On the back seat of the Committee vehicle Fahd watched the drivers hurtle down the roads in their cars and thought of his father’s ordeal. Suleiman had been questioned interminably until it was finally established that he had not taken up arms to hijack the Grand Mosque when they stripped his clothes off and one of them examined the front of his shoulders to determine if the butt of a Belgian rifle had jarred against them and left a bruise.
He was sentenced to jail then transferred to a new prison outside Mecca whose walls gave off the smell of fresh paint. He and his companions were the first guests to enter that now venerable building. How Fahd wished that his father had not bequeathed him this part of his life and revealed to him his secret papers.
Suleiman left a part of his secret life to Fahd for one reason: his fear that his son might become embroiled in the activities of extremist groups and that he might not stop at distributing pamphlets in the court of the Grand Mosque, as his adolescent father had done back in the dying days of Ramadan in August 1979, but take up arms or strap an explosive belt to his body. Fahd came to understand that Suleiman had been afraid, that his fear became an obsession, and before he passed away he set aside a few possessions for his son, instructing his wife to hold them in trust and hand them over when he had grown, as though anticipating a sudden death in the midst of his young life.
So it was that Fahd got his hands on his father’s old books: Apprising the People of the Signs of Discord and the Portents of the Hour, A Vindication of the Religion of Abraham, Upon Him be Peace, and pages written in a shaky hand, memoirs and diaries. There was a small and dirty string of prayer beads made from olive stones and a blue biro with a grubby plaster stuck on for a grip. There was a photograph of Suleiman and a man with long hair sitting together in the terraces of Malaz Stadium, another of him with a group of young men around a fire on a sand dune in Maizeela outside Riyadh, and a third and final picture in black-and-white of Suleiman alongside his father, Ali, old and oblivious of the camera, and his brother Saleh.
As he sat in the back of the vehicle looking out of the window, Fahd recalled when his sister, Lulua, had handed him a leather bag, black, ancient and falling apart. Their mother had asked her to give it to him as a bequest from his father. Inside he found the timeworn, personal effects that his father had insisted be handed over to him only once he had come of age. Why his mother had waited until he was in his early twenties he didn’t know. Maybe because of their relationship, which for the last three years had been bleak. He had opened the bag in a fever of excitement. There was no money, no treasure, just his father’s stupid journals: his years in prison and words of wisdom for his son.
— 3 —
THE GMC WITH THE Committee’s logo on the driver and passenger-side doors moved off and headed down a side street in Wuroud, the driver looking to skip the traffic on King Abdullah Road. Fahd thought of how many times he had crossed this road with Tarfah, the two of them staring at the vast advertising hoardings by the corner of the Ministry for Municipal and Rural Affairs and laughing, their fingers entwined.
‘Remember your aunt’s house that’s up for rent in King Fahd?’ he had asked her one night. They had gone to the house and stretched out naked in a sitting room devoid of furniture, the echo bouncing from the bare walls parroting their voices, their laughter and their moans.
He twisted about, looking for Tarfah. Where have they taken her? Where will they take me? His fearful muttering was interspersed by the hawk-eyed man’s directions to the driver.
At the Owais Markets traffic lights the driver crossed straight over instead of turning left into the King Fahd neighbourhood. The streets were very quiet; there was none of the usual bustle around Haram Mall, which lured shoppers in with its cheap, low-quality goods.
Fahd sighed and muttered a prayer; perhaps these moans and murmurs might move the hawk-eyed man to pity him. But it was no use: the man was like a butcher at Eid al-Adha, dragging the animal by its foot, the handle of a sharpened knife clamped between his teeth as he listened to the latest joke from his colleague.
‘It’s just a few papers to sign and you’ll be on your way.’
That is what the man had said, encouraging Fahd to talk briefly and clearly. Fahd sighed and directed his gaze to the street, thinking again of Tarfah. What are you doing now? Where are you? Has the sheikh in the cream mashlah, his eyes full of calm and warmth, taken you off in his colleague’s car to the Committee or the women’s shelter? Don’t put your faith in his deceptive courtesy, his claims that it’s just a few official documents, just a signature on a pledge and you can go home. They’ll tell you that they are looking out for you, but they lie. He’ll trick you as he tricked me. He’ll lock you up or ask your family to collect you. The scandal!
Fahd imagined Tarfah bobbing on the back seat like a freshly slaughtered pigeon, her door secured with a safety catch that could only be opened from outside while doubtless the sheikh in the cream mashlah rode up front, reciting hadith on the virtues of the chaste, inviolable woman who stayed at home. He longed to call her and make sure she was all right, but they had taken away his phone and all his papers.
The GMC stopped outside a building. The man with hawk-like eyes opened the door and glared at Fahd, who remained inside with the policeman and the driver. There was a short delay then he emerged from the building accompanied by a bulky man, a toothstick poking out of his thick lips, which he bit on every now and again as he muttered and spat and looked over at Fahd. The short man gestured at the driver, who got out with the bag containing Fahd’s possessions and stood next to them. Then the big man came forward, opened the rear door and took Fahd to the building while the bag swayed in his other hand.
He sat down facing the men. There were three of them, waited on by an Indonesian, who brought them tea. The big man came over and stood in front of Fahd.
‘Stand up. Lift your hands in the air.’
Fahd raised his hands as though he were at a custom’s check or airport security and the man began to pat down his pockets and body, front and back; he even felt beneath his balls. The hawk-eyed man gave a shout, springing towards Fahd and yanking at his upraised left hand.
‘What’s this?’
He removed the prayer beads that had been left to him by his father, a small string of beads that he had wrapped twice about his wrist the week before: olive stones that had been stored in his father’s bag for nearly twenty-five years.
In his diaries, his father had told him that he had kept the beads as a reminder of the long prison nights and their boredom: the darkness, the isolation, the sadness. He wanted to remember how he had passed the time fashioning prayer beads from olive stones or breeding cockroaches, letting them multiply before destroying them all.