The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories Read online

  We all remember that it seemed to take forever to get back home. We didn’t speak to anyone, not even to each other, and the adults said we were ungrateful, sulky brats and they would never take us anywhere ever again. When we got home, you were already there. You said you had snuck away to see the new Sathyaraj movie, Villathi Villain, and it was superb. Fight, dialogue, comedy, dance, ellamai top class, you said. You thrust the ticket stub into Anandhi’s hands and told her to keep it safely. You even sang one of the songs from the movie, your heels hitting the ground hard and out of beat as you tried to dance along. But we never believed you.

  FOR A LONG time, we remember you dishonestly. During the majority of her twenties, Anandhi remembers you as the son of the cook, a wiry boy with hot, dusty eyes who was clever with his hands and had a tendency to steal. She does this partly because it gives her a chance to talk about the inherent dishonesty of the working class, and partly because she doesn’t know how else to talk about what really happened, and what she did. Murali used to remember you as a distant cousin, a poor relation who was left in our ancestral home to go to school and later build a life as best he could as a mechanic or a bus driver. He always remembered you as a fast runner, which gave Murali the chance to talk about the lack of sports opportunities among the poor. For many years, I remembered you as the first boy to show me his penis, even though this is completely untrue. Sometimes you were the cook’s son, sometimes you were a poor relation, sometimes you were just ‘some boy’; but you always showed me your penis, and I always laughed.

  There are times in mixed company or on social media when we talk about you – 1984, Doordarshan, Tinkle and Gold Spot – like it really happened that way. We create a memory none of us recognizes, soaked in mellow sunlight and a sweetness none of us understands. And it is the easiest thing in the world to place you there in the sun, drinking Gold Spot with us like you are just a boy, like you are as unremarkable as the rest of us. We like to say you excelled at life through hard work and determination, and you are now living in Australia with a white woman named Shirley. When we tell people this, they always believe us.

  WE REMEMBER YOUR magic. Maybe that is the obvious thing to remember about you. We never tell anyone about it, though, not even each other, because it is hard to talk about now that we are older. The words don’t make sense in our mouths, and once they are said, they just hang there, and they are ridiculous. It’s not something you can put words to.

  We remember watching your feet when you ran and the way our hearts would tilt the moment your feet left the ground. We remember cheering you, how we all jumped up at the same time, arms high, shouting like all this, the young boy tripping across the sky, the sun, the shouts in the air, all of it was ours.

  We remember cajoling you to ‘do something’ and then crowding around you, watching the way feathers blossomed from your shoulders and chest, how they shuddered and settled once the transformation was done. Murali remembers that when he was younger, he thought it was a trick. Later, he would watch you do it and think how could I have been so stupid? How could I think this was a trick? We remember the rush of air when you took off, and how the quiet seemed to spread all around us when you were gone.

  MURALI AND ANANDHI keep souvenirs. Murali collects bird figurines and when he meets small children, he tells them that they are magical stones that look like birds but can turn into anything when you aren’t looking. When they ask if they can have one, Murali tells them to fuck off, they are his fucking birds. Anandhi keeps a scrapbook, filled with photos of Sathyaraj and ticket stubs of every Sathyaraj movie she has seen, even the Telugu and Kannada ones. There is one autographed picture, given to her by a friend who thought she was a huge fan. Anandhi keeps this one on a separate page with the words I LOVE YOU written all around it.

  Murali hides tiny penguins or owls in the fridge when he comes to visit. Anandhi leaves cut-outs of Sathyaraj inside my bowls and coffee cups. I keep all of them, carrying them from one rental to another in a box I never unpack. I don’t know what else to do with them.

  I REMEMBER YOU honestly to strangers. I tell women in share autos that I never liked you very much, but you were comfortable to sit with and you sang well. I don’t remember what you looked like, but I remember at one point, you thought you looked like Sathyaraj when he was younger and I had disagreed. I remember that your feet were always dusty and you often breathed through your mouth. Your English-speaking skills were poor; you could not add double-digit numbers in your head. You had no idea what a biochemist was. I am pretty sure that if you were still here, you would not have been good at computers. I also remember how your eyes would close as the feathers began to sprout from your shoulders and the way you threw your chest out when your feet were no longer on the ground, when you were just running, the sky opening up slowly underneath you. But I don’t mention that to anyone.

  I always remember the house. I think of how children just came and went, this one’s niece, that one’s son, all of them coming and going like the house was spitting them out only to swallow them up again when it felt like it. Anandhi said this is what happens in old ancestral houses where there are too many rooms, too many people coming and going. I always remember the house. That fucking, fucking house.

  But mostly, whenever I remember you, I am sorry. I am sorry for what happened. I’m sorry for not opening the door. I’m sorry for saying that I was coming to get you and for not coming at all. I am sorry you are not here now. I am sorry for that most of all.

