The woman, whose name he later learned was Thuraya, was talking knowledgeably about the picture in the delectable, adorable lisp of the Hejaz, with her striking embroidered red headscarf and the perfume that filled his nose and mind. Were it not for her telling him that she was a mother of six, the oldest of whom was about his age, and her faintly husky voice, he would have been unable to guess that she was in her late thirties.
She had married young to a man from Qaseem and left the Hejaz, a place which made her coo like a pigeon whenever she mentioned it: ‘You’re fine and soft like a Hejazi!’
All that was beautiful, fine and wonderful in life had its origin in the Hejaz; the vulgar and barbarous belonged to the Bedouin. Thuraya was fiercely partisan towards her place of birth. Unembarrassed, she brought up her age and claimed that as a woman from the Hejaz her years didn’t show and that her eyes were still young and passionate: ‘The eyes of our women speak.’
Two days later she called him on his mobile on the pretext that she had some preliminary sketches for paintings she wanted to make. ‘Just a bored housewife’s feeble efforts,’ she called them, with an exaggerated laugh that sounded like racing cars speeding past. She hoped to get an opportunity to give them to him and get his opinion. They agreed that he would take them from her on a Monday, when she went to the Dr Shablaan Clinics to get her son treatment for his speech defect.
On the Monday he stopped the car in the dusty square next to the building and went inside, going up to the second floor, inspecting the signs of the individual clinics, then leaving again. He called her and said that he had gone back to the car and wouldn’t be coming up because it was difficult to see her there. She came striding out in high heels and almost fell on the uneven ground as she made for the car. He suppressed a malicious laugh and as soon as she got in, he noticed her confusion and the trembling of her hand. He shook it and she quickly freed it from his grasp. Her carefully ironed, soft black headscarf hung loosely over her niqab-rimmed eyes. She was extremely shy. Fahd could see no part of her save her hand and a ring of white gold. She only stayed three minutes. Saying she felt confused, she handed him a large envelope and left.
The next time they spoke she said, ‘I’ll see you at Uthaim Mall opposite Atiqa market. Turn right as soon as you’re inside. There’s a little bookshop beside the escalator; I’ll be there before the evening prayer.’
After sunset prayers he took a stroll in the mall. He went up the escalator. Children were stampeding towards the games arcade, wearing green bracelets on their wrists that allowed them to play all day long. He went back to the bookshop and looked through the books. Most had an Islamic theme. He picked one out by Sheikh al-Qarani and read on the cover: The book that has sold a million copies. He put it back and searched for some poetry or novels in translation. He sensed someone breathing nearby and a penetrating female perfume tightened about his throat. He turned to see a young woman drawing a headscarf across her mouth. She fixed him with her eyes, the eyeliner applied with exquisite care and the eyeshadow a light pink that matched the smooth pearls covering her handbag. From the opposite direction he received a sudden kick. It was Thuraya. He hadn’t noticed her come in.
‘Surrounded by admirers I see!’ she said, gritting her teeth and handing him a coloured paper bag as she looked about warily.
In the car he found a box wrapped in gift paper at the bottom of the bag and opened it quickly and eagerly. A bottle of cheap aftershave. He laughed.
A few days later as he was cleaning out his car he picked up the bag to throw it away and discovered a card with the silhouette of a man and woman embracing while the sun set into the sea behind them. On the back he read: I love you Fahd, but I’m scared that you’ll reject my love and my crazy passion because I’m older than you, maybe the same age as your mother!
Fahd felt remorse that he had been ignoring her, claiming that he was busy, that his studies took up all his time and that his friends wouldn’t leave him alone.
Haha, she would chortle in her text messages. Your friends, or your little girlfriends? I admit it, see? I know you’ve got girlfriends. Just give me a little of your time!
When she sensed that he wasn’t interested in her, she turned her conversation to art, and asked him about the sketches. Had he liked them? Very politely and extremely embarrassed he answered that she had conveyed her ideas very directly, and most of them were highly romantic and sentimental.
— 22 —
FOR THEIR NEXT MEETING Thuraya asked if they might sit together a while longer, in other words that she come out in his car and the two of them take a little drive. It would be easy, she said. ‘I’ll get in at the hospital entrance at evening prayers and we’ll go anywhere we like or just drive around in the car.’
He was hesitant and unsettled. Saeed hooted when he heard him prevaricating, and when he hung up, gave a wild laugh. ‘The classic case of the village boy who falls for an older woman. My friend, she’s the same age as your mother.’
Fahd smiled and blushed. He took the bottle of Givenchy cologne, tipped a few drops into his palm and rubbed his hands together.
He borrowed Saeed’s car and as he got in his phone was hit by a message. He headed out for the Eastern Ring Road. He had no idea where Iman Hospital was and was embarrassed to ask, so he called telephone inquiries and got the number. A Sudanese employee answered who gave an awful description of the route.
‘I know it’s in the South, not the East,’ he said, then handed the receiver to a young colleague who gave Fahd precise directions.
Ten minutes before the appointed time, Fahd was there. He passed through the Medical Institute’s gates with its domes like wind-filled sails, assuming it belonged to the hospital.
I’ll take a look around and get to know the neighbourhood in the few minutes that are left, he said to himself.
Worshippers were pouring into the mosque next to the hospital. Fahd felt that his bladder would burst. He looked around for another mosque. There was a large one facing the hospital, with Pakistani, Indonesian and Sudanese workmen clustered around the entrance to its toilets. He passed a Sudanese worker who had raised the hem of his thaub to avoid getting it wet as he sipped water from a palm cupped beneath a large cold-water tap. The droplets flowed in a long line along the bottom of his arm and dripped from his black elbow.
He pulled up at the domed gateway.
‘Where are you?’ she asked. ‘I’m at the gate.’
‘Look to your right!’
But the woman in the embroidered abaya did not turn round.
‘The gate’s the one with the domes like tents, right?’
‘No, you’re at the Medical Institute. Keep going.’
He started the engine and found her looking out through her niqab. She got in next to him.
‘At last. Those kids were hassling me.’
She took a large bottle of scent from her bag and sprayed away at her chest and hands for a few seconds, then put it away and held his hand between her palms. Her hands were soft and finely lined, her long nails untended and untouched by red or silver nail polish. His fingers were curled to form a ring that she mischievously poked her thumb in and out of until he heard her moan.
He grew bolder and reached for her chest. Her bra was the rigid kind and he couldn’t tell if what it concealed was sagging or firm. Not firm, he guessed, or else why wear this horrible contraption?
She said that she had had her children young.