Part III
1915
13.
In the years following the jinniyeh’s banishment to the Cursed City, the Bedu residents of Palmyra were forced to wage a constant and rather irritating battle.
Their adversary stole strips of meat off the drying racks, and frightened the goats so that their milk went sour. It raised dust-devils between the tents, hid the men’s swords in the animals’ bedding, and snipped the coins from the women’s veils while they slept. It could only be a jinni of some kind—but no matter how many amulets they hung above their doorways and tent-flaps, still they woke to find their looms unstrung in the night, and the chickens gorging themselves in the granary. They began to set aside small offerings for their uninvited guest—old veils, colorful balls of wool, the best morsels of lamb—in hopes that they’d be accepted, and the rest left alone.
The jinniyeh was amused by these bribes, and took them more or less at random, hoping to confound the Bedu further. Sometimes she considered entering their sleeping minds, to watch their dreams and search through their memories—but the prospect held little true appeal. Their lives seemed to be made only of drudgery, so why should their dreams be any better? Besides, the tales were full of jinn who’d entered a human’s mind at night, only to be trapped there come morning—a risk that hardly seemed worth any reward.
So each day she flew from her cave to the citadel, where she contented herself with her small mischiefs: raising winds to pull the clothing from the washing-lines, or turning into a mouse and nibbling through the ropes that held their tents aloft. The women chased after their laundry, and the men cursed as their tents fell around their ears; and she’d laugh, and fly back through the ruins to spend the night in her cave, telling herself stories in the dark. It was a lonely existence, perhaps, but far preferable to hiding among her own kind. She fully expected to live out her centuries in this manner—until a spring evening in her fourth year of banishment when, approaching her cave, she saw the glow and snap of a campfire.
Shocked, she halted in midair, then flew closer. Beyond the fire, inside the cave, was the elongated outline of a sleeping camel, and a donkey beside it, its bristled back to the flames. The camel’s saddle and an assortment of packs and panniers sat nearby, against the jagged wall.
Footsteps—and a human figure emerged from the cave’s depths.
At first the jinniyeh thought he was a Bedu, though they rarely traveled alone. He wore a scarf about his head, and a long shepherd’s coat lined with sheepskins, still dusty from the road. A thick assortment of fringed shawls topped the coat, as though he’d traveled from a land still mired in winter. The man unwound the head-scarf—and the jinniyeh saw that it wasn’t a man at all, but a woman, pale and fine-boned, her long hair braided tightly around her head.
Intrigued, the jinniyeh flew closer—and startled the camel, which snorted and kicked in its sleep before settling again. The woman tensed and looked out past the fire, searching. For a moment her eyes seemed to focus upon the jinniyeh, who felt an irrational prickle of fear.
Slowly the woman reached into a pocket in her coat, and withdrew a slim metal case that she opened to reveal dozens of steel pins, each bent at the middle like a miniature horseshoe. The woman held the case open a moment, then removed a few of the pins and slid them into her braids, which already held such an impressive number of them that the jinniyeh wondered how she bore the weight. With a last glance beyond the fire, the woman snapped the case shut and put it away again. Her hands, the jinniyeh saw, were shaking.
With a jolt the jinniyeh remembered that she’d seen this woman before.
The woman went to the camel’s saddle, and from a holster withdrew a rifle like the ones the Bedu carried. She sat down by the fire, laid the weapon nearby, and rubbed at her eyes. The jinniyeh held perfectly still, floating only upon the air-currents that rose from the fire, until at last the woman curled up against the camel and fell asleep. Even in slumber she shivered, minute tremors that traveled the length of her body. She frowned, her mouth twitching.
Slowly, slowly, the jinniyeh drifted closer. The camel shuddered once, and snorted into the dust, but the woman slept on. Her mind was open, the way clear—and for the first time, the risk seemed worth the reward.
The jinniyeh flew inside.
Her name was Sophia.
She had been Sophia . . . Williams? Winston? The difference seemed laughably small, though to the woman it mattered immensely. But she was only Sophia now, and only to herself. The tribespeople of the desert called her Saffiyah, a different name in a different language. Saffiyah the stranger, Saffiyah the afflicted. Shivering Saffiyah.
But before that, there had been a telegram, and then a letter, written to a man named Abu Alim: With utmost sorrow I must tell you that I can no longer employ you as my guide.
Then, doors upon doors, a city’s worth of them. Protestant missionary schools, écoles françaises, wealthy Damascene families who might want a tutor for their children. She knocked upon them all. She could teach English, French, history, mathematics. References? She had none.
The doors closed in her face.
You aren’t a Winston anymore, she told herself bitterly. So stop thinking like one.
The souk in Damascus, the calls of the vendors. Umm Sahir, her sharp eyes spotting her customer across the alley.
You’re early this month, Miss Williams. Has something happened?
She needed employment. She had no skill at healing, and was too old to apprentice. But she’d been the guest of every tribe from Aleppo to the Red Sea. She knew their sheikhs, their languages, their alliances. More than that: she knew their healers, and what they needed. Herbs, mastics, incense, salts, items too
