Alif the Unseen (38 page)

The
marid,
prompted by something unfathomable, rose and drifted toward the door, where Sakina was leaning silently with her arms crossed.

“He looks awful but he’s actually the most fussy nursemaid you’ll ever meet,” whispered Dina. “Vikram made him promise to look after her until the baby is born, and
you wouldn’t believe how seriously he takes his responsibilities. Once she was craving this particular kind of American apple—”

“Braeburns,” said the convert.

“—and he was gone for a whole day, and when he came back it was with two sacks of apples so large they had to be brought in by camel. I’m not joking.”

Alif looked sideways at the titanic apparition in the doorway.

“I bet,” he muttered.

“Well, I’m glad to see that you’re in good health, regardless of the—unusual circumstances,” said Sheikh Bilal, patting the convert’s hand. “I
wouldn’t want to spend a season among the djinn, but I’d prefer it to what Alif and I have endured. If man’s capacity for the fantastic took up as much of his imagination as his
capacity for cruelty, the worlds, seen and unseen, might be very different. Which is why I would rather not speak of my own past three months in any more detail.”

Alif felt a pang in his throat. Dina regarded the old man in wordless sympathy, brows rippling above the hem of her veil.

“And you?” Alif looked at her, attempting to project tenderness through every pore. “Have you been all right? Are you angry with me, like everybody else?”

Dina shook her head.

“I was too afraid you were dead to be angry with you,” she said. “When you came through the door just now I swear I thought you were a ghost. You’re so thin and so pale
and you look so much older, I—” Her voice broke.

Alif laid his head on her knee again. She permitted him.

“Am I ugly?” he asked.

“No, no. But you’re frightening.”

“I thought about you every day. I mean, I couldn’t tell the days apart, but I thought of you anyway. I sang those songs you used to sing on the roof—”

“You could hear me? God forgive me.”

“Please don’t say that.” Alif stroked the silky material of her robe where it had pooled around her feet. “It was beautiful. At the time it meant nothing to me, your
singing. It was just background noise. I was an idiot then.”

“You were a boy.”

“I was selfish.”

“It doesn’t matter now. You’re alive and we have to make you well again or I’ll die of grief.”

“For God’s sake,” yowled NewQuarter, “I’m choking on all this sugar. Please, no more love stories today. No one else is to become pregnant or contract some kind of
ill-fated marriage. I forbid it. Honestly, look at me, I’m turning green. You’ll make me throw up.”

Alif sat up, face hot with embarrassment.

“No one said you had to listen,” he muttered.

“How can I not listen when you’re
touching
each other? It’s rather alarming.”

“All right,” said Dina, standing and shaking out her robe. “Two of you need to bathe and shave. The third can make himself useful, if he even knows how.”

“I won’t carry water like a menial,” said NewQuarter indignantly.

“The young man is a member of the royal family,” Sheikh Bilal explained to Dina.

“That’s very nice for him. The djinn are not likely to care.”

Alif looked up at her in admiration. He would not have suspected that Dina could be so unflinching. When he remembered her deft management of his smuggler friends in the souk, and the rapidity
with which she had accepted what exactly Vikram and his sister were, he wondered why he should have had this impression of timidity; certainly she had never been timid. He had, perhaps, mistaken
her modest silences for something they were not.

Within half an hour, during which Alif stood about feeling useless, tubs of hot water were arranged in the courtyard. He and Sheikh Bilal were sent out with towels and jars of soap as the sun,
heady without being bright, floated above the swaying palms and brought out the scent of sap. Alif relaxed in his bath with a cloth over his face, murmuring responses to the sheikh’s fervent
praise of such luxuries as hot running water. The soap smelled of sandalwood and rose oil, emphasizing to Alif how profoundly he stank. When the water began to cool he emerged from the cloth and
scrubbed every inch of skin he could reach, picking filth from under his slippery fingernails. The bath was murky with dirt when he stood and wrapped himself in a towel. Fresh clothes had appeared
while he bathed: a loose linen tunic and pants folded neatly on the warm stone behind the tub. He dressed, looking up when Dina slipped through the doorway at the other end of the courtyard with a
hand mirror, scissors, and a razor.

