The Golem and the Djinni. Helene Wecker
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 djinniyeh 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 djinn’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 Djinni 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 Djinni 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 Djinni 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 djinn 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 Djinni 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 djinn 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 Djinni, 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 djinn, 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 Djinni 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 Djinni’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 Djinni’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 Djinni 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 Djinni was shaking from head to toe.
The Djinni 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 Djinni muttered. “Cold.”
They made their way back to the shop, Arbeely half-supporting, half-carrying his new acquaintance. Once inside, the Djinni 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 Djinni 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