“Maryam,” said Arbeely, “do you know Nadia Mounsef? Matthew’s mother?”
He was sitting at the Faddouls’ coffeehouse, drinking cups of scalding coffee despite the heat. Knowing that Arbeely only came when he wished to talk about something, Maryam had kept close to him, polishing the already pristine tables while Sayeed attended to the other customers. Now she paused, cloth in hand. “Nadia? We’ve spoken a few times, but not lately. Why do you ask?”
Arbeely hesitated. He didn’t want to say the truth, which was that the woman’s face had been haunting him. “I went to see her a few weeks ago, about Matthew,” he said. “She was ill. I mean, she looked ill before, but . . . this was different.” He went on to describe the woman who’d answered the door: even thinner than he remembered, her eyes dull and sunken. A strange dark blush, almost a rash, was spread across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. The crucifix at her throat—three barred, the sigil of the Eastern Orthodox—had fluttered visibly in time with her too-quick heartbeat. She’d blinked at the feeble light in the hallway as Arbeely haltingly explained his concerns. It wasn’t that Matthew was a nuisance, far from it: he was a helpful boy, and they enjoyed having him at the shop. But the child was spending mornings there, when he should certainly be in a classroom. And if a truancy officer happened to come by . . . “I don’t mean to get Matthew in trouble with anyone,” he said. “Including his mother.”
She’d given him the barest hint of a polite smile. “Of course, Mr. Arbeely. I’ll speak with Matthew. Thank you, for being patient with him.” And before Arbeely could protest that patience had nothing to do with it—the boy had real talent, and would make a promising apprentice—she went back inside and closed the door, leaving Arbeely to wonder how he could’ve handled it better.
“You did what you needed to,” Maryam told him. “You can’t be responsible for her son’s welfare.” She sighed. “Poor Nadia. She’s all alone, you know.”
“I was wondering,” Arbeely admitted. “What happened?”
“Her husband was peddling in Ohio. For a while there were letters, and then, nothing.”
“He disappeared?”
“Dead, ill, or run away—no one knows.”
Arbeely shook his head. It was a common story, but still hard for him to credit. “And she has no one here?”
“No family, at least. And she refuses all attempts to help her. I’ve invited her to dinner, but she never comes.” Maryam looked troubled, and no wonder: it wasn’t often that someone succeeded in refusing her generosity. “I think most of her neighbors have given up trying. Her illness is so strange, it comes and goes—it’s terrible to say, but many decided she was making it up, to avoid them.”
“Or perhaps she just doesn’t want to be stared at, and gossiped about.”
Maryam nodded sadly. “You’re right, of course. And who can blame her? I’ll visit her soon, and try again. Perhaps there’s some way I can help.”
“Thank you, Maryam.” He sighed. “At least Matthew stopped coming in the mornings. Although, mind you, some days I’d rather he did.” At Maryam’s quizzical look he said, “It’s Ahmad. At this point I think he likes the boy more than me. He’s been . . . moody, lately. A failed love affair, I suspect. He tells me little.”
Maryam nodded with her usual sympathy, but at the Jinni’s name the warmth had faded from her eyes. How was it that Maryam, with her gift for seeing the good in everyone, had taken such a dislike to him? Arbeely would have liked to ask her; but that, of course, would mean venturing into dangerous territory. Instead he thanked her and left, feeling more morose than ever.
Back at the shop, the Jinni and Matthew were at the Jinni’s workbench, their heads bent together like conspirators. The Jinni insisted that Matthew’s discovery of his secret had been a complete accident, but still Arbeely felt the Jinni had been far too cavalier about the whole thing. It had sparked their worst argument since the tin ceiling.
How didn’t you hear him come in?
Half the time you don’t hear him either. Besides, I told you, he knew already.
And you didn’t even try to convince him otherwise?
Arbeely, he saw me soldering chain links with my bare hands. What could I have said?
You could’ve tried, at least. Made up some lie or other.
The Jinni’s face had darkened. I’m sick of lying. And when Arbeely tried to press the matter, the Jinni had left the shop.
Since then, they’d spent most of their mornings in tense silence. But whenever Matthew arrived and took his silent spot on the bench, the Jinni would treat him with uncharacteristic patience. Sometimes they even laughed together, at a joke or a mistake, and Arbeely would tamp down his jealousy, feeling like a stranger in his own shop.
He tried to keep things in perspective. Business was more profitable than ever, and the necklaces they were making for Sam Hosseini were beautiful—no doubt Sam would fetch a small fortune for each one. He thought back to the morning the Jinni had come in looking like he’d been dealt a mortal blow. It had been only a month, after all. Hopefully soon his partner would be distracted by something—or, God help them all, someone—new and intriguing.
The sun dipped behind the broad backs of the tenements, and the light in the shop’s high window faded. Women’s voices drifted down from the upper stories, calling their children in for supper. Matthew slipped off the bench and was gone, the shop door barely whispering as he passed. Yet again the Jinni wondered if the spirit world had meddled in the boy’s bloodline—it seemed impossible for a human to be that uncanny without help.
Matthew’s visits had become the sole bright spot in the Jinni’s days. Whenever the boy left and the door slipped shut, something would close in himself as well, something barely acknowledged. Arbeely would turn up the lamp, and they would work in their separate silences until Arbeely, succumbing to hunger or fatigue, would heave a sigh and begin to heap sand on the fire. At that, the Jinni would put down his tools and leave, as wordlessly as Matthew.
His life was no different than before: the shop during the day, the city at night. But the hours now felt interminable, ruled by a numbing sameness. At night he walked quickly, as though driven to it, barely seeing his surroundings. He tried returning to his old favorites—Madison Square Park, Washington Square, the Battery Park aquarium—but these places were haunted now, pinned to memories of particular evenings and conversations, things said and unsaid. He could hardly walk within sight of Central Park before a weary anger turned him elsewhere.
So he went farther north instead, tracing aimless paths into unexplored territory. He walked up Riverside to Harlem’s southern border, then cut through the university’s new grounds, past the columned library with its gigantic granite dome. He forged up Amsterdam, crossing streets numbered well into the hundreds. Gradually the well-kept brownstones gave way to Dutch clapboard houses, their trellises heavy with roses.
One night he discovered the Harlem River Speedway and walked its length, the river glittering to his right. It was well past midnight, but a few of society’s more reckless specimens were still out in their racing carriages, chasing each other up and down the course. Their horses strained white-eyed at their bits, kicking up dust from the macadam. At dawn he found himself at the amusement park at Fort George, its shuttered fairway eerie and silent. The wooden rides seemed skeletal, like the remains of huge abandoned beasts. The Third Avenue Trolley had its terminus at the park’s entrance, and he watched as the day’s first car disgorged its passengers: carnival barkers and ride operators, yawning beer-garden girls in faded skirts, an organ-grinder whose monkey slept curled around his neck. No one seemed happy to be there. He boarded the car and rode south, watching as the trolley filled and emptied, delivering workers to the factories and printing presses, the sweatshops and the docklands. The more he rode the trolleys and trains of New York, the more they seemed to form a giant, malevolent bellows, inhaling defenseless passengers from platforms and street corners and blowing them out again elsewhere.
Back on Washington Street, he trudged to Arbeely’s shop, feeling as though he were caught inside a single day that stretched like molten glass. There was nothing to anticipate, except Matthew. He enjoyed the boy’s wide-eyed attention, enjoyed giving him tasks and watching him perform them with silent absorption. He supposed that eventually Matthew would grow older and lose interest, and take his place with the feral young men who slouched on the neighborhood stoops. Or—even worse—he’d become just another streetcar rider, dull-eyed and unprotesting.
He sat down at his bench without a word of greeting. Behind him, Arbeely puttered around the shop, making irritating humming noises. The man was deep into a large order of kitchen graters and had spent an entire week punching diamond-shaped holes into sheets of tin. Just watching him made the Jinni want to go mad. But Arbeely gave no sign that he minded the repetition, and the Jinni was beginning to detest him for that.
You judge him far too harshly, he could hear the Golem say.
He scowled. It was clear they would never speak again, and yet he was hearing her voice more and more often. He rubbed at his cuff, felt the square of paper shift beneath it. Enough: the necklaces were due to Sam Hosseini. He took up his tools and tried to lose himself in the creation of something beautiful.
