“Muzahim never stops complaining. He’s trying to make everyone in the neighborhood think he’s fighting for some noble goal, but the truth is he wouldn’t let anyone cheat him out of a grain of sand. And when it comes to you, he’ll just go on playing the gallant knight forever …”
“That’s true, but it’s still up in the air. If worst comes to worst I can always go live at the home with Yousriya, Khalil the pilot’s sister, and the other women.”
“You? Live there?! Mom, you earn your living from making music and livening up weddings with your tea ceremonies. You’d die in that depressing place! Maybe Mecca’s getting back at us because we’re both such hypocrites!” Halima could feel the crackle of electricity in Yusuf’s voice, and it reminded her of that morning a few months earlier when Imam Dawoud was leading the prayers in the mosque in the Lane of Many Heads and he recited Verse 32 from the Banquet Chapter: “If someone kills one person, other than to avenge a murder or prevent wickedness on earth, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and if someone saves a life, it is as if he has saved all mankind.” Something went off in Yusuf’s head when he heard that verse. One moment he was on the roof and the next, he’d leapt down to the alley in a single bound, his eyes shooting sparks like a wounded animal, and he broke through the door of the mosque with a thunderous clatter. The worshippers tried to ignore him, but he pushed them aside as he elbowed his way through their ranks in the direction of the air-conditioning unit. He snapped it off, and then he turned out the lights as well, ricocheting from one switch to the other like a bullet, and then he went up and snatched the microphone from under Imam Dawoud’s nose.
“You, people of the alley, whom I cherish and whose lost causes I’ve defended tirelessly in my column …” His eyes bored into the alarmed faces arrayed before him. “You’ve stolen my life. You’ve suffocated every youthful spirit in the neighborhood. You’re nothing but a bunch of hypocrites and liars who’ve banded together to fight life itself. You poison the minds of young people in the Lane of Many Heads. You’ve turned this place into a den of spies who pry into our most profound desires, our most intimate dreams. You’ve managed to turn the most private moments in our lives into a living hell. And you still have the nerve to stand in a house of God, blasting your prayers over the loudspeaker five times a day! You pray to ingratiate your way into heaven after you’ve gone and made our lives unbearable.” Yusuf avoided the sympathetic look in the cook Abd al-Hamid al-Ashi’s eyes and directed his rage at Sheikh Muzahim. “You. You build prisons with your left hand and mosques with your right. You’re always preaching about faith, but what faith? The faith of burying your daughter alive every day? The Lord knows you’ll be held to account on Judgment Day for all these prayers and prostrations. And you—” Yusuf turned to Yabis the sewage cleaner. “You dream of making it to heaven by cleaning up our shit! You’re killing yourself day in and day out, but you think that our excrement’s going to win you God’s favor. What kind of role model are you for us and your own children? What if we all followed your lead and became cockroaches living off the neighborhood’s waste? Of course, I’m a hypocrite, too. None of us knows what it means to live next door to God’s holiest sanctuary, what it requires of us. Are we supposed to celebrate life? Or to fight against it?”
The loudspeakers carried an explosion of anger from inside the mosque. “That’s the voice of Satan himself speaking!”
“The kid’s crazy, look at his eyes …”
The speakers had drawn an audience. A cloud of dust rose in the alley as people poured in from the fringes of the Lane of Many Heads, rushing to see the spectacle. Even those who didn’t usually get up early enough for dawn prayers couldn’t miss the appearance of the devil himself in their neighborhood mosque.
Some of the young men came forward warily, hoping to wrest the microphone from Yusuf’s trembling hands. At the other end of the Lane of Many Heads, Azza burst out of nowhere and ran down the length of the alley in her abaya to the door of the mosque, where she hesitated. She wanted — no, yearned — to push past the men and get to Yusuf, to calm him down, but some fear, like the fluttering of a dove’s wings, stopped her.
“What kind of believers are you? What are you doing here, bowing and kneeling like robots, when true religion is out there, in the streets and in people’s homes, in the good deeds you do, whether great or small!” A cloud of heat settled over the mosque and the neat lines of prayer rugs began to sway and overlap; sweat trickled between men’s shoulders, daubing wet patches onto their shirts, sliding into the scene. A group of young men had Yusuf surrounded. Yusuf sent his first assailant flying through the rest of the circle with a forceful shove.
“God give you strength! Don’t be frightened by the devil. Don’t let him weaken your faith!” shouted a voice somewhere in the back, cheering the attackers on. Raising his voice, Yusuf answered him, “Have faith in life, in the breath of life His spirit gave us! Don’t fight the breath which brought us into this world. Know its many blessings. Heaven begins in the street and ends at the threshold of the mosque!”
“Muslim brothers, block your ears to Satan’s blasphemy! Repeat God’s name and attack him. This is the devil himself speaking to you through Yusuf, an angel of hell!”
That morning Halima woke from a deep sleep to the sound of her son’s rage booming out through the mosque’s loudspeakers. She leapt up, grabbed her abaya, and raced out into the alley. The air exploded as Yusuf, now cornered by the men, screamed at the top of his lungs, “Look at the deal you’ve made!” Amplified by the loudspeaker, his shriek tore through every breast in the Lane of Many Heads. “A prison in life and a paradise in death!” he yelled, as fists pounded him and feet smashed into his face and his ribs, not even sparing his broken knee. They were beating Satan himself. They beat Yusuf until he collapsed, crushed under the weight of their rage, until even his breath fell silent.
Halima broke through the ring of bodies to find her son had been tied up with cables and his head wrapped in a red scarf so as to hide the face of the devil.
“Move, woman. Stand back or Satan will get you!” Halima paid no attention to the warning and pushed her way through the crowd of men to her son’s unconscious body. Her abaya slipped as she knelt down to cradle Yusuf’s crumpled frame in her lap and the men retreated at the sight of her bare chest. As soon as the ambulance appeared at the end of the alley, they surged around her again and shoved her aside. She found herself stumbling feebly into Azza’s arms outside the mosque. Meanwhile, Sheikh Muzahim and his bright orange beard stepped forward to fan the men’s rage:
“Fear for your religion! The devil has taken over the body of this cursed boy. Cast him into hell! Show him no mercy!” His hand trembled as he grasped his black prayer beads, urging the paramedics and policemen to expunge the satanic presence.
“He is an angel of hell,” echoed Imam Dawoud. “Who is more wicked than he who seeks to destroy God’s mosques and prevent worshippers mentioning His name therein? Only disgrace awaits such people …” His son Mu’az went to turn on the air conditioner to end the disgrace Yusuf had caused.
Yusuf was taken to Ta’if and booked into Shihar psychiatric hospital. He was strapped to the bed in a crowded ward where six patients lay immersed in their own feces, spraying everything around them with putrid froth every time they shrieked at the orderlies or at Yusuf when he tried to escape. He was unimaginably furious: to end up in Shihar hospital was a fate worse than death. Shihar … The name alone was considered an insult back in the Lane of Many Heads in Mecca; it was where disturbed girls, who were virgins, suddenly gave birth, where the healthy dropped dead by morning, where sanity trickled away down drainpipes and heads were emptied slowly of their identities, where a person’s human qualities would be washed away by the surging onset of idiocy and stupefaction.