With the family’s meagre goods finally unloaded, the boy’s mother stood with the old man in the decaying kitchen, quietly trying to thank him for everything he had done. He shook his head, pressed a small roll of banknotes into her hand and told her he would send more – not much, but enough – every month. As she bit her lip, trying not to cry at his generosity, he walked slowly to his granddaughters, who were watching from the dirt yard, and put his arms around them.
Then he turned and hesitated – he had left the hardest part to last. His grandson, aware of what was coming, was trying to look busy opening boxes on the back porch. His grandfather approached and waited for him to look up. Neither of them was quite sure, as men, how much emotion to show – until the grandfather reached out and held the boy tight. This was no time for pride; he was an old man, and only God knew if he would ever see his grandson again.
He stepped back and looked at the youngster – every day he thought of how much he resembled his own boy, the one they had executed. Still, life lives on in our children and their children, and not even a king can take that away. Abruptly he turned and walked towards the vehicles, calling to the cousins to start the engines. He didn’t look back lest the family see the tears rolling down his cheeks.
The boy, surrounded by his mother and two sisters, stood in the gathering darkness for a long time and watched the tail lights of their former lives disappear into the night.
Chapter Four
TWO DAYS LATER, for the first time in her adult life, the children’s mother went out in public unaccompanied by an adult male. Despite her fear and embarrassment, she had no choice – if she didn’t keep the children occupied their loneliness and new-found poverty might overwhelm them.
Adrift in a foreign land without relatives or friends, she found the local bus stop, bundled the kids on board and walked for hours with them through the city’s shopping malls. It was a revelation. None of them had any experience of a liberal interpretation of Islam, and they looked wide-eyed at posters for American movies and Bollywood musicals, stared at Western women in tank tops and shorts and couldn’t believe Muslim women in elaborate abayas who had surrendered their veils for Chanel sunglasses.
For the boy, one thing above everything else swept his feet from under him. The only female faces he had ever seen were those of his mother and close relatives – he hadn’t even seen women in photographs: magazines and billboards showing unveiled women were banned in Saudi Arabia. So, in the shops of Bahrain, suddenly afforded a basis of comparison, he learned something which otherwise he would never have known – his mother was beautiful.
Of course, all sons think that about their mothers, but the boy knew it wasn’t prejudice. She was still only thirty-three, with high cheekbones, flawless skin and wide almond eyes that sparkled with intelligence. Her nose was fine and straight, leading the eye directly to the perfect curve of her mouth. More than that, her recent suffering gave her a grace and hauteur far above her modest position in life.
One night not long afterwards, with his sisters in bed, he sat beneath a bare light strung across the kitchen and haltingly told his mother how lovely she was. Laughing, she kissed the top of his head, but in bed that night she cried quietly – when a boy started to notice a woman’s beauty it meant he was growing up, and she knew she was losing him.
In the weeks that followed she succeeded in enrolling the three kids in good schools and the boy, after six attempts, found a mosque that was rigid and anti-Western enough to have met with his father’s approval. A fifteen-year-old who walked in off the street, unaccompanied by any male member of his family, was an unusual addition to any group of worshippers, so, on the first Friday after prayers, the imam, blind since birth, and several other men invited him for tea in a beautiful garden at the back of the building.
Under a purple jacaranda tree the boy volunteered almost nothing about the events that had brought him to Bahrain, but the men weren’t easily diverted and, unable to lie to the imam, he finally told them in fractured vignettes the story of his father’s death. At the end the men bowed their heads and praised his father. ‘What son – what devout Muslim – could not be proud of a man who had spoken out in defence of his faith and its values?’ they asked angrily.
For a boy who had been shamed and rejected by his community, who had been lonely for so long, it was a salutary experience. Already the mosque was starting to fill the emotional void at the centre of his life.
The blind imam told him that God sends only as much suffering as a man can handle. Therefore the horrific events in Jeddah were a testament to his father’s deep devotion and courage. With that he reached out and ran his fingers over the teenager’s face, committing him to memory. It was a sign of respect, a special welcome into their fellowship.