The Dove's Necklace

by Raja Alem

  “Don’t worry,” Nora’s assistant hurried to comfort her sleepless, frightened boss, picking up the clothes Nora had just taken off and watching her nestle into the hand-embroidered bed sheets. She left the light above her and the light in the corridor leading to the bathroom on. The assistant had never seen anyone who slept bathed in so much light. “I could make you some chamomile tea and run you a hot bath if you want.”

  “I just want you to check on me every half hour while I’m sleeping. I’m worried that if I sleep too deeply, I’ll go into a coma and die …”

  A sympathetic fear welled up in the assistant’s heart and she quickly reassured her. “I sleep as lightly as a bird; I fall asleep in a second and wake up just as easily. I’ll sleep on the sofa in the sitting room and leave the door open so I can watch you all night.”

  The assistant’s self-sacrificing promise coaxed Nora to confide further. “I’ve been scared of sleeping alone since I was little. I used to sleep glued to my second mother’s ribs, and I’d make her hold me tight. Whenever I felt sleep pulling me toward death, I would hear her murmuring God’s names over me and I’d resurface.” She paused to push away an apparition, “I was sleepy all the time.”

  The assistant relaxed at this easing in her mistress’s mood—though she couldn’t claim to have gotten used to those fickle changes of temperament, which were getting even more pronounced lately. “How about I make a doctor’s appointment for you?”

  Nora didn’t say anything. The assistant unobtrusively finished what she was doing, then left.

  The night passed like an interrupted dream, in flashes of light in which her assistant hovered over her breathing to make sure she was still alive and then went out again.

  It was eleven in the morning when the honking of saxophones outside woke Nora. A stream of protestors stretched from El Retiro and the Prado down to the Palacio de Congresos, stopping traffic, and they’d dyed the Fuente de Neptuno fountain bright green on their way. They were demanding raises for municipal workers. When Nora stepped out of her hot bath, she looked radiant and fresh; she walked barefoot across the thick carpet, delighting in the feel of handwoven silk. Her breakfast was waiting on a tray on the table in front of her beside a few embroidered cloth bags her assistant had lain there.

  “I went out for a walk this morning and came across an old Turkish woman who was selling these handmade purses.” A sharp look pecked at her momentarily, then relaxed. Nora picked up her coffee and calmly took a sip, looking out the window at the demonstration below. She picked up one of the bags; in her mind’s eye she could see a similar purse tied around her waist and hanging down to the right. Her words flowed out like she was picking up an old story.

  “The woman who brought me up invented a little bag like this for me to tie around my waist. She made it out of the fabric of my feast-day dress. She believed that every girl should start with a little bag that the world could pour good luck into!” Down below on the street, one of the striking workers delivered a speech to the entire city over a PA system in enthusiastic Spanish.

  “She was so noisy and cheerful, dancing, praying the Ramadan night prayers and singing all in the same breath.” Nora picked up another little purse, this one adorned with blue eye beads and tiny palms to ward off envy. “What would a girl like me put in a purse like that?” she snorted.

  “I could put your hair pins in it …” ventured the assistant.

  “Someone once gave my father a tin of agarwood and he kept it hidden away, never once using the incense. I stole the biggest piece, which nature had sculpted into the shape of a man. It was the first thing I hid in my purse. When I wasn’t looking, the man used to leave me messages written with hair pins on my skin; he’d climb out of the bag when my eyes were closed. He said my hair couldn’t stand being restrained by hair pins, so he took to braiding my untamable hair and winding it around my head like a crown. In the world I lived in, it was always men who held the keys to the world. That little agarwood man was my secret key … I always blushed when he’d dip his finger into his mouth before smoothing down my thick eyebrows …” Her voice was scarcely audible any more, a little girl murmuring in her sleep.

  Super Emperor

  RAFI JUMPED OUT OF HIS CHAIR TO GREET THE SHEIKH WHEN HE APPEARED, unannounced, in the hallway, but he headed straight for Nora’s suite and entered without knocking. Rafi couldn’t help but feel embarrassed, like he’d been caught red-handed. He’d gotten used to the sheikh’s sporadic appearances and disappearances over the ten years he’d spent working as part of the man’s security detail whenever he came to Madrid on business or pleasure.

