40

Father’s condition had improved and he no longer sat in the same chair. He was delighted with his new decorated chair. But in fact it was the same chair Mother had bought at the ﬂea market, the one he had been carried in on, but now it had drawings on the back and sides that made him think he was still sitting cross-legged on his old throne-like chair with its two snakes descending to the ground and its high back resembling the wings of a soaring eagle. Father looked like a general in exile after losing his ﬁnal battle. His entourage, which no longer understood what he wanted, circled around him like out-of-control animals. They were imprisoned in an apartment that resembled a cell. He himself looked like someone who no longer had any desires. His last wish was to get a haircut so that he could welcome my brother Suleiman, like a general receiving the last soldier of his defeated troops as he sits on his throne. His desires had been soaring above our heads for years like birds of prey. No one worried about or was proud of them anymore. All of this was over. They no longer interested anyone. He didn’t have anything else to take care of, except for this single desire—to get a haircut—in order to forget about the crack that had been left behind, stretching across the entire length of the mosque’s ceiling like a viper in clear daylight, like a sword threatening to come down on his neck at night while he slept. Khadija and I looked at his head. The razor was in my hand. Khadija was a bit too enthusiastic. She wanted to shave his head for him. Like a child wanting to play. The anxiety I was feeling didn’t come from the razor blade in my hand, or from the sight of Father looking like someone getting ready to shave his head for the last time before descending into his grave. The anxiety I was feeling emanated from this very place, from its suffocating atmosphere and from the depressing thoughts it evoked. First and foremost, it came from the new neighborhood. When I walked through it, I saw that the women—the same neighbors from our old neighborhood—had spread their covers out over the rocks, sunning them and their brittle bones. They sat on the sidewalk that wasn’t there or on the hills formed by dirt and rocks that no one had gathered up. They warmed their bones, which had been penetrated by the moist air of the previous rainy nights, while at the same time looking at the shadows being traced by the sun over the holes left behind by the construction workers. The walls were still dripping and they had holes in them here and there. The sun’s heat heralded an early summer, as if these places have only two seasons, as if in places where the poor settle they only have a choice between a rainy season and an extremely hot season. The children emerged from the ditches, brandishing pieces of metal and yelling at one another. The houses’ stairs were too narrow. Long, bare hallways echoed with the sound of the wind and children’s shouting. Then there was the house itself. One bedroom, a salon—square like a box—with two small windows that looked like those of a prison cell. The sewing machine was gone. There was no bazaar where Mother could sell her goods or buy things from the north, so her hands sat practically idle. There were no customers. Instead of buying and selling, her hands satisﬁed themselves by monitoring Father’s head (the same desire that ate away at the other hands ate away at hers). Everyone had a score to settle with the head—Father’s head, which he generously offered to us with a sudden, never-before-seen humility. And ﬁnally, perhaps most essentially, there was the thought that hadn’t left me since I had ﬁrst looked at the neighborhood: that I would run into Kika. I remembered him prior to this moment. My heart seized even before looking at the neighborhood, when Kika was nothing other than one possibility among many, like a project, like an image that passed by while I faced the hateful glares that united the people who were angry at a girl they didn’t know, who protested against singing they’d never heard; a girl who made my heart ﬂutter—it started to beat embarrassingly harder. When he heard the news of Suleiman’s return, Kika came by the house asking about him too. He asked many times a day. But, really, he wasn’t knocking on the door with the intention of asking about him. Rather, he hadn’t forgotten about Farah. He came to add his wickedness to that which had spread out all around the girl who sang in the mosque, because what did Suleiman have to do with a girl singing in the mosque? It was the same spite he had been carrying inside him ever since he ﬁrst saw her in the cabaret. He wasn’t given the pleasure of a single nice word from her mouth. That’s why. Farah had ignored Kika as if he were a mosquito. Then he talked about her everywhere. It was best that I avoided Kika. Really, he was no more and no less than a mosquito. Relinquishing Kika came to taste like deliverance. It didn’t matter that Kika had once been a friend. A friend, yes, but not like being friends with the color red or cedar wood, for example. Those are true friends; friends you can rely on and be a companion to without question. Without feeling an anxiety you can’t respond to. With some joy, I remembered that I had forgotten him these last few weeks, and I felt even more joyful and reassured when I didn’t see Kika among the young men leaning up against the walls all day, watching the sun and the moon go around in the sky. I didn’t care about the fact that he’d gone, nor did I have any desire to know where he went or what happened to him after the visa ﬁasco. I could picture him anywhere. At the port waiting for a truck he’d never ﬁnd to take him away. In front of an embassy where a policeman stood at the door threatening him with his truncheon. But always without the visa. Why would he deserve the visa? Why did he want to emigrate anyway? Just to copy Suleiman? And why would he get to Spain or somewhere besides Spain? Kika didn’t deserve to go anywhere.

