Thief of Baghdad (13 page)

Now he went toward the gate again, but more slowly. Naturally, I expected him to try and bribe the guard to let him out. But Karim had other plans.

He stopped, not by a guard, but by another prisoner, whom he addressed as Ali, perhaps because it was his name, but probably because every other Arab seems to be named Ali. Karim spoke loudly enough so I could hear him from where I was, without zooming an ear at all.

“Look, Ali, how the stars are falling tonight.”

Ali looked, and so did I. There were a few shooting stars, true, but no more than can be seen on almost any desert night. Ali looked, and I looked, and so did the guards at the gate.

Karim said: “Did you know, Ali, that when the stars fall, sand turns to pearls?”

Ali spoke the coarse Arabic of a Syrian. “If that were true, every camel-herder would be a sherif or an emir.”

“Sometimes it is true,” Karim said. “And— Why look! Ali, look!”

Ali looked. I looked. The guards looked. Karim, the nimblest thief in Baghdad allowed the clumsy Syrian to outjump him; Ali got the pearl, held it up in the moonlight. “A beauty!” he cried. “Worth a fortune!”

The nearest guard deserted his post at the gate and came running to snatch the pearl from Ali’s fingers. “Forbidden to have private property in the Mills,” he said.

Ali’s wail brought half the men in the Mills, guards and prisoners alike. “My pearl,” the Syrian moaned. “He took my fortune!” He spread his hands wide in anguish.

With the trained dexterity of a cutpurse, Karim flipped another pearl through the air, so that it landed in Ali’s outstretched fingers. This time the Syrian clutched, took one quick look, and concealed the pearl in his rags.

Two guards landed on him, started tearing his clothes away. But Karim was busy now, flipping pearls everywhere. Prisoners and guards mingled, screeching: “The heavens have opened,” and “It is raining pearls,” and all kinds of other obvious things.

There wasn’t a guard on the gates. They were milling with the prisoners and with the overseers who had come pouring out of their dining tent to join in the hunt for pearly riches.

Karim was at the gate now, fiddling with the lock. I have no doubt that he could have picked it—that was a branch of his trade, after all—but I didn’t think he’d mind a little help. I dematerialized and took the keys off a head guard’s girdle; he was so busy crawling on the ground looking for pearls that he didn’t feel me.

Floating over to Karim, I handed him the keys. He was so anxious to get out of there, he didn’t notice that I was invisible.

He opened the gates wide. Then he started trotting across the desert, toward Baghdad.

In a few minutes, most of the prisoners had given up the pearl hunt and were running after him. To be trite, there is no greater pearl than freedom.

Invisible, I waited long enough to dematerialize the pearls again. If I hadn’t, my old friend, the Jinni of the Persian Gulf, would never have forgiven me for ruining the market that supports so many of his people. A jinni has to think of these things. Especially when he’s just come close to getting his city into a war; at the moment, I was concerned about keeping friendly with all jinns everywhere, even hairy ones.

Time to rest. I floated back to the city, materialized on a deserted rooftop, and composed myself for a nice nap, a materialized nap, which always rests me twice as much as a dematerialized one.

Three or four hours later, by the stars, I awoke, hungry but refreshed. I vanished, floated down to the street, and became the old man again. Then I strolled slowly toward the Street of the Tanners, stopping only for a cup of tea and an omelet with leeks.

Malek was leaning against a wall, reading. I lounged next to him until he came to a good stopping point, and looked up to rest his eyes. Dawn was just breaking; it was cool and pleasant here. I said: “Greetings, O scholar.”

He laughed. I could tell he didn’t recognize me. I couldn’t remember what appearance I’d had last time we talked. To help him, I switched my ears from one side of my head to the other, and then back again. He nodded slowly: “Are you the same jinni who appeared to my brother and me before?”

“I am the Jinni of Baghdad. If you have seen any other jinns, they are trespassing.”

“Oh . . .” Malek was thoughtful. “I am not sure that you are a good jinni.”

“Allah il Allah! Are you calling me a hairy jinni? I have been a good Mohammedan for seven hundred years and more!”

Malek shrugged. “This of hairy jinns and Muslim jinns I know nothing of, except what I have read; and it seems to me that the writers knew little more than I do. But this I know, O Jinni; you appear and talk of being a friend, and the next thing I know, my brother is in the Sultan’s Mills.”

