Once the municipality truck had left, Nasser headed to see Imam Dawoud, who led him into the mosque. As he stepped in front of Nasser to open the door, Nasser had the chance to take a good look at him: he was a stocky, rotund Ethiopian. His robes hung from his round belly halfway down his rough calves, casting a shadow over his callused feet in their blue flip-flops. His white head-cover hung on his head, as if pinned to an invisible hook, down to his scarf as it cascaded down between his shoulders and spread like a fan over his backside. His beard struggled bravely; a few of the hairs had made it to over two inches. He had no mustache. His eyes were protruding and bulbous, piercing and slashing from behind thick lenses.
Nasser didn’t know how to begin. “The people of the lane hold you in special regard, sir. Your children were all born here. Is it hard for them never to have visited Ethiopia even though they carry Ethiopian citizenship?”
“We have served this mosque for a quarter century and so I pray that the Lord will give us the reward of those who live in the vicinity of His holy house. Praise be to God, we now have regular residency papers because of my work with the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue. They have also begun citizenship proceedings on my behalf. And yet with one foot in the grave, what need do I have of citizenship? If I have any desire of it at all, I want it only for my children.”
“Tell me … What’s all this about your lists? Lists of the people going to hell and those going to heaven?” The imam’s gaze froze on a point on the wall in front of him and bore deep.
“You should ask about the box for bribing the VIPs. A certain woman claimed it was for collecting donations when she set it up, but all it is is a way to collect protection money from the people in the neighborhood,” Dawoud replied, carefully avoiding the sin of mentioning either Umm al-Sa’d or her stepson, the Eunuchs’ Goat, by name. “God forgive her. She’s collecting money to bribe some officials to issue an ID card for her son and get him citizenship.” The ancient air conditioner, which was doing its best — with the assistance of the ceiling fan — to drive the burning clouds out of the mosque, reminded Nasser of his office. “That woman is hell’s kindling. Satan gave her his devilish skill so she could bewitch people and force them to donate to her fund. But then, what do you expect from a woman who fell from Azrael’s jaws? She’s capable of any sin.”
“Even Sheikh Muzahim talks about ‘the woman who fell from Azrael’s jaws.’ What do you mean by that?”
“Be sure you don’t tear off Satan’s mask before you’ve fortified yourself against his fiendish horror,” he replied. He continued after a pause, “With those marketing skills of hers, she’s gone and hung a donation box for bribing those officials on the door of her father’s building so she can watch who donates, and then she divides the Lord’s Muslim believers into those who give and those who abstain, splitting them into two factions: the kind-hearted and the empty-hearted.” He suddenly fell silent once more. There was no way he could expect a man like this, in his Western uniform, to understand the defense plan he’d put in place. It was based around the certainty that both briber and bribed were condemned to hell; they, and everyone who donated to the fund, were on the list of those bound for hell. Those who abstained were on the heaven list.
“It has come to our attention that the donors are mostly men blinded by lust. They’re donating hard currency as well as gold trinkets on occasion.” Nasser had no clue what the imam was talking about. “It is not for me to describe to you the satanic urges they stuff into that box along with their hard contributions.” Nasser didn’t know what to think of the imam’s deliberate use of the adjective “hard,” but in any case the imam had regained his deep silence, leaving the ceiling fan to put a finer point on his insinuations and scatter them around the darkness of the mosque.
Those Who Meet Azrael
IT WAS ANOTHER PITCH-BLACK NIGHT IN THE LANE OF MANY HEADS, AND NASSER was hovering around the Arab League building trying somehow to solve the riddle of how Umm al-Sa’d had “fallen from Azrael’s jaws.” He paced back and forth between the building and al-Ashi’s yard across the street. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the smear of soot on the wall of the yard: it was never cleaned or scraped off, it remained there as if it were a testimony to al-Ashi’s good luck. The shocking affair, which had taken place in that exact spot a quarter-century ago, had left its stain upon my memory. I had been temporarily blinded that night by the misery that swept down my alleyways and clouded the moon above, setting the scene for the drama about to be played out. Even the shadows were pinned against the walls and the neon lights merged overhead to form a curtain for an operating theater that was preparing for an imminent disfigurement. Cats skulked on crumbling sidewalks and rooftops, while doves buried their heads deep beneath their wings and feet, sneezing at the putrid smell that had turned the howling dogs rabid. They scrapped like starved wolves, nipping one another’s tails to win a bite of the plastic-wrapped mass that had been tossed in a heap at the bottom of the wall in the yard. Al-Ashi was a young trainee at the time, fighting to move up the ladder in the kitchen. It wasn’t the smell of cooking oozing from his clothes that woke him up but the manic barks that shook the room overlooking the yard where he lived. He hurriedly wrapped his green towel around himself and staggered, still half-asleep, down the stairs to see what was going on outside. He was assaulted by the same putrescent smell that had besieged the entire alley: the smell of a body. Grabbing rocks, bones, whatever he could find, he chased the dogs as far away as he could from the plastic bag that had been tossed in the gutter. When his shaking fingers finally managed to tear the bag open down the middle he found himself face-to-face with a skeleton. I admit that even I, the Lane of Many Heads, usually so phlegmatic — even when faced with the most hideous abominations — was overcome with nausea at the sight. I was speechless; even after a long time had passed, I could never bring myself to utter a word to anyone about that disgraceful secret. I couldn’t bear to look at the clotted black mass between the wide shoulders; there was hardly more than a ribcage topped by an elongated skull, which grinned at al-Ashi with a set of mouse-like teeth. The smell of bodily decay surged out so violently that it was impossible to tell whether the body was alive or dead, female or male. The acrid burning odor blinded al-Ashi and brought tears to his eyes. The dogs were snapping at his anklebones, angling for their share of the ribs, but he bent down and gathered up the body, then set off at a run. Deaf and blind to the world he ran and ran, a foul trail dripping behind him, followed by a pack of barking dogs and curious eyes peeping out in terror. He ran on — his animal pursuers having long since given up — until he reached Zahir General Hospital. They say that he ran for miles and miles, in search of refuge or salvation, because he knew he was carrying his own doomed fate in his arms. He finally laid his heavy burden to rest on a yellowed stretcher in the emergency room; a strong smell of chloroform suggested that another body had departed quite recently on these sheets. The doctors and nurses were revolted at the thought of touching the body, but al-Ashi begged them.