by Raja Alem
A loud boom rang through Yusuf’s head, a tremor that reminded him of the bulldozers in the Lane of Many Heads. He was vaguely aware of a streak of blood trickling down the Eunuchs’ Goat’s left cheek and in the moments before he lost consciousness, he understood that they’d been attacked.
Nasser began his morning with the news, which filled him with panic:
… while Jeddah Police spokesman Col. al-Mi’ayd said the force had launched a number of raids on a garbage dump in east Jeddah, arresting dozens of illegal aliens. He noted that routes leading to the site were notoriously treacherous, enabling a small number of criminals, who reacted quickly, to escape, but he offered his assurances that they would soon be apprehended. Meanwhile, the mayor of Jeddah has announced that the municipality is nearing completion of a new garbage dump of four and half million square meters, at a cost of thirty million riyals. The mayor added that the new dump, which was constructed in accordance with the strictest international guidelines for environmental preservation, would be open to receive the city’s garbage soon.
A Key for a Drink
YUSUF WOKE UP BESIDE IBRAHIM GATE. HE CAST HIS EYES OVER THE ROWS OF worshippers; his memory was a blank. He had no idea how he’d gotten back to the gates of the Haram Mosque. Had those hours in the garbage dump been a nightmare? His eyes fixed on the tops of the minarets whence flocks of pigeons soared into the sky with every prayer and prostration. He couldn’t understand why the most critical moments in his life were always getting mixed up with his dreams and nightmares.
He felt a surge of pain when he tried to stand. His broken rib was testimony to his miraculous survival. “They want you dead.” The words echoed inside of him, urging his feet along. Limping, he hurried back to al-Lababidi’s house. Every time he passed a trashcan, he had visions of the barricades, hidden trenches, and escape tunnels at the dump. He was certain that every trashcan was a lookout post for the army of the Mahdi who were advancing from the Eunuchs’ Goat’s camp to launch their apocalyptic war against the one-eyed Antichrist who was being formed in the bowels of the city and its kitchens and was about to be resurrected.
THE EVENTS AT THE GARBAGE DUMP BEGAN TO INFILTRATE YUSUF’S DISTURBED sleep. Night after night he woke up, alone, screaming for help. He carried the Eunuchs’ Goat’s jaw in his hands and blood poured out of the knife wound that stretched from his temple down beneath his eye to his ear and the veins in his neck. The sticky dark red blood it spurted covered Yusuf’s chest. Even when he was wide awake, Yusuf could still feel the stickiness of that blood on his neck and fingers. The blood was thick and it took ages to congeal in the dark chill that enveloped him. He knew for certain that the Eunuchs’ Goat had been stabbed at the dump. His many attempts to convince himself that the stabbing was just part of the nightmare failed in the face of the intense terror he’d felt at seeing a face split apart like that. It was like some vein of clarity had burst open, exposing a perfection buried deep inside Yusuf; a perfection that overcame the horror of the Eunuchs’ Goat’s disappearance.
The nightmare that plagued him only added to Yusuf’s discomfort with the outside world and his frailty in the face of it. He gradually lost the face that had guided him in the Sanctuary and he could sense a strange, pearly cloud passing over the rooftops, trying to find a way into the house. The light outside, he was convinced, was enough to strip his face of all its features. Yusuf stopped going up on the roof, for that reason, and instead he spent whole days in one of the reception rooms, barricading himself inside, blocking every vent, hibernating among the photographs on the walls.
His entire being was reshaped during his long seclusion in the upstairs parlor where the distinguished old men of Mecca were gathered. He stayed awake for days, searching desperately through those faces for one that would give definition to his own. The electrical charge in his brain rose steadily and the countdown to an explosion tick-tocked all around him. He was terrified of touching anything in the vicinity lest he burn to a cinder. He appeared more and more inhuman, he was a shadow, or an unexposed film strip, ready to burn up and disappear in the faintest glimmer of sunlight from outside.