“Where did you get this stuff?” Alif asked her. “I can’t picture the
marid
needing to shave.”

“God only knows,” she sighed. “Sometimes in this place you can find what you’re looking for simply by opening a drawer. I try not to ask where it all comes from. Here,
sit on the edge of the tub and hold this. I’ll cut your hair.”

Alif took the mirror from her and held it up. For a moment he was startled by his own reflection: the man in the glass did look older. His black hair had thinned and lost its luster; his eyes
appeared slightly sunken. But the chin and jaw Alif had always thought too soft had become prominent, decisive even, and were covered with a beard of a few days’ growth; the brows were
thicker, with an arch of concentration that reminded Alif of his father. He touched his bloodless cheek.

“You’re right, I look like a refugee,” he said. “A middle-aged refugee.”

“You look much better now that you’re clean,” Dina replied. “Though I’m sorry to say I think you may have had lice at some point—there are bitten-up patches
on your scalp.”

“Don’t touch me then, I’m hideous.”

“No you aren’t. This won’t take long.” She pulled a length of hair between her fingers and snipped along the edge. He thought he heard her catch her breath in a funny
way, twice, and realized she was crying silently. He tried to turn and look at her but she kept a firm grip on the crown of his head.

“Dina,” he said. “Love, please—”

“Don’t, don’t say
love
. Not yet.”

Alif opened and closed his hands, still wrinkled from the bath. It took all of his energy not to touch her.

“When can I see your face again?” he asked instead.

“When you and your father have come to see my father.”

“Your father would throw me out in the street after everything I’ve put you through.”

“He can do as he likes, but I won’t marry anyone else, so in the end he has no choice.”

It was half startling and half charming to hear her speak so frankly. Alif tried to turn again, but she pushed his head down with more force than was necessary and began trimming the hair along
his neckline. He studied her feet as she shifted around his chair: they were unshod and coated in a layer of the fine iridescent dust of the Empty Quarter, making her seem a djinn herself. Tendons
moved beneath her skin as she went on tiptoe to inspect her work. The sight made Alif ache. He let his hand drop and ran one finger along the arch of her foot, and heard her gasp; the foot danced
away. She did not admonish him. Alif wondered how much she knew about men and women and felt an uneasy sense of responsibility, wishing Vikram was there to offer more of his crass but useful
advice.

“When did I come to deserve such loyalty?” he asked, suddenly melancholy.

“You never did,” she said, “but it was yours anyway.”

“Why? I’ve been an ass to you for years.”

She snipped at another segment of his hair with an exasperated laugh.

“Because even when I was annoyed with the boy you were, I liked the man I knew you would become. More than I liked any of the other men my parents were suggesting.”

He was touched by the simple clarity of her answer, and wished he had a sentiment as durable to lay at her feet.

“For a while it was the only thing keeping me alive,” he said. “The idea that your irritating principles wouldn’t let you accept anybody else, and that if I didn’t
find a way to get back to you, you’d convince yourself you had to spend your whole life as a widow without ever having been married at all.”

“Calling my principles irritating isn’t a good idea when I’m holding a pair of scissors.”

He laughed.

“You do—I mean—it isn’t only that you feel obligated to me, is it? You do want—I know I’m not pretty, but—” There was real timidity in her voice
now. This time he did turn, ducking her hands, and held her eyes with his.

“You told me not to say
love,
” he said, “otherwise I would kill any anxiety about prettiness or wanting right now.”

She looked down at him, wide-eyed, the scissors suspended in her right hand.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Okay I can say it?”

“Okay, I believe you.”

He kissed her hand before she could pull away. She clucked her tongue, withdrawing, and steadied his head again, returning to her task. Alif watched her progress in the mirror, seeing shaggy
tufts of hair fall away from over his ears and forehead until he began to look presentable. When she was done she brushed the trimmings from his shoulders and neck with a cloth.

“There,” she said. “You could go out in public without disgracing yourself now. I’ll leave you to shave.”

“I may keep the beard,” said Alif, rubbing his chin. “I feel like I’ve earned it.”

