The Dove's Necklace

by Raja Alem

  My mother Halima’s expression fascinated him. It summed up the need to be open to the other, even to the point of butting heads.

  The Hell List

  NASSER PARKED HIS CAR AT THE ENTRANCE TO MY WINDING NETWORK OF ALLEYways and stood for a moment watching approvingly as my parasites woke up and began their day, before heading to the cafe where the Pakistani waiters greeted him with a stack of molasses-flavored shisha tobacco. He sat down and contemplated the freshly washed colors of the dawn sky over Mecca, quite different to the glaring sunsets, when it seemed to him as if Abel’s blood were dyeing the evening sky over the Sanctuary. He could still just about make out the old page, which had been torn away, leaving behind a fresh one; every morning the inhabitants rewrote the city’s fate upon it in Cain’s breaths. Is that what Yusuf’s diaries were trying to do?

  The cashier, a Sudanese bachelor, had spent the night on one of the cafe chairs wrapped in a blanket and was just stirring to the scents rising off a teapot that one of the Pakistanis had set down on a tray beside him, along with a cup sitting in a pool of water left over from a hurried rinse.

  Nasser didn’t know what kind of message the neighborhood was trying to send him by following him even through his dreams … Nasser’s thoughts were interrupted by a sudden kerfuffle from just outside where the African woman who’d been sitting at the side of the road with her goods had leapt to her feet and shot away down the street.

  “Good morning to you, too!” snorted the detective as he watched her disappear from sight, leaving behind her mat and the cheap wares piled up on it. She didn’t run so much as the alleyway simply opened up and swallowed her. At precisely that moment, a truck emblazoned with the logo of the Market Inspection Service—“Safeguarding the Holy Capital”—appeared, and before it had even stopped the doors burst open and two officers leapt out to pounce on the miniature stall. They kicked over trays of roasted almonds and watermelon seeds and ground them into the dust. Then they began picking up the bags of snacks and foodstuffs that had been packed and tied carefully by hand and tossing them into the back of the truck. Ready-to-use sachets of hibiscus tea processed by a company called Vitaminat Group, Bakura bars—short, curved, tamarind-flavored sugar sticks—colored imitation lollipops produced in improvised kitchens by illegal workers, cheap toys and games made in Taiwan.

  Once they were done and their truck continued onward, deeper, into me, I was seized by a fever of activity. The makeshift stalls that were laid out down the length of the alley all disappeared, their owners having managed to hide inside the entryways to people’s houses, as cats clustered around the bits and pieces that had been spilt and scattered around, licking and sniffing disdainfully in an effort to determine what was good to eat.

  Nasser watched as the waiters huddled in the bathroom of a dilapidated house, shutting the door behind them, while the kitchens hid their poor day-laborers in tiny coal rooms. Nasser didn’t watch so much as feel himself one with the endless, obstinate movement in the neighborhood. He thought, “If the angel Israfel’s trumpet rang out, heralding the coming of Judgment Day, the Lane of Many Heads would simply lay out its sinful red carpets and its staff of heretics and carry on being unruly after the trumpet was blown. Chickens would still be roasted on spits over flames, flatbread would still bake in the tandoor, biryani would simmer on in its pot, the grease would bubble up, unceasingly, lying in wait for stomachs that were ready to renounce their deeper hunger and all that they’d accomplished in the day.” I won’t pretend that the notion didn’t flatter me or that I wasn’t filled with pride.

  I wasn’t quite sure how to understand Nasser’s yearning to possess everything, even a neighborhood like me. He’d spent so much time here that he’d begun to see my miserable winding alleyways as an extension of his own body. That’s right, I’d tricked him into thinking that he himself was just another one of my many heads. I entertained him with little crumbs of my inner thoughts, all the while keeping him far away from the place where I stored all my secrets and sins. He even began thinking that he was incognito; that he knew exactly how many undocumented wastrels were hanging around, that he knew who was splitting the rent on the shacks where they took turns enjoying what pleasures they could on my lumpy, bumpy beds; that he knew all the petty offenses—merely human nature—and the crimes that violated both religion and the regulations on public safety in the Holy Capital; that he could count every single sigh sighed by the women as they watched episode after episode of reality TV behind boarded-up windows, before the next round of confiscation and destruction put an end to it.