Or perhaps this feeling of anxiety stemmed from the message that arrived from the old city, casting its pall over the entire household, sowing childish desires in Father’s heart and invigorating Mother’s broken hopes. A message from Suleiman. Finally. But it wasn’t a message like other messages, just a bit of news transmitted by a man we didn’t know. The house was suddenly and radically turned upside down. And the man who brought the message, where was he? He contacted us at our old address, but the old address was no longer there. An unwritten message. But that was unimportant. The important thing was the piece of news, which was that Suleiman was en route, although it would take some time for him to arrive because Saudi Arabia was far away. I didn’t see the man who carried the message. The ones who saw him were two kids who stayed behind in the old city because they weren’t lucky enough for their parents to have gotten an apartment in the new neighborhood. Why Saudi Arabia and not Abu Dhabi or Oman? No one knew. They’re all distant countries located in the east, as far away as one can go. And the man? He hadn’t gotten in touch before because he didn’t know our new address. But thanks to airplanes, all points on earth are now close to one another. Saudi Arabia is still far away, though. The news came at just the right time. Mother ﬁgured that a reasonable amount of time had passed. “There’s nothing better than for a person to remember his kin after being away for a year! We don’t know how many days Suleiman will spend with us.” We bet that it won’t be more than one week. Then we bet that it will be longer. Two weeks. We had never seen a migrant worker return to his job after less than a month, especially if he was working in wealthy and far-off countries like Saudi Arabia or the Emirates. People didn’t need to work too much there. All the money he might be bringing back with him would be useful. Mother said that the best that could happen would be for us to be done with this cardboard box of a house before it was ripped from above our heads by the wind, and to go back to our old house and ﬁx whatever could be ﬁxed. All things considered, it was a ﬁne house with four rooms where we couldn’t hear the embarrassing things the neighbors were doing in their houses on the other side of the thin walls.

The razor passed over his head, shaving it bald as his eyes followed its movement. The blade mowed down the white hair, leaving behind red skin like that of a plucked rooster, along with some shaving cream. Khadija asked for the razor before the hair was completely gone. The head shrank. Mother demanded the razor back before the head shrank to the size of a pomegranate and became too difﬁcult to handle. Mother wanted to have her share of the fun with Father’s head before it disappeared completely. It might be gone at any moment, then we’d be left without a head at all for us to empty our old hatreds into. Father’s physical condition had improved, but the ceiling and the crack in it came back to trouble him. Karima rubbed her small ﬁngers in shaving cream mixed with hair. She was playing too. Father asked whether Suleiman was going to come in now, and we told him that he was en route, as we had been told. Then he immediately forgot about Suleiman. He went back to asking about what was still worrying him: Would the king see the crack in the ceiling on Dedication Day? He was no longer worried about his shrinking head, or about the hands tracing all of their accumulated anger on it. He was no longer worried about whether his son Suleiman was coming back. Rather, for every single ticking second, he was hoping that in the coming days the king wouldn’t notice the damn crack. Father didn’t get up from his chair, but his health had improved, as Khadija said as she rubbed his beard. His wrinkled red neck had grown longer, and his head had shrunken as much as it could. His speech seemed heavier as he talked about the mosque and Dedication Day. He asked when it would be. It wouldn’t do for him to miss a day like that because he had contributed to it mentally, and his health had suffered for it as well. Dedication Day would be memorable, and the hairline crack wouldn’t be visible to anyone. Do you think the king is going to worry himself with something so minor as a small crack in the ceiling ten meters up? And about the crack, he also told us that he’d discuss the matter directly with the king in the event that he did see it. If the king saw it, there was no doubt he’d demand that the one responsible for the ceiling be brought before him. And that was what Father was anticipating with all of the former enthusiasm we recognized. As if the thought of the dedication returned him to his old vibrant self. Then, this question: If the king doesn’t see it, what if a member of his entourage does? These guardians of hell don’t allow anything to go unnoticed. That was what worried him. What would happen if that were to occur? Then he forgot all about his question and told little Karima that he’d take her with him to see the mosque he helped build. He wouldn’t say anything to her about the crack, though. He’d let her discover it for herself. And she’d tell him that she saw it because she’s young and doesn’t know how to lie. All she wanted to do was pluck one of the hairs from his head, but the hairs were all gone. We all still harbored a hatred inside us that had not yet been slaked. An unsatisﬁed anger.

