The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories Read online

  He turned his face in the direction of the voice and saw a boy his age, with flame red hair and eyes to match. The boy put a finger to his lips, and looked away. Qasim bent further forward at the waist, but just before his forehead touched the carpet he saw movement in the darkness of the doorway, a swirling. He drew back a little and the carpet was a carpet again.

  “What is it?” he said, softly, but the boy jinn next to him only said the words of prayer out loud, his example somehow conveying an instruction for Qasim to emulate him.

  And so Qasim prayed with the congregation of jinn, whose prayer was just like the prayer of men. Each of the jinn had flame-red hair – why hadn’t he seen it as soon as he entered? – and other than the boy jinn, they were taller than the tallest of men in the village. When the prayers ended, each jinn turned to embrace the jinn beside him. Qasim turned to the boy jinn who turned to him, and their arms went around each other, and Qasim hadn’t realised until then that his heart had never known love – how to feel love and be loved, both. The embrace lasted longer than Qasim’s whole life and still was too short. When the boy jinn drew away, Qasim wept, and the boy jinn wept with him.

  “It is their time now,” the jinn imam said, and all the jinn, including the boy jinn, fell to their knees and prostrated themselves one final time – and when their foreheads touched the darkness of the doorways they fell through it, every one of them, a head-first plummet. Then there was silence. Qasim was alone in the mosque and the carpet was a dull green and the flowers along the border were of a colour he couldn’t call red now that he understood red.

  He was standing in the centre of the mosque looking around, when the men of his village entered – his father, and uncles, and brothers, and all the rest of them.

  “How did you get here? You were sleeping when we left,” his father said. “Your mother said we shouldn’t wake you because you hadn’t been well yesterday.”

  Qasim looked at his father, his brothers, his uncles, all the men who made up his world. He thought of his mother, whispering prayers over him the night before while pressing a wet cloth to his forehead.

  Why didn’t you let me follow you? he wondered, looking at the place where the boy jinn had stood.

  FOR THE NEXT few weeks he went to the mosque in the darkness before dawn every morning, but the jinn never showed themselves to him again. Sometimes from the corner of his eye he thought he might have seen a flickering flame, a movement in the darkness, but when he looked directly at it, it disappeared.

  The world he had always lived happily in stopped having any meaning for him. Food was tasteless, sleep brought no rest, company was no longer companionable. One morning his mother asked him, not for the first time, what was wrong, and he shook his head, not for the first time, to say he couldn’t speak of it.

  “Maybe he’s possessed by a jinn,” his little brother said, and Qasim brought his hands to his face and wept.

  “I’m not,” he said. “He didn’t want to stay with me.”

  That evening, Qasim’s mother walked with him to Gulab Baba’s shrine and said, “Now you need to hear the story of your birth.”

  Qasim had always known that his mother was not the woman who had given birth to him. That woman – his father’s first wife – had died in childbirth, and her sister had married the widower and raised her nephew as her son. When she and Qasim’s father had children of their own, they were Qasim’s brothers and sisters, not his cousins. And so he had never missed, and rarely thought about, the woman buried in the graveyard near the tree on which his infant clothes hung in tatters.

  The woman who had always been his mother sat down on the verandah of the shrine, and pulled him down beside her.

  “You’re old enough now to be made to understand how the world works. When we are young and strong, we raise our children; when we are old and infirm, they look after us. For a couple to be without children is the greatest of sorrows, but there are times by God’s will when one or other is unable to have a child of their own blood. If the woman is at fault, the man can have other wives, and their children will be children to the childless woman too. But if the man is at fault, then the situation is much more serious. In the time of Gulab Baba, there was a man who had been to war and came back unable to lie with his wife in the way that was necessary. He went to see Gulab Baba, the most pious of men in the village, who said, my son, you defended all our lives with your valour and in return I will pray to God to send you a child. Tell your wife to come and pray with me, so that the Almighty might hear the combined prayers of his devoted servant and a woman in need. The man sent his wife, seven nights in a row, and nine months later a child was born. You understand what I’m telling you?”

