excerpt from beginning of Chapter 1 ©

 

Unity of prayer forgotten, the men came out of the mosque, collective clarity of morning prayer left behind.

 

They faced the sand and wind that veiled daybreak in isolation. The last of the faithful, two Saudis, stopped at the entrance. The younger man felt the creases in the red-and-white headdress that overhung his forehead. Habit sharpened its already sharp, starched creases with his fingers. A twisted circle of a stylized rope wound with black silk thread formed two loops that rested over his headdress. A coil of rope had long served Bedouin cameleers to bind the forefeet of their animals at night. During the day, cameleers kept it on their heads for convenience. In the urbanized setting in which the young man lived, it served as outward recognition of custom, an emblem of vanity worn solely for decorative purposes, a crown of ego.

 

The young man’s distracted fingers counted the number of folds fanning out over his forehead. He caressed them with practiced fingers of soft hands. The creation of his public image was guided by an inner light more accurate than any mirror could reflect. He created a corrugated wave of cloth above his eyes.

 

Perfection attained, satisfied with the voguish number of checkered waves accepted by men his age, five, the young man grinned and, to protect his mouth from chaotic sand, wrapped the end of his headdress that fell over his right shoulder across his smooth face.

 

He was displeased by what confronted him. Dissatisfaction with his birthright focused the eyes behind designer frames. His perfected sight made visual definition an act of precise surgery performed on the environment. Powerful lenses made seeing an extreme sensation that transformed sight into a violent act, power become luxury for the rich young men of Saudi Arabia. His eyes were violent.

 

Bent forward, he trotted on calf-leather loafers into the natural ambiguity that confronted him, not knowing who he was but sure of what he wanted to be.

 

The other man was a squat, messy man. He pulled an inexpensive white headdress across his face. The cloth was frayed and dirty. He wore no decorative coils. Vanity in dress was irreligious. He did not immediately follow the young man into the sandstorm. Morning prayers still preoccupied his attention. He peered into the whirlwind deception through soiled eyes. His vision was still with Allah.

 

Others who had performed morning prayers in the mosque hurried around him and dispersed to jobs in the hospital, the pharmacy, and the shops across the street. They left their prayers in the mosque. The man who stood looking into the wind carried his out.

 

When the man with soiled eyes returned to this world, the others were lost to sight.

 

The faithless vanished into sand grinding the atmosphere. Tall, uniformed Sudanese guards, posture Euclidean in the performance of line, dark and shiny, disappeared into the wind. Egyptian bureaucrats, men for whom the art of deception is courtesy, paunches emblems of material wealth because human worth is weighed, disappeared into the wind. Yemeni clerks, subservient to the Najd tribes of central Arabia who shared their meager desert, who smile too quickly because smiles are a sign of fear, servitude ingrained through contact with their neighbors, disappeared in the wind. Small Bangladeshi janitors, frightened men allowed to suffer in the Kingdom’s dry, desiccating heat because they were Moslem, receiving small pay that provided a better life for families left behind in the moist, enervating heat of their homeland, disappeared in the wind.

 

A score of Saudis, uncomfortable among the others, also disappeared in the wind.

 

All disappeared into the dry fog. Within twenty feet of where the man with soiled eyes stood, all were equally dissolved.

 

Blocks away, early traffic could be heard complaining about the division of labor that called men to work. Street signs along the main thoroughfare, pushed by the wind and pushing back, not visible to commuters, displayed the name of the modern traffic artery in large Arabic script: Dhabab.

 

Beneath, in smaller print, “Desert Fog Boulevard.”

 

Peering through poor eyes, the man with soiled eyes found clarity in verses from the Qur’an.

 

We created man from sounding clay,

From mud molded into shape;

And the Jinn race, We had

Created before, from the fire

Of a scorching wind.

 

The man heard the shattered song of innumerable Jinn swirling around his head.

