The match came to an end. Fahd was already worried about being late home while Saeed wanted to watch the cup presentation ceremony. Patting his pockets and pulling out his phone Fahd was startled to find five missed calls from his mother and a couple of text messages. He read one: Your uncle’s come home and he’s asking where you’ve got to. I’m begging you, my son: don’t you be late!
— 17 —
FAHD’S FATHER NEVER INSULTED him. Even when Suleiman was angry he tried to ensure that he spoke clearly and to the point. Fahd’s mother had never pulled him by the ear, other than that awful time he had gone out on to the roof of his uncle’s house in Buraida when she had twisted it after finding the a white feather clinging to the bottom of his green winter thaub.
Moreover, his father followed his progress at school and made sure that nobody upset or belittled him, even if it was no more than mocking or hurtful words in front of his classmates. How shocked Suleiman had been to discover the marks of the Qur’an teacher’s beating on Fahoudi’s fingers. He had accompanied him back to the school that same afternoon. Only the duty master was around, but Suleiman threatened to make a complaint to the board of education the following day and expose the school in the papers if the teacher didn’t offer him a written apology and a promise never to do it again.
To Soha he would say that he didn’t want anyone to hurt Fahd, not even to treat him roughly, so that he wouldn’t grow up broken inside, but it didn’t always happen like that. Despite himself, he had to sit there the time Umm Yasser caught Yasser, Fahd and Hissa’s son, Faisal, climbing on the kitchen table and hurling eggs on the ground until the kitchen floor became a sticky yellow. Or rather, she had caught Fahd and Faisal, while Yasser ran into the street. She packed their eyes with table salt until their wails filled the living room, then Aunt Hissa took them and roughly rinsed them clean with water while Soha, the foreigner, stayed silent and still. Fahd bolted for his father in the men’s majlis and fell asleep in his arms as he fought back his groans: ‘The old woman in there put salt in my eyes.’
His uncle gave a boisterous laugh and said sarcastically, ‘All the better for you; now you’ll see properly.’
It was past midnight when Fahd returned from the stadium, a blue shawl across his shoulders. Opening the door in the wall he went inside and found his uncle sitting on the steps leading up to the house. He gave him a fierce look and Fahd froze in shock, fearing the worst. They were like two wary cats meeting by a rubbish dump, circling one another with their hairs pricked up like thorns in anticipation of battle. His uncle didn’t look up again, and his voice came heavy through the midnight air: ‘Where have you been, you wretch?’
‘I was with my friend.’
‘With that Zero-Seven bum?’
‘Saeed Bin Mushabbab, my friend, the son of my father’s friend.’
‘A good-for-nothing bum and the son of a criminal.’ Then: ‘Where were you?’
‘At the stadium.’
‘So, with all the other bums and dropouts and scum?’
A vision of the presentation ceremony suddenly flared in Fahd’s mind. ‘Even the king was there,’ he said.
His uncle leapt from his place and Fahd lifted his arm to block the wild blow. His uncle’s powerful grip fastened on his raised wrist while his other rough hand crept out and twisted Fahd’s earlobe. He tugged hard and spitefully, gritting his teeth with suppressed rage. ‘Don’t provoke me you animal! You and your sick mother have lost me time and business.’
He grabbed Fahd’s hair and pulled him closer. The stench from his mouth was foul as he shouted, ‘I swear to God, if I see you in the car with that Southerner again I’ll get you both locked up! Do you understand?’
Then he shoved him towards the tall flight of stairs and Fahd ascended, fighting a violent desire to cry and a powerful urge to run from the house. No longer could he bear to live under his uncle’s rules. Ever since Abu Essam had handed over the marriage certificate that allowed him into the house he had been despotic and domineering, running the place according to his habits and beliefs.
Throughout that long night, Fahd contemplated running away and experiencing life for himself, as his father had done.
I’ll make my own way. I’m not Lulua; I don’t have to be ruled by my uncle and his delusions. I’m a man. I’m sixteen, I’ve got an ID card and I’ll be getting my driver’s license soon enough. I’ll be able to run my own affairs free of that animal!
As was his habit, Fahd kept finding fault with himself and the way he had handled his uncle just a short while before.
I’m bigger than my fat uncle. When he stretched out his hand towards me, why didn’t I grab it and push him back? When he pulled at the shawl round my neck why didn’t I take it off, wrap it around his neck and squeeze until his beard quivered and his great gut wobbled? He’d raise his hands in surrender and I’d see his eyes bulge and his slack tongue lolling out, then I could shove him off the third step and his fat head would crack against the stone planter. He’d lie there twitching for a moment then his soul would fly down to hell!
Fahd was sitting by his wardrobe and listening to the muffled sound of his father’s voice from behind the clothes. He always felt that the voices of the dead would sound strangled, as if bubbling up through water. His dead father was telling him off. ‘And then what, my young Fahd? You kill your uncle and they haul you off to prison for years, until your uncle’s youngest son has come of age. Then they charge you with murder and you’ll find yourself in Justice Square before the black-clad executioner, sharpening his long sword and sending your head rolling away like a football. You will die and leave your mother and sister grief-stricken not just at my loss but at yours as well.’
Fahd rolled over on to his left side and spoke to his father from his depths. ‘It makes no difference, Dad. Kill him and be killed for it or not, I’m going to run away. I’m going to leave this house. I’ll take your picture with me and hang it on the wall of another house without fear. I’ll arrange my canvases and easel in the middle of the living room and fill the house with the smell of oil paints, just the way you remember it. I’ll have no more of the stink of agarwood and incense that my uncle has filled the house with, so that I feel I’m living in a morgue or graveyard.
‘I swear to you, Father: I’ll have satellite channels once again, and I’ll watch the nine o’clock news on al-Jazeera just like you used to do. I’ll follow the investigative reports on al-Arabiya and I’ll enjoy the weekly movie. Fairuz’s voice will wash through the chambers of my heart and the walls of the house where I live, as it used to when mother and you would play it in the early morning. Do you know that even Mum has changed since you’ve gone? She’s forgotten Fairuz and the long-handled pot she used to make Turkish coffee. It’s lying upside down and neglected in an unused kitchen drawer. Maybe she’ll use it as a piss pot for my uncle when he’s too old to reach the bathroom. There are religious cassettes scattered through the house. I can’t understand how this tyrant got my sister to memorise religious anthems and simple-minded myths.
‘Everything has changed so much. Our life has turned completely upside down. Lulua’s childhood has been brought to an end; now she’s a woman who wants only to be a good, pious little wife when once she dreamed of being a television presenter. Do you remember her seventh birthday, when she went with you to Toys “R” Us and you bought her a pink tape recorder with a keyboard and microphone? Do you remember how she’d switch it on in the living room and you’d ask us to listen to her? How she once sang, I loved you and forgot to sleep, I’m scared that you’ll forget me and read out a made-up news report? How you laughed in delight as you clapped and the report became crazier and crazier? That’s all dead now, Dad. Now she dreams of being a corpse washer, or one of those female preachers, doing the rounds of gatherings and get-togethers and delivering Islamic lectures, telling women to fear God and the torment of the grave, to set aside the sinful habits of those who have fallen by the way, to invite them to organise themselves. Sometimes I imagine her joining some militant Islamist group. If the terrorists changed the way they worked and brought in women as partners and operatives, they’d be enthusiastic fighters for the cause, strapping on bomb belts to blow away anything they regarded as sinful and become martyrs, flying straight to Paradise.’