Alif the Unseen

  “I don’t think what you’re talking about is a modern issue,” said NewQuarter, “I think we’re going back to the way things used to be, before a bunch of European intellectuals in tights decided to draw a line between what’s rational and what’s not. I don’t think our ancestors thought the distinction was necessary.”

  The sheikh considered this for a moment.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “I suppose every innovation started out as a fantasy. Once upon a time, students of Islamic law were encouraged to give free reign to their imaginations. For example, in the medieval era there was a great discussion about the point at which one is obligated to enter a state of ritual purity while traveling to the Hajj. If you were on foot, when? If you went by boat, when? If by camel, when? And then one student, having exhausted all earthly possibilities, posed this question: what if one were to fly? The proposition was taken as a serious exercise in the adaptability of the law. As a result, we had rules governing air travel during Hajj five hundred years before the invention of the commercial jet.”

  Alif lay down on his sleeping mat.

  “I’m not sure whether that makes me feel better or worse,” he said. His limbs were heavy with sleep. “I wish you would come back with us, uncle.”

  “I won’t be alone. The convert will stay also, you know, until after her child is born.”

  “Wonder what that little prize will look like,” said NewQuarter, pulling a face. He slid off his sandals and flopped down on the mat next to Alif ’s. “He’ll probably have fur. Or fangs. Where will he live? How does one go about being half-hidden?”

  “She,” said Alif.

  “Sorry?”

  “She, not he. The baby.”

  “As you like.” NewQuarter shut his eyes, pillowing his head on his arms. Alif did likewise, listening to Sheikh Bilal hum as he removed his head cloth and shoes.

  The air was warm and tonic, carrying with it the scent of date sugar. Alif heard Dina’s muffled laugh from inside the marid’s house, echoed by the convert’s voice, raised in some lighthearted protest. He thought of the City and what returning to it might mean, and about his mother, alone with the maid in their little duplex, fearing him dead. It seemed significant to him that during his time in prison he had only been able to look back at his life in Baqara District, and not forward to what it might be again. Even if he and NewQuarter succeeded, even if the jinn were able to stave off the Hand’s demons, he might, like the sheikh, go back to the wreckage of a life.

  “Alif,” said NewQuarter, voice slurred with fatigue. “Is this going to work?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Alif. “If we screw up, we won’t live long enough to have to deal with the consequences.”

  “Good point,” said NewQuarter.

  A bird—if there were birds in the Empty Quarter—called from somewhere overhead: a trilling, edge-of-night song, like a sparrow’s imitation of a nightingale. He felt his thoughts go soft, and was soon overtaken by sleep. He had not been out for long when a dream settled on him: he saw the marid’s courtyard, and Sheikh Bilal’s sleeping figure, and NewQuarter, and himself, but the sky overhead was a dark, saturated, moonless blue, full of stars in constellations he had never seen. The sight arrested him, and he hovered silently above his sleeping body, staring upward.

  His reverie was interrupted by the sound of a woman crying. Unsettled, he looked around for its source, and saw a shadow in the doorway of the marid’s house: a golden, late-afternoon shadow, at odds with the blue darkness. It was Azalel. She came across the courtyard on velvet feet, covering her unveiled face with her hands. Her black-and-orange hair fell in disarray over her shoulders. The yellow robe she had worn the last time he had seen her was tattered and covered in dust, as though she had never removed it.

  “Hello?” called Alif awkwardly, surprised by the sound of his own voice. Azalel looked up at him with eyes slitted like a cat’s. The grief there was so wild and potent that Alif found himself afraid.

  “Are you—why are you—” It was difficult to speak.

  “I am here to see my brother’s child,” said Azalel in a low voice. “I like to watch her dream in her little womb.”

  Alif looked around helplessly.

  “Am I awake or asleep?” he asked.

  “Asleep.” She padded toward him, rubbing the tears from her eyes.

  “I miss Vikram too,” said Alif in a kinder voice. “I should ask you to forgive me. If it weren’t for the trouble I’m in he might still be alive.”

  Azalel shook her head.

  “No. He chose the moment of his death. It had little to do with you.” She lay down and curled up on the warm stone, close to where Alif was sleeping. He noticed with regret that his mouth was hanging open in an unattractive fashion.

  “You must have loved him very much,” said Alif timidly. Azalel smiled and closed her eyes as though remembering something pleasurable.

  “Sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes I hated him. We were lovers once—or perhaps he was my father, or we were enemies who reconciled. We’ve known each other for so long that we’ve forgotten.”

  Alif hoped his dismay didn’t show on whatever it was of him she could see. His sleeping face twitched faintly. Azalel stretched up her arms for him, waving her fingers entreatingly like a child reaching for a sweet. Alif backed away.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I love someone else.”

  “You said that last time.”

  “This time I mean it.”

  Azalel curled on to her back and stared up at him with a face that was tired and needy and reminded him perversely of his mother. “It’s all right. I just want to smell your hair. The smell of your hair hasn’t changed since you were a child.”

  Charmed and unwilling to hurt her, Alif lay down. He felt himself inhabit his body, waking for a brief moment as the blackand-orange cat nosed his temple, purring.

