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22

Suhayl took another sip of tea and silently looked into the old man’s eyes. They were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen and it gave him peace and contentment just to sit silently and be watched, to be observed by those two steely grey eyes that absolutely twinkled with mischief and happiness, as if the man were about to reveal some wonderful joke that he just couldn’t wait to tell.

“Suhayl, I see that you know some of my other young friends here. I am glad you found one another.” Khalid Edrissi fingered his tasbih without taking his eyes from Suhayl’s gaze. The younger man moved uncomfortably, not sure what to say beyond admitting that he knew some of the shaykhs mureeds, new mureeds of recent vintage it seemed.

“Yes, I know Rashid and Linda, and they mentioned some other people I knew too, a man named Hussein and his wife Elizabeth.” Suhayl’s voice had become almost a whisper and he didn’t really want to talk about the connections he had had with these people.

“You knew them from their former khaniqah Suhayl?” Edrissi’s voice was full of compassion and warmth, like that of a doctor sympathetically letting it be known that he suspected your dissolute past, and that he understood.

“Yes, I’d been with Shaykh Abusalem for a while, I took bayah with him in the States and then when I could, I saved up the money and freed my various obligations, and I moved here to be closer to the heart of things.” He broke his gaze from the older man and stared at the floor beneath his knees and began running a finger aimlessly through the deep pile of the beautiful Persian carpet.

Ya Allah.” Edrissi sighed and shook his head. They sat in silence for a few more minutes and finally Suhayl relaxed and looked up. He smiled and immediately broke up into a grin when he saw Shaykh Khalid’s face beaming like a light that burned away everything else.

“I take it this Abusalem is not a very nice man.”

“No, no he’s not sir, and, I apologize with all my heart for the gossip, and I know Rashid and Linda meant no harm, they’re not like that.”

“Salaam, Suhayl, Salaam. I know, I know. It’s okay.”

“I know that adab forbids backbiting and gossip, but, well, I had to know, I’m so glad they told me what happened after I left there. I always secretly feared, that it was me, that I didn’t understand some message, that my faith was weak after all. My heart told me not to fear, but to leave him and get as far away as I could. But still, I worried that it was my nafs telling me to take the easy road and avoid the trials of the path.” Suhayl’s voice broke off and he slumped down with his head in his hands.

“Suhayl, let me tell you a little story. In the old days of Islam, there were many rivers flowing through the land. Some of those rivers were shallow and filled with sweet water and anyone could drink from their streams and river banks, men and women, small children, even the smallest of creatures filled their needs from these life giving waters. There were other rivers, some in deep gorges, others teaming with treacherous rapids, others impassable at any point. So the people got together and built bridges over these rivers and soon people were able to pass back and forth and to come and go in both directions, passing safely over waters that would kill any but the most powerful and experienced swimmers.

Little by little and over a very great pass of time, some of these bridges became important thoroughfares between mighty kingdoms and they were maintained at the expense of great kings and often they began to charge tolls and fees for crossing and only those dressed in the finest robes could pass by dropping their gold coins into a box held by a gatekeeper. These bridges were about nothing more than making money from the wealthy and so they catered to their needs and their nafs, providing foods and entertainment and all manner of amusements, all just so they could pass over a bridge, from one side of the river to the other.

Other bridges fell out of use or were abandoned and soon taken over by highwayman who lured the people to the bridge and then stole their money and their possessions and left them naked to wander back down the mountain trail, having never set foot on the bridge. These old bridges had often crumbled and would carry no one to the other side. But the brigands who sat at their gates did not let this be known. They promised to bring the unwitting travelers to the other side when they had never been to that other side themselves.

Often these brigands set up camps around the base of the bridge and kept people prisoner, allowing them to believe that at the auspicious moment, the gatekeeper would usher them over the bridge to the other side. When in fact, keeping these travelers captive was what these gatekeepers had in mind all along, because it made their own egos grow fat with contentment believing it was they and not the bridge and the destination on the other side that the travelers sought.

Eventually they passed a law in the land that made it a very great crime to say anything about the bridges other than how wonderful they were. And if anyone dared say that such and such a bridge was controlled by a brigand and that the bridge had fallen into ruin and people had actually fallen to their deaths from its heights, they were accused of gossip and backbiting and were made to feel as though it was they who had sinned. When in fact Suhayl, what greater service can there be to your brother that you meet along a steep mountain trail than to warn him that the bridge up ahead has rotted cables, and is about to fall into the rapids below, or that a greedy gatekeeper, hungry for gold and the fawning adoration of travelers in need of his aid lies hidden along the road.

Suhayl breathed deeply and cleared his head, nodding in agreement as he saw the truth of Shaykh Khalid’s story.

“Yes, I see.”

“Indeed. And such gatekeepers cannot be allowed to hide behind adab, hide behind religion. Because what happens is people no longer see the gatekeepers, they just see religion. And when so many of these scoundrels have taken over these old bridges or in some cases created new ones, the overwhelming image of religion is seen through eyes that behold only the scoundrels. You did well Suhayl, in leaving and in sharing your story with Rashid and Linda, as they did the right thing to get your story. Such men need to be recognized for what they are. It is a service to Allah and His Islam to unmask them. And so often, nothing at all needs to be done because they unmask themselves through their greed and their arrogance. You are welcome here Suhayl. There is no compulsion in religion. I offer you the hospitality of this khaniqah. You may come to pray, to eat with us, to share the friendship of good companions in Allah. And if there is anything at all you would have from me, you may ask it. We want nothing from you here, but to take the salaams of religion and share our company honorably.”

Suhayl was overcome with emotion and he felt the intensity and horrors of the last few months melting and his heart softening, and he felt he might actually start crying, so he laughed instead and wiped his face.

“Thank you Sir, thank you so much. I would love to come here, to start coming to your meetings. I don’t know what, I mean beyond that I don’t know ----“

“None of us knows Suhayl. So be at peace. There is one thing, when I said we want nothing from you, I, well, I can’t speak for that willful daughter of mine! She will run you ragged and milk every word out of your tired soul if you let her. She can be like a little dog that won’t stop jumping all over people. She means well, she is very bright, but do not fear to tell her to be silent and leave you alone if she infringes upon your peace.” The old man winked and Suhayl laughed out loud, freeing himself from the last of the stress that had coiled around his heart and mind.

“Sir, I have the utmost respect for Ceyda. I don’t know her well, but I see what she does in the computer lab. She runs rings around our professors and I see them come to her for help. I look forward to getting to know her better, with your permission of course.” Suhayl nodded shyly and the old man waved his comment away.

