a threat. Taking a party of men from Buraida to Riyadh, Saleh had met the head of the press distribution company at their headquarters in Malaz and demanded that he lean on his brother, bewitched by a piece of Jordanian immigrant trash of dubious background, and give him a choice between divorcing his wife or getting fired. In this way, they imagined, they had left Suleiman with no way out, but without realising it they had in fact created a huge
opportunity for a young driver who was just one of a vast contingent of Sudanese and Egyptian drivers.

The head of the company asked to meet Suleiman and struck up an acquaintance with him, because when Suleiman was calm he was reasoned, persuasive and well-spoken, a manner he had learnt first studying with the sheikhs and then from his time in prison. Suleiman spoke of the hard times and crises he had been through and told him that the very Jordanian they were so set against had led him to rediscover himself and convinced him to go back to the classroom to take night classes and literature lessons at secondary school and pursue business studies at King Abdul Aziz University.

After that Suleiman abandoned his little delivery van and worked first as an accountant and then as head of the accounting department, before finally being placed in charge of the company's book distribution operation.

Suleiman was supported not only by Abu Essam, but also by Soha, his loving wife, who relieved him of the burden of the children, packing his suitcase when he was due to take his examinations in Jeddah and removing herself and the little ones to her family's apartment in Khazan Street by Jawhara Mosque. There, Fahd could get some relief from long periods he spent indoors. He messed around with a ball in the building's wide entryway with Rami and Mohammed the Egyptians and enjoyed playing with his grandfather, Abu Essam, dressed in his short-sleeved
jellabiya
and open-work skullcap, who would lift Fahd on to his shoulders, the boy pulling on his hair as they made their way to Nisma, the supermarket at the bottom of the building. Held aloft he would look down at people and feel proud whenever he saw Rami or Mohammed. They looked so small as they shouted and hopped around him.

Occasionally Soha would consent to her parents' request to take Fahd out and he would leap on to the back seat of the Caprice to fiddle with the plastic dog on the car's rear shelf. When they reached the shops in Sulaimaniya selling Palestinian and Jordanian delicacies, Abu Essam would pick him out a Jordanian olive, fresh, green and pickled, and a piece of salty white cheese and make young Fahd try everything to decide whether it was good or not, fighting back loud laughter along with his wife and the salesman when they saw the boy wince at the sour and salty flavours.

Soha was stunned by their effrontery, and the effrontery of Ibrahim, who not only had taken their side in such a matter but had accepted the idea despite the still-present trauma of her husband's unexpected death. Though Fahd was pleased at his mother's rejection, he knew how unpleasant his Uncle Saleh could be. He still remembered the first days of mourning when his uncle would visit them constantly, stroking his head and hugging Fahd, speaking humbly and warmly with Abu Essam and shamming respect, refusing to take his coffee before the old Jordanian. He would even open a jar of dates and press Abu Essam to take one, talking about free trade in Saudi Arabia, the entry of foreign companies into the country as a positive influence on the private sector, and inquire about opportunities for trade and new projects in Jordan. Had he been laying a new trap? Was he wanting to erase his old image, his extremism and his enmity with his brother, just to get closer to Abu Essam and leave the way open to asking for Soha's hand in marriage?

 

–12 –

T
WO MONTHS AFTER THE
death of his brother, Saleh dusted himself down and travelled to Amman. He met Abu Essam and showered him with insincere smiles and gifts and sacks of preserved dates, packets of
klija
from Qaseem and date cakes which filled the back of his Toyota Land Cruiser; all that effort and ambition in order to claim Fahd's mother, on the grounds that he alone had a duty to protect his brother's household and two teenage children. His words were convincing, caring and compelling enough to wear away at Abu Essam's heart and mind, or perhaps it was the money that weakened his resolve.