 

Released by the wind from the desert floor where Jinn suffered, they circled maliciously in the hot, dry air that gave them life, each frantic to perform a unique mischief before their liberator, the confused wind, dropped them back to the earth where they would again sink into the sand.

 

Beings of wrong-doing, Jinn carried every variety of evil, each anxious to propagate his or her own sin among humans: envy, hypocrisy, lust, pride, greed, anger, and all other vices, great and small, public and secret, known and unknown, imaginable, unimaginable. Once spread, these vices would live among men after the wind subsided and Jinn returned to slumber beneath the sand.

 

A Jinn’s handicraft is a contagious vice, the man with soiled eyes thought, an uncontrollable virus that infects rapidly before it is noticed and the temporary imbalance of elements that is the essence of a sandstorm, a confusion in which Jinn thrive, was upon the land.

 

The moist and the dry, the hot and cold, the man thought, each has its proper place in the natural order of things on the earth. Air, fire and water form the earth.

 

The messy man’s manner of dress signified who he was. His white garment was grimy, stained and tattered at the cuffs and around the neck, threadbare at the elbows. He had worn it for a week. The hem was high enough to reveal his ankles and knobby, calloused feet in cheap leather sandals. He wore no watch, no jewelry, no rings, bracelets, necklaces, or medallions. His beard unraveled at the edges in a maze of errant strands and his eyes were milky—a common desert malady leading to cataracts and blindness.

 

This man, common but not modern, lived his life as an example of his religion. His disregard for dress, an act of humility, was a spiritual exercise that debased vanity and allowed the worshiper to approach Allah without the interference of worldly things.

 

The man with soiled eyes was a mutawa, a spiritual guard, one who devoted his life to the teachings of the Qur’an and their protection. He was a man who never smiled.

 

Covering lower face with his cotton headdress and calling on Allah for protection, the man stepped purposely into the sandstorm. It was an act of moral courage, not physical survival, in a menacing environment.

 

The poor condition of his eyes and the chaos of airborne sand limited visibility to a few feet. He did not hurry. He listened to the howling Jinn, the ecstatic choir that mingled with hot wind and sand. They sang unintelligible, discordant words in his ears.

 

Throughout the city, he knew, they swirled gleefully around unsuspecting victims caught in the storm. Dirty and maddened, Jinn clung to whiskers and hair, caught in Bedouin beards where they would hibernate, waiting for other occasions to awake and propagate.

 

Directing and encouraging the hot wind, Jinn unveiled maidens for all to see virgin faces. They slipped beneath the ground-length, black robes women wore over their clothing and lifted hems to expose ankles of young, married women.

 

Innumerable Jinn, their size as immeasurable as thought, roared sordid intentions. Trouble flew in all directions.

 

With this in mind, the man walked across the street into the office where he worked. A large caseload would reach his desk within the next few hours.

 

“As-salaam aleekum.” The man spoke in a slow monotone to the small Bangladeshi receptionist at the main door of the office and passed without looking.

 

“Aleekum as-salaam.” The receptionist mispronounced the Arabic salutation with exaggerated courtesy, unheard.

 

The man crossed the foyer and paced down a long hall with offices on either side, doors open. A few offices were occupied with two or three men, Saudis and Egyptians. They chatted, drank morning coffee, and read Al-Yamama, the morning newspaper. Some nodded as the man passed. Seeing that he looked to neither side, they resumed their morning routine.

 

A current of savory coffee brewed with cardamom filled the hallway. A Yemeni servant slowly poured the tea-colored coffee into small cups. The aromatic coffee trickled from the curved snout of the coffee pot, strained through dangling horse hair. He filled the cups to half and kept them at that level. A full cup, he knew, was an inhospitable gesture that suggested the guest should finish and leave. A half cup gave the host the pleasure of repeating his hospitality.

 

In a large office at the end of the hall, a very old man greeted the man with soiled eyes. Nine desks in the large room were unoccupied.

 

“As-salaam aleekum.”