Michael Levy slowly woke to the thin glow of morning. The other half of the bed was an empty sea of sheets and counterpane. He closed his eyes, listened for his wife. There: in the kitchen, bustling about. It was a comforting sound, a childhood sound. The air even smelled of fresh-baked bread.
He padded out into the tiny kitchen. She was standing next to the stove in her new housedress, leafing through her American cookbook. He snuck his arms around her waist and kissed her. “Couldn’t sleep again?”
“Yes, but it’s all right.”
Apparently it was an insomnia she’d had all her life. She said she was used to it; and indeed, she looked more awake than he felt. If it were him, he’d be dead on his feet. An amazing woman.
He still couldn’t believe they were married. At night he’d lie next to her, tracing his fingers around her stomach, up to her breasts, her arms, amazed at how thoroughly his life had changed. He loved the feel of her skin—always cool somehow, though the days had been sweltering. “I suppose it’s because of the ovens at the bakery,” he’d said once. “Your body’s used to the heat.” She’d smiled as though embarrassed, and said, “I think you must be right.”
She was often shy, his wife. Many of their meals together were silent, or nearly so: they were still tentative with each other, unsure of how to act. He’d look across the table and wonder, had they married too quickly? Would they always be strangers to each other? But then, even before the thought had passed from his mind, she would ask about his day, or tell him a story from hers, or else simply reach across and squeeze his hand. He would realize it was exactly what he’d needed, and wonder how she’d known.
Then there was the matter of the bedroom. Their wedding night had begun tentatively. He was well aware that as a previously married woman, she would be much more experienced than he. But what did she like? What pleased her? He had no idea how to ask, and not nearly enough nerve. What if she suggested something outlandish, even terrifying? His friends, when they’d had a few drinks, boasted of their exotic nights with “emancipated” girls, but his own fantasies had never ventured far from the prosaic. Perhaps it was a failing; perhaps she’d be disappointed.
If she was, she didn’t say so. Seeming to understand his distress—and there, again, was that knowing—she had led him into the act with her usual calm and steady demeanor. If their lovemaking was a little too workmanlike—if, afterward, he’d been unsure of her own pleasure—still he was relieved that it had been accomplished at all.
And then there’d been the night a week or so later, when she’d started as though surprised, and placed a hand between their bodies, pressing at a particular spot. To Michael’s utter regret he’d frozen, chagrined, as his Orthodox upbringing rushed clamoring to the fore, insisting that this was immodest, unbecoming in a wife—and slowly she’d removed her hand, and replaced it on his back, and resumed their rhythm.
He couldn’t talk to her about it, later. He just couldn’t. He tried, once, to repeat what she herself had done; but she took his hand and moved it away, and that had been that.
Already there were things unsaid between them. But he loved her; he was certain of it. And he liked to think she loved him in return. He imagined them in thirty years, with children grown, holding hands in bed and laughing at how unsure they’d been, how delicately they’d tiptoed around each other. But you always knew just what to say, he’d tell her; and she would smile, and nestle her head in his shoulder, both of them completely at home.
He’d ask her about these things someday. He’d find out what had prompted her to propose to him, just when he’d given up hope. Or what she’d been thinking as she stood next to him before the justice of the peace, looking so composed and serene. He only hoped it wouldn’t take him thirty years to ask.
The Golem placed a glass of tea and a plate of bread before her husband, and watched as he ate quickly, in big bites. She smiled in real fondness. He was so earnest, in everything he did.
She turned back to the sink to clean the few remaining dishes. They lived now in three tiny rooms crammed at the end of a first-floor hallway. The thin light that filtered down the air shaft illuminated a pile of garbage that climbed halfway up the bedroom window. Sometimes she’d watch as a cigarette butt fluttered down from above. The kitchen was more like a closet, with a stove barely big enough to roast a chicken. At night she did her sewing in the parlor, which hardly merited the name; it was perhaps a third the size of her old room at the boardinghouse. The rooms’ main advantage was that they sat at the back of the tenement, which had been dug into a slight rise, so that the earth kept them cool while the rest of the building sweltered. “It’ll be warmer in winter too,” Michael had said. She hoped this meant she wouldn’t feel so stiff and creaky, so driven to walk in the evenings. But deep down she knew that her proximity to Michael’s restless mind would hound her to distraction as surely as the weather once had.
