The Dove's Necklace

by Raja Alem

  And when I slipped into the masses circumambulating the Kaaba and raised my eyes to the sky, I realized there was no space left there for the moon; it struggled to squeeze past the Abraj al-Bait towers that dazzled the eye and flooded the mosque courtyard with their silver glare. There was no empty firmament, just the skyscrapers clawing at the bare flesh of the volcanic mountains. I don’t know how Mecca breathes any more. Throughout history it had always breathed through those mountains.

  I realized then that the day when the Kaaba truly disappears isn’t far off. Either it will be suffocated, and suffocate every pilgrim who dares to approach it too, or Wadi Ibrahim’s legendary flood rains, which once swept a camel all the way to the mosque’s pulpit, will burst forth from the tips of the skyscrapers surrounding it and wash the entire courtyard to a pit at the bottom of the universe. Our eyes, which used to reach the silk-swathed Kaaba long before our bodies, will strain to make out its distant form but fail, and only with infrared night-vision goggles will we dare to venture toward it.

  The detective glanced at some of the comments below the article.

  “Chill out, grandpa … You’ll be beefing with our ancestors Adnan and Qahtan at this rate!”

  Nasser smiled wryly and wondered how he could track down this ghostly character who left his fingerprints all over the Internet. He was struggling, too, to work out what the puzzle-master was cooking up by bringing this magician Copperfield into the whole business.

  Dulcimer

  Dear ^^^,

  Azza makes me feel guilty. She talks about everything, whereas I don’t breathe a single word about you. What she said about him today was both titillating and frightening. Let me tell you what she said:

  “I’m a child.

  Yeah, a child. And I want to play. What do you expect of someone who was born into a little container? Someone who was nursed on her mother’s post-partum depression?

  Mushabbab isn’t depraved or evil. He’s a child like me. Yusuf wrote about Mushabbab. He wrote about him until the slave of the sharifs appeared in the flesh like a genie when I was lonely and heavy-hearted. I sleepwalked that night all the way to his garden.

  Don’t laugh. Girls were always getting abducted in the stories they told us when we were children. Why do you think that is?

  Because the girls of the Lane of Many Heads are born into little containers. The only way they can get out, the only way they can stand in the doorway of their houses and get some fresh air, is magic.

  There were times when the secret of my sleepwalking was close to being exposed. At that moment, I’d see fear in the form of agitated camels. Real-life black camels coming toward me, blocking the alley. But I wouldn’t shut my eyes, wouldn’t shield myself. I run straight toward the center of the herd and at the moment of impact everything disappears. My brow sweats and my throat bleeds. The herd grows larger every time and the houses join in, collapsing as I walk past, and I know that one day they will crush me without mercy.

  I ignored the rush of blood and sweat until I made it to the orchard gate and pushed it open with both hands.

  As soon as I took off my shoes and buried my feet in the sand, I opened up on the inside like a rose. Even my scent changed. There was a burning down the length of my back and between my breasts. I don’t know how to describe it to you. Mushabbab calls it “the smell of water breaking.” Like all men, Mushabbab is naive. How would he know what it smells like? I, on the other hand, can sense the chemical effects it has. It’s still there when I wake up and for days after. It’s like a combination of genie hair and the scent of Arabian jasmine.

  Do you know how thin and cottony pollen can be? If one were to take hold of me, I’d turn into dust.

  I walk around in circles in the orchard while Mushabbab laughs. Aisha, you don’t know the Azza I discovered in the orchard. My limbs are longer and more flexible. My smile is wider, my eyes are bigger. The Azza whose eye broke her out of the little container knows how to flirt and talk in ways that you won’t even find in those books of yours that scare me so.

  The orchard was always full of small things. It’s as if they’ve known you since you were born, as if you can travel backward through time with them. Whenever I went there in the evenings, I found little treasures worth stopping for. One time there was an instrument from Basra, a hammered dulcimer inlaid with mother of pearl. It had precision tuning pins that gave the notes a deeper tone and a longer resonance, one string for each note. When I tried playing it with the two hammers, the smooth, ringing sound that rose up came from those passions that I don’t dare to face.

