Alif the Unseen (21 page)

Anxiety pinched Alif’s midsection. He felt tired and sick, unwilling to be the cause of such potential humiliation. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“No matter. In God’s eyes whatever will happen has already ened. You don’t need to look so guilty.”

“I don’t know another way to look.” Alif bent over yet another footprint. He was nearing the great copper doors where his muddy path began. For the first time he became aware
of the profound silence of the place, insulated by stone and metal from the noise of the street outside. It gave the mosque a sympathetic air, as if it could speak but chose instead to listen. An
early memory surfaced: he was six years old and his father, still often at home in those days, deemed him big enough to attend Friday prayers. They had come here, hand in hand, and prayed in this
musala
—perhaps it had even been a younger Sheikh Bilal who gave the sermon, of which Alif remembered only a deeply intoned
ameen
resonating from the domed roof. He had been
happy. He put down the brush and curled up on his side, overwhelmed. The carpet was damp and soapy beneath his cheek.

“My poor dear boy. This won’t do at all.” Alif heard cloth rustle and felt Sheikh Bilal’s hand on his shoulder. “You mustn’t despair. Much too early for that.
You’re clearly exhausted—here, get up. Leave that last bit. I’ll have one of the cleaning women do it. You need to rest.”

Alif let the old man propel him out of the
musala
. Sheikh Bilal smelled of napthalene, lotus oil, and laundry detergent—grandfatherly scents that put Alif at ease. In a room
across the hall from the office where they had taken tea, he unfolded an old camp bed that left a rusty streak where it had been leaning against the wall, muttering to himself as he wrestled it
open.

“There. Lie down. Let’s say that you are safe here. It’s functionally true, for the moment. The sunset prayer will start in a few minutes—I’ll lock the door on my
way out.”

Alif nodded, already on the verge of sleep. When he heard the click of the lock in the door, he burrowed into the musty camp bed and closed his eyes. Sleep did not come. His heart beat
erratically, stimulated by adrenaline and the sheikh’s black tea. Reaching beneath the bed, he pulled the
Alf Yeom
from his backpack and flipped through its pages with idle
restlessness. His eyes fell on a strange transliteration of a familiar word.

“
Feh-kaf-reh-mim,
” he muttered. “Vikram.”

In the land of Hind, which in our language means a sword so sharp it cuts without a sound, there lived a great king named Vikram. He was both handsome and noble, as kings ought
to be. His people loved him when he was successful in war and lowered taxes and hated him when he was not and did not, as people are wont to do. For many years his realm was prosperous and his
reign fruitful.

One day, however, a troupe of villagers from a far province came to him with their faces full of fear: a vampire spirit from among the djinn, which the people of Hind call a
vetala,
had
taken up residence in a banyan tree outside the town and terrorized the villagers at night. They begged King Vikram to intervene. Being both humble and brave, the king promised to dispatch the
vetala
himself.

King Vikram took his fastest horse and rode at once to the village in the far province. At midnight, under a full moon, he confronted the
vetala
as it hung by its feet
from the banyan tree. Though the creature was a terrible thing, more shadow than substance, with the countenance of a jackal, King Vikram was master of his fear.

“You are not welcome here,” said King Vikram. “As lord of this village, I order you to return to the unseen lands from which you came.”

The
vetala
laughed.

“I recognize no lord,” it said. “And I find this tree and this village rather pleasant. I think I’ll stay.”

The king drew his sword. The
vetala
merely laughed the louder.

“Don’t bother,” it said. “I would kill you before your blow fell. But since you have proven yourself both brave and stubborn, I will agree to leave this place if you can
best me in a game of wits.”

“I will gladly try,” said King Vikram.

The
vetala
folded one ankle against its knee, assuming the yogic position of the Hanged Man, in order to better channel its wits.

“Very well,” it said. “I am a mighty fortress, sheathed in stone.”

King Vikram thought for a moment.

“I am a catapult,” he said. “Stone-breaking, fortress-sundering.”

“I am a saboteur,” countered the
vetala
. “Oath-breaker, weapon-disabler.”

“I am ill luck,” said King Vikram. “Upending plots, dismaying plans.”

The
vetala
was favorably impressed.

“I am fortune,” it said. “I crown luck with destiny.”

“I am free will,” said King Vikram. “I challenge destiny with choice.”

“I am divine will,” said the
vetala,
“to which choice and destiny are one and the same.”

“I am myself,” said King Vikram. “The only thing that is mine to give, by choice or by destiny.”

The
vetala
was silent. It stretched out its legs and dropped from the tree, moving to stand in front of King Vikram.

“How very clever you are for a human,” it said. “You’ve won, but you’ve also trapped yourself. Which I feel you must have known would happen.”

“I was prepared for that possibility when I came here,” said the king. “Otherwise I would not have come at all.”

“Then you are honest as well as clever,” said the
vetala
. “A pity you’ve given yourself to me.”

“You will uphold your end of the bargain?”

“You have my word. I will leave this village and never return. But then again, neither will you.”

King Vikram took off his sword and attached it to his horse’s saddle and with a sharp whistle sent the animal cantering back down the road that led to the capital city. He then faced the
vetala
once more.

“Do what you are going to do,” he said.

“Very well,” said the
vetala
. “I honor you, King Vikram, as will all my race, for you have demonstrated true nobility: the willingness to sacrifice the greatest of
your possessions for the least of your dependents.”

With that, the
vetala
entered King Vikram’s body and assumed its shape. True to its word, it left the village, traveling west to the land of the Hyksos, known today as the Arabs.
King Vikram’s memory was ever after honored among both djinn and men, and many histories were attributed to his name.

