by Raja Alem
Out of all the people it could’ve been, Nora never would have expected to open the door and find the head flight attendant standing there in an embroidered red silk dress with a plunging neckline. “Get dressed. You’ve been invited to dinner at the Building Crow’s camp.”
“Oh, but I’d rather sleep.”
“He sent for you specifically. No one turns down an invitation from the Building Crow. You’d never be forgiven.”
“But I’m not ready for a party. The only clothes I have with me are pajamas and a pair of jeans. My bags are still on the plane.”
“That’s not a problem. Just put on some makeup. You need some bright red lipstick. I’ll be right back.” The woman was gone before she had a chance to object, and a few moments later there was a fancy set of underwear and a hand-embroidered, brilliant gold caftan laid out on the bed waiting for her. Nora couldn’t get her head around anything. She knew that the sheikh would never forgive her if she turned down the invitation. A few moments later, she was sitting beside the two flight attendants in the back of a black Mercedes, dressed in an outfit conjured up by goodness knows what magic wand, as the desert night ushered them to the campsite.
An assemblage of lights pierced the darkness on the horizon, and when they got closer, they couldn’t believe how grand the campsite was. Large brocaded canopies had been erected against the desert sky. When the car stopped, they were greeted by a guard in white robes and a checked red headscarf who led them to the canopies. In the middle of each canopy, there was a fire that gave off warmth against the austere sand. They walked through a fantasy realm. The walls of the canopies were embroidered with Arabic writing in red, blue, and golden thread. Here and there, the large tents were studded with pieces of art, which reflected the gleam of night and fire. Their footsteps were muffled by exquisite Persian carpets that stretched as far as they could see. Confronted with that splendor hidden within the infinitude of desert and the scents of Arabic coffee and cardamom and ginger, Nora relaxed. What was she thinking when she said she didn’t want to come out to an oasis like this? Every canopy was air-conditioned and brightly lit with the power supplied by generators, whose roar could be heard far off into the dark night.
The three women were led toward a large tent raised over a triangular platform of white canopies. The Building Crow was presiding over the tent, dressed down in his white robes, bare-headed, without even his striped black cloak. Just the simple man himself, his dyed black hair, the farthest thing imaginable from his formidable reputation. Nora and the other two women sat on his left, in a line against the red damask, which had been laid out to hide the tent poles. To the Building Crow’s right, there sat a black man who stood like a plume of smoke reaching up to the top of the tent. His eyes pierced her like spikes of fire and paralyzed her down to her toes, crushed her. She was looking into the face of Satan himself. She turned to look at the Building Crow himself, who for all that he was large and intimidating was less terrifying than his right-hand man, Bundug. Out of all possible names, Bundug—Bullet—summed up the character of a devil who was ready to shoot fire at the people around him at any moment, who acted with an uncanny sense of his master’s confidence, who used his satanic strength, even, to control his own master. The odor of his body filled the entire tent, a mix of devil’s sweat and pungent eastern musk. His body was a coil of steel cables without a single lump of fat; a network of disgusting nerves, which could easily be tracked and deciphered, darting and pulsing vividly. Nora was certain that she’d receive a physical shock if she were ever to touch those nerves, that she’d be turned to ash. She was careful not to look that devil in the face again while he commanded the party and the Building Crow himself. Bundug, Bundug. No name has ever been repeated so doggedly, so madly, like his name was that night. Everyone savored the tune of it, accentuating its dissolution, they repeated it, begging for its consent and good favor, flattering the absolute ruler who held them in his thrall.
Servants appeared, spread around the room, and in the blink of an eye gracefully removed the palm mats and the large platters of rice topped with whole lambs freshly slaughtered that evening that had been laid before them. Dinner was over, but Nora hadn’t been able to bring herself to force down a single bite. A cloud of the devil’s sweat hung over the assembled guests. It turned her stomach and spoke of his desires and intentions. The trays of lambs staring back at the diners was just the first sacrificial offering of many. Bundug began moving among the diners like a storm of contradictory passions. He ate voraciously, swallowing unfathomable amounts of red meat, but he didn’t touch the milk- and butter-steeped rice or the vegetables or fruit. Only meat, as bloodred as the tongue he wiped across his lips after every bite, and the inside of his mouth, which was revealed with every lunatic laugh. The meat was burned up to produce energy in the furnace of that bundle of nerves, without even a single globule of fat.