  Once the municipality truck had left, Nasser headed to see Imam Dawoud, who led him into the mosque. As he stepped in front of Nasser to open the door, Nasser had the chance to take a good look at him: he was a stocky, rotund Ethiopian. His robes hung from his round belly halfway down his rough calves, casting a shadow over his callused feet in their blue flip-flops. His white head-cover hung on his head, as if pinned to an invisible hook, down to his scarf as it cascaded down between his shoulders and spread like a fan over his backside. His beard struggled bravely; a few of the hairs had made it to over two inches. He had no mustache. His eyes were protruding and bulbous, piercing and slashing from behind thick lenses.

  Nasser didn’t know how to begin. “The people of the lane hold you in special regard, sir. Your children were all born here. Is it hard for them never to have visited Ethiopia even though they carry Ethiopian citizenship?”

  “We have served this mosque for a quarter century and so I pray that the Lord will give us the reward of those who live in the vicinity of His holy house. Praise be to God, we now have regular residency papers because of my work with the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue. They have also begun citizenship proceedings on my behalf. And yet with one foot in the grave, what need do I have of citizenship? If I have any desire of it at all, I want it only for my children.”

  “Tell me … What’s all this about your lists? Lists of the people going to hell and those going to heaven?” The imam’s gaze froze on a point on the wall in front of him and bore deep.

  “You should ask about the box for bribing the VIPs. A certain woman claimed it was for collecting donations when she set it up, but all it is is a way to collect protection money from the people in the neighborhood,” Dawoud replied, carefully avoiding the sin of mentioning either Umm al-Sa’d or her stepson, the Eunuchs’ Goat, by name. “God forgive her. She’s collecting money to bribe some officials to issue an ID card for her son and get him citizenship.” The ancient air conditioner, which was doing its best—with the assistance of the ceiling fan—to drive the burning clouds out of the mosque, reminded Nasser of his office. “That woman is hell’s kindling. Satan gave her his devilish skill so she could bewitch people and force them to donate to her fund. But then, what do you expect from a woman who fell from Azrael’s jaws? She’s capable of any sin.”

  “Even Sheikh Muzahim talks about ‘the woman who fell from Azrael’s jaws.’ What do you mean by that?”

  “Be sure you don’t tear off Satan’s mask before you’ve fortified yourself against his fiendish horror,” he replied. He continued after a pause, “With those marketing skills of hers, she’s gone and hung a donation box for bribing those officials on the door of her father’s building so she can watch who donates, and then she divides the Lord’s Muslim believers into those who give and those who abstain, splitting them into two factions: the kind-hearted and the empty-hearted.” He suddenly fell silent once more. There was no way he could expect a man like this, in his Western uniform, to understand the defense plan he’d put in place. It was based around the certainty that both briber and bribed were condemned to hell; they, and everyone who donated to the fund, were on the list of those bound for hell. Those who abstained were on the heaven list.

  “It has come to our attention that the donors are mostly men blinded by lust. They’re donating hard currency as well as gold trinkets on occasion.” Nasser had no clue what the imam wa
s talking about. “It is not for me to describe to you the satanic urges they stuff into that box along with their hard contributions.” Nasser didn’t know what to think of the imam’s deliberate use of the adjective “hard,” but in any case the imam had regained his deep silence, leaving the ceiling fan to put a finer point on his insinuations and scatter them around the darkness of the mosque.

