The crowd below surged and the minarets of the Gate of Peace suddenly sprang to life. Night prayers for mercy rang out from the minaret windows: “Praise be to God, the Most Compassionate. Bless and preserve our Prophet Muhammad, O Most Forgiving and Most Merciful Lord.” The voices of aged muezzins filled the sky over Mecca with prayers for mercy and forgiveness.
At the sound of tearing and the key turning in the lock as the Kaaba was about to open, the soldiers ran forward. They didn’t care about catching the trespasser, they just wanted to get up close to the door, so they found themselves chasing after the moving staircase as if it were a missile with Yusuf at the top. It moved so gently that Yusuf wasn’t aware of any danger or indeed of who was abducting him by pushing the staircase past the rows of worshippers across the courtyard of the mosque toward the colonnades. Yusuf felt he was floating on the sweet tones of the nighttime supplications. Some of the soldiers chased after the staircase while others looked back at the Kaaba to see if it had indeed been opened so that they might steal a glimpse of the inside.
When he moved past the steps of the Gate of Peace, Yusuf felt the nighttime chill against his skin. All around him voices screamed at him to wake up and flee his captors. He became aware of some ancient presence in the air and all of a sudden the famous witnesses of the Gate of Peace from his history books came to life. They used to follow the Chief Judge of the Shafi’i Law School up Mount Abu Qubays to verify the appearance of the crescent moon that marked the beginning of the fast and the two Eid festivals. These men delivered all of Mecca’s feasts and they were now stretching their arms out to Yusuf, who grasped them tightly and leaped into the crowd. He had the feeling that the key, the gate, the Shayba family, the river of books, the prayers, and he were nothing but a plot dreamed up in those men’s heads — those men who’d dreamed of a being greater than themselves, an all-encompassing being; or rather perhaps it was Mecca that had conjured itself inside their minds.
Yusuf moved within that dream. He knew where to find Mushabbab now. Mushabbab had warned him not to come looking for him until he was ready for the final move. He snuck onto the back of a truck hauling the pilgrims’ tents down from Arafat and Mina and squeezed himself in between the rolls of tents. He remained there until they arrived at the al-Labani Tent Company’s warehouse on the Jeddah Road. Mushabbab had once told him that some people he knew had given him a temporary job there as a guard. As he stood there in front of the building, he recognized a familiar scent. He didn’t even look at the waiting figure who’d peeked out of a small side entrance. He jumped down from the truck and slipped into the warehouse. The guard didn’t seem to have noticed him. All around him in the warehouse, heaps of tents lay like weary travelers who’d just arrived after a long journey. Yusuf walked through an ocean of tents as the workers began unloading the still warm, still smelling of pilgrim tents off the trucks.
As night wore on, activity in the warehouse dwindled; that was when Yusuf spotted Mushabbab, sitting in a corner on top of a pile of 125-year-old tent thread, one of the al-Labani family’s heirlooms. The family had grown famous in Mecca for their craft. Their ancient grandfather used to sign his name on the tents in black and white: Ahmad Abd Allah al-Labani, and his descendants later added the man’s lifetime—“1307–1382 AH”—beneath his signature.
When Yusuf surrendered to the pile, flopping down beside Mushabbab, he forgot all about their rivalry and disagreements. They breathed in the same breath from those flowing beneath them: three quarters of a century of a man’s life, and those of countless pilgrims, were stored in those seams. The stacked-up lives of sons and grandsons stretched out before them, starting with Abd al-Rahim (1350–1411 AH), who modified the tradition by sewing the tents with blue and white thread and signing his own name.
He was followed by the Nigerian tentmakers whom Abd al-Rahim had brought over to sew the tents. The journey taken by the tents and thread surrounding them was like the journey taken by the people of Mecca: forced out from the Shamiya district in the heart of Mecca to areas like al-Shisha and Hawd al-Baqr on the outskirts and eventually to the road out of Mecca. Just like Mushabbab and Yusuf as they caught a ride on a truck, this time sitting beside the driver in the cab, headed toward Medina. Mu’az would follow after them with the amulet.
As they drove away, the warehouse grew smaller and smaller until it eventually disappeared from view. The blue and the black and the white all vanished, as did those threads and that history. There was a bulletin in the newspaper the following day: “The heirs of the al-Labani Company announce that they have decided to sell their family’s warehouse and have ceased renting tents to pilgrimage agencies. For further inquiries please contact———. Sale filed with Records Office, year 1428 AH.”
Not a Patch of Shade Left
THE NEWS, WHICH HAD PASSED YUSUF BY ON THE MORNING HE LEFT MECCA, came below a bold headline on the back page of Umm al-Qura, January 1, 2008:
Following extensive planning with world-renowned consultants, Elaf International Holdings Real Estate Division has announced plans for the creation of a mixed-use site at Darb al-Nour (formerly known as the Lane of Many Heads) on the Umrah Road, as part of its development strategy for the area. The company has released plans for two towers, one boasting 123,000 sq m of commercial office space and a 30,000 sq m five-star hotel, and the other offering 77sq m luxury apartments. The area between the towers will house a 36,000sq m luxury mall and parking for approximately four thousand vehicles. Developers say the project’s proximity to the central commercial and historical district will give strategic value to the project in the form of distinctive design features. The multi-billion riyal project is expected to be completed in 2011. Among the companies contracted to work on the scheme by Elaf International Holdings Real Estate Division are MZ Global Consultancy Ltd., who will be responsible for designing the site, and international consultants GP Ma.
The detective followed the story on comment forums on the Internet, where supporters and detractors were coming to blows over the dramatic rise in land prices to the north and northwest of the Holy Mosque — from thirty thousand to a hundred thousand riyals per square meter — since the announcement of the decision to expand the mosque complex northward. The expansion would push settlement and amenities northward toward Mount Shahid and al-Tan’im — and who would benefit from this but Elaf Holdings, who owned most of the land in those areas, and who based on this had just released their plans for the five coming years?
Having been so preoccupied with the Lane of Many Heads, Nasser hadn’t been aware of the deluge that had swept the Holy Mosque, or the apocalyptic rumor that accompanied it: the Shayba clan were on the brink of extinction. He carried on reading the comments appended to the article: