The Dove's Necklace

by Raja Alem

  “Lord, I haven’t tasted coffee like this since my aunt Etra left us …” Her smiling eyes brightened. All that precise measuring and tireless preparation was so she could hear a stranger sigh like that when they tasted her coffee. Halima’s face stuck out from her headscarf, which was wrapped around her face, accentuating her smiling eyes, and leaving the part in her hair uncovered, the ends resting against her chest. Hers was a youthful face that had made peace with the world, and her preoccupying worry of late—that Sheikh Muzahim would turn up to evict her any day now—hadn’t caused any wrinkles. The half-moon colored in henna on her palm appeared and disappeared with her every gesticulation as she spoke. Nasser began to suspect that she might have been meeting Yusuf secretly. Absorbed in the motherliness of her face, Nasser stood there by the side of the road listening to her and trying to follow any thread that would lead to Yusuf.

  “My father came from Jawa in the Qasim Oases originally, but he became a city-dweller. He used to sit out in the alley, dressed in a striped sarong like the people of Jawa who come to live in Mecca. He even started to speak with a Meccan accent.” She bit off half a date with her tiny teeth and squeezed the other half into her palm. The stone she threw at a crow perching on the lip of a water vat; it flew off and landed on the shoulder of the one of the stone soldiers, its eyes trained on her. She polished her samovar with clay dust, which made all my coverings shine as well. Stories trickled out from her giggles:

  “This house used to belong to my father. He sold it to Muzahim when the drought wiped out our orchards in the Fatima Valley. He sold the soil for mere cents and used it to prop up the men who came to see him who’d been wiped out. He took in a Yemeni man who came on pilgrimage from Aden and gave him a job selling the dates he used to harvest from the orchards in Fatima Valley. He rewarded him by giving me to him as a wife just like Jacob did with Moses. My father wasn’t impressed by his trustworthy character so much as the story he told: he claimed to be related to a Meccan family.” She pointed toward the sky. “They kept the name a secret, though, until they could prove it.”

  From his eternal spot in his shop, Sheikh Muzahim listened in on their conversation. He would interject, but then pull back, not wanting to expose his opposition to the story. “He wasn’t a Meccan, her husband,” he cut in. “Not on your life, God help us. He was a descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. He was raised in the happy land of Yemen by their genie servants. He was cursed because he dared to alight in Mecca and pretend he was related to its servants.”

  Halima didn’t pay any attention to his sarcasm. She was in the thrall of her own tale:

  “I fell madly in love with the handsome Yemeni. I didn’t care who he was related to! Every time I looked at him it was electric, my heart trembled. But we weren’t allowed to enjoy it. The old men in the Lane of Many Heads used to make fun of him for the claims he made. They said that throughout Mecca’s history there were always Jews and Christians and infidels pretending to be Muslims so they could spy on the House of the Lord. But God cursed them and wiped them out for their insolence.”

  “Hmph,” Sheikh Muzahim snorted. “How these birdbrained women dream!”

  “My father, though, he adopted the Yemeni and took him to the venerable memorizers of Meccan lineages, al-Qurashi and one of the sons of Na’ib al-Haram. They saw that he carried the ancient blood and features, and they were ready to testify to his lineage, especially after they heard my husband talk about the moon-shaped birthmark on his mother’s palm.” She looked wistfully at the henna moon on her own palm, which defied all the neighborhood’s customs and traditions. “He told me that this moon here used to remind him of the one on his mother’s hand.” She showed Nasser her palm, ignoring Sheikh Muzahim’s snarling derision. “What I gathered was that my husband was descended from Mecca’s devoted servants who’d gone to Yemen in search of the key.”

  “What key?”

  “He showed me a drawing of the oldest key to God’s house. They said that an Iranian pilgrim once had stolen the key and fled to Yemen with it. Mecca’s most loyal servants, among them the Shayba clan, went looking for it, but the happy land of Yemen stole their hearts and they married Yemeni women, had children there, and never returned.”

  “But what was it about that key in particular?”

  “I don’t really know the true story, but they believed it was the greatest key. God knows best. The one that the books of the Shayba clan say unlocks all doors. Don’t ask me how. Over the centuries, the doors of the Kaaba have been changed, but that key is blessed. It unlocks them all. The historians spotted that key in the drawing that my husband had inherited from his grandfather. It had been passed down from father to son for generations in the Shayba clan.”

  “But what exactly did your husband the Yemeni have to do with that key?”

  “It was a message he’d inherited from the servants of Mecca. They raised their children to search for the missing key and bring it back to Mecca. My husband told me that his father was one of the servants and that he’d told him to return to Mecca so that he could prove his lineage and go searching for the key. They believed that the key had been taken to al-Andalus. An ancient Andalusian traveler had either taken it back there with him or made a forgery. The traveler had gone halfway across the world, from southern Spain to the village of Solomon in Yemen, where there’d been an earthquake that destroyed everything in the village. The only thing left was the doors, so he took them all back to al-Andalus. People say that by tracing the seals of Solomon that were etched into all the locks he was able to make a key that unlocked them all and that it was an exact copy of the greatest key.”

  Sheikh Muzahim cleared his throat. “The woman’s head is stuffed full of her husband’s delusions. Those Yemenis all bring Solomon’s hour with them: at sundown they chew qat and start having hallucinations of the key that unlocks all doors, including the door between genies and humans.”

  I confess it does amuse me to hear them go around in the same circles like that, and their imagination always heats up the neglected corners of my mind.

  “My husband didn’t come to Mecca to plant roots and settle down. He came chasing the dream of the key. His father had driven it into him and he’d made sure that all his descendants would go looking for it after his time was up. My husband was killed, though, before he’d even appeared before the judge to verify his lineage. And on that same day, Yusuf kicked in my belly to announce his presence. I named him Yusuf after his father. I wanted to pull him back into life through his son.”

  “Who do you suspect of killing your husband? The Many Heads?”

  “They claim to have seen his body being eaten by rabid dogs, but we could never prove that he’d actually died. He left us no body to mourn or bury.” Sorrow spread through her voice.

  “But you still believe he’s alive?”

  She hesitated for a moment, but then she came clean. “Somewhere in God’s great land. I’ve never felt like he’s dead. Men who are possessed don’t die. The thing that possesses them swallows them up.” The look of skepticism Nasser gave her forced her to elaborate. “On the night he disappeared we were sleeping in the same bed. I woke up in the darkest darkness. There had already been rumors of Portuguese pirate ships roaming the Red Sea and my husband had decided that that was a sign that he need to go searching for the key. He’d heard about the pirates abducting men and forcing them to work on their ship.”

  Sheikh Muzahim coughed, spraying them with a hail of cardamom and sour coffee. “Detective, you know Meccans,” he said. “Their imaginations are as impenetrable as their mountains. They still weave horror stories out of the Portuguese fleet’s invasion of Mecca and Jeddah in 1541! You know, the Portuguese came with eighty-five warships and landed at the port of Abu l-Dawa’ir near Jeddah. They were met by the Sharif Muhammad Abu Nama, the pride of the Barakat tribe, at the head of legions of Meccans and tribesmen from the surrounding area, and the fleet was repelled. Ever since then whenever a young man
goes missing in Mecca, they say he was abducted by the Portuguese and taken back to Andalusia. They have a hard time believing that some of their own flesh and blood are little devils who would leave the proximity of the Holy Mosque.”

  A long suppressed ache in Halima’s heart was awoken and the scene from twenty-eight years ago replayed itself:

  A sudden movement in the darkness interrupted her sleep. She could feel the heat coming off her slumbering husband’s body, which pressed against her own. She wanted to warn him but she was paralyzed by fear. She lay there for a while, looking into the darkness, watching the black figures fill the room. They approached the bed, and in a flash they pounced on her husband. Innumerable hands covered his mouth and stuffed him into a bag and then they simply carried him out. Halima fell deeper and deeper into her nightmare until dawn broke her screams open and the whole neighborhood came running. Innumerable hands reached out to soothe her, and hands held her back when she ran out into the street, trying to chase after the bag. In daylight, she was surrounded by pitying faces and the spiteful rumor started to spread that the angels had torn the Yemeni to shreds and fed him to the dogs because he’d had the temerity to ask for the key to the Kaaba. That night even the drawing of the key had disappeared, leaving no trace.

  Halima had fallen silent and was watching the television in the cafe downstairs. A music video of song by Abd al-Majid Abd Allah was showing. For a second, her silence tempted me. I, the Lane of Many Heads, nearly started to tell the truth of what had happened that night, but I restrained myself. I wasn’t going to make it any easier for Nasser to tie together all the loose ends in his case.

  “What exactly was the lineage your husband was claiming anyway?” It was sarcasm more than curiosity that impelled Nasser’s question.

  “I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know what kind of fire my husband was playing with. I didn’t want my son Yusuf to fall victim to the same curse so I let the lineage my husband claimed stay buried. I remember my father used to like to call my husband “al-Hujubi,” in reference to his ancestors the custodians, so that’s what I nicknamed Yusuf. But when he needed a pen name to sign his Windows in Umm al-Qura, he chose Yusuf ibn Anaq, as if he were descended from the historical giant Awaj ibn Anaq.”

  Women prattling always make me lose my mind. It feels like my heads are exploding into a million chaotic shards. Night fell on my desolate corners and to shut Halima up I covered the houses in the neighborhood in an even thicker gloom. Halima watched Nasser leave the depressive darkness after he’d gone for his customary walk around Mushabbab’s orchard. She pulled herself away from her permanent overlook and got ready to go out for her Thursday evening bridal tea-pouring ceremony.

  AS USUAL, SHE HUNG HER MIRROR ON THE BACK OF THE DOOR, HER FACE LIT BY THE streetlamps, and began to make herself up. The eyelashes of her left eye fluttered as she ran the kohl over them and suddenly she felt something watching her in the darkness. She dared not turn around. For a second, she thought her time had come—that after the murdered woman her turn was next, that the hidden killer had come looking for her. The kohl hardened in the corners of her eyes. The death ritual replayed itself in her mind like a video: She’d washed that afternoon, and her hair, which she’d tied into a bun behind her head, still smelled of Abu Ajala soap. She’d performed her ritual ablutions before squeezing into the outfit the wedding planner had sent over. It covered her from tip to toe and had a white apron that tied at the waist and draped to her knees like folded wings; it matched what the rest of the servers would be wearing. She didn’t have to worry about being unclean, she thought; she was as ready for death as you could be. If only this person who’d snuck up on her in the dark had given her the chance to pray the evening prayer: four obligatory sets of prostrations plus two extra for supererogatory blessings. If only he’d done it while she was prostrate in prayer. But it occurred to her that dying on her prayer rug on all fours, like an animal, would leave all her curves exposed to the eyes of the policemen who’d come to find her body. Even if dying in prayer was the quickest way to enter heaven. For the first time, she understood the wisdom of her grandmothers’ prayers: “God grant us a good ending!” She thought she should repent, but in that gossamer limbo between life and death she couldn’t think of anything she had to repent for. In her mind’s eye, she could see the image of that specter, the visitor who used to appear at night in the Lane of Many Heads back before they’d found the body.

  Halima drove that madness from her mind and focused on her tongue. The tongue is a secret portal that can open up under a Muslim’s feet at any time, plunging them down into the lowest circles of hell. Her grandmother had driven that image into her memory. There was no way she could repent for every rude thing she’d ever said. Instead she thought back on that bag of high heels she’d come home with one night. They were given to her by a woman in a car that was worth as much as the whole Lane of Many Heads neighborhood itself.

  “Pray for Khalid Bin Nura, Auntie dear,” the woman had bent down and whispered to Halima, who was sitting on the floor in front of the Abu Dawoud Mall selling pots of waxing sugar. She motioned to her driver to give the bag to Halima.

  Halima’s tiny feet were swimming in those size thirty-nines but she didn’t let that stop her. She stuffed each shoe with cotton so she could strut around like a peacock at weddings, and she generously let the neighborhood girls borrow them, too.

  She had no idea who was weighing her soul down with all these heavy thoughts at precisely the moment when she needed to concentrate on one simple thing, one simple sentence. Out of the darkness emerged the figure of a man. “I testify that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is his prophet!” The profession of the faith had scarcely burst out of the lump in Halima’s throat when she recognized Mu’az. “You scared me, God damn you!” She noticed how thick his eyelashes looked, and he cut her off:

  “Yusuf is in a safe place, Auntie Halima. He asked me to check on you.”

