Yabis’ youngest son, the one-year-old, ran up to them and clung to his father’s knee. He pressed his wet mouth against the dirty patch of his father’s purple loincloth. The child peered at Nasser and then suddenly raced down the alley, toddling in his worn-out tank top and orange tracksuit bottoms. He dodged the Mitsubishi motorcycle carrying sugar cane as it zoomed toward the space between the two shops where the sugarcane-juice seller had set up his extractor and lined up his yellow plastic cups on a shelf beneath the counter. Behind the counter, he hid the bucket he used to wash the cups after every customer. The motorcycle sped past him, trailed by a bunch of children who, if it had slowed down, would’ve have nabbed a sugarcane and run off. The little boy hesitated for a moment — he didn’t know whether to follow the sugarcane or the scent of the roasted chicken one of the cafe patrons was eating. By the time he’d made up his mind, one of the cafe staff was clearing the table, and when the boy appeared beneath the table, he threw him a wing. Like a cat he scurried off as he chewed. Yabis watched him lovingly. He swallowed. He was silent for a while and then he said, “Sometimes I wonder — what’s the use of a job like mine at a time like this?”
“You mean because of the sewer system?” The sewage cleaner looked up at him and then he nodded. Face to face with those severe features, Nasser chose not to speak the conclusion that had suddenly occurred to him: there’s no need for sewage cleaners in heaven. Waste ceases to mean anything in that paradisiacal realm where nothing can be consumed, or digested, or go rotten and decay. Is that because the only thing left behind is light?
Corruption
“NOTHING ROTS IN HEAVEN.” THOSE WERE NASSER’S PARTING WORDS. THE detective chose not to return to his office. He felt an overwhelming need to go back to his tiny apartment, where he shut the door behind him, took a deep breath, and headed to the bathroom. He stripped off all his clothes and laid them in the laundry basket. Then he sat down to relieve himself. He laughed. After the day he’d had, he felt he could now appreciate what was coming out of him. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” He was sure to wash his hands with Dettol before he took up his lover’s letters. Therein lay his humanity, his paradise.
FROM: Aisha
SUBJECT: Message 8
Time is a pit here.
I stand on my bed so I can reach the window that’s blocked up with an air-conditioning unit.
I look out at the neighborhood through a long aperture. It’s like a hedgehog covering its back with satellite dishes. It’s the communal longing to get away from here. We lose so much when we live and die in the same spot, the same alley, the same smell of the same breath, when we don’t get mixed up in the saliva of others. One oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms (forgive me if I get the proportions mixed up), that’s what water is made of. I haven’t made my own water yet.
Attachment 1: photo.
Is this Jameela? It’s hanging up beside the door of Sheikh Muzahim’s shop.
Her clothes don’t change. They just get grimier at the chest and turn a pale yellow. If you chewed on Jameela, you’d smell turmeric. Saliva dribbles from the corner of her mouth. The girl’s mouth watered and her saliva washed away the ground beneath Sheikh Muzahim’s feet.
Aisha
P.S. Do you hear the singing coming from the hallway? That’s Mu’az, Imam Dawoud’s son. Every morning at dawn he comes to clean the hall. I stand at the top of the staircase with burning incense while he splashes songs of water and Danat against the stairs. For days I’ve been burning the same charred chunk even though you’re not supposed to re-use incense because it’ll smell of burning. The last thing he does is spray water in front of the house to “put the shadows to bed” like my father used to do.
P.P.S. When Azza was a child, there were always ants swarming over her diaper, and my mother Halima would say “She’s got sweet pee” in a singsong voice. I wanted to ask her what she made of my urine.
As soon as I reached puberty, I started spending long stretches in the bathroom. I looked warily at my body, this thing that was erupting out of control, the scandalous contours of my chest, the sloping of my torso toward what came next. Now when I confess these things to Azza, she laughs hysterically. “It’s weird but I was never embarrassed by my body.”
Then I get defensive. “I had to monitor my body so that I could hide it. I was embarrassed to see it transforming into an adult woman. I didn’t want my teachers, who were all women, or my mother to see my shame.” Azza looked at me like there was something wrong with me. I can understand how she wasn’t embarrassed by the danger of her body: she was an innately alluring creature. Made of seduction but in its raw form, before it’s become self-aware. She used to augment the danger, too. She’d wear a rocket bra that pushed her breasts out for all to see. She’d add a belt to any skimpy thing she wore to cut her in half at the waist and accentuate her curves. Even without a belt, the way she stood was seductive: hands on her hips, as if she were re-sculpting the latent thrill of her body. Am I allowed to say that even her sweat was dew?
P.P.P.S. Do you still smell of firewood and rosemary? Which parts of you should I lick to know what kind of mood you’re in today? Tell me which of your black parts is off-limits so that I can start there. There’s a lot for us to enjoy as we wait for the grill to heat up and we feed the moons and cats. Do you still walk barefoot in the garden? One day, when I’m rubbing your feet, you’ll see rose-water and damp spots in the places where your foot rests against my lap and in my hands. You look so much like me.
Nowadays when I pray it’s like a door that opens for you to slip through, like a chatty conversation or one in which we tell each other our dreams. I wait impatiently for that moment when I’m standing before God and I make you stand next to me so we can replay our most intimate conversations. Just imagine!
Apple Smoke
DETECTIVE NASSER STEPPED OUT OF HIS APARTMENT BUILDING AND TOOK A LOOK at the empty space around him. For the first time, he actually wanted to see the place where he’d lived for two decades. This was one of the neighborhoods that had sprung up after the oil boom twenty years ago and although it was new, it had begun to decay. Buildings still under construction were sprinkled here and there, and between them lay wild and empty spaces. The neighborhood didn’t deserve a second look: all the buildings were copies of one another, the products of minds lacking any imagination. They had tiny windows, and all the columns were concrete pillars that ran up the entire length of the building. Three or four columns, sheathed in golden aluminum, covered each building’s main entrance. The street looked like a steaming corpse. There was no foot-traffic to give it life, just a row of cars on either side of the street, carrying ghost-like riders, unseen. One car disappears as another comes around the corner, both covered in dust so you can’t even see the windshield.
Nasser gave The Lane of Many Heads his undivided attention in an attempt to become part of that neighborhood: the old ghosts, the buzz and din, the vivaciousness that threatened a quarter-century-long routine of robotic discipline, robotic lifelessness.
Nasser sat at the cafe in the Lane of Many Heads, engrossed in the soap opera, a favorite among housewives who were perpetually depressed because of it: The Happy One. He took a deep drag on his water-pipe, relishing the burnt apple taste. He’d become addicted to that type of flavored tobacco, and he’d smoke constantly as he interviewed people. He took a look at Mu’az, who’d always stop by when he saw Nasser sitting there. He’d come up and take a seat beside him, silently joining the television viewing. I, the Lane of Many Heads, was never comfortable with the way Nasser toyed with my younger heads. Ever since Mu’az’s latest confession, the two of them had built upon their flimsy trust. Nasser had the feeling that Mu’az wanted to tell him something but was unsure, and so he resorted to telling Nasser about himself. He wasn’t embarrassed about telling him the details of his home life: