Where Pigeons Don't Fly (18 page)

‘You're in the wrong because you got his friend involved,' said Fahd, boldly. ‘If you can't persuade him yourself then that's the end of the matter.'

‘Well of course, that's not all that happened.'

‘Sorry for interrupting … This is Exit 25. Shall I get off here?'

She was silent and he turned towards her to find her devouring him with her gaze.

‘So, you're going to leave me so soon, are you, Fahoudi?'

She glanced at her imitation Charroil watch. ‘Tell you what, let's make a plan about where we're going first, then we'll drive. I want to see it and try it out, too!'

As she spoke she put her hand in his lap and he shrank back like a cat.

He took the exit and turned left at the lights. The area was all brightly lit hotels and cars. Children clustered at shop entrances and the women sold toys, nuts and fizzy drinks stored in blue and orange ice-filled refrigerators.

Thuraya resumed her story. ‘Later, I called my husband's mobile when he was at work and his dirty little pal picked up. When I heard his voice I told him, “You'll come to a bad end, mark my words,” and I hung up on him. When my husband got home he beat me again. I ask you, does anyone beat his wife for a friend?'

This time round, Fahd tried to avoid angering her. ‘I don't know, I've never been married.'

She punched him in the chest and in her beautifully flawed accent said, ‘My little idiot. So silly and soft. You're just like the smooth men from the Hejaz: they love women and appreciate them.'

Fahd was heading south, and before the side road gave out he turned right and saw a rose-red neon sign proclaiming
Shamaat al-Amakin
. He pointed.

‘There's the spot, see?'

She said he had to get out of the hotel district so they could drive around one of the new neighbourhoods until her friend turned up, because she didn't know anyone else at the wedding.

 

–24 –

F
AHD NAVIGATED A NARROW
path through the rows of cars, worried that he might hit one. A Honda stopped in front of him. The boot opened, then the doors, and two women got out of the back as a fat youth emerged from the driver's seat and began pulling out white tubs of food. The tubs looked heavy and the youth hunched forward as he walked over to deposit them by the women's entrance to the hotel. He closed the boot and moved off, and Fahd followed him to the ring road.

Fahd was forced to mount the pavement and come back down on to the road. Then he swerved across to the far left-hand side of the street and without stopping at the lights, kept to the left and turned into a newly built neighbourhood. Its buildings were of average height but its streets were fairly broad. In the darkness Thuraya's hand reached out for his lap. Fahd's breathing became uneven and rapid. Excusing herself she turned to look behind her then raised the armrest and leant towards him, snapping open the safety belt and entering the virgin forest.

Unable to drive Fahd stopped at the end of the road facing an old wall made out of breeze blocks. He hesitated. Should he switch off the car's lights in the middle of the street, or would that leave them at risk of a car careering along in the dark? He kept the lights on and maintained a lookout for
any headlights approaching from either side or from the rear. Bolder now, his right hand began caressing the softness of that realm of irresistible pleasure.

His phone rang in his pocket and Thuraya grimaced, saying that she'd told him more than once to switch off his mobile as soon as she got in beside him.

‘Seems you're scared of Mummy!' she added in vexation. ‘A Jordanian, to boot.'

Fahd laughed openly as he patted her thigh. He checked the number and saw it was Saeed.
At a time like this, you bastard?
he said to himself.

‘Don't let it bother you,' he whispered and they continued their tour of the quiet streets.

‘Go back to that street by the wall!' she said with relish, but he found a wide road that was more or less dark and stopped the car by a high marble wall. He doused the lights, keeping the engine running and Thuraya surged forward like an enraged tigress in pursuit of its prey.

She was more skilful this time, calmer. This time he didn't close his eyes but stayed on the lookout. An Indian labourer shot past them on a motorbike then a speeding car whose driver didn't turn their way. Suddenly a car came swerving right up behind them and Fahd gripped her boyish crop and held her still so she couldn't rise. Frightened, he snapped, ‘Don't move.'

Her body stiffened.

‘Don't be scared,' he said soothingly, ‘but don't lift your head up just now.'

