The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories

by Mahvesh Murad

  The other is the cottage at the bottom of the front garden.

  A jinn lives in the cottage at the bottom of the front garden. Saman has seen the place on a previous visit to the Saigol farmhouse, but she’s never been inside. She wants to go see the jinn, but she’s too proud to ask Zak – and a bit intimidated. The jinn sleeps under Rukhsana Apee’s skin. Has been hibernating in Zak’s sister for ages. Everyone knows that, though you’re not supposed to know.

  You are not supposed to know either, but now you do.

  He must be so old, Saman thinks.

  Saman follows the twins up the staircase and into Zak’s room. It is huge, a boy’s room with boy bedsheets and boy clothes thrown on the floor. The mantlepiece is littered with cricket and hockey trophies, action figures – Wolverine, Batman, Loki and Thor petrified in death grips – and two jars filled with polished stones and marbles. Posters of the Rolling Stones, Usher, three girls in bikinis, and Salman Ahmad wearing a beige Peshawari cap, long fingers riffing on an electric guitar, glisten on the walls.

  “Your dado lets you take the book to your room?” Saman says.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Didn’t you say it’s real valuable?”

  “Uh-huh. It’s real old. Four centuries or some shit like that. After Apee got sick. Dado said she saw a shadow seated in a chair on top of a tree near the cottage. Shortly after, Dado bought the book from a peer sahib. Paid a lot of money for it. She keeps it in a glass case but sometimes she misplaces the key. So...” Zak tosses his sunglasses on the bed. He yanks a drawer from his dresser, rummages, pulls out a thick tome.

  Saman and the twins gather around.

  The book is leatherbound, the cover art contained in a transparent book jacket. A twin-horned creature with a goat face, fangs, and tufts of black hair on its corrugated head looms in the foreground. Its umbilicus bulges from its belly like a pregnancy and its hands are raised, plucking peacocks with serpent tails from midair. At its feet crouches a girl sketched in mid-laughter. She has maddened red eyes and is licking the creature’s toes. The creature and the girl are surrounded by men with dog, shadow, and raven faces.

  Saman smiles. The twins shudder. Zak scowls at no one in particular.

  “Kitab al Jinn,” Saman murmurs.

  “What does that say?” The twins point. Arabic words swirl across the cover in gilded letters. There is a golden smudge where the name of the author should have been.

  “I read a bit of it last time I was here. I think it’s a book of spells,” Saman is saying. “It also has descriptions of the many kinds of jinns you can banish. I wonder if you can summon them as well.” Saman reaches out a finger and taps the cover.

  “Does it have jinn stories?” the twins say. This is the first they’ve seen the book, although Zak and Saman have been talking about it since they got to the house.

  Zak scowls some more. “No summoning anything.”

  “Why? You scared?”

  Zak balls up his hands into fists. “No one is summoning anything.”

  Saman and the twins ponder his fists. This is odd, you must think. You’ve surmised that Zak’s a daredevil. “Can I take a few pictures of the pictures in the book?” Saman says finally. “With my cell?”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re nasty,” she says brightly, “and I like nasty things.”

  Zak looks at her. The twins look at them both. Zak’s fists open. He fiddles with the book cover, taps the edge of his dresser. “Fine,” he says, then reluctantly, “We could try a seance or something, if you want.”

  “What’s a seance?” the twins ask.

  “Ooh, yes,” Saman says. “I’d love to talk to something which isn’t there. Should we do this by the cottage where your jinn lives inside – ?”

  “No. We will do it in Dado’s study. It’s quiet.” Zak says. “I’ve got some skull candles I can bring, and the Ouija board Mother brought me from USA.”

  Zak doesn’t say ‘America’, like most people. It’s always ‘USA’, and he enunciates it so seriously.

  “What’s a ‘weejah board’?” The twins ask, but Zak is already walking out the door.

  They go to Zak’s Dado’s study.

  IN NO PARTICULAR order, the Kitab al Jinn teaches the following truths. You need to memorize them. The twins have.

