“Who do you suspect of killing your husband? The Many Heads?”
“They claim to have seen his body being eaten by rabid dogs, but we could never prove that he’d actually died. He left us no body to mourn or bury.” Sorrow spread through her voice.
“But you still believe he’s alive?”
She hesitated for a moment, but then she came clean. “Somewhere in God’s great land. I’ve never felt like he’s dead. Men who are possessed don’t die. The thing that possesses them swallows them up.” The look of skepticism Nasser gave her forced her to elaborate. “On the night he disappeared we were sleeping in the same bed. I woke up in the darkest darkness. There had already been rumors of Portuguese pirate ships roaming the Red Sea and my husband had decided that that was a sign that he need to go searching for the key. He’d heard about the pirates abducting men and forcing them to work on their ship.”
Sheikh Muzahim coughed, spraying them with a hail of cardamom and sour coffee. “Detective, you know Meccans,” he said. “Their imaginations are as impenetrable as their mountains. They still weave horror stories out of the Portuguese fleet’s invasion of Mecca and Jeddah in 1541! You know, the Portuguese came with eighty-five warships and landed at the port of Abu l-Dawa’ir near Jeddah. They were met by the Sharif Muhammad Abu Nama, the pride of the Barakat tribe, at the head of legions of Meccans and tribesmen from the surrounding area, and the fleet was repelled. Ever since then whenever a young man goes missing in Mecca, they say he was abducted by the Portuguese and taken back to Andalusia. They have a hard time believing that some of their own flesh and blood are little devils who would leave the proximity of the Holy Mosque.”
A long suppressed ache in Halima’s heart was awoken and the scene from twenty-eight years ago replayed itself:
A sudden movement in the darkness interrupted her sleep. She could feel the heat coming off her slumbering husband’s body, which pressed against her own. She wanted to warn him but she was paralyzed by fear. She lay there for a while, looking into the darkness, watching the black figures fill the room. They approached the bed, and in a flash they pounced on her husband. Innumerable hands covered his mouth and stuffed him into a bag and then they simply carried him out. Halima fell deeper and deeper into her nightmare until dawn broke her screams open and the whole neighborhood came running. Innumerable hands reached out to soothe her, and hands held her back when she ran out into the street, trying to chase after the bag. In daylight, she was surrounded by pitying faces and the spiteful rumor started to spread that the angels had torn the Yemeni to shreds and fed him to the dogs because he’d had the temerity to ask for the key to the Kaaba. That night even the drawing of the key had disappeared, leaving no trace.
Halima had fallen silent and was watching the television in the cafe downstairs. A music video of song by Abd al-Majid Abd Allah was showing. For a second, her silence tempted me. I, the Lane of Many Heads, nearly started to tell the truth of what had happened that night, but I restrained myself. I wasn’t going to make it any easier for Nasser to tie together all the loose ends in his case.
“What exactly was the lineage your husband was claiming anyway?” It was sarcasm more than curiosity that impelled Nasser’s question.
“I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know what kind of fire my husband was playing with. I didn’t want my son Yusuf to fall victim to the same curse so I let the lineage my husband claimed stay buried. I remember my father used to like to call my husband “al-Hujubi,” in reference to his ancestors the custodians, so that’s what I nicknamed Yusuf. But when he needed a pen name to sign his Windows in Umm al-Qura, he chose Yusuf ibn Anaq, as if he were descended from the historical giant Awaj ibn Anaq.”
Women prattling always make me lose my mind. It feels like my heads are exploding into a million chaotic shards. Night fell on my desolate corners and to shut Halima up I covered the houses in the neighborhood in an even thicker gloom. Halima watched Nasser leave the depressive darkness after he’d gone for his customary walk around Mushabbab’s orchard. She pulled herself away from her permanent overlook and got ready to go out for her Thursday evening bridal tea-pouring ceremony.
AS USUAL, SHE HUNG HER MIRROR ON THE BACK OF THE DOOR, HER FACE LIT BY THE streetlamps, and began to make herself up. The eyelashes of her left eye fluttered as she ran the kohl over them and suddenly she felt something watching her in the darkness. She dared not turn around. For a second, she thought her time had come — that after the murdered woman her turn was next, that the hidden killer had come looking for her. The kohl hardened in the corners of her eyes. The death ritual replayed itself in her mind like a video: She’d washed that afternoon, and her hair, which she’d tied into a bun behind her head, still smelled of Abu Ajala soap. She’d performed her ritual ablutions before squeezing into the outfit the wedding planner had sent over. It covered her from tip to toe and had a white apron that tied at the waist and draped to her knees like folded wings; it matched what the rest of the servers would be wearing. She didn’t have to worry about being unclean, she thought; she was as ready for death as you could be. If only this person who’d snuck up on her in the dark had given her the chance to pray the evening prayer: four obligatory sets of prostrations plus two extra for supererogatory blessings. If only he’d done it while she was prostrate in prayer. But it occurred to her that dying on her prayer rug on all fours, like an animal, would leave all her curves exposed to the eyes of the policemen who’d come to find her body. Even if dying in prayer was the quickest way to enter heaven. For the first time, she understood the wisdom of her grandmothers’ prayers: “God grant us a good ending!” She thought she should repent, but in that gossamer limbo between life and death she couldn’t think of anything she had to repent for. In her mind’s eye, she could see the image of that specter, the visitor who used to appear at night in the Lane of Many Heads back before they’d found the body.
Halima drove that madness from her mind and focused on her tongue. The tongue is a secret portal that can open up under a Muslim’s feet at any time, plunging them down into the lowest circles of hell. Her grandmother had driven that image into her memory. There was no way she could repent for every rude thing she’d ever said. Instead she thought back on that bag of high heels she’d come home with one night. They were given to her by a woman in a car that was worth as much as the whole Lane of Many Heads neighborhood itself.
“Pray for Khalid Bin Nura, Auntie dear,” the woman had bent down and whispered to Halima, who was sitting on the floor in front of the Abu Dawoud Mall selling pots of waxing sugar. She motioned to her driver to give the bag to Halima.
Halima’s tiny feet were swimming in those size thirty-nines but she didn’t let that stop her. She stuffed each shoe with cotton so she could strut around like a peacock at weddings, and she generously let the neighborhood girls borrow them, too.
She had no idea who was weighing her soul down with all these heavy thoughts at precisely the moment when she needed to concentrate on one simple thing, one simple sentence. Out of the darkness emerged the figure of a man. “I testify that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is his prophet!” The profession of the faith had scarcely burst out of the lump in Halima’s throat when she recognized Mu’az. “You scared me, God damn you!” She noticed how thick his eyelashes looked, and he cut her off:
“Yusuf is in a safe place, Auntie Halima. He asked me to check on you.”
“Thank God, thank God a million times. Does he have enough to eat? Does he have enough to drink? Is he feeling well? Is that electric in his brain keeping him up at night? Is he sleeping?” The whole neighborhood was used to Halima worrying about her son’s sleep and the electrical activity in his brain. “How about his metal knee? Is he keeping it warm? Take him some Zamzam water that prayers have been read over. And give him this.” She reached three fingers into her cleavage to pull out some rolled-up banknotes and pressed them into Mu’az’s palm.