Saad Al Dousari is a Saudi writer and narrator. Along with the generation of the 1970s, he helped establish literary modernity in Saudi Arabia - before, during and after the religious radicalisation that prevailed in Saudi Arabia since the 1980s, until all symbols and manifestations of this radicalisation were eliminated in 2015.

From his beginnings in 1975 until today, he has been one of the most consistent and prolific writers of his generation. He has published two novels, five short story collections, nine children's books and three plays. For thirty years, he wrote a daily opinion column and was involved in the founding of the Saudi film industry through his screenplays.

He received the Riyadh University Prize for short stories in 1980, the Ministry of Culture Prize for novels in 2012 and was honoured by the Ministry of Education as a children's book author and by the Saudi Society for Culture and Arts as a playwright.

It was pouring with rain and almost seven o'clock.
I was lonely and hungry. My wife had left five days earlier, taking our children out of town.
When I said goodbye to my three children, she cried. She hid her tears under her veil, and I thought to myself:
- I'll never see them again.

On the way to the airport, my son said to his sister:
- Dad's going to stay behind in the war.*

My wife whispered to me:
- Are you scared?
I replied:
- We're always at war.

The rain spoke to me with its steady rhythm on the flagstones of the small courtyard.
It was almost seven o'clock.
The smell of the meal I had started to prepare turned my stomach; I turned off the gas stove and opened the kitchen window.
The distant light falling on the bare fig tree added a damp majesty and faint nocturnal scent to its sadness.

I rushed to the radio, which was broadcasting the signal announcing the bulletin.
A burning nail sank between my ribs.
My colleague had called me before we left and begged me not to let the stress overwhelm me.
She contacted me every two hours or so to check up on me.

Each time, she begged me to turn off the little radio I carried with me everywhere, and immerse myself in work, like everyone else.
-You won't change anything. This is our destiny. We've been through so much...and what have we achieved?

I poured my heart out into the yellow light of the radio dial.
I thought I saw the announcer gathering news agency dispatches to declare:
- It's no use. Everything has failed.

The rain was seeping into the nail that was burning even hotter in my chest.
Was it a form of seizure about to strike me?
Or the redness of crying, which for months had become the twin of my breathing?
- Take a hot bath and listen to some music. It'll soothe you.

I was wearing a cotton t-shirt and pants.
I could feel the sweat soaking my chest despite the cold.
I turned off the radio and stretched out on the sofa.
The light was dimmed in the living room, and I didn't have a phone at home.
My neighbourhood was far from the hustle and bustle of the city, which had been silent now for weeks.
Except for a neighbour four houses away, our neighbourhood was deserted.
- Dad's going to stay behind in the war.

My wife knows how much fear is in me.
- What do they want from you? Why are they hunting you down? Why are they forbidding you to travel, to write?

My hands began to shake. I said to myself:
- You're not afraid - you're hungry. You haven't eaten anything for two days. You only eat bread and a little salad. You smoke too much, you drink too much. You are not afraid. You're not afraid.

I got up.
I took off my T-shirt and laid it over my shoulder.
I opened the living room window; a cold, damp draught came in.
I looked at my chest: it was still soaked with sweat, and my ribs were visibly sticking out.
- I've lost maybe ten kilos.

I started to walk around the rooms.
The children's room smelled of pencils and school homework.
Dirty socks lay here and there, a hairbrush too.
Our bedroom was plunged into darkness, save for a nightlight next to the bed
which I used to read before bed.
The living room was a mess: newspapers, books, work papers, empty water bottles, a dusty cooler, a box of saltine crackers still closed.

Next to the front door, a pair of trainers.
I sat down next to them. Without thinking, I grabbed my keys, put my shirt back on, and headed out.

I walked past the few houses in the neighbourhood, and found myself in a dark area, bordered by a rough, vacant lot.
Land waiting for builders.
I, too, have bare land waiting for me to build a home and gather my children.
I still have long years left.
Maybe even longer now.
Or maybe they'll never come.
- What do they want from you? Why are they after you? Why are they depriving you of...

Things are going to get worse.
The children and their mother will stay out of town.
And I'll stay alone.
If I stay.

The cold invaded my chest.
The drizzle soaked my hair and clothes.
I started to jog, then little by little, broke into a run.

I'd strayed far from the neighbourhood. I felt like I was in a desert. But for the paved road, I'd have thought I'd left the city.
Between me and this city, there's a green artery. It irrigates us both with warmth and passion. I can't imagine myself without its pulse, nor my face detached from its facades.
The inhabitants of this city are no longer the guardians of its sandy dream. They have slipped away from her spontaneous vigils to join the golden feasts, leaving her alone to search, in the ruins of the night, for a rebab who would make her heart vibrate, a lover whose restless thirst, drowned in clouds, has not yet been extinguished.

In the distance, the sound of a car engine reached my ears. I kept running, not looking back. As it approached, I had to leave the asphalt, but it turned in my direction. I stopped and turned around. It was a patrol car, with two policemen inside.

The driver stopped and the policeman next to him got out. He greeted me and asked:
- Do you need any help?
I replied, visibly troubled:
- No, thank you.
The other policeman got out in turn and joined his colleague, saying:
- Are you running in this rain and cold?!
I stammered to answer him. There was no apparent reason to run in such weather and darkness. They wouldn't understand if I told them I was suffocating, and that running was my only means of relief. But I decided to try, I had nothing to lose.
- I was feeling a severe tightness.
My hands were still shaking, and I was struggling to catch my breath.

