The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories Page 21

  “Fuckshitfuckfuck,” he says, in English.

  “You must be very tired, my friend,” says Salim.

  “I have been driving this Allah-forgotten taxi for thirty hours,” says the driver. “It is too much. Before that, I sleep for five hours, and I drove fourteen hours before that. We are shorthanded, before Christmas.”

  “I hope you have made a lot of money,” says Salim.

  The driver sighs. “Not much. This morning I drove a man from 51st Street to Newark Airport. When we got there, he ran off into the airport, and I could not find him again. A fifty-dollar fare gone, and I had to pay the tolls on the way back myself.”

  Salim nods. “I had to spend today waiting to see a man who will not see me. My brother-in-law-hates me. I have been in America for a week, and it has done nothing but eat my money. I sell nothing.”

  “What do you sell?”

  “Shit,” says Salim. “Worthless gewgaws and baubles and tourist trinkets. Horrible, cheap, foolish, ugly shit.”

  The taxi driver wrenches the wheel to the right, swings around something, drives on. Salim wonders how he can see to drive, between the rain, the night, and the thick sunglasses.

  “You try to sell shit?”

  “Yes,” says Salim, thrilled and horrified that he has spoken the truth about his brother-in-law’s samples.

  “And they will not buy it?”

  “No.”

  “Strange. You look at the stores here, that is all they sell.”

  Salim smiles nervously.

  A truck is blocking the street in front of them: a red-faced cop standing in front of it waves and shouts and points them down the nearest street.

  “We will go over to Eighth Avenue, come uptown that way,” says the taxi driver. They turn onto the street, where the traffic has stopped completely. There is a cacophony of horns, but the cars do not move.

  The driver sways in his seat. His chin begins to descend to his chest, one, two, three times. Then he begins, gently, to snore. Salim reaches out to wake the man, hoping that he is doing the right thing. As he shakes his shoulder the driver moves, and Salim’s hand brushes the man’s face, knocking the man’s sunglasses from his face onto his lap.

  The taxi driver opens his eyes and reaches for, and replaces, the black plastic sunglasses, but it is too late. Salim has seen his eyes.

  The car crawls forward in the rain. The numbers on the meter increase.

  “Are you going to kill me?” asks Salim.

  The taxi driver’s lips are pressed together. Salim watches his face in the driver’s mirror.

  “No,” says the driver, very quietly.

  The car stops again. The rain patters on the roof.

  Salim begins to speak. “My grandmother swore that she had seen an ifrit, or perhaps a marid, late one evening, on the edge of the desert. We told her that it was just a sandstorm, a little wind, but she said now, she saw its face, and its eyes, like yours, were burning flames.”

  The driver smiles, but his eyes are hidden behind the black plastic glasses, and Salim cannot tell whether there is any humor in that smile or not. “The grandmothers came here, too,” he says.

  “Are there many jinn in New York?” asks Salim.

  “No. Not many of us.”

  “There are angels, and there are men, who Allah made from mud, and then there are the people of the fire, the jinn,” says Salim.

  “People know nothing about my people here,” says the driver. “They think we grant wishes. If I could grant wishes, do you think I would be driving a cab?”

  “I do not understand.”

  The taxi driver seems gloomy. Salim watches his face in the mirror as he speaks, staring at the ifrit’s dark lips.

  “They believe that we grant wishes. Why do they believe that? I sleep in one stinking room in Brooklyn. I drive this taxi for any stinking freak who has the money to ride in it, and for some who don’t. I drive them where they need to go, and sometimes they tip me. Sometimes they pay me.” His lower lip begins to tremble. The ifrit seems on edge. “One of them shat on the back seat once. I had to clean it before I could take the cab back. How could he do that? I had to clean the wet shit from the seat. Is that right?”

  Salim puts out a hand, pats the ifrit’s shoulder. He can feel solid flesh through the wool of the sweater. The ifrit raises his hand from the wheel, rests it on Salim’s hand for a moment.

  Salim thinks of the desert then: red sands blow a dust-storm through his thoughts, and the scarlet silks of the tents that surrounded the lost city of Ubar flap and billow through his mind.