“Suhayl, this is a khaniqah and it is assumed that anyone who comes here will abide by the rules of Allah’s adab and treat everyone here with respect. I welcome you Suhayl Sutton, be welcome here.” Shaykh Khalid said formally and then closed his eyes briefly and sighed.

“My deepest thanks Sir.”

“We have other guests arriving in a day or so Suhayl, they’re known to you as well I believe. Azadeh’s brother Khosro and his assistant and friend Gary.”

“Oh of course. Although I only met Gary once, briefly. But Khosro I met many times, a very wise man.” Suhayl thought back on that night in the mosque six months ago. Khosro had been there. And the Jinn, Khosro and the Jinn had been connected in some way he didn’t understand, and he only knew pieces of Khosrow’s story. But he knew him as a man of power and dignity and great spiritual wisdom. And the Jinn. Did Shaykh Khalid know about the Jinn? He had no intention of launching off into the details of that strange night, having no idea what the older man might think. But Shaykh Khalid knew Khosro, how could he not know about the Jinn?

“Suhayl, this is a strange khaniqah, in many ways not like any other. We have our own rules and they tend to be more flexible, and yet more stringent than many other orders. We have only a few members around the world, but each man and woman is drawn here as to an underground spring from which they alone may drink. Khosro was drawn to such a spring long ago with his friend Tursun. Yes, I know these stories. And I know they are all true.”

Suhayl looked up, relieved that the other man knew and he wouldn’t have to test his fears that he might appear like a madman or a gullible naïf.

“You recall my story of the bridges a moment ago, well, we have each discovered a ford in the river that we might cross, and there is no bridge for us to use here. Do you understand me? Those of us here, we are drawn to this order, because we can swim. We do so, or we drown, and that’s not always a bad thing. For in any event, we drown among good companions who know the waters. But come, I just saw my Ceyda girl poke her head in. Let’s go eat!”

23

He wore the body of a man once more, and reclined against a soft rise of red sand, his right hand resting on his knee. Sand, he could see nothing but red sand and the deepest blue sky unbroken by the floating clouds of any moisture. Azami had departed, melted back through the barzakh of dreams and become a man once more, nestled in the dreams of men and awaiting the call of fajr to bring him to his prayers.

A gentle breeze flowed over the rise and a gust of sand blew up before him. In the sands he saw the face a beautiful woman and he smiled. She was the daughter of a sultan, and in her eyes he learned stories that the Jinn may only hear about. But in her arms, he learned secrets that would make the others of his kind jealous for a thousand years. She had wanted a child from him and had refused to believe it was not possible. As a woman, she knew that the only way to secure the power and safety she longed for, and the continuation of the life she loved upon her father’s death, was to have a very powerful son to protect her, and what more powerful son, than the son of a Jinn. She had cast him out of her bed when her belly had refused to rise. But he remembered her always, even though she had been dust in the earth for over twelve centuries.

But for the Jinn, there are no centuries. And if he chose, he could go to her now, enter the red sands and find her once again to lose himself in those laughing black eyes that were far more intelligent than the men of her father’s court dared to suspect. And too, he could lose himself in those arms. But to do that, he would have to lie, say to her that he had discovered a way to giver her child, and that he would not do. And so he sighed and remembered.

He was drawn from this reverie as another gust of wind blew up from behind him and tickled the back of his neck. He smiled again and turned to gaze into the red sand floating on the air and swirling into a face. It was a dark angry face that bore a murderous sneer, the head shaved but for a long braid down one side. The quilted leathers were soiled with years of campfire soot and dried blood, and the urine of horses was rubbed into the hair and scalp and flesh to keep away the flies and fleas and other vermin. The face was almost pitch black from the dirt of the road, and a necklace of talismans and fetishes and the polished skull of a fallen enemy dangled from his chest.

And the Jinn roared with laughter. The cook in the khan’s great army. Always in search of new disguise that might make him appear ferocious and terrifying, he was harmless and sweet natured as a kitten, but refused to seem less a man than the greatest warrior. This man was the source of boisterous mirth and joviality among the men of the army and a favorite among the khan’s body guard. Whenever they conquered any army, town, or village, this man always sought out the cook to beg or buy or coerce their favored delicacies from them so he might prepare them for the khan in his nightly tent among his nobles and his family. The Jinn had delighted in slipping this man the wondrously inexplicable recipes that never failed to dazzle his master and his favorites. Had he wanted, the Jinn could have found this man and laughed with him once more and slipped him a culinary oddity from more modern times than his own.

And soon the sands were swirling madly around him from a thousand directions, each congealing in a face that vied for the undivided attention of his memory. Kings and warriors, peasants and monks, horse thieves and scholars. And always the women, beautiful and kind, and taking great risks to know him and suffering no regrets.

And then too he saw a sickly man, frail and almost snow white, his veins laying upon the surface of his skin like a maze of delicate blue snakes. The man was on the top floor of a monstrously tall glass tower surrounded by a lake filled with large carnivorous fish. He stood at the window and gazed down, longing to break the glass in front of him and fall to his death. This man would live in a world two thousand years after Azami’s death. And the Jinn remembered him well. Such was the memory of the Jinn, not bound by time or place but always an eternal moment in which he may appear in any time or place by stepping into the red sands. And the thousand faces bore down upon him, each lost in the dreams of their times and calling out for him, their lost friend and companion, to return to them. And they, his human companions and friends, all known to him from the first day of his existence to the last, all in an eternal moment of now.

When Nazer Silmi first saw Azami in the café with Zafer Yilmaz, he had been waiting for him, knowing he was soon to arrive, and he recognized him instantly. And through he could always move and travel in this manner, and often did in his dreams, the Jinn chose to live daily through the normal course of time and be in the world of the Sons of Adam, to watch, and perhaps help them in ways that would not interfere with the grand course of things that were playing out upon the world of that time.

Which is why the sultan’s daughter had felt betrayed when a lesser man than she of dubious honor and intentions was allowed to claim the throne of her father and begin wrecking havoc and horror in her kingdom after taking her to wife, when all the Jinn had to do, she believed, was give her a child, a child of their love. Was that so much to ask? She had screamed, and her scream echoed down through the centuries. And this is why the great khan had felt betrayed when his cook had been captured in battle and the man who took his place slipped poisons into his evening soup. The Jinn had watched and not interfered and the great khan wept like a child in his arms as he died, the pain of betrayal and disbelief clouding his eyes in the final moments. And the sick man in the glass tower had felt betrayed, and his world betrayed when the Jinn stood by and watched as the air in the sky soured and rotted and the world died around him.

