“Al-Labban — the milkman — was nothing but bad news. He was one of the devil’s two horns. He was always making trouble. They used to call him “Full Cream” because he was so fat. His twin brother was as skinny and sparky as he was podgy and slow, so they used to call him “Son of the Night.” He never sat down and never got tired; he was the backbone of that dairy. He used to milk the cows before it got light, skim off the cream and fill the yogurt vats, ready to wish the neighborhood a good morning before anyone had even woken up. No one knew the truth until the religious folks raided the cellar of the milking yard at midnight one Monday and found him smoking with his friends. Having caught them unarmed, the attackers brought the cellar down on top of their heads, then dragged them in chains to Farewell Gate where they flogged them and beat them with sticks, leaving them for dead. Worshippers who’d come for morning prayers hurried to dress their bloody wounds and carried the dead to al-Shifa hall in the center of Mecca, on the side of the Haram Mosque facing Shamiya Hill, where all the perfumers and herbalists had their shops, while the injured were taken to Qubbaniya hospital, which stood on the site of the house that Abu Sufyan had bought from Khadija bint Khuwaylid. That was where Full Cream found the corpse of his twin, Son of the Night. His heart was consumed with rage. May God pardon them both.” Sheikh Muzahim fell silent so as to savor his own words in the silence of the shop, and such a long time went by he almost forgot his voice.
“It was Full Cream who led the counterattack,” he picked up, “on the night of the Umm Kulthoum party in the orchard. He awoke from Umm Kulthoum’s sighing, which had stoked his pain at the loss of Son of the Night, and cursed the zealots — the same curses that had accompanied his twin’s bier during the funeral procession. Demons clamored in his breast, and suddenly with a leap he was possessed by Night, his dead twin. All his usual lethargy seemed to melt away and he snatched up his club and began thrashing every one of the attackers he could get his hands on. When the other men, both gentlemen and slaves, had gathered their energy they formed ranks behind him, and soon the beards and checked headscarves began to retreat. By the time they reached the gate of the orchard, they found themselves encircled and were forced to surrender. They were tied up and blindfolded and dragged to the desert near the road to the Umrah station, where they were beaten again and had their beards ripped out. Then they were thrown down a hole and left in the darkness …”
“And what’s the link between Full Cream and the place they call al-Labban’s house here in the alley?”
“He was their grandfather. He left his only son the milking yard and a wine press, and the son — Umm al-Sa’d’s father — sold the milking yard and used the proceeds to build the building they call the Arab League. The devil’s money, that was …”
“How much did he get for it?”
“I told you, there was a wine press in the milking yard, and al-Labban the milkman used to come out every dawn carrying three cans of milk on his right-hand side and three cans of wine on the left, distributing each to whoever requested it. There’s a very over-the-top story about how he died, now I come to think of it,” he added, spraying spit in excitement. “Are you interested in the hallucinations of devil worshippers?”
“Of course,” replied Nasser. He felt like he was being pushed into the past; he wasn’t seeking out these memories but rather they were being inserted into his head whether he liked it or not, like external memory drives.
“Some people say his children declared him mad and locked him up, so he ran away and was soon arrested by the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue for selling “vice.” They escorted him to their leader, our sheikh. He was standing before the Kaaba and turned to the milkman to rebuke him. “Aren’t you ashamed?” he asked. “How will you face your Lord with these sins?” “Shall I show you?” replied al-Labban. He asked for some water so he could wash for prayer, and then began to pray. After two genuflections he remained prostrated on the ground for some time, and when they touched him they found he was dead. Death while praying, Detective, is the fastest route to Paradise. As you can see, these types grant themselves license to do whatever they want, claiming that they’re spiritual people, and even have the temerity to say they’re going to go to Heaven!”
“So Umm al-Sa’d is this dervish al-Labban’s granddaughter?”
“Her father kept the wine press in the hallway of the Arab League as a memento, God help us.” He whistled sarcastically. “The milkman’s depravity jinxed the whole family. See how viciously the grandsons fought over their inheritance and how they ended up turning on their father, and their sister too? She gave them away in the end, though, when she escaped from Azrael’s jaws and came back to wage her shameless war on men. Well, like father, like son!”
“And what about Aisha? I heard she was friends with your daughter.”
Sheikh Muzahim glared at Nasser as best he could through clouds of glaucoma.
“Lord help us! She’s a weevil in the flour barrel, that one. She’s a curse: she corrupts the children first and then the adults. I was always careful not to let her near my daughter. Her marriage brought her and the whole lot of us bad luck. It was that crystal wedding dress that did it …” The mention of the dress surprised Nasser, and he sat up, hoping to hear more. “Ask that Turkish woman,” said the old man, but at that moment the sun must have set, because the call to sunset prayer sounded and he stood up to go and wash. “Are you coming to the mosque?”
“Sure,” said Nasser. “Go ahead and I’ll catch up with you.”
He’d finally got to the dress. Soon, he’d get to the body underneath, too, and the moment he touched it, life would shoot through his veins.
It was getting late, so Nasser went straight to the Arab League to deliver the Turkish seamstress’s eunuch assistant a summons for her to come in the following morning. On the wall of her cellar studio was daubed sloppily in red paint: THE DONKEY EMPRESS IS A BUTCHER.
That night, the stories he’d been listening to brawled in Nasser’s head, leaving him with half a headache. Automatically, he opened his wardrobe and took out the shameful ripped sleeve, spread it out on his bed like he did every night, then lay down with his face buried in it and fell asleep. Yusuf’s surreal article about Ali Bao the lunatic ancestor was waiting for him in his dreams.
Sharif Abd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn Awn (1299–1323 AH) picked out one of Mecca’s madmen known as Ali Bao, who used to roam the streets naked, and brought him into his circle of intimates — once, of course, he’d ordered for the man to be washed and shined and dressed in finery befitting someone who was to sit in the parlors of noblemen. They became close companions, and the Sharif ordered Mecca’s gentry to kiss the man’s hand, and treated him as the most important gentleman of all. He wanted to build the madman a grand palace, so he bought several houses close to the mosque in al-Qushashiya — the most important street in Mecca, where the fanciest, snobbiest of its people lived, such that even a Turkish pasha would take care to pick out his best clothes if he were passing in that direction — and forced the owners to move out before demolishing them and building the palace in their place. Next, he selected a large area in front of the palace that was also full of houses, ordered their inhabitants to move out too, and demolished them to make way for a lush garden that would delight the madman’s eyes whenever he looked out from his palace. Then, he decided to demolish the whole adjacent area, up to the edge of the Gaza neighborhood, so as to give an unobstructed line of vision between the Emir’s palace and the madman’s palace. In the end, whether it was cleared so that the Sharif could plant an enormous garden, or to build lodgings for pilgrims in accordance with the wishes of the Caliph, Sultan Abd al-Hamid II, the land remained empty for some time, but Sharif Awn died before anything was built, and it was eventually overrun by small houses and stores. Some like to believe that Sharif Awn associated with lunatics because he was wary of Sultan Abd al-Hamid — it was well-known that he was highly suspicious of the more precocious of his employees and servants — while others claim that Sharif Awn himself was a loony, as was patently clear from his approach to governance. They tell stories about the elephant he was given by a dignitary from India, which he used to let wander wherever it liked through the streets of Mecca, accompanied by a minder, and which he would take to summer in Ta’if with him. All this is to say that over the years, Mecca has become perfectly accustomed to madmen and elephants wandering around in the vicinity of the Haram Mosque …