He gave up on trying to finish the article, knowing that it would be censored — yet maybe it would provoke some reader or other, or throw up a key to Azza’s disappearance. As he was flipping through his old articles, he came across this:
January 22, 2003
Last night when I opened my eyes and found myself inside the Haram Mosque, circumambulating the Kaaba — and I don’t think it was a dream — I increased my pace and slipped in among the construction workers behind the wooden screens that had recently been erected around the Kaaba. We spent the whole night digging for the green gems at the foundation of the Kaaba, and when an emerald as big as a house was finally revealed, I fainted. I knew the workers were digging it up so as to remove it and dump it into the ocean. Every time they chipped at it, it would spark and Mecca would tremble. From where I lay on the ground, I tried to hold back one of the workers: “Why are you trying to get rid of the last remaining piece of heaven on earth?”
In the beginning, God sent down his house for Adam to live in, then Ishmael came to live in the Kaaba and took to using the unroofed part as a pen for his sheep and goats. Our journey away from divinity began when we led Ishmael’s animals out of the ruins and shut the Kaaba in our own faces.
Yusuf was annoyed by the emptiness in these words, knowing they were no match for the threat he felt in the air around him, but he couldn’t put a name to it.
At noon, Yusuf set out for the Lane of Many Heads, stealthily making his way to Mushabbab’s orchard. The sun had filled the sky and the temperature was over 49 degrees Celsius. Mirages formed over the surface of the lane as Yusuf walked along, joining the workers on their way to lunch, a wave that began after noon prayers and receded at half past two, leaving the neighborhood spotted with reeking plastic bags of rice and chicken, the eternal meal.
Yusuf moved warily, conscious of the eye that was following him carefully, but he was pretty sure Nasser wouldn’t be expecting him to show his face in the Lane of Many Heads in the middle of the day like this.
He sneaked in through a gap in the fence at the back of the orchard and made it to the stairs leading to the open sitting room. There on the mud stairs he collapsed. He couldn’t move. He surrendered totally to despair, not giving a damn what might happen to him. He felt that the last thread he could cling to had been cut. A stray cat appeared out of nowhere. It was missing its right eye and there was pus suppurating from where the eye should have been. It stared with its left eye, which was still intact, straight through to his heart. As he sat there, Yusuf lost all track of time. He was thinking back to the last time he’d sat there, when he’d watched as Mushabbab woke up.
Mushabbab doesn’t get up from the pile of dust he’s been lying on naked like a corpse, like a charcoal sculpture laid out on the ground of the orchard. Instead, still lying on the ground, he buries his head in green silk scraps from the covering of the grave of the Purest Prophet, peace be upon him, and breathes in the scents of three-quarters of a century’s worth of the Prophet’s tranquil sleep. He’s drunk on the sun so he begins to pick at the strings of his rebec with his left thumb, and sighs rise from his body. It’s a melody a woman sang to him on some occasion he can’t quite remember; nevertheless, he still passes it on in that singing, and it carries with it the weight of many souls. Some of the rebec’s strings do nothing but carry sighs:
“O Lord, you formed me out of the separation suffering soot of your creation.
I am your slave.
I long for nothing but to hear your voice.
I yearn for nothing but for you to reverberate through my body.
O Lord, I’ve left behind everything I used to carry except your echo.”
Mushabbab continues his secret conversation with that hidden melody until the sun lights up his still-high mop of hair. Then he knows it’s nine in the morning and time to cover up his nakedness.
He puts on his silver and white striped African robe to walk around the garden. He prepares for his daily rituaclass="underline" reviewing the curvature of the arches created long ago by masterful hands, and examining the mosaic trees and their birds, and the decaying wooden carvings on what remains of the roof. He can sense the hands of the artisans and the adobe of the builders who mixed volcanic rock with mud and spread its warmth over the walls with the ancient crenellations they called “stone soldiers.” Like a snake that slithers along and feels the soil of the orchard against its belly, he can feel the vaults beneath his feet, full of fragrant oils and history. In the air in front of him, he thinks back on the travelers who passed through his orchard the day before, including the Bangladeshi man who left him a stone tablet the size of a man and told him it was one of the tablets of Seth, son of Adam, which contained the destinies and wisdom of man from the beginning of time to the end of days.
“Rock candy, narcissus and wild thyme, ginger …” He squats by his stove and mixes up his secret preparation. “Sweetens the breath in the chest, helps the breath flow … When air finds a capacious emptiness inside of you, it speaks and comes out clearly, and takes inspiration from the rhythm of your diaphragm.” He drinks the mixture and it makes him feel full. He sets the cup down on the base of the mosaic and a hovering bird lands and drinks the last few drops. He heads for the only closed door in the orchard, to the left of the sitting area. As he turns the ancient key, the sun crowds against him on the threshold before he enters the bathroom. Only once has Mushabbab let Yusuf into that mysterious vaulted bath, which is the object of the curiosity of every young man and boy in the Lane of Many Heads. Yusuf was blown away when he saw it; it was a masterpiece. The floor was made of ceramic tile that looked like it had just come out of the oven; it was the color of fire. The walls were covered in blue mosaic up to Yusuf’s head, but above that they were bare adobe and the ceiling was cement, its dinginess contrasting with the turquoise hint in the blue. Mushabbab had brought this bathroom to life out of rubble. He himself had mixed the cement and laid out the tiles, arranging them according to how much fire they’d absorbed. He himself had laid the pipes that fed the wide pool.
Mushabbab closes the door in the sun’s face and drops his robe on the doorstep. He continues his daily ritual, ignoring anything higher than his head. He pulls up a tile to the right of the door and extracts his cigarettes, hand-rolled from darkened reddish weed, picking up his lighter, too, and walks to the brimming pool in the middle of the room, where he plunges his entire body into the water, hissing and bubbling like a burning piece of coal. The water soaks every bit of him, sending up bubbles of thyme and ginger and the sweetness of the rock candy. He lies back, lights his joint, and the drug spreads through his limbs.
The earthenware jars lined up along the sides of the pool are filled with mud from the Well of Zamzam and plants from the sacred circle of Mecca’s deserts. He reaches toward the jars and picks a few leaves, dunking and swirling them into the water next to him.
Time stops while Mushabbab is lying there, hidden behind clouds of smoke and listening so he can tell his disciples how he was reborn out of the bottom of the Well of Zamzam.
“I had the chance to touch like a truly living, waking person touches, and stagger like a dreaming person staggers more than a quarter-century ago, in 1979 or ’80, when I dove to the bottom of the Well of Zamzam in diving gear, in shifts with several other divers. They were hired to deepen the well, while I dove down to deepen its springs in my chest.