Where Pigeons Don't Fly by Yousef Al-Mohaimeed Page A

transmit his knowledge to the greatest possible number offuture husbands, and so that the men in these foreign countries might understand that Islam permits multiple wives, he would point out the relevant Qur’anic verse in translation. How skilfully he convinced these new converts to Islam! He would distribute blessings on these benighted individuals then return to his house in Quds to boast to his first wife, Umm Yasser, that more than 120 of these foreigners, men and women, had joined Islam at his urging.
    And so it was that in a few short years he became the owner of seventeen agarwood outlets in Riyadh. His Abu Ayoub Agarwood and Eastern Perfumes chain enjoyed an irresistible appeal and credibility amongst the public. The Bangladeshi guard no longer manned the shop on his own, but was assisted by a large number of Indonesian employees with long, light beards whose individual hairs hung down separately, and gleaming white
ghatras
on their heads, the sort whose toothsticks only left their mouths when they slept.
    Â 
    â€“13 –
    O CCASIONALLY, SOMEONE WOULD ASK why Abu Ayoub was so keen on marrying his brother’s widow. Was it out of spite? Was it because all his deceased brother had salvaged from the wreck of this world was a beautiful wife whom he loved, leaving Abu Ayoub dreaming of adding her to his possessions, like the hundredth camel in the story of the two brothers, one of whom owned ninety-nine of the beasts but could not rest until he had taken possession of his brother’s only camel to make a round one hundred?
    One summer evening Fahd and Lulua clapped for joy and shouted when Abu Essam and his wife knocked on their door, bringing with them gifts from Amman and spreading laughter through the sad house. But the laughter died away when the two young ones discovered that their grandparents had come to tell them that one day they would grow up, marry and have homes and children of their own to distract them from their mother, that this was life, and it was their mother’s right to look to her own interests. So it was that Abu Ayoub slipped in, a wolf dressed as a pussycat, who later tried to win Fahd over by buying him a new car.
    Just a month later and Abu Ayoub was ready to usher angels into the home that his brother—God rest his soul—had made a dwelling place for devils and infidel demons. By degrees, life started to change: the still-grieving Soha began setting the dialon her kitchen radio to play the Holy Qur’an all day long, and then the cassettes of Fairuz, Umm Kulthoum, Khaled Abdel Rahman and Ahlam vanished to be replaced by taped sermons. In one a sheikh screeched away as he recounted the terrors of the Day of Resurrection and the sins committed by the heedless, such as giving an ear to slander, gossip and song, coveting that which God had declared forbidden, adultery, sodomy, prostitution and filth. He spoke of the righteous path: hotter than burning coals, more slender than a hair, sharper than a knife-edge, more elusive than a fox, with Paradise at one end and hellfire beneath it and no way forward but along its back. Another sheikh spoke of death, when they place you in the grave and the two angels, Munkir and Nakeer, come to judge you; then he wept and wept and with him wept Soha and little Lulua.
    A few months later and the uncle started urging Fahd to enrol at the College of Sharia Law, promising that he would come top of his class and get a job as a judge or court clerk. Despite the overpowering influence of his uncle, Fahd never even considered it. His loathing of the man had grown after he took down his father’s portrait from the living room wall. Fahd took the picture to his bedroom where he was now confined, when in his father’s time the whole house had been his. He hung the picture facing his bed, but his uncle surprised him in the room one day and screamed, ‘You’re in need of some re-education. Pictures are not to be glorified,