other was for dirhams and barter. The dollar purchases had to go through an imam, who would extract a fee for handling the money, and pay the merchant what was left, converting into dirham. There were easily three times as many merchants and customers in the dirham-and-barter tent, the Kafir looking for bargains and the sellers for surprises, as much as for doing business. It was festive there, too, a lot of chatter and laughing over the rattle and whine of an amateur band of drummers and fiddlers. People who think we are aloof from infidels, or hate them, should spend an hour here.
Those who did this regularly had tables they rented by the day or month; we amateurs just sat on the ground with our wares on display. I walked around and didn't see anyone I knew, so finally just sat next to a table where a man and a woman were selling books. I laid out a square of newspaper in front of me and set the Thrilling Wonder Stories on it.
The woman looked down at it with interest. 'What kind of a magazine is that?'
Magazine, I'd forgotten that word. 'I don't know. Strange tales, most of them religious.'
'It's 'science fiction,'' the man said. 'They used to do that, predict what the future would be like.'
'Used to? We still do that.'
He shrugged. 'Not that way. Not as fiction.'
'I wouldn't let a child see that,' the woman said.
'I don't think the artist was a good Muslim,' I said, and they both chuckled. They wished me luck with finding a buyer, but didn't make an offer themselves.
Over the next hour, five or six people looked at the magazine and asked questions, most of which I couldn't answer. The imam in charge of the tent came over and gave me a long silent look. I looked right back at him and asked him how business was.
Fatimah came by, the cart loaded with groceries. I offered to wheel it home if she would sit with the magazine. She covered her face and giggled. More realistically, I said I could push the cart home when I was done, if she would take the perishables now. She said no, she'd take it all after she'd done a turn around the tent. That cost me twenty dirham; she found a set of wooden spoons for the kitchen. They were freshly made by a fellow who had set up shop in the opposite comer, running a child-powered lathe, his sons taking turns striding on a treadmill attached by a series of creaking pulleys to the axis of the tool. People may have bought his wares more out of curiosity and pity for his sons than because of the workmanship.
I almost sold it to a fat old man who had lost both ears, I suppose in the war. He offered fifty dirham, but while I was trying to bargain the price up, his ancient crone of a wife charged up and physically hauled him away, shrieking. If he'd had an ear, she would have pulled him by it. The bookseller started to offer his sympathies, but then both of them doubled over in laughter, and I had to join them.
As it turned out, the loss of that sale was a good thing. But first I had to endure my trial.
A barefoot man who looked as if he'd been fasting all year picked up the magazine and leafed through it carefully, mumbling. I knew he was trouble. I'd seen him around, begging and haranguing. He was white, which normally is not a problem with me. But white people who choose to live inside the walls are often types who would not be welcome at home, wherever that might be.
He proceeded to berate me for being a bad Muslim-not hearing my correction, that I belonged to Chrislam-and, starting with the licentious cover and working his way through the inside illustrations and advertisements, to the last story, which actually had God's name in the title… he said that even a bad Muslim would have no choice but to burn it on the spot.
I would have gladly burned it if I could burn it under him, but I was saved from making that decision by the imam. Drawn by the commotion, he stamped over and began to question the man, in a voice as shrill as his own, on matters of doctrine. The man's Arabic was no better than his diet, and he slunk away in mid-diatribe. I thanked the imam and he left with a slight smile.
Then a wave of silence unrolled across the room like a heavy blanket, I looked to the tent entrance and there were four men: Abdullah Zaragosa, our chief imam, some white man in a business suit, and two policemen in uniform, seriously armed. In between them was an alien, one of those odd creatures visiting from Arcturus.
I had never seen one, though I had heard them described on the radio. I looked around and was sad not to see Fa-timah; she would hate having missed this.
It was much taller than the tallest human; it had a short torso but a giraffe-like neck. Its head was something like a bird's, one large eye on either side. It cocked its head this way and that, looking around, and then dropped down to say something to the imam!
They all walked directly toward me, the alien rippling on six legs. Cameras clicked; I hadn't brought one. The imam asked if I was Ahmed Abd al-kareem, and I said yes, in a voice that squeaked.
'Our visitor heard of your magazine. May we inspect it?' I nodded, not trusting my voice, and handed it to him, but the white man took it.
He showed the cover to the alien. 'This is what we expected you to look like.'
'Sorry to disappoint,' it said in a voice that sounded like it came from a cave. It took the magazine in an ugly hand, too many fingers and warts that moved, and inspected it with first one eye, and then the other.
It held the magazine up and pointed to it, with a smaller hand. 'I would like to buy this.'
'I-I can't take white people's money. Only dirhams or, or trade.'
'Barter,' it said, surprising me. 'That is when people exchange things of unequal value, and both think they have gotten the better deal.'
The imam looked like he was trying to swallow a pill. 'That's true enough,' I said. 'At best, they both do get better deals, by their own reckoning.'
'Here, then.' It reached into a pocket or a pouch-I couldn't tell whether it was wearing clothes-and brought out a ball of light.
It held out the light to a point midway between us, and let go. It floated in the air. 'The light will stay wherever you put it.'
It shimmered a brilliant blue, with fringes of rainbow colors. 'How long will it last?'
'Longer than you.'
It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. I touched it with my finger-it felt cool, and tingled-and pushed it a few inches. It stayed where I moved it.
'It's a deal, sir. Thank you.'
'Shukran,' it said, and they moved on down the line of tables.
I don't think it bought anything else. But it might have. I kept looking away from it, back into the light.
The imams and the white scientists all want to take the light away to study it. Eventually, I will loan it out.
For now, though, it is a Christmas gift to my son and daughter. The faithful, and the merely curious, come to look at it, and wonder. But it stays in my house.
In Chrislam, as in old Islam, angels are not humanlike creatures with robes and wings. They are male 'ikah, beings of pure light.
They look wonderful on the top of a tree.
Burn by James Patrick Kelly
From Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection (2006)
We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonder-ful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to