  One time, I went in and found the sitting area covered in piles of books that Mushabbab was in the middle of organizing, dividing them up between the shelves on the wall and the shelves beneath the seats. He hid the copies that were nicer and older, and replaced them with copies that were more run of the mill. Mushabbab’s passion for hiding things drove me insane. I always made fun of him for it, but he didn’t care. For nights on end, the amulet that I’d spied lay there stuck between books in the shelf beneath his stand. I examined it stealthily: it was in the shape of a half moon and it was made of pure silver. It was engraved with intersecting pleas for help shaped like little amulets, which reminded me of my mother Halima’s one and only bracelet. She never wore it, of course, rather she hung it proudly on her bed; it was the only gift her husband had given her. The Jews of Yemen had them made to mimic the moon-shaped birthmark on the palms of Solomon’s daughters, which symbolized the moon under which they’d been born.

  The amulet didn’t hold our attention for long. Spring brought the inescapable pandemonium of clogs: some decorated with shells, others with pearls, still others with brocaded Indian fabric, and there were even some made out of fragrant sandalwood. The women of Mecca wore their clogs in their bathrooms and on the roofs of their houses, clicking and clacking wherever they went. The night they arrived, we moved the Persian carpet in the sitting area out of the way so Mushabbab and I could dance on the bare floor. We experimented with every type of tap-dancing imaginable. Dawn snuck up on us that night, as we tap-danced lightly on our feet, until I finally realized just how long I’d been gone and knew that I was in deep trouble. Whoever goes to Mushabbab’s orchard is transported into a dream-state; it’s as though it’s one of the dreaming stations par excellence.

  Things were always appearing and disappearing there, but I never asked any questions. He didn’t used to rescue me with any answers either. Where does he get all this detritus? Where does he go when he leaves? Sometimes I would come across patches in the dirt in the orchard where bodies had lain recently, and I could never imagine the orchard in deepest night, full of people who’d taken shelter there, waiting for sunrise so they could earn their living. At dawn, one time, I’ll hide on one of their collars and see where it is they go.

  Those faces crop up and disappear as if by magic; Mushabbab and I are the only ones who hang out there. Aisha, if only you could see the place. From the outside, the orchard looks constrained by the fence and time, but on the inside, there’s no fence, no time. You get lost whether you’re going forward or backward. It looks to me like a piece of silver that’s fallen from the sky. I knew that my game had to end where the trees began; one step farther and the game would no longer be a game. I didn’t dare cross over alone. Mushabbab had to wait for me at the entrance to one of the paths or he had to escort me somewhere and bring me back as well. He would always come fetch me in time so I could get back home before dawn. And there was always that same smell. Smelling like the blood of a slaughtered animal, sacrificed there by an old man on the old ground that was still there in the orchard. A scream I still can’t perceive.

  Tonight I went to the orchard unexpectedly, where I encountered the guest, who looked dangerous, what with the bodyguards he had waiting for him at the end of the alley. I darted past, but they spotted me and were about to follow after me before I reached Mushabbab. He was in a state. He hid me off to the side of the orchard as he s
aid goodbye to his visitor.

  I waited before I headed back to him. Gathering my courage, I headed for an alleyway that led northeast; at the end of it there was a thicket, dried up, growing wild. At one point, I was stopped by a hand that stretched to cover my entire face. I could feel the hand even if I couldn’t see it. But I didn’t resist. I peeked through the branches to see three white bodies, naked, talking in a huddle. I felt my vitality goad me as I stood there. I was worried that if I moved backward or forward, they would be on to me. I let out a sudden gasp when I felt Mushabbab’s lips rub against my braids.

