‘But how? How come they changed their minds so easily?’
‘Connections, my friend. Connections over and above the law …’
‘What connections?’
‘Your uncle.’
‘Damn you and my uncle!’ Fahd bellowed in a rage, trying to open the car’s locked door. He raised a pointed finger at Saeed and screamed, ‘I swear if I’d known this when I was back there I’d never have signed the pledge, even if they’d condemned me to death. I’ve nothing left to lose!’
‘Fahd, listen to me. If things had been left to grow and spread it might not have been a death sentence, but you could have gone to prison for a long time and been robbed of your life and your studies.’
‘What, Saeed? There’s no one left to help me off their rubbish-tip except my murderer of an uncle?’
‘Because your uncle has ties to them. Don’t forget, he knows their top guys and most of them pray at his mosque. They’ve got interests in common.’
‘Fine. Where is he then?
‘He came after making a few calls and finished your paperwork, then he left again.’
‘He left? Really? Without saying anything? He didn’t make any problems for me?’
Saeed avoided the question and turned his gaze towards the shops in the street. He would go back to the flat, he said, so Fahd could take a shower and change his clothes and celebrate his release at an expensive restaurant.
When Saeed tried to park the car outside Buhasli restaurant on King Abdullah Road, Fahd objected, remarking that he hated the whole street, its shops, restaurants and cafés. He had barely recovered from his unpleasant memories of Starbucks, he said, so Saeed drove on to Saraya, the Turkish restaurant on Thalatheen Street, and as they were waiting for their food, Fahd asked, ‘Tell me. What happened?
‘Basically your uncle asked me to tell you that he never wants to see you again.’
‘To hell with him. I don’t want to see my mother’s killer anyway.’
‘There’s something else.’
Saeed fell silent, poking holes in his paper napkin with a fork and considering how best to explain. ‘He took a copy of your case file at the Committee and asked them to keep a record of your pledge.’
‘Why? So he can haggle with it whenever he wants?’
‘No.’
‘You sure?’
‘He told me he was taking your sister to live with him because you are untrustworthy and incapable of looking after her.’
Fahd said nothing for a while, briefly peering out at Thalatheen Street as if he was struggling with his eyes to stop a sudden tear springing forth. He saw pigeons wandering around over the broad pavement. One of them hopped on a tub containing a wilting bush while the rest continued to circle the tightly packed paving stones, pecking away as if reading their painful life stories. He returned his gaze to the gloom of the restaurant and whispered in a sad, defeated voice: ‘God damn him.’
‘A week ago you were thinking of emigrating. When I asked you about your sister you said she was the same as your uncle and she didn’t concern you any more.’
‘She’s all that’s left of my family, Saeed, do you understand?’
His voice changed, becoming strangled. A grief-wracked sob rose from his chest and he cried a little. Knotting his hands on the tabletop he laid his head on them and wept for a long time, silent and full of sadness. Saeed let him be for a few minutes and then reached out his hand and laid it on his head.
‘Be brave, Fahd. You’re a man, you have to confront life and its challenges.’
Leaving the restaurant, Fahd saw a Starbucks on the other side of the street with its famous green sign and shouted in a mocking voice so Saeed could hear, ‘Bye-bye Starfucks!’
Saeed laughed as he opened the car door. ‘That’s a global company. You’ll find it on every corner in the world, maybe even in that village you’re planning to live in in Britain.’
‘Very possibly, but you know something? The difference is that there’s no Committee there, nobody watching your every move and counting your breaths. No, “Where are going? Where have you been? Who’s that girl with you? Your mother, your sister or your lover?”’
Saeed let out a long whistle. ‘Well, I hope life over there agrees with you.’
— 62 —
FAHD DROVE HIS SMALL car towards Ulaya Street, past the Pizza Hut in Urouba Road and into the narrow side street called Sayyidat al-Ru’osa, from where he entered Zuhair Rustom Alley, stopping briefly by the black door behind which his childhood had passed like a dream. This door, from whose threshold he had bade farewell to his father Suleiman as he started the car and headed off to Qaseem, never to return. This door, through which his gypsy uncle entered with glassy eyes and a belly fat with care and deliberation, to expel not just Fahd, but Fahd’s whole life, from this contented household. This door, through which he passed for the first time carrying his satchel, headed for the unfamiliar faces of pupils and teachers at Al-Ahnaf Bin Qais Primary School. This door, scuffed by the feet of his grandfather, his grandmother and his mother’s three brothers. This door, from which they carried the body of his mother, fighting for life after being subjected to a savage beating. This door, ponderous, melancholy, scowling. This door, broad-shouldered as a gorilla, not wide enough to admit the dreams of one small family that began its life with an ill-starred association with the Divine Reward Salafist Group, the breadwinner spending years in prison for taking a risk and handing out pamphlets inciting rebellion before returning to live his life with honour, shunned by respectable families. This door that opened smoothly and didn’t creak, unlike his grandparents’ door in al-Muraidasiya, which shamed them with its vibrant squeak, reckoned a kind of singing by the local congregation, some manifestation of the Satanic pipes that must be stilled. This door, witness to a life which flew past in a demented rush, never pausing to look over its shoulder.
Fahd raised his eyes to the fogged glass of the car window: maybe he would see his sister’s ghost. But he saw nothing there save silence and slow death, nothing save a pot with its withered plant.
He started the car and drove off. Turning left and passing Sheikh al-Islam Mohammed Bin Abdel Wahhab Mosque he looked out at the southern steps where the shelves for sandals stood empty. But lying on the ground he noticed a pair of tattered leather sandals like those of his father, his father’s final pair that had driven him to his death.
Once past the mosque his heart thumped in alarm and he turned back and parked the car. He got out, frightened and confused, removed his shoes at the entrance to the mosque and glanced briefly at the size of the sandals by the door. He put his right foot in one—‘It’s my father’s size!’—and reaching out to the door he felt a shiver run through his body like cold water and the hairs on his skin prick up.
Very slowly, he opened the door and in the far west corner of the mosque, next to the mihrab, he saw a body wrapped in a hair mashlah and apparently asleep, its face turned towards the qibla. He considered walking quietly round to see the face. He was frightened that he might wake, but he was determined and he moved forward with slow steps, alert to any rustling from his thaub. Reaching the mihrab he took a look at the sleeping man’s face, but he had covered it with his shimagh. He thought of making a loud noise to wake him up, but instead retraced his steps to the door, turning every few paces towards the qibla where the man lay.
He peered at the sandals for a while. They looked like the ones his father and Mushabbab had taken turns wearing in prison whenever one of them was summoned for interrogation, until that heavy day had dawned and Saeed’s father had donned the leather sandals and gone outside and neither he nor the sandals had returned. Were these sandals, lying like a witness outside the door of the mosque, the sandals that Saeed’s father had slipped on a quarter of century before?