Within days of their marriage she’d realized how much she’d underestimated the difficulty ahead. Unlike the Rabbi, who’d been so circumspect, so careful in his thoughts, Michael’s mind was a constant churn of wants and fears and second-guesses, most of them directed at herself. The noise wore down her composure and tested her self-control. She found herself serving him second helpings when he was hungry, talking when he wanted conversation, taking his hand when he needed reassurance. She’d begun to wonder whether she still had a will of her own.
Also there were the endless practical dilemmas. The long stretches of lying next to him in bed, remembering to breathe in and out. The excuses for her sleeplessness, her cool skin. Would he notice that her hair never grew? Or, God forbid, that she had no heartbeat? And what would happen when she failed to bear children? She’d hoped to keep marital relations to a minimum, to put some protective distance between them—she was afraid, above all, of hurting him accidentally—but then his desire would grow too strong to ignore, and she would feel driven to respond, or else lie there frustrated by reflected lust. There’d been that one night, when she’d felt her own warm tingle of desire, and tried eagerly to encourage it; but it had been doused by Michael’s awkward, guilty horror. It wasn’t his fault: she could feel his chagrin at his reaction, and he’d later tried to remedy the situation, but with such tortured ambivalence that she’d put an end to the attempt. Was it the pleasure itself, she wondered, that was somehow shameful? Or only what she’d done to increase it?
Unbidden she heard the Jinni say: It should be easy. They’re the ones who complicate it beyond reason.
No. She couldn’t afford to listen to that voice. It was wrong, ludicrous even, to resent Michael for her decision. She’d bound herself to him; she would see through what she’d begun. And perhaps, one day, she would tell him the truth.
At last the necklaces for Sam Hosseini were finished. Arbeely delivered them to Sam’s shop himself, not trusting the Jinni to strike a good bargain. But he needn’t have worried, for Sam was so pleased with them that he barely remembered to haggle. Besides the Jinni’s original necklace, with its disks of blue-green glass, there were versions with garnet-colored teardrops, brilliant white crystals, and lozenges of a deep emerald green. The Jinni had flattened the links and added the faintest edge of tarnish to the metal, which gave them a timeless beauty, while also looking like nothing Sam had ever seen.
Arbeely had expected Sam to display the necklaces in his largest glass case, but Sam had a better plan. Lately it had become fashionable for Manhattan’s society women to pose for portraits while dressed in a fanciful “Oriental” style, such as they imagined a Near Eastern princess or courtesan might have worn. Sam’s shop was a popular destination for these ladies, who often sent their maids or even came themselves to buy props and costume pieces. Most of them viewed bargaining as gauche, which meant that Sam was turning a tidy profit in curl-toed slippers, billowing silk trousers, and faux Egyptian armbands. The new necklaces would certainly appeal to them; and Sam knew they would like them even better if they came with a story.
It was only a few days before the first likely customer arrived. A sleek, expensive brougham pulled up in front of Sam’s shop—causing a good deal of gawking from the passersby—and a dark-haired young woman emerged. The afternoon heat was baking the sidewalks, but the young woman wore a heavy, dark dress and a thick shawl. She looked about with polite curiosity until an older woman, dressed just as finely in black, stepped from the carriage. The older woman eyed their surroundings with distaste, then took hold of her companion’s elbow and led her swiftly into Sam’s shop.
They were, indeed, there for a portrait. “My fiancé’s idea,” the young woman said. “He commissioned it, as a wedding present.” Sam ushered them to his best chairs, poured them tea, and spent the next hour bringing them bolts of fabric, beaded scarves, veils hung with coins, and whatever other bric-a-brac he thought they might fancy. Surprisingly, the young woman had a good eye for authenticity and avoided the gaudiest offerings. Soon she’d put together an outfit that truly resembled what an Ottoman woman of means might once have worn.
The sun slanted through the shop’s large windows, and the old woman dabbed at her brow with her handkerchief. But the young woman made no move to unwrap her shawl, and Sam noticed that her teacup shook slightly in her hand. Some sort of illness or palsy, perhaps. A shame, in one so young and lovely.