  “Thank God, thank God a million times. Does he have enough to eat? Does he have enough to drink? Is he feeling well? Is that electric in his brain keeping him up at night? Is he sleeping?” The whole neighborhood was used to Halima worrying about her son’s sleep and the electrical activity in his brain. “How about his metal knee? Is he keeping it warm? Take him some Zamzam water that prayers have been read over. And give him this.” She reached three fingers into her cleavage to pull out some rolled-up banknotes and pressed them into Mu’az’s palm.

  He looked her up and down. “My, my Halima, bird wings and high heels?” he teased.

  “If the job demands it.”

  “Give me one of your outfits. I can put a veil on and come help you.”

  “No boys allowed.”

  “I’ll come as your little assistant boy and help carry your stuff. I can just peek through the door.”

  “You call the prayers and you’ve memorized three-quarters of the Quran and you’re sharp enough to steal the kohl off an eyelid—and now you want to come peep at girls?”

  “Just from the doorway. I want to see what an eight-star hotel looks like on the inside. I want to see what Mecca looks like from a skyscraper. I promise you I’ll look down at my feet the whole time. I’ll only look up to see the sky.”

  “Everything in the neighborhood’s topsy-turvy now. I don’t know what to think. Even you all, sons of the imam! You’re not like you used to be.”

  His pure eyes stared straight into her own and pleaded. For a moment she looked to him like the very embodiment of tragedy. Her deep-set eyes were like graves for her husband and son, the whole neighborhood even. He could have lain down to die in one of her all-enveloping eyes. Tragedy stopped at her neckline, however. Maybe if he’d been able to picture one of those great big breasts, he’d have enjoyed a glimpse of paradise, the promised land of milk and honey.

  She draped her veil over her face. She didn’t permit him, nor did she forbid him, so he followed her in silence. They walked down the alley amidst b
arking dogs and jangling music videos.

  It was night. He was all in black and she wore heels with flashy diamante buckles on the side. They got into Khalil’s cab. The scent of olive-oil soap preceded her into the back seat. Khalil turned the car over robotically and set off into the Meccan night, smirking with menace, searching for what to say to annoy Mu’az.

  “So,” began Halima, “How do you like being married?” It was the question all of the Lane of Many Heads had been wanting to ask ever since they attended his wedding to Ramziya the sewage cleaner’s daughter. The question came as a shock.

  This woman was the definition of a trooper, he thought to himself. Nothing—not a body, not the disappearance of her son or beloved—nothing could put an end to the rituals of her life. Here she was, made up and tottering on high heels off to a wedding, and asking him about his bride.

  “Well, to tell you the truth, Auntie—”

  “Now don’t you start complaining!” she warned him with her usual giggle.

  He couldn’t help but laugh.

  “I haven’t laid eyes on Ramziya since we got kicked out of the Arab League. I sent her back to her father’s house and I started living in this cab.” His voice conveyed a mixture of relief and sadness as they drove through the al-Zahir district.

  “Khalil, don’t just abandon her like a house that’s been left to someone in a will. God will curse you for wronging her!”

  “My body’s been sucked into a void and my mind’s in a different space altogether. Please, Auntie, stop giving us headaches with this curse business. I’m a man and I won’t be beat. I defeated cancer. Doctors in the U.S. said I was a miracle case. It had spread through my stomach despite the intense chemotherapy, and they’d given up hope.” Khalil looked at himself in the rearview mirror and ran his hand over his hair, which had grown back sparsely after his treatment. “I was determined to make the angel of death choke on my dust. I fought back with yogurt and garlic, clinging to life like a flea on the back of a bull. I drank buckets of that stuff. One morning I woke up and discovered the cancer vanished. It was a miracle. The will to live can make miracles out of Moses’ staff, or yogurt, even. But it’s not working at the moment, now that I’ve got Azza eating away at me. She keeps metastasizing. And Ramziya’s like a bucket of garlic, burning up all my cells, benign and malignant together.” Khalil’s expression was all bitterness now. Everyone knew that the chemotherapy had left him infertile. The day he went to ask Yabis for Ramziya’s hand he surprised everyone with an award-winning performance.