“Recently my mother confessed that she loved me more than any of my brothers. But I was born stubborn, a heavenly creature, while my mother is a peasant, the salt of the earth. Already when I was three, I used to go exploring in the woods near our farm, and they would come looking for me at sundown. I’d spend the whole day as far away from human contact as I could; the plants of the forest fed me. My mother, on the other hand, lost her heart growing up an orphan. There was a big bundle of fear where her heart should have been: a fear of life and the thought of giving in to its joys.”
You kept talking while I, Aisha, usually so sober, was absent, crazy, trying to shake you out of your depression.
“Aisha, let me explain it to you. The sun was in Gemini when I was born, you see. We Geminis have a problem with either-ors. We see all the choices that life offers us as possible. Nothing’s forbidden to us. As far as we’re concerned, we can accept every proposal without having to discriminate. But sunlight brings some clarity to this problem of either-ors, allowing us to see past multiplicity to the singularity beyond.”
Am I allowed to say that all of you Westerners are Geminis, while here we’re all handcuffed Libras?
You once said to me, “You’re a bird, Aisha. I’ll be your stretch of sky so long as you promise to never stop soaring joyfully.”
Reading these words, Nasser suddenly felt like his body had been buried alive in an endless pit for the past thirty years. Buried beneath stacks of investigations, murders, betrayals, clues. Now Aisha’s words taunted him; they dared him to jump up and discover that he was still alive.
She wasn’t the only one who submitted to the hand of a healer against her back. No, Nasser al-Qahtani was also lying down and baring his back for her to massage his eternally tense muscles and finally loosen up their toughness.
Nasser peeled himself from his victim’s repose and stood up, angry with himself. When he went to take off the dog’s collar, he found it sound asleep. He turned out the lights and lay back down. He was still tossing and turning when the sun came up. He didn’t bother with breakfast, just put on his uniform, drawing the sturdy khaki fabric around him tightly, and left the house.
In the Land Rover marked with its official badge, he briefly ruffled the fur of the dog inside him and reassured himself that last night’s weakness was simply part of the magic formula he’d been dreaming about since childhood: to show off like Superman in a comic book, performing heroic feats that would impress even the criminals. He’d always thought of criminals as being outside the spectrum of humanity. Rather than become one himself, he’d chosen to become the person to whom murder victims would first disclose their murderers’ brilliance. To train his ears to listen, even though his heart was full of the kind of stress that no heart — or ear for that matter — could ever bear. To be a friend to the truth in this exhausted, decrepit body. That was why he’d specialized in homicides, so that his heart would be as tough as the heart of al-Malah Cemetery. So that it would be a sanctuary for all those tableaux of violation, all those disowned corpses. He’d decided that he, too, would have to leave the spectrum of humanity behind.
The Prince
THE PAKISTANI ELECTRICIAN HAD BEEN STANDING AT THE SIDE OF THE UMRAH route for about an hour. The midday sun, directly above him, was fierce, and as soon as the bright yellow taxi pulled up he jogged toward it, pulled the door open, and threw himself into the front seat beside the driver in a halo of curry spice. When he took a look at the driver, his blood froze. Hoping there was still time to escape, his hand reached for the door handle, but the car sped away at a demented pace.
“Excuse me, sir, this is a taxi?” The question rang out stupidly, which only tickled Khalil more.
“Of course it’s a taxi. Where do you want to go?”
The Pakistani stuttered before managing to reply, “Gaza Market, please, sir …” His hand fumbled comically with the door as he attempted to open the window.
“It’s broken.” Khalil grinned spitefully.
The Pakistani floundered, groping for the words that might save him. “Are you making joke? Excuse me, sir, you are … Same same Saudi prince?” Khalil’s delight doubled at the man’s agitation.
“Don’t worry, you’re not on candid camera, I really am a prince and I’m driving you around. The world is finally smiling on you!”
The Pakistani smiled back at him uncertainly. “Sir, you serious? This is why you wear fashion clothes?” He took in Khalil’s embroidered silk robe, the gray wool cloak trimmed with gold thread, the bright white Lomar branded headdress and the fancy black band that held it in place, coming to rest on the gleaming black Zimas dress shoes, one of which was pressed hard on the accelerator, keeping the car hurtling along at a diabolic speed.
“Please, sir, slowly—”
“Why? Don’t you like how princes drive?”
“Please, sir … In Pakistan I am have six children, and my mother is sick, will die soon—”
Khalil stamped on the brake. “Get out. May God shun you! And your six kids and your mother, too!”
The Pakistani shoved open the door and leapt out, reeling. Khalil took a bottle of mineral water from under his seat, emptied it in one gulp, and sped off, thirsty for the next humiliation.
His second victim was a woman with her teenage son. She looked like a tent of black in the abaya, which hung from her head right down to her feet, and the black knee-length socks and elbow-length gloves, which picked up where the abaya left off. She stuffed herself into the back seat with her son. At the decisive clunk of the doors being locked centrally and a foot slamming on the gas, the car — darting forward hysterically — was suddenly filled with panic.
The boy attempted uselessly to open the door, then at his mother’s urging squeaked as loudly as he could, “Stop! Let us out here please!”
“Brother—” Terror had induced even the mother to speak, “Let us out, for the love of God!”
“Not until you take your socks and gloves off. Pretend like you’re making the pilgrimage!” Khalil laughed, abruptly and jarringly.
“What?! Fear God!”
“I’m a disturbed man,” replied Khalil baldly. “The color black upsets me. I could drive this car into a wall at any moment.” The car accelerated. “But as soon as you take your gloves off …” The boy frantically tugged his mother’s gloves from her hands.
“See, we’re slowing down. As soon as you take your socks off we’ll stop and the doors will be unlocked.” The boy leaned down to take his mother’s socks off, and the moment he dropped them onto the front seat with the gloves, the brakes squealed.
Driving off, Khalil watched in the rearview mirror as the woman flapped about, her hands and feet suddenly exposed to the sun, struggling to cocoon herself and protect her skin from the light and people’s eyes. “A real-life Dracula!” Khalil cackled with glee.
The third victim was a solidly-built man in his sixties wearing a robe, waistcoat, and snow-white skullcap, and a yellowed silk stole draped over his left shoulder.
He climbed into the back seat and sat in silence. Khalil tried to provoke him: he drove fast and he made several sudden, violent stops that sent the car’s contents, including the passenger, crashing into the back of the front seat. He changed direction from west to east to south again, and stopped at every traffic light to rearrange his headdress in the rearview mirror, looking defiantly at the impassive face in the back seat as the cars trapped behind them released a torrent of indignant honks. Finally, in the isolated valley of Mina, he came to a stop. “Get out. I’m not going any further,” he ordered. The man gazed out at the bare mountains and the empty land sliced into asphalted plots in preparation for the construction of yet more accommodation for pilgrims.