On day seven of his dematerialization, Yusuf saw a man come out of photograph number sixty-four on the wall of one of the parlors. A live man taking form in the film strip that was Yusuf’s body. Swarthy, with a beard that covered a third of his face, a broad nose, and piercing eyes that were trained on Yusuf, studying his features closely. For a second, Yusuf thought he was staring into a mirror; the man had the exact same features as he did. Perhaps the only difference was that he wore glasses and looked like a religious scholar from a hundred years ago, his white turban wrapped in slightly lopsided spirals that mirrored the downward swirling embroidery on his robe. The broad gold ribbons on the robe, which stretched down to the man’s left big toe, glinted in the darkened room, suggesting hidden movement beneath the black robe. In the center of that scene, all attention was drawn to the man’s right thumb from which the key ring hung miraculously. Yusuf desperately tried to memorize the outline of the key in his mind, but its gleam blinded him.
He remembered the forgotten caption on the wall beneath the photograph, which was empty now that the man had stepped out: “Abd al-Wahid of the Shayba clan. Custodian of the Kaaba during whose tenure the Great Key was stolen.”
Yusuf looked to where the finger was pointing: the next page of this history book of photos, a picture of two Shaybi children, one of whom was dressed in a gold embroidered robe. Yusuf looked back and forth at the faces of the two children and they looked back at him. He shut his eyes and when he opened them again, he saw the boy on the right was winking at him. No matter how many times he blinked, the boy was still winking, nodding toward the door. Yusuf couldn’t help himself: he turned around and walked toward the door. In the mirrors on either side of the door, Yusuf could see his reflection lit by the gold embroidery glimmering behind him. He realized that the boy in the embroidered robe had snuck up behind him and was trying to take over his body, so he threw him off and ran out of the room.
At the moment of manifestation, Yusuf forgot to take a look at the other child, the one on the left, but then he saw that it was a girl dressed in a gold embroidered robe, and that she’d pushed the boy forward to take over his body. He didn’t stop to hear what she had to say.
He threw the door open, trying to erase what that instant had brought him, and neglected to shut it behind him. He went into the parlor next door and sat there clutching his Quran until he could collect himself. By the time he had gotten used to the dark again, the venerable old men on the walls had stepped out of their frames. They began moving between photographs, going in, coming out, trading places, waving to Yusuf. He could hear people moving around on the other floors and in the rooms next door, slamming doors. He could hear them rustling behind the photos, drawing water at the first sign of dawn to wash themselves in preparation for prayers.
Yusuf fasted for a long time. He subsisted on nothing but a few dates and some handfuls of water from the Well of Zamzam, which Mu’az left on the doorstep for him each day, until he too grew paper-thin and was able to join the old men in their frames and converse with them. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t worried that he might go insane. He was finally free of the lifelong nightmare that his mind would one day lose its grip on reality. His eyes narrowed till they were thin slits connecting wakefulness and dreaming. They forgot how to sleep, but they no longer cared about sleeping. No longer did he struggle to win his body some fragmentary rest; all his other physical needs receded as well. He became a bundle of energy unlike any other. He felt the terrifying energy of the house all around him, pulling all the doors wide open, climbing up the stairs to the sitting room on the top floor, which is where he saw the old woman who blew him away the moment he laid eyes on her.
As soon as he opened the door, he felt a pearly cloud preceding him into the room. He recognized the scent but he didn’t know from where. The air was oppressive as Yusuf pass
ed through the cloud; he stood in the middle of the parlor, feeling stripped bare, looking around as the cloud passed over the old black-and-white photos. As the cloud passed over the photos, the black fell right off, leaving all the photos to the right of the door a bare white strip.
When the cloud reached photograph number five, the old woman whom Yusuf had come looking for fell out of the frame, materializing directly in front of him. The moment she stepped out, the wall behind him turned the color of green silk. The woman pointed to an inscription written in red above the door. Yusuf read it; it was a verse from the Quran: “God’s first House was established for the people at Becca.” She turned to the man whom the cloud had pulled out of his frame after her and introduced him to Yusuf. “This is my father, Hulayl al-Khuza’i.” Al-Khuza’i came forward, carrying the key to the Kaaba in his hand.
He held it out toward his daughter. “Take this key and keep it safe. Hobba, you are my only heir.”
“Father, how I can assume responsibility for the Kaaba when I am already responsible for Qusayy’s heart?”
“You would allow Ibn Ghabshan to take custody of it then?”
Yusuf realized he was living through the moment in history that had been driven out of the photo frame.
“No. He’s a drunk.”
“But he’ll sell the key for a jar of wine; your husband Qusayy, who’s worthy of it, will buy it. That way the key will pass from master to master.”
