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

don’t you understand?’
    His uncle took the picture down and flung it to the ground. ‘I don’t want to see any pictures in this house after today. Pictures are forbidden. You just don’t get it. Angels won’t enter a house where there are pictures. God protect me from you!’
    He went out and Fahd froze, the fingers clutching his ruler and open biology textbook suddenly numb. He got to his feet, the needle stitching its thread through his chest. He lifted up his father’s smiling portrait, the one taken at Studio Zamani in Thalatheen Street with its painted backdrop of books on a shelf. Sobbing, he kissed it and then hid it behind his clothes in the wardrobe. When he went to bed at night he would lock his door, take it out and sit talking to his father, reproaching him:
    â€˜Why did you betray me, Father? You had no right to run off and leave me to face life on my own. You had no right letting this person meddle with my life. Have you noticed that the only thing left of you in your own house is inside my wardrobe? All of this because of your brother, with his belly, his beard and his stink like the smell of the dead. Sometimes I think that he really is dead. He smells like a corpse as he climbs the stairs to the house. I don’t know, I just smell dead men climbing the stairs. I even feel that you’re alive, sometimes, that behind my clothes you’re more alive than him.’
    Nor did Abu Ayoub find it easy to accept Saeed, the family friend, coming into the house. This young man, raised by Suleiman as a favour to his fellow inmate Mushabbab, who had spent happy days as one of the family and often travelled with them to Sharqiya and Ta’if, was now banned from their home.
    â€˜I’m not worried about your boy other than from that Southerner,’ Abu Ayoub shouted to the back of Soha’s head one day as she stood silently before the stove making his bitter coffee. ‘His father was a terrorist, one of Juhayman’s group, and his family are a bunch of degenerate Zero-Sevens. Come into this house? Not a chance. I’ve bumped into him in the
majlis
a few times wearing a T-shirt and underwear and nothing else.’
    One evening, when the uncle was with his first wife, Umm Yasser, Saeed called Fahd up to invite him out to Yamama College.
    â€˜We’ll catch a play and get a break from studying.’
    Fahd agreed and told him that he would wait at Tareeqati Café, to avoid the possibility of his uncle surprising him outside the door as he got into Saeed’s car. He had no desire to bring the man’s rage and ranting down on his mother. When it was time for the sunset prayer he put his
shimagh
over his shoulder, told her he was going out and hurried off.
    Saeed was sitting in his car outside the café. Before getting in Fahd motioned with his hand to say that he would fetch some coffee. Saeed nodded. When Fahd pushed the glass door he found that it was locked. He peered inside where the dim lights glowed but saw no one. He rapped his knuckle against the glass. Saeed got his attention with a soft honk of the horn and held his hand in front of his mouth like a megaphone, indicating that it was a prayer time. Inside the café a little sign dangled down above the door:
Closed for Prayer
.
    Fahd got in and Saeed told him that he had been to the college the evening before and there were cafés and restaurants by the main entrance. They set off towards Qaseem Road and as they approached Quwa al-Amn Bridge, Saeed moved to the right lane and turned left, heading back to Riyadh on the service road. At the corner of the college’s outer wall he turned right and they passed through the northern gate, finding a parking space some distance from the main building. It was still early but they walked until they had almost crossed the courtyard in front of the entrance.
    â€˜Some coffee or tea?’ Saeed asked.
    â€˜Ummm … There’s a poetry