Alif the Unseen (4 page)

“Sins,” Alif muttered, batting at a banana leaf. A plume of dust slid off into the air. “You called my mother a Hindu earlier.”

Dina gasped, covering her face with her hands. “I forgot! I was angry—”

“Don’t, don’t do that. You’re an immaculate saint. Don’t torture yourself.”

She put her palm on the ground, close to his knee. “You know my family has never questioned her conversion,” she said. “We love her. She is like my aunt.”

“You have an aunt. I’ve eaten her
qatayyef
.”

Dina clucked her tongue. “You always tie my words in knots.” She sat back on her heels and clasped her arms around her knees, looking less like a woman than an abstract impression of
one, inky and creased. He remembered the day she had announced, at the age of twelve, that she intended to veil her face. Her mother’s tears and her father’s angry retorts carried
easily through the common wall of the duplex. For an upper-class Old Quarter girl like Intisar to veil was one thing; her silken, beaded cocoon was a mark of rank, not religion. But Dina was
imported labor—a shabby Alexandrian, expected to become the bare-faced, underpaid ornament to someone’s office or nursery, perhaps even discreetly available to whomever was paying her
salary. For her to declare herself sanctified, not by money but by God, looked like putting on airs. Even as a pimply fourteen-year-old, Alif had understood why her parents were so upset. A saint
was not profitable.

“What’s this favor?” Dina asked finally.

Alif set the box in front of her. “I need you to take this to a villa in the Old Quarter and give it to a girl who lives there.” A twinge of regret rippled through him even as he
said the words. When Intisar saw what he had sent her, she would think him disgusting. Perhaps that was what he wanted: the last word, a final scene more vulgar and melodramatic than the one she
had orchestrated in the tea shop. He would remind her of what they had been to each other, and punish her for it.

“Old Quarter? Who do you know in the Old Quarter? It’s all aristocracy.”

“Her name is Intisar. Never mind how I know her. Seventeen Malik Farouk Street, across from a little
maidan
with a tile fountain in the center. It’s very important that you
put this in her hands—not a servant’s, not a brother’s. All right?”

Dina picked up the box and examined it. “I’ve never met this Intisar,” she muttered. “She won’t take a strange box from me without an explanation. There might be a
bomb in here.”

Alif’s mouth jerked. She was not far wrong. “Intisar knows who you are,” he said.

Dina scrutinized him from beneath her fringe of dark lashes. “You’ve gotten very odd. I’m not sure I want you talking about me to girls with fussy names from the Old
Quarter.”

“Don’t worry about it. After this errand, we’ll never mention her again.”

Dina stood, shaking dust from her robe, and tucked the box under one arm. “I’ll do it. But if you’re asking me to commit a sin without my knowledge, it will be on your
head.”

Alif smiled bitterly. “My head is already heavy with sins. Such a little one as this will make no difference.”

A line appeared between Dina’s brows. “If that’s true, I will make
du’a
for you,” she said.

“Many thanks.”

Alif watched her walk across the darkened roof and disappear into the stairwell. When the sound of her footsteps was no longer audible, he leaned his forehead against the rim of the banana plant
pot and sobbed.

* * *

The next day, Alif did not leave the house. He took his laptop to the roof and meditated on a blinking cursor in a blank Komodo code editor, vaguely aware of the maid trudging
to and from the clothesline and putting carpets out to air. The cat appeared again, strolling along the concrete balustrade that lined the roof. She paused to observe Alif with something like pity
in her yellow eyes. In the late afternoon, Dina and her mother came up to shell peas. Seeing him—his bare feet propped up, his face bathed in the bluish light of the computer—they
retreated to the opposite corner and whispered to each other.

Alif ignored them, intent on the coming of evening. He watched the sun flush as it sank into the desert. Entering its most sacred hour, the City began to shimmer in a haze of dust and smoke.
Between the irregular rows of duplexes and apartment buildings, Alif could make out a fraction of the Old Quarter wall. Struck by a last volley of sunlight, it was lit to an astonishing hue: not
pink, as it was vulgarly called, but salmon-gold, or a bridal shade of old Jaipuri silk. Provided with such spectacular footlights, the call to sunset prayer rose up from the great mosque of Al
Basheera at the epicenter of the Old Quarter. It was quickly echoed by a hundred lesser muezzins, each more toneless than the last, in mosques spread across the haphazard neighborhoods outside the
Wall. Alif listened only to that first perfect baritone before slipping on his headphones. The great muezzin’s voice was like a reprimand: he had coveted what he should not.