 

“Aleekum as-salaam.”

 

The man with soiled eyes approached the old man and, embracing, kissed his cheeks, forehead, and the tip of his nose. These traditional signs of respect kept alive the culture of central Arabia and, for the man with soiled eyes, they were not gestures alone. He respected his elder in his heart.

 

Both men came from the same fundamentalist town in Al-Qasim Province, the region north of Riyadh. Alone, this was reason for strong ties, but the younger man’s respect ran to depths of affection that could not be explained by location, tribe, or clan.

 

In their strict desert town, Buraydah, a Wahhabi, fundamentalist stronghold, the elder had been his father’s dearest friend and first cousin. It was to this man that his father, before he died, entrusted his son’s religious education. When his eyes were still bright, when he began to memorize the Qur’an, it was this man who had explained the Prophet’s revelations Surah by Surah, chapter by chapter.

 

Memories were a solace, but the thought of escaped Jinn screaming unintelligible obscenities in the storm outside remained in his mind. He looked at a large, modern desk with piles of American magazines stacked on it. He wanted to begin his work. Formalities kept him with his elder.

 

The elder man asked about his family and health and the two completed a formulaic exchange before settling in their own fashions into morning office routine.

 

“Your magazines came in late last night,” the older man said. “More than usual and, looking at the cover of Cosmopolitan, more difficult. Vogue will come in this afternoon.” He indicated the bundles of magazines on the desk.

 

“It is my work and duty. I will do my best, Insha’Allah. God willing. These are difficult times.” He was anxious to begin. There was no time to lose, he knew. He had seen the moral consequences of enough sandstorms in his life.

 

“You have learned well! Praise be to Allah! You are truly your father’s son.”

 

“It is you who have taught me. I am forever in your debt. Praise Allah!”

The Yemeni servant entered the room, closed hands curled under his chin. He stooped, submissive.

 

Two fingers held up, the elder indicated coffee for himself and the man with soiled eyes, then, turning his hand down, he used the same two fingers to brush the servant out of the room and send him on his chore. The servant shuffled out with a show of urgency. Only remnant dignity informed his frightened step.

 

What is more sorrowful, the elder man thought as his pupil turned to his daily tasks, to know the past or not to know the future?

 

The man with soiled eyes turned to his desk, politely putting his back to further conversation. He took the top magazine off the stack on the left of his desk and placed it before him. It was an issue of Cosmopolitan from the United States. A seductive young woman, bare-shouldered, smiled out at the world. She invited intimacy.

 

He opened the center drawer, removing a boxed set of black, felt marker pens of various point sizes and shapes. He turned on a desk lamp and centered the light on the smiling cover girl and efficiently traced a black line from the neck around her arms and torso, down to just above her feet. Line completed, he carefully selected another pen with a broad, felt point and filled in the outlined area, covering her bare shoulders, clothing her with a traditional black robe that protected men from women’s seductive intentions. He covered her body, covered her hair, and, lastly, veiled her face. Only two eyes remained and they were the eyes of all women of the Occident, unexpressive, unlike Arab women.

 

Still, they posed questions and the questions invited conversation.

 

It is good I do this before such women corrupt our young men.

​

The man with the soiled eyes noticed that he had outlined her shoulders too broadly and that now she appeared to have the body of an Egyptian construction worker. He leafed through each page and tore out objectionable photographs and a reference to Israel. He placed the finished magazine on the right side of his desk and put another copy under the light. The temptress smiled at him again, bare-shouldered, lascivious, defiant.

 

I thought you’d learned your lesson, he said to the arrogant young woman.

 

I will never give up trying.

 

You are such a naughty girl. You can’t go out on the street looking like that!

 

I will! You can’t stop me! No one can!

 

Come here! Let me dress you properly.

 

I won’t have those big shoulder pads you gave me last time I went out! Please! Give me something a little more attractive.

 

I promise to do better. Now, let me put this silk robe over your lovely shoulders.