  Here:

  1. Jinns are made from smokeless fire.

  2. Jinns are souls blown into winds.

  3. Jinns try to eavesdrop on the heavens and are repulsed by meteors.

  4. Jinns have the power to take on any form.

  5. Jinns inhabit darkness, cemeteries, caves and ruins.

  6. Evil jinns are repelled by goodness and prayers.

  7. If those are not an option and you run into a jinn in a deserted place, pulling your pants down also works.

  ELEGANTLY LINED WITH mahogany bookshelves, the study is on the ground floor. A small window cracks open onto a side garden. The bay window faces east and at sunrise, its stained glass paints flame and icicles on the hardwood floor. You adore the colors, you do. Overhead, a crystal chandelier sparkles. It trembles in the breeze from the ceiling fan, sends slivers of light and shadow skittering across the round table on which Zak has splayed out the jinn book.

  Pensive, Zak says, “I don’t remember this picture.”

  The twins glance at each other, then back away from the table and go to the side window. Outside, it’s late afternoon. The sun is a yellow splash between the leaves of the oak framed by the window. Beyond the tree you see primrose beds, a blue-green pond, and a chicken wire coop. Its door is open.

  The two peacocks from the back garden have made their way to the pond. Silently they stand at its bank. Their blue backs glisten. One peacock’s train of feathers – the male’s, you think – fans out and above it gloriously. Shimmering in the sunlight, the feathers seem to vibrate. The twins contemplate the feathers; the eyespots on the feathers contemplate the twins. The bird lowers its train and cocks its head. Majestically, the peafowl raise their feet and saunter inside the coop.

  The twins think of the hatchery. They don’t know anyone who owns a hatchery besides the Saigols. Zak’s father is fond of double round crested parrots, gray francolin teetars, peacocks, and patridges. The twin’s mother told them so. The twins have always wanted to visit the hatchery, but now is not the time.

  They put their hands on the window, feel the glass. It’s warmed nice by the sunlight. The twins feel the stirring of a comfortless sadness they cannot explain. You feel it too, but it passes quickly.

  The twins return to the round table.

  Saman’s gaze is riveted on the pages. Her fingers play with the end of the green scarf wrapped around her neck. Propped on her elbows, she leans in, a smooth mechanical motion, as if drawn by strings. She breathes on the illustrations, the calligrams and magic boxes that ripple and shutter like an optical illusion, as Zak turns the pages. The twins watch Saman’s eyes, fascinated. Her pupils seem star-shaped. A brown lock of hair drops past the scar on her eyebrow; she blows it away, but it returns. The twins discover they want to play with that lock. They would, too, but Zak is frowning.

  “Seriously, this picture...” he says.

  Saman takes the book from him. She flips back to the calligram that has caught her eye – a verse in Arabic, its curlicues and flourishes twisting to form a horned beast with myriad eyes and twin humps. Saman reaches out a finger and traces the beast’s outline, caressing its eyes of noon, its humps of conjoined laam. Her heart is pounding. She glances at the bottom of the page, sees the numbers in the magic box drawn there quiver in time to her heartbeat.

  This is the moment you need to remember. When the stuff hidden and in-between turns into a looming. The twins know this all too well.

  Saman tries to speak, stops, clears her throat, says, “Is that a spell right next to it?”

  “I have no idea.” Zak takes the book, shuffles the pages, and murmurs to himself, “This wasn’t there before.”
<
br />   “Oh, move on already.” Saman snatches the book back, finds what she’s looking for. “How to Conquer the Emperor of Jinns. There are several stations of fear in this one.”

  She reads out loud, words rising like vapors from her lips, her voice soothing, honey on a sore throat. Her wonderful eyes follow the words. “The emperor of jinns,” she says dreamily.

  “Sounds like an asshole, doesn’t he?” Zak says.

  The twins look at each other. They miss the peacocks already. They miss their mother too. When did she say she’d be back?

  Commotion outside in the garden. Shouts. The sound of running feet.

  Zak is already at the window, peering out, his fingers clinging to the glass. His neck is flushed. He turns to face them.

  Saman has closed the book. “What?” she says.

  Zak’s eyes are gleaming. “There’s a killer on the property.”

  STOP ME IF you’ve heard this one.

