Alif the Unseen (9 page)

Alif looked back at the ceiling. “It might as well be my name,” he said.

“But it isn’t. It’s a letter of the alphabet.”

“It’s the first letter of Sura Al Baqara in the Quran. You of all people should approve.”

He heard Dina shift on her mattress. With the angle of the light from the window, he realized that she could probably see him through the curtain, though he could not see her.

“I don’t approve,” she said. “Your real name is better.”

“
Alif, lam, mim
.” He drew the letters in the air with his finger. “One-digit symbol substitutions: God, Gabriel, the Prophet. I named myself after the first line of
code ever written. It’s a good name for a programmer.”

“Why does a programmer need a second name?”

“Tradition. And it’s called a handle, anyway, not a name. It’s safer to be anonymous. If you use your real name you’re liable to get into trouble.”

“You use a fake name and you still got into trouble.”

Alif bit back an insult, keeping his teeth shut until he could trust them. “Whatever. Good night, Dina.”

He had begun to lose the distinction between his thoughts and his dreams when she spoke again.

“I’m not what you think I am. I’m not trying to be stuck-up and annoying. I’m not what you think.”

“I know,” he muttered, unsure of what he meant.

* * *

When he woke up the next morning he had forgotten where he was. Bolting upright, he stared wildly at his surroundings, blinking until his eyes adjusted to the unsaturated light that filtered in
through the window. Dina moved along his peripheral vision like a dark bird, humming an Egyptian pop song. The sheet that had protected her while she slept was folded neatly on her mattress. Alif
caught the sharp, astringent scent of tea: a tin pot was steaming atop a camp stove on the window ledge, next to a plate of fried eggs and roti.

“Abdullah left some breakfast,” said Dina. “We didn’t want to wake you. It’s nearly ten.”

“Where’d he go?” asked Alif, rubbing his eyes.

“He said he had to make some phone calls. We’re supposed to lock up when we leave.”

They ate without speaking. Alif stared pensively out the window, trying to map his next steps. The day, and the days that would certainly follow it, were unfathomable: too much had been asked of
him. He looked at his backpack, wishing he had had more time to consider what he might need.

“Why didn’t you want Abdullah to know about the book?” he asked Dina, reminded of the inconvenient article by a rectangular bulge in his bag.

Dina shrugged. “Why does he need to know?” she asked. “The less he knows, the less he has to lie about when they come for him. Your friend obviously wanted to keep the book a
secret. There must be a reason for that.”

“When they come for him,” Alif repeated. “God, I feel sick.”

Dina began to tidy the room, clearing away their breakfast things and straightening the boxes they had moved to make room for their bedding. Alif watched her with pursed lips.

“You sing,” he said abruptly. “You listen to music.”

“So?”

“I thought women who believe the veil is mandatory also believe that music is forbidden.”

“Some do. I don’t.”

“Why? You all read the same books. Ibn Taymiyya, right? Ibn Abdul Wahhab?”

“Birds make music, river reeds in wind make music. Babies make music. God would not forbid something that is the sharia of innocent creatures.”

Alif chuckled. “Okay.”

Dina whisked his empty tea glass out of his hands and clucked her tongue. “You’re always laughing at me,” she said.

“That’s not true! I laugh when you surprise me.”

“How is that better?”

“All right, I laugh when you impress me.”

Dina said nothing, but he could tell by the way she refilled his glass that she was pleased. He drank the tea down quickly and helped her finish tidying the room. When they were done Alif
shouldered his backpack and opened the door cautiously: no one outside, no one on the rooftop across the way, no one loitering at the corner in an obvious manner. An elderly man in a donkey cart
piled with jackfruit rolled past the alley along the street beyond. Otherwise, they were alone.

“Let’s go.” Alif ushered Dina out in front of him and locked the door from the inside before closing it. They set off down the alley at a nervous pace, wandering too far apart
and then too close together. There was an acrid smell in the air—the scent of factory fumes and the overheated sea; cement dust from construction in the New Quarter. Alif headed in the
direction of the harbor, following streets that sloped downward to meet the water.

“You’re heading toward the souk,” Dina observed at one point.

“Yes—I thought that was the plan.”

“Plan? We’re not seriously going to look for Vikram the Vampire, are we? Even your Bedouin idea was better than that.”

