— The direction of the Holy Mosque’s expansion is like a magic finger: wherever it points, a square meter of soil suddenly becomes more valuable than a cubic meter of solid diamond. And it’s a lucky fellow who can predict the direction it’ll point before the official announcement comes out!
— More than 300 of Mecca’s historical sites and monuments have been destroyed so far. It isn’t the authorities who are destroying them, but some shady third party. It started right after the end of King Abd al-Aziz’s reign, God rest his soul.
— The Arabs used to demolish any building taller than the Kaaba, like Qusayy, for example. They also used to demolish any which imitated the Kaaba with a cuboid shape. But we’re like Las Vegas now, huge towers and imitation cubes all over the place.
Suddenly, sitting on his chair in front of the screen that morning, Nasser stopped reading, sucked in by a huge void. He sensed a change in the rhythm of the city; a seventh sense was telling him Yusuf wasn’t in Mecca any more, as if Yusuf’s departure from the environs of the Haram Mosque right then had sucked the vitality out of the air around him. He felt drawn, as if to a black hole in the universe that centered around Yusuf’s movements, drawn to follow. He didn’t finish reading the rest of the comments. He got up to leave, not wanting to waste any more time.
The moment he left, another comment popped up about a news item on the planned demolition of houses on Mount Hindi, in preparation for the removal of the entire mountain by early 2011 at the latest.
Tread Softly
MU’AZ SET OFF UP MOUNT HINDI CARRYING THE BURDEN HE’D BEEN ENTRUSTED with. After he’d gotten hold of the amulet, he’d had to wait a while before Mushabbab’s instructions reached him. At first he simply attributed the silence to the weight of three million pilgrims slowing Mecca down, and waited for the city to shed its human scurf so Mushabbab would be free to devote time to the task; the doubts in his mind grew, though, when he started hearing the rumors about the extinction of the Shaybas and the story people were repeating about the attempted break-in at the Kaaba.
When Mu’az had woken up that morning, it had been to a silence which called to mind the silence before Israfel blew his trumpet to announce the Day of Resurrection. He’d lain frozen on his mattress on the floor in a corner of the studio, waiting for the trumpet to sound and for those in their graves to be resurrected. When nothing happened after a while, he got up, denied the sense of resurrection that was in the air. He headed for the Holy Mosque, to see for himself what had happened to the Kaaba, dawdling beneath the lofty door while he circumambulated as if he expected it to creak open at any moment, refusing to stay closed and revealing the interior to the circumambulating worshippers. According to the story doing the rounds, there had definitely been an audible click, the sound of a key turning in the lock; the door had submitted to that strange young man who’d slipped past the soldiers and climbed up the stairs. Mu’az wanted to get closer to see if the door was still slightly ajar, but the soldiers had formed a tight cordon around the Kaaba so nobody could get anywhere near it. The vague threat of a curse still hung in the air.
As he made his way up the mountain, Mu’az imagined it was the last shot taken of a Mecca whose Kaaba then closed in its face — a shot burnt up with bleak white. The shots he’d taken during his time as a professional photographer, he thought to himself, could all be summed up in this image of Mount Hindi rising above the city for the last time. He clutched the bag in his hand tighter and continued on up, his mind’s eye seeing front doors marked with red Xs, which meant “unfit for habitation,” and houses that didn’t even have front doors. A lean dog regarded him wanly from one house, and on another crumbling house a dovecote still stood, doves cooing in every corner. When would the doves leave too? Mu’az felt like he’d been away from that mountain for an age, from that Barbie wrapped in a mangy red rag lying on a doorstep, from that broken water cooler with the leaky pipe sticking out and the seven kittens lapping at the water that pooled underneath it while their mother eyed Mu’az from a distance. The house above it, whose windows were all closed, bore a cornice of immaculately illuminated blue calligraphy, of which Mu’az could make out only two words of a verse by Abu l-Ala al-Ma’arri: “Tread softly.” Damp had caused the rest of the words to crumble.
His hand reached out to knock at the door of al-Lababidi’s house before his mind caught up with him, but when only silence yawned back at him despite repeated rapping, his heart was clutched in a cold grip. Only then did he notice the words FOR DEMOLITION daubed in red paint across the wall in front of him. The phrase was repeated the length of the facade, stretched out in places: DE — MOLI — TI — ON. The last letter was half cut off by the window of the downstairs sitting room. Mu’az stood staring at the repeated words. The meaning simply couldn’t penetrate his skull. He was there but not there — until he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder.
“At last.” The words plopped down with finality, accompanied by a victorious look on Nasser’s face, their full weight slumping onto Mu’az’s head. When Nasser reached for the bag in Mu’az’s hand, Mu’az didn’t attempt to resist. Nasser fingered the hard object inside the bag and his mouth went dry. They’d told him there was no case, but right away he’d solved it. They’d accused him of not reaching a satisfactory closure, but he’d found one. He didn’t give Mu’az any chance to object, but opened the bag to reveal the amulet right away. Their eyes were instantly drawn to its bright gleam. It was the shape of a half moon, pure silver, and decorated with the breathtaking engravings of the Jewish craftsmen of Yemen. Nasser could sense Mu’az’s stiffness and glanced around him, aware of the eye watching him.
“You were bringing it to Yusuf?”
It wasn’t a question, so Mu’az didn’t bother to confirm or deny. He felt drained of any will to move or speak, but finally managed to mumble, “This is a personal affair.”
“Don’t play games, Mu’az,” warned Nasser. “I know Muflih al-Ghatafani, and he told me. So just tell me where Yusuf is now.” It was a plea as much as it was an order. “I know he’s somewhere waiting for this amulet.”
Mu’az seemed caught off balance. After thinking for a moment, he replied, “We’re not doing anything illegal or anything that should concern the police.”
“And I’m not speaking as a police officer. I’m a private investigator, and I happen to know what you guys are up to.”
Mu’az made a sudden grab for the amulet and said, “If you’ll excuse me—”
Nasser was alert and ready for the movement. He kept a firm grip on what was in his hands and looked sharply at Mu’az, who just smiled. “You know I’ll find you,” said Nasser.
A loud crash interrupted them, and looking up in fright they saw that the wind had slammed open a line of windows above. Mu’az’s heart gaped with an arid abjection which turned his black skin an ashy gray. It was the first time a window in that house had opened; his earthly paradise was lost. His keys had gone, leaving him discarded in Mecca like a strip of film burning up under the glare of a torch. His shoulders slumped and he gave in to Nasser’s insistent pressing.
“Now that Yusuf’s not here it’s meant to go to Mushabbab.”
There was a silence, and the two men listened to the distant sound of bulldozers chewing up the mountain’s insides. Mu’az’s eyes were glued to the amulet in Nasser’s hands. Speaking over the strangled roar, Mu’az added reluctantly, “At the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina. That’s where the circle that holds the secret of the amulet is.” At that, Mu’az turned and walked away, light as a mountain goat. Nasser watched him go, winding down the hillside between outcrops and houses.