She hadn’t moved, but her silence was now charged with attention. He opened the box of trims and ribbons, selected a spool of golden cord. He pondered a moment, then said, “Chava, this cord is far too thick for a needle. How does one sew with it?”
A pause. “First you lay it on top of the fabric,” she said, her graveled voice betraying extreme patience, “and pin it into place. Then, sew across it with small stitches, and remove the pins.”
He found her pincushion, cut a length of the cord. “We fell from the mountain,” he said as he worked, “and landed in the desert, and had to contend with rain, and iron, and men and their magic. We searched for a cause, a fault. Brother accused sister, clan accused clan, saying, ‘It was this wrong, it was that slight.’ The first battle began, and we’ve been fighting ourselves ever since.” He threaded another needle, and began to sew neat yellow stitches across the golden cord. “It’s said that if one day we can discover the reason for our banishment, then the roc will gather us all and fly us home to Mount Qaf, where we’ll live in peace again. But until that day, we are doomed to endless conflict.”
His voice trailed away. Long moments passed; and then she said, “Ahmad, do you believe in Mount Qaf?”
He knew that she expected him to say no. It was the sort of story that, if it were told by a human, he’d dismiss as nonsense. But now he felt the need to give a better answer.
“I used to, when I was young,” he said. “But then I began to question. How could a mountain encircle the earth? Wouldn’t there be evidence of such a place, if it existed? I decided that the tale was invented—that all the stories, in fact, were invented, and I would give them no power over me. But yes. I believed, once.”
She lay there, absorbing this, as he continued to sew. Then she said, “Rabbi Meyer gave me a book that told a story like that. Except it wasn’t a mountain, but a garden, in a place called Eden. The people who lived there were Adam and Eve, the first humans. They ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, the only fruit that God had forbidden them to eat.”
She paused, as though waiting for a scornful comment. What is the point of planting such fruit if one only means to forbid it? But he remained silent, sewing, listening.
“Once they gained the tree’s knowledge,” she said, “they realized that they were naked, and it made them ashamed. God saw their shame, and knew that they’d eaten the fruit. So He banished them from the garden. And the humans have never been able to find it since.”
He considered. “It’s similar,” he said, “but not the same. I’m quite certain that no jinni has ever felt ashamed of their nakedness.”
“Somehow I believe you.”
“And all men and women, they’re meant to descend from these two?”
“Yes. But it grows complicated.”
“I’d imagine so.”
Silence returned. He kept on sewing, tied off a thread, snipped the ends away. “These scissors,” he said. “They surprise me. They seem like something I’d make, not something you’d own.”
“Why not?”
“They’re too fanciful. You seem to value utility above all else.”
“They’re well made, and they were no more expensive than the others in the shop.” Did he imagine it, or was her voice improving? Perhaps it was only the added tone of indignation. She paused, and then muttered something he couldn’t quite hear.
“Pardon?”
“I said, ‘And besides, they remind me of you.’”
Surprised, he smiled in the near-darkness. “Really?”
“As you say, they’re something that you might make. I use the scissors, and I think of you. There, now you know the extent of my infatuation.” She spoke it half defensively, as though he might think less of her for it—and suddenly it pained him that even now, lying injured and immobile, she felt the need to protect herself in this way.
“May I tell you another story?” he said.
“Of course.”
He threaded the needle, began again. “Once, there was a jinni who was captured by a wizard, and bound to human form. He came by accident to a towering city, where all thought him very strange—and there he met an equally strange woman, a woman made of clay.”
The words came to him as though fed from some distant source. He pulled thread through fabric, heard it whisper like flame. “Before long,” he said, “it seemed to him that, in that city full of wonders, the woman was the most wonderful, the most worthy of his attention. For years they roamed together—and then, one night, they came upon a building in flames. Nearby was a child, panicking for her father. The child ran inside, and the woman ran in after. He shouted for her to stop—but it was too late, the woman was gone. And he was left to wonder: Had she heard him, calling after her? Or, because she couldn’t feel his wishes, did they simply not matter as much as the child’s? And more to the point, would he ever see her again?”
“Oh, Ahmad.” A whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
The stork’s beak nipped at a thread-end. “If I’d been elsewhere, would you have died tonight?”
“If you’d been elsewhere, I wouldn’t have been out at all.”
It was a diversion; he wouldn’t allow it. “If you’d heard the commotion and gone alone, then. Or if there’d been a mishap at the bakery, and someone was trapped inside. What then? Did you give any thought to your own safety?”
A hollow sigh. “No. I didn’t
