‘We don’t want our grandchildren to become orphans with no one to provide for them,’ said some. Those who were more diplomatic and considerate of Ali’s feelings said simply, and with blatant dishonesty, ‘The girl’s taken.’
And so Suleiman left his family and his two-faced city forever. Sensing his father’s frustration and his concern for the family’s honour he decided to relieve him of the burden of his presence and asked his permission to seek a living somewhere else. He returned to Riyadh to work as a driver for a press distribution company, where he had the job of delivering newspapers to government offices. The streets of Riyadh were not as wide as they are now but nevertheless he spent his whole day trekking back and forth between various government agencies, sometimes forced to wait at this building or that because the guard wasn’t around to receive the stacks of six daily newspapers. He would spend a few minutes perusing one of the papers as the voice of Umm Kulthoum swelled inside the car, sedate and pleasant in the early morning.
Sometimes he would go for a stroll with a middle-aged guard from Jazan, who worked at one of the agencies and would tell him what went on in this ministry or that institution; how the employees fought over the newspapers and the minister himself had to distribute them himself in instalments. With his yellow teeth and creased orange headscarf the guard would chuckle, ‘The minister and his deputy have given up public affairs and are working as newspaper boys.’ Then he would withdraw to the stove in his room to make tea for himself and Suleiman.
‘They all go home at midday.’
On more than one occasion as he stood outside the Presidency for Girls’ Education near the television building, waiting for someone to open the door, Suleiman had seen a middle-aged man dressed in a smart suit, tie-less, with sparse hair and a thick blonde moustache sprinkled with white, adjusting his spectacles as he sat on a sheet of paper on the edge of a plant pot that held an ancient thorn tree. He had a small paper bag, out of which drifted the smell of fried falafel, and he turned the pages of Sharq al-Awsat with interest. At first, Suleiman assumed he was some sub-editor who came early for some complex reason of his own, but after an entire month had passed he was certain that the man worked in the Presidency.
One day Suleiman got out of his van carrying some newspapers, and, shaking the man’s hand, asked if he was an employee. He was, the man replied in a lovely accent; he had been under contract with the Presidency for twenty years, an accountant responsible for the daybook, the general ledger and the department’s expenditures, and an occasional supervisor for inexperienced young Saudis. He asked Suleiman about his job and qualifications. Suleiman told him that he distributed newspapers and that he loved his morning work because he came from a rural family that liked to get up and start work early.
The next day, the man told Suleiman that he, too, was a country boy, a Palestinian, who had emigrated with his family as a young man to study accountancy at the University of Jordan in Amman before the Presidency had hired him more than twenty years ago.
‘Which city do you come from, sir?’
‘From Qaseem,’ Suleiman replied.
‘We’ve got three from Qaseem, one from Bakeeriya and a couple from Buraida.’
He amazed Suleiman. He knew the people well and he knew the country. He could list the prominent families and their leading men and could reel off the history of Riyadh. This foreigner was an embodiment of the city’s memory, a witness to what had taken place here.
Some days later, he invited Suleiman to his office to drink coffee before he continued his morning rounds. Suleiman came in hesitant and shy and the man asked him if he drank Turkish coffee, apologising because he had no Arabic coffee: the employee who made it didn’t come until nine o’clock. Suleiman thanked him and turned the coffee down, so he made him a cup of tea and they talked for a while about everything under the sun.
The Jordanian would drop his sons and daughter off at school and would then have to come to work very early to go through the official accounts and expenditures in peace and quiet before the noisy young employees turned up. His son Essam was studying law at the University of Jordan and Soha, his daughter, was in middle school. Twins Ammar and Nabeel went to middle school together.
A few days later, the man convinced young Suleiman to continue his studies at night. ‘Goodness me, you’ve got free night schools, after all!’
Suleiman began to take night classes at the Farouq Secondary School, and his admiration of this lovable Jordanian began to grow. Then came the day he stopped seeing him. Given the job of supplying boxes of newspapers and correspondence to various ministries and institutions, Suleiman would dump the newspapers very early indeed and go on his way.
Finally, Abu Essam caught up with him before he could disappear, reproaching him for his absence and for not dropping in to see him. The pair became more than friends and one morning Suleiman thought the time was right to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. What could the Jordanian do but welcome the offer and salute his self-sufficiency and self-confidence?
But Suleiman felt that he had been far too hasty, and now found himself vacillating before his two obligations: the first, to inform the kindly gentleman of his imprisonment and former membership of a religious group, and the second, to inform his family, even though he believed that no one else had the authority to question his decisions.
‘Haven’t you made inquiries about me, Abu Essam?’
‘What are you talking about? I’ve known you six months and your character speaks for you.’
Suleiman was standing in the kitchen of Abu Essam’s house in Khazan Street and he fell silent.
‘Is there anything you want to tell me that I don’t know about?’
Stammering, Suleiman told him the tale of his involvement with the Divine Reward Salafist Group seven years before, his four years in prison, then his return to his family and search for suitable employment, up until his arrival in Riyadh.
‘Prison is no shame for a man! What concerns me is what Suleiman has become and how he thinks now. I don’t care what he used to be.’
Relief washed over Suleiman and he looked over to Soha, with her laughing face and bewitching dimples and her accent that blended her family’s dialect with the Saudi vernacular she had learnt during her nine years at school. Neither Suleiman’s features nor his cultured speech gave any clue that he delivered newspapers, an unskilled employee with a mediocre education. He was neat and well-groomed, his light moustache was carefully clipped, and he wore spectacles with clear, round lenses. Of medium height, his face was golden brown and serene. From the very first he set his heart on Soha and loved her dearly, not just as a wife but as a mother, a lover and a friend and for all their time together, the way he looked at her never changed.
And then, what no one could have predicted: Suleiman’s own brother, the imam, turning up out of the blue fifteen years later to take his wife into his bed, the same brother who had threatened that he would empty three shotgun cartridges into Suleiman’s head when he found out he was marrying a foreigner. That’s what Saleh had written in his letter: he would take his bird gun and send his brother’s head flying because he had brought bad luck and scandal upon them. And here he was, after all that, marrying a destitute foreigner of whose background and breeding he knew nothing at all.
It had been more than just a threat. Taking a party of men from Buraida to Riyadh, Saleh had met the head of the press distribution company at their headquarters in Malaz and demanded that he lean on his brother, bewitched by a piece of Jordanian immigrant trash of dubious background, and give him a choice between divorcing his wife or getting fired. In this way, they imagined, they had left Suleiman with no way out, but without realising it they had in fact created a huge opportunity for a young driver who was just one of a vast contingent of Sudanese and Egyptian drivers.