  Those Who Meet Azrael

  IT WAS ANOTHER PITCH-BLACK NIGHT IN THE LANE OF MANY HEADS, AND NASSER was hovering around the Arab League building trying somehow to solve the riddle of how Umm al-Sa’d had “fallen from Azrael’s jaws.” He paced back and forth between the building and al-Ashi’s yard across the street. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the smear of soot on the wall of the yard: it was never cleaned or scraped off, it remained there as if it were a testimony to al-Ashi’s good luck. The shocking affair, which had taken place in that exact spot a quarter-century ago, had left its stain upon my memory. I had been temporarily blinded that night by the misery that swept down my alleyways and clouded the moon above, setting the scene for the drama about to be played out. Even the shadows were pinned against the walls and the neon lights merged overhead to form a curtain for an operating theater that was preparing for an imminent disfigurement. Cats skulked on crumbling sidewalks and rooftops, while doves buried their heads deep beneath their wings and feet, sneezing at the putrid smell that had turned the howling dogs rabid. They scrapped like starved wolves, nipping one another’s tails to win a bite of the plastic-wrapped mass that had been tossed in a heap at the bottom of the wall in the yard. Al-Ashi was a young trainee at the time, fighting to move up the ladder in the kitchen. It wasn’t the smell of cooking oozing from his clothes that woke him up but the manic barks that shook the room overlooking the yard where he lived. He hurriedly wrapped his green towel around himself and staggered, still half-asleep, down the stairs to see what was going on outside. He was assaulted by the same putrescent smell that had besieged the entire alley: the smell of a body. Grabbing rocks, bones, whatever he could find, he chased the dogs as far away as he could from the plastic bag that had been tossed in the gutter. When his shaking fingers finally managed to tear the bag open down the middle he found himself face-to-face with a skeleton. I admit that even I, the Lane of Many Heads, usually so phlegmatic—even when faced with the most hideous abominations—was overcome with nausea at the sight. I was speechless; even after a long time had passed, I could never bring myself to utter a word to anyone about that disgraceful secret. I couldn’t bear to look at the clotted black mass between the wide shoulders; there was hardly more than a ribcage topped by an elongated skull, which grinned at al-Ashi with a set of mouse-like teeth. The smell of bodily decay surged out so violently that it was impossible to tell whether the body was alive or dead, female or male. The acrid burning odor blinded al-Ashi and brought tears to his eyes. The dogs were snapping at his anklebones, angling for their share of the ribs, but he bent down and gathered up the body, then set off at a run. Deaf and blind to the world he ran and ran, a foul trail dripping behind him, followed by a pack of barking dogs and curious eyes peeping out in terror. He ran on—his animal pursuers having long since given up—until he reached Zahir General Hospital. They say that he ran for miles and miles, in search of refuge or salvation, because he knew he was carrying his own doomed fate in his arms. He finally laid his heavy burden to rest on a yellowed stretcher in the emergency room; a strong smell of chloroform suggested that another body had departed quite recently on these sheets. The doctors and nurses were revolted at the thought of touching the body, but al-Ashi begged them.

  “Please! Have mercy! This is a human being,” he entreated, tearing apart the plastic to reveal the hideous skeleton patched with decaying flesh. The ER team spent a goodly amount of time just working out whether or not the body was still alive and deserving of medical attention. Frustrated, al-Ashi grabbed an oxygen mask and fitted it over the gaping skull, covering the murine teeth—but it wasn’t the surge of oxygen through the arteries so much as al-Ashi’s faith that sent a shudder of breath through the large ribcage, which was followed by a hacking cough that sprayed the disgusted faces surrounding the body with mucus. The spray of slime left the medics with no choice but to examine the body. From the plastic bag, they pulled a woman with a crushed chest and abdomen swollen with fever, most noticeably around her pubic region, and they hesitantly began cleaning her body, though they expected it to collapse in on itself at any moment. The stench of bodily decay grew with every stroke of the alcohol-soaked sponge. It took the team more than an hour of routine examination to establish that they should indeed treat the body as a living being. Yet at the very moment that the doctor touched her stomach, the body reared up angrily and tore away the hand that had dared come near the swelling in her pubic region.

  It took five Filipino nurses to hold the thrashing body down so they could inject her with anesthetic. The hard swelling in her pubic region puzzled the medics; they were astounded all the more when their probing hands met solid metal. The radiologists and medics stood, amazed, looking at the images of the woman’s vagina and uterus. “Is that an earring?!” asked one. “I’ve been on my feet in the emergency room for twenty-four hours receiving one casualty after another. I’m beginning to wonder whether my eyes are playing tricks on me and all this chaos is just my imagination!”

  “Wait, is that a necklace?”