The Jinn sat and watched as wave upon wave of happy memories turned to angry, weeping, pleading, and accusing faces, faces demanding to know why he had betrayed them by doing nothing when even the smallest act from him with his great knowledge would have changed the course of events within the world.

The Jinn watched the faces fade and melt into the sands as the winds died away and all was still once more. Their tears and cries and angry recriminations fell upon his soul like rain but did not touch him. They did not know, they could not understand. Nazer Silmi was a Watcher, sent to watch the world for his Lord. But he was tasked from time to time with revealing himself to others, a very few others, so that they might know, that everything was the will of Allah, a Will that let its signs be known most clearly in the great tides and movements among men in their pulsing dance of love and power, Rahman and Rahim, in its tides upon the body of Time.

24

Shaykh Hassan Abusalem sat on a cushion on the floor of the yali regarding the man who spoke to the assembled mureeds, those of his students who remained at the khaniqah. This was the first time that Abusalem was not the center of attention in his yali, the first time that he had deferred to another to lead the gathered talibs, the students, the first time he was relegated to a seat on the floor beside the small diadem on which he usually sat raised amidst those who called him their master.

“Bi’ismillah. Long ago, in the days of the first Rightly Guided Caliphs, may Allah protect their secrets, Muslims knew treachery, murder, greed, and every sin among the ummah. For centuries, we fought one another, brother against brother, shedding the blood of our wives and daughters, of our sons and our sons’ sons, turning mother against daughter and village against town. Sultans rose mighty from among us and from their loins were raised mighty kingdoms filled with the greatest wisdom and piety, the most magnificent architecture and skilled crafts the world has ever seen. And yet, this was not enough for us. Still we fought on and were never sated with each other’s blood.

And because we have raised ourselves upon this history of warfare amongst ourselves, never uniting for any cause, forever incapable of seeing our common good, we have grown weak and like the city whose walls have crumbled, whose warriors lie dead and rotting, and whose gates are guarded only by the sick and the infirm, we are now indefensible. And we have no one but our own greed and worldly ambition to blame. But there are more enemies in our midst and from them we willingly take the poisoned flask and drink until we have grown fat and besotted.”

You here, all of you.” Shaykh Uthman gestured widely with his arm indicating the twenty five or so young men who sat stiffly in tightly ordered rows before him, nodding slowly at each, his black eyes like those of a bird of prey catching each eye before him and holding it until it looked away. “All of you here, you are Sufis? Is that what you are? This is, what is this place? A khaniqah, a place for Sufis? But I ask you, who are the Sufis? Are they the men who fought beside the Prophet, salle allahu alayhi wa salaam? Did these Sufis ride at Badr? Were they at the Battle of _____ when the great Hamza was struck down and his body was defiled by a woman? Were they at Karbala when the grandson of the Prophet fell? Were they at al-Quds when the Crusaders broke their truce and massacred a caravan on its way to the Holy City? Where were they? What did they do, what did they preach? I ask you, I am an ignorant, simple man, tell me, any of you, please.” He stopped speaking and glared at them, watching with satisfaction as they moved uncomfortably on their cushions and turned their eyes to the floor in front of them.

“I’ll tell you what a Sufi does. He sits on a soft cushion in a mansion such as this yali, and he thinks and he prays to Allah, he drinks tea and eats dates and grows fat, but he renders no service to Allah or to his servants. I sit on no such cushion because I am a slave of Allah.” His voice fell away again and he nodded as first one and then another and then all of them pulled out the cushions from under their backsides and cast them away.

“But that is not all the Sufi does. He wallows in his softness, his private meditations that take him away from the ummah. He is useless to anything but his own fantasies. He is a traitor to the ummah and I say he has poisoned the virile manhood of Islam, dragging him from the saddle, taking the sword of righteousness from his hand and throwing him down, onto what, a soft cushion that separates him from the earth which bore him and which mixes in his veins with the spirit of his Lord. But even that my brothers, even that is not all. The Qur’an says, there is no intercessor between Allah and His servant. And yet, the Sufi bows to a man, takes a man as his master, places his hope and his faith and his trust not in Allah but in a man, and he calls that man a shaykh! I see even now you are glancing uncomfortably at this man seated here.” Shaykh Uthman gestured towards Hassan Abusalem and the others looked at him in dismay, confused and not knowing what was happening.

“Alhamdu’lillah, your old master here has ended his ignorance and come out of his jahiliya and accepted the true Islam. Never again will he be a master, not to you, not to anyone, and not even to himself. These fine carpets, these, cushions, all of these will be removed tonight and burned. The library here, will be given close scrutiny and all books that contain blasphemies against Allah and the society of the ummah shall join these vanities in the flames. No longer will this place be called a khaniqah, no longer will you refer to yourselves as Sufis. Any Sufis among you, are free to leave as the kafiroon westerners among you have left, as the defiled Arabs and Persians and Turks among you have left who took kafiroon women as their wives and rejected your own sisters. Anyone who wishes to serve Allah by sitting on a cushion and reading poetry, can get out now and follow the kafiroon into infamy, for the days of jahiliya in these lands is drawing quickly to a close.” Uthman stood quickly to his feet to gage the reactions of those young men before him. With only a few hesitations, the rest jumped quickly to their feet and cried out the divine formula. Allahu Akbar!

Abusalem rose to his feet as well, and glanced around at the faces of the young men. A few were looking at each other with shock and confusion, the rest seemed ready almost to fall at Uthman’s feet. There had been hintings, preparations for this day for many months. Little by little, under Uthman’s direction he had weeded his garden of all but those young Arab, Turk, and Persian men who did not mind this great weeding, the loss of the other mureeds, the stiff and unyielding trials that he had set them too in preparation for just this moment. And now, now, he felt a strange chill come over his body as he watched Uthman take his students in hand and disperse them to the hammam to wash for the prayer.

When they had gone, Uthman motioned for him to sit back down. Abusalem grew uncomfortable under the man’s gaze, but waited for him to speak. When he did not, Abusalem decided to ask him about the carpets.

“You will burn the carpets Shaykh Uthman, and the cushions?”

“Yes, there is no need for them now, and they will only remind the talibs of the days of their ignorance, and make them soft. The yali is ours now, do not worry about those heaps of rubbish.” The man said smugly.

“Ours? But what of ---“ Abusalem got a sinking feeling but allowed Uthman to speak.

“The former owner of this yali is dead.” He said casually.

“Dead?” Abusalem muttered in horror.

