Alif the Unseen (11 page)

Dina fretted under her breath, producing a mobile phone from a pocket in her robe. They walked deeper into the residential outworks of the New Quarter, past condominiums and apartment buildings
modeled on some architect’s fever dream of California and painted contrasting shades of salmon and sea green. This was territory Alif rarely visited. The City, Abdullah had once quipped, is
divided into three parts: old money, new money, and no money. It had never supported a middle class and had no ambition to do so—one was either a nonresident of Somewhere-istan, sending the
bulk of one’s salary home to desperate relatives, or one was a scion of the oil boom. Though Alif came from new money on his father’s side, he only saw it in driblets. Baqara District
felt closer to the truth of things than the pastel oasis around them.

“I want to go home,” he said abruptly. “This whole thing is ridiculous. I’ll never take our second-rate street for granted again.”

Dina gave an unladylike snort.

A breeze had come up from the harbor, exactly timed, as it always was, with the trailing edge of sunset; Alif smelled salt and hot sand. He took a breath. They had to keep moving: he must find a
safe place for them to spend the night. He hoped the mosques in the New Quarter, none of which were more than a decade old, were not so posh that they would go against the established custom and
turn out travelers. Alif was following this thought into its contingencies when he noticed a man wearing a white
thobe
and sunglasses. It was odd, he mused, to see a man in sunglasses
after dark. A moment later the realization kicked in.

“Go,” he whispered to Dina, shepherding her around a corner. “Go, go, go.”

“What is it?”

“The detective from State.”

She whimpered, then clapped a hand over her mouth, following Alif quickly down a street edged in hibiscus bushes. Alif didn’t dare look over his shoulder until they had gone several blocks
and then doubled back. He paused in the recessed doorway of a women’s clothing store that had closed for the evening. Dina flowed in behind him like a shadow, pressing herself against the
locked glass door. Alif peered out through a tangle of mannequin legs: there was no one on the street except for a janitor in a dusty uniform, sweeping out the entryway of an apartment building
with a broom made of twigs.

“Is he still there?” whispered Dina.

“I think n—”

A loud crack interrupted him. Glancing down, Alif saw a perfectly round hole in the cement facade of the shop, no more than a few centimeters from his left arm. Dina shrieked. Without thinking,
he threw himself over her, and they both tumbled to the ground as the glass display window behind them shattered. He felt her breath against his ear and the rise and fall of her chest, and for one
vacant instant was pleasantly aroused.

Three more shots hit the storefront. Alif craned his neck: the white-robed detective was across the street, sighting down a pistol as calmly as if he were hailing a cab. He felt Dina struggle
underneath him. She rolled, pushed him off, and half-stood. Alif made a grab for her arm.

“Don’t,
don’t
! Stay down!”

His heart sank as another shot ended not in a crack but in a gasp, and Dina slumped back down to the ground. There was a noise like a feral animal—Alif thought he himself had made it until
he saw a tawny shape dislodge itself from the air and knock the detective flat on his back. Shaking, he gathered Dina’s unresisting body and hid his face in the folds of her veil, whispering a
prayer directed as much to her as to anything divine. He heard a man scream: a high, terrified gurgling sound, and then it was interrupted by the snapping of bone. The screaming ceased. Alif
tightened his grip around Dina’s limp shoulders.

“Come, children.” The voice was sinewy and sated. Alif felt something close around his neck—a set of talons smelling of blood and shit—and found himself wrenched forward,
separated from Dina by brute force. Then he was half-flying down the street, taking longer and longer steps until his feet no longer touched the ground at all.

* * *

“Give me your arm.”

“No! Leave me alone—”

“Girl, listen to Vikram Uncle. That arm wants dressing. If you keep making this pious fuss I will break it off, dress it, and sew it back on.”

There was a rustle of fabric. Alif struggled to sit and was immediately assaulted by nausea; with a groan, he lay back down. He neither knew or cared where he was. Turning his head, he saw Dina
kneeling next to Vikram with her robe rolled up to her shoulder, exposing one red-brown arm: a bruised, bleeding bullet wound was visible halfway between her shoulder and her elbow. Relief flooded
Alif’s body, a sensation so intense that he momentarily forgot to be either nauseous or afraid. She lived. She had lived. His eyes stung.