“Where does it all go? It’s like the devil himself is eating alongside you.” The Building Crow chuckled as he teased Bundug, his creation. His fondness was apparent. Every time he looked at him, he was even more astonished, but Bundug just fed on that satanic riddle, which confused everyone and was him at the core.
Bundug’s furnaces blazed and the party kicked off. The music grew to a roar and the guests could suddenly hear the throbbing drumming of his coiled nerves in their own. Moving, writhing to the beat, Bundug came nearer and motioned to the girls shamelessly, pointing at their shoulders, and their breasts, and their thighs, which clamped together in defense. That was when the Building Crow made his move and all hell broke loose. He came out wearing nothing but a sarong around his waist, his flabby, hideous, burn-scarred torso completely bare. He pulled the three women to their feet to dance, and Nora found herself buffeted by the dancing bodies, blinded by the mass of burn-striped flesh. It was as if Satan’s teeth were still stuck in his body. The rhythm of the drums became more insistent and frenetic and Nora was terrified that he might lay his hands on her body. But Bundug was flitting around like a blood-sucking fly, buzzing and swooping. The fleshy mass came nearer and nearer, grazing her, the burn-scars enveloping her, giving off a thick sulfurous fug, and the women dancing realized that underneath his thin sarong he was completely naked. Bundug made that plain when he danced over and pulled his boss’ sarong right off. The Building Crow was naked before them. Nora shut her eyes, but she could still feel the idol’s eyes enveloping her. Flesh began crashing against flesh. Nausea ripped through her insides. Her eyes looked away, to Bundug’s coil of nerves, sculpted as if from steel.
Her refusal only attracted the demon. He channeled his perversity toward her and approached, pointing with his index finger at her throat. She choked on her saliva and stumbled, twisting her ankle. Nora felt dirty and stupid for dancing so she tried to make her way back to her seat, but the demon’s blazing eyes followed her. He could see her refusal plainly and it only made him circle more lecherously around the two remaining dancers, his lust goading them.
That scene went on forever. The thunder of a coil of nerves whipping clouds of flab. And the flab spread out to engulf all three women and that was when Nora wrenched herself away. Lightning tore through the demon’s black body. He pounced on her, his eyes shooting fiery daggers.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
She tried to stifle her hysterical wailing. His pupils were coal black and his eyes were like clotted blood, there was no sign of white. An eye of sand, creeping, pitch-black, bottomless, was dripping blood onto her face. Bundug pulled away from the dancing party and wrapped his burning fingers around her wrist. He dragged her outside the tent and shoved her into another tent nearby. He shoved her with all his strength and she fell to the floor.
“You slut! You want to play the virgin? Your fee’s in the envelope already, in dollars. A hundred grand for this cheap sack of flesh. And an extra thirty for your two whore friends. Are you trying to bargain for more by pretending to be chaste?” Nora looked like she’d lost her mind.
She was shaking and she’d stopped breathing; her skin was turning blue. The cry of a wounded animal came bawling out of her chest. Even the demon seemed to be moved by it.
“Take me home. God help me. Please, I’m begging you, take me home.”
The demon took offense at that. “You think you’re worth a cent to me? Cheap flesh like yours? The world’s a market and it’s packed full of the best kinds of fresh meat, fresher than you even. Every day hotter, fitter bodies are brought to market. It makes me sick just to think about all the flesh that gets thrown at my feet. Who do you think you are? This is a hypermarket with shelves and shelves of tits and ass, so much for so cheap it turns your stomach. I could import bodies like yours and stock them in my freezer. You’re nothing. Nothing.” His eyes flogged her as he waited for her to say a single word so that he could snap her neck. Nora’s voice had disappeared deep down within her chest and she herself was sinking into the darkness.