Eventually, as Sam had predicted, they arrived at the subject of a proper necklace. He went into the storeroom and emerged with an old leather box, battered and worn, and blew imaginary dust from its top. “This,” he said, “I rarely show.”
He opened the box, and the young woman gasped as he took out necklace after necklace. “How gorgeous! Are they antiques?”
“Yes, very old. They belong to my jaddah—excuse me, how do you say, mother of mother?”
“Grandmother.”
“Thank you, yes, my grandmother. She was Bedouin. You know this? A traveler in the desert.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of the Bedouin,” said the young woman.
“My grandfather gives them to her, at their wedding. As part of her . . . hmm. Price?”
“Her dowry?”
“Yes, dowry. When she dies, she leaves me the necklaces, to sell. For a beautiful necklace must have a beautiful woman to wear, or else it is worth nothing at all.”
“You wouldn’t rather keep them for your own wife, or your children?”
“For them,” and he gestured to the shop around them, “I make a business. Much more valuable, in America.”
She chuckled. “You’re a wise man, Mr. Hosseini.” Next to her the old woman sniffed, as though to express her opinion of Mr. Hosseini’s wisdom, or perhaps the entire conversation.
“May I see this one?” And the young woman pointed to the necklace with the discs of blue-green glass.
He fetched a hand mirror and held it up while her older companion fastened the clasp. She gazed at herself, and Sam smiled: the necklace fit as though made for her throat. “Beautiful,” he said. “Like a queen of the desert.”
With her shaking fingers she reached up and touched the necklace. The glass disks shifted, chiming softly against each other. “A queen of the desert,” she echoed. And then, a deep and startling sadness crept over her face. Tears began to spill from her eyes; she covered them with a hand and drew her breath in a hitching sob.
“My dear, what’s the matter?” cried the old woman. But her young companion just shook her head, trying to smile, obviously embarrassed at herself. Sam fetched her a handkerchief, which she took gratefully and dabbed at her eyes. Chagrined, he could not refrain from blurting out, “You don’t like it?”
“Oh, no! I like it very much! I’m so sorry, Mr. Hosseini, I’m just not myself at the moment.”
“It’s the wedding,” said the older woman consolingly. “Your mother makes such a fuss of everything, I wonder how you can bear it.”
Sam nodded at this, thinking of his own quiet Lulu, her lingering homesickness. “A wedding is a strange time,” he said. “Much happiness, but many changes also.”
“There certainly are.” The young woman took a deep breath, and then smiled at her reflection. “It’s beautiful. What will you take for it?”
Sam named a number he thought slightly less than ludicrous, and she readily agreed. The old woman’s eyes widened with alarm, and she looked as though she would’ve given her charge a stern chiding if they’d been alone. Sensing that the shopping was now concluded, Sam poured them more tea and brought out small cakes dusted with crushed pistachios—“My wife makes these,” he announced proudly—and busied himself with wrapping their parcels and carrying them to the waiting carriage. The footman gave him an address on Fifth Avenue where he could send the bill.
When the women finally rose to leave, Sam placed his hand on his heart and bowed to both of them. “Your visit honors me,” he said. “If you need anything else, please come again.”
“I will,” the young woman said warmly, and clasped his hand; he felt the odd tremor in her fingers. She glanced at her companion, who was already making her way toward the door, and lowered her voice. “Mr. Hosseini, do you know many of your Syrian neighbors?”
“Yes,” he said, surprised. “I am here a long time, I know everyone.”
“Then could you tell me—do you know a man—” But then she looked again to the woman waiting nearby at the door, and whatever question she meant to ask died on her lips. She smiled again, a bit sadly, and said, “It’s no matter. Thank you, Mr. Hosseini. For everything.” The bells on the door jangled as she passed.
The footman helped Sophia into the carriage. She settled herself next to her aunt, and pulled her shawl a bit tighter. The trip had been a success; she only wished she had not cried like that, and made a spectacle of herself. She supposed she ought to thank her aunt for providing an excuse for her tears, when their true cause had been far different. A queen of the desert: that was what she’d imagined herself, in her bed, in his arms. Suffice to say, the irony of her engagement portrait had not been lost on her.