The driver said in an authoritative tone:
- Get in... Come on, get in with us.
His colleague opened the jeep's rear door. I climbed in, my legs weak with fear.

I took the seat furthest from them. But the other, a religious man with a long beard, asked me to come closer. The windows were closed and I was still breathing with difficulty. I saw him reach out to the driver and squeeze his knee. The clean-shaven driver laughed:
- Have you been drinking?

My heart sank. A feeling of dizziness and chills invaded my whole body. All the previous week, I'd been drinking every day from the moment I left the office until two, three, even four in the morning, when I finally managed to sleep, because without it, it was impossible. I didn't worry about eating: I'd nibble on crackers, a few slices of bread, cucumbers or carrots. I never slept more than three hours. I often woke to the sound of the morning news flash, sleeping next to the radio, once all the news bulletins were over.

I tried neither to feign innocence nor to evade, so as not to complicate matters further. I replied with forced assurance:
- Yes...
And added:
- But as you can see, I'm perfectly lucid. It's just that I was feeling very oppressed...

The religious man turned to me, furious, and cut me off:
- You all say that...
He was silent for a moment, then blurted out:
- It's a sin.

We all remained silent. The driver turned around and headed for the houses. He reached the main avenue and headed for the neighbourhood station. The radio crackled incessantly, while my breathing calmed. The driver grabbed the transmitter and announced my arrest using abbreviated codes.

We arrived at the police station a few minutes later, during which the din of the radio was our only conversation. The receptionist asked me to enter the detention room, crowded with Turkish, Thai, Pakistani and Indian workers. I was still soaked with rain and sweat.

The floor of the room was cement. The walls, dirty and covered in handprints, gave off a nauseating stench. I stood with my hands on my hips, watching through the only opening as the policemen came and went. Amid the noise of their footsteps, I could hear the radio, though I couldn't make out what it was broadcasting, despite all my concentration.

A Turkish worker with bushy eyebrows approached me and asked:
- Residency?
He wanted to know if I'd been arrested for lack of a residence permit, like most of the men crammed in here awaiting deportation.
I replied:
- No.
He bowed his head, then returned to smoking his acrid tobacco with his companions, whose faces were etched with despair and despondency.

This was the first time I'd been in a detention cell. I had always dreaded this situation. The terror of prison for such an offense haunted me. Even when I drank alone in my room, I always felt as if a policeman was standing next to my glass.
I had stopped drinking several years ago, despite my love for Friday nights, after my children had gone to sleep, when I would pour myself a drink, read or watch a film. But a month ago, a friend - knowing how tense I was because of events - had offered me two bottles, and I hadn't hesitated to accept them.

He gave them to me, wrapped in a newspaper and slipped into a black bag, joking:
"That'll last you a year."

He also knew that I drank alone, and rarely.
I thought:
"How am I going to get out of this mess?!"
I didn't want anyone to find out. I decided to call my colleague, who knows everything, and let her handle the situation. However, I doubted I'd be able to reach her. After questioning me, they were probably going to arrest me for two or three days. Maybe even whip me. And they certainly wouldn't let me make any calls.

The sound of the radio was still reaching me, but indistinctly. I wanted to yell at them to turn up the volume.
- What's the point. The war's about to start. Will this city disappear? Will the streets and footprints be erased? Detention cells and drawing rooms? Innocents and executioners? Children and informers? Lights and dark corners? Dreams and nightmares? Candid secrets and petty denunciations? Will fire ignite poems and plots? The exhaustion of the righteous and the sieges of the opportunistic? The wishes of lovers and the claws of the envious?
- Turn it up, announcer. We're here, in this cramped room. We don't know if we can still let our hopeful legs run. Turn it up, tell us: should we lie down on the concrete of disaster, or build a wall made of new expectation?

A young policeman opened the door to the room and asked me to report to the duty officer.
I stepped forward hesitantly.
- To the right.

I stood before the duty officer. He asked me my full name and the nature of my work. He stated the accusation, which I acknowledged.

It was almost midnight. On his table was a large radio, but it was switched off. I had remained standing throughout the interrogation, and every moment my gaze fell back on the radio.

The officer asked me to sign the report. The hands were creeping toward midnight.
I asked him:
- Could I listen to the news bulletin?
He replied curtly, without even looking at me:
- No.

Then he asked me:
- Can anyone vouch for you?
- Can't I vouch for myself? This is the first time I've made this mistake, and it will be the last. I promise.
- I know it's the first time. But someone has to vouch for you.
- Can I use the phone?
He shoved the phone at me and growled:
- Hurry.

I called my colleague, but her line was busy. I tried a second time, then a third, but the line was still busy. I didn't want to call anyone else.
-The line was busy.
I told him, so he took the phone out of my hand and called the young policeman.

Without so much as a word, the policeman grabbed me by the arm and made me walk in front of him.
It was still raining. The air was damp, cold, saturated with expectation.

Before reaching the holding cell, I spotted the religious policeman shouting at an Indian labourer, who was begging him to bring him water.

The policeman violently opened the door to the room, pushed me inside, then closed it again.
Exhausted, I collapsed in the darkness of the nauseating room, and closed my eyes for a moment. I didn't think sleep would come that night, but I kept my eyelids closed.
- What do they want from you?!
My bones seemed cemented together, I no longer felt the pain. I guessed it wasn't yet one o'clock in the morning. I turned onto my left side, while one of the workers smoked heavily and coughed.

(Riyadh, 1990)

*This refers to the Gulf War that developed after Iraq invaded Kuwait.