Vikram was holding a pair of tweezers between his long fingers and peering at Dina’s wound with an interest that was not absolutely wholesome.

“You can scream,” he said. “It’s all right.” With no further introduction he plunged the tweezers into Dina’s arm. She slumped to one side, balling her hands
into fists, but made no sound.

“And there it is.” Vikram held up a bloodied bullet in the tweezers. “You see that? That is a piece of your robe clinging to it there. The bullet pulled it in. That would have
festered and poisoned your blood.” He dropped the bullet into a saucepan sitting near his hyperextended knee. “Now we will clean it and stitch it up. You owe me your life, but your
virginity will suffice.”

“Try it and I’ll kill you,” muttered Alif.

“Good God, it’s awake.” Contemptuous yellow eyes regarded him. “You’re threatening me? The girl here has more balls than you do. You’d have pissed yourself
just now.”

Alif sat up and swallowed hard to keep from vomiting. Dina looked at him blankly, eyes glassy with pain. They were back in Vikram’s tent, he realized, which was rosy now with light from
several glass lanterns set around the base of the arch. He smelled wood smoke somewhere close by. Vikram was bent on his task, swabbing Dina’s arm with a wad of white cotton like some demonic
nurse. When he was finished he took a curved needle from a box that looked like a pencil case and threaded it.

“This is the worst part,” he said. “I think ten stitches. That means twenty needle pricks and some tugging. You really might scream.” There was a plaintive note in the
last sentence.

Alif looked away. Dina did scream, short panting yelps that made Alif tense in sympathy.

“Little mud-made
beni adam,
” said Vikram, seemingly to himself. “Third-born little
beni adam
. Fragile as a fired clay pot, you are. You can look now,
brother.”

Alif glanced up: Dina’s arm was bound expertly in white linen. She tugged the sleeve of her robe down over it with a hand that shook.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Why did you change your mind?” Alif tried to look at Vikram without fear. “Why did you come to help us?”

Vikram half-smiled, jerking one side of his mouth to reveal a sharp incisor. “My sister says she knows you.”

“Knows me?” Alif began to feel nervous. “I would remember meeting someone like her.”

“I should think you would. She says you gave her shelter once during a sandstorm.”

Alif stared stupidly at Vikram. He opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again.

“I’ve been through your things,” continued Vikram, putting away his instruments. “As it turns out, you’re mildly interesting. You didn’t tell me you had a
copy of the
Alf Yeom
. There are almost none left in the seeing world. Humans aren’t supposed to have it. I assume this is one of the copies transcribed by those old Persian mystics?
Naughty of you to be carrying it around this way. I could get you a very pretty price for it.”

“You mean the book?”

Vikram loped across the tent on all fours. He stopped in front of Alif and gave him a measuring look.

“Are you saying you don’t know what this is?” He pulled Intisar’s book out of nowhere and tossed it in Alif’s lap. “Strange, as someone seems to have
annotated it for you.”

Alif frowned, looking from the book to Vikram and back. He opened the manuscript gingerly and leafed through it: tucked between the pages were yellow Post-its covered in Intisar’s neat,
upright script.

“These must be notes for her thesis research,” he murmured. “I don’t understand. The girl who sent me this told me she never wanted to see me again. Why would she give me
something so valuable, especially if she needed it herself?”

Vikram tilted his head to one side in a raptorlike motion. “Perhaps she wanted to keep it out of someone else’s hands.”

“I guess.” Alif held the book up to the light and began to read the first page.

* * *

The kingdom of Kashmir was heretofore governed by a king called Togrul. He had a son and a daughter who were the wonder of their time. The prince, called Farukhrus, or Happy
Day, was a young hero whose many virtues rendered him famous; Farukhuaz, or Happy Pride, his sister, was a miracle of beauty. In short, this princess was so lovely, and at the same time so witty,
that she charmed all the men who beheld her; but their love in the end proved fatal, for the greatest part of them lost their senses, or else fell into languishing and despair, which wasted them
away insensibly.

