The Golem and the Jinni

  He’d followed them until at last on the horizon he spied a low band of green. It was the Ghouta, the oasis fed by the river that bordered ash-Sham. Reluctantly he’d slowed his pace and watched until the caravan became a thin wedge on the horizon, a spear-point piercing the Ghouta. The green belt might appear benign, but even the Jinni was not so rash as to travel into it. He was a jinni of the desert, and in the Ghouta’s lush fields he would be out of his element. There were stories of creatures there that didn’t take kindly to wayward jinn, and would trick them into the river, holding them under until they were extinguished. He decided to exercise caution for once and return home.

  The journey back had been long, and by the time he reached his palace a strange loneliness had settled over him. Perhaps it had to do with the caravan. He’d grown used to their conversation, their songs and stories; but he had no part in them, he merely overheard. Perhaps it had been too long since he’d sought out his own kind. He decided he would leave off chasing caravans, and go to the habitations of his clan, and dwell among them for a time. Perhaps he’d even seek out female companionship, a jinniyeh who might desire his attentions. He’d arrived at his palace at sunset, making plans to leave again in the morning—and there his memories ended.

  After that, only two images penetrated the haze. In the first, a man’s brown, gnarled hands clamped the iron cuff across his wrist, and with this image came the impression of searing cold and bottomless fear, a jinni’s natural reaction to iron—but how, he wondered, did he not feel it now? And then, the second image: a man’s leathered face, lips cracked and grinning, the bulging yellow eyes glowing in triumph. Wizard, the memory told him. But that was all; and in the next instant he was sprawled, naked and bound, on the floor of Arbeely’s shop.

  Except that it had not been only an instant. Apparently he’d been trapped in the flask for over a thousand years.

  It was Arbeely who’d managed to calculate that figure, while searching for clothes for his naked guest. He’d pressed the Jinni for anything he could remember from the world of men, something that might narrow down the year of his capture. After a few false starts, the Jinni had recalled the caravan guards talking of the Grand Mosque, the new building in ash-Sham. “They’d said that inside the mosque was the head of a man, but not his body,” he said. “It made no sense to me. I might have misunderstood.”

  But Arbeely assured the Jinni that he’d heard correctly. The head belonged to a man called John the Baptist, and the mosque was now known as the Umayyad Mosque—and it had stood in the city of ash-Sham for over a thousand years.

  It didn’t seem possible. How could he have been trapped for that long? Rare was the jinni that lived more than eight hundred years, and he himself had been nearing two hundred when he began to chase the caravans. But not only was he still alive, he felt no older than before. It was as though the flask had not only contained his body, but also paused him in time. He supposed that this way, a wizard could extend the usefulness of his captive for as long as possible.

  The flask now sat on a shelf in Arbeely’s shop. Like the iron cuff, it revealed nothing of its maker. Arbeely had shown him the partially erased pattern of scrollwork around its base—apparently a sort of magical stopper that had kept him sealed inside. But how did you fit in there with the olive oil? Arbeely had asked, a puzzle not nearly as interesting to the Jinni as how he’d allowed himself to be captured and bound to human form in the first place. Perhaps the wizard had followed him to the jinn habitations, or laid some sort of trap. He wondered if the wizard had treated him like one of Sulayman’s slaves, forcing him to build pleasure palaces and slaughter enemies at his command. Or had the wizard simply cast him aside, like an enticing trinket that, once acquired, loses its appeal?

  Of course, the man would be dead by now. The wizards of legend had been powerful indeed, but still mortal. The yellow-eyed man had long since gone to dust. And whatever enchantment he’d placed upon the Jinni, his death had not lifted it. The thought came, crawling, hideous: he might be trapped like this forever.

  No. He pushed the thought away. He would not accept defeat so easily.

  He looked down at the iron railing, then gripped it with both hands, concentrating. He was near exhaustion; the confinement in the flask had apparently destroyed his strength—but even so, within a few moments the metal was glowing a dull red. He tightened his grip and then let go, leaving behind an outline of his fingers pressed into the railing. No, he wasn’t helpless. He was still a jinni, one of the most powerful of his kind. And there were always ways.

