She picked up her speed, zigzagging between other, slower-moving pedestrians, and eventually managed to catch up with Samir. She whirled around in front of him, with arms out wide, to block his path.
Samir was so surprised that he would have crashed into her had she not swiftly side-stepped his unstoppable momentum, and caught his left hand between her fingers as he passed:
‘Where are you off to now?’ she whispered into his ear, as he came to a stop.
‘I dunno.’
‘I’ve been chasing you. When I ask you where you’re going you won’t even answer me. Okay, so I’ve put on some weight. You haven’t gone off me, have you?’
‘Hala. Today’s not your day.’
He kicked the back of his left heel and started moving again. But Helen still had hold of him. Eventually he turned to her, as they continued to glide in parallel, facing each other. ‘Okay, but not here,’ he said, looking up at the date vines that ran like a curtain around the buildings on both sides, each one embedded with synth-bio cameras.
Samir took Helen’s hand and guided her off the Najaf Broadway, and down several side streets until eventually they stopped outside a repeater station, where he knew there would be no trees to cause interference.
‘Today is the day isn’t it?’ Helen asked when he was finally ready to talk.
‘Take one of these and I’ll tell you.’ He held up a small blue pill in his left hand.
She stared at it.
‘Pentathol,’ she moaned. ‘You don’t trust me?’
‘The Old City is my destiny, Hala. Come with me, then I will trust you.’
She snatched it out of his hand, and made it vanish leaving a smile on her face.
‘By “old city” you mean the “Exhibition”?’
‘Don’t call it that, Hala. It is the real Najaf, not this wretched reboot; NJF.’ He spat the letters out, like they had a sour taste.
‘It’s just a place for obsessives, Samir. It’s unhealthy.’
‘It’s not up to me anymore.’
‘Give me one reason why you have to go.’
He turned round, reluctantly, dropped his bag and lifted his shirt just above his belt. Helen saw it instantly and her eyes prickled.
The skin above his belt was cracking, a gap had opened up and started to peel, like an egg that had been slowly boiled.
‘The symptoms!’ she exclaimed.
‘Yup.’
He fell silent and looked up to the sky which was being crisscrossed by lasers announcing the start of the holiday. He looked back at Helen.
‘My father was one of the first doctors to study the disease; he identified many of its key stages, and risked his life in his research.’
‘I know,’ said Helen. ‘I watched that blog-doc about him and how that first case, the swimmer who peeled to nothing in front of hundreds of spectators, had been his patient. That clip went viral at the time; it was sick.’
Helen shrugged. ‘So,’ she looked him straight in the eyes, ‘you’ll get the treatment … You’ll be okay.’
‘I don’t want to. I want to follow it to the end, the way my mother did.’
‘Your mum took her own life,’ Helen said as softly as she could.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Something else happened. She knew it was leading somewhere, but when they took her dried-up body away from me, she was still there.’
‘Samir. She’s dead. That place is a cemetery, nothing more. People say it helps people mourn, but look at you, it’s doing the opposite. It’s twisted, Samir. You think she’s still alive, just because her body is preserved. It’s madness Samir!’
‘My dad used his connections to return her to the Old City.’
‘Samir…’
‘Helen. There, there is no comma between life and death, down there. Everything is lifeless but alive.’
‘So you go, and you find her; then what?’
‘I might find a way of getting rid of this,’ he said, pointing at his waist. ‘And if I don’t at least my last few days will be with her.’
‘Does your father know what you’re planning?’
‘No,’ he said, gesturing towards his backpack. ‘It is better no one knows anything. I don’t want to put them at risk.’
‘Not even Aamir?’
‘My brother?’ he asked surprised. ‘He’d be delighted to see the back of me; he’s always been embarrassed by me, or scared my behaviour will affect his climb up the greasy pole.’
‘Isn’t he afraid for you?’
‘Look, everything’s prepared. I’ve had everything forged: my dad’s fingerprints, his retinal scans … I’ve even impersonated his voice.’ He lowered his pitch: ‘My dearest Helen, take this ungrateful wretch away, and pray teach him some respect for his elders!’
Helen smiled.
‘But you’ll be found out, and then you’ll get him into trouble too. They’ll section you.’
‘Maybe I am crazy. If so, let me just see her one last time; let me share my symptoms with her.’
‘Don’t leave me, Samir.’
At this, he said nothing, simply kissed her on the forehead. She turned away from him, resisting the urge to return the kiss. And so they stood together, not looking at each other in the silence, until suddenly the moment was broken by the sight of hundreds of people marching toward Celebration Square. Without looking back, Helen began to walk toward them, winding her way slowly through the crowd, who now streamed past her in the opposite direction, like some tidal wave.
It was too much. She made her way to the side of the street, and rested her back against the glass wall of the DNA Bank. Looking around, everything seemed distorted to her, like long jumbled sentences that had no meaning.