 

Determined to keep her attractive, he began to dress her again, arranging the black cloth carefully on each shoulder. He could smell the fragrance in her hair.

 

Do you have to cover my hair, too? she whined. Her low voice made him self-conscious. He brushed his beard unconsciously. Sand that had become entangled in it when he crossed the street from the mosque fell on the cover of the magazine.

 

Yes, he replied, and pulled the robe over her hair. Mind yourself this time, he scolded. Be modest! I will be very cross with you if you don’t keep yourself covered. He brushed the sand off the cover and placed the finished magazine on the approved side of his desk. He put another in its place.

 

I won’t let you wrap me up like a mummy!

 

At the doorway, the Yemeni servant, balancing a plastic tray, surveyed a room quiet except for the squeaks of marker pens on paper. Mutaween, religious police, arrived and desks were occupied with men marking out women’s flesh with felt pens. With the exception of two young, intense men, they were middle-aged or old.

 

The two young mutaween worked as though they had less time than their elders to complete their tasks. Their error was not solely in haste. The deeper error of youth, the older men understood, was in the false view that the eradication of vice could ever be complete and the work finished. Speed brought human depravity no closer to an end than patience. Older men knew that vice was eternal, so vigilance eternal. The work of fighting evil was never finished. The younger men would learn that the world’s ills could not be corrected during an eight-hour shift.

 

Each mutawa was preoccupied by his work. Each desk was stacked with magazines from a specific country.

 

The Yemeni servant knew each man he served had a beautiful woman in front of him. When he first started, he was told that these men had a great religious calling. It was their duty, he was told, to protect people from impiety. To the servant it often appeared that mutaween were possessed by the objects of their work and the office of nine desks a brothel.

 

He noticed a mutawa pitch back in his seat.

 

The mutawa who worked on magazines from the United States abruptly sat up.

 

Likewise did We make

For every messenger

An enemy—evil ones

Among men and Jinns,

Inspiring each other with flowery discourses

By way of deception.

 

The man with Cosmopolitan on his desk found the verse from the Qur’an reassuring. He praised Allah for giving it to him when his mind had lost the path.

 

He did not remember what had distracted him. He knew that his mind had been playing with unacceptable thoughts that arose from outside of his soul, thoughts about the naked girl in front of him. She called him again.

 

You must be modest! It is important that you cover your hair and shoulders, he told her.

 

Sometimes you are so mean! Please! Come, now, and dress me in a robe that fits my body. You see, here, where my hips swell?

 

Yes, I see. We must do our best to make it fit those hips comfortably.

 

Allow me, he answered, feeling the girl’s contours. He placed his rough hands lightly on her hips and caressed them. They were smooth, unblemished.

 

Your hands are so rough!

 

I’m sorry. I did not mean to hurt you. He pulled the strands of his beard. Grains of sand fell to the surface of the desk and appeared to his poor eyes to squirm rapidly towards the girl. I need new glasses again. His attention was too fixed on the maiden’s body to entertain for long thoughts of sand or eyesight.

 

I didn’t say you hurt me. She smiled. You are just too rough. Too manly.

 

The Yemeni served coffee. Keeping the cups fresh and always half full for all of the offices along the corridor kept him busy all morning. Silently, he sympathized with the maidens held captive. He saw the tricks the maidens used to implore their tormentors. Some smiled, some pouted. Others were calm, sultry, temperamental, agitated. Some showed gleaming teeth, others licked their upper lips. He observed their wiles as he moved quietly from desk to desk, unnoticed, and remembered a visit to a cousin in the British Protectorate of Aden.

 

His cousin took him to a brothel of women from many nations. Sana’a, his hometown, had no such entertainment. Perhaps, as religious men said, the British were corrupt and debauched. He thought Aden was the greatest city in the world and the women of the brothel pleasant and refined. He was aware of their wiles when he visited the soft comforts of these women again without his cousin, but he didn’t think any less of them for their charming deceptions. He sympathized with them and with the women in the office with nine desks.

