Where Pigeons Don't Fly Read Online Free PDF

and out would come Saeed in his wrinkled
shimagh
, his face still drowsy despite the droplets of water that clung to it.He would get in and they would drive to Ulaya, to pray at Sheikh al-Islam Mohammed Bin Abdel Wahhab Mosque near the house.
    After prayers, Suleiman would go to the Afghans selling toothsticks and buy a long stick, which he broke into three. He would sharpen each piece and hand one to Saeed, one to Fahd and silently chew the third as he walked to the car, the two boys scurrying behind him like tame kittens. He would drive to nearby Urouba Road, pulling over just before the Layla al-Akheliya traffic lights outside Alban Zaman dairy to purchase a five-litre container of sour drinking yoghurt and milk, before going in to the Sulaimaniya supermarket and picking up a copy of
Sharq al-Awsat
, while the boys, beside themselves with joy, got a cold can of Pepsi each.
    Holding their cans, the paper tucked beneath Suleiman’s arm, they would climb to the second floor of their small rented flat and after lunch the two boys would stretch out in Fahd’s bedroom to watch cartoons—
Lady
,
Sally
and
Falouna
, and occasionally,
The Iron Man
—though Fahd, making sure Saeed didn’t notice, would move his pillow from beneath his head and hold it in front of his face to hide his eyes, frightened by the creatures that he feared might reach out through the screen and attack him.
    Just before sunset Suleiman would take them with his wife and their little sister, Lulua, to Sindbad’s Toy Town next to King Fahd Library, or to Marah Amusement Park on King Fahd Road, where they placed woollen blankets beneath their bottoms and shot with heart-stopping speed to the end of the long, undulating slide before panting back up. No one panted more than Lulua, who suffered severe asthmatic attacks thatsent the whole family on frequent journeys to the Children’s Hospital in Sulaimaniya which left Suleiman dizzy, the spinning of his head made worse by the wails of the sick children sat waiting on plastic chairs. The moment Lulua emerged from the oxygen chamber he would hurry away before Fahd could make him stop at the man selling snacks and toys by the large glass door.
    Whenever Suleiman was busy, or wanted to meet one of his friends, he would offer to drop the family at the entrance to the Khaima Funfair for women and children then take himself off for two hours or more. Fahd hated this funfair: the vast building and dimly lit halls. He would lose sight of his mother, sometimes for half an hour or more, and when she finally found him, dragging Lulua behind her, she would grab him viciously by the ear and angrily demand, ‘Where have you been, you clown?’
    Those times when he was lost, he felt destined to live his life far from his family; he feared a swarthy woman would snatch him up and run off and he would go to live in a gloomy house that never saw the sun. Any mention by his parents of the municipal workers who stole children would set Lulua and him trembling and whenever he caught sight of cleaning staff or the like he would shut his eyes until they had passed by.
    â€˜The
ziyoud
will get you!’ his mother would tell them.
    When he was small he assumed the
ziyoud
were the men in Punjabi outfits, Afghans or Pakistanis he guessed, but once he was older he realised that they were Yemenis. Every time his father parked outside the supermarket and went in alone, he and his sister would hide beneath the seats in the back, curled up in the footwells out of sight of the thieves.
    Could this fear of his date back to the silly rhyme he heard when he was five?
    Mummy and daddy loved me,
    They went to Jeddah and left me …
    He felt that his parents really would abandon the two of them without warning, a fear that grew when they went out at night, leaving them with Asiya, their Indonesian maid. They wouldn’t leave until the children were asleep, but if either woke unexpectedly it was torture. At