Hobba turned to Yusuf, wrapping her arms around his neck, running her palm lightly over his jugular, and down to his chest where the key hung. Yusuf could feel the woman clinging to him, begging him to rescue her.
“The heart is the key to everything,” she whispered. An electric shock ran from Yusuf’s brain down to his heart when she drowned his key in hers, but her father interrupted gruffly:
“And you? What are you waiting for?” Yusuf stammered a reply, but the man didn’t pause to listen. “Go, now. Get yourself to the Kurd’s bookstore at the head of Ali’s Pass at the foot of Abu Qubays. Dig through the mounds of sand and dirt that cover the remains of the old square house underneath. Uncover everything that’s inside: the ten windows, the column topped by two arches over the prayer niche, and the hole beneath the prayer niche in which the green marble slab lies, marking the place where our beloved, the Prophet was born. Take out the silver ring. The silver ring marks the birthplace that is the center of all birthplaces. This is your inheritance. Do you understand?”
Just then the cloud completed its revolution around the room, leaving all the photographs behind it a blank white. When it reached Hobba and her father, their color gradually drained, before they vanished into the air. Yusuf heard a crow caw, and when it flew up out of his mind into the room in front of him, he saw that it was no longer coal-black; it was white.
“What are you waiting for?” It chastised him.
“A sign. A message.”
“The messages are in everything around you. In your blood, even, and in that key around your neck.”
“But my eyesight is getting worse. I’m seeing double. How can I trust my vision when this concentration has clouded it?”
“Just shut your eyes and let the world come to you. Let it translate you. Let it define you. Choose a book and find your sign.” Yusuf picked a book at random off the bookshelf: al-Jahiz’s The Book of Living Creatures. “Now just pick a word.”
Yusuf opened the book at random to a long chapter and read the first word he saw: “Crow.”
“What connects the crow to Abd al-Mutallib?”
Yusuf flipped through the chapter to read the story of the Prophet’s grandfather and the crow. The crow showed him where to dig up the buried Well of Zamzam and bring Mecca to life again.”
“And what connects the crow to Cain?”
Yusuf didn’t need to read the Book of Living Creatures to answer the question, he already knew it: “The crow showed him how to bury Abel.”
“And what’s the connection with the Kaaba?”
“Dhu l-Suwayqatayn, the bow-legged, blue-eyed, broad-nosed, fat-bellied one who will appear at the end of time and dismantle the Kaaba brick by brick with his comrades and throw its remains into the sea.”
Yusuf wondered what could connect all those things: al-Jahiz, the crow, the universe, Mecca, the Kaaba …
“Now you understand the secret orbits of a single word and the power of resurrection that lies within it. The key that can unlock the entire universe lies within the most basic word. Don’t let locks and borders stop you. Gather your will and go forth.”
Yusuf obeyed the command that rose within him and stood up. He followed dutifully as it shone, like the crow before it had shone, from door to door, room to room, to the green marble and the silver ring. He dived down to the bottom of its shine. He washed like all those around him who were preparing to dress in pilgrim’s robes. Then he performed his ritual ablutions and unleashed the bright light of purity. In his pilgrim’s robes, he looked just like the perfectly white photos on the wall, just like the eternal pilgrims in them. As he stepped out of the Lababidi building, he joined the flood of pilgrims.
It was the seventh day of the month of Dhu l-Hijja, two days before the pilgrims would gather to stand on the Mount of Mercy at Arafat, where Adam and Eve met after they were banished from heaven. As he walked through the Haram Mosque, Yusuf saw that a storm was brewing. Soldiers were driving the masses of pilgrims away from the mosque and panic had turned the faces of everyone in the crowd monstrous.
“We’ve been cursed! God’s house cannot be opened. The Kaaba has shut us out.” They’d made this discovery when the Emir of Mecca, and other visiting grandees, had come to wash the inside of the Kaaba and wrap it in white cloth as was always done on the seventh day of the month of Dhu l-Hijja. Soldiers searched for Abd Allah al-Shaybi in the mosque’s colonnades so that he could come unlock the Kaaba, but they found neither the forty-something-year-old man nor the key, not in the mosque and not at his house.
