‘Is that what Princess Lulua has done?’
‘No, not that bad! I don’t think she’s ambitious enough for death!’
— 18 —
THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPH: a husband and wife, spreading out a plastic mat beside a small white car. Between them sits a boy of two, playing with a plastic bag. His mother lets down her luminous red hair while his father gives a fleeting grin between his heaving breaths, having placed the camera on a box, set the timer, and run back to his wife and child. On the reverse of the photograph a flowing hand has written: Suleiman and Soha — Nisf al-Qamar Beach, Sharqiya, 1986.
The second photograph: a pedalo, licensed to hold two adults only. The husband and wife and their two children all wear yellow lifejackets, inflated and tied around their chests. The father looks worn out by his exertions as he pushes pedals with his feet. Next to him, his wife holds her one-year-old daughter in her arms. The father has his arm around the boy, who looks scared, as though he wants to cry, or has just stopped. There are traces of chocolate ice cream around his mouth. On the back: Suleiman, Soha, Fahd and Lulua — The Jeddah Corniche, 1989.
The third photograph: a pretty little girl sits in front of a cake with four candles on top. Next to her is a laughing boy with his arm flung round her neck, his other hand moving as though to grab a candle or snuff it out. Behind them children laugh, boisterous and gleeful. On the back: Lulua (4), Fahd (7) and Saeed — Lulua’s birthday, Funtime, King Fahd Road.
The fourth photograph: a frightened boy on a little pony, his hands nervously placed in front of him on the animal’s back, peers towards the camera with tearful eyes. On the back of the picture: Fahd in Thamama, Riyadh, 1990.
The fifth photograph: a groom with his ghatra hanging self-consciously down over his face and resplendent in a white mashlah with wide, horizontal stripes, stands alongside a bride in her wedding dress, her white, rose-embroidered veil over her face. On the back: Suleiman and Soha’s wedding — January 6, 1984. May you have a long and happy life together!
The sixth photograph: a young boy stands on a white blanket next to another boy holding a bunch of roses; both are laughing at the camera. On the back: Saeed after the operation with Fahd — King Abdul Aziz Hospital, 1992, and then in a shaky hand in green ink: Memories of an appendix.
The seventh photograph: three boys bashfully stand behind school desks, one of them shyly ducking his head. In the background is a wall decorated with blue paper and flowers and the edge of a row of lockers beneath a high window. Written on the back: Fahd in middle school with Muwaffaq the Iraqi on his right and Ziyad the dwarf on his left — Second year, Middle School, Class 2/2.
The eighth photograph: a boy belted into a high chair. To his right is a man with a carefully clipped moustache, its red hair mixed with a little white, sitting back with a beautiful smile. To his left is a woman wearing a hijab who laughs as she puts a potato chip dipped in ketchup into the little one’s mouth. On the back of the picture: Fahd with his grandparents, Abu and Umm Essam — Abu Kamal Restaurant, Thalatheen Street, Ulaya.
The ninth photograph: a husband, his wife and their two children, with a handsome young man in a jacket and tie alongside another youth with an open collar and an old man with a white moustache. On the back: Suleiman, Soha, Fahd and Lulua with Essam, Kamal and Abu Essam — Sham Restaurant, Amman, 1995.
The tenth photograph: a small picture, 6x4 centimetres, of an eager-eyed boy, his red hair combed backwards, fighting back a grin. On the back: Fahd Bin Suleiman al-Safeelawi, 1992.
This last photograph Fahd remembered well. He recalled his father and the Yemeni photographer in Studio Zaman on Thalatheen Street laughing together at the boy’s eagerness. He had held his breath before the lens to hold back his laughter and appear a man, for a man does not laugh.
It had been after this picture was taken that Suleiman had grasped his son’s hand, and the two of them had walked the length of Thalatheen Street and gone into an art gallery, one of whose pictures Suleiman liked. He had spent a long time arguing with the salesman over the price, then they had walked out without buying it.
Pictures then more pictures, memories coming to life in the photo album Fahd kept in a wardrobe drawer. It felt to him as though they were his memories and his personal history, his whole life, in fact. Nothing took him back to his beautiful past like this album and the songs that summoned up those moments to which they were bound. For Fahd, these photographs were life itself; he had no idea what he would do if one day he couldn’t find them. Would he put an end to his existence? Commit suicide? What would he do if, all of a sudden, he became a person without a past? Was the past only present in photographs? Didn’t memory inevitably lead back to the past? It did, but memory needed a spur to stir its cells awake; like a horse pulling a cart uphill it needed someone to apply the whip.
Some nights after the football match, Fahd was sprawled on his bed thinking back to his early childhood, until the memories and his own oppressive longing led him to his father’s features and the picture of them together, his father playfully pulling his head towards him in front of the ice cream cart in Thamama.
Suddenly panicking he opened the wardrobe door, then pulled out the drawer looking for the album. He couldn’t find it. Maybe his mother or Lulua had taken it to gaze on days that would never return. He rifled through the chest of drawers and bedside table but to no avail. Frantic and frenetic he remembered that he had put it beneath a large suitcase on top of the wardrobe and he mounted a small stepladder and lifted the case. A great cloud of dust billowed out, filling his eyes, and in a single movement he sprang backwards off the ladder and fell on his rump.
Standing before the basin in the bathroom to wash his face and eyes he almost burst into tears. He went out in search of his mother and found Lulua in the living room.
‘Where’s the album, Lulua?’
‘What album?’ she said coldly as she wrote out her homework.
‘My album. The photograph album in my drawer. Who took it?’
She didn’t answer, just shrugged and frowned. He went into his mother’s room. She was in the bathroom. He waited and when she emerged, her wet head wrapped in a white towel, he attacked her with questions about the album. She replied that she knew nothing about it. He hunted through the house like a wounded wolf, inside which other wolves lurked and howled. He didn’t know who he was any more. What was his name? Where had he come from? Where would he go and where would he stay? Who were these people, moving around all about him?