February 6, 2000
Just like every morning, I bumped into al-Ashi at the entrance to the grocer’s. He turned his head as if he were following the scent of something delicious cooking.
“Your ‘window’ was longer than usual today,” he commented. The shop boys and a customer stopped to hear what he had to say about my article. His verdict would determine the way they felt about me.
A cat squeals, its tail caught in the closing shop door, and shatters Nasser’s concentration. I, the Lane of Many Heads, will have to intervene and continue the story from my point of view, to demonstrate just how peculiar al-Ashi is.
At exactly six in the morning, as precise as an hourglass, not a second before or after, al-Ashi went over, as he always did, to the newspaper stand that one of the shop boys had just wheeled into place outside the store, and stood at the side of the road, rifling through Umm al-Qura newspaper. Having enjoyed many gifts from his kitchen, the shop boys turned a blind eye, though they knew he was looking for Yusuf’s daily column, entitled “A Window,” that surveyed this, the Mother of Cities. He read the column slowly and with pleasure, and measured it with his handspan before closing the newspaper, returning it to the stand, and reaching automatically for the official newspaper, al-Riyadh. He handed over the money and turned his back on Yusuf’s window, secure in the knowledge that it was there behind him.
Tucking the newspaper under his arm, al-Ashi disappeared into the courtyard of his kitchen.
He pulled out his immortal chair, its tired iron legs screeching on the cement floor. The bare chair was cool in a way that made it seem as if it looked forward to his morning perusals. He extracted his glasses from the cloth tied around his middle like a sarong, then sat down, stretched his arms and legs out to the full length of the newspaper and lost himself in the front page of Al-Riyadh.
“Al-Ashi has connected the transmission wires,” the kitchen boys whispered. The courtyard door was open so no passerby or neighbor could fail to notice that the reading ritual had begun, and that the outside world had begun to flood into the neighborhood through that newspaper.
Umm al-Sa’d sent her stepson the Eunuchs’ Goat down with tea, in one of those tall collectible Kraft cheese glasses, which he placed on the floor to the right of al-Ashi, who let the tea vapors, infused with Umm al-Sa’d’s breaths, waft up to him as he began his second round of reading. “Umm al-Sa’d reads and writes.” I, the Lane of Many Heads, always made sure I kept my heads well out of reach of the deluge of that woman, who could sweep walls away and always cleaned up in the stock market. Nevertheless, I observed with interest the stupid morning assemblies she held for her acolytes in her apartment on the first floor of the apartment block that belonged to her father the milkman and was known as the Arab League building.
That morning, Umm al-Sa’d was tense as she greeted Kawthar, the wife of Yabis the sewage cleaner, whose oldest son Ahmad was married to Aisha the cripple and worked as a PA to some big shots. He had promised—
Nasser paused the action. He was taken aback by the word cripple.
Ahmad had promised he’d look for somebody who could take care of some papers for the Eunuchs’ Goat, who, having been left to grow up with the cats in al-Ashi’s backyard, had never been granted citizenship, and was now finding it nigh on impossible to get it. In my minds, Ahmad stood out for being a well-connected node: he built relationships with influential people, the kind of people who could turn the sea into tahini, as the saying went, who could fix all the intractable problems I faced when I tried to keep up with progress. He sold permits for music shops, for example, and allowed video games to be played in cafes in exchange for bribes that were peeled from my flesh. He guided me step by step through a series of cosmetic procedures — a total makeover, in fact — the complications of which transformed me into a monster like that woman who got plastic surgery to make herself look like a cat. Ahmad claimed he was doing it all as a favor to me, but the truth was he was sucking my blood on behalf of those people who were biting the flesh off my shoulders.
Umm al-Sa’d slumped regally on her throne in front of her computer. Her Internet browser was open at the website of the national stock exchange and the women from the neighborhood were arrayed around her, munching their way through roasted sunflower seeds and the latest news and rumors. They all watched her when she sat up straight and — with a heart like steel — clicked to confirm the purchase of a thousand shares in Shams Ltd., which had been losing value over the past few days. She reclined on her throne once more. The rim of her coffee cup was branded by her garish red lipstick. The numbers on the screen jumped about incessantly, never settling not even for a moment, and each tiny quiver brought new gains for market parasites like Umm al-Sa’d, who would jerk upright with a tremble whenever the value of her shares rose unexpectedly, and with a click, issue the order to sell.
“We’ve pulled it off! Out of the lion’s jaws, and we made a thousand!” The women gave a collective sigh of relief, filling the room with the smell of roasted watermelon seeds. They rallied under the banner of her stock market piracy. They entrusted her with what little wealth they had, giving her power of attorney so she could sell and buy on their behalf in the hope she would bring them unimaginable wealth. This fills me, the Lane of Many Heads, with an overpowering desire to crush that lone female head sprouting up like a parasitic weed among my male heads.
“Women like Umm al-Sa’d must have enormous vaginas that are capable of swallowing up the entire stock exchange, the Lane of Many Heads, and even death itself all in one go!” The idiotic thought took root in the women’s minds as they watched Umm al-Sa’d penetrate the market, leaning toward her computer without bothering to sit up. They called her “Steelballs” behind her back. I’m certain that if the women of the Lane of Many Heads were ever allowed to nominate their own candidate to chair the local council, there wasn’t a single man who’d dare challenge Steelballs. She could win all the women’s hearts with a mere flick of her index finger, which lay poised on the keyboard, and she’d have posed a very real threat if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with the problem of how to secure citizenship for her adopted son, the Eunuchs’ Goat.
“God knows Ahmad’s tried his very best,” Yabis’ wife Kawthar said, relaying her son Ahmad’s message, “but his contacts weren’t shy about putting a figure on it. They want eighty thousand up front and the same again once it’s taken care of.”
Umm al-Sa’d gasped. “Selling favors is like selling shade, or water from the Well of Zamzam. It was the downfall of earlier nations, you know. When the Amalekites lived in Mecca, they were as wealthy as could be but they got greedy. They started renting out the shade and selling water, so God expelled them from Mecca. He hit them with a plague of ants that chased them out of the Sanctuary, and then He drove them away with drought. He sent bountiful rain ahead of them and they followed it, and that’s how He was able to drive them back to Yemen, the birthplace of their forefathers. There they were dispersed and perished. God replaced them with the tribe of Jurhum, but they, too, eventually became greedy and so He exterminated them.”
The history lesson didn’t ruffle the satisfied look on Kawthar’s face. Umm al-Sa’d shifted in her seat, making her displeasure clear, and picked the bowl of red apples up off the side table. The women looked on anxiously as she peeled them methodically one by one, heaping the peels on a plate and chopping out the core and seeds. She then began feeding the slices to her guests, who chewed mechanically, as if carrying out a military order. Umm al-Sa’d herself pounced on the plate of peel. The women watched in disbelief as she wolfed down the entire heap, with inexplicable lust and a dripping red mouth. It only confirmed the legends about her past that the women had tried to put out of their minds. They couldn’t stop watching Umm al-Sa’d, who’d never eaten an apple in her entire life, just apple peels; to them the peels looked like a victory banner that she raised every time she’d fought and triumphed against the injustice of men, a banner bloodied by years of unconscionable imprisonment.