I shrugged. “Who knows Karim better than you, his brother? He is a very stubborn young man. He took offense at something I did, and refused my aid when the palace guards were after him; and so he was caught.”

“Those who go to the Sultan’s Mills never return,” Malek said. “It’s a hard penalty for being stubborn.”

“Those who are friends of the Jinni of Baghdad need not fear. Karim is on his way home now.”

Malek’s face lit up. “Welcome, O Jinni, thrice welcome. That is good news. Your work?”

Being the most modest of jinns, I merely said: “Karim saw an opportunity and made the most of it. Of course, I was there.”

Malek nodded and smiled his slow smile. “And were you there, too, when the princess fell ill? There is talk all over the city of great magic in the palace.”

“I was there.”

“The Grand Vizier is reading a proclamation at dawn, by order of the Sultan. Shall we go toward the the great square?”

I asked: “How about Karim? He should be home soon.”

Malek was stowing his book away in his robes, getting his crutch under his arm. “Karim is a cutpurse, a thief. Where there is a crowd, he will be. It is his trade.”

So we moved out, in a crowd that increased in density as we got nearer and nearer to the palace. I was enjoying myself; I like crowds, and particularly Baghdad crowds. They sound exciting, they look colorful, and their smell of garlic and charcoal smoke and horse sweat even delights my Baghdadian nose.

Halfway there, we ran into Karim. He looked tired and dusty from his run across the desert, but not too much so; he was very young. He embraced Malek and said: “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

“The old man here told me you were on your way home.”

Karim looked at me. “Are you the jinni?”

I nodded modestly.

“Decent of you to help me out with those pearls . . . I must tell you about it sometime, Malek . . . but in another couple of minutes I would have figured out a way of overcoming the guards . . . Where’s all the crowd going?”

“There’s to be a proclamation at the palace. About the Princess’s illness.” He had asked Malek, but I answered.

“The Princess Amina is under a spell,” Malek said. “The man who brings her a blue rose will cure her, and inherit the Sultanate—and the Princess.”

Karim glared at me. “If there are any spells about, I know who spelled them. Aren’t you always saying that you’re the Jinni of Baghdad, the one and only Jinni of Baghdad?” Suddenly he grabbed me. “I don’t like all this magicking and sorcering! If you put a spell on the Princess Amina, take it off, and now!”

Really! I don’t expect slavish gratitude from the people I help, but a little common manners wouldn’t hurt. I tried to get loose. I said: “If the Princess Amina weren’t under a spell, she’d be the wife of Prince Osman by now. She’d be ornamenting his tent, dancing at his command, crawling to him for favors. You might think of that!”

“All right! Fine. And it wasn’t your fault I went to the Mills; I’ll admit that. But I’m back now, and I demand that you undo the spell.”

“You don’t demand anything of jinns! Who do you think you are?” To my distress we were collecting quite a crowd. This was the most undignified moment of my jinnish career.

Karim was not at all put down by my indignation. I could have shot fire bolts at him till my fingernails scorched away, and he would have just dodged them, or more possibly, have thrown them back at me.

I should have remembered the condition of a young man in love; after all, I was a not-so-young man in love myself.

But this was no time for philosophical musings. Karim had me by my materialized throat, and he was squeezing.

I hated to do it, but it was an absolute necessity. I dematerialized.

His hands came together so fast that the fingernails of one scratched the palm of the other. He looked at them with dismay and amazement.

The crowd was absolutely awestruck. They were muttering that it must have been a spirit, a magician, a ghost. They pulled away from Karim as though he were tainted.

Malek leaned against a wall, and laughed his gentle laugh. “It was a jinni,” he told the people. “The Jinni of Baghdad . . . Karim, some things you can’t do by brawn and anger. You’ll have to learn.”

Karim was still angry. All he said was: “Let’s get on to the palace.”

I followed them there, discreetly dematerialized, floating over their heads . . .

Quite a crowd of men had decided to try out for the hand of the Princess Amina and the
leewan
of the Sultan. They stood there, waiting while Ghamal read the proclamation about the blue rose, and then had the chamberlain repeat it. It was wordy, and it didn’t add a thing to the short speech I’d made in the great hall, but I suppose it was necessary, to lend dignity to the proceedings.

