News of the theft and the miracles the thieves had wrought was hushed up, lest other greedy souls attempt to imitate their blasphemy. Instead stories were spread about how the four men had snuck into Mecca dressed as pilgrims, as so many Western travelers and other outsiders had done before, be they Jews, Christians, false prophets — all manner of the damned. The Chief Judge of Mecca was forced to issue a snap ruling, saying that the men were heretics and must be executed, and so one night they were simply beheaded. Their bodies were thrown into the Yakhour well, the final resting place of all Mecca’s garbage, and their heads were stuck on spikes in the spot where they’d been apprehended. At this point, the plot requires me to mention the woman who used to walk here barefoot from Mecca every day to sit beneath the heads and mourn them with poems and songs, occasionally reciting verses from the Quran, which were believed to protect the dead from the torments of the grave. People said she must have been in love with all four of them to turn up each morning, her feet burnt by the scorching Meccan sand, and sit there making conversation with the severed heads, goading them to compete with one another for her affections. She even used to wait until nightfall to retrace her steps toward home so as not to arouse gossip. This alley sprang up out of that woman’s tender whisperings of grief, and so I must confess that I’m nothing more than the water of desire pooling in a woman’s lap or in the lacerations of her heart and hands, even though she never shed a tear for those four severed heads; not even as crows circled overhead, pecking at them incessantly, hoping to snatch a chunk of eyeball or flesh. The woman did nothing but lament and sigh, until the alley was rent in two, and I can tell you now that the culprit behind this split was none other than feeling itself. At the top of the alley beside the Radwa Mosque, in the midst of the hordes of seeking pilgrims, there was longing, and at the end of the alley by the shops that dealt in the instruments of passionate music, there was ecstasy, and in the middle, a history that buried its head in the sand, humming the call of demons and fading away into nothingness. And yet along the edges of the alley, the doors to sadness were still open a crack, and the windows stayed up late looking for love, while the grandest gates of all were the ones that made room for secrets. The gate of passion and yearning stands in this tranquil garden, which was founded by the first of the Sharifs or the last of them (either Sharif Awn or Sharif Hussein, what difference does it make?) and has become rather more like a mirage, a glimpse of water to the thirsty, drawing in the miracle-seekers and with them soldiers to guard against brigands who are hooked on gum arabic and the kind of booze that’s made in backyards and cellars.
Before the Body
I TOLD YOU THIS STORY WOULD BEGIN WITH A BODY, BUT BECAUSE IT’S MY STORY I’ve decided we’re going to hold off on the body for the moment. Let’s not worry about the dead for now, not while we can still chase the living. I’d gone to great lengths to hide all traces of love and revenge, but the body gave us away. So when I mention Azza or say everything there is to know about Aisha, I’m not being lazy and simply picking the first girl who comes to mind; the body could’ve been any of the girls from the Lane of Many Heads, really. I should be more precise: I mustn’t mix up the names of the parties involved or hurry to point the finger at whoever did it. Not before we’ve been through the story, and heard and compared the different versions of events told by the four heads, each of whom was a suspect at one point or another. Those heads of coal shall tell their stories, from beyond the veil that separates me from them.
There was Yusuf the history nerd. He had a bachelor’s degree in history from Umm al-Qura University, signed by the dean in green and sealed with an unfakeable blue. He got it for his research paper on historical minarets in the mountains around Mecca. Yusuf was the Lane of Many Heads’ Minaret of Love, calling to his two beloveds, Azza and Mecca, and he didn’t climb down off his family’s roof — or his delirium — until he managed to combine them into one.
Then there was Mu’az, who was being trained to take over from his aged father as prayer leader at the mosque. In the meanwhile he decided to kill time by helping out at the photography studio. There was also Khalil, who had a suspended pilot’s license and rejection letters from every single private airline. And, last of all, there was the adopted son of al-Ashi the cook, the Eunuchs’ Goat, who gathered human limbs to practice his perversion. They all deserved to have their heads paraded on spikes.
That much was vouched for by Sheikh Muzahim, who arrived in the wake of Ibn Saud’s campaign in 1926, after King Ali ibn Hussein gave up Jeddah following a long siege and Mecca surrendered without hostilities. Muzahim was fifteen when he was orphaned by the Battle of Taraba — it was news of that massacre, in fact, that caused the Hijaz to surrender without putting up a fight. He stayed in Taraba for a long time, the only survivor, and witnessed the piles of fingernails, which according to legend were all that remained of Taraba’s slain inhabitants, blowing slowly away in the wind, silvering the contours of the sand dunes. People have attempted to tarnish his reputation, as a man and as a religious scholar, because of the silver he pilfered from the tribe’s legacy before finally fleeing to Mecca where he used the silver to start a business. His family name was left in tatters; he buried it along with the last of the silver in the ground beneath his new store. He began trading in “sustenance,” which is what the people who lived there called the bags of flour, rice, wheat, sugar, and tea he sold. Sheikh Muzahim made his money off of human sustenance. He suffered from chronic, debilitating constipation, too, and the only thing that eased his suffering was an almond-oil coated finger. That was why he found Ramadan such a torment. Inevitably, by the time the month was over, his anus would be besieged by hemorrhoids and his intestines would have turned to stone. He finally went to the trouble of seeking a religious ruling to affirm that almond oil in the rectum didn’t break one’s fast.
The Body
MU’AZ, THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S APPRENTICE, WAS LEAPING BETWEEN TWO ROOFS when he froze in mid-air, transfixed by what he saw below. Deep in the cleft between the two houses was the body. In her death the woman was a breathtaking nude portrait, one leg bent and the other stretched languidly out, rebellious breasts pointing in opposite directions, reveling in the attention of the sudden crowd, who were captivated by the bloom of darkness between her legs.
“Such perfect death! What a shot!” cried Mu’az as he snapped a photo.
At one end of the alley, an oud fell silent, though a drum still rattled under an amateur’s clumsy hand. From the other end came a squat penguin of a woman in a flapping black abaya and white mourning dress — Kawthar, the wife of Yabis the sewage cleaner, mother to Ahmad the emigré. “For the love of God, cover the poor woman up!” she cried as she waddled back and forth around the body. The crowd jostled against her great hunched back, which shielded the dead woman from sight.