 

Some rebelled, some enticed, some smiled, some deceived with smiles.

The servant poured the coffee into small, glass cups from the elongated spout of a brass coffeepot. At the opening of the spout, a splay of horsehair filtered the strong coffee that in appearance looked like tea. The aroma of coffee and cardamom seed, the soul of Arab coffee, created an atmosphere in the room as heavy and ornate as the design of a Bakhtiari carpet. In the morning, mutaween preferred more sugar in their coffee than later in the day.

 

The mutaween worked at their desks without interruption.

 

At mid-morning, a telephone broke into the unknowable inner worlds of the religious censors. It rang a half dozen times before the elder man answered. He appeared to do nothing all day except answer infrequent calls, finger prayer beads held loosely in his left hand, and pray in an incomprehensible hum.

 

Phone conversation complete, the elder man called to the man with soiled eyes whose attention to his work transported him to another place. He was startled and momentarily disoriented when he heard his name.

“That was Captain al-Rashid of the Riyadh Police. He wants you to call him as soon as possible, Brother al-Ali. He was very insistent.”

 

“I will.” The man with soiled eyes adjusted his thick glasses. They magnified his eyes. “Before noon, Insha’Allah.” He answered without turning from his work.

 

“I am surprised that al-Rashid called,” the elder man said. He cut the plastic straps that bound a bundle of French magazines that had just arrived and arranged them in orderly stacks. He placed Paris Match on his own pile. “I will help the French section this afternoon. They are falling behind.”

 

The cut straps slapped the desk.

 

“I thought the two of you had no contact after he reassigned you here last year.”

The censor turned respectfully to his elder. “I was not reassigned. I asked to be transferred to this service.”

 

“Of course.”

 

Before silence disconnected the two, the elder added a thought. “Al-Rashid is not a pious man. He is a peacock, perfumed and devious. He pleats the folds of his headdress with starch and wears a silk rope. His breath is bad. I do not like this man. He and his kind are an offense to Allah and our ways. What is it that the Riyadh Municipal Police do except prevent us from performing our religious duties? They protect foreign infidels and their loose women and they encourage wayward behavior among our own. They are lax in the performance of their religion. Their scandalous reign will end soon, Insha’Allah, and we will return to the pious ways of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab who made this country. But give al-Rashid a call soon. It was clear from his voice that he expected you to call him back quickly. Such an arrogant young man! He can cause much trouble for you if he wants. He has friends in the Royal Family.”

 

“He is part of the group of corrupt officials who consort with foreign infidels in their compounds and at the Intercontinental Hotel,” the man with spoiled eyes replied. “He is not pious.”

 

“A disgrace. I have not been there. I am told men and women freely consort. That the women openly display their hair to entrap the men.”

 

“A few months ago, I waited out a sandstorm at the hotel and saw the worst of them. I wanted to leave. There was too much sand in the air to drive. I had no choice. I had to stay there an entire afternoon, surrounded by rude and corrupt foreigners and impious Arabs. This scandal in the land of the Prophet, peace be upon him! I saw much that disgusted me. It was late before I got home safely, praise Allah, but I know that Allah placed me there to learn.”

 

“Perhaps Allah has a task for you.”

 

“Perhaps. I will call al-Rashid before noon, Insha’Allah. This morning I must first get through these obscene issues of Cosmopolitan, God willing. The storm outside is dangerous, as you taught me. We must prepare for its consequences.”

 

“You have learned well. Praise be Allah’s name!”

 

“I am forever in your debt. Praise be to Allah!”

 

Outside, the sand blasted at the sign over the entrance. A few letters were illegible. The meaning was clear: Institute for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, al-Malaz Central Station.

 

Time passed.

 

Allahu Akbar min kulli shay. God is greater than everything.

 

The call to noon prayer, broadcast by loudspeakers throughout the city, burst through the sand and wind.