“You’re nothing. Shut up. I swear to God if I so much as hear you breathe, I’ll smash your head in and leave your filthy body for the hyenas.” He turned and walked out. She wasn’t breathing. Her eyes had dried and were fixed, bulging, on the tent wall in front of her. There was writing, in golden thread, on the wall of the tent and it began to spread and cover the four walls of her horizon. She couldn’t move or hear, she couldn’t see anything but those verses of the Quran, the word of God in the heart’s heart. She realized that she was entering into, looking inside, the heart of the Quran itself, the Throne Verse, which was said to protect and dispel fear. She didn’t read the verse, she crawled over it and slipped inside, seeking shelter. She sank deeper and deeper as the verse grew lighter and lighter, until Nora became aware of the white idol that was the platform with three faces. The idol bent down—the entire campsite listing as it bent—and picked her up, setting her down on its crest. She could see a woman’s face joined with that of a man and a child, and with her own. She and they became a single mass of life shooting up toward the sky, while in the tent next door, the tender flesh had been laid out and was topped by burned flesh, and both were topped by a network of cables sending its shocks through them, and giving off an acrid smell of sulfur.
On the last night, before they reached her sheikh’s camp, Nora was sleeping deeply when she was woken by a horrific burning smell. Her eyes sprang open in the dark and she could see Bundug towering over her in the tent like a plume of smoke. His fiery eyes paralyzed her as she lay there and without even breathing he raised his arm into the air and brought it crashing down onto her body. She could make out the feel of his headdress band tearing at her flesh. Only his execrable breath disturbed the total emptiness of her tent. He whipped her silently. The headdress-band dug deeper into her flesh and Nora received the blows in silence. Any notion of pain or self-defense had left her. The pain was too deep to scream for or move away from. As if her soul was being torn away, her body surrendered to the flogging, as her two companions watched, goggle-eyed, from their beds, paralyzed in their own nightmares. The blows sought out her face especially, as if to break her pride, blindly striking at her neck and chest. Nora raised her arms to cover her face and her body turned to stone to absorb the pain. Part of her embraced it, using it to wash away an old sin she’d been hiding somewhere deep inside her.
Bundug’s demonic laughter interrupted the rhythm. “Ah, so it was a flogging you were lusting for all this time? I knew just the kind of whore you were from the moment you started playing the virgin and praying every chance you could.” He waited in vain for her to respond. “If you breathe a word of what I did to you, I’ll crawl into your sleep and break your neck. And I’ll crush your bones under my camel’s hooves and throw them in the desert far from any trails.” He spat at her and disappeared.
Her sheikh pretended not to see the signs of whipping on her body. He knew, but he chose to obey the rules of a vital partnership that enabled him to enact the final stage of his plan.
Media
NOTHING BUT THAT DEEP SENSE OF ISOLATION. ALL THE FACES THAT HAD GIVEN Mu’az’s shots their meaning had vanished: al-Lababidi’s house, then Yusuf, then Mushabbab, then Khalil. The feeling of a curse frosted the air. “Mecca paused on the verge of Doomsday”: this was the shot that summed up for Mu’az the crushing emptiness around him. To coexist with it and within it, Mu’az surrendered to the seasonal rhythm of life in Studio Modern, where he worked, this time looking for some purpose to his life.
The studio was no bigger than three meters by three meters, with a wooden screen that was bare on the outside, and on the inside bore a poster of a waterfall whose water droplets remained perfectly static, night and day, never refreshing Mu’az with a cool mist. He felt like the studio was too small to accommodate his dangerous thoughts these days—especially when the owner turned up late and Mu’az was left alone with a female face. Then, it would no longer be the camera taking the photo, but Mu’az’s whole body that took the shot and developed it underneath the skin. Sometimes a young woman would take a risk and smuggle a few locks of her bangs into a photo, and Mu’az would know that the bangs would be sent straight back to him the moment they arrived at the passport authority, for him to take a new photo without; then, he’d watch as the girl tried to slip some other signature of herself into the picture, this time pulling her headscarf back a little to reveal just the roots of her thick black hair, outlining her forehead with a dark border, and this time she’d succeed in getting it past the hands of the passport office employee. In the unofficial shots, the girls would relax, smuggling a glimpse of cleavage into the frame, or the edge of a leg. What got him most were the women’s slender ankles, totally unlike his mother’s thick camel-hoof ankles covered by a layer of dust. These were softly rounded, like flower buds.