  The women he’d gotten used to seeing on the sheikh’s arm never lasted more than a few days, though. There was always a new face, attracted to the forty-something sheikh’s good looks and the financial empire he’d managed to build at a relatively young age. This time around, it was different though. Somehow Nora had succeeded in luring him back every time he went away. Through some unspoken arrangement, he’d made her understand what her role was in that equation of theirs: when he was around, she hardly ever left the suite, but as soon as he left, she’d be out of there in an instant as if fleeing his shadow. Whenever her mood darkened and the ties binding them began to break—because she was the one breaking them—he’d rush back to trap her.

  RAFI LINGERED IN THE HALLWAY OUTSIDE, TRYING TO LISTEN IN ON WHAT WAS HAPPENING on the other side of the door. The sheikh’s aftershave hung tenaciously in the air.

  Inside the suite, Nora lay on her chaise longue and watched him come in. Something in her eyes drew him toward her like a magnet, like a shark sensing a drop of blood at the bottom of the ocean. He leaned over her, careful not to touch any part of her except for her lips, grazing them cruelly with his own. His kiss penetrated her skull, burrowing down to her spine. She clenched the chaise to stop herself from wrapping her arms around his neck. When he pulled back, he could taste her blood on his lips. He licked them as he stared at her. “What do you do when I’m not around? Do you find a way to entertain yourself?”

  The question groped at a deeper question: her intentions. It was absolutely vital for him that she remain exactly where he wanted her, when he wanted her, how he wanted her. Fulfilling his every condition. The taste of her saliva, her silence, they awoke the hunter inside of him. She knew that tone of his, it preceded a storm. “Your bills betray a lack of enthusiasm. What do you do to amuse yourself in my absence?”

  “Nothing.”

  He’d failed to draw her into conversation, but it only provoked him further.

  “Nothing? Don’t you miss me?” Their arguments usually started with something stupid like that.

  “Do you want me to lie? No, I don’t.”

  “Maybe you miss hi—”

  “Hold it right there.”

  “Who are you to tell me where I should hold it?”

  “They’re your rules. You came up with them and now you want to break them. If you get to break the rules, then I’ll break them, too.”

  “Really? I’d love to see that.”

  “Fine. You will,” she said with implicit defiance. He grabbed her by the throat.

  “Are you threatening me, you bitch?” He squeezed her neck; he seemed to enjoy watching her face turn carnelian red. “You want to make a laughing-stock out of me? Is that your plan? You stup—”. She hit him with her arms and fists, catching him unawares, and broke free.

  “Say one more word, and I swear you’ll never see me again.”

  She got up from the chaise longue and ran toward the bedroom. He caught her by the bedroom door and threw her against the cold, clean wall, grabbing convulsively at her body.

  “Oh really?! I’ve obviously spoiled you then…” That was the last thing he said. His thirst for destruction was beyond words. Rafi tried to ignore the fight raging on the other side of the door even though he could hear bodies crashing together.

  She ascended from pain to pain, from climax to further climax, stari
ng into eyes that delighted in her suffering. No matter how much she gave in, he would never trust her. Her eyes cut into him like a tightening noose, penetrating through him and around him. He left no room in her for a rival. Time passed them by. She dived down, drawing him in, toward the hunger that always followed. She was always two steps ahead and he was always panting to catch up. If he’d managed to beat her to it, he’d have left her there without a backward glance. She bit, it hurt, he groaned. He was searching for hatred in her, she was searching for destruction in him. When he was plunged inside her like this, her body betrayed her with desires that weren’t her own: it mimicked him so that he could take her over. She was finding it harder to overcome this thing that brought them together, that enslaved them, that always lured him back. No matter where else he went or who else he lusted after, he was as stuck as she was in the trap he’d laid for her.