  “God heard their prayers?”

  “In a manner of speaking. When word of what happened came about, another man, who had married three women and still had no children, sent all his wives to pray with Gulab Baba. And nine months later, all three of them had children. Soon, more and more men began to send their wives to him. Gulab Baba himself had four sons, and as he grew older it was the sons increasingly who stayed up all night praying with the women. You understand now?”

  “He raised his sons to be as pious as him?”

  “Hmmm, something like that. When Gulab Baba was dying, he asked for this shrine to be built in his memory. He said that as long as the men of his line stayed on as guardians of the shrine, God would continue to hear their prayers, with those of the childless women. And all these generations later, that truth still holds. In a manner of speaking.”

  “And I was born because of the prayers of your sister and the guardian of the shrine?” Qasim said, beginning to understand.

  “No, my son. You were a different story. My sister came here, it’s true, when she was unable to conceive a child. Her husband, your father, loved her beyond all measure and said he couldn’t take another wife, he would rather they remained childless. Men say foolish things like that, because they know they have decades in front of them when they can change their minds. But a woman has only so much time given to her in which to become a mother. My sister was determined to have a child, so one night she asked me to accompany her here. She was afraid of what she had to do, but there was something pulling her greater than fear. I held her close before she went in, and said I would sit out here – on this verandah, right in this very spot – and wait for her. I had been here only a few minutes when I saw the guardian of the shrine run out, his eyes wild, holding his shalwar up with his hands. I put out my leg and tripped him, and when he fell I pinned him down with both my arms and said, ‘What have you done to my sister?’ He cried out, ‘Nothing, I did nothing, the jinn wanted her instead.’

  “When he said this, my bones became ice. I pushed him aside and tried to run into the shrine, but the doorway turned to fire. I tried to run through it, but I couldn’t. All night the fire blazed there, and all night I tried with prayers and buckets of water from that well – there, that one – to put the fire out; but nothing I did made any difference. I cried out for help but my voice disappeared in the roar of the fire, and no one came. The guardian left, saying, ‘There is nothing to do but let him finish, and hope he will release her afterwards.’

  “Near dawn, the fire went out, and my sister walked through the doorway, her eyes a haze as if she had just woken from the sweetest of dreams. She didn’t speak of what had happened, and neither did I. But when I touched her, her skin was hot. Not like a flame, just a warmth, as if she’d been sitting in the sun. A few weeks later, she told me she was going to have a child. I don’t know what she told your father – he and I have never spoken about it – but he was even more adoring than ever before, during all those months leading up to your birth. That warmth of her skin was with her throughout the pregnancy. I knew what it was, but what could anyone do about it except hope it would go with the birth of the child? And then the midwife said there were two of you, two babies, in her womb. I was there the night you were born. The midwife, my sist
er, and me – only the three of us. I held cold towels to her head, her arms, her belly, as the fire which the jinn placed inside her began to consume her. She was so hot the midwife and I were sweating, just from being near her, though it was deep in winter. And in all of this, you were born, your skin cool to touch. Your mother wept with happiness, tears that sizzled on her cheeks and disappeared.”

  “And the other child?”

  “I swaddled you up and took you outside where your father was waiting, to place you in his arms and protect you from the heat of the room – which was beginning to make my flesh burn. I stood outside just a moment, breathing in the cold night air, and when I turned to go back inside it happened again: the doorway of fire. I knew the jinn was in there with her, and this time I did nothing but hold you and watch. Your father was the one to try to run through the doorway, douse it with water, defeat it with prayers. When the fire finally disappeared, your father rushed into the room and when I heard his cry I knew my sister was dead. The midwife, too, both dead of burns. And no sign of a second child.”

  “I have seen him. He held me. Everything is nothing after that; even you, mother.”

  Qasim’s mother placed a hand on his head. “Stay with me, son,” she said.

  He stood up. “It’s too late already. I’m sorry.”

  HE ALLOWED HIS parents to call an exorcist, but after listening to his story the man threw him arms up in despair. “I can drive out a jinn that has possessed a boy, but what am I supposed to do about a boy who seeks to be possessed? Go to the fortune teller. Perhaps he can help you.”