It was then that a rumor spread about how a fire had raged through the houses of the Shayba family the year before, wiping them all out. All attempts to open the Kaaba with freshly cast keys failed. Outside the Farewell Gate, the sheikhs who specialized in Quranic recitation were searching for a verse that would drive away the curse, when a blind sheikh spoke up.
“The Kaaba will only open for a Shaybi. All of Mecca knows the story of when cholera struck the Shaybi family and nearly wiped out every last one of them. The only Shaybi left was an infant in diapers and when the Emir of Mecca failed to unlock the Kaaba, he had no choice but to call for the infant, place the key in his little hand, and turn the key in the lock. Only then did the Kaaba open.”
“What about now? Aren’t there even any infants left?”
Yusuf joined the flow of pilgrims, dissolving into the masses headed for Arafat. All the pilgrims could do was carry on with the rituals they’d come to perform. The sky was dark that day, not because of the clouds upon which the angels perched to hear the pilgrims’ prayers, but because of the terror caused by the curse that hung over their heads, threatening to wipe out the very earth from under their feet.
Yusuf flowed with the pilgrims flooding toward Mina, where the devil was trapped in three stone pillars. Each pillar of Satan was surrounded by circular galleries over eight levels, supporting the masses of pilgrims, who were delivered there by futuristic escalators and moving walkways. Three million pilgrims that year throwing seven pebbles before sunset at each of the three devils for three days equaled one hundred and eighty-nine million pebbles thrown at Satan from eight levels of modern engineering. They weren’t pebbles raining down on Satan, however, they were little pieces of living flesh, which the pilgrims tore off their bodies and sins to hurl onto Satan’s body, which grew larger. Yusuf stood in the middle of all the throwing hands so his flesh would be torn off and hurled down. He felt he’d been washed in that downpour, relieved of his every infirmity. For a moment, Yusuf was one with the devils be
ing bombarded and the sins of the pilgrims and their dreams, one with the holy ground he stood on, with its geography and its history.
By sundown after the third day, Yusuf felt as light as could be, and he was carried by the masses of pilgrims back toward Mecca, arriving at the Holy Mosque by nightfall. He was guided by the minaret at Bab al-Salam, the Gate of Peace, the fourth oldest of the mosque’s minarets.
Purity opened Yusuf’s body up to a memory that began in the past and ended in the present. His senses were liberated. They could travel unimpeded, summoning that past into the present and moving within both simultaneously. He didn’t go through the modern marble entrance, but through the old gate, which had been implanted in his memory by everything he’d read, by al-Lababidi’s photos and by the detailed maps and drawings that Mushabbab had put together from the recollections of Mecca’s oldest inhabitants. The Gate of Peace consisted of three large arched doors, each five meters tall, divided by two two-meter-wide columns, topped by calligraphic decorations in naskh script, names written inside circular cells: God, Muhammad, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali, Sa’d, Said, Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, Abu Ubayda, Talha, al-Zubayr, Hasan, and Husayn, may God bless them all. Yusuf decided to go through the small opening inside the doorway that was cut out of the larger door, following in the footsteps of those who came to the mosque back when the doors used to be shut at night. He saw his grandfather, as he saw his father, as he saw himself there and then. He used to sit, every dawn, on the pebbled sections between the pathways of stone and marble, among the study circles of master reciters from Indonesia, Egypt, Syria, and Morocco. He would open the pages of al-Azraqi’s history of Mecca and begin to memorize its passages and copy them out.
That morning at dawn, there was someone searching for Yusuf amidst a sea of pilgrims, so he had to hurry through Mecca’s history in order to penetrate deeply enough that those pursuing him would be unable to strip him from its pages. The overpowering yearning for a page of al-Azraqi, where he could lie down never to wake up, drove him toward the steps of the Bab al-Salam minaret. There in the throng of pilgrims, the book fell from his hands and was lost. More than once, the book had nearly disappeared among those bodies, which had succumbed to a vague impulse to tear it away from him. The page, which the book had been open to, was torn by the crowd’s jostling. He’d read it before—like every page of the three-volume work—a thousand times and it was imprinted on his memory, and yet this most recent re-reading, as it was torn out of his hands, was like the very first. He learned that the historians and jurists used to call The Gate of Peace “the Shayba Clan’s Gate,” because it faced a door by that name inside the mosque, which had marked its eastern boundary in the Prophet’s time.
