Nasser contemplated the fourteen centuries that separated him from that time. The grand plaza outside the Mosque of the Prophet opened out before him, and he lingered there in the hope that Yusuf or Mushabbab might seek him out. He had no idea how long he spent in that wide square in front of the mosque, but he began to feel hungry. A black woman was selling drinking yogurt from a mat spread on the ground at the edge of the plaza, ladling it from a large bowl into small clay ones. She was watching him, and when he approached her she immediately filled a clay bowl and held it out to him.
“Good health! That’s the last of today’s prosperity, with the Prophet’s blessings. Drink up, say grace, and send him your salutations.”
“God’s prayers, salutations and blessings be on our Prophet Muhammad.”
“And his family and companions,” she concluded.
Nasser thanked her, thrusting a hundred-riyal bill into her hand. Her hand trembled as she grasped the bill. He drank the bowlful in one go, and was deliriously filled with the faint but rich flavor of sweet woodruff. When he raised his eyes from the bowl, they fell upon a muscled back, and he felt as light as the short robe that covered it, the white waistcoat, the yellowish scarf thrown over the shoulder and the wide belt. Nasser felt like he was watching a character from a novel wandering, carefree, in his sleep; the man was headed to the market, and without hesitating Nasser followed him. He vanished into the covered market, with Nasser just behind him. Around them, the stores were saying goodbye to their last customers of the day and closing up, and the stalls were lowering their awnings over rows of prayer beads, prayer rugs, and cheap imported clothes. The man was in no hurry, and neither was Nasser, since any movement might have roused the man from his torpor; from a distance, it looked as if they were walking with a fine thread stretched between them, in their own sphere parallel to that of the people around them. They passed a Pakistani man with a straggly beard sitting at a stall selling prayer beads, miswak toothbrushes, and folded keffiyehs in bundles of three in boxes of cardboard, then an African woman standing propped against the damp, peeling wall. In front of her was a huge wooden cart laden with rows of small plastic bags containing red chili powder and deep scarlet hibiscus, and stacks of soft, but bitter, baobab fruit hiding inside white quartz-like exteriors. The woman didn’t look up as Nasser passed; she was dozing on her feet, hardly expecting customers. She was simply waiting the last short while until night came and she could say she’d made it through another day. The man Nasser was following seemed to be on an endless journey into the depths of sleep, until he took a sharp right into an alleyway next to a man selling sugarcane. Nasser had scarcely entered the alley when a body hit him with the weight of a rock. He hit the floor, crushed under his attacker’s weight; there was no use resisting. When he opened his eyes, he was in a hallway, and in front of him was a slim, dark face, watching him. Nasser didn’t need to ask to be certain it was Yusuf, and Yusuf’s words confirmed it.
“You’ve taken an amulet that belongs to me, Detective.”
Nasser resolved then and there that he wasn’t going to let anyone rob him of his dream of getting a medal for solving this case. But in the darkness of the cold corridor he felt an eye watching him and reading his thoughts, and without turning to look he realized who the man who’d led him to that spot must be. The faint smell of mastic strengthened his suspicion that it was Mushabbab. Just hearing the name in his head pulled him out of the cloud he’d been floating in. In a panic, he patted his clothes, but he couldn’t find the amulet anywhere, and his heart sank at the thought he’d lost it. Suddenly, Yusuf tossed the amulet onto the ground in front of him. “No need to look very far,” he taunted, then snatched it up again.
“So how far did you get with your reading?” he went on mockingly, holding up the parchment as if to read aloud. “It’s pretty easy following you, by the way. I was right next to you in the mosque. The state you were in and the way you were so engrossed in reading had everyone staring at you.”
Connections
RAFI FOLLOWED NORA AND HER ASSISTANT AS THEY APPROACHED THE TINY restaurant, Casa Gades. None of its three floors was more than a single room, and all were filled with small tables, cigarette smoke, and conversation. Diners greeted Rafi left and right as he led Nora straight to the cellar room. Before they’d got out the car, he’d explained to her, “This brilliant restaurant was Señora Mirano’s idea. She runs it for a group of art patrons; she’s very respected in Madrid’s young art circles. She puts on exhibitions here of unusual experimental work by up-and-coming artists.” Over the past several days, Rafi had ventured to suggest several places Nora could go to get to know the real Madrid, and this restaurant was one of them.
The cellar was a small room with niches in the walls for paintings, and it led to a small office where an eclectic collection of contemporary artwork was exhibited, abstract paintings and stone and bronze sculptures. Nora felt totally out of place, though she in fact did fit in with the clashing incongruity of the collection, and felt a kind of tacit mutual comprehension with its dissonance. It was like walking through an artist’s brain amidst the crackling static of their visions.
Señora Mirano, the ninety-something restaurant owner, was thin with short platinum hair, and she overflowed with energy. She led them up to the third floor, which was the quietest, drawing Nora’s attention as they climbed the wooden stairs to the strange works of art that hung on the walls. “Young artists regard this as a place many different trends and movements can meet and interact,” she explained. “It’s vital for a developing artist to spend time in a place where debate is encouraged.” She pointed out the photos of the celebrities who’d dined in her art den. “That’s Joan Miró … And Picasso, and a Russian ballerino …”
The top room looked over the room below it. Nora chose the furthest table for herself and her assistant, while Rafi made for a seat in the corner. On one side of them was a window looking onto the street below and on the other a wooden screen separated them from the other diners. When the owner reappeared, stopping at Rafi’s table, he murmured to her, “Señora Mirano, this is the woman whose sketches I showed you …” From where she stood, Señora Mirano gestured at a drawing on the wall, which looked like a Picasso nude. “Your sketches bear some of Picasso’s influence,” she said, directing her words at Nora.
Nora almost laughed out loud. What would this art lover say if she found out that in the twenty-first century there were people who’d never heard of Picasso? “The lines convey a charged energy,” the woman went on, oblivious to Nora’s self-deprecating expression. “You speak to the world through these lines.”
Nora felt uncomfortable under the woman’s gaze. “You’ve only seen one or two sketches.”
“That may be so, but they are interesting,” Señora Mirano replied. “And I say this with some authority, since I was born into the art world and I’ve spent nearly a century around artists by this point. It isn’t just my personal opinion—” she came closer to Nora, and leaned over the table. “I showed the sketches Rafa gave me to my critic friend at the Fundació Joan Miró. She was very taken with them. You’re what, twenty-four? Twenty-six? You could go on to achieve a lot from where you are now. Did you study art?”