Her body stopped moving and became cold as a corpse. The thickly bearded driver crossed to the right-hand side of the road, drove past in his old blue Ford Crown Victoria, then
turned left across their car, pausing for a moment while he pressed the remote control for the automatic gate. He was the owner of the house next to whose high marble wall Fahd and Thuraya were parked.

The car mounted the cement ramp in front of the garage door and went inside. Fahd watched the red glow from the rear lights reflecting off the wall until the garage door closed, then switched on his lights and drove away.

‘You're done?' she asked.

‘No, but you need the right mood and a bit of peace, not anxiety and fear.'

He entered Aisha Street, always crowded at night, then went straight across at the ring road traffic lights, heading back to the cluster of hotels and passing the old, black women stacking up cans of Pepsi and Seven-Up in front of them, their
niqabs
hiding eyes that brimmed with the sadness of long years of toil and hardship. A white Toyota Camry estate stopped in front of him and two young black women got out and stared at them.

‘Good God, looks like the whole street's black!' said Thuraya.

‘Look's like you're a racist,' said Fahd in a bantering tone, but she replied sharply, ‘Get out of here with your “racism” and your silly slogans.'

He laughed, embarrassed by her aggression and whispered that song he had once heard in the house of his grandfather, Abu Essam: ‘… from the red spirit of the revolutionaries …'

‘“We have set you in ranks, some above others …” she said, then, ‘God, Lord of the Worlds said that, not me.'

Thuraya hunted for a cassette. She found an old tape, blew on it to clear off the dust and put it in the machine. Suddenly, Fahd stopped outside the hotel's entrance for women where
a southern Egyptian was posted in a sky blue
jellabiya
, his turbaned head lolling forward over his cane. He was overrun by children trying to get past him to the women's section.

‘I can't get out unless I'm sure my friend has really arrived.'

She pressed the buttons on her mobile and started talking, waving at him with her left hand to lower the volume on the cassette player. Her friend appeared to have asked her a question, because she said, ‘It'll be quarter of an hour before I get to the wedding.'

She was lying. She hadn't told her that she was outside the door at that very moment.

‘Let's take a quick spin,' she said.

‘It's tricky to get out of this area because of the traffic. I don't think there's anything stopping you going in and waiting.'

She sensed he wanted rid of her and in a broken, faltering voice said, ‘You still haven't taken that money out of the bank for me. I told you my sister was coming from Jeddah and I need to go shopping with her.'

Fahd was carrying no more than one hundred riyals in his pocket. His bank balance was in good shape but he found it hard to swallow that a woman his mother's age should be exploiting him. True, she was in need, he told himself, but it was unpleasant to be begged from so brazenly. He took her lined hand and kissed it in something like apology.

‘I'll bring the money next time, before your sister gets here.'

As Thuraya prepared to open the door with a defeated air, he said, ‘Just a minute, I'll set you down right outside the entrance.'

He wanted to atone for disappointing her; he hadn't brought the money and he hadn't found a quiet spot where they could sit together and she could see him properly.

‘I want to see you facing me,' she had said. ‘The whole time we're in the car I only see you from the side and you're concentrating on the road.'

He didn't really understand what she meant by seeing him properly. He thought of inviting her to Saeed's flat but he kept having second thoughts, worried that some disaster might occur and he would put his best friend into harm's way.

He left Thuraya and drove Saeed's car to Maseef. He told himself he had to get a hot mocha and stopped at Coffee Day on King Fahd Road. Most of the seats were taken. He went to the bathroom, washed his face and looked at his eyes in the mirror, rinsed his mouth out repeatedly, then finally took a seat in a far corner, parallel with the road outside and raised his hand when the Filipino waiter looked his way.

He thought of when she said to him: ‘I was a Hejaz girl, coddled by my family, until circumstances dictated I marry that man from Qaseem. Miserly and filthy. My friend, that man never washes or puts on scent. He doesn't seem to know that there even is such a thing as scent. I'm the complete opposite. I was always clean and nice-smelling. To this very day I take care of myself and my clothes, and that's after half a dozen kids. One time I called this sheikh and told him that I couldn't bear living with my husband and that I didn't sleep with him at all. “At all?” he asked. “No, but every couple of months or more and I need a man who's always there and tender.” The sheikh suggested straight out that I ask for a separation. How could I ask for a divorce when I've got no job and six kids to look after? And what did he tell me? That he was worried I would fall into temptation and sin!'