  None of the people who’d been lured by the hubbub to come gawk at the strange X-ray could believe their eyes. When the doctors decided that surgical intervention was necessary, al-Ashi assumed the role of the woman’s next-of-kin and signed the consent form.

  “She’s got a vagina like a bank vault! We dug out all kinds of twenty-four-karat gold jewelry from there: necklaces, bracelets, earrings, solid gold coins all lining the woman’s vagina and womb!”

  The riddle demanded police intervention, and of course the fingers all pointed at al-Ashi at first, but further investigation soon revealed the woman’s true identity. “It’s Umm al-Sa’d, the milkman’s granddaughter and the only girl among four brothers. Just look at that flat chest, like a man’s, those wide shoulders, the gaping mouth with mouse teeth—those features can only have come from her grandfather al-Labban. Her brothers announced her death a while back. And they kept their father locked up, saying he’d gone mad, until Azrael the angel of death came to save him from their ingratitude.”

  “We suspected they might be keeping someone prisoner in the back room—you could see that mop of hair through the bars on the window. It was their sister they’d locked up in there. The only thing they gave her to eat was pieces of stale bread and apple peels, and in the meanwhile they took her share in the Arab League building—the same inheritance that had led them to get their father declared insane so that they could stop him from giving it away to any young man from the Lane of Many Heads who was allowed to build another floor on top.”

  “Finally, after she’d been locked up for years, they thought she’d died and tossed her out in the alley for the dogs to eat her. That’s when al-Ashi found her.”

  “She inherited all that jewelry from her mother. She was determined not to let them get their hands on it, no matter how badly they starved her for all those years. She never cracked. Never revealed where it was.”

  “Noah’s treasure buried in a vagina! No one could ever dream that up, not even a Hollywood director. And to think, it was all the work of an innocent teenage girl.”

  “Even if her brothers had had suspicions, who would dare dig for treasure in a hiding place like that? Who would dare profane his sister’s virtue, her womb? That girl was something else!”

  The drama swept through the lane like a tornado. People began saying that Umm al-Sa’d had fallen from Azrael’s jaws, loaded with unimaginable riches, and they crowned her with the title: the neighborhood’s roomiest vagina. In order to get her to drop the charges against them, her brothers agreed to let her marry her savior al-Ashi, and they gave up t
heir claim on the first-floor apartment in the Arab League building. Nevertheless they never truly gave up their attempts to rob her of her fair share, even as they watched each year—in horror—as she littered the alley with crates of apples and showered the neighbors with roasted seeds whose husks would be sucked on and spat out in celebration of her heroic survival, which had left her ever more robust and ravenous. For a quarter-century, whenever Umm al-Sa’d relapsed into silence, al-Ashi followed her inside her head and alongside her he traversed those many years of imprisonment in that back room where she’d lost her innocence. He kept the starving teenage girl company as she exposed her womanhood in the darkness and carefully dug down into her own vagina, hiding hard metal away within her soft flesh, her stomach swelling and hardening, in preparation for the day when she’d be freed from her imprisonment and begin a life built on those riches.

  Al-Ashi’s eyes would fill with tears when he looked at her. “This woman is the treasure life has granted me. She and the massive hoard she used to buy me this kitchen and invest in the stock market.” He embraced her every untiring effort to transform her inconsequential treasures into a small fortune. She’d paid a heavy price: her womb had become too hardened ever to be able to accommodate a soft human body.

  “Any fetus of her own flesh and blood would just stay in her womb, hoarding gold. The infernal girl brought the curse upon herself!”

  I pressed the wisdom of all my heads into service to mock Umm al-Sa’d, without the slightest compassion. I was afraid that if her womb were to be taken seriously it might swallow me right up. I watched al-Ashi on the nights when his anger was too much for him, when he’d take the burning logs from his ovens and march out into the alley, threatening to burn my heads in an attempt to stamp out my snickering. Umm al-Sa’d didn’t need fire’s help to defeat me, though. She’d been rearing a tech-obsessed genie inside of her, and it finally appeared in the form of a laptop and an AwalNet modem that connected her phone line to the Internet. She defeated all of my macho heads by getting to the stock market first.