He hurriedly drained the water from his bottle and walked outside, accompanied by his mobile’s message tone. He opened the message:
Beware of the following phrases if uttered by someone older than you:
1. Let’s go bird hunting.
2. Would you like me to teach you how to wrestle?
3. What do you say we go up to the roof and look at the pigeons?
4. Would you like me to teach you how to drive?
5. Let’s go and find some jerboa in the desert.
6. Today, the bill’s on me.
7. Let’s open the wardrobe.
8. Let me show you my stamp album.
9. Let’s stay up and watch a video.
10. Let’s see how a gecko suckles her young.
Compliments of the Committee for Fighting Sodomy, Qaseem
Fahd closed his eyes and sighed, clinging to Tarfah’s hand for several minutes and then releasing it as they traversed the mall’s wide central passage and passed Carrefour. Noticing that he seemed a little put out she asked him what the matter was, but he told her it was nothing. Where were they going, he wanted to know. Her molten eyes gave her answer, but she added that if he was preoccupied or not in the mood they could grab a coffee and just go for a drive. They stopped at the Starbucks inside the main entrance.
Saeed was just fooling around. Whenever he got a message making fun of Qaseem and its inhabitants he would pass it on to Fahd, who would respond with sarcastic remarks about southerners.
As they bought their cappuccinos, Lulua’s mournful voice reproached him: she and her mother had been trying to get hold of him for two days, and their mother was exhausted, worn out trying to track him down. He tried making the excuse that he had been painting for the next spring exhibition and promised that he would visit them both that night.
As soon as they drove off Tarfah’s phone rang and she began hunting fretfully for it in her bag. Fahd was miles away, staring up at the advertising hoarding at the traffic lights while she giggled to her friend Wafaa, but he paid attention when she glanced over at him and said, ‘There’s a friend of mine who’s been doing “short time” with this guy but so far, no action. Looks like she’ll end up paying him for it!’
She ended the call and her laughter trailed away as she put the phone back in her bag. ‘She’s completely mad.’
‘Who?’
‘Wafaa, my friend. She worked on the programme for eradicating illiteracy for nine years. She studied psychology. And now they’ve cancelled it; they’ve cancelled the contracts of more than eight thousand female teachers … Imagine! Just like that!’
‘God! And what did she do?’
‘Nothing. They thought of staging a demo at the Department of Education in central Riyadh.’
‘If they tried that they’d end up wishing they were at home unemployed.’
‘Now she tells me that her friend in the programme suggested they form a troupe of wedding dancers, so Wafaa told her there was a much more enjoyable, easy and quick way to make cash.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Work as a Friday girl. “Short time” for a thousand riyals in furnished flats and in hotels for two and half. Amazing!’
‘Are you serious?’
‘No, I’m joking, you maniac. Did you believe me?’
‘Why wouldn’t I? Anything’s possible in this country.’ Fahd lowered his voice as though speaking to himself. ‘The women are turning into Friday girls and the boys are off to Iraq!’ Then: ‘Friday girl! I like that!’
Tarfah laughed. ‘That’s what they call them. We once asked Wafaa about her man and she said he was going to Bahrain. We really thought he was travelling, but she laughed at us and said it was code for a guy who drinks too much!’
He didn’t spend long with Tarfah that evening. They roamed the darkened neighbourhoods of North Riyadh for a while and he gave her a half-hearted peck. She felt hurt and asked him to go to his mother’s; they would meet tomorrow if they could.
— 38 —
‘SAY SOMETHING!’ SAID LULUA.
‘Who to?’ Fahd answered, setting down the bag containing bread and three cartons of yoghurt that he had bought from the supermarket and the bakery next door.
‘Anyone on planet Earth would be nice.’
‘You mean the jinn?’ he said, smiling.
‘I know you don’t believe in those things but I swear to God I heard it. Its voice was completely different …’ Then: ‘I swear it wasn’t Mum speaking!’
He wasn’t convinced, but when he took his seat beside his mother, prostrate on her bed in the dining room, he handed her a glass of zamzam water. She took three sips, then sprinkled a few drops into his right hand and he stroked her brow and head as he muttered a Qur’anic verse.
It came to him that there was a spiritual cure that might save this ravaged body; even holding her hand, still beautiful, warm and soft, could give her new impetus. She adjusted herself and began to tell him about his childhood, then his father. Her tears flowed and she was silent. She had remembered the bag, maybe. She asked him to call Lulua.
‘I’m making tea, Mum. Just a minute.’
‘Your father bequeathed it to you.’
She grabbed Fahd’s hand and squeezed it.
Choking back a sob, Fahd said sternly, ‘Let’s have none of that talk; it’s no good.’ Then he added, ‘God give you a long life. You’ll be there for my wedding and you’ll see your grandchildren.’
Wearily, Soha described to her daughter where the old black leather bag was kept on top of the wardrobe. She would need the little stepladder behind the kitchen door.
— 39 —
TARFAH SENSED THAT FAHD’S usual high spirits were dampened; she missed the touch and tenderness she had come to expect. He was going through a crisis, she felt, but wasn’t telling her. Wasn’t she the queen of trauma and tragedy? How many dreadful things had happened to her, and she hadn’t gone under, rising phoenix-like from the ashes every time and telling Fahd in lavishly sarcastic tones: ‘Smile! You’re in the Kingdom of Human Kindness!’
She thought of the despondency that sometimes overwhelmed her when she was with him.
She was sitting in the dark of her top-floor bedroom in Suwaidi listening to the sunset call to prayer from a nearby mosque; it was the first time she had listened to it in such a downcast state: how could it be calling for peace of mind when she felt such hopelessness? As a child, whenever she’d felt sad or a strong urge to cry, she would creep into her wardrobe like a cat, closing the door on herself, shutting her eyes in the dark and letting her tears flow unchecked until her soul was purged and she could emerge to play and stampede about crazily.
All she remembered of her childhood was the bad and the sad, starting with being named Tarfah and, perhaps too, the superstition with which her immediate family and relatives poisoned her early years: that any woman called Tarfah was destined for bad luck in life. Though she hadn’t believed it, the years that followed had proved them right.
It was a mystery to her why her entire family should prefer her older sister, Asma. Was it because of her utter docility, the very opposite of Tarfah’s naughtiness? Or because Tarfah excelled at school while her older sister failed and had to repeat one year after another until they ended up together in the fourth year at primary school, before Tarfah overtook her and went to middle school first? Tarfah relied on her own talents, while her sister received assistance from private tutors, all to no avail. Was that really sufficient to make her family hate her, so that as a girl she often felt that she wasn’t their daughter at all, that she was in the wrong family? Neither their ideas nor their way of life tallied with her own and comparing her dark skin to her four fair sisters only made her more doubtful. When she was older and her father had died she would ask herself, ‘Did Mum sleep with someone else?’