Alif kicked a dried clot of dung that lay in his path. “I don’t know what else to do, Dina. I really don’t know what else to do.”

“This isn’t a movie, for God’s sake. You can’t just walk up to a back-alley thug and ask him for a favor. And Abdullah’s never even met this man—he could have
been making that whole story up!”

“What do you
want
?” Alif turned on Dina with a snarl. “We are down to a small selection of shitty options. Don’t harass me.” He spun around and continued
walking. A minute later he heard sniffling: Dina was trailing behind with one hand over her veiled mouth, head down.

“Oh, God.” Alif ducked into a side street, leading Dina by the hand. “Please don’t cry. I didn’t mean for you to cry.”

“Don’t touch me.” Dina shook her hand free. “You think this isn’t awful for me, too? I could have just—” She stuttered to a halt, breath catching in
little gulps.

“What?” Alif asked.

“The detective,” she answered. “He said nothing would happen to me or my family if we turned you in. You were standing right there. If I had—I
didn’t—”

Impulsively, Alif took her hand again and turned it upward, pressing a kiss into her palm. They stared at each other. Dina pulled away, rubbing the tears from her eyes.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Okay. Let’s go find Vikram.”

* * *

Souk al Medina was close to the wharf, giving vendors easy access to the fishing boats that came in at dawn and sunset. It was as ancient as the Old Quarter, active since the
days when the City was only a punctuation mark on the Silk Road, a resting place for merchants and pilgrims on their way to Mecca. Alif had known it since childhood. He remembered clutching the end
of his mother’s shawl as she bought live chickens and fish heads for stock, or raw spices measured by the gram.

With Dina he wandered down alleys that had never been paved. The footing was half mud and reeked of yeasty animal functions. Every so often the alleys were interrupted by limestone arches, the
remnants of a covered market hall long since quarried for newer buildings. The place was impervious to its own history. Women and maids were out resupplying their households in the morning light, a
throng of black veils and multicolored
salwar kameez
so indistinguishable from one another that Alif kept glancing over his shoulder to reidentify Dina.

“I think we should look around the wharf side,” he said at one point, trying to sound confident. “I know a couple of smartphone importers down there who might be able to help
us.”

“Importers?”

“Smugglers.”

“Oh.”

Alif pushed his way toward the wharf, past fishmongers extolling the freshness of their wares in rhyme. Over the sea of covered heads he saw a tiny storefront with a sign advertising mobile
phone sales and repairs, and moved toward it. With relief, he spotted a familiar figure—Raj, the enterprising Bengali who had unlocked Alif’s own smartphone—leaning in the
doorway.

“Raj
bhai
!” Alif tilted his chin up in what he hoped was a jaunty manner. “It’s been a long time.”

Raj looked up at him with disinterest, then glanced suspiciously at Dina. “Hello,” he said in English. He toyed with a SIM card in one hand.

“Listen,” said Alif, clearing his throat, “I have a strange question. This might sound strange, I mean. I’m wondering if you know—”

“A man named Nargis,” said Dina, cutting him off. Raj’s eyes flickered over her cloaked form. Alif shifted uneasily from foot to foot, and elected to say nothing.

“You looking for a hacktop?” Raj asked.

“No,” said Dina. “We just want to talk to him.”

“No one comes here to talk,” said Raj.

Dina sighed with an air of impatience. “We don’t have a lot of time,” she said. “Do you know this guy or not?”

Raj looked faintly impressed. “I know him. He’s usually around in the afternoons. Let me give him a call.” He eased himself upright and went into the shop.

“What are you doing?” Alif hissed at Dina. “What’s all this about Nargis?”

“Assuming Abdullah was telling the truth, we should talk to the source of the story,” she said. “If we go bumbling around the souk asking for Vikram the Vampire we’ll
look like a pair of idiots.”

Alif felt a swell of admiration. She really was as smart as a man. He straightened up as Raj leaned out of the shop door and motioned them inside.

“Nargis is on his way. Come inside. Chai?” He said the last word in a Bengali drawl that verged on sarcasm.

“Hot, please,” said Dina, sitting down on a folding chair along the shop wall, “With plenty of sugar.”

Raj flushed and skulked away into an inner room. He emerged a few minutes later with two glasses of milk chai, offering them wordlessly to Alif and Dina before retreating behind a desk. Alif
sipped his tea in silence, watching Dina as she maneuvered the glass beneath her veil with the dexterity of long practice. A few minutes later, a short, nervous man of indeterminate age appeared in
the doorway. Raj rose.