  “Dina always said you were a jinn,” he muttered, halfway between sleeping and waking. “I thought she was kidding.”

  “So did she. My pretty mud-children, playing on the roof . . .” The cat settled with her back to his chest. With bewildered guilt, Alif thought of the time when, as a small boy, he had attempted to trim her whiskers with a pair of scissors; he also remembered pulling her tail. It had never occurred to him to think it odd that she neither bit nor scratched him for it. As he slipped deeper into sleep, he heard her begin to sing: a soft, wordless cat-song of love gone and children grown, trilling and sad.

  “I’m scared I won’t be able to fix things,” his dreaming mind confessed.

  “Don’t worry,” came Azalel’s voice, sounding far away. “I’ll help you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

  The convert rested one hand on the gentle swell of her belly, still just barely noticeable beneath the generous cut of her robe. She smiled at Alif.

  “God willing. I’ll have the marid, and now Sheikh Bilal as well— and I have a feeling we’ll see each other again, one way or another.”

  Alif hoped that if this was true, it would be elsewhere, under a brighter and more comprehensible sky.

  “I’ll come back to see your daughter,” he promised. Vikram’s daughter, he added in his head, still baffled by the idea.

  “Good. I’d like that.” She reached out and pressed his shoulder. “Be careful.”

  “I’ll try.” Alif turned to Sheikh Bilal and kissed his hand. “Goodbye, uncle. It’s been a great privilege to know you.”

  “God save us, you talk as if I’m about to die.”The sheikh winked. “Knowing you has been a great test. However, it has brought me to this undreamt-of juncture, and for that, I thank you. Vikram was right—you will need every one of your wits in the days and years ahead. Use them well.”

  NewQuarter handed Alif his backpack. He shouldered it, and turned to see Dina coming out of the house shod incongruously in a pair of sneakers, a messenger bag slung over one shoulder.

&nbs
p; “Yalla bina?”

  “What’s in the bag?” asked NewQuarter, eyeing it.

  “Things we might need.”

  Alif glanced anxiously at the slender ankles visible beneath the hem of her robe, so fragile-looking, and remembered the grim sound of the shot that had penetrated her arm as they ran from the State security agent.

  “Maybe you should stay here until this has blown over,” he said. “It’s going to be dangerous.”

  “I know.That’s why I wore sneakers.” She moved to stand beside him, eyes crinkling in a smile. Alif suppressed the urge to take her hand. Sakina came through the garden gate with the marid billowing like a thundercloud behind her, arms crossed over its muscled chest.

  “Ready?” Sakina asked.

  A surge of adrenaline rose in Alif ’s chest, rushing outward into his limbs in a bloom of heat.

  “Ready,” he said.

  Sakina ushered them toward the gate. Alif turned one last time: the convert, the marid and Sheikh Bilal stood at the center of the courtyard like a tableau, watching silently. The water that splashed in the fountain seemed to speak for them. Alif raised one hand in an awkward farewell.

  “Peace be upon you,” called the sheikh.

  “And upon you,” said Alif. The gate closed behind him.

  Sakina led them along the street outside the marid’s house at a rapid pace, dodging around the murky assortment of street vendors and passersby that clogged the thoroughfare. The mosque that had so taken Sheikh Bilal appeared on their left: an airy, graceful structure of white stone, open on all sides, crowned by a dome that let in the rosy light of the sky. Alif glimpsed a number of pale figures inside, keening to themselves the words he had learned in infancy: Say: He is God the One, God the Absolute; He begets not, nor is He begotten; and there is none like unto Him.

  He tripped over the thong of one of his sandals, and wished for his own clothes; the robes NewQuarter had given him were beginning to feel affected, the garb of an elite to which he did not belong. Hobbling a few steps, he caught up with Sakina, following her braided head around a corner and down a flight of stone steps into a kind of subterranean market. The scent of oud-wood and and animal must filtered out from behind stalls crammed with bottles and boxes, cages of creatures with increasingly exotic plumage, gadgetry Alif recognized and much he didn’t. NewQuarter’s head bobbed in front of him, flashing white cloth among living shadows. He quickened his pace.

  The market wound around itself for several blocks, stopping at a kind of arched grate, through which Alif could see the desert. It was slippery against his vision: one moment he saw the pinkish sky and luminous dust of the Empty Quarter belonging to the jinn; the next he saw a more familiar landscape of yellow dunes and scalding blue above them.

  “Through here,” said Sakina, hoisting the grate upward with a powerful swing. “It will feel a little weird.”

  Alif looked back at Dina. Her eyes were clear and unafraid above her black veil.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  They stepped through one by one, disappearing into a confluence of light. Alif tasted ozone again, and something metallic, as though he had clamped down on a strip of tin foil with his teeth. He gasped, emerging into bright sand, and floundered to find his footing. He heard NewQuarter retching nearby.

  “Fuck,” the younger man said weakly, “I never want to do that again.”

  Dina sat down on the sand and fanned the lower half of her face with the loose edge of her veil. Sakina alone seemed unfazed, standing impatiently over them with her arms crossed.

  “Pull yourselves together,” she said. “We’re still many kilometers outside the City.”