Nevertheless, the fame of her beauty spread through the East, so that it was soon heard at Kashmir that ambassadors from most courts of Asia were coming to demand the princess in marriage.
But before their arrival she had a dream that made mankind odious to her: she dreamed that a stag, being taken in a snare, was delivered out of it by a hind and that afterward, when the hind fell
into the same snare, the stag, instead of assisting her, fled away. Farukhuaz, when she awoke, was struck with this dream, which she did not regard as the illusion of a wandering fancy but believed
that the great Kesaya, an idol worshipped at Kashmir, had interested herself in her fate and would have her understand by these representations that all men are treacherous. They would return
nothing but ingratitude for the tenderest affection of women.

* * *

“This is weird,” said Alif, skimming ahead. “After that the king asks Farukhuaz’s nurse to tell her stories that will encourage her to like men and
accept one of the foreign princes. It’s just a bunch of old tales like
The Thousand and One Nights
.”

Dina rose unsteadily and limped toward the mattress where Alif had been sitting. She lay down on it, curling into a fetal position with her wounded arm held tight against her chest.

“What a rare idiot it is,” scoffed Vikram. “
The Thousand and One Days
is not just a bunch of old tales, little pimple. That title is no accident—this is the
inverse, the overturning of
The Nights
. In it is contained all the parallel knowledge of my people, preserved for the benefit of future generations. This is not the work of human beings.
This book was narrated by the djinn.”

Alif insisted on hanging a bolt of cloth across the tent, dividing it into two rough rooms while Dina slept. He woke her from her doze to tell her she could make herself
comfortable; she agreed only after he promised not to leave her alone in the tent with Vikram. Alif retreated as she was taking off her shoes, letting the cloth fall behind him. Vikram was sitting
in the opposite half of the tent with a thoughtful expression, flexing his bare, lightly furred toes.

“If she’s not safe around you, I need to know,” said Alif. “I’ll be able to tell if you’re lying, even if you are a—a different sort of
person.”

“I have no intention of raping your friend,” Vikram said idly, looking out the tent flap at the shuttered marketplace. “If I had, I would have already.”

Alif shuddered. Vikram seemed not to notice his revulsion, and lifted his nose as if scenting something in the violet night air.

“You seem to know a lot about the
Alf Yeom,
” said Alif after a tentative silence.

“Enough to price it for what it’s worth.”

“What did you mean about parallel knowledge? What’s all this about djinn?”

“Why should it matter to you? This is more talking than I’ve done in a month. I’m tired of moving my mouth around air instead of meat.”

Alif ground his teeth in frustration. “I need to figure this out,” he said. “The girl I love could be in serious trouble. I have to find out why it was so important to her that
I have this book, even though she’s angry at me.”

Vikram stretched out his legs and stood. “Perhaps she was worried about being discovered with it. Your censors only know how to do one thing to books.”

Alif shook his head. “The censors don’t bother with fantasy books, especially old ones. They can’t understand them. They think it’s all kids’ stuff. They’d
die if they knew what
The Chronicles of Narnia
were really about.”

“Do you read many of these fantasy books, younger brother?”

“They’re all I read.”

“And do
you
understand them?”

Alif looked up at Vikram sharply. The lower half of his body seemed less terrifying now, a confluence of man and animal familiar to some inherited memory from another age.

“What is it with you and Dina,” he said. “It’s like you’ve formed a conspiracy to convince me I’m stupid. Or an atheist.”

“You may be both, but that girl is neither. She saw me this afternoon when you were walking in the alley outside my tent. I was trying to sneak up on you. Most of the tribe of Adam
can’t see us unless we give them permission, you know. The veil is too thick. When your kind walk in the Empty Quarter, all you see is desert.”

“That’s because the Empty Quarter is a desert,” said Alif.

“It is a desert, but it is also a world turned sideways. Djinn country.”

“That’s just a myth.” Alif began to question the wisdom of spending the night in the company of such a person.

“Myth, myth. Who are you to say? Have you ever been to the Empty Quarter?”

“Of course not. Nobody goes there on purpose. There’s no water, no shelter. Not even the Bedouin go there.”