— 54 —
THAT NIGHT FAHD VISITED Lulua, and in the dining room overlooking the street he placed his head between his hands like a man coming round after a near-fatal car crash. Lulua stood before him and consoled him, stroking his hair, lighting the stove to make him a cup of tea and telling him to give thanks to God: their mother had been a believer, she had loved Fahd dearly and he had been a devoted son in turn.
Fahd recalled his mother’s enjoyment when he would lay his head in her embrace while she made a show of searching for some louse lost in the wild jungle of his hair. Everything on the top floor carries your memory: your small bedroom facing east, your prayer mat, the blue prayer robe you bulked out when you prayed, the large Japanese radio, the seven-columned oil-fired radiator by your bed, the oil pan atop it and the small bottles of mineral water surrounding it, the Rico wafers with their thin chocolate filling, the covered tub of dates, the small silver pot filled with dried figs, your cotton shirt hanging on the wardrobe door, the head covering stuffed between the radiator’s columns to keep it warm and drive the cold from your head, the new curtain in the dining room, lined to hide the light from your tired eyes, your brown handbag hung from the curtain rail, the plastic box inside the bag where you stored your lumps of bitter asafoetida, the bottles of medicine for blood pressure, digestion, inflamed bowels and migraine — your Zocor, Scopan, Coli-Urinal and Panadol — everything that forced you out of your room, out of the living room where you would stretch out your legs as you sat on the bearskin rug, the Singer sewing machine before you, whose wheel you delicately turned to patch a thaub.
Silence filled the house while Fahd sat on a plastic chair in the kitchen remembering, his groans cutting through the awful hush.
‘Take refuge from Satan, Fahd,’ said Lulua.
She offered some words of consolation as she placed a cup of tea before him, then closed the kitchen door behind her as she headed to the living room.
He felt suffocated. He carried the cup of tea over to the west-facing window and slid it back on aluminium runners. The bridge by the soaring edifice of Mamlaka Tower was lit up. He took a deep breath and wept loudly and bitterly as a black butterfly settled on the peeling paintwork of the window’s metal frame. It took off and landed on the chilly aluminium runners.
Silence filled the dust-choked skies. The heat spilled over and descended on people’s heads. Fahd threw his body down on a bolster and resting his elbows on his knees he knitted his hands together over his eyes and sobbed passionately.
He heard the raucous message tone from his phone. God comfort you and grant your deceased forgiveness! The number was unknown to him and he paid it no mind.
He switched on the air conditioner and closed the window. The black butterfly flew inside, first landing on the fabric of the lampshade in the corner then upon the table’s edge by the cup of cold tea.
What a strange butterfly, Fahd said to himself. A butterfly dark as night. I remember reading once that the souls of the departed become black butterflies, roving about. Are you my mother? Come here my darling one, light upon my heart, or rather, light upon my eyelash and tell me how it happened, how they stopped your heart, how they laughed, the Egyptian, my uncle and my trickster cousin, as the heat began to trouble you and you felt the air about you drain away. You raised the hem of your thaub and the Egyptian laughed, saying, ‘This is what I want!’ My uncle laughed, certain that the hands that raised the thaub were those of the jinn, for you no longer counted for anything. Here, come closer, Mother; tell me all that happened …’
When his hand approached it, the black butterfly flew to a small bookcase by the door. Would it make its way inside a book and re-emerge as Soha?
Just think, Mother, what kind of wasteland we’re living in. A few days ago the Shura Council discussed setting limits on the beating allowed in traditional healing. As easily as that! In other words, it admitted that the beating itself was legal. Just two years ago the Council turned the world on its head when a member, on a whim, proposed a vote on whether to debate a matter so trivial it never deserved debate in the first place: should the Shura Council debate the matter of women drivers, or should it not? Those religious scholars approved beating, which is forbidden by the laws of every land and religion in the world, and because of that your slender, pure body deserved to be flogged to death to exorcise a jinn! Come here, Mother, don’t fly too far. The doors and windows are sealed shut. Come here. Don’t go into the book, I want to talk to you, to tell you of my pain.
This strange country on whose soil we live in fear, at home and in the street, at work and in the car, this strange country, where we never wake without a tremor in our hands or our skin crawling: it ate your heart. It tossed you in the morgue. Wasn’t there something a few days back about an African witch who rode a broomstick black and naked and flew from the second floor to the fourth a Medinan apartment block? Our newspapers printed the story — our glorious press — as if to lend credence to the statements of those moral guardians, the men of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, who saw witches flying through the air.
At times, Mother, I feel that I am not in the real world, but in a dream or film. I sense some legendary creature seated in the heights, winding the reel of some epic movie, enjoying himself at first, then roaring with laughter and thinking how, when the reel is spent, he will throw it in the bin and go on his way, while we hop about like puppies dumped in deep trenches filled with filth, while in the distance the sound of a vast tractor draws nearer, pushing the dirt to send it heaping over us.
Absent-mindedly he reached out to the cup of cold tea and the black butterfly fluttered abruptly from on top of the bookcase and clung to the mirror. It reminded him of King of the Butterflies, a story he had bought with his father at Jarir Bookstore in Ulaya years before. It told of the ruler of the butterflies who flew from his kingdom to find work for his young butterflies and caterpillars. He alighted on a window at the Fara Palace and was just peeping inside when the heavens thundered and torrential rain poured down. Before the servant could close the window he nipped in. He flew to the bedroom and there he found eternal love. In the mirror he saw a brightly coloured butterfly queen, looking much like himself but slightly smaller. Every time he approached her, she drew closer, too. She was his reflection, no more, and when a sudden bolt of lightening and roar of thunder shattered the mirror, the beautiful queen fled. Downcast, the butterfly king returned and told his subjects, who became convinced that the lightning, that bright light, had swallowed up their queen, and from that day forward butterflies have fluttered around any light they found.
Are you searching for the king who flew from you, my mother, my queen? Is it the fate of kings to hunt for that which might hold their kingdoms firm, until like every king in the world before them, they are swallowed by a light that becomes a burning, all-consuming fire?