Her perspiring aunt fanned herself with her gloves. She turned to Sophia, as though to say something—this terrible heat—but then caught herself, and only gave her a strained smile. Sophia’s illness had this benefit, at least: her acquaintances’ newfound awkwardness meant a reprieve from all sorts of chitchat.
The footman nudged the brougham away from the curb, and threaded slowly through the morass of carts. “Shall we go to Central Park?” her aunt said. “I’m sure your mother wouldn’t mind.”
“That’s all right, Auntie. I’d rather just go home.” She smiled, to soften the refusal. Her aunt was worried about her; they all were. Sophia had never been an energetic girl, but at least she had gone for walks, and visited friends, and done the things a wealthy young woman was supposed to do. Now she merely sat by the fire for hours at a stretch. She knew they all pitied her, but she’d found a real comfort in her protracted convalescence. Her mother had excused her from all social functions—which were few in any case, as the Winstons were the only family of note who still lingered in the city. Her father, indulgent in his concern, had opened his library to her, and at last she could read to her heart’s content. In all, these last few weeks had been some of the most peaceable of her life. She had the sense of existing inside a fragile pause, a moment of grace.
But that would soon be over. Her mother was determined to forge ahead with the wedding plans. She’d even told her fiancé’s parents that Sophia’s tremor was improving, which was certainly not the case. Sophia had merely learned to disguise it more effectively. As for Charles himself, so far he’d taken care to appear undeterred by the sight of his shivering fiancée. At each meeting he asked once after her health—always she struggled to find an answer that was neither a falsehood nor a complaint—and then embarked on a rapid stream of pleasantries. It was exactly the sort of conversation she’d hoped never to have with her husband, and she doubted he relished it either. She feared their married life would be like some dreadful novel: the dissatisfied young husband, the sickly heiress.
She watched the men and women going about their business outside the hansom window, and wondered what it would be like to lose herself among them, the warm press of people carrying her somewhere else, somewhere far away.
And then, she saw him.
The tinsmiths’ shop had felt especially stifling that morning. Each thud of Arbeely’s hammer, each dull ring of metal on metal, seemed pitched and calculated to be as annoying as possible. So when Arbeely grumbled that the hammer’s rawhide was wearing thin, the Jinni declared he would go to the tack and harness shop on Clarkson, and buy him a piece. It was a long walk for a minor errand, but Arbeely had given him no argument. Apparently both of them wanted him gone.
They’d fought again, bitterly, over Matthew this time. Arbeely had learned that the boy had no father to speak of, and seemed to think the Jinni should be concerned about the boy’s welfare. The ensuing argument had included phrases such as moral guidance and appropriate father figure, and other impenetrables that the Jinni suspected were tinged with insult. What business was it of Arbeely’s if Matthew chose to spend the afternoons with him? The truth, the Jinni sensed, was that Arbeely was jealous. Matthew paid him hardly any attention, though he obeyed without protest whenever Arbeely pointed out the lateness of the hour, saying, Your mother will be worried. But it was on the Jinni’s bench that the boy silently materialized every afternoon. And no wonder. Who’d want to spend their afternoons with Arbeely, if they could avoid it? With each day, the tinsmith became more of a misery, his brow furrowing with worry and disapproval, his eyes sunken from lack of sleep. You look terrible, the Jinni told him one morning, and in return the man shot him a look of surprising hostility.
He left the shop, his thoughts in their now-usual stew, and crossed the street, navigating with irritation the carts and horses. Many of them had been held up behind a hansom that was trying to pull away from the curb. The hansom inched forward, and the Jinni glanced into the window as he passed.
It was, unmistakably, Sophia—and yet he had to look again. Pallid, black-wrapped, she had clearly undergone some terrible change. Again he remembered her dark and shrouded room. What had happened to her? Was the girl ill?
She looked up, and saw him. Surprise, dismay, anger all passed across her features—but she did not flush or glance away, as once she would have. Instead she held his gaze, and gave him a look of such naked, vulnerable sadness that it was he who glanced away first.
In the next moment the cab passed. Confused, shaken, the Jinni continued on his way. He told himself she was a girl of means, and that her problem, whatever it was, was not his to solve. But he could not let go of the feeling that, in that moment, she had been calling him to account for something.
Abu Yusuf sat on the floor of the sick-tent, holding his daughter’s hand.
