The nightmare that plagued him only added to Yusuf’s discomfort with the outside world and his frailty in the face of it. He gradually lost the face that had guided him in the Sanctuary and he could sense a strange, pearly cloud passing over the rooftops, trying to find a way into the house. The light outside, he was convinced, was enough to strip his face of all its features. Yusuf stopped going up on the roof, for that reason, and instead he spent whole days in one of the reception rooms, barricading himself inside, blocking every vent, hibernating among the photographs on the walls.
His entire being was reshaped during his long seclusion in the upstairs parlor where the distinguished old men of Mecca were gathered. He stayed awake for days, searching desperately through those faces for one that would give definition to his own. The electrical charge in his brain rose steadily and the countdown to an explosion tick-tocked all around him. He was terrified of touching anything in the vicinity lest he burn to a cinder. He appeared more and more inhuman, he was a shadow, or an unexposed film strip, ready to burn up and disappear in the faintest glimmer of sunlight from outside.
On day seven of his dematerialization, Yusuf saw a man come out of photograph number sixty-four on the wall of one of the parlors. A live man taking form in the film strip that was Yusuf’s body. Swarthy, with a beard that covered a third of his face, a broad nose, and piercing eyes that were trained on Yusuf, studying his features closely. For a second, Yusuf thought he was staring into a mirror; the man had the exact same features as he did. Perhaps the only difference was that he wore glasses and looked like a religious scholar from a hundred years ago, his white turban wrapped in slightly lopsided spirals that mirrored the downward swirling embroidery on his robe. The broad gold ribbons on the robe, which stretched down to the man’s left big toe, glinted in the darkened room, suggesting hidden movement beneath the black robe. In the center of that scene, all attention was drawn to the man’s right thumb from which the key ring hung miraculously. Yusuf desperately tried to memorize the outline of the key in his mind, but its gleam blinded him.
He remembered the forgotten caption on the wall beneath the photograph, which was empty now that the man had stepped out: “Abd al-Wahid of the Shayba clan. Custodian of the Kaaba during whose tenure the Great Key was stolen.”
Yusuf looked to where the finger was pointing: the next page of this history book of photos, a picture of two Shaybi children, one of whom was dressed in a gold embroidered robe. Yusuf looked back and forth at the faces of the two children and they looked back at him. He shut his eyes and when he opened them again, he saw the boy on the right was winking at him. No matter how many times he blinked, the boy was still winking, nodding toward the door. Yusuf couldn’t help himself: he turned around and walked toward the door. In the mirrors on either side of the door, Yusuf could see his reflection lit by the gold embroidery glimmering behind him. He realized that the boy in the embroidered robe had snuck up behind him and was trying to take over his body, so he threw him off and ran out of the room.
At the moment of manifestation, Yusuf forgot to take a look at the other child, the one on the left, but then he saw that it was a girl dressed in a gold embroidered robe, and that she’d pushed the boy forward to take over his body. He didn’t stop to hear what she had to say.
He threw the door open, trying to erase what that instant had brought him, and neglected to shut it behind him. He went into the parlor next door and sat there clutching his Quran until he could collect himself. By the time he had gotten used to the dark again, the venerable old men on the walls had stepped out of their frames. They began moving between photographs, going in, coming out, trading places, waving to Yusuf. He could hear people moving around on the other floors and in the rooms next door, slamming doors. He could hear them rustling behind the photos, drawing water at the first sign of dawn to wash themselves in preparation for prayers.
Yusuf fasted for a long time. He subsisted on nothing but a few dates and some handfuls of water from the Well of Zamzam, which Mu’az left on the doorstep for him each day, until he too grew paper-thin and was able to join the old men in their frames and converse with them. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t worried that he might go insane. He was finally free of the lifelong nightmare that his mind would one day lose its grip on reality. His eyes narrowed till they were thin slits connecting wakefulness and dreaming. They forgot how to sleep, but they no longer cared about sleeping. No longer did he struggle to win his body some fragmentary rest; all his other physical needs receded as well. He became a bundle of energy unlike any other. He felt the terrifying energy of the house all around him, pulling all the doors wide open, climbing up the stairs to the sitting room on the top floor, which is where he saw the old woman who blew him away the moment he laid eyes on her.
As soon as he opened the door, he felt a pearly cloud preceding him into the room. He recognized the scent but he didn’t know from where. The air was oppressive as Yusuf passed through the cloud; he stood in the middle of the parlor, feeling stripped bare, looking around as the cloud passed over the old black-and-white photos. As the cloud passed over the photos, the black fell right off, leaving all the photos to the right of the door a bare white strip.
When the cloud reached photograph number five, the old woman whom Yusuf had come looking for fell out of the frame, materializing directly in front of him. The moment she stepped out, the wall behind him turned the color of green silk. The woman pointed to an inscription written in red above the door. Yusuf read it; it was a verse from the Quran: “God’s first House was established for the people at Becca.” She turned to the man whom the cloud had pulled out of his frame after her and introduced him to Yusuf. “This is my father, Hulayl al-Khuza’i.” Al-Khuza’i came forward, carrying the key to the Kaaba in his hand.
He held it out toward his daughter. “Take this key and keep it safe. Hobba, you are my only heir.”
“Father, how I can assume responsibility for the Kaaba when I am already responsible for Qusayy’s heart?”
“You would allow Ibn Ghabshan to take custody of it then?”
Yusuf realized he was living through the moment in history that had been driven out of the photo frame.
“No. He’s a drunk.”
“But he’ll sell the key for a jar of wine; your husband Qusayy, who’s worthy of it, will buy it. That way the key will pass from master to master.”
Hobba turned to Yusuf, wrapping her arms around his neck, running her palm lightly over his jugular, and down to his chest where the key hung. Yusuf could feel the woman clinging to him, begging him to rescue her.
“The heart is the key to everything,” she whispered. An electric shock ran from Yusuf’s brain down to his heart when she drowned his key in hers, but her father interrupted gruffly:
“And you? What are you waiting for?” Yusuf stammered a reply, but the man didn’t pause to listen. “Go, now. Get yourself to the Kurd’s bookstore at the head of Ali’s Pass at the foot of Abu Qubays. Dig through the mounds of sand and dirt that cover the remains of the old square house underneath. Uncover everything that’s inside: the ten windows, the column topped by two arches over the prayer niche, and the hole beneath the prayer niche in which the green marble slab lies, marking the place where our beloved, the Prophet was born. Take out the silver ring. The silver ring marks the birthplace that is the center of all birthplaces. This is your inheritance. Do you understand?”