When all the light was gone, Alif went inside. He washed, shaved, and accepted a plate of curried fish from the maid; after he had eaten, he went out into the street. He paused at the corner and
thought of hailing a taxi, then thought better of it—the evening was pleasant; he would walk. A Punjabi neighbor salaamed him half-interestedly from across the street. Named for the cattle
market to which it had once played host, Baqara District was all imported labor from India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and the lesser Arab countries of North Africa.
El ‘abeed
. It
was one of a dozen neighborhoods that belonged to nothing, and reached out between the Old and New Quarters as if begging for alms.

Signs flickering to life in the dusk advertised bakers’ goods and pharmacies in half a dozen languages. Alif passed them by quickly. He turned down an alleyway that smelled of ozone; air
conditioners working hard in the apartments above dripped Freon on his head. At the end of the alley, he tapped on an unassuming door on the ground floor of a residential building. He heard
shuffling. An eye appeared in the peephole.

“Who’s that?” came a voice in the throes of puberty.

“Is Abdullah at home?” asked Alif.

The door opened, revealing a nose and a downy mustache.

“That’s Alif,” said a voice from farther inside. “You can let him in.”

The door opened wider. Alif stepped past the suspicious youth into a large room, packed to the ceiling with boxes of computer parts. A welder’s bench at the center was strewn with their
guts: motherboards, optical drives, tiny translucent microprocessors still in beta. Abdullah straddled the free end of the bench with a laser pen in one hand, working on a circuit board.

“What brings you to Radio Sheikh?” he asked without looking up. “We haven’t seen you in weeks. Thought you might have gotten pinched by the Hand.”

“God prevent it,” Alif said automatically.

“God is greatest. How are you, then?”

“Shit.”

Abdullah looked up, wide eyes in a rabbit-toothed face. “Say ‘forgive me,’ brother. The last time I heard a man answer that question with anything but ‘praise God,’
his dick was melting off. Syphilis. I hope your excuse is just as good.”

Alif sat down on the floor. “I need your advice,” he said.

“I doubt that. But go on.”

“I need to prevent someone from ever finding me online.”

Abdullah snorted. “Oh, come on. You’re better at this than anyone. Block all his usernames, filter his IP address so he can’t get on your Web sites—” Alif was
already shaking his head.

“No. Not an IP address, not a username—not a digital identity. A
person
.”

Abdullah set the board and laser pen down on the bench.

“I’m tempted to say it’s impossible,” he said slowly. “You’re talking about teaching a software program to recognize a single human personality irrespective
of what computer or e-mail address or login he’s using.”

“Yes, that’s what I’m talking about.” Alif’s eyes flickered. “And it’s a she.”

“A she! A she! So that’s why you’re shit.” Abdullah laughed. “Brother Alif with girl trouble! You miserable hermit—I know for a fact you never leave your
house. How was this accomplished?”

Alif felt his face get hot. Abdullah’s face blurred in front of him. “Shut up,” he said, voice shaking, “or I swear to God I’ll knock those buck teeth down your
throat.”

Abdullah looked startled. “All right, all right. It’s serious. I get it,” he murmured. When Alif said nothing, he shifted uncomfortably on the bench. “Rajab!” he
shouted at the youth lurking in the corner. “Be a good
chaiwalla
h and fetch us some tea.”

“Your mother’s a
chaiwallah,
” muttered the youth, slinking out the door. When the latch clicked, Abdullah turned back to Alif.

“Let’s think about this,” he said. “In theory everyone has a unique typing pattern—number of keystrokes per minute, time lapse between each stroke, that kind of
thing. A keystroke logger, properly programmed, might be able to identify that pattern to within an acceptable margin of error.”

Alif sulked for another minute before responding. “Maybe,” he admitted at last. “But you’d need a huge amount of data input before a pattern could be detected.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. It depends on how unique one’s typing pattern really is. This has never been studied.”

“What if you went further,” said Alif, getting up and pacing. “Cross-reference the typing pattern with grammar, syntax, spelling—”

“Ratio of language use. English to Arabic to Urdu, Hindi, Malay, whatever. It would be one hell of an undertaking, Alif. Even for you.”

