Her hand on the coffee-pot went slack. The crash reverberated throughout the shop—and Sam Hosseini jumped up with a grimace, his trouser-legs dripping with coffee.
Maryam gasped and bent to pick up the pot. “Sam, I’m so sorry!”
“No harm done, no harm done,” he said, stepping away gingerly.
Sayeed went to fetch the mop, and Maryam escaped to the kitchen, where she stood at the sink and let a few tears fall. Then she gathered herself and refilled the coffee-pot. A long, puckered indentation now adorned its side. She wished that she could take it to her tinsmith friend Boutros, who’d have mended it beautifully and charged her far less than he ought. Once, she’d given him her mother’s old copper flask, to see if he might remove the dents and repair the scrollwork. She wondered, sometimes, what she would’ve done if she’d known what was hidden inside it, waiting to be set loose among them.
* * *
The Jinni sat with his back to the forge, his head in his hands.
A jinniyeh. Here, impossibly here, in the Amherst. And she’d flown from him, in—fear? Horror? He’d seen both, in her features. He wished that he could believe he’d imagined it all, that he hadn’t driven away the only one of his kind he’d seen in fifteen years—
A glimmer, from above.
He looked up, then slowly got to his feet as she descended through the arches and past the platforms. She didn’t touch the iron—but she was utterly surrounded by it; she ought to have flown in terror regardless.
Was she unaffected by iron, somehow? Was she like him?
He stood perfectly still as she approached, terrified that he’d frighten her away again. Her body glowed like a jewel in the thin morning light. She came to hover in front of him, only a few feet away. He stared at her, not daring to speak.
—I apologize, said the jinniyeh.
He wanted to cry out at the sound of her voice, at the wind-borne language unheard for so long.
—I was afraid, she said. But I shouldn’t have flown away like that.
“Afraid . . . of me?” His own words seemed flat and clumsy in comparison.
—A little, I suppose. And this place was . . . unexpected. But I was also afraid of what you might think of me.
“You’re immune to iron,” he said, not quite daring to believe it.
—Yes. I always have been.
He felt dazed, giddy. “Is such a thing . . . common now, among our kind?”
—Not at all. I thought I was the only one—until I heard the tale of the iron-bound jinni.
“The . . . what?”
She smiled at his blank confusion.—Did you think we wouldn’t tell your story, once you were gone? There isn’t a creature along the desert’s curve that hasn’t heard of the iron-bound jinni, who buried the wizard’s flask and then returned to his exile among humankind.
His story? They had made a story of him?
—It was said, she said, drifting a touch closer, that he could only be found by another such exile. From the first time I heard the tale, I knew that I was the one it meant.
His mind struggled to take this in. “Another exile . . . You were exiled from your tribe?”
—Yes, when my secret was discovered. They banished me, to the City of Sulayman.
He gaped at this. “And you survived?”
She laughed then, and it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.—Then you remember the tales?
“Remember them? They haunted my childhood! I was terrified of them—of Sulayman’s bound ghuls, and the ravenous demons who’d hunt for jinn and tear them apart, flame by flame—”
—The tales were all false, she said gently, as though afraid of disappointing him. There’s nothing in the Cursed City except for stones, and Bedu. I lived in fear there for entire seasons before I accepted the truth. Then the Cursed City became my home, while I plotted a way to reach you.
The world itself was changing shape beneath him. Disoriented, he shook his head. “But how could you possibly have come here? How did you find me on the strength of a tale and nothing more?”
—It was easier than I thought it would be, she told him. First, I had to escape through the jinn lands, so I hid myself in a Bedouin’s saddle-bag next to his sword, and traveled with him to the outskirts of Homs. There, a farmer in a wheat-field told me of a healer in the Damascus souk who had the power to find anyone alive beneath the heavens, be they flesh or flame. I followed the railway from Homs to Damascus, and found the healer in the souk. I entered her dreams, and told her, ‘Find me the iron-bound jinni.’
He listened, enraptured, picturing it all: the saddle-bag, the wheat-field, the sleeping healer.
—The healer said, ‘He calls himself Ahmad al-Hadid. He is across a sea and an ocean, hiding in a city where shining boxes rise as high as Mount Qaf, and an arch of Palmyra stands among green trees.’ I searched through many sleeping minds before I understood what city she meant by this. Then, because of the war, and the blockade—
“War?” he said, startled. “There’s a war?”
—Yes, one of the humans’ usual fights, only very large and inconvenient. I flew to the city of Port Said, and hid inside a ship that crossed the sea, and another ship that crossed the ocean. I arrived here—and then—She paused.
And then? he wanted to say, like an eager jinn-child to a story-teller.
—I found you in an old—She frowned, at a loss. Then, a slow, shining smile. An old . . . directory.
She’d spoken the word in English, using the nearest sounds that jinn language could muster, and the effect was so startling and strange that he burst out laughing. At once he was afraid she’d take it wrongly—but she, too, was laughing now, the sound melding with the flames behind him.
“By the six directions,” he said, “that is an astonishing tale.”
—You swear in the old way, as I do, she said, still smiling.
“I haven’t in years,”
