Alif the Unseen (12 page)
Authors: G. Willow Wilson
“Well, there you are. If you’ve never been there, you can’t say you’ve never run into a djinn in the Empty Quarter. You can only say you’ve never not run into a
djinn in the Empty Quarter.”
“Okay, sure, fine, you’re right.”
“Of course,” mused Vikram, oblivious to Alif’s noncommittal demeanor, “there were days when the world was crawling with
walis
and prophets who could stare right
at us, but that was a long time ago. Now it’s different. Now you are more interested in the veil between man and photon than the one between man and djinn.”
“Good,” muttered Alif, becoming uncomfortable.
“So you say, but you may think differently when you discover all roads of inquiry end in the same place.”
“I’m not interested in your back-alley pseudo-
hikma
. I need straight answers.”
Vikram yipped—Alif assumed it was meant as a laugh—and walked out through the tent flap.
“That’s right, it has a backbone of sorts,” he heard Vikram say as he wandered into the dark. “A small one.”
Alif listened to his footsteps recede along the alley.
“Well?” came Vikram’s voice faintly on the breeze. “Are you coming or not?”
* * *
Alif had to jog to catch up with Vikram, who had covered more distance than he would have thought possible for a man strolling at such a pace.
“I don’t want to leave Dina alone,” he said when he reached Vikram’s elbow.
“The girl is perfectly safe. Azalel will keep an eye on her—she’s lurking around here somewhere. She prefers to walk with the beasts, you know, at night.”
Alif felt a burning desire to change the subject.
“About your parallel knowledge. What did you mean by that?”
“I mean that my race is older than yours—we think about the world differently, and we inhabit it at an angle. We remember the Foretime, when it was just us and the angels, and your
tribe had not yet been created from earth and blood. So we tell stories differently. Oh, they might look the same on the outside, but they have meanings that are hidden from you, just as we
ourselves are hidden.”
Alif could already feel his interest flagging. It was like listening to the babbling of a madman in the marketplace; one feigned attention, then moved away as quickly as possible.
“What does all this have to do with the
Alf Yeom
?” he asked.
Vikram sighed.
“Your kind was never meant to read the
Alf Yeom,
” he said. “You have your own stories and your own knowledge. You are seen, and we are hidden. That was the way of
things ordained by God before He started the clock on this strange universe. But you
banu adam
are always messing with delicate things and transgressing boundaries. At some point, hundreds
of years ago, an unscrupulous member of my tribe allowed one of yours to transcribe the
Alf Yeom
—either under duress, or for a handsome favor, depending on which version you believe.
Ever since then there have been copies floating around the seeing world. Many were lost over time, thought to be only, as you said, a bunch of old stories. But a few remain. That book you have is
one of them.”
Alif thought for a moment. A night bird trilled morosely from a nearby hibiscus bush. They had wandered into the oldest part of the souk, silent now except for the occasional domestic sound of
an animal in its berth.
“So the stories aren’t just stories, is what you’re saying. They’re really secret knowledge disguised as stories.”
“One could say that of all stories, younger brother.”
“How do you know so much about this book, anyway?” asked Alif. He was nagged by the suspicion that Vikram was toying with him. “How do you know what these people were
thinking?”
Vikram’s teeth flashed in the dark. “I paid attention.”
By silent consent they began circling back toward the tent. Alif’s mind wandered to Princess Farukhuaz in a Kashmir he had never seen, full of palanquin-bearing elephants and men wearing
brocade kurtas like the ones in Mughal miniatures. He tried to imagine a time when his parents’ marriage might have been seen as something perfectly natural, removing the dark hint of
idolatry with which he had been born.
“You don’t believe me,” observed Vikram.
Alif flushed. “In what sense?”
“You think I am an ordinary man who has gone a little mad. Well, that’s what I get for spending so much time hanging around the periphery of the seeing world. There is danger in
being seen as too real.”
“I don’t think you’re ordinary,” said Alif with a nervous laugh. He did not know how to proceed. His limbs felt heavy, and the atmosphere was suffused with a sense of
dislocation; his room and his bed and his computer seemed to be part of a distant world.