  “There are several stations of fear in this. The procedure goes: in a place of desolation, draw a circle and apply perfume within. After isha prayer recite Chapter of the Jinn seven times and Chapter of the Shrouded One sixty times. Impart blessings upon the Prophet at the beginning and end of the amal. Do this daily for forty days. Fast with a purified intention while you do this, to draw power against Demons and Horrific Faces.

  “At the end of forty days, the Emperor of Jinns will come to you.

  “NOTE: for a lesser jinn, read the spell on the next page aloud ten times and walk through a red doorway. Repeat this thrice.

  “BE WARNED: without a pure heart and trained tongue, you will not be able to control the manifestation that appears.”

  This excerpt from Kitab Al Jinn is from the chapter on magic and dopplegängers. The twins have read this carefully. The twins cannot stop talking about it. They’re still talking about it, if you listen. You should listen closely.

  Here’s how this next part goes.

  HE IS A scrawny broomstick of a boy in dusky shalwar kameez with holes – filthy wild hair, bruised lips, skulking face. He can’t be more than eleven. Trapped against the peafowl coop, he trembles like a weed, white wakes of tears on his face. A gardener holds his right arm, an armed guard the left.

  He stinks like a servant, you think.

  “What did you do, asshole?” Zak asks softly. He nods to the guard and the guard’s hand swings. The full-palmed slap sounds like a brick falling on a steel sheet. The boy wails. “You thought you wouldn’t get caught?”

  “Suh... sahib, I didn’t mean to,” says the boy between sobs. “I swear on my mother’s name I was just looking for food.”

  “In the coop, chootiyay?” says the guard and kicks him in the shin. The boy screams. “Your mother left her pussy for you to eat?” The guard looks at Saman, face turning apologetic. “Sorry, baji. These bastards bring out the worst on my tongue.”

  Saman is bored. It is a beautiful day and yes, this was exciting for a moment or two, but she wants to get back to the jinn book now. She can feel the tug of the summoning spell. She thinks of the calligram situated by it, the eyes, the humps. Her skin is moist. It is a hot day. She wonders what would happen if one read half the spell, or, say, did twenty days of amal instead of forty. She thinks of the second spell for calling lesser jinns. In her mind she can still see the words glowing. Serpentine they curl, mystery upon mystery, nebulous, a-blur. It is a gorgeous, golden day, really.

  Saman begins to mutter the words.

  “Please, sahib,” the boy is moaning. “Let me go. Forgive me this once. I... I was so hungry. I just wanted some of their feed. The bird attacked me, bit my leg. I didn’t know what else to do.” He tries to point to his leg where the shalwar is torn, soaked with blood, but the gardener jerks his arm out again.

  The twins look at each other. Together, they go to the coop, where on the straw-covered ground a peacock lies, ugly in death, eyes bulging like marbles. Its crushed head oozes red-gray. An iron rod is trapped under its body. The other bird skitters at the far end of the coop, its foot leashed to a ring in the wall by its handler.

  You sigh. The twins pretend not to hear. They exit the coop and glance at the drama unfolding by the pond. Saman has vanished. The boy is being dragged to the back of the house by two guards. “Teach him a lesson. Keep him there for a night or two,” someone shouts. “Make the police wait a while.”

  Zak is shaking out the stiffness from his right hand. His face is florid.

  “Where’d they take him?” the twins ask.

  Zak shakes his head. “Bahan-chod,” he murmurs. “Damn sister-fucker. Murdered our bird.”

  And as Zak finishes, the air fills with a smell, a mix of sweat and musk and dirty underpants. The shadow of the oak flickers across the primrose. The bushes and pond water ripple. The twins back away from Zak. They find themselves backing away from each other.

  What’s happening out there is Saman summoning something, something is happening out there, the twins think, but already their thoughts are drifting apart. The two are thinning out, molting, the link between them quivering, tenuous, as they float away from each other, slipping and cascading, still carrying each other afloat, but all the while sundering.

  Before they could come apart, they rush to see what Saman is about.

  You follow them.

