Raja Alem - The Dove's Necklace

“It’s your daughter’s decision. If she wants to have children, then it would be unjust to tie her down to a man like me. The doctors robbed me of that option. They could’ve frozen some of my sperm before they put me through the chemotherapy, to give me the chance to have kids in the future, but they gave me the treatment without letting me know what the side effects were.” The light shining through his thinning, almost glowing, hair gave him a boyish air, a vulnerability that played on the heartstrings. It was a miracle when his hair started to grow back after the chemotherapy and he started treating his hair as if it were a child. He would oil it and comb Minoxidil through it every night. He was as careful as he possibly could be and he never suffocated it under a headscarf. He spent more on that desiccated chaff than he did on his entire body — the body that had already betrayed him once and given life to that dinosaur, cancer. That day, standing in the alley in front of the sewage cleaner’s house, he could be heard as he explained, in detail, how the doctors had failed to freeze a portion of his sperm. As he delivered his scientific exposition to Yabis, the look on the man’s face reminded him of a cow drinking happily from a muddy puddle. His response was entirely unexpected:

“I know my daughter. Who are we to question God’s wisdom? Who knows? Did you hear about the Indian lady who got pregnant in her seventies? When the Lord wills it, milk will pour from stone udders.” Their blind faith was almost defiant and Khalil decided to punish them for it by going through with the marriage.

On their wedding night, that same inner demon goaded him. As she walked toward him resignedly, he stretched his arm out, blocking the doorway to of their bedroom. “You’re going to walk out of here just like you walked in, childless, all the way to your grave. Nothing but burnt firewood. There’s no point to anything you do in there. It’s pointless. You’re just a toy for me to play with.” His idiotic talk pained even his own ears.

“Leave it to God,” Ramziya had said, sighing, emitting a faint whiff of something rotten. She defied him by replaying the same pious tune her father had. “Don’t reject God’s blessings. When you get to the bottom, say, ‘Praise be,’ before you say, ‘It’s tar.’”

Halima’s probing questions made him uncomfortable and in an effort to distract her he nodded toward the mass of white buildings that had come up on their right.

“Those are the Sayf buildings. There are forty-four of them in total. They’re kitted out like spaceships and all lit up. They were built over where the mountain and citadel of the Dabba used to be.”

“Yusuf’s obsessed with that mountain,” Mu’az chimed in. “Those are the rocks from which horses first emerged in the beginning of time and it’s where the Dabba will appear at the end of time. It will wipe the earth out with its tail and then comes the resurrection. He still writes about how they destroyed the citadel, which was more than a century old, despite Turkey’s objections and their pleas for UNESCO and the heritage protection bodies to get involved.”

Khalil shot to life as if he’d been stung by a scorpion. “You still see Yusuf, you son of — an imam?”

Mu’az brushed off the insult. “Don’t you follow his column in the paper? He said that they’d promised to rebuild it on a different mountain farther away, complete with all its original underground vaults and secret passages. Including the Ottoman chests that are still shut up with great big padlocks on chains and the old guns and cannons that are breeding-grounds for rats now and haven’t been fired in more than three-quarters of a century.”

Khalil stared at Mu’az for a long while, irritated by his idle chattering. He was looking for his point of attack and then he said, “Is Azza with him?”

The accusation riled Halima. “God protect us from your devilry, Khalil. Don’t go making trouble. And keep us out of your twisted obsessions.” Halima turned to look at Mu’az. She wanted to get into his head to know the truth. Why hadn’t it occurred to her?

Mu’az broke through the apprehension that had settled over the three of them. “Apparently the princess is still lying there in a sandalwood coffin at the top of the citadel. People say she still winks and braids her hair with camphor and rose perfume.”

“Camphor makes you infertile,” Halima interjected.

“No, camphor comes from one of the springs in paradise. And the princess is still waiting for the Turkish pasha who locked her up in there until he could defeat her father the Sharif of Mecca.”

“Mankind has had free will ever since it was a speck of cells on our ancestor Adam’s back. You can go look for what you want in the citadels of the Turks, developers’ high-rises, dovecotes, wherever,” said Halima, making Khalil wonder whether she was hinting at what he’d gotten up to in the Turkish seamstress’s basement. “But it’s pointless vanity,” she continued. “All Eve’s daughters are the same in the end. Deep by night and sweet by day. As for the ones in coffins, God knows best.”

Khalil looked back and shot Mu’az a disdainful look. “You still digging up graves? Huh? Has your camera flash got any bones to fess up to yet?” He was trying his hardest to irritate him.

Mu’az was defiant. “They told me that human waste has been piling up and that it attracts crows. They said we’ve become the biggest crow colony on earth.”

Halima cut through the tension between the two men. “That detective’s getting more and more suspicious. He’s chasing down every single thing in the neighborhood, his own shadow even. You two know he’s been asking about you both.” As soon as she said that, she regretted it. She felt sorry for Khalil and she didn’t want to give him something else to worry about. He was gloomy enough as it was! She couldn’t imagine either one of them being involved with the body in any way. She was quick to add, as if to apologize, “Never mind the Seven Wonders of the World, these days there are two thousand and seven! There’s a murder on every TV screen — and all for entertainment. Men stay up all night in cafes, smoking shisha, to watch that stuff.”

The look of worry in Khalil’s eyes only intensified. Everywhere he turned, the phrase “He’s been asking about you both” followed. The cab was filled with a glum silence as they each followed the course of their own private apprehensions. The night outside the window was less heavy. Mu’az thought about the meanings pregnant with meanings that lay behind words. They felt like thick honey on his lips.

Khalil took them up Hafayir Hill in silence. He felt as empty on the inside as the top of Mount Omar to his right, which had been shorn of all its houses and leveled. Thoughts ate at his black insides, which were exposed to the elements. He saw the neon yellow bulldozers that were parked, waiting for morning, waiting for flying saucers to land atop the spacescrapers.

“God help me. Not a day passes without another mountain in Mecca disappearing. Where are the houses at the top of Mount Omar that we’ve always known?”

“Their misery was wiped out in the name of progress! The land they used to occupy is called Ground Billion now. They’re planning to build the tallest buildings in the world on Mecca’s mountaintops.”

“Taller than the minarets of the Holy Mosque?”

Mu’az saw Mecca through Halima’s eyes. “The development here is out of this world, Auntie. They’re pouring billions into it every day. The massive corporations are like their own world order. They don’t answer to the laws of any one country. The last deal they signed was with Elaf Holdings for three billion dollars to develop one mountain here and another one in a different area. Not even Manhattan’s like this! The Valley of Abraham is lit up like a Christmas tree. I swear if the Many Heads went out for a stroll in Mecca, they’d think they’d been resurrected in New York City.”