The railway station was extremely crowded. The half-year examinations had finished, and everyone wanted to spend the vacation with their families. He saw several faces that he recognised from secondary school. He exchanged hasty greetings with them, then joined the crowd, first to get a ticket and then to get a decent seat. The crowd didn’t annoy him or get him down, because he knew that at the end of it lay Dammam, his family, his loved ones and the sea … How he yearned for the sea after so many months in a city without a sea! When the train finally moved off he had already started Al-Tariq, by Naguib Mahfouz. Soon the red hills of sand passed quickly on either side of the train.
About halfway between Riyadh and Dammam, he started to feel extremely hungry. He hadn’t eaten any of Moudhi’s breakfast, except for drinking the tea. At the time he hadn’t wanted anything, not with that splitting headache. It was still very painful, even if it was now less intense. He put Al-Tariq to one side and went to the restaurant at the rear of the train. There he sat at a table beside the window, ordered chicken, rice and cola, and began to eat quietly. The chicken tasted nothing like chicken but more like cooked fibre, and the rice didn’t taste like rice. The smell from it was distinctly unappetising, but despite that he ate the whole lot. The restaurant car wasn’t crowded; most of the passengers had brought their own food and drink, but there were a few people sitting down. Some were drinking tea or juice, others were eating sandwiches and some were doing nothing at all except watching the sand dunes, which had turned yellow beyond Dahna, passing by like the years of one’s life.
He finished his meal and ordered a glass of tea which he drank quietly as he smoked, inhaling deeply and blowing the smoke upwards, watching it disperse across the roof of the carriage. He was deep in thought about nothing in particular when he felt a hand placed on his shoulder and a familiar voice saying, ‘hello’. He looked to see whose voice it was and there was Adnan, standing behind him wearing the trace of a smile. He had grown thinner, although his face was less pallid – what one could see of his face, that is; his hair sprawled over most of it, completely unkempt. His large beard was untrimmed, while his moustache was extremely neat and obviously clipped. He was wearing a short brown woollen tob and a red headdress with no headband. You could see the front of his head and the edge of his white skullcap. The trace of a smell of aloe oil wafted gently from him.
Hisham got up at once, smiling broadly, and held out his hand in his friend’s direction. ‘Greetings to you too,’ he said, trying to make his voice sound deep. ‘God bless you.’ The pair shook hands and Hisham pulled his friend into a spare seat opposite him at the table. For a short time they examined each other – they hadn’t met for around two months. Even in the college canteen, Adnan had avoided him recently. Hisham finally brought the silence to an end by asking his friend if he wanted to eat or drink anything, but he refused. Adnan looked at him intently. ‘Wow!’ he said. ‘It’s your moustache. You seem older than you really are, but more handsome!’ Hisham smiled and thanked him for the compliment. ‘But wouldn’t it have been better to let your beard grow?’ added Adnan. ‘That is nearer to the love of God and obedience to the Prophet, and the beard is one of the signs of true manhood.’ Hisham didn’t want to get involved in an argument of any sort, so he smiled, nodding his head in agreement. ‘The moustache is a first step,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the beard will come next, God willing.’ Adnan knew his friend better than anyone else. He realised that Hisham did not want to embark on a conversation of this sort. He quickly made ready to get up, saying quickly, ‘God willing, God willing. And by the way, you will quit smoking, which injures the health and angers God. God will always reward the man who does good.’ Hisham tried to stop him leaving, but he insisted, saying that he was with some other friends, then left, heading for a table at the end of the restaurant where two people looking just like Adnan sat drinking tea. Hisham ordered another glass of tea. Blowing smoke into the air he stole a glance in Adnan’s direction, trying to rationalise the change that had come over his oldest friend.
There was no one waiting for him at the station. He hadn’t told anyone he was coming. This was deliberate, despite the fact that he knew they would be expecting him. He left the train hurriedly, found his case, then took the first taxi he saw without even asking about the fare. He gave the driver the address, and the taxi sped off down the main road in the direction of Eighteenth Street.
He missed everything about Dammam. Even the ugly municipal architecture seemed beautiful this time, as he passed it on his way home. In less than ten minutes the taxi was standing in front of their house. How beautiful and how comfortingly familiar it was right then! He jumped out and gave the driver two riyals without any haggling. Then he pounded on the door and rang the bell at the same time, his heart beating hard. A few moments later, he heard a voice he knew well. It seemed to be coming from a long way away, as it repeated, ‘Okay … okay!’ Then it came closer, asking, ‘Who is it? Who is at the door?’
‘It’s me … it’s me, Mother!’ The door opened wide and he immediately found himself savouring his mother’s delightful scent. She kissed him several times, and he kissed her brow, then surrendered to her warm embrace. His father wasn’t in. He was at one of the evening gatherings he often went to in the winter. They sat in the television room, with all the familiar memories it aroused, as his mother scrutinised him from top to bottom, smiling. The joy shone in her eyes.