  Caviar

  THAT NIGHT, THE SHEIKH HOVERED AROUND NORA, TRACKING HER EVERY MOVE like a vulture, ready to swoop the moment she flagged. He forced her to eat caviar on bread topped with slices of lemon, but he himself didn’t touch the stuff. He liked to order things his ulcer prevented him from eating and watch her eat them instead, as though she were a dog or a cat, relishing the sight of each bite as it went down. He liked forcing every bite down her throat, which always tightened up after he plundered her body. He put her on and took her off as if she were a glove, but when her body rejected him, he would break through her defenses by force-feeding her.

  When he was done, she’d curl up on the end of the sofa and he’d ignore her and carry on drinking alone, looking weary and grim. The further he drifted from consciousness, the closer the two of them grew. She remembered the texture of the caviar, reddish, jelly spheres exploding against her tongue and the roof of her mouth, washing away the taste of him in sea-saltiness. At one point, she laid his head down in her lap so that he could stretch out on the sofa. She was calm in those moments of truce when everything was laid bare. In sleep, he was just an innocent boy from a working-class neighborhood. His forehead was sweaty at the hairline and the volcano inside him lay dormant. Maternal instinct filled her and for a moment she was woman pure, with no need for ornament, or danger. When his breathing got heavy, it was easy enough to lay his head on a pillow. Then she stood up.

  She shut the door to her bedroom, and then several others: one that led to the sitting room, another that led to cramped maid’s quarters, as well as the door leading to the Jacuzzi and the door to the bathroom. She felt like she had to shut every door within a hundred-meter radius.

  Through the windows in the corner of her bedroom she stared out onto the two tree-shaped sculptures in the park below, which peeked back up at her. She didn’t want to sleep. She didn’t want to sit down. She wasn’t afraid, but her mind was aglow, split open like a gorge. Fiery explosions surged upward, blazing wildly in the corners of her mind before melting away. Nothing could be translated into a coherent image. She made a decision: leaving her fur coat behind, she wrapped a gray scarf around her head and slipped through the service room into her assistant’s bedroom where she put on the woman’s coat. She slipped out through a door that opened out onto the end of the hallway and took a quick look back at Rafi’s room; he left the door ajar even when he was sleeping. She was relieved not to have him hovering around her either. She wanted to be alone for a night. Alone. Face to face with the world.

  In the road, whipped by the cold night, her disquiet grew. She understood the risk she was taking going out by herself this late, but she didn’t care. She only cared about the earthquake inside of her. She didn’t know when it was going to erupt onto the surface. It was the first time she’d ever dared break his rules. She walked uphill, the Palacio de las Cortes on her right, and veered left down narrow streets. Bars and restaurants were woven into the web along with laughter and flirtatious cries that trailed her as she passed. A young man circled around her singing gypsy songs and kneeling down theatrically until his girlfriend pulled him away. Nora carried on walking, staring ahead, her steps falling in time with the cackling of the woman behind her. The woman just kept on laughing and laughing. Nora floated on, mesmerized by everything she saw, totally unaware of the figure who’d been stalking her since the moment she’d left the hotel. She carried on further down narrow lanes toward the surprises they held. From deep within the darkness of one alleyway, a tall matador rushed toward her with a massive dog on a leash. When they shot past her, a soggy tongue licked the index finger of her right hand and the sensation of wet animal contact caused her to gasp. When she turned around to look, no trace remained in the darkness. The wetness puzzled her. Do you wash it seven times with water and a final time in sand? She hurried forward in the direction of guitar music and stamping feet. The melancholy Andalusian singing drew her forward until she found herself in the Plaza Mayor, a massive square designed by Juan de Villanueva in 1790 after the great fire. She was surrounded on three sides by two hundred and thirty-seven balconies and nine gates.

