Yusuf spent the entire night examining that photo, but he couldn’t figure out the secret Mu’az had tried to get him to see. It was a photo of the mahmal, the procession of the kiswa, moving through the Meccan streets having arrived from Egypt. The mahmal was always occasion for celebration; those gifts were like a yearly revival for the poor Hijaz. Between glances at the photo and down at the alley, Yusuf was nodding off, and at one point the photo and the alley infiltrated his dreams. He dreamed of them both as one and the same. All of a sudden the mahmal was passing through the Lane of Many Heads, guarded by soldiers at the front holding their swords pointed toward the ground. In front of them were the down-and-outs of the Lane of Many Heads, mingling with the great men of Mecca who walked behind the Sharif in decorated headdresses, the religious scholars in white turbans and the Bedouin in headscarves and igals. The women were dressed in black abayas and white yashmaks, diaphanous veils that covered their mouths but left their eyes and foreheads bare for all to behold. A single tree recurred in the image; military drummers girded the procession. Women peeked enviously at the procession from behind screened windows and cracks in the wall. Yusuf’s heart stopped when he spotted the men on the roof at the left of the picture. Half-hidden behind the minaret on the roof, a man dressed in white traditional clothes seemed almost to be waving at him; another man had turned toward the wall so Yusuf couldn’t see him; Mu’az was watching the scene surreptitiously from behind the minaret with the two other men. The houses in the Lane of Many Heads looked like they’d been patched up. Some parts bespoke great past wealth and others had been fixed with new pockmarked bricks or cement or wood, or even mud. It was a mix of planks and patches, through which the mahmal passed on its way to Mushabbab’s orchard, where the camels would rest.
Yusuf came right up close to the decorated canopy on the back of a camel in which the covering of the Holy Kaaba lay. It looked like the kind of cage they put over a woman’s coffin to conceal her post-mortem allure. “Who’s under that cage?” wondered Yusuf.
“Azza,” said a voice inside him.
“Aisha,” said another.
Yet another said, “Yousriya. Salma. Maymuna. Sa’diya …” It couldn’t decide on a name. Some presentiment was telling him to decipher the designs and words embroidered in gold on the kiswa and the canopy of the litter … When they got to the orchard, the men began lowering down the magical-looking mass of the kiswa. Yusuf was expecting the girl wrapped up in there to appear. But the men weren’t taking down the cloth, but rather the writing itself. Word by word they decorated the orchard, the pride and joy of the Lane of Many Heads. When the silver- and gold-couched words had all been hung up on the walls of the orchard, a young woman in trailing black appeared all at once out of the writing-denuded camel howdah into the orchard. Yusuf’s heart was pounding; it told him he knew her. In that instant, the trumpets and drums, the ruler and notables, all the celebrants, disappeared as if they’d never been there, and in their place was a huge fire. The neighborhood people were adding firewood. They said it was to melt down the gold and silver in the orchard’s decorations so it could be donated to the people of the neighborhood. The fire raged and smoked, and the walls began to melt from the heat; the girl was melting too. When she had melted down completely into a puddle, a giant reared up out of the puddle and with a single flick of its tail knocked the alley upside down.
When Yusuf woke up, a certain tranquility had settled over the lane, but it was almost instantly shattered by a scream: the body had been found.
Alone in the Lababidi house, Yusuf pored over the photo of the camel litter. He spread it out in front of him; for days and nights he examined its every last detail. He looked at all the men’s faces, searching for the man responsible for withdrawal. Among the people celebrating, he noticed a face he recognized. It was one of the notables; he was dressed in modern-looking robes and surrounded by lackeys. He’d seen him before. With his driver and PA. All those faces had actually been through the Lane of Many Heads a month before the body was found. He tried to find a way to blow the photo up, so he could see the features better, to find that man and find out who he was. He knew that if he could just put a name to the guy, he’d have discovered who the killer was. Or who the kidnapper was, or who the woman was. He replayed the image in his dream in slow motion to get a better look at the young woman as the curtains of the litter parted and she made her way toward the orchard, or leaving the alley in the magma of the giant …
Subconsciously, Yusuf knew the woman who had snuck out of the Lane of Many Heads. Who was she? Azza or Aisha? Or just another daughter? A sister? A woman who couldn’t bear the neighborhood any more? He looked back and forth from the photo of the camel howdah to the image of the event in his mind. The events of that night were impressed on his subconscious. Although he’d been sleeping, he’d still been aware of that quick rustling movement: the body that fell and the other that ran from it.
FROM: Aisha
SUBJECT: Message 23
I sank into the deepest of deep sleeps last night. I missed the dawn prayers, and waking up this morning was like having my soul torn out.
If death turns out to be a deep revival like that, I long for it. After all, the Quran does tell us that sleep is a minor death.
Do you ever ask yourself, “When is she going to give up and stop writing to me?”
A single word from you is enough to wipe out my darkest thoughts.
“Best strive with oneself only, not with the universe.” Lawrence says toward the end of Women in Love.
Imagine if you only had one local channel, then the signal was cut, and then suddenly you were reconnected and plugged into all the cutting-edge channels we have today. My father’s death was like that. Whenever I look at the channels Azza is plugged into, I can’t help but pity myself.
There was a sour taste to the yeast in our bread this morning. Do you think that Azza is coming up with all those channels herself? She says there’s nothing to the world but portals, and there are too many for her to cross. “Just close your eyes and spin around and start bouncing from doorway to doorway. The important thing is not to let any doors close on you.” That’s her mantra.
The photo of you standing in your kitchen is making me hungry. Remember how I tore at the bag of shopping you brought home that Sunday? I had no idea what I was going to make with leeks in that modern kitchen of yours. One day I’ll make a meat and leek pie for you. It’s not an easy dish to make and it must have eaten up so many of my mother’s days.
Don’t be surprised by the amount of leeks it uses. Leeks warm the blood. Did you know that? They’re related to green onions. Our grandmothers used to mellow them out by adding ground meat, tahini, and pastry.
I look back and I see the leeks of my childhood. Strange, exciting images whose focal point is the Yemeni porters. They were literally the backbone of the Lane of Many Heads. Their backs had witnessed all our homes coming into being. Their backs, half bent under the crushing weight, had seen our furniture move up and down the floors of our building, sometimes during pilgrimage, and for the last time when I settled in my cubbyhole for good. They left their heavy vests on even when they slept and they would sit in the corner of the lane, out of the sun, each with a bunch of leeks, which they ate with rounds of white bread.
My father was irritated that the strong, well-built Yemeni who’d appeared in our narrow neighborhood had chosen to sit leaning against the nude brick wall of our house, the smell of his white, leek-steeped undershirts reaching up to me as plainly as anything. I would peek out at his green loincloth, which changed color like a sunflower, rising and loosening as a reptile crawled inside it. Every time a woman walked past, she’d screech like a crow and crash into walls as she tried to flee.