Bored, I floated around and looked over the contenders. Prince Osman, of course, and the sons of almost every emir and sheik in Arabia. Several rich merchants, and a number of young Army officers. I had specified that the fellaheen were to be admitted to the contest, but except for Karim none had turned out. He was the only man there without a horse and a jeweled scimitar.

Just to remind him that a jinni is not lightly mocked, I materialized a horse and a fine cavalry saber, and put the reins of one in his hand, and the belt of the other around his waist.

The stubborn young thief was still trying to get along without me; he dropped the reins, tried to unbuckle the sword belt.

I welded the buckle shut with one touch of my invisible fingers.

The crowd of contenders, bored with Ghamal’s long-winded proclamation, gradually realized there was something to look at: the rather amazing spectacle of a young man trying to unbuckle his own belt, and unable to get anywhere with it. They began to laugh at Karim.

He was not the man to enjoy that. His efforts redoubled, but, of course, to absolutely no avail. Finally he gave up, picked up the horse’s reins again. I wished I’d made it a camel, just to humble Karim a little, but I’d done enough conjuring for one day. I didn’t change the species of the animal.

The proclamation ended, an imam climbed to the top of the mosque opposite the palace to bless the contenders, and then the young men streaked off toward the east.

I floated up to the harem to see how the Princess Amina was. No change; still unconscious under my spell.

But I was embarrassed. The Lady Mariam had taken advantage of the fact that the whole palace was concentrated on the proclamation to entertain a captain of the palace guards.

For a young and—I had thought—inexperienced girl, she certainly was entertaining. I learned a thing or two I’d never dreamed of before.

But it didn’t bother me. I was on my way to the Rocky Sands, and the Lady Jinni thereof. Legitimately, on the purest of jinnish business.

11

A
s I floated leisurely over the eastering suitors, I could hear their voices rising in the thin desert air; they were shouting boasts to each other, as young men do at the beginning of a journey . . . Before I was through with them, they’d be silent enough! They were up against a jinni with many years of experience in trying vainglorious boasters.

I nose-dived down to see how Karim was doing. He rode in the rear of the cavalcade, sparing the horse I had given him; he was showing sense. He rode well; I wondered if he had been a horse thief before he became a cutpurse.

Passing him, still at the height of a young palm tree, I listened more closely to the other suitors. Osman was riding alongside a richly dressed young man with circled eyes and a sulky, sensual mouth.

“You are heir to one of the richest fortunes in all Arabia,” Osman was saying. “And I am of the great house of Mossul. Is it fitting then, O Fajid, that we ride in competition with a thief and gutter-scum?”

“Oh, I shall camp by myself at night,” Fajid said. “Of course, you are always welcome to drop over for a nargileh and a bit of grape juice, O Prince,” he added tactfully. “But as for most of these fellows—they’ll be gone at the first of the Seven Gates, you’ll see. I mean, after all, they rather lack our advantages, don’t you see. A scrub pony can hardly keep up with a perfectly bred charger of the Hyksis strain, can he?”

Little as I liked Prince Osman, I sympathized with him; I have had to deal with fools too often. The Prince sighed and said: “Conceived in poverty and reared in hunger as this thief was, still he is resourceful and wily. And capable, of course, of deceptions and deceits beneath the notice of one of us.”

Anything beneath Prince Osman would have hit water in the driest part of the Sahara. But the blackest hearts are often in the same body as the whitest tongues.

“Oh, come now,” Fajid said. “I can speak Latin and Greek, and even multiply and divide. My father spared nothing in my education.”

His father was well known to me. He had made his money by dyeing the coats of stolen camels. The dye had been bought with the dowry of his Syrian wife, whose family had paid well to get her an Arabian husband.

“It was my thought that we purify this expedition tonight,” Prince Osman said, “by eliminating the Thief while we are camped. If you were to engage him in conversation, I could come up behind him and . . .” Instead of finishing the sentence, Osman touched the jeweled dagger at his belt.

Fajid smirked. “Ah, he’d probably be so overcome with honor if I were to talk to him, that he’d swoon with delight. Besides, he’ll be tired, after a day in the saddle. The lower classes are never at home on a horse, of course.”