“Yes, dead. It seemed the most expedient way to gain possession of this building. He was in a casino, drinking, women hanging around him. But it was the dark eyed beauty who caught his eye and he drew her into his arms and then swept her upstairs into his rooms.” Uthman laughed and nodded at the look of confused surprise on Abusalem’s face.

“Yes, the dark eyed beauty in her kafiroon dress and her skin bared for all to see. But oh, look at this! Do you think all our people are angry looking men in big beards and white thobes? The dark eyed beauty was my own brother’s daughter who agreed to defile herself before a room full of unbelievers in order to get close to this man and move him out of our way. Once they were in the room, she poisoned him and waited for him to die. The neighbors, fools that they were, thoughts the screams were the sounds of passion and the laughter of the beautiful woman. Then she quietly left, leaving him on his flight to Jehanum. She emptied his wallet before leaving and threw the money into the river, not wanting the filthy money, but leaving the scene to look like the act of an easy woman and a mere robbery. Then my brother’s daughter disappeared back into the neighborhood where the ummah lives where she did a full ghuzl to purify herself, and then she flew home to her father’s house. So you see, the yali is now ours. And Abusalem, we have no qualms about eliminating any such obstacles that may arise in a similar manner, and there is no one who is not potentially, an obstacle.”

Abusalem got up and went to the window in an attempt to steady himself and hide the look of shock and misgivings that gripped his features. His hands shook as he grasped the window sill and looked down onto the street. He saw two figures emerge below, two of the mureeds who had seemed unsure of Uthman’s words. They stood for a moment talking, their backpacks securely in place. They glanced up at the window where Abusalem stood, and the man stepped back so they wouldn’t see him. When he looked back, they had disappeared into the growing darkness. He knew they wouldn’t be back and he wished them well. And he would say nothing of their disappearance to Uthman, for fear they too might become obstacles.

25

The morning after the Azami’s evening visit, Rafiq was at the door of the mosque in time for the fajr prayer. Selim joined him in the garden for wudu, surprised to see his friend up so early and on time for the prayer at the mosque.

“We have to talk.” Rafiq said sharply.

“We have to pray my brother, we have to pray. Then we can talk.” Selim said solemnly as they walked into the mosque. Azami had just given the adhan, the call to prayer, and was standing in the middle of the room facing the mihrab, his head bowed and his right hand over his left wrist.

After they had finished the prayer and Azami left to go help Ramsay Hamza with the morning’s bake, Rafiq and Selim sat facing each other in the garden, steaming cups of tea in hand.

“Azami told me about this encounter he has had, he showed me the tattoos. When were you going to tell me about this?” Rafiq shook his head in disbelief that his friend had not told him that another Jinn had appeared among them.

“He is quite an individual, I’ll say that much!” Selim laughed and swallowed the rest of his tea.

“What?” Rafiq hissed, his jaw dropping at the thought that Selim had encountered the Jinn as well. “You have met him too? Tell me! Tell me everything, please.”

“The night of the fire, Ramsay Hamza and I had been searching for Azami but we had no idea where he was. The fire officers said they had seen him go into the fire and disappear, and they never saw him come out. We were afraid he had been caught in the fire, but we just didn’t know. I was beside myself. I told Ramsay to stay here of course, and when we got back here, Azami was here in the mosque, sitting here with some guy, or so I thought. “

“He was just sitting here with Azami?”

“Yeah. At first I didn’t think anything of it. I was so mad and relieved to see that kid here safe. We lit into him pretty hard. He had gone into the fire, but only to make sure Ramsay wasn’t inside. I mean, what could I say? He risked his own life to make sure Ramsay wasn’t trapped inside. So when we calmed down and introduced ourselves to this guy, Nazer Silmi he calls himself ---

“Wait, you got his name? He has a name?”

“Yes, that’s what he told us his name was, or the name he uses, has used for a very long time he said. He’s lived here in the city for, a long time. When I got a chance to really look at him, he looks like anybody else, but, there is, what, something strange about him, the feel of him I guess. And then I saw the tattoos on Azami’s arms and the flesh on the back of my neck just about crawled off. I could see Ramsay was shot and almost asleep, so I told Azami to take him to the guest room while Nazer Silmi and I talked. Before Azami came back, he told me his story, part of it, but he couldn’t tell me why those tattoos appeared on Azami’s arms. He said he had found Azami collapsed and unconscious in the fire and had brought him out to safety. It sounds like he had assumed some fiery form and came out of the flames to get Azami out of there. We talked about the other Jinn, and he could feel his presence. Azami came back, the guy touched him and he fell asleep and we talked some more. I don’t even remember what all he said but, I think he’s good Rafiq, I know he is and, I like him.”

“You like him?”

“I like him. He’s nothing at all like the other one, the other Jinn. He’s, more human, if that makes sense. Yeah, I like him.”

“But what does it all mean, what’s happening?”

“That’s it, I don’t think he knows either.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“No, but, I believe him. If something is, going on, I guess we’ll all find out what it is, him too.”

The two fell into silence, letting the whole thing sink in. Then Rafiq cleared his throat and decided to lay his cards on the table as well.

“Well, I have some news too.”

“Oh, what’s that?” Selim looked up, his gaze narrowed on Rafiq as the other man rubbed his chin and decided where to begin.

“I have seen Tursun.”

“What?” It was Selim’s turn to gasp as he grabbed Rafiq’s shoulder and looked into his face. “When? Where was this and when were you going to tell me? We can’t have any secrets between us my brother, it is the path that binds up and there can be no secrets like this.”

“Oh Selim, it was just a couple of days ago.”

“A couple of days?”

“Yes. You remember my friend Nurhan, well, she passed away, I found her body actually.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. But how ---“

“Just listen. I went to her apartment. He heat had been turned off and I got it back on. But by the time I got there, it was too late. She was in here chair, it looked like she was asleep, but, she was gone. As I was looking at her, a voice spoke to me from behind and I went into complete shock. It was Tursun’s voice. I turned, and there he was sitting in a chair.”

“Alhammdu’llilah! Where is he now? What will he do?” Selim cried with a big grin, then he called suddenly to see that his friend was not smiling. “What’s wrong? Where is he?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. He left. He left after telling me that he had known Nurhan as a young woman, that he had loved her. I had no idea! But he had come here for her, and I don’t know what that means, he didn’t tell me. But he has not come back, I don’t think. I don’t know. He was strange, of course he was strange, what am I saying. It’s so confusing and I really have no idea. But he said he had not come back to answer any questions or to be around, he sounded vague. It left me with a very, very uneasy feeling. I am glad to have seen him, yes, but, it feels like a broken window now with a draft coming in. I have no idea. Who knows if we will see him again. I just don’t know.”