  They drive up Eighth Avenue.

  “The old believe. They do not piss into holes, because the Prophet told them that jinn live in holes. They know that the angels throw flaming stars at us when we try to listen to their conversations. But even for the old, when they come to this country we are very, very far away. Back there, I did not have to drive a cab.”

  “I am sorry,” says Salim.

  “It is a bad time,” says the driver. “A storm is coming. It scares me. I would do anything to get away.”

  The two of them say nothing more on their way back to the hotel.

  When Salim gets out of the cab he gives the ifrit a twenty dollar bill, tells him to keep the change. Then, with a sudden burst of courage, he tells him his room number. The taxi driver says nothing in reply. A young woman clambers into the back of the cab, and it pulls out into the cold and the rain.

  Six o’clock in the evening. Salim has not yet written the fax to his brother-in-law. He goes out into the rain, buys himself this night’s kebab and French fries. It has only been a week, but he feels that he is becoming heavier, rounder, softening in this country of New York.

  When he comes back into the hotel he is surprised to see the taxi driver standing in the lobby, hands deep into his pockets. He is staring at a display of black-and-white postcards. When he sees Salim he smiles, self-consciously. “I called your room,” he says, “but there was no answer. So I thought I would wait.”

  Salim smiles also, and touches the man’s arm. “I am here,” he says.

  Together they enter the dim, green-lit elevator, ascend to the fifth floor holding hands. The ifrit asks if he may use Salim’s bathroom. “I feel very dirty,” he says. Salim nods. He sits on the bed, which fills most of the small white room and listens to the sound of the shower running. Salim takes off his shoes, his socks, and then the rest of his clothes.

  The taxi driver comes out of the shower, wet, with a towel wrapped about his mid-section. He is not wearing his sunglasses, and in the dim room his eyes burn with scarlet flames.

  Salim blinks back tears. “I wish you could see what I see,” he says.

  “I do not grant wishes,” whispers the ifrit, dropping his towel and pushing Salim gently, but irresistibly, down onto the bed.

  It is an hour or more before the ifrit comes, thrusting and grinding into Salim’s mouth. Salim has already come twice in this time. The jinn’s semen tastes strange, fiery, and it burns Salim’s throat.

  Salim goes to the bathroom, washes out his mouth. When he returns to the bedroom the taxi driver is already asleep in the white bed, snoring peacefully. Salim climbs into the bed beside him, cuddles close to the ifrit, imagining the desert on his skin.

  As he starts to fall asleep he realizes that he still has not written his fax to Fuad, and he feels guilty. Deep inside he feels empty and alone: he reaches out, rests his hand on the ifrit’s tumescent cock and, comforted, he sleeps.

  They wake in the small hours, moving against each other, and they make love again. At one point he realizes that he is crying, and the ifrit is kissing away his tears with burning lips. “What is your name?” Salim asks the taxi driver.

  “There is a name on my driving permit, but it is not mine,” the ifrit says.

  Afterward, Salim could not remember where the sex had stopped and the dreams began.

  When Salim wakes, the cold sun creeping into the white room, he is alon
e.

  Also, he discovers, this sample case is gone, all the bottles and rings and souvenir copper flashlights, all gone, along with his suitcase, his wallet, his passport, and his air tickets back to Oman.

  He finds a pair of jeans, the tee shirt, and the dust-colored woollen sweater discarded on the floor. Beneath them he finds a driver’s license in the name of Ibrahim bin Irem, a taxi permit in the same name, and a ring of keys with an address written on a piece of paper attached to them in English. The photographs on the license and the permit ID do not look much like Salim, but then, they did not look much like the ifrit.

  The telephone rings: it is the front desk calling to point out that Salim has already checked out, and his guest needs to leave soon so that they can service the room, to get it ready for another occupant.

  “I do not grant wishes,” says Salim, tasting the way the words shape themselves in his mouth.

  He feels strangely light-headed as he dresses.

  New York is very simple: the avenues run north to south, the streets run west to east. How hard can it be? he asks himself.