They settled into a meditative silence. The youth appeared again with glasses of tea steaming on a metal tray. Alif took one and rolled it between his hands, enjoying the heat against his
skin.

“If it worked . . .” he said softly.

“If it worked and word got out, every intelligence agency on God’s earth would come to hump your leg.”

Alif shivered.

“Maybe it’s not worth it, brother,” said Abdullah, unfolding his large feet from beneath the bench and standing up. “It’s just a
bint,
after
all.”

Alif looked at the eddies of dark leaf and undissolved sugar in his tea glass. His eyes clouded. “This is not just any
bint,
” he said. “This is a philosopher-queen, a
sultana . . .”

Abdullah shook his head, disgusted. “I never thought I would see this day. Look at you, you’re practically sniveling.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I do, in fact.” Abdullah raised an eyebrow. “You have something the rest of us imported Rafiqs do not: a noble purpose. Don’t waste it on the whims of your
prick.”

“I don’t want a noble purpose. I want to be happy.”

“And you think a woman will make you happy? Son, look in the mirror. A woman has made you miserable.”

Alif drifted toward a pile of boxes against the wall. “How much do you want for this?” he asked, holding up an external hard drive. “I could use some more storage
space.”

Abdullah sighed. “Take it. God be with you.”

* * *

In his room at home, Alif retrieved a packet of clove cigarettes from a drawer in his desk. He opened the window before lighting one, and leaned against the ledge, sending
luxuriant trails of smoke into the night air. Dew lay on the jasmine in the courtyard below; its scent met the spicy overture of clove and blew back through the window. Alif took a long breath.
Since childhood, he had imagined he could see the sea through this window, shimmering with reflected light beyond the maze of buildings. Now he knew the lights danced not on water, but in smog;
nevertheless, the image soothed him. He looked down as the jasmine bushes shook: the black-and-orange cat was picking her way silently across the court. He called to her. She looked up at him,
blinking saucer eyes, and made a small sound. Alif held out his hand. The cat leaped onto the window ledge in one effortless movement, purring, and caressed his hand with her cheek.

“Good little
at’uta,
” said Alif, using the Egyptian diminutive Dina had bestowed upon her long ago. “Pretty
at’uta
.” He flicked the end of
his cigarette out the window and turned away, dusting his hands on his jeans. The cat settled down on the ledge with her feet tucked under her body. She regarded him through half-closed eyes.

“You can stay there,” Alif said, sitting down at his desk, “but you can’t come in. The maid’s a Shafa’i and cat hair makes her ritually impure.”

The cat blinked agreeably. Alif ran one finger across the wireless mouse pad next to his computer and watched the screen crackle to life. There were messages in his inbox: confirmation for a
wire transfer of 200 dirhams from a client; an introduction to a Syrian activist who was interested in his services. A Russian gray hat with whom Alif played virtual chess had made a move against
his remaining bishop. After blocking the Russian’s advance with one of his pawns, Alif opened a new project file. He deliberated for a few moments.

“Intisar,” he said to the cat. “Rastini. Sar inti.”

The cat opened and closed one eye.

“Tin Sari,” said Alif, typing the words as he spoke. “Yes, that’s it. I was thinking in the wrong language. A veil of tin for a wayward princess.”

It took him most of the night to modify his existing keystroke logger program with a set of genetic algorithms that might—he hoped—be used to identify basic elements of a typing
pattern. He rose only to sneak into the kitchen and brew a
kanaka
of Turkish coffee, adding cardamom pods he crushed against the granite countertop with the back of a spoon. When he
returned to his room, the cat had disappeared from the window ledge.

“They all leave,” he muttered. “Even the feline ones.” He pulled up Intisar’s computer from a drop-down menu. The first time he worked on her machine he’d
enabled remote access, allowing Hollywood, his custom-built hypervisor, to track her usage statistics. She never discovered him. Once in a while he meddled benevolently, clearing the malware her
commercial antivirus software had missed, running his own defrag programs, deleting old temp files—things the ordinary civilian would either forget to do or never learn properly at all.
Whenever there was an increase in Internet policing in one of his client’s countries, it was common for him to go without sleep and speech for days; during such periods Intisar often accused
him of neglect. It hurt him, yet he never told her about these small acts of affection. She did not know that a copy of her incomplete thesis sat behind one of his firewalls, ensuring her words
would survive any event short of the apocalypse. These were the only gestures that made sense to him. So much of what he felt did not translate.