  You think I’m overdoing it? I could feel hot lips against the end of my braids; I smelled fire. Mushabbab led me back. When we got to the sitting room, he sat me down in a Louis XIV armchair he’d chosen for me at an antiques auction, which he always kept in the same exact place in the courtyard facing the sitting area. Only then did he settle my curiosity. “What a wild imagination you’ve got! What you saw was nothing more than three column capitals. The same columns that were left forgotten in the colonnades of the Great Mosque after they were removed from the Hanafi corner and the Well of Zamzam. They disappeared completely, and we had no idea where to look for them even. Then one day a friend of mine who’s got some pull brought them here.” To assuage my doubts even further, he said, “The most complete one is the column that loomed over the Well of Zamzam, its oil lamp lighting the pilgrimage rituals for centuries. Memories of the faces of believers and a faith unlike any humans can conceive of are alive inside that column’s memory.”

  The thought of running my hand over those column capitals makes me shiver with a pleasure I dare not explain. Aisha, you’re free to roam through books and the minds of those who wrote them. But my world is here between these four walls, which reflect nothing but my own face. In my room, I miss the feeling of coming across these small things, I miss the whims and the laughter. And they don’t remind me of the windows. For my own is nailed shut and the only way I can get out is through Yusuf’s writing. And that’s not real.

  You know what I need? To throw a stone. A stone that will force the bird out of my chest into the open air.

  Every time I visit the orchard, my desire to go even farther grows.

  You’ll probably laugh, but I’m dying to get my lips on a teat. To drink directly from a nanny goat’s teat. That was what Yusuf did when they couldn’t get him to wean. None of the substances they rubbed on Halima’s breasts—aloe vera, pepper, chili—succeeded in keeping him off, so his mother let him run loose in Mushabbab’s orchard and suckle on the young nanny goats.

  What do you think? What must the mixture of dung and wool and hot, pulsing milk taste like?

  Mushabbab lays a mat over the sandy ground where we’re standing. He sits down and starts playing a Danat, a Yemeni song. A shawl of silence floats, translucent, above us. It’s nearly touching the ground, but every time it gets close, a night breeze raises it up.

  “Ha! You’re going to take her, Mushabbab? Your beloved? To reality TV, to Fashion Academy?” I used to pick fights with him whenever that desire to touch bubbled up inside me.

  “Where do you belong if not among beauty queens? When they finally get around to starting Miss Saudi Arabia, you and I are going to have to put our heads together. You’ll show us a flirtatious side that’s been buried like treasure.”

  “Everything is buried treasure and keys with you, Mushabbab. Really!”

  That’s when he stands up. He pushes away all his wooden instruments and starts playing on the live string in my feet. When he reaches my ankle, bodies spring from my body and Mushabbab crumbles. He has one of those episodes that he calls “a moment of dislocation.” A moment of submission in which he is stripped of his skin, and his nerves are all exposed to the refreshing breeze.

  “Your foot is the buried treasure and the key.” I can feel his heart breaking over my foot. I feel awkward and I have to suppress a giggle. How come we don’t laugh when a man’s worshipping us? I can barely make out his whispering. “Men may dream of kissing your lips, but I don’t dream of anything except for this foot. Your foot running over my lips, washing over my face.” I shudder, terrified God might punish me for enjoying the man’s desperation. This same man who doesn’t dare lust after anything above my foot. He stands up suddenly, looking at me as if lost beyond hope. I’m so scared of what I might do to him I begin to tremble.”

  IT WASN’T NASSER WHO DECIDED WHICH OF AISHA’S LETTERS TO READ; IT WAS THE puzzle-master. Nasser read them out loud so that he, too, would suffer from their many disappointments. He put this Mushabbab character’s name down as a suspect, as an adversary, and he went looking for him in Aisha’s letters to see if she too had fallen under his spell.

  The way the women conspired to break a man’s spirit frightened him. He went digging for more of the erotic suspense that outraged him, that whorish glimmer. The puzzle-master had dropped him into a stifling scene, the only cure for which was to throw Azza and Aisha, crushed and naked, onto the side of the road.

  P. S. You found the masculine river, Yang, and the feminine river, Yin, in my body. The river water is like magnetic tape: every scar of our desperation and happiness is written onto it beginning from when we are children, and the moments of our sadness pile up, blocking its course, getting it caught.