Selim and Rafiq fell into a dark silence, each trying to steady himself within the unfamiliar terrain that was gathering around them.

Chapters 1-20

JINN SANCTUARY








1



Nurhan Şahin brushed a pile of crumbs from the worn silk tablecloth and swept them into her pocket of her skirt, glancing quickly around the large opulent room which was completely empty but for the massive carved dining table and three remaining chairs, making sure that no one saw her. It was a reflex, nothing more than a thoughtless action. Nurhan knew there was no one else in the room, that she was alone today, as she was alone every day in these nine grand rooms that looked imperviously over the dark waters of the Bosporus. Nurhan also knew that no one would care if she swept the crumbs from her solitary lunch into her pocket before tossing them into the garbage in the kitchen, or if she brushed them onto the floor for the family of mice she had spotted just this morning.

When Mehmet was alive, he would have called the exterminators immediately upon first sight of these harmless little creatures and had the entire house fumigated, moving them all to the yali until the systematic executions were complete. Nurhan herself had never bothered about such innocent little things, having been raised in the country where every creature had his place in God’s intricate scheme of life. Had they been city rats however, with their sinister jewel-like eyes and hideous rough fur and those disgusting wiry tails of theirs it would have been an altogether different matter. But these little mice, she left them in peace as long as they kept a respectful distance from her end of the table.

Nurhan Şahin dug deeply into the folds of her skirt and retrieved the guilty crumbs from her pocket and smiled. No, she thought with a strange little smile, today I will choose a different option. And with that, she raised her fist and flung the crumbs into the air and watched closely as they fell and scattered in the dust. Lunch today had been spare, and she had no weight to lose. But she had paid her charity to Allah, and today the mice would eat. Rafiq, I must call Rafiq again. Sooner rather than later. Lunch had been spare today, too spare for her liking, and there would be no supper.


2

The large grey and white cat sat in the garden watching the man move silently about the shop. The cat was big enough to sit on his haunches and peer in through the French doors that closed off the garden on rainy days. He eyed the man closely, watching him unfold two large rugs and vacuum them, then roll them back up and tie the bundles with twine. The cat watched patiently as two other men loaded the pair of heavy rolls into the back of a truck and drove away. He made no attempt to get inside the shop or to gain the man’s attention. He just watched. Suddenly the cat stiffened as he sensed the small red cat slipping into the garden through broken pieces of masonry.

As soon as the grey and white cat saw the newcomer, he growled softly and ran off, darting through the fallen branches and out through another gap between the walls of the garden and the street. When the red cat saw the first intruder, he hissed and the fur on his back rose in a stiff angry ridge. Then he padded lightly to the French doors and sat down, claiming the place of the first cat as he took up the watch, peering closely at the man’s movements about the shop. This cat did not try to get the man’s attention either, he just watched and waited for his fur to lay back down soft and smooth on his back. The man’s name was Rafiq, and he didn’t have a cat.


3

Rafiq completed the paperwork on the sale of the two carpets, both fine Hamedans over a hundred years old, and then retrieved the beautifully wrapped little box from the jewel case that held most of the smaller treasures on offer in his shop. This delicate little box held six decades of private memories belonging to someone very dear to him. He smiled sadly, remembering the day the contents of this box came into his possession. He had often visited her on the pretext of taking a few of the larger pieces of furniture on consignment in advance of a planned move to a smaller apartment. But the move had never come, and there had been many subsequent visits when he had carried away more and more of her treasures, selling them in his shop to supplement her dwindling bank accounts.

That particular day several months ago he had been called to have tea with her. Their teas were frequent and by no means confined to the buyer and seller relationship. But as he prepared to leave that day, carrying two of the original sixteen dining chairs, she had silently shoved a small satchel filled with jewelry into his pocket, saying nothing more as she ushered him out the door and called the elevator. That day had almost been too much for Rafiq. When he returned to his shop and spread out the contents of the satchel to inventory what she had given him so he could make a proper estimate of what she could hope to regain from their sale, he had been horrified to see the emerald and sapphire ring of stunning beauty glittering proudly among the lot. The last time he had seen this ring was last week on Nurhan Hanim’s finger, the cherished symbol of a fifty year marriage, the engagement ring that had once belonged to a valide sultan among her husband’s distant ancestry. Rafiq knew he would never sell this ring as long as he lived. But he needed to find just the right pretext to return the ring to her as a gift without treading upon her dignity. Today was her birthday, and as a man who could always claim the ignorance of the well meaning Westerner, he planned to return this ring to the finger where it belonged in honor of a special day he knew she always celebrated in her own quiet way.

As he slipped the little box into his coat pocket and turned off the lights in the shop, Rafiq sensed someone watching him. He paused momentarily and smiled. It was a pleasant sensation, as though a friend approached from behind unexpectedly and their presence was sensed before they were actually seen. Rafiq turned, knowing no one was there, glancing towards the French doors leading to the garden. Empty of course, no one in sight, no way into the garden except through the shop and out those doors. Ah well, he sighed, buttoning his coat and heading out the door. But he felt uplifted and delighted by the feeling as it clung to him like a warming breeze and he whistled softly to himself as he walked up the street towards the main intersection to find a taxi.

4

The sensation of his front claws ripping into the bark as he scrambled over the rough hide of the massive oak that partially obscured the front of the house drove him wild with pleasure. The unlimited power in his back legs as those back claws gouged into the tree and carried him upward faster and faster was absolutely exhilarating. He wondered briefly if he might actually be able to, if he flung himself away from the tree and into the air, extending his four legs in all directions, could he take flight and soar into the open sky. He decided not to try this. It was a long way down to the street and he needed to get in through that open window that was still a several feet above him. Just a short ways to go, and then he could rest. There it was finally, the window open in front of him, and the old woman sitting in her chair looking out at him, a look of surprised curiosity on her face.

Nurhan Şahin gasped in shock as the small blur of soft red fur leapt from the tree through the window and landed squarely in her lap. He immediately started purring, rubbing the side of his face against her hand and evoking a firm stroking of the head and ears. The woman grinned and almost wept with happiness. She loved cats very much, but had not held one like this for many years, not since she was a girl. Mehmet had not allowed animals indoors and she had sadly complied with the rules of his house. The red cat nestled into her lap and purred as he fell into a contended doze. He had loved this woman for over fifty years and he had not seen her in almost as long. But of course he was very different then, back when he wore the body of a man, and he and his handsome friend Mehmet had vied for her affections and the approval of her father and he had lost. But then, certain kinds of love neither die nor fade, no matter what shape the lover’s soul might wear to face the world.

