Raja Alem - The Dove's Necklace

When Yusuf woke up, a certain tranquility had settled over the lane, but it was almost instantly shattered by a scream: the body had been found.

Alone in the Lababidi house, Yusuf pored over the photo of the camel litter. He spread it out in front of him; for days and nights he examined its every last detail. He looked at all the men’s faces, searching for the man responsible for withdrawal. Among the people celebrating, he noticed a face he recognized. It was one of the notables; he was dressed in modern-looking robes and surrounded by lackeys. He’d seen him before. With his driver and PA. All those faces had actually been through the Lane of Many Heads a month before the body was found. He tried to find a way to blow the photo up, so he could see the features better, to find that man and find out who he was. He knew that if he could just put a name to the guy, he’d have discovered who the killer was. Or who the kidnapper was, or who the woman was. He replayed the image in his dream in slow motion to get a better look at the young woman as the curtains of the litter parted and she made her way toward the orchard, or leaving the alley in the magma of the giant …

Subconsciously, Yusuf knew the woman who had snuck out of the Lane of Many Heads. Who was she? Azza or Aisha? Or just another daughter? A sister? A woman who couldn’t bear the neighborhood any more? He looked back and forth from the photo of the camel howdah to the image of the event in his mind. The events of that night were impressed on his subconscious. Although he’d been sleeping, he’d still been aware of that quick rustling movement: the body that fell and the other that ran from it.

FROM: Aisha

SUBJECT: Message 23

I sank into the deepest of deep sleeps last night. I missed the dawn prayers, and waking up this morning was like having my soul torn out.

If death turns out to be a deep revival like that, I long for it. After all, the Quran does tell us that sleep is a minor death.

Do you ever ask yourself, “When is she going to give up and stop writing to me?”

A single word from you is enough to wipe out my darkest thoughts.

“Best strive with oneself only, not with the universe.” Lawrence says toward the end of Women in Love .

Imagine if you only had one local channel, then the signal was cut, and then suddenly you were reconnected and plugged into all the cutting-edge channels we have today. My father’s death was like that. Whenever I look at the channels Azza is plugged into, I can’t help but pity myself.

There was a sour taste to the yeast in our bread this morning. Do you think that Azza is coming up with all those channels herself? She says there’s nothing to the world but portals, and there are too many for her to cross. “Just close your eyes and spin around and start bouncing from doorway to doorway. The important thing is not to let any doors close on you.” That’s her mantra.

The photo of you standing in your kitchenis making me hungry. Remember how I tore at the bag of shopping you brought home that Sunday? I had no idea what I was going to make with leeks in that modern kitchen of yours. One day I’ll make a meat and leek pie for you. It’s not an easy dish to make and it must have eaten up so many of my mother’s days.

Don’t be surprised by the amount of leeks it uses. Leeks warm the blood. Did you know that? They’re related to green onions. Our grandmothers used to mellow them out by adding ground meat, tahini, and pastry.

I look back and I see the leeks of my childhood. Strange, exciting images whose focal point is the Yemeni porters. They were literally the backbone of the Lane of Many Heads. Their backs had witnessed all our homes coming into being. Their backs, half bent under the crushing weight, had seen our furniture move up and down the floors of our building, sometimes during pilgrimage, and for the last time when I settled in my cubbyhole for good. They left their heavy vests on even when they slept and they would sit in the corner of the lane, out of the sun, each with a bunch of leeks, which they ate with rounds of white bread.

My father was irritated that the strong, well-built Yemeni who’d appeared in our narrow neighborhood had chosen to sit leaning against the nude brick wall of our house, the smell of his white, leek-steeped undershirts reaching up to me as plainly as anything. I would peek out at his green loincloth, which changed color like a sunflower, rising and loosening as a reptile crawled inside it. Every time a woman walked past, she’d screech like a crow and crash into walls as she tried to flee.

“A Yemenigot up, his compass pointing north, he needs a nestto stick it in but he hasn’t got a dime!”

I wait for the children’s rhyme. They sing it as loud as they can and smiles break through the frowns of windows quivering to open.

I could never bring myself to say those raw, naked words. Words like that stick in my throat and send blood rushing to my face, because they don’t come out level and neatly cut, but take me by surprise, their bodies appearing out of nowhere on my tongue.

The Lane of Many Heads doesn’t sing those songs in the middle of the day any more. Perhaps their giant has left.

If the Yemeni man were still alive, I’d have sent you his picture. The rumor was that he’d been magicked into a bunch of leeks and devoured by the female crows in the impenetrable hideaways of the Lane of Many Heads.

We the girls of the Lane of Many Heads grew up with all these dreams and all these things we’d read. We were raised to think the world revolved around love and that love would save a girl from suffocation. I know now that the world revolves around sex and food.

I finished last in that race — it took me thirty years to have my first orgasm. The whole world is built around two bodily orifices.

Everything else is just padding that disappears at first contact.

Aisha

P. S. Dear ^,

‘Do you love me?’ she asked.

‘Too much,’ he answered quietly.

She clung a little closer.

‘Not too much,’ she pleaded.

‘Far too much,’ he said, almost sadly.

‘And does it make you sad, that I am everything to you?’ she asked, wistful. He held her close to him, kissing her, and saying, scarcely audible:

‘No, but I feel like a beggar — I feel poor.’

She was silent, looking at the stars now. Then she kissed him.

‘Don’t be a beggar,’ she pleaded, wistfully. ‘It isn’t ignominious that you love me.’

‘It is ignominious to feel poor, isn’t it?’ he replied.

‘Why? Why should it be?’ she asked. He only stood still, in the terribly cold air that moved invisibly over the mountain tops, folding her round with his arms.

‘I couldn’t bear this cold, eternal place without you,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t bear it, it would kill the quick of my life.’

( Women in Love )

Every time I read this conversation, I find something new.

Is this what I’ve been missing all along? Begging?

And what comes before begging: poverty. A hunger you would steal to sate?

It takes another personto make a beggar out of you. Because if your indigence becomes paranoia it will chase him away and you’ll be left hungry.

P. P. S. My computer crashed all of a sudden.

Don’t ask what made me download this cutting-edge program. This program excels at testing our curiosities and whims. Sometimes it opens us up onto a world in which a single click makes magic happen and other times it wipes your entire hard drive. Just like a human relationship.