“Nargis,” he said, adding something in Bengali that Alif did not understand. Nargis shuffled into the room, glance shifting from person to person as though waiting for a reprimand or
a blow. Alif noticed that his jaw was slightly crooked, and sat strangely on his face.

“Hi,” said Alif.

“What do you want?” asked Nargis. “I’ve never heard of you before.”

“I’m—we’re friends of Abdullah’s. We’re looking for a certain person and he thought you might be able to help.”

Raj said something else in Bengali.

“Would you mind giving us a few minutes?” Dina asked him sweetly. “Thank you so much for the tea. It was delicious.”

Unmanned, Raj bolted back into the inner recesses of the shop.

“Abdullah told us you had a nasty run-in with Vikram the Vampire,” Alif said to Nargis. “Is it true?”

Nargis touched his jaw. “Vikram the Vampire isn’t real,” he said.

“We’re not interested in getting you into more trouble,” said Dina. “ We just need to find him.”

Nargis broke into a sudden, high-pitched laugh, like a scrofulous hyena Alif had once seen in the royal zoo.

“You must both be insane. He would break you in half if you went looking for him. Do you know what he is?
Do you know what he is?
”

Alif was confused. “A thug?”

“You’re insane,” Nargis repeated.

“Just give us a location,” said Dina. “That’s all. We’ll never bother you again.”

“You don’t understand what he’ll do to me if I help you.”

“He’ll thank you. We want to pay him a lot of money to lend us a hand.”

Nargis seemed to relax a little. He licked his lips. “That’s something else,” he said. “If you want to hire him, that’s something else. But it will cost
you.”

“That’s fine,” said Alif impatiently. “We need to find him first. Right? Yes? So where is he?”

Nargis regarded him for a long moment. “There’s a cracked arch on the western edge of the souk. He lives in the alley that runs through it.”

Alif suppressed a triumphant smile. He glanced out the corner of his eye at Dina. Her gaze was fixed and calm, betraying nothing. She stood.

“Thank you,” she said. “We’re grateful for your help.” Nodding at Alif, she walked briskly toward the shop entrance. Alif scrambled to follow her, cursing his
awkward feet.

“That was great!” he crowed as soon as they were back in the bustle of the souk. “The way you handled them, Dina—it was like you weren’t even nervous. For a minute
I forgot you were a girl.”

Dina made an indignant noise. The sun pressed down as though endowed with physical strength; the day was growing hotter. They moved into the shade of the corrugated shop roofs that extended row
after row toward the wharf. At the end of one alley they found a shabby concrete building that had been converted into a prayer room, announcing its repurposed function by the pile of shoes heaped
outside. Dina slipped off her sandals and excused herself to perform the midday
salat
. Alif waited idly by the door for her return. The idea of taking off his shoes and socks only to put
them back on again was too much in this heat. He leaned against the cool concrete wall and listened to the imam—toneless, weary-sounding—lead the prostrations of his merchant
congregation. Dina emerged in the aftermath, a black figure amid the press of men jockeying to retrieve their sandals and loafers from the heap near the entrance.

“
Haraman,
” he told her.

“
Gema’an inshallah,
” she said. He felt foolish when she did not rebuke him for his failure to pray. They walked silently back through the souk, listing toward the
harbor, where the smell of grilled fish and onions announced lunchtime from innumerable food stalls. When Dina suggested they eat before continuing their search, Alif made no protest. An uneasy
sensation was building in his middle: a suspicion that he lacked both the will and the competence to see this plan through. He had prided himself on his knowledge of the City’s gray market
but the thought of a thug, a visceral criminal, made him feel inexperienced and effeminate. He had never held a gun, nor seen one except on television and once or twice in the hands of a border
guard.

Alif made a conscious effort to relax his brow and his mouth. When he was nervous he tended to purse his lips; it was a shortcoming Dina herself had identified. He felt her gaze on him now,
studying his mood. He would not let her see his uncertainty. He couldn’t bear the thought of her familiar sharp sigh, the upcast eyes, the unspoken conclusion that he had once again behaved
like a child and it was left to her to make things right. Alif lifted his chin and tried to appear confident.