  WE TRY TO remember this part objectively. We try to remind ourselves that we were teenagers then, and everyone is an asshole when they are a teenager. Add to this the limited financial resources, all of our parents, boredom, an unusually hot summer, the house and the fact that we kept getting dumped there summer after summer, and it is almost understandable; but not really.

  Something had probably been wrong with you for a while before we arrived. I remember that you did not come out to see us, and when you did, you seemed slow and bewildered. One of your eyes had whitened and seemed to be focussing on something far away. Murali kept saying you looked like an old man. Fine dust had settled between your fingers, under your nails and in the corners of your eyes. You said you felt cold, it was like ice was running through your hands and feet. I remember you taking my hand and pressing it against your neck and I had said you didn’t have a fever, you were fine. Murali remembers that you weren’t eating anything and that sounds were coming from your chest. It almost sounded like wheezing, but if you listened closely, you could hear voices, laughter sometimes. I remember we kept making you take deep breaths so we could hear it and we would imagine what was inside you. Murali thought it must be a city, and I thought it was a radio.

  We all remember the day you showed us your back – it was covered in jagged, broken feathers. The scabs and gouges held swirls of black smoke that left behind a soft, greasy residue. You couldn’t understand what was happening. You wanted to know if we could take you somewhere, or if there was something we could do. You tried to grab my hand again, but I stepped back, and when you grabbed Anandhi’s hand, she pulled away and told you to stop it. I don’t know what made you ask us for help, or what made you keep asking even when we were trying to leave.

  In the end, it was Anandhi who told you to “just do something”. Murali and I looked at you, waiting for some kind of magic to overflow from your eyes or burst out of your hands. You shook and coughed and I kept telling you to try harder. We spent the rest of that day telling you to do something, pushing you down each time you tried to get up, wrenching the feathers from your back whenever you tried to stumble away. You kept asking us to stop and we kept telling you to do something. Do something, or we will break your teeth.

  WE ALL REMEMBER saying it was for your own good. We locked you inside your room, leaving you nothing but a tumbler of water and a blanket. Murali in particular thought this was a good idea, because he did not like seeing you once your back started getting worse. Even the whee
zing voices in your chest had become uncomfortable to listen to, because whatever was inside you seemed to know our names now and Murali said they were “talking crap” about us. What we can’t remember is how long it was. Anandhi and I think it was two weeks and Murali feels it was just a few days. However long it was, we spent the time sitting outside your room, telling you to fucking do something. We had seen you fly. We had seen you turn into a fucking bird, for fuck’s sake. If we could do even a fraction of what you could do, we wouldn’t even be here. Do something. Do something.

  I remember you telling us to please open the door, you were better, you were okay now, please just open the door. At some point, you started saying you were sorry. But we kept sitting there. We asked you why you stayed in this fucking, fucking house. Why had you come back those two times? Maybe this is what you get for coming back. If it was us, if we could just disappear like you could, we would never come back.

  You kept saying sorry. After a while, you didn’t say anything.

  THEN ANANDHI LEFT. She caught an overnight bus to Chennai, where she stayed with a friend for the rest of the summer, allegedly looking for a job, though she never found one. Murali left two days later. He just went home, saying that he had a spare key and nobody really cared where he was anyway. I stayed because I had nowhere else to go.

  The day after Murali left, I stopped going to your door. I remember spending most of my time listening to the radio and reading old newspapers. I remember some distant relative coming to stay and how I lied to her, saying I was a big executive in a foreign company, that I had a car. I remember that I did not plan it, that it hadn’t been something that was bothering me. But by the time I was about to leave, I remember thinking that I was going to save you. I was going to take you back with me and tell people you were my cousin. You would get better, find a job. We would hang out together and you would tell people that I saved your life, that you wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for me.

  I remember how much dust was in the corridors. Even the walls were covered in a soft, grey blanket that seemed to ripple towards the floor. Lizards were sparring on your door and underneath, I could see a bar of bright light. I remember that I never said I was sorry. I just said I was going to get you out of there, that you were going to be okay. I would come in the morning, open the door, and we would leave immediately. I am going to get you out of here, okay? I said, like I was in a movie. You murmured something I couldn’t understand and I said okay. You are going to be okay.

  I remember, very distinctly, that I did not think of you at all on the bus ride home. When I finally did, I thought of the door, the smoke swirling up from your back, and even then, I didn’t feel bad.

  WE EACH MADE up our own stories about what happened afterwards. I always felt that you stayed, but you didn’t make it. I don’t know if you died. Maybe you fell apart or you just stopped. Sometimes when I see a movie where the demon or vampire evaporates in the sunlight, I wonder if that’s what happened to you. Murali decided that you got better somehow and left, while Anandhi felt that the atmosphere in your room must have split and swallowed you up for good. They both liked to believe that things got better for you. Perhaps you had gotten a job somewhere and settled down. Maybe you were married. Anandhi hoped that you had gone back to where you came from, because she thought things would be better and easier for you there. Murali said you were probably still here somewhere. He thought you liked it here, despite everything.