Saleh was known to the congregation at his small mosque in the East Riyadh neighbourhood of Quds as Abu Ayoub, after the Prophet's most militant companion. He was fat but light on his feet with a beautifully combed beard and a
thaub
that was always spotlessly clean, while his
shimagh
sent out the scent of incense and agarwood oil wherever he went; you only had to embrace him for the smell to linger on you for days.

When he entered the mosque he would bring a censer with him and hand it to the man at end of the row of worshippers, or humbly carry it past them himself, though at the same time he was skilled at sniffing out any new congregant, greeting them attentively and tenderly and welcoming them to the mosque. Sometimes, when the prayers were done he would
turn his plump frame towards the line of worshippers behind him and peer at them, muttering invocations and fingering his prayer beads as he searched for a new victim. As soon as he spotted a newcomer he would send him his charming smile or a nod of the head in greeting, leaving the worshipper doubting himself and wondering, ‘Does he know me, or is it just that I look regal and majestic?' at which instant he was snared.

The worshippers came to his little mosque from most of the neighbouring districts of East Riyadh, from Riyan, Roda and Khaleej, and the building's parking spots and the surrounding streets were filled with their cars. They claimed he had a wonderful voice, that his recitation brought on humility and tears, and in Ramadan they came like raindrops because he could wrap up the night prayers in fifteen minutes: anyone praying behind him who didn't know him would lose track at the end of the Qur'an recitation as he ran on in a single breath into the exaltation of the
rakaa
: …
forGodistheonewhoseesandhearsallthingsGodisGreat!

He attacked the prayers like a startled crow hurriedly pecking at the earth before flapping back into the sky.

Many of those who called him Abu Ayoub had no idea that his eldest son was called Yasser and not one knew the secret of his extensive contacts and influence, nor how he had convinced the country's leading sheikhs and
muftis
to come and pray behind him, nor how he was able to announce that one of them would be giving an address at his humble mosque. This won him considerable renown; men such as these were the unsullied of the earth, their honesty and purity doubted by no one. So not one of the congregation could find it in themselves to take Abu Ayoub to task if he missed the odd prayer or made use of the mosque for his agarwood oil and incense business.

He put a door in the room that led to the mosque's courtyard and after prayers he would open it to welcome his guests. Brushing the back of a worshipper's hand and suffusing his
ghatra
with the fragrance from the sweet white smoke, he would make him a gift of one of the minute vials that held less than three grams of oil, while the Bangladeshi mosque guard served coffee and preserved dates.

Abu Ayoub and the Bangladeshi guard had perfected the art of stalking worshippers and running them to ground. After the free gifts Abu Ayoub would leave it until another day to show his wares to the victim, who would be forced to buy more oil or quarter of a kilo or more of fragrant agarwood sticks, either because he liked them or out of a sense of embarrassment and good manners. Guests were impressed by the fact that Abu Ayoub had taught the Bangladeshi to wear a pressed white
thaub
and new red
ghatra
and to comb his sparse beard exactly like a Saudi; he even spoke their dialect. ‘Greetings, by God! Wonderful to see you. A cup of coffee in God's name. Taste these dates, God grant you Paradise.'

Abu Ayoub, who invited the great sheikhs to his mosque, had so spun and extended his web of contacts within the Call and Guidance Centre that he had secured a fully subsidised annual trip to India and Eastern Europe. His ostensible purpose for travel was to call non-Muslims to Islam, but it was there that he obtained large quantities of agarwood oil jars and boxes full of huge, high quality incense sticks to sell in the mosque. His motto: ‘Go on pilgrimage and sell prayer beads while you're at it.'

He would be gone a whole month and sometimes longer if there was a wife to marry. ‘Marry women of your choice, two or three or four.' He would mutter in front of others
(and argue to himself) that he married women from East Asia, Eastern Europe and the impoverished villages of India for two reasons: to safeguard himself against the more heinous sins such as adultery and to educate the unenlightened bride in matters of the Faith—how to wash before prayer, pray and fast and the other tenets of Islam—so that she might teach other women, not to mention the man who would marry her next. His evangelising mission complete, he would return to his mosque in Quds having divorced the Indian, the Ukrainian or the Filipino.