Alif closed the book with a laugh that verged on hysterical even to his own ears. A strange admixture of fatigue and giddiness ran through his body as a tremor. It was too late to war with
belief or disbelief; all he felt was exhaustion. He curled up on his side like a baby, succumbing at last to sleep.

He dreamed he wandered in the desert. Milky dunes spread out beneath his feet, under a sky from which stars and moon were absent. He had been on a road: the elevated highway that ran west out of
the City, into the oil fields. But at some point he had lost his way, and now not even the lights of the New Quarter were visible in the advancing landscape. At this time of night the sand was
glacially cold. Alif wasn’t wearing any shoes. The desert stole warmth from the soles of his feet, then his ankles and shins, until he was dead from the knees down and dragged his limbs like
a sleepwalker.

He was waiting for someone. She appeared on the lip of a dune, wearing one of Intisar’s jet-trimmed black veils.

“Princess!” Alif waved his arms, not trusting his icy legs to carry him up the dune.

Princess Farukhuaz turned and looked, eyes crinkling with recognition, and slipped gracefully down the sand toward him. She was barefoot also, her feet pale and white-gold.

“You’re wrong about a lot of things,” Alif told her. “There is nothing you can do with a sphere that you can’t do with a straight line.”

She shook her head. The beads in her veil quivered musically.

“I could do it,” said Alif, growing impatient. “I could out-program your book. I know all the right codes, even if I don’t understand them.”

Her laugh seemed to come up from the frozen sand.

“And we’re not all like that,” Alif continued. “I would have done anything for Intisar. Her love was like three kebab meals to me, with tahini and hot peppers. I never
took her for granted. Never.”

“You’re always talking about her when I’m trying to talk about something else.”

Alif realized with surprise that the woman underneath the veil was Dina. The feet peeking out from beneath her robe, which had been palest gold a moment earlier, were now a ruddy copper.

“What do you mean?” he asked, baffled.

“I won’t let him in,” she replied, in a voice not hers. “If you are really his friends, fine, but that—that
thing
is not setting foot inside this
mosque.”

There was a pause.

“I said stay out!” Dina screamed.

* * *

Alif jerked awake on the camp bed. There was a commotion outside his door. Blinking rapidly, he attempted to clear his head. He heard raised voices: Sheikh Bilal’s, and
those of two distressed women. Over all three boomed a malicious, sarcastic laugh.

“Don’t worry, old man. I promise not to eat you. The walls will not bleed. The Messenger walked among us in our own country, and we heard the Warning. Let me in.”

Alif stumbled toward the door of his room and jiggled the lock, still half-asleep. It jerked open from the outside. Sheikh Bilal stood in front of him, all color drained from his face.

“Some girls are here to see you,” he whispered. “And they’ve brought—God protect us from Satan—”

Alif pushed past him into the hallway and jogged across the
musala
. It was very dark. The great skylights cut into the dome above admitted only thin, pinkish streams of illumination
from the street lamps outside. The copper doors were open a crack and Alif recognized the convert’s pale, puffy face in the gap.

“Alif!” she hissed. “Jesus Christ! Why haven’t you answered any of my texts?”

“Hello,” he muttered in English.

“You see? I told you he was here.” Vikram’s yellow eyes glowed, floating in the dark above the convert’s head.

“How did you find me?” asked Alif incredulously.

“Your smell,” said Vikram. “You reek of electricity and hot metal. I’ve never smelled anything like it. Little sister was hysterical when we lost you so I went sniffing
around the City hither and yon until I caught your scent.”

Dina, damp strands of black hair trailing out from her veil, squeezed through the opening in the doors, into the
musala,
with a frightened cry. She was wearing her own clothes again;
the black robe and veil looked freshly laundered.

“Don’t do that!” she quavered. “Don’t leave me with people I don’t know and disappear.”

“I’m sorry! Those men from State ambushed me when I was waiting for Intisar—”

Dina shrieked. Alif turned in time to see Sheikh Bilal swing a broom through the open door, toward Vikram.

“Stop, stop!” Alif batted at the broom head with his hands. “He’s all right! He’s helping me!”

Panting, Sheikh Bilal dropped the broom.

“I don’t know what you’re mixed up in,” he said in a low voice, “but if it means letting young girls run around the City at night unchaperoned, with this—this
creature,
then I’m not sure I can offer you my protection any longer.”

Eyeing the broom, the convert squeezed into the
musala
. Alif looked from Vikram to the sheikh.

“What do you mean, creature?” he asked.

“This! That thing in the doorway! Dogs are not meant to speak, or go on two legs when they should be on four.”

“You seem to have found a holy man,” said Vikram blithely.

“He’s not as bad as he looks,” said Alif, a note of pleading in his voice. “He saved our lives.”

“I’m sorry, did you say a
dog
?” the convert interjected. “The Arabic of mine is not a hundred in a hundred.”

Sheikh Bilal mopped his brow with one sleeve.

“All right,” he said. “Recite the Fatiha, oh, hidden one, and I will let you in.”

“In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful,” purred Vikram. “Praise be to God, Lord of Worlds. The Beneficent, the Merciful. Master of the Day of Reckoning. You we
worship and to You we turn for aid. Show us the straight path, the path of those whom You have favored, not of those who earn Your anger, nor of those who go astray.
Ameen
.” He
grinned. “You see? It hasn’t burned my tongue.”

“That means nothing,” muttered Sheikh Bilal, pulling the door wider. “The Devil is said to be wise.”

“I’m not the Devil,” said Vikram. He bounded inside. “Here, old man—is this better?”

Sheikh Bilal pressed a hand to his forehead as though he felt faint. Coming to again, he frowned at Vikram in surprise.