“It looks distinguished. Or it would if you trimmed it properly.”

He examined his neck and cheeks as she walked back across the courtyard toward the inner rooms of the house.

“We should decide our next move pretty soon if we want to get out of here,” he called after her. “I’ve got to figure out what happened to the
Alf Yeom,
otherwise
we’ll go home to the same mess we left behind.”

She looked back at him in surprise.

“There’s nothing to figure out,” she said. “I have it here. I’ve had it this entire time.”

Back inside, Dina displayed her hidden wealth: she had taken not only the
Alf Yeom
but Alif’s backpack, which contained his netbook and the flash drive onto
which he’d downloaded Tin Sari.

“I went into Sheikh Bilal’s office when I smelled burning plastic,” she said. “You were in some kind of weird fit or trance. I wanted to clear out anything that might
burn if the desk caught fire. Then I ran out and called for Vikram and the sheikh.”

“I didn’t even see you leave with this stuff,” marveled Alif, holding up the flash drive. Apparently the blessing of the toothless dervish had stuck.

“I had it under my robe when Vikram took us away. You didn’t seem like you were in a state to stay on top of things.”

“I wasn’t.” Alif studied the green-flamed eyes above her veil with unfeigned adoration. “You’re amazing. You’re wonderful. I’m pathetic without
you.”

“You’re pathetic with her,” muttered NewQuarter, coming into the room from an interior chamber. “There is no hope for you whatsoever.” He crouched next to Alif on
the floor. “So, what do we do now?”

“Burn it,” said Alif promptly. “We’ll be rid of the whole mess. The Hand can do what he likes—the book will be out of his reach forever.”

“No,” said Dina. “ We don’t burn books.”

“Who’s
we
?”

“People with an ounce of brain.”

“But you hate more books than almost anybody I know,” said Alif, surprised. “How many times have you picked on me for reading my
kafir
fantasy novels?”

“When have I ever suggested you burn them? I am allowed to have opinions, aren’t I? And I don’t hate them—I don’t give a fig about them. The only reason I cared is
because you were so comfortable belittling me for believing things you only read about. I was afraid you’d turn into one of those literary types who say
books can change the world
when they’re feeling good about themselves and
it’s only a book
when anybody challenges them. It wasn’t about the books themselves—it was about hypocrisy. You can
speak casually about burning the
Alf Yeom
for the same reason you’d be horrified if I suggested burning
The Satanic Verses
—because you have reactions, not
convictions.”

Alif twitched as if slapped. He could tell this was an argument she had made many times in her head, before an absent shade of himself. He had simply given her an opportunity to voice it aloud.
His blood ran hot and cold, unable to reconcile such a pointed critique with the depth of her loyalty to him.

NewQuarter had apparently elected to pretend he had not heard, and fiddled with the hem of his robe, brushing away some invisible pollutant.

“This damn dust,” he said to no one.

“Why risk so much for me if you think I’m such a brainless hypocrite?” Alif asked.

Dina softened. Perhaps saying so to his face had not played out the way she had seen it in her mind.

“Because you’re not. I shouldn’t have said it that way. But there are some things that you haven’t thought all the way through, and this is one of them.”

Restless with conflicting instincts, he looked down at the manuscript sitting on the smooth stone floor between them. The convert slipped into the room, light-footed despite her condition, and
knelt beside Dina with a silent, appraising glance.

“We could leave it here,” said Dina. “The
marid
could keep it hidden. I’m sure he would if we asked.”

“And if the Hand comes for it? Sakina seems to think he’s got powerful friends. Whatever wounded Vikram back at the mosque did not come from our side of the visible light
spectrum.”

As if she had heard her name, Sakina appeared in the doorway leading in from the courtyard. Her leonine face was tense.

“What, what?” Alif did not bother to conceal either his frustration or his alarm.

“More trouble,” she said. “The Immovable Alley has been sacked.”

“Sacked?”

“Invaded. Raided. Shops overturned, mine included, merchandise looted and burned—all by the man you’re running from and his recruits. They’re looking for you, Alif, and
for the
Alf Yeom,
and I’m afraid they’re getting very close.”