  “You’re not saying we have to walk?” NewQuarter looked up at her in horror.

  “You don’t. But I do. And three mud-mades are a lot to carry.”

  “Carry—” Before NewQuarter had time to get the question out, they were pulled off their feet. Alif flailed in the air, encountering sand beneath one foot but not the other. A sudden jerk leveled his body above the flying earth. He closed his eyes against the tears dragged from them by the wind as it rushed past his face. He could hear Dina gasping for breath, and reached for her; his hand encountered only the hem of her robe. Their speed increased. Alif felt alarming pressure on his bowels and bladder, and fought the probable outcome; the concentration this involved distracted him, and in what seemed like another moment, he was tumbling down along a concrete sidewalk.

  Breathing deeply through his nose, he pressed his cheek against the ground. There was a sound behind him like claws grinding into asphalt, as from the land-bound steps of some giant bird of prey. He heard NewQuarter’s cry of surprise, and looked up: in front of them was a smashed storefront, its innards charred and looted. Alif got to his knees and then to his feet, ignoring, by instinct, the amorphous shape that was Sakina.

  As far as he could tell, they were in one of the ambivalent residential neighborhoods between the Old and New Quarters, not far from Baqara District. Yet the landscape was unrecognizable. Windows were black with smoke; open cafes deserted, the gates of duplexes and apartment buildings barred and locked. Along the wall of one building, the word ‘Enough’ was hastily spray-painted in Arabic and Urdu, dripping red chemical streaks toward the sidewalk.

  “What’s going on?” Dina’s voice was high with fear. “What’s happened?”

  “The Hand crashed the internet,” said Alif grimly. “And possibly the utility grids along with it.”

  “Looks like people got upset,” said NewQuarter, sounding very young.

  There was a scrambling noise in a nearby alley: Alif looked around the corner to see a cadre of teenage boys hurrying past with a flatscreen TV balanced between them. They resembled the dock boys who had harassed Dina as they sat on the water to eat lunch in another lifetime. A sensation that was neither fear nor excitement rose up from Alif ’s extremities.

  “NewQuarter,” said Alif, “Is this it? Is this our revolution?”

  “If it is, it’s already scaring the shit out of me,” said NewQuarter. “Where is everybody? Why are they stealing things? Is this really what happens when people can’t get into their Facebook accounts? Where is our glorious coup?”

  “You’ve got bigger problems,” said Sakina, condensing into a human shape. “I smell sulfur. There are dark things loose, and close by.”

  “He’s pulled out all the stops,” said Alif. “What is he so afraid of ?”

  “You, presumably,” said NewQuarter.

  “No way. He hates me, but not enough to go this nuts. Not enough to let a bunch of demons off the leash over the entire City.”

  “Them, then,” said Sakina. She pointed down the street. A low roar issued from around the corner. Alif ’s eyes widened. A mass of protestors appeared, marching dozens deep across the breadth of the boulevard, holding signs and placards in Arabic, Urdu, English, Malay; there were women bare-headed and veiled, old men in the red armbands of the Communist Party, men with beards and robes.

  “I suggest we clear the road,” said Sakina mildly. Alif bolted into the safety of an alley, with Dina and NewQuarter close behind. The mob moved past, chanting the people want justice and down with fear, down with State Security in something less than unison.

  “I can’t believe it,” said NewQuarter. “Are you seeing this?”

  “They’re marching together,” said Alif, half to himself. “All the disaffected scum at once. I probably know a lot of these people.”

  “We did this, akh. Computer geeks did this. We told these ruffians they could all have a voice, but they had to share the same virtual platform. And now that the virtual platform is gone—”

  “They have to share the real world.”

  “IRL.”

  “In real life.”

  “Holy shit.”

  Their reverie was interrupted by the sound of gunfire, and then by a low hiss. A canister of white gas rolled down the street toward the protestors. Alif glimpsed State Security police in bod
y armor a block away, wielding batons. At a distance they looked like a phalanx of black beetles, their eyes and mouths obscured by reflective face shields of tempered plastic. Alif thought of his captors at Al Basheera and felt a cramp in his midsection where their kicks had landed.

  “We need to get out of here,” quavered Dina.

  “Alif needs a working uplink,” said NewQuarter. “The plan was to get to my apartment.”

  “Is that still possible?” Sakina raised an eyebrow.

  Alif looked at her doubtfully.

  “Can you, umn—carry us, again?”

  She sighed.

  “Please,” said NewQuarter. “It’s not far. It’s a penthouse in the big white building off of Victory Square, on Boulevard 25 January. In the New Quarter. Obviously.”

  “Very well.” There was another jerk, and Alif was aloft again, stomach lurching toward his throat. The City coalesced below him into a matrix of dust-colored dots. Alif began to gasp as the air grew thin, and was on the verge of asking Sakina to set them down when she did just that, tumbling them one by one on to the roof of a large white condominium. Alif dropped to his knees and held his pounding head, distantly aware of some indelicate noises coming from NewQuarter’s direction.

  “I think I’m done with that particular mode of transportation,” quavered NewQuarter, rubbing one sleeve across his mouth. Sakina sniffed, looking insulted.