He was careful to marry young girls because they were quicker to learn than older women, but he never claimed, as others might, that they were more passionate or that they restored his lost youth. He would instruct them how to lie back and open their thighs and repeat with him the prayer of copulation. ‘In the name of God. God keep us from Satan and keep Satan from what you have provided to us,' he would say, as he knelt to enter them.

He would teach them the correct way to wash themselves, taking great pleasure in coaching them on how to clean the vagina then, unable to control himself, would leap on them again. Such moments presented him with no great difficulties. ‘There is no shame in the Faith,' he would say, pointing out the sentence in the translated text then leading them to the bathroom to become conversant with the method of achieving true cleanliness in Islam, his hands playing ceaselessly with their chests' ripe fruits like an Indian gardener assessing the yield on the mango tree.

Abu Ayoub had no qualms about taking two new wives at once. All the better to teach them simultaneously and thus transmit his knowledge to the greatest possible number of
future husbands, and so that the men in these foreign countries might understand that Islam permits multiple wives, he would point out the relevant Qur'anic verse in translation. How skilfully he convinced these new converts to Islam! He would distribute blessings on these benighted individuals then return to his house in Quds to boast to his first wife, Umm Yasser, that more than 120 of these foreigners, men and women, had joined Islam at his urging.

And so it was that in a few short years he became the owner of seventeen agarwood outlets in Riyadh. His Abu Ayoub Agarwood and Eastern Perfumes chain enjoyed an irresistible appeal and credibility amongst the public. The Bangladeshi guard no longer manned the shop on his own, but was assisted by a large number of Indonesian employees with long, light beards whose individual hairs hung down separately, and gleaming white
ghatras
on their heads, the sort whose toothsticks only left their mouths when they slept.

 

–13 –

O
CCASIONALLY, SOMEONE WOULD ASK
why Abu Ayoub was so keen on marrying his brother's widow. Was it out of spite? Was it because all his deceased brother had salvaged from the wreck of this world was a beautiful wife whom he loved, leaving Abu Ayoub dreaming of adding her to his possessions, like the hundredth camel in the story of the two brothers, one of whom owned ninety-nine of the beasts but could not rest until he had taken possession of his brother's only camel to make a round one hundred?

One summer evening Fahd and Lulua clapped for joy and shouted when Abu Essam and his wife knocked on their door, bringing with them gifts from Amman and spreading laughter through the sad house. But the laughter died away when the two young ones discovered that their grandparents had come to tell them that one day they would grow up, marry and have homes and children of their own to distract them from their mother, that this was life, and it was their mother's right to look to her own interests. So it was that Abu Ayoub slipped in, a wolf dressed as a pussycat, who later tried to win Fahd over by buying him a new car.

Just a month later and Abu Ayoub was ready to usher angels into the home that his brother—God rest his soul—had made a dwelling place for devils and infidel demons. By degrees, life started to change: the still-grieving Soha began setting the dial
on her kitchen radio to play the Holy Qur'an all day long, and then the cassettes of Fairuz, Umm Kulthoum, Khaled Abdel Rahman and Ahlam vanished to be replaced by taped sermons. In one a sheikh screeched away as he recounted the terrors of the Day of Resurrection and the sins committed by the heedless, such as giving an ear to slander, gossip and song, coveting that which God had declared forbidden, adultery, sodomy, prostitution and filth. He spoke of the righteous path: hotter than burning coals, more slender than a hair, sharper than a knife-edge, more elusive than a fox, with Paradise at one end and hellfire beneath it and no way forward but along its back. Another sheikh spoke of death, when they place you in the grave and the two angels, Munkir and Nakeer, come to judge you; then he wept and wept and with him wept Soha and little Lulua.