Her voice became dreamy: ‘I'm with you now, Fahd. I want you but I know that you won't marry me, that you're a young
man and I'm a married woman with six children, the oldest only a year younger than you. Remember how I told you at the start that I wasn't one of those girls who spends her nights in hotels on the outskirts of Riyadh or in furnished flats, that I was scared to weaken before you, your good looks and your youth? Well now I'm ready to open my heart to you. I'll open everything.'

They were parked outside a stall selling mango juice and he asked her, ‘OK, and what about Fadwa?'

She became agitated. ‘Please don't speak about her ever. I've become jealous of her. When I first told you about her, I said it was because I was looking for some warmth. It's not as easy for women to meet men as it is to meet women. I got to know her at a wedding in Jeddah. She was leading the band: brown, with a strong yearning voice. I was utterly bewitched when she sang,

O my desire,

My solace,

I love you, how I do,

Why turn away,

Why leave me,

When I love you,

I love you, how I do!
'

Thuraya sung in her throaty voice, and that night, Fahd sang along with her. She laughed. ‘It's like you lived with female wedding singers all your life. Like you listened to their drummers and memorised their songs.'

He told her that it was an old and famous song, and that it had been recorded by Abdel Muhsin al-Mahanna, Ahlam and
Asala. He had a nice voice, she said, then continued, ‘Fadwa sang in that voice of hers looking dazzlingly in my direction, so I smiled at her and she smiled back! My relationship with her began then. Of course, my three sisters were with me and they think I'm very pious and strict, mainly because I've lived most my life in Riyadh with an old man from Qaseem, so it wasn't easy to go up to her and talk or get her mobile number. But her looking at me encouraged me to smile. She was watching the bodies of the dancing women as she sang, then she'd steal a glance at me. I'd smile and she would smile.'

Thuraya sighed.

‘My sisters asked me what I thought of her, and I said her signing was incredible, that her voice was wonderful, strong and expressive, that she chose sad, romantic songs, but I didn't tell them that she had a face like a child, or that her hand slapping the drum was sublime.I wanted to press her to me in a long embrace and smell her breath. Oh Fadwa! My poor Fadwa!'

She turned to him, pressing her lips together.

‘You know, Fahd, I'd love to be with you and her together.'

Her wish took him completely by surprise. She desired Fahd and in the same instant longed to have Fadwa for just one night.

‘I want to see her in front of me, smoking and blowing smoke in my face. I love her voice, her face, her body.'

Fahd put the mocha on the café table. His troubled train of thought, uninterrupted by the al-Arabiya report on Saudi stocks and shares on the television, came to end and he left.

 

–25 –

F
ADWA WAS A YOUNG
woman in her late twenties with the features of a boy. Thuraya was captivated by her eyes and brown skin and loved her firm breasts.

‘Lovely and feminine,' she told Fahd, adding that she had pursued her until Fadwa had finally consented to meet at a café on the Corniche in Jeddah.

‘She ordered a grape-flavoured
shisha
and said, “Shall I order you one?” I apologised saying that I didn't smoke, even though I'd like to, and she took a packet of Marlboro Lights out of her silver handbag and handed me one. I hesitated, but her wink and captivating smile hypnotised me into taking it. She changed her mind and took it off me, putting it in her mouth, swiftly lighting it with her silver lighter and blowing a thin stream of smoke into my face.'

Fadwa's eyes were grave as she handed her the cigarette. Thuraya saw her lipstick on the filter and put it between her lips with pleasure, feeling dizzy as she tasted the butt that had been in Fadwa's mouth. She drew in smoke, filling her chest, and coughed violently, resting her head on the table until Fadwa was almost dead from laughter and her eyes wet with tears. She came over and sat next to Thuraya and pulled her head to her breast.