She looked up at the sound of a human’s indrawn breath. The farmer, his rest over, stood at the row’s end, staring at the girl who’d appeared among the wheat. She was naked, and beautiful, and holding his scythe.
They gaped at each other. In the space of a blink the girl vanished, and the scythe tumbled to the ground.
Her companion was still shaking when she caught up with him.
—I wanted to be brave, he said, his voice low with shame. I thought I could ignore the fear. He glanced at her. Did you touch it?
—No, she said. Let’s go home.
She told no one what had happened. The fear of iron was shared by all jinn, lowest to highest; it kept them separate from the humans, and went to the very heart of what it meant to be jinn-kind. To not feel the fear, to touch the metal without consequence, was unnatural, unheard of. And so from that day forward she curtailed her curiosity and remained at the heart of the habitation, where she might listen to the tale-tellers and let their words distract her from her secret, which she kept locked deep inside.
And then, one day, a new story reached their lands: the tale of the iron-bound jinni, who’d captured his own master in a copper flask and then disappeared into the human world.
It was an instant favorite. Jinn old and young begged to hear it again and again—but the jinniyeh listened most intently of all. It thrilled her to think that the story might be true, that out there, hidden among humanity, was a jinni who believed—quite reasonably, but so wrongly!—that he could never come near any of his own kind again.
It’s only a story, she told herself. He doesn’t exist.
And yet she couldn’t help wondering.
4.
The months stretched onward, the seasons passing each in turn, completing their circle, beginning again. And as they changed, New York changed, too, the city reveling in its constant newness, its own unending cycle of reinvention.
Automobiles began to dot the streets. At first they were only playthings for the wealthy, and everyone stopped to look when one went by. Thomas Maloof, the richest man in Little Syria, bought a canary-yellow roadster that he liked to be seen in—although he was more often seen in front of it, either struggling with the crank or fanning the engine with his hat. And then, seemingly from one day to the next, they were everywhere: tearing through intersections and rocketing around corners, blaring their horns at wagons and pedestrians.
“Perhaps I’ll buy one,” said the Jinni.
“All that noise and smoke,” the Golem said, “just to sit in traffic with everyone else.”
The long-awaited subway opened at last, and the pair descended into the station beneath the ground at City Hall. Together they rode the juddering train all the way to 145th, where the Jinni all but ran up the staircase in his haste to get out.
“That was unbearable,” he said. “All that earth above us, pressing down.”
“I quite liked it,” the Golem replied.
Telephones appeared, fascinating the Jinni, who couldn’t believe such a thing was possible without sorcery. He persuaded Arbeely to buy one for the shop—but Arbeely hated shouting into the receiver, and soon avoided it entirely. The Golem’s landlady installed one in the boardinghouse parlor, but the Golem never used it. There was only one person she would call, and the operator might be listening at any moment.
At night the pair walked for miles together. They ventured across the Williamsburg Bridge and past the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and marveled at the half-built ships in the dry-docks. They admired the fashionable theaters on Long Acre Square, but never went inside, not even to see the latest sensations—for she was leery of crowds in such numbers, their emotions all pulled about by the performers.
“What if I lose myself and run onstage?” she said.
“I’ll hold you back,” he replied. But she shook her head, and they walked on.
At Coney Island they rode the Helter Skelter and the Trip to the Moon, and stood beneath the Electric Tower’s shining minarets. The Golem fed peanuts to a trained elephant while the Jinni stood some distance away, afraid of startling it. The elephant ate the peanuts, then sniffed in confusion at the woman who’d held them. Soon it was feeling her all over with its trunk, trying to decide what she was.
“He likes you, miss,” said its trainer.
She patted the gray trunk fondly, and went back to the Jinni, a sad smile on her face. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I think he wants to go home,” she said.
They learned the nighttime aspects of all the neighborhoods. Greenwich Village was a mix of laughter and furious discussion, of immigrants and dilettantes who drank champagne and talked gaily of anarchy. Riverside Avenue was calm and inward-turned, the stately apartments populated by safely dreaming minds. They tended to skirt the most contentious places—Hell’s Kitchen, the Tenderloin, San Juan Hill—in case they should be caught up in an altercation or a raid. The few times they cut across one of the slums, they were stopped by policemen who scolded the Jinni for bringing his lady among such rough characters. The Jinni found it darkly amusing—but the Golem didn’t, not at all.
“They’re right, Ahmad,” she said. “We shouldn’t come here.”
His contrary nature rebelled against this. They roamed all over, so where was the difference? And so he went alone to the slums and the stews—where all took note of the handsome man in well-made clothing, and tried to fleece him, or rob him, or sell themselves to him. One night, a poor young mother, her baby tied in a filthy sling, pulled on his sleeve to beg for money. Before he could answer, a stocky man materialized from a doorway and slapped her across the face. The woman didn’t even cry out, only slunk away, one hand to her cheek.
At once the Jinni thought of everything he might do to the man, and how