  My whole body caught fire when your fingers touched my nude back. You knew which keys on my spine would unlock the energy: rubbing the small of my back, then up my spine to the back of my neck and the base of my skull. I chased after the void that rose up from my spine through your touch. Suddenly the river split into two streams and oxygen flowed, pulsing, from the end of my spine to the base of my skull. That’s when you sighed softly and said, “That’s right. Take a deep breath and let it out. Let the dolphin that’s trapped in your spine out.”

  You set my senses free so that they could trap the first thing they encountered, which was you.

  And then suddenly I could smell. For the first time in years, scents reached me. Your scent.

  Now the scent of pine on the inside of your wrist enthralls me.

  Oh, how you played the Yin of my body off the Yang. First you raised the level of Yang, and my body burned, then you raised the Yin, and I began to soak. What kind of balance am I supposed to reach through your hands?

  I now understand what it means that I was born in the autumn. You said that’s when “femininity is at its peak.”

  Aisha

  Al-Busiri’s Mantle Ode

  NASSER WOKE SUDDENLY TO A POEM INSIDE OF HIM THAT WAS MIXED WITH mastic-scented water from the Well of Zamzam. He’d learned it in secondary school, and it had never held his attention, but still its scent was carried by Yusuf’s diaries, and it made him trail after it through his window for Azza:

  I’ll go with you, Azza, to the ceremony Mushabbab has every year on the twelfth of Muharram to conjure the blessed Prophet.

  Location: Mushabbab’s orchard. Time: yesterday.

  I entered as the call to prayer rang out from the nine minarets of the Haram Mosque. The ground was immediately covered with rugs for prayer. The floor of the sitting room and the ground in the orchard became rows and rows of worshippers facing in one direction, and foreheads began sinking toward their Creator’s house.

  The wings of angels are not made of feathers but of the sound of warm muttering.

  On the Prophet’s birthday, once prayers were over, the worshippers formed a circle, the novices spreading themselves out. Mushabbab walked around, his arm covered up to the shoulder with prayer beads, some of them with a thousand beads, which are stored in ivory inlaid boxes that smell of amber and perspiration.

  Mushabbab held onto his own prayer beads, which he never relinquished during the celebrations of the Prophet’s Birthday. They are made of serpent’s bones and whenever he flicked the beads, the life in the bones would whisper secrets of the afterlife to him.

  I took my prayer beads of amber cat’s eye. The Eunuchs’ Goat ran his agarwood
beads through his fingers, conjuring his fealty to the fire. I knew that you’d have picked the ebony beads like Mu’az does if you’d come.

  Mushabbab sat in his spot to the right, at the tip of the crescent moon formed by the participants, while Mu’az, the Eunuchs’ Goat, and I stood by the doorway to the parlor, against the branches of the carob tree and the shadows of the volunteers who were circling with pans of Zamzam water, which was nearly foaming with the breath of the Mantle Ode and the remembrance ritual.

  You, Azza, would’ve stood beside me, exposed to the parlor and the space that lay behind where the volunteers lit fire pits to warm the giant frame drums. The circle was formed in the utter whiteness of robes and headdresses, as our breathing rose, and the gold-trimmed pillows, carved wooden ceiling, and the remnants of the column capitals slipped from our awareness.

  “O Prophet of God, O brilliant star,

  “You lead all men, from behind the stars.

  “Pray for the soul of the one who is present in his absence.

  “Muhammad, God bless you and keep you and reward you!” Voices resonated around the room, followed by fingers in the air; millions of prayers for the Prophet Muhammad.

  Beads whispered, breaths muttered, as they floated between index finger and thumb, encircling the prayer niche of the assemblage.

  You could see the hands raising the prayers they’ve harvested into the air: “a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand …” The leader of the birthday celebrations gathered five hundred thousand prayers and blessings before he bent time: bodies stood straight; hands locked together in a circle of energy, interlinking to form a large field.

  Welcome, light of my eye,

  Welcome, grandfather of Hussein,

  Bless you, O Messenger of God

  Bless you, O Prophet of God.