The other interviewees had a real mixed bag of qualifications (priority was given to graduates of foreign universities!). When the man who was chairing the hiring committee, who also happened to be the managing director and the lead developer, asked me if I was Yusuf al-Hujubi, I wanted to punch him in the face. He said it like he was suspicious and he didn’t even wait for an answer. “If we decide that your qualifications are satisfactory, we may need to hire you on a probationary basis. If we were to take you on as an assistant, would you be able to put together a list of properties in Mecca whose charitable endowments are now defunct? And to find out whether the endowments are defunct because of a dispute among heirs, or just because they’ve been forgotten about?” The superior look that accompanied his question got on my nerves, and I was tempted to say, “I specialize in history, not family dramas.” The look was amplified when he said, “Leave us your number. We’ll be in touch.”
He dropped the sentence like a wall between our faces, yours and mine, severing every link: our noses and your full, peachy lips.
I stopped off to see Mushabbab on my way back. He was suspicious when I told him they were on the lookout for abandoned properties. We sat down in front of his computer together and searched for “Elaf Holdings.” You wouldn’t believe what we found: it’s like an octopus, with tentacles in companies, factories, hotels, hospitals, private universities, etc. It’s an empire on which the sun never sets. Mushabbab said it was vital that we keep track of the consortium’s activities on the ground — you never know what you might find out. To be honest, as I wrote down my suspicions it was like my eyes opened for the first time: the map was being redrawn right under our feet.
I’m not going to continue with Mushabbab’s line of thinking. I’m as deflated as a balloon today.
I dreamed of white thread last night. I dreamed that I tied the end of a string around your hand and flew you like a kite. You were leaning on your hand, as if seated in a chair, and I was flying you up over the mountains attached by only the thinnest string. We were watching Mecca wake up, though Mecca doesn’t have to wake up because she never sleeps: she only dreams, of the prayers and the footsteps of circumambulating pilgrims. And the dove: we undo the collar around its neck and the dove shakes it off like a splash of water. The thread that connects me to you makes a rainbow out of these colorful feathers, fanning them out over the Meccan horizon.
God, I’m so thirsty! And for some reason your dad chose not to take a nap today even though it’s sweltering.
I’m desperate to see that black rag at your window telling me: My father’s gone out, for … ever.
On days like this, allow me talk to myself rather than to you.
Who would hire a guy who can only think about the first Abbasid dynasty, or at a push stretch to Islamic Spain in time to fall alongside Granada in the space of a single night and hand over the keys? We always come back to the key, the epitome of my nightmares. I’m searching for the keyless lock to everything that’s shut off from you and me.
Detective Nasser reached for another scrap of paper impatiently, his mouth feeling dry as he read stealthily, like an intruder creeping into a house that was off-limits, slipping into bedrooms, finding their inhabitants stark naked, framing them for crimes, seeing right into their minds without the slightest difficulty. A “window” for the city of Mecca, the Mother of Cities, found its way into his hands:
Roofs
Our ancestors were obsessed with roofs. Meccan men were fulfilled — they were ready for death — once they’d made certain that they’d built a shelter for their heirs. Some Meccans endowed their property, entrusting their houses and their land to God — thereby returning it to Him who created it — while also giving themselves and their progeny the right to build on it, live in it, or rent it out, though they could never sell or leverage it. Their heirs were forbidden from selling or dividing up the inheritance of stones and soil within the confines of the sanctuary. The wisdom of our forefathers could be summed up thus: dust turns to liquid only for the purchase of other dust (that is to say, liquidating or selling land must lead to the purchase of substitute land that will be endowed to God).
A wise principle that is today being eroded, as can be seen in all the empty spots on the map of Meccan endowments.
Reading a Footprint
HALIMA SLIPPED INTO THE MASS OF BODIES CIRCLING THE KAABA IN THE CENTER of the Sanctuary Mosque, and as she moved she became aware of the reflection of the full moon on the marble courtyard of the mosque, casting a silver glow over the faces around her. She was borne around the first two circumambulations by the melodic Persian wail of a young Iranian man leading four women in full white cloaks who smelled of damp and dough. From the upper galleries of the mosque she could hear the wheelchairs that were provided for old men too weak to perform the circumambulation or even walk at all. She knew Yusuf was pushing one of them — a temporary means of making a living. One full Umrah ritual only cost about two hundred riyals, if the customer was willing to bargain a little.
Halima continued her circumambulation, invoking His greatest name — O Almighty! — over and over in the hope that He might restore to her what she’d lost. Her body trembled as she noticed a thin figure that had pulled away from the crowd begin swaying beside her, but without raising her eyes from her supplicating palms, she continued her rotation, finishing on the seventh circumambulation with the words “In the name of God, God is great.” When she raised her face to the corner of the Kaaba that held the black stone, she saw the names “The Living, The Everlasting” embroidered in gold, shimmering against the black silk of the covering. Without turning to look at her companion, she grasped his hand firmly and held it against her chest as she’d done so often since he was born to rein in his crazed episodes, to give him some of her tranquility:
“Are you sleeping well?” Yusuf was used to this eternal question of hers and the red blaze of insanity in his eyes diminished some.
“I gave them your papers. Forgive me.” He didn’t reply. She felt his pace quicken suddenly, and like a bird he tugged at her hand, pulling her away from the circumambulation toward the rock on which the Prophet Abraham had stood to build the Kaaba, leaving behind two footprints that were now covered over with a crystal dome set on a marble base, all enclosed in gold-plated latticework. Around the footprints was a band of silver engraved with the Verse of the Throne, and beside them, on a cushion of green velvet, lay the key to the Kaaba. Halima avoided the look of burning coals in her son’s eyes and stared instead at the key that was at the center of so many of his writings: millions of people have examined these footprints and this key, and they’ll go on doing so until the end of time. What’s the hidden message here? She wanted desperately to follow the key and the footprints, if only for a step or two, through the door to the impossible world that had possessed her son and all the other sons who were lost like him. “My whole life revolves around a key and all these doors that either open or shut in our faces.”
Halima felt even guiltier when she saw how pale and scrawny Yusuf was, and she hastily pulled her hand out of his. “They’re looking for someone to pin this body on,” she said. She hesitated before going on to tell him: “Sheikh Muzahim might ask me to vacate the room on the roof.” She could sense the anger in Yusuf’s footsteps, and it flustered her. “Some disagreement over the legality of his ownership … Sheikh Muzahim says they have doubts about his deed for the house. You know that house used to belong to my father, who sold it to Muzahim, but now someone else is claiming they have an even older deed.”