‘So, what’s fine for him is forbidden for me?’ the young man said.
She scolded him, harsh and self-assured: ‘Fear your Lord, sheikh!’
She knew he was no sheikh, but wanted to give him a rank he respected and would be ashamed of dishonouring. Alarmed, he ran from the room and Tarfah rubbed her thumb against the underside of the table’s edge to remove the loathsome ink.
It made her weep bitterly when Ayman cried in front of her, repeating, ‘This is the end of my trust in you, Tarfah! I’m the only one who respects you and does what you ask, and now you put me in a situation like this.’
Although he was years younger than her, she could pull his head towards her and kiss him twice as she asked his forgiveness; he did not deserve her deceiving him.
‘You’re the only one who has been there for me after Dad died. I don’t have anyone but you. May God never take you from me.’
In the heat of her fervour she said, ‘I swear I’ll only leave the house to go to my grave!’
His mobile had not stopped ringing from one that afternoon and he eventually answered, telling his mother that he and Tarfah would be late because one of the doctors at the university had been suspended. Tarfah had called him several times from the college, he said, and when his mother asked, ‘Shall I send Abdullah, then?’ he had shouted, ‘No! I’m right outside the college. We’ll be home in a few minutes!’
Tarfah cried for a long time in the car. Ayman didn’t ask her who she had gone to the café with but she was unable to raise her beautiful eyes towards him when he sat with his siblings in the living room.
— 64 —
THE DUST WAS CHOKING Riyadh for a third day in succession. The moon’s disc struggled to be seen without any noticeable success. Everything in the city cried out for a lament, for pity.
Fahd was riding next to Saeed as they headed out to the café and feeling almost as if he might fly. He had picked up his British visa and here he was, on his way to meet friends and some other people Saeed had organized as a surprise.
Arriving he found a group, some of whom he knew and others he was meeting for the first time. Saeed introduced him to them one by one: ‘Firas: a friend from the neighbourhood. Saoud, you know: the general director of the Kanoun website. Omar’s an Islamic political activist; he’s been unemployed since he was fired for putting his name to a statement calling for political reform. Ziyad the Dwarf from middle school, the one with a woman’s voice. Ali Bin Abdel Lateef, first in the thaniwiya aama exams at the Najashi Secondary School. And Rashed.’
They sat down and Fahd ordered a pipe of Bahraini apple tobacco and scanned the printed menu, then became aware of the earnest conversation taking place around him. They were arguing with Omar, Saeed having a go at him because he was sitting with an atheist like Brother Firas who believed in nothing. Omar was making it clear that he still believed in the drive to institute reform in the country, even if it ended up fading away or smothered in the cradle. He believed Islam was the only route to this reform, though he rejected both what he called ‘Talibanised religion’ and the form of the faith propagated by the Council of Ministers.
‘Just because there’s a brother without faith like Firas here, doesn’t mean I have to agree with him and nor does he necessarily have to believe in anything himself. It’s a personal matter. It concerns him, his relationship with the world and his view of religion,’
Saeed broke in to say that they had come together to say goodbye to Fahd who was travelling to Britain, perhaps to study, and perhaps to emigrate, temporarily or permanently as it might be.
As he began telling them the story of Fahd’s tempestuous life over the last two years a group of bearded men entered the café, led by a portly man whose body jiggled inside his short thaub, the corner of his shimagh dangling down either side of his face. He halted in the middle of the seated patrons. Some hid their shisha hoses beside them while others hung them on the brackets next to the pipes and got up to leave. Fahd was on the verge of walking out when Omar gestured at him to sit down and whispered to everybody: ‘Please, no one leave. I want you to witness what I’m going to do with your own eyes.’
‘Brothers, the sheikh has something to say!’ bellowed one of the men. Most of them were over twenty. Some carried plastic bags full of free cassettes and little booklets; others ringed the fat sheikh with his round red face and groomed black beard.
‘Brothers, not one of you can claim to be a believer until he desires for his brother what he would want for himself, and, by God, I love you all in God’s fellowship and wish for you what I wish for myself! My Brothers — may God guide you — the smoking of shisha, and tobacco in all its forms, is among those things that are proscribed for the harm they bring, as doctors have shown, and is forbidden by the words of Almighty God, may He be praised: “They ask you what is lawful for them. Say: lawful for you are all things pure and good.” And also: “He commands them to do what is just and forbids them from evil; He makes lawful for them what is good and pure and prohibits them from what is bad and impure.” Tobacco and shisha, my Brothers, are amongst those impure things proscribed by God in His Book, for they are the cause of illness and destruction: “Make not your own hands the instruments of your destruction.” And also, “Do not kill yourselves, for God has been to you the Most Merciful.”’
The sheikh talked on for ten minutes amid absolute silence, some even lowering the volume of their mobile phones, giving him a feeling of great satisfaction and importance. As he finished reciting his final verse, Omar raised his hand and in a loud voice that broke the hush, he shouted, ‘God reward you, sheikh! I have a question.’
The sheikh glanced at him for a moment. ‘Please.’
‘Truly, God reward you for that advice, but might we know your name?’
The sheikh looked him up and down sourly and one of his acolytes said, ‘Sheikh Hamoud Bin Abdullah.’
With a self assurance and courage that was the envy of the silent crowd, Omar said, ‘Naturally, sheikh, you would agree with me that you yourself contain both good and evil.’
The sheikh nodded uncertainly. ‘Indeed …’—while his companions lifted their eyebrows in disbelief.
Omar fired his second volley: ‘And of course, sheikh — God reward you on behalf of us all — you will know that there are those amongst us who will be better even than you.’
Then Omar came to the point, speaking with a crazed bluntness: ‘You came here to speak to these guys, most of whom are unemployed, so that they’d give up smoking but you didn’t ask yourself why they’re here. Don’t you know that most of them don’t have work or a hope of finding it, that they’re poor and struggling? Don’t you think, sheikh, that standing up to tyrants, fighting for what is right before an unjust ruler, is more important than taking on the shisha habit of these penniless men?’
The sheikh was staring at Omar, struck dumb by shock. His face reddened and he began to mutter unintelligibly as he made for the exit followed by his bearded men, while Omar continued to scream in a blind frenzy: ‘Sheikh! Don’t turn your tail and run! Come here, I’ve got something important to tell you!’
Some of the young men in the café chuckled and Saeed shouted, ‘A big hand for Sheikh Omar!’
A roar went up, the youths clapping and whistling with a delight rarely to be found in a city whose dust only cleared when a new dust storm rolled in.