  He was beginning to shiver, but he ignored it. Instead he turned and gazed up at the city that rose from the water’s edge, the enormous square buildings that reached far into the heavens, their windows set with perfect panes of glass. As fantastical as cities like ash-Sham and al-Quds had seemed from the caravan men’s tales, the Jinni doubted that they’d been half so wondrous or terrifying as this New York. If he must be marooned in an unknown land, surrounded by a deadly ocean, and constrained to one weak and imperfect form, at least he’d ended up somewhere worth exploring.

  Arbeely stood a few feet away, watching the glow of the iron railing fade beneath the Jinni’s hands. It still seemed impossible that this could be happening while the rest of the city went about its business, unchanged and unknowing. He wanted to grab the nearest passerby and shout: Look at this man! He isn’t a man at all! See what he’s done to the railing! He supposed that if he wanted to be hauled off to the lunatic asylum, there were worse ways to go about it.

  He looked out across the bay, trying to see it through the Jinni’s eyes. He wondered how he himself would feel, to wake up and discover that over a thousand years had passed. It would be enough to drive anyone mad. But the Jinni only stood straight-backed and grim, staring at the water. He didn’t look like a man about to run amok. The dirty, too-small clothes he wore clashed ludicrously with his figure and features, hanging from him as though in apology. He turned his back to the water and gazed at the buildings massed at the park’s edge. It was only then that Arbeely noticed that the Jinni was shaking from head to toe.

  The Jinni took a step from the railing. His knees buckled, and he fell.

  Arbeely lunged and caught him before he hit the ground, and hoisted him to his feet. “Are you ill?”

  “No,” the Jinni muttered. “Cold.”

  They made their way back to the shop, Arbeely half-supporting, half-carrying his new acquaintance. Once inside, the Jinni stumbled to the banked forge and collapsed, leaning against its scorching side. The borrowed work shirt smoldered where it touched the metal, but he didn’t seem to notice. He closed his eyes. After a while his shaking stopped, and Arbeely decided he’d fallen asleep.

  The man sighed and looked about. There was the copper flask, sitting on the shelf, but he didn’t want to think about it for the moment. He needed an easy task, something quiet and calming. He found a teakettle with a hole in the bottom, brought to him by a local restaurant owner. Perfect: he could patch a teakettle in his sleep. He cut a patch from a sheet of tin plate, heated both kettle and patch, and set to work.

  Occasionally he glanced at his guest, and wondered what would happen when he woke. Even silent and unmoving, the Jinni carried a strange air about him—as though he were not quite real, or else the only real thing in the room. Arbeely supposed that others would sense it as well, but he doubted they’d ever guess at its meaning. The young mothers of Little Syria still tied iron beads around their babies’ wrists and made gestures to ward off the Evil Eye, but out of tradition and fond superstition more than true fear. This new world was far removed from the tales of their grandmothers—or at least so they’d thought.

  Not for the first time he wished he had a confidant, someone with whom he could share even the most outrageous secret. But in the tightly knit community, Boutros Arbeely was something of an outsider, even a recluse, happiest at his forge. He was terrible at idle chitchat, and at wedding banquets could be found sitting
alone at a table, examining the stamp-marks on the cutlery. His neighbors greeted him warmly on the street, but never lingered long to talk. He had many acquaintances, but few close friends.

  It had been no different in Zahleh. In a family of women he’d been the silent, dreaming boy-child. He’d discovered smithing by lucky accident. Sent to run an errand, he’d stopped in front of the local forge and watched, fascinated, as a sweating man hammered a sheet of metal until it became a bucket. It was the transformation that enthralled him: useless to useful, nothing to something. He returned over and over to watch until the smith, exasperated with being spied upon, offered to take on the boy as an apprentice. And so smithing came to fill Arbeely’s life, to the near exclusion of all else; and though he supposed in a vague way that someday he’d find a wife and start a family, he was content with things as they were.