At that moment, it felt as if the city of NJF had transformed into a gigantic funfair, a carnival of technicolor billboards, skyscrapers cascading with light; each advertising message, scrolling across the sky in tortuous wordplay, promised a ride like no other, a once-in-a-lifetime ‘experience narrative’: play or be played.
Helen thought about her teacher’s face and the circus lion, and the world suddenly struck her as not unlike like a child’s toy grown monstrously large; it made her think of how she and her friends would spend their weekends sitting in the stands of the Roman stadium, arms crossed, deciding collectively on the fate of particular players and their teams at the start of each game; and how they would then imagine they were moving them around the pitch with their will power alone.
She sensed the building behind her shaking, and stepped forward a little in order to see its walls twisting, slowly but surely, above her, opening up to display its multilevel entrances. As some balconies closed in on themselves and others appeared, she recalled the advert a few weeks earlier: ‘Lucky are those who live and work in the Transformer Buildings for they shall always enjoy a new view. Farewell solid walls!’
It was some spectacle.
It seemed human endeavour had now transcended the limitations of static architecture and buildings could dance like puppets.
Helen skated off again like someone late for a meeting, then, as if realising she’d missed it already, stopped suddenly, finding herself standing in front of a Pop Shop at the entrance to one of Najaf’s busiest retail valleys. It was a deliberately retro version, aping the outdated designs of the original kiosks, and staffed by an aquadroid—a laser hologram projected onto a cloud of smart-vapour.
‘I’m exhausted, Bob,’ Helen said, reading his name-tag. ‘Give me your strongest.’
‘How about a shot of High Gene?’
‘No. Now’s not the time for feeling happy,’ she said, standing on one foot hesitantly. ‘I want an anti-fear hormone. I feel like I’m living in a nightmare, and I just want to go back to sleep.’
‘Something to impede the delivery from the adrenal gland?’
‘Yes, Anti-Fear. That’s the one. Make it a double.’
‘Maybe you need some oxytocin, or some self-confidence hormone,’ he suggested. ‘
Your eagerness to imbibe the aforementioned product concerns me. Remember: reducing the distribution of adrenaline can be dangerous, and can lead to dependency. Why not try Chillax to help you relax?’
‘Bob, please. I’m scared.’
‘Of what?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s from the Transformer Buildings, or the light shows. Something’s making me nervous, or rather unnerving me.’
‘I’ll give you Anti-Fear, madam, on the understanding that your use of it is prohibited for the next month. Your GP has just filed your dependency rating and you’re low risk.’ The aqua-droid then handed her a shot glass, and changed its tone to deliver the usual product slogan. ‘Life is but a dream…’ It paused, leant in closer and whispered, ‘so be careful waking up, Hala.’
Helen’s blood ran cold. Samir! His name reverberated inside her. Samir was the only person who called her by that name, and hearing it again made her realise how she had prepared to never hear it again. She had abandoned him. And now she knew he was in danger. They’ve discovered us Samir, she thought to herself.
In an instant, Helen knew that all those compulsory implants, recording every detail of her blood chemistry since the day she was born, would today be registering something new, something rising within her. It wasn’t fear, that old friend, but the thing she feared; and the sense that she would soon overcome it. She was standing now between two worlds; the one she had lived in all her life; and the one Samir was calling to her from: a strange place set back behind the walkways of ordinary life, extinct, forgotten, lifeless but alive. And to her, it seemed more attractive than anything this artificial world had to offer, this place where everything you touched became obsolete because you touched it, everything you said became a lie because you said it.
She looked hard and long at the shot glass in front of her.
What happened next she probably wouldn’t be able to tell you. Samir’s name rang through her thoughts, echoing, but with no reply. She was lost, calling his name, pleading, begging for forgiveness. Then suddenly a word. ‘Come.’ And with it a million unspoken coordinates, any one of which would lead her to him.
Within a matter of minutes she found herself running down a dark, narrow alleyway, one that seemed to be heading downwards, endlessly, completely at odds to the rest of the city’s shape. Eventually she came to the end, and looked up at a huge iron gate, with only darkness behind it.
* * *
‘What is this place?’ Helen asked, staring at the massive columns of an enduring building, holding up a huge gold-coloured dome.
‘It’s a shrine,’ Samir answered, taking her hand.
Helen tried to focus. Her stomach was still turning, the way it would if you’d just stepped out of an elevator that had plummeted a quarter of a mile in three seconds.
‘A “shrine”?’
‘It’s a kind of monument, attached to a grave in this case, designed to honour the memory of a hero, a prophet or a pious person.’
‘And whose grave is this?’
‘Imam Ali,’ said Samir. ‘It is the centre around which this Old City was built.’
She had never heard of him, but she didn’t ask any more questions, gazing up at the golden dome that looked like the helmet of some gigantic knight, bigger than her imagination could bear.
‘Take your shoes off,’ he said.
‘Why?’ Helen asked.
He stared at her as if searching for a convincing answer.
‘We’re here as guests, and we must follow the traditions of the hosts.’
