Alone in his bedroom, the Eunuchs’ Goat confronted the frightening perfection of thighs and knees. His eyes weren’t aware that the torso was shattered; he’d never once imagined that his heart could be so enthralled by two knees and the silence that separated them.
It was then that he realized that he’d fallen under the control of women with closed fists, closed mouths, closed — impenetrable women! No matter how hard he tried, his saliva didn’t soften the cork, his touch couldn’t knead it. The first time he looked into her eyes to beg with his own, he saw there was no eye there, no head.
“God curse American democracy! It can’t even give the beauties in shop-windows their heads or severed limbs back. A democracy of cork arms and legs that can’t wrap around men’s necks and waists and make the blood flow back through them.”
He became addicted to those bodies. He no longer had any qualms about stealing them from wherever he could find them. He was consumed by his conflicted feelings about those beautiful women; their skin that never sweated and thus left him craving. Every morning he woke up disgusted with himself. The only thing that he could hope for was that Sa’diya, Imam Dawoud’s daughter, would save him. Sa’diya who was wrapped from her head to her toes in black, who had never been programmed by a fashion designer or by love scenes seen on TV. Sa’diya was his “Surah of the Cow.” Her heart contained the “Throne Verse,” where he would stretch out and be loved like no man had ever been loved before. The Eunuchs’ Goat swore to himself that he would be the recipient of that tiny flame’s love. That he would surrender himself to her completely. That she would make up for all the rejections he was getting from the beauties that were cluttering his bedroom.
From where he was standing in the doorway, Nasser could see the delicate arm, its palm stretched flat and index finger pointed in his direction. In the light coming through the tiny window, the mannequin’s subtle gesture brought him nearer to her. He shut his eyes and the taste of blood overcame all his senses … This was the Eunuchs’ Goat’s blood; there was no doubting that. Nasser fought his attraction to the Eunuchs’ Goat, whom he called to mind through the mannequin’s body, though hers was more feminine.
Discovery
FROM: Aisha
SUBJECT: Message 11
The bird scrapes at the air-conditioning unit, with its stock of feathers and chicks, to build a nest. “Is it spring?” I ask out loud. He doesn’t answer. He disappears and then comes back again. Like you …
Every Sunday since my back was introduced to scalpels and crow’s-foot stitches, my heart feels as if it’s been left here in this chair by the window to wait, and is reluctant to speak to me.
You look out.
You cover me with that heavy raincoat that smells of pine nuts!
Your slender body kneels in front of me, you set my feet on the footrests of my wheelchair.
Your lips graze my knee for the briefest moment.
You jump up and come around behind me to push the wheelchair.
All the stores on the sidewalk of that narrow lane are closed.
Then we arrive at the river.
In the small village, I let the wheelchair spin in whatever direction it pleased. I discovered that wheels are bolder, more curious than feet.
The old woman who knits socks in the tiny shop and the red pair you gave me.
No one ever spoiled me before you.
Why is it that we never get the opportunity to spoil the ones we love and to be spoiled by them?
Aisha
Attachment: A photo of Aunt Halima’s samovar. Half the Haram Mosque have drunk from it.
Also a photo of her drum.
Aunt Halima always repeats her motto to me: “I’m my own woman. God have mercy on anyone who tries to tie me down!”
Discovery signed this drum for me.
Discovery is the Beyoncé of the Lane of Many Heads, ^. She and her whole band with all their instruments sit atop Aunt Halima’s heart. “She’s so beautiful, so sexy, so young. She’s one of a kind, she’s a star!”
She was always waxing lyrical about Discovery and she’d go to all the weddings just to see her, Halima and all the other women who couldn’t get enough of joyous celebration.
P. S. The first meal I ever ate with a strange man, alone, in the open air. It makes my body writhe with passion even now.
P. P. S. Azza loved the bracelet that you and I picked out for her. That day you were surprised, ^, by my naive suggestion that we get our two initials, A & A, Azza and Aisha, engraved on it. I didn’t feel I had to justify anything, but then I said one “A” would be enough. Whenever I dream of life outside the Lane of Many Heads, I become Azza, who becomes me.
Aisha
Manumission
ONE DAY, YUSUF DISCOVERED A SMALL STOREROOM BEHIND THE SITTING ROOM on the third floor, which al-Lababidi had devoted to pictures of Mecca’s largest cluster of papermakers and booksellers, the area between the Great al-Salam Gate and the Little al-Salam Gate on the left side of the incline leading from the Haram Mosque to the Mas’a. Booksellers’ and bookbinders’ stores were mixed with perfumers and kohl-sellers dating from the third and fourth centuries AH; it was a river of ink and perfume welling up from the Haram, flowing alongside the Mas’a.
On the right-hand side of the storeroom were engraved the words: The Perfumers’ Market. Soul of books and soul of oils. Book lovers believe the words of books are what give the perfumes their wonderful scent, but the old fragrance connoisseurs believe that perfumes are what give the books their magic. The truth is, it’s the human spirit diffused in the air that does it.
Yusuf spent the nights gazing at the pictures. He strolled in a waking dream from the Sidra dorms, which had been endowed as lodgings for seekers of knowledge, to the ranks of innumerable small bookstores like Fida, al-Baz, and Mirza, with their tiny dark interiors and traditional arched doorways at which Mecca’s great men — Fida, al-Baz, and Mirza themselves — sat surrounded by piles and piles of manuscripts. Yusuf gazed at a black and white photo of the founding bookseller, Fida bin Adam al-Kashmiri, a hundred years old with feet still dusty from traveling to Istanbul, Egypt, and India in search of books. He had scarcely to utter the first missing title that he noticed—Fath al-Qarib Ala Abi Shuja, say — when his grandson Abd al-Samad would throw him a small cotton cushion to put on the paved ground of the square while he went around to the neighboring stores to bring him the title Fath al-Qarib al-Mujib Ala l-Taqrib by Sheikh Abu Abd Allah al-Shafi’i. He’d come back, having fetched the book, repeating what he always said: “Price is final. Price is final.” Time was suspended and merged, allowing Yusuf to walk slowly and arrive in time for the audience at the bookshop after sunset prayers, where he was enveloped in the most beautiful Quran recitations, by sheikhs Qarut, Bahidra, Qari, Jambi, Ashi, Mirdad and al-Arba’in. Whenever one ended, another would start up somewhere in the twilight. Then, as soon as the evening prayers were over, the chanters would come — Jawa, Abu Khashaba, Bukhari — to salute the night with their hymns and folk songs. Yusuf wandered from bookshop to bookshop, stopping to see the calligraphers, disciples of Muhammad al-Farisi and his student al-Kutbi, who flung out lines of calligraphy to the cadences of the recitations. He stopped to read every one of the signs that were hung on the walls and over the arched doorways — QURANS AND THEOLOGY BOOKS, ARABIC LITERATURE — and witnessed an argument which broke out between some market traders in Sheikh Muhammad Salih Jamal’s bookstore. He stopped at the narrow frontage of the store owned by Abd al-Karim bin al-Baz, heir to the great dean of booksellers, which had become a center of intellectual activity under the auspices of Sheikh Abd Allah al-Urabi, and went in, joining the crowd of youths who were watching, entranced, the poetic duel taking place between al-Zamakhshari, al-Siba’i and Abd al-Jabbar.