“I’ll devote myself to photographing nothing but women’s ankles one day, thousands of ankles spread out like wallpaper, and I’ll stand at the very center of the wall amidst them all.” That was his most recent dream, which he was sure was a sin-free zone, since he couldn’t recall any religious texts that prescribed a punishment for ogling women’s ankles.
Mu’az firmly believed that he’d been taking photos before he even owned a camera. Today, as he climbed the minaret’s spiral staircase and stood hidden at the tiny window, looking out onto the alley from above, he could see the old men he’d grown up knowing—they looked isolated, each a portrait of loneliness or weakness or worry—and the little drawings sketched by young boys who were dusty and confined to tiny areas around their houses, just like he had once been, but his generation, he could see, had found ways out and were now smoking water-pipes at the cafe or chasing the shadows of the girls, who’d gotten bolder. Mu’az could see that the younger girls of the Lane of Many Heads tried harder now to peek out from behind their abayas, attempting to look the world in the eye and seeing more than his sisters had seen.
IN THE NEWSPAPER THE STAFF, WHICH A CUSTOMER WAS HOLDING, A LARGE PICTURE taking up a whole quarter-page caught Mu’az’s eye; the customer was busy tidying himself in front of the mirror and smoothing his eyebrows with spit, so Mu’az took a longer look. It was a painting of a human torso in black on a white background. A quaking longing shook Mu’az’s heart all of a sudden; he knew that form. He skimmed the first lines of the article:
“Under the auspices of his Excellency the Minister for Culture Faysal al-Mu’ayiti, an exhibition by contemporary artist Nora will open at 8 p.m. tonight, Wednesday 20th February, at Earth Gallery, Jeddah. Nora has been hailed as one of the most promising female artists of Saudi Arabia’s contemporary art movement …”
The customer’s eyes pierced him from where he sat before the camera’s lens with a stretched-out smile like a baguette dotted with sesame seeds and notched by the baker’s knife, waiting to be photographed. Attempting to control the tremble in his hand and his heart, Mu’az automatically reached out and switched on the glaring lamp, illuminating the baguette; his lens hovered for a while as he looked for an angle that would soften
the dark, knotted eyebrows. Suddenly a cascade of shots hit Mu’az, static ones, moving ones, all Azza’s drawings he’d spent his nights with, those severed human trunks that inhabited the Lane of Many Heads and which he’d spent his childhood peeping at to the point that he started dreaming about them, even when he was awake, and now they were here, poured into that quarter-page of newspaper right in front of him. His hand froze over the captive face inside his viewfinder, as if receiving a long-awaited divine visitation that contained everything he had devoted himself to, contained his whole life; impatiently, he pressed the button, crushing face and baguette, and let the man leave. Mu’az himself was out the door in a flash, running down Gate Lane. It wasn’t long till the opening, but seeing the notice about it had left him no time to think: he had to be in Jeddah that evening and find the address: Earth Gallery, The Seafront, opposite Jamjoum Mall, Jeddah.
As usual Mu’az paid no attention as he slipped easily between the public bus stops and found the blue and orange bus with broken air conditioning that dropped him at the stop behind the Mahmal Shopping Center in downtown Jeddah. Mu’az surrendered his eyes to the salty air of the artificial seawater lake created where the neighborhood known as Clay Sea used to be. It had formed the city boundary and was full of quarries out of whose Manqabi stone Jeddah’s most beautiful old buildings were built; the stone breathed humidity, salting the bones of its inhabitants. But the greedy, ever-expanding city known as the Mermaid was swallowing it up now, trapping it between cement and giants like the National Bank, the Queen building, and the Seafront and Mahmal shopping centers.