Tentatively, imitating the Pakistani who had preceded him as guardian of this treasure, Mu’az locked every floor as they descended to the next, giving Yusuf no chance to go back and contemplate again the decades of Mecca’s history they had passed through. Each floor was a different face of the city’s existence. The lower they went, the more alienated Yusuf felt: as they moved into more recent years, Mecca’s immense spirituality receded into the distance. Floor by floor, the old alleys became wider, and their cobblestones, over which water once ran in rivulets to cool and refresh the city, were picked off, until they reached the ground floor where the houses had lost their teak-wood windows altogether. Poor squatters had taken over the old abandoned houses with their roof terraces, and the hillsides had been eaten away to make room for asphalt that bit through them. Yusuf got to the point where he couldn’t tell if he was still wandering among the photos of al-Lababidi and his wife Marie or if he had been booted back to the modern Mecca he knew.
With dilated pupils, Mu’az turned to Yusuf, wanting to convey in his look that he had seen — and wanting Yusuf too to see — the transformation of the world around him into an ugly rectangular box, the blade that had sliced through old stone houses leaving staircases and footsteps dangling in mid-air and reminiscences of wooden windows teetering, about to crumble into nothingness or fall into a deep dream; that had unceremoniously chopped up sitting rooms mid-soirée so that half a divan still stood in its place here, perhaps the leg of an evening guest still resting on it, and eager oud strings or laughter still echoed there, only to be chewed up by bulldozers and paved over with asphalt, cement and aluminum punched through with narrow windows where air-conditioning units crowded out most of the light.
Mu’az and Yusuf stood in front of a room on the ground floor that was stuffed with al-Lababidi’s photos of the Mecca he’d continued photographing until his last breath, taken during the period when Mu’az had worked at the house; to these, Marie had permitted Mu’az to add his own black and white photos. Standing there, Yusuf could see how Mu’az had raced to take those pictures, panting to keep up with the pace of the changes sweeping the city. As the photos progressed, they seemed to drag Mu’az and Yusuf into a hole. Around them, the heart of Mecca was transformed into a courtyard paved with marble slabs that erased the Small Market, the Mas’a Market, the Mudda’i Market, the Night Market, and al-Salam Gate Square to the southeast where pilgrims entered the Haram Mosque. Nothing whatsoever remained of the two public squares at al-Salam Gate, only the great courtyard like a crater left by a meteor, overshadowed by glass towers that ate into what flesh remained of the bare mountains. In that pit, gone were the faces of the Meccans who had sought wisdom and proximity to the Great Mosque, and in their place were the faces of mercenary salesmen, infiltrating from every side, and their stores, uninterrupted like prayer beads, which confronted the approaching visitor to Mecca upon his arrival at the gate that opened onto the graves of the martyrs and Umm al-Doud and covered the city’s peaks and depressions. Holes had been drilled in the façades of old houses where parlor windows had once been, and protruding glass vitrines now displayed clothes made in Taiwan, China, and Korea. The makeshift stalls selling caps and robes dyed with saffron and embroidered by Meccan fingers had disappeared, while new restaurants, stores, and stands, more of which were opening all the time, sold every kind of fast food under the sun amidst stacked-up white plastic jerrycans of Zamzam water for wholesale purchase.
Standing in that cold hall, Yusuf realized — as Mu’az had also realized — that he was moving in a condemned space, in a holy sanctuary where Old Mecca had come with its history, its people, and its stone houses to take refuge. Here, in al-Lababidi’s house. A beggar, he had come to take refuge with them.
Yusuf knew that Mu’az had arrived before him to the world that he’d spent his life trying chaotically to sum up in a word. He was seeing it now summed up in a picture.
Abraj al-Bait Towers
SINCE THE PREVIOUS NIGHT, NASSER HAD BEEN UNEASY. HE FELT NOT ONLY LIKE he was being watched, but like someone was directing his movements, as if by remote control. Thinking for him, impelling him to go poking around after events and faces that even the Lane of Many Heads itself had forgotten. It wasn’t just Yusuf’s diaries or Aisha’s letters — there was something else. Nasser was trapped inside a puzzle, and the puzzle-master was moving him — the central piece — back and forth, either to build or to destroy the case.
That morning, the player had him follow the thread that wove Thursdays together through Yusuf’s “Window” in Umm al-Qura newspaper. Yusuf had become a ghost who surprised them by peering out of his newspaper column, corresponding with his editors from the many Internet cafes scattered about Mecca. His last piece had been banned, but Nasser had managed to find it on al-Sahat, a dissident website, using a personal proxy server. It gave him a great sense of superiority; he could reach everything blocked by the National Anti-SPAM Firewall — Electronic Crimes Division — with their bland message: “This website is unavailable. If you think this website should be available, please click here. For more information on Internet services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, please visit www.internet.gov.sa.”
Nasser read:
Yesterday when I entered the courtyard of the Haram Mosque, I couldn’t see the Kaaba. I looked around, wondering for a moment if David Copperfield — famous for making the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty disappear — had come to play his tricks on the circumambulating worshippers, but by feeling my way ahead, my fingers finally made contact with it, having penetrated the thick vapor of pilgrims’ breaths, which there was no mountain breeze left to dissipate.