Picked out by lamplight, Azalel’s shadow passed across a wall of the tent as Alif and Vikram approached. Alif froze, possessed by an emphatic urge to avoid her, especially while her
brother was present. Vikram brushed past him. He spoke a few words to Azalel in their own language, and she answered in kind, saying something that made Vikram chuckle. With relief, Alif watched
Azalel’s shadow slide off the far end of the tent and disappear. He ducked inside. Vikram was cross-legged on the floor, combing his long hair with his fingers.
“Skittish as a young monk!” he said as Alif approached.
“Where’s my backpack?” asked Alif, ignoring him.
Vikram produced it from inside his shepherd vest, where it could not possibly have fit, and let it drop on the floor. Alif knelt to unzip the bag: his netbook, wallet, and smartphone were intact,
but the two pairs of socks Dina had packed for him were unfolded, and the bag of dates had been liberally foraged over. Alif made a face.
Pulling out the netbook, he logged on and spent twenty minutes breaking into the nearest encrypted WiFi network, the digital province of some New Quarter entrepreneur. The other gray hats who
shared his cloud were online and in a panic: where had he been for the past two days? They had each been infected with a keystroke-logging program none of them had ever seen before—did he
know what it meant?
Alif felt sweat spring up on his forehead.
“Goddamn it,” he muttered.
“Hmm?” Vikram looked over at him, one eyebrow arched.
“He’s found Tin Sari,” Alif said. An ache had begun in his temples. “He got it off of Intisar’s machine, of course, like Abdullah knew he would. He’s trying
to figure out what it is and how to use it. He’s making a hash of it for now, but that will change.”
Vikram snatched the netbook out of Alif’s hands.
“Plastic and electricity,” he said with a look of disgust. “This is how you people think you will ascend to the heavens. But if you climb too high, younger brother, the angels
will ask you where you’re going.”
“Give me that.” Alif struggled to take the netbook back from Vikram, who grinned and held on with two fingers.
“How weak your little fleshy hands are. Have you ever done anything with them but type and fondle yourself?”
“Go to hell.” With a jerk, Alif succeeded in wrestling the netbook from Vikram’s grip. He turned his back, hunching over the keyboard.
“What are you doing now?”
“Opening Intisar’s thesis. I put a copy online, in the cloud. Maybe I can figure out why she wanted me to have this book, and what she expects me to do with it.”
Alif pulled up the document on his home screen: it was fifty pages, written in Arabic, and titled
Variations of Religious Discourse in Early Islamic Fiction
. He ran a search for
Alf+Yeom and found no mention of it until the last ten pages. Frowning, he began to read.
The suggestion that the
Alf Yeom
is the work of djinn is surely a curious one. The Quran speaks of the hidden people in the most candid way, yet more and more the educated faithful
will not admit to believing in them, however readily they might accept even the harshest and most obscure points of Islamic law. That God has ordained that a thief must pay for his crime with his
hand, that a woman must inherit half of what a man inherits—these things are treated not only as facts, but as obvious facts, whereas the existence of conscious beings we cannot
see—and all the fantastic and wondrous things that their existence suggests and makes possible—produces profound discomfort among precisely that cohort of Muslims most lauded for their
role in that religious “renaissance” presently expected by western observers: young degree-holding traditionalists. Yet how hollow rings a tradition in which the law, which is subject
to interpretation, is held as sacrosanct, yet the word of God is not to be trusted when it comes to His description of what He has created. I do not know what I believe.
* * *
Through his growing confusion, Alif felt pained: why had she never spoken of this to him? Why had she not revealed her spiritual crisis? Clearly the
Alf Yeom
had moved
her in some deep and troubling way, yet she had been mute. If there were clues, Alif had failed to pick up on them.
The last few pages of the thesis were a degeneration: stray thoughts and bullet-pointed arguments Intisar had not yet organized into prose. They seemed to have less and less to do with the work
itself and more with her own fragmented thoughts, and ended in a series of pseudo-mathematical logic exercises, one of which, written in English, Alif recognized.
GOD=God Over Djinn. GOD=God Over Djinn Over Djinn.
GOD=God Over Djinn Over Djinn Over Djinn.
“Hofstadter,” Alif muttered.
“What now?” In the dappled lamplight of the tent, Vikram seemed to have congealed into shadow; Alif had forgotten he was there.
