He still hadn’t recovered from his first shock when a specter appeared against the fog. When he looked up, he didn’t need to pause a second to think or to check his mental database of faces to know who it was who was speaking to him. The resigned look in his eyes was an invitation for the Eunuchs’ Goat to take a seat beside him, but he didn’t. Mu’az could barely hear what he was saying over the din of the cars:
“When the girls of the Lane of Many Heads died, our world died alongside them. What else are rats like us supposed to dream of? I heard they put up barriers around the Kaaba now since the key’s been lost.” He wasn’t speaking to Mu’az; he was preoccupied with his shopping cart, which carried a mannequin dressed in muslin and lace. It turned Mu’az’s stomach, and he was certain that he’d be struck with the disease if he so much as looked at the crazed, trembling fingers — like talons — running over the strips of velvet that covered the mannequin’s plastic waist, and at that dead marble face stuck onto a woman’s body, unsmiling, unable to look out on the world. For the first time, Mu’az noticed the feminine features of the Eunuchs’ Goat’s face, and his shiny shaved head, the red scar on his left cheek that cut through his onion beard down to his neck.
“I went inside.” Mu’az’s voice was almost sad. “I was careful not to let her see me, but I accomplished what I came to do. We — you and me and maybe the whole of the Lane of Many Heads — have no business being inside there. There are professional photographers in there. There are probably also newspaper editors in there and an army of reporters from international news outlets. Who could ever die with all those lights on them?” The Eunuchs’ Goat tried to ignore the signs of age in Mu’az’s face. He’d been a mere teenager, mimicking the adults, when he’d last seen him back in the Lane of Many Heads. Now he was more like a mannequin who’d suddenly come to life, the signs of the past twenty years becoming instantly etched into his face in the process. A mannequin that was being subjected to an acid peel of time gone by and specific doses of light therapy.
“I don’t think so,” he said and drained the last of his soft drink. A piece of acting fit to be caught on tape.
“If you’re here because you’re curious, go inside. Do you want her to recognize you, is that it?” Mu’az’s words were like a snapshot that couldn’t be retouched, but it was received soberly.
“I don’t think so.” Mu’az took a mental portrait of the Eunuchs’ Goat’s head at precisely that moment: empty, echoing with words. If he looked for his own reflection in the Eunuchs’ Goat’s eyes, all he saw was the stolen mannequin in the shopping cart.
“It’s idiotic of you to keep saying ‘I don’t think so’ when you’re feeling hindered by this inferiority complex you inherited from Yusuf. So tell me: what grave did you crawl out of? Last I heard you were a fugitive from the immigration authorities.”
“It would shock you to know what desperate people like me can accomplish. They don’t have anything to lose. You should see our little kingdom: castles on the mountainside, hiding places beneath rotting garbage heaps that even dogs wouldn’t venture into. Police and Immigration can’t reach us there. We’re an army of people waiting to be discovered for what we are. We’re not the subject of legend any more. Down in the ground we extract the gold from your garbage. Each day we come face to face with the monster that threatens to devour our planet, and we burn it day after day to replenish our forces. If we stop recycling, garbage will overwhelm you and us and swallow the entire world. Everything you throw away is added to the monster; that’s why we can’t just shut our eyes, relax, fall in love, and settle down somewhere outside the dump where our kids won’t get asthma and cancer.” Mu’az noticed that the Eunuchs’ Goat’s skin wasn’t marble-white like it used to be; there was a layer of ash on his skin, as if he’d just left a crematorium.
“In the garbage dump?” He couldn’t hide the disgust in his voice.
“Your garbage is more valuable than anything you buy in your super-hyper-mega-stores.”
“Like the cursed nations in the Quran? You were cursed because of what you did. I figure the immigration police never did arrest you that night, never booked you for deportation, and you didn’t actually escape. No. You stole the money out of the Eunuchs’ Goat fund and abandoned your poor father and your deranged mother. You destroyed your parents who rescued you from garbage and embraced you, so you could return to garbage. We thought you ran off with a woman but you ran after this …” He said, pointing to the mannequin, disgustedly.
The Eunuchs’ Goat broke out laughing. “All the women you know are just the same woman. You can’t fool them. They know that love can’t sprout from fear and that mannequins and human beings can’t fall in love. Imagine this cork body in love! This is like a disease that’s eating away at me: I need them to feel my touch. I need them to love me back. But who can bring them to life? I collect all the mannequins I can get my hands on and recycle their parts so I can create one real living woman out of them.” He waited for a response from Mu’az. “Look. You have no idea what I’ve been through. You spent your entire adolescence memorizing the Quran and trying to get away from your father’s stubborn agenda. How could you know? I’m the only one who knows what it’s like to miss the feeling of flesh and blood in your arms. That’s what the girls of the Lane of Many Heads were,” he said pointing to the mannequin in the shopping cart. “Your sister Sa’diya …” Mu’az blinked rapidly, but he was too drained to tell him to keep Sa’diya out of it. “Fine, let’s say Azza, or whatever girl, lived in constant fear that we would touch them.” He scratched the mannequin’s body without thinking. “They didn’t want us to discover this: a cylinder where their pelvises should be and metal rods instead of thighs and calves.”
Mu’az’s expression didn’t soften; he looked on the verge of anger. “You think I wasn’t like you guys, the other boys in the lane? That I don’t know what it means not to feel the touch of another body? You say I was too busy being trained to call prayers to notice any of that. No, I felt what you were all going through and I loved all of you. I’m going to level with you: you’re all cowards. You were the Veil Monster, who used to sneak into our rooms at night, but that too was a cowardly thing to do. You and my sister Sa’diya didn’t do a single thing to win each other’s hearts. That’s why you ran away like a kitchen rat and why she didn’t shed a tear after you left.”