She turned off the main boulevard, onto one of the area’s backstreets. Not as numerous as the Khan but easy enough to get lost in. At a barely lit square, she walked beneath an archway and down some steps to an almost hidden door. Using her cane, she rapped a pattern: three quick, two slow, three quick. Up top a slot opened, showing two eyes with shifting purple irises.
“You lost?”
“Looking for some jasmine tea,” she answered.
“How much sugar?”
“Just a touch.”
The slot slammed shut, and the door was opened by a heavily muscled djinn wearing a black tailcoat. He flourished an arm, those purple irises glinting. “Welcome to the Jasmine.” Fatma walked inside, a cacophony of music and carousing washing over her like a small storm.
The Jasmine wasn’t listed in the directory. Outside, no one ever said its name. They just called it the Spot.
Patrons sat at tables talking or laughing as boilerplate eunuchs in tuxedos and red tarbooshes swapped out empty glasses. At the Spot, the drinks flowed freely. Mostly beer, Egypt’s favored intoxicant. But there was wine too and a trendy bubbly champagne with enchanted elixirs that, quite literally, left you light on your feet.
But no one came here just for the alcohol. You could get that readily enough anywhere in Cairo, even the foreign stuff. It was the clientele that placed the Jasmine off the beaten path. At one table, two women in Parisian dresses smoked from slender tortoiseshell cigarette holders—socialites come to do some slumming. They flanked a tall milk-white djinn with an unnaturally handsome face, as he pulled from a hookah and blew out spinning silver orbs. Beyond the tables, young men with the swagger of street toughs moved as gracefully as cabaret dancers—partnered with upper-class women who’d never be seen with them elsewhere, day or night. Some of those young men danced with each other. Everything hummed to the mesmeric music belted from a raised stage.
Navigating the crowd, Fatma sauntered over to the bar. A short djinn bartender with six arms doled out drinks. She caught hers as it slid past and lifted it to take a contented sip.
“You act like you drinking something,” someone commented in English, “when all you got in there is sarsaparilla!” She turned to find an older man in a tanned suit some seats down.
“Sarsaparilla with mint leaves and tea,” she corrected. “You should try some.”
The man huffed. “I like my drinks as drinks!” His brown face broke into a grin. “How you doing, Fatma?”
She smiled back. “Alright, Benny. Been a while.”
“Been a minute!” He moved beside her, setting down a silver cornet.
Benny was from America, like most musicians at the Jasmine—a place called New Orleans. Cairo brought in people from all over. Some looking for work or drawn by stories of mechanical wonders and djinn. Benny and the others had come fleeing a thing called Jim Crow. They brought with them their hopes, their dreams, and their fantastic music.
“You playing tonight?” Fatma asked.
“Every night.”
Their attention was drawn to a blaring trumpet onstage. The man leaned back as he played, fingers moving in a blur that made his instrument squawk in a mix of ragged whines and shouts, like lovers in in the late of night or a quarrel in the morning. Behind him, a band joined his tirade with the multitudinous harmony of clarinets and trombones.
Benny didn’t have a name for what they did. Said it was just the New Orleans sound. But he claimed it was going to be the biggest thing in the world one day. Fatma could believe that. She’d been riveted the first time she heard this hypnotic, beautiful music. The syncopated rhythm and melodies crept up your spine, willing you to move, live, and be free.
“That Bunky can blow!”
Fatma turned to find others arriving to sit around them. One with a jowly face in a blue suit was Alfred, nicknamed Frog—a trombone player. A small tight-lipped man wearing a red tarboosh and hugging a clarinet case was Bigs. The one who’d spoken, a skinny younger man in an all-gold suit and matching hat, was a piano player. She wasn’t sure of his real name, because he only answered to Mansa Musa.
“Yeah, you right.” Benny nodded. “Seen better, though.”
Mansa Musa squawked. “Name someone better!”
“I can name you three. But only need to say one.”
“Then say it.”
“Buddy Bolden.”
Mansa Musa groaned. “Why every time we talk music, you bring up Buddy Bolden?”
“If you’d ever seen him,” Alfred croaked, “wouldn’t need to ask.”
Nods came all around.
“I remember this one time I saw Buddy play,” Benny related. “Fatma, I’m telling you it was something. He played so loud, his horn blew back the whole row of people seated in the front. No, I’m telling you true! Them people pitched right over! This one woman, she went rolling right up on out the place. Kept rolling all Saturday night, and no one could find her until she rolled up into church Sunday morning!”
The group erupted with laughter as Mansa Musa threw up his hands. Fatma smiled.
“Well, Buddy’s gone now,” Alfred put in. “Left him, Jim Crow, and old New Orleans behind.” He lifted a glass. “To King Bolden. They never gon’ take away your magic.”
The rest raised their glasses, chanting the same. When al-Jahiz sent magic back in the world, it hadn’t just happened in Egypt. It had happened everywhere. The whole world over. In America, the return of magic had been met with persecution. Benny and the others still whispered wide-eyed about a sorcerer named Robert Charles