  WE KEEP GOING back, sometimes together, sometimes alone. The decay that was once confined to your room seems to have crept through the rest of the house, encasing everything in dust; the air is hot and hard to breathe. We walk slowly, taking our time as we shuffle through the crumbling rooms and empty corridors. In your old room, we find things we have given you: cut-outs of Sathyaraj, movie ticket stubs, small, colourful notes wishing you a happy Pongal and happy Independence Day. There is one birthday card. We have all signed it, and at the top are the words YOU ARE ______ YEARS OLD? We can’t find the tumbler or the blanket.

  Anandhi always stabs at spears of sunlight, dark shadows, sometimes at nothing in particular, hoping something will collapse and reveal you in a place that is bright and warm, maybe at your parent’s house or waiting for a bus. Murali talks to you like you are still here. Sometimes he leaves you tiny birds made out of chocolate wrappers or cigarette foil.

  I don’t come here as often as I used to. It is harder now, and anyway, I never liked this house. But when I do come, I go to your room and close the door. I sit on the ground with a tumbler of water and a blanket. And I remember everything.

  Hurrem and the Djinn

  Claire North

  Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight.

  My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my Sultan, my one and only love.

  The most beautiful among the beautiful...

  My Istanbul, my Caraman, the earth of my Anatolia

  My Badakhshan, my Baghdad and Khorasan

  My woman of the beautiful hair, my love of the slanted brow, my love of eyes full of mischief...

  I’ll sing your praises always

  I, lover of the tormented heart, Muhibbi of the eyes full of tears, I am happy.

  Poem from Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent to Sultana Hurrem

  IT’S NOT MY place to gossip...

  Oh, go on, then, you forced it out of me!

  There was a lovely young man, dark brown hair, beautiful green eyes, came from near Ragusa, they said, stolen by pirates – or maybe claimed by the child-tax, the devshirme; likely, but less romantic, don’t you think?

  However you tell it, when he was still young enough to be pretty and malleable, he was taken from his home, educated in the ways of Islam, in Persian poetry and the philosophy of the Greeks, and raised, all in all, as our famous Kadis and Viziers are, to be a slave of the Sultan and servant of the Empire. And when he was a young man, the great men of the court came to inspect their pupils, and the bravest were sent to the Janissaries, ever-ready for battle, and the cleverest to the Chancellery to count the Sultan’s tribute as it is paid by cowering Christian kings; the wisest to judge in the courts, and the most loyal to the borderlands, where they would stand against heretics and so-called Safavid kings. But this young man...

  ... we’ll call him Davud...

  ... his qualities were of quite another sort, and caught the eye of one Ahmed Danishmend, of the Sultan’s Imperial Gentlemen. You have never heard of this Ahmed? Do not be alarmed, it is not that your spies have been lax. His is a profession not spoken of, even here in Topkapi, where Sultans are required to murder their brothers to claim the crown, and the procession of ever-smaller coffins that followed our exalted Suleiman to the throne caused barely a raised eyebrow amongst our chattering dignitaries.

  Given that a little light fratricide causes minimal distemper, I can only whisper that the work of the Imperial Gentlemen is most secret, and I urge you not to breathe a word to anyone. You promise? You swear? I believe you; truly, I do.

  Do you know the tapestry in the style of the Chinese dragon that hangs near the armoury of the second courtyard... yes, there, behind that, did you know there was a door? Ah – few do, but I heard it from...

  ... anyway, open that door of great, black wood, that makes not a sound as it slides across smooth stone, and descend down, down, down. Once a Byzantine Emperor built a tomb there to bury his unruly wife in; another built a cistern to store cool water and fresh fish. Now descend into this sanctum, where hangs the bright blue eye that wards against evil, where sit bowls sanctified with the blood of emperors, the broken sword of Alexander, the silky web of a spider that, they say, once wove in a cave in the desert – all these things ordered on shelves and tables carved from the stone itself, between pillars of the ancient Byzantine, the paths carved through flowing water where pale fish swim. Now it is a place for the Imperial Gentlemen to practice their arts, serving the Sultan as someone must – I don’t judge, you
see – in the binding and commandment of the djinn.

  Ah – you are fearful, you reach for a strip of sacred verse in your sleeve; yes, yes, very wise, though the djinn are not much interested in the affairs of men, to them we are as flies upon the rim of a horse’s eye. Yet powerful men may control and bind these creatures, some for the Sultan, some against him, and it was in this art that Davud was raised, and achieved noted success, until the day that his master, Ahmed Danishmend, came to him with one Nizamuddin Mektubji – no, you won’t have heard of him either – with a most strange request.