While they were summoning the sheikh who now sat before him, Fahd thought, What accursed prayer beads are these? What ripe olives flew here from Granada or Seville? What olive tree in Andalusia is cackling faintly at my plight, in league with gypsies against the moon, now plotting with the gypsies here against me? Are these men gypsies, too, my father? Are they gypsies, too, dear Lorca? Am I the moon who came to earth and entered the forge to play? Yes, I am he; I have a side that glows like silver, and a dark side, too. I have descended to this forge of a land that I might live, but I paid no heed to little Sara’s warning and I could not do as Lorca’s moon and suddenly ascend at the right moment, grasping the child’s hand. No, I remained for the gypsies to charge me with possession of olive stones. Dear Lorca, I stole no olives, I merely kept their stored and dusty stones safe. A week ago, I painted them to resemble the bright African skies. When the gypsies came stealing through the forest of cars I did not hear their drums. I did not hear them cry from their car at the frightened people in the alleys, scampering and hiding like rats. I heard nothing but my sweetheart’s voice as she eased the burning loss of my mother. I failed to see that Andalusia had come to Riyadh, never thought that Riyadh would travel to far-off Andalusia.
‘So shall we go for a drive in the car or take a furnished flat?’ Tarfah asked.
‘What do you say to a coffee?’
‘Mmm. In the car, perhaps.’
‘No, let’s sit at a café.’
‘I think the cafés are always being watched by the Committee. Nada says there are employees in the cafés who work as spies for them. They earn more than their regular wages.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said, adding, ‘Sounds to me like exaggerations and rumours.’
‘Anyway, going into cafés in the morning is scary.’
Fahd didn’t give it much thought. His grief was overwhelming, stifling. Although a week had passed since his mother’s burial he still had the feeling that Riyadh’s skies had lowered until he could touch them with his hand. It muddled his thinking. He was unable to continue work on his oil painting or start on another while he remembered Naseem Cemetery, Rajehi Mosque and the morgue. Perhaps the image that affected him most was the memory of standing inside the grave and looking up at the faces of the people, the movement of their lips, their outstretched hands bearing brick and lumps of clay. Whenever their faces came to mind he tried imagining them silent, that sound had been utterly abolished, leaving nothing but the image. He tried imagining that he was deaf, freeing up vast space for the image alone. How might he paint bodies circling about him, stopping to incline towards him, faces muttering, murmuring, staring, old faces, others youthful, faces wearing glasses, faces veined and worn, and all with a light coating of the dust thrown up by the ring of feet?
A scene worthy of a future painting, perhaps: The Cemetery.
— 61 —
FAHD REMAINED IN THE cramped holding cell, detained on charges of practicing sorcery and committing the lesser idolatry, all because of a string of painted prayer beads. Despite the kindness of the sheikh with the cream mashlah and his paternal air, he had now vanished and Fahd hadn’t seen him again. He was like Lorca’s gypsies, hiding their knives in the dust.
It was a narrow, stifling room with a fan dangling from its ceiling, though he couldn’t tell whether it was working or whether warm air was shuffling in from some high window like a crook-backed pensioner. If this was going to go further, he wondered, how long would he be held here? Would they transport him to another prison? Would the court hand down a harsh punishment? He remembered the hawk-eyed man telling him that the penalty for sorcery in this safe and untroubled country was death, telling him this as his slender fingers toyed calmly with his beard. The killers’ calm was agonising. Despairingly Fahd shouted that he was no magician; his father had been in prison that was all. He had passed the time with these olive stones, he had …
The man had smiled, until Fahd could almost see the cutting beak behind his mouth, and mockingly said, ‘My goodness, are the whole family ex-convicts?’
Fahd was in a desperate situation, the man went on. The charges against him were solid, especially since the woman’s brother had made a complaint on her behalf that Fahd had bewitched her so that she would go out with him against her will.
Damn! Fahd thought to himself. Wasn’t it she who had pursued me? Hadn’t my desire for her faded? Hadn’t she been the one who proposed meeting to console me for my mother’s death? Now who will console me for my death, when it comes? Will I have to stand in some public square like Saeed’s father, Mushabbab, wearing a hood that bears the reek of impending death before my head is sent flying? The penalty for sorcery is beheading by the sword, so kill every sorcerer, but I, sheikh, am not a sorcerer. My father was the one who got me in this fix; he was the one who bequeathed me his effects that I might be mindful of his mistakes and avoid the long imprisonment, the night-time terror of waiting for deferred execution and that was his lot. Look, Father, I’ve taken a short cut. I’m going straight to the slaughterhouse.
The huge man terrified me, roughly turning the toothstick in his mouth and telling me that my file had been handed over to the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution. There was no way out apart from the Indonesian bringing food and tea. How could I offer him a bribe when I had nothing? I promised him a big reward if he helped me. Not to escape: I just wanted to make a call.
His eyes flickered about as he handed me his battered mobile phone. I hurriedly dialled Saeed’s number, terrified that it would be turned off or he wouldn’t answer, particularly since he wouldn’t recognise the number. The moment I heard his voice I quickly said that I was in the Committee’s headquarters, mixed up in a serious case, to which he said in his Southern way, ‘Leave it to me.’ The next day the sheikh with the cream mashlah arrived and I was so happy to see him that I almost hugged him. I reproached him for leaving me, for not listening to my story and the story of the coloured prayer beads, and he smiled, patting my shoulder and telling me that I would leave once I had drawn up a confession of being alone with a woman other than a relative and signed it, pledging that I would not commit the same sin again.
Feeling that I had been set free, I almost fainted. A murderer condemned to death, out in Chop-Chop Square, and just before the sword is raised through the air to split him with its maddened whistle, just before it sinks into the flesh and tendons of his neck and sends his head flying, one of the crowd cries out, ‘I release you in God’s name. In the name of God Almighty, go, you are free,’ and the people gathered there praise God and noisily rejoice, while the condemned man is led back to the car, his hood removed, and seeing life anew, signs away his right to appeal in the courts.
And so the worthy sheikh saved me from execution. I could have fallen on his head and kissed him and I could have embraced Saeed when he came to collect me. My eyes were flickering all over. I had no idea how he’d managed to arrange things, more easily than I had thought possible.
As soon as Fahd saw Saeed he asked him how he had done it.
‘Get in and I’ll tell you,’ Saeed said.