“Douglas Hofstadter,” he repeated. “Intisar has one of his recursive algorithms in her thesis. God equals God over djinn. It’s a mathematical model in which God sits on
an infinite pillar of djinn who hand our questions up and up, and the answers down and down. The joke—or maybe it’s serious—is that GOD can never be fully expanded.” Alif
scratched at a patch of dandruff on his scalp, frowning. “I think I may have lent her that book.”
Vikram said nothing. Alif looked up at him and found he had trouble focusing. When he tried to make out Vikram’s features his thoughts shimmered, anesthetized as though he was half-awake
and remembering a dream. For one disorienting moment he was convinced he had been talking to himself.
“Could you not do that?” he said, closing his eyes. “Whatever it is that you’re doing. It’s really weird.”
“It’s not me, it’s you,” came Vikram’s voice. “You’re tired. Your mind is getting sick of dealing with things it’s taught itself not to
see.”
Alif did feel tired. He closed the netbook and lay down on his side with one hand over his eyes. The last thing he heard was an exasperated sigh. A blanket unfolded itself over his body. With a
feeling of profound relief, Alif wriggled into a more comfortable position beneath it and fell immediately asleep.
* * *
There was the scent of fresh water. A sparkling blue smell, absent any tang of dust, accompanied by a splash and a gasp. Alif opened his eyes. Beneath the hem of the tent he saw
two pairs of feet: one a pharaonic red-brown, the other honey-colored, topped by stacks of silver anklets. Rivulets of water ran under them through the dirt. He heard scrubbing sounds, another
splash, a woman laughing.
“It’s cold!”
Dina’s voice. Alif sat up and tilted his head from side to side; his neck was stiff from sleeping on the ground. Azalel was crooning in a low, affectionate warble, like a well-fed house
cat, her inarticulate noises arranging themselves in his mind as sentences in a half-remembered language. She was calling Dina her precious child, her brown-limbed little girl who had grown up so
well, whom she had loved since she first saw her playing among the jasmine bushes in her garden. Alif didn’t know how he comprehended Azalel’s meaning until, feeling freshly ill, he
remembered that he had understood her when she spoke to him in his dream.
The maternal caress of her voice aroused him. Racked with conflicting spasms of shame and desire, Alif turned away. He was hungry. He fumbled in his backpack for a clean pair of socks and what
was left of the dates. After eating as many of the sticky fruits as he could stand, he pulled out the
Alf Yeom
and opened it to read, knowing it would be unwise to leave the tent until the
women were finished bathing. He found the spot where he had left off under one of Intisar’s yellow sticky notes.
Princess Farukhuaz settled down in her bower, supplied with sweets and delicacies and rose water with which to bathe her face in the heat of the day, and prepared to
listen to what her nurse had to say. She knew full well that her father, a kindly but unsubtle man, had sent the nurse to ply her with stories that would frame her mind toward marriage. But
the dream of the hind and the stag and all it portended was still fresh behind her waking eyes, and she hardened her heart against any persuasion the nurse might offer.
“I’m ready, let’s get on with it,” she said with a yawn when her nurse arrived.
“Ready for what?” the nurse asked innocently.
“ Your stories. You’re here to convince me to marry some prince of whom my father approves. It won’t work. I have been given a vision of the true nature of men, and I
shall never subject myself to marriage.”
“That’s as you like,” said the nurse. “My stories are stories, not whips to turn you this way or that.”
“If you say so,” said Farukhuaz.
“I do,” said the nurse. “Shall we begin?”
Haroon and the Wise Judge of Abouzilzila
Once upon a time in the land the Arabs call Al Gharb, there was a town called Abouzilzila. It was so named because of its frequent earthquakes, brought about by the great
traffic of djinn through that area. Abouzilzila was a rocky, mountainous place with many caves. In one of these caves lived a highly respected
hakim
or judge from among the djinn,
whose counsel was so sought after that he was often consulted by humans as well as by his own kind.
Abouzilzila was also home to an unfortunate farmer named Haroon. Haroon, never a very clever man, was the frequent butt of pranks by both his djinn and his human neighbors. The humans
would leave his laundry in knots and hide his shoes; the djinn would cause his animals to go mad and copulate with mates from inappropriate species. One day, they went too far: Haroon woke to
find his new crop of turnips entirely vanished. Since this was a great part of his livelihood, Haroon was fuming with anger and decided to take decisive action. Packing up his elderly mule
with supplies for a day’s journey, he rode into the mountains and up to the cave in which the wise judge lived. At the threshold, he dismounted, took off his hat, and called out in his
most respectful voice:
“Oh, wise judge! I have come from the village below with a terrible case to lay before you and humbly ask your judgment.”
