by Raja Alem
Don’t make fun of the way I write.
When a man sits down to write, to jostle the dead so they can’t enjoy their eternal rest, he’s choosing to write as a substitute for living the life he dreamed he would: a world in which his sons could live contentedly, assured of the knowledge that their father had fought and been broken, but that he’d done it all for them. That he was a hero and that his children were the only medals he had to show for it. The most painful, most deceitful words a man will ever write are the words he writes to a woman so that she will give him something she’s never given to any man before him and will never give to any man after him. Imagine the hopelessness of a man who writes for a living and who, after writing books upon books, discovers in his writerly solitude that he’s gone down a dead-end of illiteracy; that he writes but isn’t read, that the volumes of his life are nothing more than moth fodder.
We write to give life and to take it away (that’s how you should see me).
I realize I’m not writing to you, but to whomever inevitably reads my journal after you’re gone. They will, of course, try to read between the lines; so, to those who will wear themselves out trying to deduce who I am, let me save you the trouble: I am the writer and historian Yusuf, half-man, half-robot, twenty-eight years old. For some sin or transgression, I was born deformed in the 1980s and have lived on into the twenty-first century.
But I will record my secret here: I swear to you, reader, that I was born, healthier and more handsome, in the fifties and grew up in the sixties. Azza met me back then. She fell in love with me, and we sailed through time together.
Don’t ask whether the things you’re reading are true.
Just tell yourself you’re reading about a freak who wakes up in the twenty-first century to unfurl and stretch like the monsters looming before us, all these limited and unlimited liability corporations.
My nom de plume is Yusuf ibn Anaq, the giant who plucks fish out of the bottom of the ocean and grills them on the eye of the sun. It takes days for the caravans I send from my head to reach my feet where they discover that the nipping flies they set out to rid me of are actually wolves. I’m the one who survived Noah’s flood, which didn’t even come up to my waist. I’m the one who traveled through time and met the Israelites in the desert, who picked up a boulder the size of a mountain, which would have crushed them all had Moses not begged God to protect them. The boulder was instantly hollowed out and fell like a collar around my neck. The column I write in Umm al-Qura newspaper is a salute to my namesake, Awaj ibn Anaq.
Detective Nasser had the feeling that Yusuf was writing all this to make sure he’d be involved. He was writing to be read. He wasn’t writing like someone trying to hide a secret; he wanted to defy the veil. He wanted to look the reader straight in the eye and say the things that people usually tried to hide. Nasser was annoyed. For a second he thought about stopping—so as to deny this gloating exhibitionist an audience—but the detective in him told him he could do it: he was capable of combing through even the most innocent-sounding testimonies to track down the criminal hidden within. He carried on; the challenge he’d accepted weighed on him greatly.
September 20, 2004
A Window for Azza
Dear Azza,
When I get close to home, coming down the narrow lane, the window of your bathroom becomes the direction of my prayers. I look for the signal we’ve agreed on: a scrap of red cloth tied around the iron bars of the window informs me of your father Sheikh Muzahim’s movements.
I see it from far off. A red rag, shouting: “Danger! Do not approach.”
I slip my “window” under your door and go on up to my room, which is directly above yours. I step heavily on the floor, wanting to impress myself upon your head and your body, to inhabit you and the loneliness that surrounds you.
I should have stopped writing these windows to you. We’re not kids like we were back when we started playing this game of life. Back then my secrets were silly. I still remember what I wrote to you when I was in fourth grade: marriage?
My ears flushed red when I watched you read that word; I thought it meant something like “making out,” or “sex” even! Do you know how far a word will go to disguise its meaning, just so it can hold on to the connotations of its first rhythms?
That’s the beat the word played on my heart, the chill it sent up my spine, and no matter how many times the religion teacher explained and elaborated, the word still winks at me and whispers: “Take her in your arms, crush bones and distances in one go.”