  Everyone knew that fortune tellers didn’t have the power of prophecy directly, but they knew how to speak to jinns, and ask them for favours. The jinns could enter the realms of angels and hear them discussing the future, and bring back news to the fortune teller of what was yet to happen. Of course the angels didn’t like it when the jinn did this, and if they saw a jinn eavesdropping on them they would hurl a thunderbolt at the jinn – to human eyes, it looked like stars streaking across the skies. Qasim didn’t want to know the future, but he did want to know someone who could speak to the jinn, and in the village there lived a fortune-teller who was believed to have a whole army of jinn ready to do his bidding.

  So he went to the fortune-teller, who could be found sitting under an old banyan tree whose branches served as a canopy (a hundred or more jinn lived in that tree alone, it was said).

  “I’ve heard of you,” the fortune teller said. “The jinn have been talking of the human boy with the jinn brother. Is it true you were able to see him?”

  “I saw the whole congregation,” Qasim said. “But I only saw them once, and you can see them all the time.”

  “No, I can only hear their voices. The jinn blood in me is diluted – my great-great-great-grandmother lay with a jinn. She was the last woman in this area to do so before your mother. The jinn don’t like it when their kind couple with ours; it gives rise to people like you and me, who break the rules that say the jinn are aware of us, but we aren’t aware of them.”

  “So there are others like me? Humans with jinn brothers?”

  “Somewhere in the mythology of all nations, the stories exist. When Sikandar came here with his armies, his people brought the stories of the brothers Castor and Pollux – do you know the story? No? There are many versions, but the one closest to the truth is this: Castor and Pollux were twin brothers, but one was human and one was jinn. A jinn named Zeus had lain with their human mother in the guise of a firebird. Pollux, the jinn, was immortal, but his brother was not. When Castor lay dying, Pollux begged his father Zeus to be allowed to share his immortality with Castor. There was enough jinn in Castor to make this possible, but the price was a heavy one: for half the year Castor lived in Hell, with the dead, and the rest of the year he was in the world of jinn.”

  “It’s not such a heavy price. At least he had half the year with his brother.”

  “No, let me finish. Hell, as you know, is under the command of Iblis, the most powerful of the Shaitan jinn. He would not agree to give up someone promised to his realm without getting something in return. So for the time that Castor lived among the jinn, his brother Pollux...”

  “No, don’t say it.”

  “... his brother Pollux was in Hell, the only place in the universe where the fires can burn even a jinn. In saving his brother from death, Pollux ensured they would spend all eternity apart.”

  “Why did you tell me this?”

  The fortune teller looked up at the stars between the branches of the banyan tree. “Do you think God, who sees everything, doesn’t reward sacrifice? When He saw what Pollux was willing to endure for love of his brother, he brought them both up to heaven. Look, you can see them, the constellation of the twins.”

  Qasim’s eyes followed the fortune-teller’s pointing finger. A group of stars which he’d never before noticed detached themselves from the sky and lowered themselves until they were floating just above the banyan tree. He blinked once, and the stars become two boys, their arms around each other’s shoulders, so close he could see the fire of the nearer twin’s eyes. Blinked again, and they were just pinpricks in the darkness, rising back up into the sky.

  “But though God had compassion for the twins, the jinn Zeus saw the power of His rage. No man or jinn should interfere with life and death – those are God’s domains alone. To interfere with them by making a pact with Iblis puts the crime beyond the reach of God’s mercy. And so Zeus, once the mightiest of all the jinns, was removed from existence. Only a few of us remain who even believe he ever lived. No jinn since has ever tried to make a pact to extend the life of his mortal son, and no jinn ever will.”

  “But why did my brother show himself to me only once, and never again?”

  “A jinn’s life span extends to the Day of Judgment. What feels like ‘never again’ to you is a speck of time to them.”