“I hear and sympathize,” came a voice from inside the cave. “Do go on.”
Haroon explained the escalating pranks of which he had been a victim, culminating in the theft of his turnip crop.
“This is indeed a grave matter,” said the voice from inside the cave. Haroon thought he glimpsed a pair of yellow eyes floating in the darkness. “One to which I will
gladly lend my trifling expertise. Send word to your neighbors and tell them to present themselves tomorrow night at my cave. If they refuse, the wise judge will come and fetch them himself,
which will not be pleasant.”
Haroon thanked the wise judge profusely and hurried home, rapping at each of his neighbors’ doors, in turn, to deliver the judge’s message. He did not bother to conceal a note
of smug triumph in his voice, nor the look of gloating when he saw the dismay on his neighbors’ faces.
With the threat of the wise judge in their minds, Haroon’s neighbors, both human and djinn, presented themselves at the entrance to the cave the next evening with the greatest
alacrity. Haroon came as well, eager to see for himself what the judge had planned.
As darkness fell, a great creature lumbered out of the cave, one part shadow, one part beast, one part man.
“Here is what you will do,” it said. “All of you will spend the night in my cave. At the center of the cave, I have placed a copper vessel housing a terrible night-seeing
demon. It can read the thoughts of men and djinn, and will place a mark on the back of the thief. In the morning, we will know without doubt who has stolen Haroon’s turnip crop. Haroon
and I will spend the night right here at the entrance to make certain no one is tempted to wander off.”
The neighbors did as they were told, though each of them quaked with fear as they entered the cave, alarmed by the thought of the demon residing in the large copper kettle they found
inside. Haroon bedded down next to his mule, casting furtive glances every now and then at the wise judge, who stood very still and upright all evening, and did not appear to sleep.
In the morning, the judge herded Haroon’s neighbors out of the cave. One man, the butcher who lived down the road, lagged behind with an anxious expression. When he finally left the
cave, he threw himself at the wise judge’s feet—or what passed for feet—and burst into tears. A large black stain was visible on his back.
“Forgive me, wise judge, and forgive me, brother Haroon,” he wept. “I have indeed stolen the turnips. It was only a joke. I intended to give them back. That is, I sold
them at the market to pay off my gambling debts, but I will repay you.”
“Well, Haroon?” said the wise judge. “What would you ask of this man in recompense?”
“The money he received from the sale of the turnips will do,” said Haroon, immediately cursing his sense of charity and wishing he had asked for more.
“Very well. Sir, you will surrender your ill-gained profit, and thank the Maker I have not decided to take one of your hands as well, as the law decrees.”
The man stuttered an incoherent and relieved thanks, vowing never to molest Haroon again. He returned to the village with Haroon’s other neighbors, all of whom were much shaken by
the night’s events.
“So a mind-reading demon was the secret to your wisdom all along,” said Haroon to the wise judge when they had gone. “How fortunate that you possess this magical copper
kettle.”
“There’s no magic to it whatsoever,” said the wise judge, with something curiously like a snort. “It’s an ordinary kettle. I smeared the walls of the cave
with soot. The innocent men slept soundly but the guilty man sat all night with his back pressed against the wall so the demon couldn’t mark him.”
“Astonishing,” said Haroon.
“Whether djinn or man, a wise person need never call on anything more arcane than his wits,” said the judge. “Remember that, Haroon, and keep a better eye on your
crops.”
Haroon returned to his village, satisfied, and from that day on extolled the virtues of the wise judge of Abouzilzila to anyone who would listen, taking care never to reveal the secret of
his methods.
“And that,” said the nurse, “is why you can never trust your neighbors, and must always read verses against the evil eye when you encounter copper
pots.”
Princess Farukhuaz raised a delicate eyebrow.
“Surely you’ve got it wrong, nurse. The moral of the story is that the guilty will always reveal themselves, and that wit is superior to superstition. Clearly by this you
mean to convince me not to listen to my dream, and instead take the path of common sense.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said the nurse. “But a story is a story, and one may glean from it what one likes. Good sense need not enter into it.”