Abdullah wasn’t at this party, which seemed more like a funeral. Absent from the shaving ritual, which seemed more like a farewell rite. He was working in the new neighborhood’s mosque. It wasn’t really a mosque. They forgot to build the mosque in the new neighborhood. It was more of a cellar underneath one of the houses. Abdullah was the one who suggested converting it into a mosque. And he was the one who led the prayers and delivered the sermon. This job had completely transformed him. He spent his days repairing the ﬂoor. He patched the holes that appeared on the walls after Father constructed a mihrab for him out of wood left behind by the construction workers. And for the occasion, he also put in an arched doorway like those found in palaces. Abdullah repainted the mihrab and door once a week, as if intentionally not allowing himself a minute’s rest so as not to have to make an appearance at home. He redid the mosque’s straw-mat ﬂoor coverings. He searched among the pious for new Qurans, incense burners, strings of prayer beads that could be seen in the dark because they were lit only with the light God planted in them, and anything else that might be appropriate for his mosque. Yes, Abdullah had changed considerably. So much so that I had to admit how wrong I had been, and that I had judged him too harshly before. In the evening, he brought home whatever food the other residents brought him—bread, sugar, large bowls of couscous, and sometimes mouthwatering dishes such as soup with local chicken in it, some of which I took to Farah. It was as though Abdullah had become indispensable for sustaining life in our household, and outside of it as well. Even Khadija was touched by the same healing hand. Her face became noticeably fresher. She no longer complained about her old pains, and when she was afﬂicted by one of her spells, Abdullah took her into the only bedroom, which had become his, and after a quarter of an hour she would be cured. Habiba was the only one not happy with the situation because the room was hers. She didn’t want Khadija or anyone else in it. When the arguing between them grew ﬁerce, Habiba accused her of stealing her husband. And Khadija responded that she didn’t understand why she was making such a fuss for no reason. “No reason?” And what was the harm in their sharing the same man? Habiba was being selﬁsh, because men were created to sleep with many women, four at least. She went on to explain to all of us in scientiﬁc fashion that the total number of men was decreasing in the world. They were dying in wars, on the roadways, and at work in the mines. Even those who were still living didn’t live for very long. So, in order for women to fulﬁll their duties, and in order for life to continue so that the human species wouldn’t disappear from the face of the earth, each man needed to have a number of women. It was just envy gnawing away at Habiba’s heart. “Envy? What envy?” At this point, when the yelling between the two sides reached a fever pitch, I no longer understood any of it; perhaps no one did. But there was still that dangling question: What did Abdullah and Khadija do in the room? After spending a quarter of an hour with him, she emerged rosy-cheeked, in full health, walking and stretching out her arms like someone who has just woken up, fresh, new, cured, completely cured. Then we heard Father demand his gold-embroidered selham robe. When we smoothed it out over his shoulders, he said, “Now I can receive him.” We realized after a moment that he meant Suleiman and not the king. Before leaving the house, I heard Mother ask about the girl who sings in the mosque. She was holding a pot between us, and the steam rising from the pot smelled delicious—saffron, olives, and preserved lemon. The smell didn’t dissipate when she put the top back on and handed it to me, without adding anything else. Without waiting for a response.

These annoying stairways, twisting halls, and narrow windows looking out over the debris left behind by the construction workers didn’t help me know whether Kika was lurking in some corner waiting for me. Because of the buildings, because of the evening sky weighing heavily over them, because of the toxic news that had been spread about Farah, the threat of Kika seemed more imminent than ever before. Not because of the question Mother asked about a girl she didn’t know; not because of the number of times he came knocking on the door; not even because of how long he had been gone before suddenly showing up and spreading the word about the girl who wasn’t interested in him. It might have been because of the way he had stood in front of me, with all that malice coursing through his veins, the day we went searching for Farah and he had left me out to dry. Still, to this moment, just remembering that hateful ﬂash in Kika’s eyes gives me the impression that a nasty wind is heading my way. It might even have started before that, from the looks he had given Farah the ﬁrst night we met at the Saâda Cabaret, and then afterward on the broad, dimly lit avenue as he walked around her, ﬁrst as a victor in a battle that hadn’t yet begun, then as a wounded animal that had fallen in that same nonexistent battle. If I ever emerge from this maze that is the new neighborhood, with its dark alleyways and dug-up streets, I’ll never come back again. I can’t walk through it without thinking about Kika, and about Farah.

I passed through a grove of jacaranda trees, putting some distance between me and the new neighborhood, the machines, and the men, who hadn’t moved from where they were standing. Small, purple, bell-shaped jacaranda ﬂowers continued to fall as I moved through the trees, stepping on the blossoms as so many others had, and would. When they’d been stepped on and dirtied, and had lost their color and scent, when they were completely obliterated, new ﬂowers would bloom. Other purple, bell-shaped ﬂowers would fall to earth, fresher, more welcoming of life, even more ready to be stepped on. Before continuing along the road, I stood there for a while smiling at the purple ﬁeld. A small bell-shaped ﬂower fell onto my shoulder and ﬁlled me with a ﬂeeting feeling of intoxication. In order to forget about Kika, I thought of Farah. Would she stay? As sure as I was of the generous, eternal life that ﬁlled the ﬂowers of the jacaranda tree, my conviction faded when I thought about Farah. I have little patience, and this causes the ﬁres of disappointment to ﬂare up. I wish my mind would allow itself even a brief moment of relaxation, but it can’t. My mind needed some time to not think about Farah, but that was impossible. Would she stay? How long would she stay? Last time I counted up the days, hours, and minutes. She’s been here longer this time. Did that mean anything? Would I ﬁnd her there when I went back? I was seized with the feeling that there was some sort of threat out there that would continue to pursue her. The danger still threatened her.