  MANY YEARS PASSED. Qasim became caretaker of the mosque, and learnt to be content to glimpse flutters of the jinn world from the corner of his eye, never turning to try to look at it directly. He lived the life of an ascetic, taking pleasure in nothing the world could give him – not food, not love, not the turning of seasons. Everything was nothing compared to the embrace of a jinn-brother.

  One night, he woke up feverish, his body burning. He remembered it had felt exactly this way all those decades ago in his childhood when his mother had held a cold towel to his head to cool him down before he fell asleep. He rose unsteadily to his feet, and entered the prayer hall. It was no surprise to see the carpet of flame border and black doorways, exactly as he remembered it. A boy with eyes of fire stood on the carpet in the centre of the otherwise empty hall. He was only slightly older than he had been, more than forty years ago.

  “Have you come to take me with you this time?” Qasim said.

  “You can’t live in our world,” said his brother. “It would burn you.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because I’m old enough now to know how I can live in your world.” The jinn stepped towards Qasim, and Qasim, understanding, held out his arms. His brother came closer, stepped into the embrace, and then deeper than that, into Qasim himself. No words have been invented to speak of that moment.

  A few weeks later, the exorcist came to the mosque for the night prayer and saw the caretaker, a man he’d first known as a boy. He watched the man run a brush frothed with soap and water along the bare floor of the courtyard, and then called for his grandson, who was also his apprentice, to be brought to the mosque.

  “Can you see the jinn inside that man?” he said.

  The boy said certain prayers, and in the darkness the caretaker’s shadow leapt onto the wall, like a fire with many tongues.

  “Will you let me help you drive the jinn away?” the boy said.

  “Oh, no,” said the exorcist. “All he’s ever wanted is to be possessed. There is no evil here, only love. God save us from a world that can’t tell the difference.
”

  Above, a group of stars detached themselves from the firmament and the sky twins bowed towards the exorcist, with their arms still around each other’s shoulders in a forever-embrace. Qasim and Qasm, the twins in one body, looked up.

  “Show-offs,” Qasim said, and went to clean the mosque’s carpet, with its border of flame and black doorways running in rows all along the length of it.

  How We Remember You

  Kuzhali Manickavel

  WE REMEMBER THE first time you almost disappeared. You walked past the broken well at the end of the field and we watched you, unaware that we were clinging to each other. The atmosphere split and swallowed you. It was quiet, like a leaf falling or someone closing a book. Years later, Murali will think of this whenever he hears of people disappearing – he will think of the atmosphere opening up and swallowing people head first, and he will clutch whatever is near him, completely unaware of what he is doing.

  The minute you disappeared, Murali wondered what would happen to you. Specifically, he wondered who would feed you, where you would sleep, and what you would do if it started raining. Long after Anandhi and I went back inside, Murali stood there, hesitantly poking at the atmosphere, afraid you would come tumbling out with your heart and liver in your hands. You came back four hours later like nothing had happened. No one else noticed you were gone. A couple of days later, Murali gave you his postcard of Sathyaraj, the one with I LOVE YOU written over and over on the back. We never saw it again. Murali decided that you took it with you when you finally disappeared for good.

  WE REMEMBER THE second time in bits and pieces. It was at Mandaikadu, and Murali remembers the rain and how warm the temple seemed after the damp bus and the incessant chilly drizzle outside. I remember anticipating tea and biscuits at somebody’s house, and how that anticipation carried me through that miserable day. Anandhi remembers the sea. She remembers how all the kids went to stand at the water’s edge because we were told to, and how we stared blankly at the waves, our feet already turned, ready to go home. She remembers shoving you and saying something about your knees, when you walked right past her into the sea. For a second, we didn’t do anything. The water continued to lap at the shore and it was like you hadn’t gone in at all, like you had never been there in the first place. Then Anandhi dived in after you and was lost in a forest of strange legs swathed in cotton saris and frayed inskirts. She saw the hair on the women’s legs move gently against the water. Scars seemed to glow in their skin, some sickle-shaped, some like tiny lost moons. She stayed underwater, even after she realized she was not going to find you, which is why that visit to Mandaikadu was always remembered as the time Anandhi almost drowned.