5

Zafer Yilmaz scrubbed angrily at his tender reddened flesh with the sponge filled with hot soapy water, trying to purge the last flecks of fish guts and fetid water from his hands and arms and face. But he could still smell it, he could always smell it, as though it had seeped into the pores of his very soul and could never completely be dislodged, as though somehow it had become him, defined him, and would never abandon him to a feeling of healthy cleanness. It was a slick, sticky substance, coarse with salt and fish slime and it permeated his clothing and his hair and no matter how long he stayed in the shower, it never really went away. Only a trip to the hammam made any kind of difference, and it was the rough and relentless pounding of the bather’s hands on his flesh and muscles that finally forced the remains of his daily work in the fish bazaar from his body and his mind. But when he returned home, the smell still lingered on the air, clung to the clothing and the heavy rubber aprons he wore in the market, waiting for his wife’s careful ministrations in the laundry.

Not so easily discharged were the memories and the dreams, remnants of a former and brief employment. Zafer recalled that day in the police station when he had been called away from his duties scrubbing the latrines to attend the interrogation room. Not my job, nothing to do with me! These words had screamed through his mind when he opened that door and took in the scene that greeted him. The older guard, a brutish man known only as ‘Ali, had been interrogating a prisoner. When Zafer walked in, ‘Ali had roughly shoved a heavy wooden club into his hands and he had instinctively grabbed it, seeing it slick and oozing blood and other substances, substances he had no desire to wonder about. But then he was forced to look at the third man in the room, a man already mercifully unconscious and near death. This one got away from me before I could get anymore information. The bastard! the guard had muttered thickly with a disgusted sneer. Then a man in a filthy white jacket had come in and covered over the man’s face with a plastic sheet. It was only then that Zafer realized the poor man was already dead.

Later that day Zafer Yilmaz had been again called into the office of his superiors. This time he was beaten and yelled at for having brutally handled the man in a way that allowed him to die before getting the desired information. He looked at the police chief, and at the other guard, ‘Ali, who had shoved the murder weapon into his hands. It was ‘Ali who was the guilty one, not me! But ‘Ali had forced Zafer to take the blame for his own monstrous act because he feared he would lose his job. There had already been too many such deaths on ‘Ali’s hands.

Before this, Zafer Yilmaz had worked in the fish bazaar since he was thirteen years old. But he had always longed for more. He had wanted to come home clean from work, or at least covered in the honest grease and sweat of machine labor, or perhaps one day even to wear a suit and a clean white shirt. That felt like such a long time ago. Zafer had married and had a child and he vowed to get out of the fish bazaar and make a better living for his family. When he had gotten the chance to interview at the police station, he had cried out joyfully, Alhamdulillah! praising and thanking God himself for the opportunity. But on the second day of the new job, the second day, Zafer Yilmaz had found himself in the presence of the brutal and savage murder of a prisoner, he had been falsely blamed for this crime, and then he had been beaten savagely by the police chief to teach him a lesson about how things were done around there. Later, as he was preparing to leave, ‘Ali had come up and slapped him hard on the back, knowing full well he had been beaten there, and jovially assured him he would get used to how things were done around there and that he would fit in just fine. But Zafer knew this would never happen. He had taken wounds far, far deeper by this encounter than any whip or club could ever inflict. He had never returned to the police station and had gone back to the fish bazaar the next day where he was welcomed warmly but with no questions when they saw the look of misery on his face. He had only been gone two days, but he had crossed a desert of experience from which he feared he might never return.

That had been six months ago, and his hands still shook at odd times, but at least the dreams had finally stopped. This he suspected was because of his visits to the small mosque in a neighborhood far away from the bazaars. On his first day back at the stall, one of his customers, a man named Selim, had cheerfully asked him where he’d been during his two day absence, wondering if he had been sick or traveling to see his family in the south. Zafer had told Selim that he’d taken another job but that it hadn’t worked out, that it wasn’t for him. Selim’s gaze had darkened as he studied his face and seemed to read his heart. Selim had come back after they had shuttered up the stall nor the night and asked Zafer to join him for a coffee, where he pried the whole story out of him, nodding with understanding and listening silently as Zafer laid out the whole horrible story. Selim had said nothing more, apologizing for having to get back to the mosque for the Isha prayer. But he had made Zafer promise that he would come to visit him on his next day off so they could talk more about these events.

Zafer had never been much interested in mosques. He believed in Allah of course, and tried to be a good man, but he had no patience for prayer and the soft spoken ways of the men and old women he associated with the religious life. Zafer was a man of the streets, a man of the Earth, and beyond the basics, he and Allah seemed content to leave each other pretty much alone. But there was something about Selim, something very much unlike those he had known who hung around mosques and always had a quote from the sacred text on their lips and a hard questioning gaze at every suspected slip of the rules. No, Selim was a man of the Earth too, just like him, he could feel it. So he went to the small mosque a couple of weeks after he returned to work at the fish bazaar, and had been going there often ever since, if not to pray exactly, at least to talk. It was not long after he began these visits that Zafer Yilmaz began to heal, and the horrible nightly dreams began to fade.

6
Rafiq took the elevator to the penthouse apartment, the small box securely lodged deep in the pocket of his jacket. He hoped that Nurhan Hanim would be pleased with his gift and not put up any kind of an indignant fuss. When he arrived at her door, he knocked lightly, and instead of hearing the light pattering of Nurhan’s slippered feet as she came to open the door, he heard her calling for him to come in. He opened the door and stepped inside and then stopped. There she sat by the window, but the large dining table was empty, scattered with her morning’s dishes, no lunch in sight. Clearly, Nurhan Hanim had forgotten their luncheon date.

This had never happened before. Always she was the impeccable hostess, priding herself on providing an exquisite feast, whether her guests were a hundred or but one. Rafiq knew this was the right day, her birthday. He scanned the room closely and noted she did not rise to greet him and he was immediately alarmed that perhaps she was sick.

“Nurhan Hanim, are you all right? Are you feeling ill today?” his concern was growing. Then he stepped up to her and saw the beaming happiness on her face and the small red cat nestled in her lap purring so loudly he could hear it.

“Nurhan, when did you get a cat?” he asked, reaching down to stroke the soft red fur.