  He tosses the car keys into the air and catches them. Then he puts on the black plastic sunglasses he finds in the pockets, and leaves the hotel room to go look for his cab.

  Duende 2077

  Jamal Mahjoub

  THE IRON HANDS had long since fallen away, leaving a blank space where time used to be. The clocktower was retained as a token of what had once been, a pagan icon from a forgotten era. A punctuation mark that closed the book on Christian hegemony and ushered forth the new, bright era of the Rashidun Caliphate.

  History books chronicled the decline of unbridled capitalism, how it spiralled into social anarchy, chaos and moral bankruptcy. The illusion of unlimited wealth projected onto a world that experienced only increasing poverty and destitution, diminishing natural resources, industrialised slavery. One day it all imploded. The Caliphate flooded into the power void.

  DHAKA STEPPED AWAY from the window. The room was nice, if a little claustrophobic. Heavy damask drapes and high divans, the heady scent of patchouli oil, myrrh and sandalwood. Sensuality was a big deal to whoever lived here, though you wouldn’t know it to look at him now. Stretched out on the bed, naked. His head, or what was left of it, was shaven but for the bushy beard – dyed henna red. The yellow silk sheets were sprayed with crimson.

  One killer or two? Dhaka knelt by the door, ignoring the clamour around him as he recreated the scene in his mind. The victim had been sitting on the edge of the bed, the killer behind him. Standing or kneeling? The slash to the neck had released a spray of blood so powerful it had left an arc across the Japanese cherry tree print on the walls. He’d tried to stand then, one hand to the neck, probably not believing the wound was fatal. A bloody smear on the high lacquered chest where he tried to balance himself. That was when the shot was fired. One high-tensile round. The force of it knocked the victim back onto the bed. The bullet went through his right eye and took off most of the back of his head.

  Moving closer to the wall, Dhaka sought out a hole in the paneling with a pen. Flecks of bone and brain matter circled the spot, resembling an exploding star. He moved closer, picking up a strange, familiar smell that he couldn’t place. Why shoot a dead man?

  “Forensics?”

  “Don’t hold your breath.”

  The sullen, overweight figure of Kara Murat stood by the window, smoking an illicit cigarette. Murder was one of the great taboos of the Caliphate: in the perfect Islamic state, there was no homicide, no need to allocate resources. No need for men like Dhaka.

  “Call me when they get here,” Dhaka said. He knew he’d be lucky if he heard anything back.

  The street outside was hot and humid. Autumn, and yet the temperatures were so high it could have been midsummer. The rain was so fine it flowed directly into his sweat. Dhaka longed for a deep lungful of clear air; what he got was a damp fistful of liquid smog. Realising he hadn’t eaten, he trawled the riverside stalls and settled on dumplings and some kind of Uyghur soup, an unpalatable grey colour. He suspected it was dog meat, but it was spicy and hot and restored some semblance of life to him. He listened to the rain hitting the tarpaulin over his head as he ate.

  “Mulazim Dhaka?”

  A small, South Asian woman wearing a non-regulation hijab over her uniform stood beside him. The ideogram in her palm told him she was ISD. K.S. Munzari. Internal Security Directorate. He guessed the K stood for Khadija, beloved wife of the Prophet.

  “I am to accompany you to the Majlis.”

  “Why?”

  Her face was emotionless. “I don’t question orders.” And neither, clearly, should he.

  He eyed the last grey dumpling floating in the soup and decided maybe he’d had enough.

  “Transport?”

  “Naturally.”

  It wasn’t a given. They might have expected him to walk, or comandeer a rucksha. She had a kalesh and no driver, which said something about her, but Dhaka couldn’t figure out what. He wiped his mouth and reached for a toothpick. The interior smelled of jasmine air freshener and disinfectant. Dhaka recalled the smell he had picked up in the apartment, and remembered where he knew it from. The distinctive scent of burnt almonds. Munzari swiped a finger across her wrist console and the engine came to life. The dull flash of red and blue lights reflected exhausted faces trying to get out of their way; in short order, they were sweeping along the riverbed, the lights of other vehicles flashing by.