I still look for a word like that, a word that says something so it can say something else, and for faces that present certain features so they can disguise others. I look out for those dreams, as well, that make us dream so they can hide us inside the dreams of another being, even though that being doesn’t want us to be part of their dreams either. Their dreams, too, are the dreams of another being that doesn’t want to release them from the library of dreams dreamed by all the people who came before.
I rave and claim that I’m going to tear off all the masks. The first mask is yours.
Azza, have you really become a woman like you threatened when you said, “There’s a veil between my face and yours now, Yusuf!”
Okay, fine, then that must mean I’m a man now, and like all the other men in the Lane of Many Heads I need a veil to cover my impotence so you don’t see my shame.
How can you expect a man to be nothing more than a white scrap addressed to you? I’ve lost sight of the man I once promised you I’d be; his head’s been unplugged.
I’ve got to keep breathing so I can fill your chest with oxygen. I, too, can hear the contradictions in my voice. That’s always how it is when I’m with you. It’s what gets to you.
I’m sitting on the bus writing this scrap of paper to you. Did you know that I’m an Aquarius and that Aquarius empties his bucket for all of eternity? Suddenly fate—that eternal emptying—dragged me to my feet in the middle of the bus, my papers scattering everywhere. The dusty eyes of the immigrant workers all turned to stare. These men didn’t let a fear of emigrating hobble them, they chased their dreams—me on the other hand …
How old am I now?
My head sways every time the bus stops, every time a body beside me stands up, sits down, or slumps in its seat. I’ve got to collect all these shreds of my identity; me and everyone else in my petroleum generation.
Did you know that bodies can tell a story in sweat? Like the sweat of this worker who just sat down with his plastic bag, stained with oily chicken and rice; he’s between a rock and a hard place. He’s in a rush to get to the building site where only yesterday one of his friends fell off the top of the scaffolding. They waited for hours for a vehicle—any vehicle—before they could take him, finally, to the nearest clinic in the back of a truck, racing against death. They were charged four hundred riyals just to have him admitted, and he ended up dying on one of their stretchers.
The sweat of these men tries to wash over me, tries to seep out of me; it says we’re all running from a construction site to a destruction site.
My gaze takes refuge in the scrap of paper that longs for your eyes, and in the view of the road ahead. Every time I raise my eyes, people, shops, and colors flash past, jolting me. I’d bet you there’s nowhere else on earth where you can find two square meters with such a mix of complexions. Mecca is a dove whose neck is streaked with colors that surpass the spectrum of humanity.
Do you also see how the rails of goods in the storefronts cry out? Newly arrived migrants are hatching a new generation, and in doing so they’re splitting the physical and human geography of Mecca into two classes: the improvisers—whose one care in the world is selling as much as they can of whatever they can—and the consumers. During the pilgrimage season, alongside the religious ritual, they buy and sell to the tune of five billion dollars a month. They drink tea with milk, mint with pine nuts, strong coffee, Seven-Up, Pepsi, herbal teas, Boom Boom, and Bison (“Makes
you move!”); they gobble up basmati rice and buy prayer rugs (“One hundred percent guaranteed to answer all your prayers!”). My mother used to warn me: “Make sure you fold up your prayer rug when you’re done praying, or else Satan will use it!” and as the bus speeds along I watch devils praying on rugs laid out on display in shop windows. If you ask me, marketing really is the answer to the devil’s prayers. O rugs of Mecca, if only you’d give me one that was guaranteed to answer my prayers!
“Meccans are slippery and sly, hot pepper that brings tears to the eye. They’re born businessmen who’d sell you the shade and the breeze. Never mind wool, they’ll pull your own mother’s placenta over your eyes!” My mother, Halima, loves repeating this little pearl; it’s like scrawling a naughty smirk onto the face of the mountains around Mecca.
I just got out of an interview with the recruiting team at Elaf Holdings, the company that handles most of the urban development and investment projects in Mecca, trading in soil that’s worth more than enriched uranium.
It was for the position of “historical researcher.” I’d be tasked with investigating potential sites for real estate development, with regard, of course, to preserving the unique nature of the Holy City.
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.”
“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.