“Oh Rafiq! Isn’t he beautiful? But I didn’t get a cat, rather I think he got me! He came in through the window this morning, he jumped right off that tree and just made himself at home. How could I disturb him to get up and make our lunch. We will call the boy from downstairs and have him bring something from Meryem Devi’s. I assume you still like that strange fusion of Turkish and Indian cuisine?”

“Of course! That would be fine. I was just worried that maybe you were sick, or I had the wrong day.”

“No, no Rafiq, you know very well what day this is. And who knows? Perhaps little Tursun here is a gift from Allah for my birthday.” She said with a smile and a nod.

“Tursun? You’re naming the cat Tursun? He probably has a family and is just mooching.”

“I don’t think so Rafiq, I don’t know, it’s very strange. When he jumped through the window from the tree out there, at first I was shocked. But then, I can’t say how or why, but I thought of a Tursun I knew many, many years ago when I was a young girl. Oh Rafiq, you have no idea how much I love cats! But of course I could not keep any cats in the house when Mehmet was alive. But now that he is gone, I have little red Tursun!” she said with a laugh and the cat got up and put his feet on her chest and began rubbing the sides of his face on hers. Rafiq thought that Nurhan would start purring too. And he had to admit, he was very happy to see her joy on her special day.

“I’ll go to the lobby and send the boy to Meryem’s with our order. The usual?”

“Yes Rafiq, the usual is fine.” She barely murmured as she cuddled the small red cat.

In the elevator down to the lobby, Rafiq was struck again with an odd sensation. Tursun was a common enough name. Of course Nurhan might have known a dozen Tursun’s in her life. But it was strange, just this morning before he left the shop, he felt a strange presence, definitely a presence of someone near, and the familiarity of that presence felt just like Tursun Nourazar, as though a fragrance of the man hung on the air as a warm greeting. It had filled him with a sense of pleasing happiness and warmth. And then to come into Nurhan’s apartment and find that she had just acquired a cat, and had named it, of all things, Tursun. It was odd, an odd occurrence of the kind that always tingled his nerves like a suddenly opened window onto other worlds.

After he placed the lunch order and returned to the apartment, Rafiq went to the kitchen to get things they would need to lay out their meal. He stopped and stared at the sink, filled with dirty dishes, several days of dirty dishes and a couple of small mice nibbling at crumbs on the drain board. Another thing that would never have been allowed during Mehmet’s life. Rafiq’s gaze narrowed as he spotted a pile of dirty napkins and dish towels on the floor. Then he went to the china cabinet to get glasses and plates, and found dust, and then his concern deepened and began to creep over him. A brief trip to the bathroom revealed the same troubling signs: unused bath towels and heaps of dirty clothing. It was all Rafiq could do not to cry out in sadness for his aging friend. She had always had servants, but now, all alone, she must do these things for herself. But then, she had been alone for some time and had never before allowed dirty clothes and linens to lie around, or dust to accumulate. Clearly something was wrong here and he vowed to make his visits more frequent and casual.

“Well, the food is ordered and I set the table. So tell me about the Tursun you named your cat after. I had a Tursun as well for a while, though not long enough. My Tursun was quite a character.” Rafiq said with a sad smile, missing the Tursun who had walked out of the world and disappeared by touching the body of a Jinn.

“Well, I haven’t seen him since I was married of course, but I will always remember him. He was a Persian you see, who had come to our city with his family to vacation, they kept a home on the waters. Somehow he had become friends with Mehmet, as young men do, and soon I was seeing them both at family parties.” Her voice trailed of as she paused to scratch the cat under his neck.

“I can say this now Rafiq, I had quite a time. I was in love you see, in love with both of them! But of course I could never say that. I like to think they became rivals. But that’s silly. In those days, such things were not up to any of us, and my parents decided on Mehmet and then we were married. I didn’t see Tursun again and I was terribly hurt. I missed him very badly. But I was also happy with my new marriage, and then the arrival one after the other of five children. But in my heart, there was always a place where Tursun lived. And today, when I saw this cat, I don’t know why, but Tursun just leapt into my mind and I could think of no better name for this little red devil. And I’m sure he is. He’s very sweet and kind right now just laying here in my lap, but I am quite sure he can be a very bad cat when it suits him!”

They laughed and the cat licked his fur and meowed, in defiance of their words or agreement, it didn’t matter. Rafiq looked the cat in the eyes and the cat held his gaze strangely until Rafiq had to look away as a chilling tingle gave him the shivers and he wanted very much suddenly to change the subject.

“Well Rafiq, I have to tell you also, I have heard some very sad news from England. Martha Addington-Senturk has died.” She said softly.

“Oh Nurhan Hanim, I am so sorry to hear that. I know she was very ill and that’s why she returned to England after all these years. But it’s still very hard, and very sad when the end comes, no matter how expected it is. I’m so sorry.” Rafiq noted this and thought it might account for her distracted neglect of the affairs of the apartment. He made a mental note to send someone over to take care of this for her tomorrow.

“Yes, I can’t think of anything else. She was my oldest friend, after Mehmet that is. When Darius told us he was coming home from England and bringing a wife, we were all stunned! That my own cousin would marry outside of the watchful eye of the family, unthinkable! Absolutely unheard of. But when he brought beautiful Martha home to us, all that was forgotten instantly. I swear we all loved her more than Darius himself, if that was possible! And if they had ever divorced, I am sure it would have been him we threw out as we rallied around Martha and kept her close. What a life we all had! And that I became so close to an English woman, it was all so strange, but then she became one of us instantly. I was so hurt when she decided to move back to England, to die, of all things, to be away from me in her last days, I just couldn’t understand it. I knew she was not terribly close to any family there, they had all but disowned her for marrying a Muslim.

But apparently they did not quite disown her. Darius was long dead of course. After she was back in England, she sent me a very singular note in which she told me quite explicitly that she had indeed come close to disenfranchising herself and her children from moneys and other inheritance because of her marriage, and that it had never mattered. She was very headstrong, Martha was. She would not be deterred and she adored Darius. And of course, money was never a problem here. But the family there made it clear to her that if she returned to England, reestablished her presence there and spent her last days there, then her children could still inherit the substantial properties. Well, this was so practical, what else could she do? Very sensible. I sent her a note apologizing. I had made quite a scene when she told me she was leaving, I must have been just awful, making it far more painful for her than it needed to be. I must have been terribly selfish. But I was just so devastated at the thought of losing her, not just once but twice! Oh Rafiq, if I could have just seen her one more time, just one more time. I should have gone to England to see her. But instead, I was still acting like a spoiled impetuous girl. And of course I thought there was still plenty of time left to us. And now my Martha is gone!” She started shaking and Rafiq saw the tears falling from her eyes.