‘Goodness me … You’ve become a man, Hisham … and handsome with it!’ She gestured to his dark moustache. He smiled back, stroking it.
‘The monkey is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother!’ he said. His mother laughed, revealing the distinctive gaps between her teeth, then said, ‘Monkey or gazelle, the important thing is that God gives you health and happiness, with a long life and salvation!’ Then she got up, promising him a special supper of his favourite dishes, and left him on his own.
He looked at the room around him. Nothing in it had changed at all, everything was exactly as it had been. He laughed at himself. He’d only been away five or six months at most. What could change in a house that had been accustomed to so much order and stability? If only his mother knew how much he’d changed in those few short months. He wasn’t as innocent nowadays. He had tried every despicable vice in her book: he had drunk alcohol, he had made love to women and he was a regular smoker. What would his mother think if she knew what he had done in Riyadh? She wouldn’t hate him, of course; he would remain her son whatever happened, but she would be wounded in a way that would never heal.
‘You must be starving!’ his mother cried as she returned, carrying the tea tray and a small plate containing round ma’mul, pistachio pastries, and ghurayyiba, sweet butter pastries. Beside the tea, there was some green mint. She put the tray in front of him without sitting down, then turned and went back to the kitchen, saying, ‘I’ll finish cooking while you enjoy your tea.’ He tried to make her stay and forget the cooking – it was already eight in the evening – but she refused. ‘How many Hishams do I have to take pleasure in?’ she said, her whole face turning into a broad, unadulterated smile. ‘Anyway, the winter nights are long, don’t worry!’ Then she disappeared into the kitchen. There was nothing more delicious than his mother’s tea and sweetmeats on a winter’s night. He drank the tea as if he had not tasted it in years, and ate her date cakes as if he were seeing and tasting them for the first time in his life. Moudhi’s tea had no flavour, and he couldn’t remember Suwayr’s tea at all, despite having drunk so much of it.
He finished the tea and cake, with his mother still in the kitchen. The smell of boiled onions wafted all through the house. He got up and switched on the television. Hiyam Younis was singing My Heart’s Devotion. He turned it off and went to his room … everything was as it had been. The bed, the books, the table, everything. He sat on the bed and smiled, the memories tumbling about in his head. Here was the first kiss in his life with Noura. It had been sweeter than honey (never mind that he didn’t like honey), and hotter than fire. He had kissed others since, and for far longer, but the taste of that kiss still burned his lips.
There was his small library, every book with its own story and its own memories. Here was the book in which Adnan had found the leaflet that had been the beginning of the rift between him and his lifelong friend. And here was the book through which he had discovered Marxism for the first time. The night he finished reading it he hadn’t slept at all, but instead lay burning with thoughts and ideas. It was the story that had fanned the political flames inside him when he read it for the first time.
He left his room and went towards the courtyard at the rear. There was the money he had buried for the organisation. He lit a cigarette and took a huge drag as he gazed at the spot where the money was. Now the organisation had vanished, and six months had passed without anyone asking about it. It was all over and he was beginning a new life – so why shouldn’t he take the money? He had a right to it. He was about to dig it up, but something made him shrink away at the last moment. He threw the cigarette over the wall of the house and went back inside.
His mother was still in the kitchen, and he was watching a local show – crass, there was no other word for it – when his father came in. He leapt up, kissed his brow and embraced him. His father’s face showed obvious joy, despite his efforts not to, for like every traditional Nejdi, the most important thing for his father to preserve, whatever life threw at him, was his absolute composure. Hisham was used to his father behaving like this. He knew that his father would like to hug him tight, but that he stopped himself. Before sitting down, his father shouted to his mother at the top of his voice, ‘Be happy, Umm Hisham … Hisham has arrived safely, thank God!’ His mother’s voice could be heard in the distance, repeating, ‘By the Prophet, by the Prophet, God willing! God grant you salvation!’
Then his father sat down in his favourite corner of the room, while Hisham found a place beside him. His father began to ask him about his studies, about his uncle and cousins, about his new moustache and the other usual things, until his mother appeared carrying the tablecloth that heralded the arrival of supper. The three of them arranged themselves around the tray of meat and potatoes and tucked in happily. ‘God bless Hisham,’ said his father. ‘At last a reason for a decent supper.’ Then he laughed contentedly, while his mother retorted in a mock angry tone, teasing him gently, ‘Goodness … It’s as if you went to bed hungry every night. Have we forgotten how to eat?’ And they all laughed, as mother and father looked happily at Hisham. My God! How he loved these two people …
When he went to bed that night, he felt he had at last returned to his roots, to a place that he loved and where he belonged, especially after his mother’s kiss that took him back to those childhood days. He went to sleep with a contented smile on his lips, and slept as if he had never tasted sleep until that day.