  In the center of the great square, Nora was swept up in the flamenco music and the exuberance of a pair of dancing spectators. It was both overwhelming and upsetting. She looked around in amazement. In the colonnade surrounding the square, the cafes and restaurants were packed with night revelers and on a wooden stage erected in the middle of the square, a flamenco dancer strutted in circles around a gypsy dancer, while circles in the audience imitated his moves. In this city, resounding with amplified music, people could laugh and cry and dance and quarrel in Spanish and English and German. All those languages were awakened inside of Nora, a river of language that flowed between the banks of her past on either side.

  To her right, a female dancer sprang out of one of the arcades and Nora shrieked, her heart frenetic, her body giving itself over to the dance. Her finger was still wet with that animal’s slobber. When she snapped out of her dancing reverie, she noticed the smiling, encouraging eyes around her. A young American came dancing up to her. He was imitating the male dancer, but mixing in matador movements, circling her as if she were a bull, in thrall to the agonized cries of the singer behind him. Nora felt that she’d been cut off from the world, from every bond, that her purpose in life was to be right there, to experience those feelings that summed up everything she’d lost. In that fleeting moment, Nora was one with the bulls’ blood that stained the walls of the wide arena around her where bullfights had been held in years past. “This void is you.” A voice inside of her commanded her cells and they responded. “Spread your limbs into every corner, occupy all space, spread out toward the never-ending. Your limbs will reach; they won’t tire. Your body is a droplet as vast as the night and all its lights.”

  Suddenly, she realized the dancer was dragging her toward an alley, and when she tried to pull away, he wrapped his arms around her. In that moment, a hand reached out of the darkness, grabbing the man by the neck and throwing him to the ground, where he lay motionless under the arcade. The hand took hold of her, pulling her forcefully, and when she looked to see whose hand it was, she gasped.

  “Rafi?” Her voice squeaked. A migraine struck her.

  “SPEND MY MONEY ON WHATEVER YOU WANT, BIG OR SMALL, BUT DON’T YOU DARE use it to buy yourself a lover.” That was the note the sheikh had scribbled on her mirror before he left. She could tell his hand must have been shaking.

  Reptile

  HE REACHED OUT FROM HIS DEEP SLUMBER AND OPENED HIS EYES IN THE oppressive darkness. Khalil was lying an arm’s length away from the basement ceiling but for a moment he had no idea where he was. The ceiling looked damp. He struggled to remember how he’d died, when he’d ended up in this grave. Is this what death is really like? The power suddenly goes out and then when it comes back on, you find yourself underground? He couldn’t remember hearing any receding footsteps. His head didn’t feel concussed. He’d always been told that the first thing a dead person hears is the footsteps of those who’ve carried him to his grave receding in the distance. When he tried
to sit up, he banged his head on the ceiling. His own groan confirmed: “Yeah, you’re dead.” That eternal sentence uttered at one point or another by all living beings. That sentence was like a door that opened up onto death itself. A little ways beyond it, the two angels Munkar and Nakir would no doubt appear and begin to judge his deeds.

  The snake he’d been expecting to find beside him, ready to crush him, wasn’t there, though; instead there were sticky mounds of fat. The smell of dough and frying meat jerked him out of his burial. The Turkish seamstress, who was lying beside him, sensed his movements and began to coil her limbs around him. For a moment, he struggled to breathe, but the dinosaur inside him broke through the curtain of the grave and the fat, ascending to the heavens and beyond. The current of those heavens floated him higher and higher, and when he fell back to earth like a rag the walls and the low ceiling began to watch him. They’d gotten used to tracking his movements. He would walk down the Lane of Many Heads—he preferred to come on foot, having parked his taxi far away—careful not to be noticed by anyone as he snuck into the basement studio. He didn’t want Ramziya or anyone else’s prying eyes to catch him in his tracks. No matter how well he blended into the darkness or how softly he stepped, he could feel the emptying houses of the lane watching him. The goddamned Lane of Many Heads didn’t use the eyes of its inhabitants to watch him, it used its walls, ramshackle doors, cats, and trashcans, the dry air and the smell of desertion and sewage, the remnants of arguments that had taken place on every street corner, the slaps a wife laid on her husband. The Lane of Many Heads watched him with its every breath, and rebuked him.