  THE TWINS UNDERSTAND – and by now you do as well – the duplicity of the Kitab Al Jinn. If you don’t, here is a powerful example – an example of power:

  1. Sheikh-al-Akbar Ibn Arabi believed the word angel hides a dozen mysterious interpretations.

  2. The word jinn is mysterious too.

  3. The word jinn means hidden, other, secreted away.

  4. The word jinn is not mysterious at all.

  5. The entity jinn is a lie. It wears spectacles.

  6. Mystery is power, the bearer of mysteries most powerful of all. That which precedes is Secret. That which proceeds is Empire.

  7. Power is the secret of jinn. If you don’t believe it, that’s because you smell like a servant.

  THE TWINS ARE watching Saman. You stand watch over them both.

  She stands by the gray structure that is the hatchery, holding the jinn book to her chest, the green scarf wrapped around her left wrist. She studies the path that winds by the hatchery past the rose bushes and disappears in a grove of poplars. Tugged by gusts of garden wind, Saman’s long white kameez shivers. Her shoulders hitch. Cold in this weather, you wonder.

  The twins move close to her.

  You follow.

  The cottage is a quaint, low structure with three chimneys, white walls, and cedar shingles undulating across the top. The stacked roof edges roll under the eaves. Its faded red door is flanked by jasmine bushes. No windows. Ivy creeps across the walls and over the door’s casing and sash. It looks like one of those fairy tale houses Saman has seen in books – magical, secret, impossible to glimpse from the drive or really any part of the farmhouse.

  Saman stops by the jasmine. She stares at the red door. He sleeps in Rukhsana Apee’s skin, she thinks. Chained to her soul, madly in love with his prison. A band of heat builds in her belly and inches its way down. Saman stares and stares. After forty days, she thinks. He must be so old now.

  She doesn’t have forty days on the farmhouse.

  Quickly Saman kneels on the grass. It is freshly sprinkled and the muddy coolness seeps through her jeans. She takes off her scarf, shakes it out on the ground, and places the Book of Jinn on it. From the pocket of her jeans, she pulls out a piece of chalk. She draws and draws and after several minutes manages a faint white circle on the grass around her. She sits and rifles through the book’s pages till she comes across the calligram, the sinuous curves of it heaving as she flips the pages one last time.

  There! The spell to summon the lesser jinns, written in Arabic. She can read the Arabic script, even if there is no translation, no means to discern meaning, and no need.

  The twins try to read along, but the page darkens before th
eir eyes. They cannot see the spell. For the first time, the twins are afraid. You can sense the fear thicken and rise like a curtain around them. You narrow your eyes, concentrate, and the spell is there, the words secret and powerful, nestled against each other, rooting you to this place you now call yours.

  Saman finds the words different from what she remembered by the pond. She is sure she didn’t misremember before. She is sure something has changed in the order of words. In the arrangement of pages that build the world of jinns.

  She begins to read the spell out loud.

  The leaves of the jasmine turn.

  The white flowers redden.

  The petals start falling off.

  Enthralled, Saman chants. There is a presence behind her. She can feel it, you can feel it, the twins can see it. The presence is growing, a crackling blackness hovering, churning, unfolding above her, like the wings of a monstrous bird.

  The twins are terrified. They’ve always wanted to go to the hatchery and now they turn and dash. They race between trees smothered by shadow, leap over tombstones exploding from the ground, sharp moss-covered teeth that grow and grow, encircling them, hemming them into a knot tightening into itself. The twins are panting and crying, the hatchery is so close, it’s right there if only they could –

  In the corner of their eyes, the building appears. Only it isn’t a hatchery anymore. It is a thatched shed. A sword, an axe, something metallic, is buried in its door.

  It glints.

  And the curtain stiffens, enwombing the twins, drawing them into the embrace of a deep, dark, unsatiated mother.

  You watch the twins disappear. You feel strong, curious, strangely loquacious, even if your vocabulary hasn’t quite flowered yet. You turn and walk back to where Saman is kneeling within the circle, hugging herself, rocking back and forth, sighing out the last of the spell. Dead leaves swirl in the air. Inundated by presence, the grove hums. The cottage breathes. Last glimmers of daylight or wetness on Saman’s cheeks? Her hair is disheveled, her lips look swollen. She looks so small from where you stand, or she has receded into the distance.