The next day, having searched the yellow rubbish bin without finding anything, Fahd came back inside, his head bowed and miserable, and sat on the entrance steps with their covering of artificial green grass. He was looking up at the neighbour’s window where a pigeon fluttered and perched. He turned his eyes right towards the wall, then left at the basketball net hanging on the long water pipe outside the bathroom; he had gone head to head with his father trying to get the ball in that very net, and sometimes, when Suleiman was asleep, he had played against Saeed. He looked to his left, at the unfrequented space next to the low wall that separated off their neighbour’s ground floor, and spotted a scrap of paper tumbling as if propelled by an invisible breeze. He stared at it for a moment then rose and picked it up. It was a deep shock when he turned the paper over to see Saeed’s eyes and waving hand at Lulua’s birthday party. It was a scrap ripped from the complete photograph. Searching for others he found another piece showing his father’s coy face and part of the white mashlah that he wore on his wedding day. He hunted around but could only find these two pieces. So. One of them had shredded his photograph album, destroyed the lot then taken it out to the street, and these two scraps were all that had escaped the bundle of shredded paper.
He went up the steps, crying and shouting, ‘Who’s the bastard, the dog, the son of a dog, who ripped up my album?’
His mother took fright, murmuring prayers and trying to calm him as he ran blindly about the living room, weeping in anguish. ‘God curse your fathers and your forefathers.’
He was insensible to his surroundings; he could not see in front of him. He didn’t know how he had acquired this vast strength as he tore the pocket of his house shirt, and kicked at the wooden partition until it shook. He threw himself down the steps shouting, ‘I want to die!’
His mother and Lulua rushed after him trying to stop him. The girl handed her mother a yellow infusion from which wafted the smell of saffron, and Soha began sprinkling it on his face as she chanted, ‘In the name of God, the Compassionate and the Merciful …’
A jinn had possessed him, she assumed, and it was the jinn that had rolled him down the steps.
The next day Fahd found out that his uncle had asked Lulua to tear up the pictures in her folders, because they were haram: they delivered their owner to hellfire and prevented angels entering the house. The Prophet, he told her, had said, ‘No angel shall enter a house in which there is a dog or a graven image,’ and had cautioned her about the punishment awaiting those who create pictures: ‘“Verily, those who shall receive the severest torments on the Day of Resurrection are the makers of graven images.”’
Then he had chatted away cheerfully to her until he discovered where the album of photographs was kept and ripped them up one by one.
When he learned of this, Fahd lost his temper and finally resolved to leave the house.
Bit by bit he started to bring his possessions over to Saeed’s rented flat, and when Saeed urged him to stay by the side of his mother and sister, Fahd told him he would go somewhere else if he didn’t want to have him as a guest. So Saeed let him have his way until the day came that Fahd told his mother: ‘I hate you, and I hate your damned husband. I even hate this house now: it’s got no soul now my Dad’s gone.’
‘My husband is your uncle, like it or not,’ she replied. ‘No angel will enter the house if there’s a dog or a picture in it, and anyway … we don’t need pictures to remind us of anything.’
He picked up a new sketchbook that he had left behind. ‘Fine, so if he rips up the photos the angels will troop in, will they?
As he scuttled down the steps like a wolf, he added, ‘And shouldn’t the dog leave the house before the pictures?’
Part 3. Love, fear and darkness
Starve me,
So that I become a lioness of discontent in the wildness of the night thickets,
So that I tease your bulging hide with my tooth’s keen edge.
— 19 —
APPROACHING BISHOP’S STORTFORD THE train slowed. A few people got aboard and passed by the ticket inspector with his small handheld device that stamped the day and date on the tickets of new passengers. The old lady offered Fahd a piece of gum. He took it and thanked her. His mind was a little calmer. He looked through the window at the empty wooden seats on the platform and the policeman who stood holding a big dog on a lead.
The train set off and Fahd’s memories galloped in its wake, wild and panting. He was thinking that it was no easy matter to rebel and to take risks with your life but if you didn’t do it when you were a teenager or a young man then you never would. That is how it had been with him: there had been nothing worth fighting for, nothing worth preserving. He hadn’t rebelled like his father. He hadn’t done what Suleiman had done and clashed with government and society. His father would have taken up arms, had he not slowly withdrawn, using Imam Turki’s mosque as a way to escape the Salafist Group, going to listen to the blind sheikh’s speeches and sermons at sunset prayers every day until he dropped out of the reckoning altogether.
Fahd’s decision to leave the family home forever was painful and devastating. Even if initially it was not on a permanent basis — spending first one night away then two, then more — it still saddened his ailing mother. What would she do at night? Would Lulua wash her forehead using water infused with the saffron ink from Qur’anic verses inscribed on white paper? Would she take three small gulps then rest her bandaged head on the pillow in search of sleep? Would she take a sleeping pill in order to drift off like the dead?
Fahd and Saeed had gone out together many times, loafing around Tahliya Street and Faisaliya Tower and pursuing the frisky girls who drew their admirers after them like panting dogs. They chased their lusts in a trance, like children chasing brightly coloured birds or butterflies, bewitched by a beguiling glance from behind a niqab, by eyes painted with kohl and maddening eye-shadow, by laughter, by shoulders jostling as the girls swayed, lascivious and lustful, and pointed mischievously towards the two young men.
Saeed become another person when girls teased him. Whenever he got the chance or came across some sheltered spot he would almost rub up against their abaya-clad bodies. He was indifferent to the presence of Indian and Filipino vendors and tried to avoid the looks of Arab street sellers — the Lebanese, Syrians and Egyptians — but when he caught sight of a Saudi walking behind his wife he would keep his lunacy completely under wraps. Alone with a girl, however, he would become demented and reckless.
One night he surged forward like a tiger towards two juicy morsels standing by the elevator and giggling in his direction and took them both in his arms. One of them hit him on the head with her handbag and he came back over to Fahd out of breath and laughing. ‘That bitch. She’s the one who gave me her number.’
Fahd could never match his wildness. He would follow after a girl full of trepidation but if she so much as glanced at him he would retrace his steps, stumbling like a bunny rabbit.