Three days had passed since Fadwa had taken ill, and in that time he had barely moved from her side. He watched Fadwa’s dreaming fingers grasp at air, listened to her moan and mutter nonsense. At first they’d coaxed her to open her eyes, but the girl had taken one look at Abu Yusuf, screamed in terror, and begun to choke. After that, they’d blindfolded her tightly with a dark rag.
The word possessed hung in the close air of the sick-tent, was exchanged in every glance, but not a tongue uttered it.
Abu Yusuf’s brothers shouldered his duties without a word. Fatim stuck to her work, muttering that someone had to keep them fed, it would do Fadwa no good if they all starved. Every few hours she took a bowl of thinned yogurt into the sick-tent and spooned as much of it as she could into her daughter’s mouth. Her eyes were red-rimmed as she worked, and she said little, only glanced at her husband as he sat there, silently blaming himself. He should have raised an alarm, he’d decided, when he’d glimpsed that impossible palace. He should’ve taken his daughter and ridden far, far away.
By the end of the second day, Fatim’s glances had a touch of accusation about them. How long, she seemed to be saying, will you sit here, doing nothing? Why do you let her suffer, when you know the remedy? And an unspoken name rose to float between them: Wahab ibn Malik.
He wanted to argue with her, to tell her that prudence dictated he wait and see if Fadwa improved before he traveled that path. That he had no idea if ibn Malik was even still alive. But on the morning of the third day he had to admit that she was right. Fadwa was not improving, and his prudence was beginning to seem like cowardice.
“Enough,” he said, standing. “Tell my brothers to ready a horse and a pony. And bring me one of the ewes.” She nodded, grimly satisfied, and left the tent.
He packed a week’s worth of provisions, then placed Fadwa on the pony, bound her hands, and tied her into the saddle. Her blindfolded head dipped and jerked, like a man falling asleep on watch. He tethered the ewe to Fadwa’s pony, giving it plenty of lead. Then he mounted his horse and took the pony’s reins, and led them out of the encampment: a pitiful, half-blind procession. No one gathered to see them off. Instead the clan peered out from tent corners and door flaps, and mouthed silent prayers for their safe return, and for protection against the very man they sought. Only Fatim stood in the open, watching until her husband and daughter disappeared.
Ibn Malik’s cave lay in the western hills, on a rocky, wind-buffeted slope. Few of the clan ever ventured that way, for there was no grazing, no place for an encampment. Already when Abu Yusuf was a boy—and not yet called Abu Yusuf, only Jalal ibn Karim—to travel west had become a euphemism among the clan for seeking out Wahab ibn Malik. Parents traveled west with children who were gravely ill, or in need of exorcisms; barren wives traveled west with their husbands and soon quickened with child. But always ibn Malik took something in return, either from the healed or from the ones who’d brought them—not just a sheep or two, but something intangible and necessary. The father of the exorcised child never spoke again. The pregnant woman was struck blind during the birth. No one exclaimed at the losses, for these were debts paid to ibn Malik, and everyone knew it.
Abu Yusuf’s own cousin Aziz had once paid such a debt. Aziz was nine years older than young Jalal, and tall and strong and handsome. All the men of the clan could sit a horse as though born in the saddle, but Aziz rode like a god, and Jalal worshiped him for it. Jalal had been out tending his father’s sheep when Aziz’s horse stumbled in a hole and threw his rider, breaking the young man’s back and neck. Aziz lingered between life and death for a day before his father decided to travel west. There was no way to drag a litter up the rocky hillsides, so he made the trip alone, and returned carrying a sack of poultices. At their touch Aziz’s bones healed, and his fever disappeared. Within a week he was up and walking. But from then on, every horse he approached shied at the sight of him. The few he managed to touch would scream in terror and foam at the mouth. Aziz al-Hadid, master of horses, never rode again. He became a shadow of his former self—but still, at least he had lived.
Slowly they made their way west. Every few hours Abu Yusuf would tilt a waterskin to Fadwa’s lips or feed her a few mouthfuls of yogurt. Sometimes she spat it out; sometimes she gulped it down as though starving. Soon the flat terrain of the steppes gave way to angled hills and low, jagged peaks. It was hard going, and the ewe started to struggle. When it became clear she couldn’t go on much farther, Abu Yusuf dismounted, kneeled on the struggling animal’s side, and bashed her skull in with a rock. She’d have to be drained soon, or her blood would turn to poison; but if he did it there, he’d bring down every jackal in the hills. He lashed the carcass to his horse’s back, and they continued on.