  But now, glancing at his guest’s prone form, he felt a premonition of lasting change. It was the same as when he’d been seven years old and heard his mother’s rising wail through the open window as she learned of her husband’s death, killed by bandits on the road from Beirut. Now as then, he sensed the threads of his life scattering and rearranging before this new and overwhelming thing that had landed among them.

  “What is that you’re doing?”

  Arbeely jumped. The Jinni hadn’t moved, but his eyes were open; Arbeely wondered how long he’d been watching. “I’m patching a teakettle,” he said. “Its owner left it on the stove too long.”

  The Jinni inclined his head toward the kettle. “And what metal is that?”

  “It’s two metals,” said Arbeely. “Steel, dipped in tin.” He found a scrap on the table and held it out to the Jinni, pointing out the layers with his fingernail. “Tin, steel, tin. You see? The tin is too soft to use on its own, and with steel there’s the problem of rust. But together like this, they’re very strong, and versatile.”

  “I see. Ingenious.” He sat up straighter, and held out his hand to the teakettle. “May I?” Arbeely handed him the kettle, and the Jinni peered at it, turning it over in his now-steady hands. “I assume the difficulty lies in thinning the edges of the patch without exposing the steel.”

  “That’s it exactly,” said Arbeely, surprised.

  The Jinni laid his hand over the patch. After a few moments, he began to carefully rub the patch around its edges. Arbeely watched, dumbfounded, as the outline of the patch disappeared.

  The Jinni handed the teakettle back to Arbeely. It was as though the hole had never been.

  “I have a proposition for you,” said the Jinni.

  Spring rains can come on suddenly in the desert. On the morning after the Jinni returned from following the caravan to the Ghouta, the skies clouded over, releasing first a thin patter of raindrops, and then a respectable downpour. The dry riverbeds and gullies began to run with water. The Jinni watched the rain sluice down the walls and crenellations of his palace, irritated at the inconvenience. He had planned to depart for the jinn habitations at first light, but now he would have to wait.

  And so he roamed his glass halls, examining the metalwork and making idle changes here and there to pass the time. His thoughts returned to the men of the caravan, their conversations and jests. He remembered the old man’s songs about the Bedouin, and wondered if the men in them had truly been so brave, the women so beautiful. Or were they only invented legends, the details altered and exaggerated over time?

  For three days the rains came and went, three days of infuriating confinement. If the Jinni had been able to go outside, and chase himself to the ends of the earth, then his growing obsession with the world of men might have dissipated, and he might have gone to visit the jinn habitations of his youth, as planned. But when the clouds exhausted themselves and the Jinni at last emerged to a newly washed landscape, he found that all thoughts of returning to his own people had vanished with the rains.

  3.

  The Golem was not even a few hours in New York before she began to long for the relative calm of the ship. The din of the streets was incredible; the noise in her head was worse. At first it nearly paralyzed her, and she hid under an awning as the desperate thoughts of the pushcart vendors and paperboys rode ahead of their shouting voices: the rent is due, my father will beat me, please somebody buy the cabbages before they spoil. It made her want to slap her hands over her ears. If she’d had any money, she would’ve given it all away, just to quiet the noise.

  Passersby glanced her up and down, taking in her staring eyes, the dirty and disheveled dress, the ludicrous men’s coat. The women frowned; some of the men smirked. One man, weaving drunk, grinned at her and approached, his thoughts bleary with lust. To her surprise she realized this was one desire she had no wish to fulfill. Repulsed, she dashed to the other side of the street. A streetcar came rattling around the corner and missed her by a hair. The conductor’s curses trailed her as she hurried away.

  She wandered for hours, through streets and alleys, turning corners at random. It was a humid July day, and the city began to stink, a pungent mix of rotting garbage and manure. Her dress had dried, though the river silt still clung to it in flaking sheets. The woolen coat made her even more conspicuous as the rest of the city sweltered. She too was hot, but not uncomfortable—rather, it made her feel loose-limbed and slow, as though she were wading through the river again.

