As fans of conceptual art we’re keen to see the cemetery remodeled as a tower. Our deaths will be truly modern — if not post-modern! A more creative contractor might even fashion the upper stories out of glass so our corpses can lie watching the more freshly dead decompose artistically above them.
I’m afraid to go on my morning stroll around al-Malah these days.
Here in Mecca we’ve become specialists in religious tourism and our mission is to deport our dead. The bodies who were disinterred from al-Shubbayka know all about that. Developers razed the cemetery and moved all its dead to make way for skyscrapers, parking lots, and five-star hotels.
Long corpses were stacked on giant trucks, their legs sticking off the end. Those of us who saw that sight as kids, still see them now, floating in midair down al-Misyal, following the drainage sewers to Majin Pool. Who knows where they took them from there.
The traffic suddenly started moving and a motorcycle roared past Nasser into a narrow gap ahead, belching fumes straight into Nasser’s face. He quickly closed the window and turned on the air-conditioning, laughing at himself for needing living, rather than mummified, air. He regarded the pate of the bike’s back passenger, which was shaved so closely it shone, and the ihram robes that fluttered as the motorbike sped along, contrasting with the driver’s tracksuit and helmet. He found the frivolity of motorbikes so irritating. They’d started to replace taxis as the main form of transport in the past few years since they were so much faster in traffic. A ride cost as little as fifty riyals, but the accidents were innumerable.
Nasser had lost his place when he’d stopped reading, and when he went back to it the word revolution caught his eye.
You could say the dead were the first to form an opposition movement because in Mecca death is the frontline. Meccan graves have a history of rebelling against extortionate taxes. The most famous instance was the Gravediggers’ Revolution in 1326 AH. When Sultan Mehmed V acceded to the throne and the Committee of Union and Progress got their way, the Ottoman constitution was reinstated throughout the empire, including in Mecca and the Hijaz. The Ottoman constitutionalists established a specific tax of five riyals for burial of the dead, which was allegedly to cover the cost of maintaining the graves. They summoned the leader of the gravediggers’ guild and instructed him to exact full payment from the relatives of every dead person, but he refused categorically and stormed out of the government palace with the famous words
People of al-Malah, rise up!
Death may well be free today
but tomorrow to die they’ll make you pay!
His cry roused the anger of the people of the Hijaz. No longer impressed by the constitutionalists’ principles, they lost what faith they’d had in the Young Turks’ revolution against the Sultan. Their crier called for a holy war, and young men from every neighborhood responded, coming out with their weapons and clamoring for a revolution against the Turks. They clashed with soldiers in markets around the city, and small numbers were killed and injured on both sides until the Turks managed, with the help of several Sharifs, to suppress the mutiny a few hours later. The Sharif of Mecca, Ali bin Abd Allah Pasha, was accused of fomenting and aiding the revolt and promptly deposed. Sharif Hussein bin Ali was installed in his place. A hardline conservative, he paid no attention whatsoever to the principles of the constitution that granted ordinary people a bare minimum of political rights because it went against the tradition of total separation between the ruler and the ruled, which was something he cherished.
The traffic finally eased when the troop of pilgrims crossed the road toward the Haram behind a young guide, chased by a little Afghan boy selling miniature prayer mats, decorated with glittery pictures of the Kaaba, out of a plastic bag. Nasser bore right, toward Hafayir, though he wasn’t planning to go anywhere in particular. Since he’d taken on the case, Mecca — the city he’d left his birthplace, Ta’if, for — had stirred in his heart; more than once, now, he’d driven around aimlessly at night, for no other reason than to check that his Mecca was still there and that the angels hadn’t carried it away to punish its unworthy residents.
As soon as he turned into al-Mansur Street he was surrounded by shining black faces. He felt safe in that narrow alley, which was named after the dervish who lived there, al-Sayyid al-Shanqiti, who was famous for materializing out of nowhere. He would wander the alley or sit down on the sidewalk in front of the mosque, perform some miracle, then suddenly disappear again. Nasser parked opposite al-Shanqiti Mosque and continued on foot, looking around him without knowing what he was looking for. People always hoped that some crisis would persuade al-Shanqiti to return from his occultation; Nasser could feel anticipation in the air, the hope that he would appear like he had once when a father had accidentally slammed a car door on his son’s hand. Al-Shanqiti materialized, read some verses from the Quran over the crushed hand, and then breathed on it. The boy’s hand had healed immediately. Or once when a motorcyclist had an accident with a car and his leg was smashed up; al-Shanqiti appeared, recited, and breathed, at which the wounds sealed themselves up and the bones set themselves. The young man got to his feet as good as new and set about collecting the broken bits of his motorbike and hauling them over to the nearest mechanic’s. The stories, Nasser thought, would be perfect for those shows on satellite where they read the stars, cure people’s problems with magic, and turn ugly ducklings into graceful swans through epic cosmetic surgery operations.
Nasser glanced around him, following the eye of the puzzle-master who supervised him and guided his investigations. He saw no trace of the glory that Yusuf had found in the history of al-Mansur Street, which used to be known as “the Chamomile.” In the early twentieth century it was easily the most fashionable area in the city, equivalent to Hyde Park, or Central Park, or the Champs-Élysées, where everyone who was anyone would promenade each afternoon to show off how elegant and radiant they were, their bejeweled rainbow-like costumes easily eclipsing the finery of their Turkish overlords.
On the other side of the alley, a black man stood up, drawing Nasser’s attention to a threadbare red couch, a water urn next to it, and a peeling Formica bookshelf whose three shelves bore a few leftover rounds of dry bread and a couple of open cans of food. A living room out in the street, on the bare earth. The man came over, arms outstretched to greet Nasser, and Nasser yielded to the hand, discovering too late its leechlike softness; it was as though his hand was encased completely in squelching clay. The man’s palm was firmly glued to his and he stared into Nasser’s eyes as he said, “Women! They come with knives. Some of us can read their sharp edges. You will. But take it slowly. Don’t read with your heart. We have nothing to do with it. Women are their own biggest problem.” The man let go of Nasser’s hand and vanished down the street.
Nasser’s feeling of annoyance mounted. He was sure he’d seen that face somewhere before, but he couldn’t recall where, and although he wanted to follow the man to find out, his inscrutable words stood like a barrier in Nasser’s way.
Nasser went back to the car and drove off in irritation. When he got to al-Rusayfa Street, the word “knives” resurfaced to prod him, and he remembered one of Yusuf’s old columns that had been published online was about knives.
June 20, 2000
The eighties began with a phone call from a woman to the office of the City of Mecca. She informed them of a peculiar phenomenon: “Firstly, I’m Meccan born and bred,” she said. “Now, my husband and I noticed a while ago that all the knives were disappearing from the markets. We asked around, and discovered that the cleavers and other sharp instruments were beginning to disappear too. We’ve found out that African workers are buying them in record numbers!”