She fought back a smile, recognising that Samir was trying on the role of scholar, despite the wonder in his eyes.
She started to circumambulate the grave, and on the far side spotted an old woman crouched near one corner, crying. Then she saw men, also with their hands held high.
‘Was the suffering of our ancestors always so severe?’ she asked, peering back between the mannequin-like figures.
He said nothing, but it didn’t matter to Helen. She found herself entranced by the clothing these figures wore, astounded by its variety. She stopped beside a male statue who seemed to have been frozen just at the moment when his lips touched the golden mesh that surrounded the tomb.
‘Were they worshipping the gold?’ Helen asked. Samir again had no answer.
She walked away from him to watch one of those who had been praying—his hands spread open as if holding a book she couldn’t see, his eyes gazing up imploringly towards the ceiling. She sidled up next to him, imitated his stance, and craned her neck to study his eyes; she couldn’t find the strength to copy his upward stare, not with the same power or reverence.
‘We’ve changed so much,’ Samir mused, as if asking himself a question.
‘The world changes and all we can do is try to keep up,’ Helen offered.
‘But have we changed for the better?’ Samir asked.
Neither of them spoke.
‘I like this place,’ said Samir. But a doubt, like a microscopic crack, began to widen. ‘Only…’
‘Only what?’
‘Nothing. Put your shoes on and let’s get out of here.’ Beyond the temple, in the dim, yellow light shed by the organic halogens suspended high in the ceilings, the Old City revealed itself: a maze of crooked, narrow, streets, silted up with rubble, and decades’ worth of moss and dark-coloured weeds. Under that high, oppressive ceiling—built over all effected cities in the years after 2021—these streets felt smaller somehow, almost unimportant like the bookshelf aisles of an oversized library. For that’s what Old Najaf was now, a buried archive, a place where the past could be referenced, and drawn up into the conversations of the present, but only by academics on officially sanctioned research visits.
Even if there was enough light, the weeds and the rubble meant it was impossible for Helen or Samir to skate. The asphalt was either scratched and pockmarked with age, or ripped up decades ago by missile strikes, leaving huge craters. Helen walked on ahead excitedly, in awe of every new sight.
‘What’s that?’ she cried out, pointing to a row of mysterious metal carcasses.
‘They were called “cars”.’ Samir snorted. ‘The dominant means of transit for over a century.’
‘And what’s happening there?’
She pointed to a group of figures wearing white robes, seated around a large cylindrical object, almost completely obscured with mould and weeds. Out of this bolus stretched a series of loose pipes, one to each of the men. Most of the figures held the ends of these pipes in their hands, but one seemed to have it leading straight into his mouth. Samir could not pretend to know what was happening here.
‘But which of these were desiccated at the time of the outbreak, and which have been brought down here for storage?’ Helen asked.
This one Samir could answer. ‘All the recent victims of the syndrome are returned to domestic interior spaces, ideally ones shown to belong to ancestors or relatives of ancestors. The bodies out in the street are victims of the original outbreak.’ At this Samir took the lead, picking up his pace and walking ahead of Helen, leading her along a route he knew of by heart. Eventually, they came to a large crater, which spanned the whole street and couldn’t be circumnavigated. Having scrabbled first down and then up out of its tangle of weeds, they stood in front of a small, dilapidated house that stood apart from the rest of the street. Samir’s eyes blazed as he approached the front door.
As soon as Helen had crossed this tiny threshold, following close behind Samir, she could see, in the courtyard beyond, the macabre spectre of his mother waving directly back at them. Her carcass stood there, surrounded by a clutch of other relatives, presumably from several generations before, at the centre of a courtyard, built around a fountain where water had long stopped bubbling.
Samir fell silent immediately, tense with reverence, then proceeded to circle around the figure, slowly, muttering inaudible words as he did so. Helen held back, pretending to be more interested in the architecture of the house, in
order to give him some privacy. Eventually she let herself glance out at Samir in the centre of the courtyard, and saw him leaning into the figure, very closely, as if trying to smell the carcass’s hair. Helen couldn’t look directly at the figure’s face; its smile terrified her, regardless of the skin that surrounded it, cracked like the shell of a hardboiled egg, about to be peeled.
Seeing her look at him, Samir called back: ‘Hala!’ Then crossing the courtyard to where she stood, he took her hand and walked her back to figure.
‘Mama. This is Hala, with whom I’m secretly in love.’ Then Samir whispered something in Helen’s ear that only the dead could hear.
Helen’s cheeks flushed. She whispered back: ‘I accepted you as a silent lover. Why wouldn’t I accept you, loudly, as a husband?’
They both laughed and, on a sudden impulse, Helen kissed the statue’s cheek before Samir pulled her back towards him. He wrapped his arms around her and planted a desperate kiss on her lips. Then he pulled her away from the statues, out of the courtyard altogether, and into a room at the front of the house, then up an ancient flight of stairs.
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