  Everything she saw was new and unknown, and there seemed to be no end to it. She was frightened and overwhelmed, but an intense curiosity lay beneath the fear, leading her on. She peered inside a butcher’s shop, trying to make sense of the plucked birds and strings of sausages, the red oblong carcasses that hung from hooks. The butcher saw her and started to come around the counter; she gave him a quick, placating smile, and walked on. The thoughts of passersby flew through her mind, but they led to no answers, only more questions. For one thing, why did everyone need money? And what exactly was money? She’d thought it merely the coins she saw exchanging hands; but it was so ubiquitous in both fear and desire that she decided there was a larger mystery to it, one she had yet to decipher.

  She skirted the edge of a fashionable district, and the shop windows began to fill with dresses and shoes, hats and jewelry. In front of a milliner’s she stopped to gaze at an enormous, fantastical hat on a pedestal, its wide band bedecked with netting and fabric rosettes and a gigantic, sweeping ostrich plume. Fascinated, the Golem leaned forward and put one hand on the glass—and the thin pane shattered beneath her touch.

  She jumped back as a rain of shards tumbled from the window and scattered onto the sidewalk. In the shop, two well-dressed women stared out at her, hands over their mouths.

  “I’m sorry,” the Golem whispered, and ran away.

  Afraid now, she hurried through alleys and across busy thoroughfares, trying not to blunder into pedestrians. The neighborhoods shifted around her, changing block to block. Grubby-looking men and indignant shopkeepers shouted at one another, airing grievances in a dozen languages. Children dashed home from shoeshine stands and games of stickball, thinking eagerly of supper.

  A sort of mental exhaustion began to set in, dulling her thoughts. She headed eastward, following the tips of the shadows, and found herself in a neighborhood that bustled with less chaos and more purpose. Shopkeepers were rolling up their awnings and locking their doors. Bearded men walked slowly next to each other, talking with intensity. Women stood chatting on corners, string-tied packages in their arms, children pulling at their skirts. The language they spoke was the same one she’d used with Rotfeld, the language she’d known upon waking. After the day’s riot of words, hearing it again was a small, familiar comfort.

  She slowed now, and looked around. Next to her a tenement stoop beckoned; she’d seen men and women, young and old, sitting on such stoops all day. She tucked her skirts beneath herself and sat down. The stone was warm through her dress. She watched people’s faces as they came and went. Most were tired and distracted, occupied with their own thoughts. Men began to
arrive home from their shifts, exhaustion on their faces and hunger in their bellies. She saw in their minds the meals they were about to tuck into, the thick dark bread spread with schmaltz, the herring and pickles, the mugs of thin beer. She saw their hopes for a cooling breeze, a good night’s sleep.

  A loneliness like fatigue pulled at her. She couldn’t sit on the stoop forever, she must move on; but for the moment, it felt easier to stay where she was. She rested her head against the brick of the balustrade. A pair of small brown birds was pecking in the dust at the bottom of the stoop, unconcerned by the tramping feet of passersby. One of the birds fluttered up the steps and landed next to the Golem. It prodded at the stone with its sharp beak, then turned sideways and hopped onto the Golem’s thigh.

  She was surprised but managed to hold perfectly still as the bird perched in her lap, bobbing and pecking at the remains of the riverbed silt that still dusted her skirt. Thin, hard feet scratched at her through the fabric. Slowly, very slowly, she extended a hand. The bird hopped onto her palm and stood there, balanced. With her other hand she stroked its back. It sat patiently as she felt its soft sleek feathers, the tiny fluttering heartbeat. She smiled, fascinated. It tilted its head and looked at her with a round unblinking eye, then pecked once at her fingers, as though she were simply another patch of earth. For a moment they regarded each other; and then it gathered itself and flew away.