It was almost evening when ibn Malik’s cave came into sight. Squinting against the last of the sun, Abu Yusuf spied a small, thin figure sitting cross-legged on the flat apron of rock just outside its entrance. He was alive. And he’d known they were coming. Of course he’d known.
Wahab ibn Malik had been already in his thirties when Abu Yusuf’s cousin was injured; but even so, as they drew closer, Abu Yusuf found himself shocked at the state of the man who waited for them. He seemed no more than a leathered, yellow-eyed skeleton. He stood as they approached, a spiderlike unfolding, and Abu Yusuf saw he was naked save for a torn loincloth. He glanced back at Fadwa; but of course the girl was blindfolded, and could see nothing.
He dismounted and untied the dead ewe from Fadwa’s horse. Cradling it in his arms, he approached ibn Malik and laid it at his feet. The man grinned at Abu Yusuf, revealing dark, broken teeth, and looked over at Fadwa, still tied to her pony.
“You want an exorcism,” ibn Malik said. His voice was startling: deep and full, it seemed to come from somewhere other than his body.
“Yes,” said Abu Yusuf, uneasily. “If you think there’s hope.”
Ibn Malik laughed. “There is never hope, Jalal ibn Karim,” he said. “There’s only what can be done, and what cannot.” He nodded at Fadwa. “Bring her down from there, and follow me. And then, we will see what can be done.” With that, he bent and lifted two of the dead ewe’s legs, and dragged her into the mouth of the cave.
What Abu Yusuf had taken to be a small cave was only the first of a series of linked, torch-lit recesses that stretched deep into the cliff. As he followed ibn Malik, Fadwa muttered and twisted in his arms, trying to get away from something only she could see. The guttering torches smelled of animal fat, and spat out a greasy black smoke that filled the passageways.
In one of the smaller caves ibn Malik gestured for him to place Fadwa on a rude pallet. Abu Yusuf did so, trying to ignore the general filth of the place, and watched helplessly as ibn Malik started his examination. Fadwa struggled against the man until he poured something in her mouth that made her relax and go still. Then he began to strip her clothing away. His demeanor was entirely dispassionate; still Abu Yusuf wanted to drag him from her side and bash in his head, as he’d done to the ewe.
“Only her mind was violated, not her body,” ibn Malik said at length. “You’ll be pleased to hear she’s still a virgin.”
A wash of red passed over Abu Yusuf’s eyes. “Get on with it,” he muttered.
Ibn Malik removed the blindfold and opened one of her eyes, and then another. Abu Yusuf cringed, waiting for her to cry out or vomit, but she lay silent and still. “Interesting,” ibn Malik said, almost in a purr.
“What is it?”
The skeletal man made a shushing gesture so absurdly like Fatim’s that Abu Yusuf wanted to laugh. The impulse died as ibn Malik suddenly moved to straddle Fadwa. With both hands he peeled her eyelids back; his dirty forehead came down to touch hers. For long minutes they stared deep into each other’s eyes. Neither of them blinked, nor seemed even to breathe. Abu Yusuf turned around, not wanting to see ibn Malik squatting over his daughter’s chest like a grotesque insect. The torch-smoke filled his nose and clotted his lungs, making him dizzy. He leaned against the rough wall and closed his eyes.
After some time—he didn’t know how long—he heard movement, and turned to see ibn Malik rising from his daughter’s side. The ancient man was smiling, his eyes lit like a boy’s with excitement.
“I’ve been waiting for this,” ibn Malik said. “All my life.”
“Can you heal her?” Abu Yusuf asked dully.
“Yes, yes, it’s easy,” the man said with impatience. “But”—as Abu Yusuf sagged at the knees, tears springing to his eyes—“not yet. No, not yet. There’s something larger here. I must consider carefully. We need a plan, a strategy.”
“A strategy for what?”
Ibn Malik flashed his broken grin. “For capturing the jinni that did this to your daughter.”