  The bridge was packed with dhimmis making their way home on foot. The lucky ones had bicycles. Public transport in Londonistan had collapsed years ago. Most lived outside the Separation Wadi, a barrier of walls and moats filled with electrified water that ringed the city. Once this was a green and pleasant land; now it was ash grey and dusty. Smoky columns rose over the skyline from incinerators that ran twenty-four hours a day, burning trash to create energy. The furnaces produced a wet, sulfurous heat and a blanket of smog that hung over the city all year round, blotting out the sun. A rain of grey ash fell over the city like snow, summer and winter alike. Thin slivers of lightning threaded through the clouds, filling the air with an electric hum.

  His wrist console buzzed and his eyescreen showed Kara Murat, looking greyer than ever. Dhaka touched his earpiece. He didn’t want to be overheard.

  “We found something. Or rather the tech squad did.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “It’s a hologram.” Kara Murat’s usual bored tone had given way to something that could almost be described as faint interest. “Iridium traces in the wall.”

  “Can they reconstruct it?”

  “They’re working on it.”

  “I need to know the moment you have something.”

  “Sure,” Kara Murat grunted. He sounded as though he had countless more important things to do. Dhaka glanced over at the woman, but she was staring straight ahead, pretending not to hear. They were already approaching Abbassiya Square. Glowing over the old sandstone building of the Eastminster Majlis was the ‘Onion’, as it had been irreverently dubbed, a tulip bulb of enameled glass and gaudy chrome. The glassmakers of Damascus would spin in their tombs. To Dhaka it resembled a bathroom ornament, but perhaps that was the idea. The insult of all insults: turn the infidels’ symbol of democracy into a toilet. The usual crowd of protesters clamoured around the landing pad, but Munzari must have signalled ahead because a path opened up before them. Dhaka left his gun in the guardroom and followed her through the building.

  A long hallway led past a succession of murals, vast oil paintings of dubious artistic merit, depicting key moments in the Great Victory. A sequence drummed into every schoolchild’s head: Dhaka saw battlefields, jihadis in headbands brandishing weapons, Muslim women and children behind barbed wire in the internment camps of the Cataclysm. The war of liberation was not a pleasant memory for him. Through the panelled windows, the thin rivulet of Wadi Tanzim was visible. Once known as the Thames, it had withered to a flurry of dar
k mud. The gigantic silver tail of an airliner jutted out of the sludge like a prehistoric fin, left as a reminder of the anarchy and despair that ruled before the coming of the Caliphate. Cyberwarfare had brought down global computer systems, sending aircraft crashing from the sky.

  The fat, pampered members of Parliament were sprawled on the carpeted floor of the Majlis. Dhaka could barely conceal his loathing. Eastminster had a reputation for corruption of the soul. Nobody came here willingly, and those who did could hardly wait to leave. Exit visas were much sought after, and impossible to get without the assistance of one of these overfed buffoons.

  A spiral staircase brought them to a deserted upper gallery. A solitary figure stood at the far end. Munzari remained by the stairs. The man did not turn as Dhaka approached. No introductions were needed.

  “Your reputation precedes you.”

  “The honour is all mine.” Dhaka gave a cursory bow.

  Colonel Asgari was tall and slim, his body encased in a black robe that fell to his shiny boots. A black turban covered his head. Bony cheeks rose above a trim beard.

  “You are investigating the murder of Sanjak Sanbura.”

  Barely an hour had passed since Dhaka had visited the crime scene. Asgari probably knew more about what was going on than Dhaka himself did.

  “We are still conducting preliminary tests.”

  Asgari gave the mere hint of a nod. There was something Mongolian about his features, his face hard and tanned like old wood.

  “I don’t need to tell you how sensitive this is. He was a wise man, with somewhat particular tastes.” Dhaka presumed this was a reference to the dead man’s bedroom habits. “What is your initial analysis?”

  “It’s too early to say much.” Dhaka shifted uncomfortably.

  Asgari leaned closer, his voice a harsh whisper. “What do your instincts tell you?”

  Dhaka glanced back in the direction of Munzari, who remained out of earshot. “It looks like an assassination. Whoever planned this managed to get through the security screen with a weapon.”