“I was always able to get old manuscripts for him when no one else could,” Rami answered. “That djinn might have a rough tongue, but his heart’s soft for books.” His tone became worried. “Is he alright? I know the Ministry was attacked. I can’t imagine he would send you to me unless something had gone wrong.”
“And why would he send us to you?” Fatma asked. She wasn’t trying to be rude, but she really needed this to move along. Besides, the public didn’t need to know about Zagros. The bookseller seemed to sense her mood.
“Right, then. Let’s get to it.” He set down the book. “The One Thousand and One Nights. A common enough book. Really a work completed over time, by many authors. The first tales came from Persia and India and weren’t translated to Arabic until the eighth century. Sometime later, probably in Baghdad, a new set of stories joined the first along with some older folklore.”
His eyes took on a storyteller’s twinkle, and Fatma sighed. This was going to take a while.
“It wasn’t until the thirteenth century that stories from Syria and Egypt helped swell the number to a thousand,” he continued. “Some stories were only added recently—like the one about Ali Baba and the thieves. The conjuration of an imaginative Frenchman likely. Though these Forty Leopards I read about in the papers appear inspired by the tale, which itself drew inspiration from older stories. Since the arrival of the djinn, newer tales are being spun within coffeehouses and in backstreets. Probably some right here in Azbakeya. I suppose when it comes to The One Thousand and One Nights, we are ever swelling its pages.”
There was an impatient click of the tongue from Tsega, and Rami shook himself from his reverie.
“At any rate, you’re likely familiar with the more traditional tales. You probably even have favorites.”
Of course, Fatma thought. She’d known them since she was a girl. “The Merchant and the Djinn.” “Abdullah the Fisherman.” “The Ebony Horse.” When she got older she read the more frightening ones—like “Gherib and His Brother Agib,” filled with ravenous ghuls—or downright bawdy ones, like “Ali with the Large Member.” There were stories about mansions on the moon and mermen or talking trees, each more fantastic than the next.
“I always liked ‘The Three Apples,’” Hadia related. “And ‘The Tale of the Murdered Girl.’ Things like that. About mysteries that had to be solved.”
“Seems fitting.” Rami nodded. He tilted his head to the side. “What about ‘The City of Brass’? What do you remember about it?”
“The one with King Sulayman, yes?” Hadia asked. “About some people on a quest?”
“Looking for a lost city,” Fatma added. The story had been a favorite as a child. “There were brass horses, people who had been petrified, a mummified queen…”
“Oh! I remember the mummified queen!” Hadia added briskly.
“Do you remember what it was the quest was searching for?” Rami asked.
Hadia opened her mouth, then frowned. Fatma did the same. She recounted the story in her head—so vivid with its living marionettes and humanlike machines, which many scholars now thought were early djinn-created precursors to boilerplate eunuchs. But she couldn’t recall what the quest was about. And that was odd—as it was the whole point of the story.
“I don’t remember,” she admitted.
“Perhaps this will help.” Rami opened the book to a page, tapping it with his finger. “Go ahead. Read. What the quest was about is right there.”
Fatma’s eyes scanned the text. It read easily enough, written in that old style and rhythm typical to these stories. It started with a king and a discussion over the prophet Sulayman. A sailor landing in a strange kingdom with black-skinned people who were naked and walked around like wild beasts, without speech. She frowned. Had that part always been so uncomfortably racist? There was something about a djinn she couldn’t quite grasp. Her mind seemed to slip around the words. Putting it out of her head, she continued searching. The quest was begun by a character named Talib. Only she couldn’t see exactly why. She tried again, reading slower, ignoring the places where the words appeared to just skate out of her vision. Shaking her head, she slid the book toward Hadia who was craning to get a view.
“I didn’t find anything,” she said. “What was I supposed to see?”
The bookseller smiled, exchanging a knowing look with his wife. “Stop playing with them, Rami, and just explain,” she chided. Then to Fatma, “With his dramatics, sometimes I think he should have gone into the theater. Back home, he might have made a good Sulayman in the staging of the Kebra Negast. Or maybe one of the debating Coptic orthodox fathers in the overture.”
Rami snorted at the remark but answered. “What you aren’t quite seeing is where the purpose of the quest is mentioned. The seekers were attempting to find a set of brass vessels that once belonged to King Sulayman. It was said he trapped djinn within, using his seal, before throwing them into the sea.” He tapped the book again. “Do you see it now?”
Fatma took another look—and saw what he was talking about immediately. The words were right there, plain as day. Talib had learned of vessels of brass used to house djinn, who had been trapped there by King Sulayman using his signet ring. He had gone on the quest, searching for them. There was even a symbol drawn to the side of the text—a hexagram made of two interlocking pyramids embedded in a circle. Where had she seen that before? Something was written beneath the symbol, in djinn script.
“The Seal of Sulayman,” Hadia translated, eyes fixed on the hexagram. She frowned, looking to the bookseller. “What’s that? And why didn’t we see any of this a moment ago?”
Rami pointed a finger upward, wagging it tellingly. “Two questions of the same kind. Like either side of a coin. The Seal of Sulayman is many things. Sometimes it is
