“I didn’t want to call you in to the precinct this time. I just want to have a friendly chat.” Alarm flashed in Mu’az’s eyes. He led Nasser into the studio, where a backcloth painted as a forest scene covered an entire wall, and showed him to a seat directly beneath a waterfall. He left the door open so he could keep an eye on the shop entrance.
“You’re a bright young guy—” At that opening, Mu’az folded his arms in front of him and hugged his body. Nasser clocked the defensive reaction but pressed on. “The people in the neighborhood say that you take sneaky pictures of the alley from a window halfway up the stairs of the minaret. Am I right in thinking that you’re the only one who has access to a view of the alley from above?”
Mu’az hurried to correct the detective. “I don’t take pictures from above, I take pictures from within. The Lane of Many Heads has never taken me seriously enough to hide its secrets from me. Do you know what memorizing the Quran did to me? It’s like I swallowed a powerful flash that never goes off. It lights up everything I look at. I had this internal camera long before I knew anything about photography. And by the way, if my father knew what we were talking about, he’d throw me off the top of the minaret and you’d have another crime on your hands.”
Nasser replied with a short, forced laugh, giving Mu’az a little room to relax so he could study his features more closely. His body was bunched up like a ball. He wore threadbare trousers and his hair was tucked into his scarf. He was a photomontage of modernity and ancient misery. Nasser glanced down at Mu’az’s feet and his huge Chinese-made imitation Nike sneakers, then raised his eyes once again to Mu’az’s dark face pierced only by the glimmer of his eyes. Mu’az was visibly uncomfortable under Nasser’s gaze. Nasser aimed his next question.
“What do you know about Azza?” Nasser could see he’d hit his target: he was well acquainted with that involuntary twitch of the eyelashes that meant the person being questioned was hiding something. Mu’az stared at Nasser’s face: it was predatory, like the face of one of those falcons trained to hunt bustards. The unexpected response exploded in Nasser’s face:
“Azza was like a time bomb in the Lane of Many Heads.” The exchange of fire eased the tensions between them. Mu’az spread his palms on his knees, and silence fell. The sounds of that morning were still streaming through Mu’az’s head. He had dozed off, sitting by the window on the stairs inside the minaret, and was awoken by a loud thud, which he was now certain was the sound of the body hitting the ground. He didn’t open his eyes for a little while, however, not until he heard the sound of hurrying, frightened footsteps, almost inaudible, because the alley was sucking them up like a sponge. He thought they were part of a dream at first — yet his keen hearing, even from that height, could sense their fear. By the time he opened his eyes, it was too late: he only just glimpsed the black Cadillac at the head of the alley, a small foot poking out from a hem before it disappeared into the back seat, the head of the black driver covered with a spotted scarf, as he leaned down, closing the door behind her, before the car sped away and the noise of the engine receded into the distance. Whose foot was it? He didn’t know.
The hound sensed these images whirling around in Mu’az’s head and broke in, “You think she’s the victim?” No sooner had he asked the question than Nasser sensed the pungent smell of denial radiating from Mu’az’s body.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Her face was totally smashed up. My lens had never captured anything so hideous. Beneath her veil, Azza had a golden face that dazzled anyone who saw it; you know the sweet scent of paradise that they say the true believers can smell? Azza went places they didn’t want her to go to.”
Detective Nasser was really no different from the street cleaners outside; he had to rake through all these layers of rotten deceit, tossing bones to his hound to chew on, until he arrived at the truth.
“So you’re sure you didn’t see anything suspicious? A strange person hanging around? A thief that could have snuck into one of the two houses?” A chill emanated from the studio walls.
“All I heard was a loud noise,” said Mu’az. “But I didn’t look. It never occurred to me that someone could strip a person naked and throw them down into the street like that.”
“You said you’ve memorized the Quran …”
Mu’az nodded. The threat implicit in the detective’s question hadn’t escaped him.
“You’re not doing anyone any good by hiding information, you know. You might be helping a murderer walk free when that girl’s lying dead in the morgue,” Nasser warned. “I’m told you also work for Aisha the schoolteacher? Is there anything you want to tell me about that?”
Mu’az was terrified that the finger of suspicion might suddenly turn to point at him. “No, no, don’t accuse me of covering something up. I’m a hard worker, Detective. My father sent me to help the schoolteacher out after she came back from Germany. I used to run errands for her once a week and sweep the hallway. A week before the body, she told me to stop coming because she was leaving the Lane of Many Heads to move in with one of her relatives.”
“Did you see her leave?” asked the detective.
“Aisha?” Mu’az snorted. “She might be the only person who could never leave. Detective, Aisha lives behind her computer screen in a world of images like me. When I worked for her I got used to hearing that same sound from my spot in the corridor. I’d stop sweeping when I heard her tapping the keys on that old computer of hers. Actually, to be honest, I got addicted to that sound. It sounded like it was coming from some incomprehensible faraway world. Often, the clicking would come thick and fast with no intervals whatsoever, so I’d hold my breath and try to move gingerly and quietly so I wouldn’t disturb her reverie. Her fingers would chase one another to a world where she’d withdraw into nothingness, so much so that I’d risk creeping up the stairs and even sneaking a look at that unearthly creature with her back turned to the door of her cubbyhole. Her hair shone with an ethereal blue light. It was twisted into a bun, always messy and listing to the right, toward the door, with a pencil stuck through it to stop it coming undone. I never felt uncomfortable nor did I restrain myself; I just stared at God’s exquisite creation, draped atop that neck. I’d follow the nape of her neck, which was craned forward, looking for some weakness in the curvature the crash had left her with. But there’s nothing weak about it, in fact it’s more like a miracle. I envy her; I wish I could run my finger over my lens shutter at that speed. I wish I could photograph worlds like the one I could hear in her fingers tapping on the keyboard.”
The hound began to salivate, but Nasser’s mouth went dry at the cipher. “There you go,” Mu’az continued. “I’ve laid out everything I know for you, like a film that burns up when exposed to light.”
Nasser felt vindicated in his decision to lure Mu’az out of the Lane of Many Heads; he felt like that trickster of an alleyway was urging them all to mislead him. Mu’az continued, revealing yet more: “You should charge me, or understand how weak I was in the face of that being—I don’t want to call her a woman. She’s a feminine miracle just in herself … I could never do harm to such a symbol … Can you imagine? She — out of all the women in the Lane of Many Heads — saved herself and made it out. I try to figure out what’s stored in her memory. The worlds she must have seen to set her fingers loose on the keyboard with such—” He paused, searching for the right description: “lust.” His mind offered nothing but the image of one of the springs in Paradise. “Aisha’s fingers are the spring of Salsabil, flowing over the keys, setting her apart from the rest of the lane’s lifeless living. Do you know the Verse of Light? That verse, from the Chapter of the Cow, lives in my heart. Aisha was lucky enough to be cast from the energy of pure light. I line my little sisters up, one after the other, with their skinny bodies and their wrapped hair, like links in a chain. Try to understand me … Understand what my life’s been like. I’m a self-made man. I taught myself photography. I memorized the Quran. I earn the money I need to support the children of the imam, who doesn’t believe in birth control.”