And then the little red cat did something very peculiar. He jumped up on her shoulder and started nuzzling his nose in her ear and immediately Nurhan started giggling as the little wet nose ticked her skin. Then Rafiq stroked her hair and went to get the doorbell that had rung to announce the arrival of lunch. In honor of her birthday, he placed the different dishes under the formal covered domes her family had used on holidays. And under the small silver dome used for butter, Rafiq placed the elegant little box containing the ring of a former valide sultan, and then he served her this dish with regal formality, uncovering the box and opening it for her. And then her tears came again and the little red cat purred even louder.

“Rafiq?” she asked suddenly as they were taking a glass of tea after they had put the lunch dishes away.

“Yes.” He looked up and waited to hear what was to come. He had known her long enough now to recognize when a serious topic was going to be introduced.

“Rafiq, do you believe in Allah?” she said looking at him, her face blank and unreadable.

“Oh yes, Nurhan, yes! I do, very much.” He said smiling, and hoping to talk more about the one subject dear to his heart that she had always steadfastly avoided.

“Yes, yes, I know, you’re a good Muslim. But I mean really, do you really believe that he is there, watching over us or doing whatever it is that the Qur’an says he’s doing?”

“Yes Nurhan, without any doubt I do, and that belief is a very close and vitally important part of my life. Do you not?” he asked softly.

“Well, I’ve never really thought too much about it since I was a girl, it never really interested me. My family was always so modern, my father insisted on that and he always said that religion was what defined the people of the past, the old generations that had faded into irrelevancy and who had held us down, held us back from progress. And Rafiq, I never doubted his words. All I ever saw as a very young girl in the small town I lived in was so backward. Village people really, women in their scarves and colorful costumes. It seemed charming of course but, so, so much a faded memory. When I married Mehmet and came to live here and I got swept up in his life, well, there was no room for any of that I can tell you. Mehmet wouldn’t hear of it, he wouldn’t even allow it to be discussed as other than a joke, something to be laughed at in scorn. And that’s all it has ever meant to me. What can I say, it doesn’t seem like something that one has any choice about believing or not believing.” She lifted her tea cut to her lips and paused, looking off into the distance.

“Well perhaps you are right, who can decide to believe, truly believe or not. But do I seem so old fashioned, so irrelevant and outdated?” he teased.

“Oh Rafiq, of course not. I just assumed, well, that it was something you studied, something you found of interest to read about. But now, I don’t know, I’m not sure. I have been thinking about it more lately. I’m a very old woman Rafiq. I won’t be here much longer.”

“Nurhan, don’t talk like that. Your health is good. You’ll probably outlive us all.” He looked closely at her, all of a sudden concerned about this strange turn in her thoughts.

“Well, I don’t know, when my time comes, I hope there is something of course. And if there is, I hope that, well, this is just silly talk. But you really do believe, not just books and tradition, not just family, but, really believe in Allah?” she smiled sweetly and looked at him in a way she never had before. He could see that she wanted him to believe, for her sake, wanted him to convince her that Allah was there.

“Yes Nurhan, I believe with all my heart and soul. I have all my life, and it’s not just books and tradition and family. And Nurhan, if you want to believe, if you ask Him ---

“No, no, I am too old, Rafiq, I just wanted to know that you do believe. I have faith in you Rafiq. If you believe in Allah, if you really believe, then that is good enough for me. That’s all I need. I know you are not a liar, not a silly man who convinces himself of things. If Allah exists for you Rafiq, then He exists for all of us. But enough of this.” She said laughing and brushing his next comments away with a girlish laugh.

But Rafiq was troubled by this talk. Nurhan Şahin may not pray for herself, but Rafiq would make a special dua for her tonight and pray that her reveries were a sign of something new and wonderful coming into her life.

7

Azami crushed the cigarette out in his empty plate and tossed back the contents of his tea glass as the other men seated at the table broke up into riotous laughter.

“How can you stand the taste of those things? Sweet Allah, I thought the smell of those things was bad enough!” a grimace of pure disgust gripped Azami’s youthful face as he shook his head and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Zafer, who is this kid?” Nazer Silmi asked with a friendly shake of his head towards Azami.

“He’s a friend I met at this place I’ve been going to for a while. He’s a baker’s apprentice and a student, a smart guy too, real smart. He’s read more books than you’ve gutted fish Nazer!”

“Unlikely, but go on!” Nazer laughed incredulously.

“He remembers all of it. Tell him something that you’ve read Azami.” Zafer Yilmaz sat back and nodded to the men around the table. It was an odd mix. Six men from the fish market, all rough and coarse and good natured but set in their ways. And then there was Azami. It had only been six months since he’d moved out of the mosque, away from Selim and all he’d known since his parents had been killed in a bombing that destroyed the apartment building he had lived in since his birth. That had been when he was six, and since then Selim had been surrogate parents and had raised him in the small mosque that he had been the caretaker of.

But that had all changed. That was six months ago, and since then Azami had immersed himself in his university studies in political science and history while apprenticing at a small family bakery on the same street as the mosque. So while he hadn’t ventured so far from the mosque itself, he had traveled light years in his experience of the world. He was nineteen now and that world was flooding in to fill the vacuum left by the cloistered days of the mosque and Selim’s well-meaning over protection.

“Zafer?” Nazer prodded, curious about where his friend and co-worker had been going. “What place is this, where have you been going, what kind of place would you wander into that has thin bearded youths like this hanging around?” he raised an eyebrow and winked towards Zafer while nodding towards Azami who knew well enough to sit there and take this razing even though his pride was beginning to boil.

“Just a small mosque on the south side of the square near where my sister lives.” Zafer mumbled, hoping his friends would be satisfied and move away from the subject.

“Ho! A mosque? Are you a shaykh now Zafer? Are you going to preach at us now?” They all started laughing again and Nazer lit another cigarette and passed it towards Azami who quickly shook his head, and they resumed their good spirited ribbing of Zafer.

“It’s just a small mosque, and I go there to talk, there’s a guy there I know, you’d like him too. He’s not the type you’d think of as running a mosque, it’s not like that at all.” Zafer grumbled, wishing the subject had not come up at all.

“Well, each man looks after his own soul. But I’ll be watching you.” Nazer said with an eye cocked in his direction. “We don’t want any of our own turning into one of that bunch over there.” He tossed a sneer towards a corner of the crowded café where a group of men in white sat talking to some school boys.

It was a large café, with more than a hundred small tables crowded together and teeming with noisy men just off from work or on their way there. Each table was littered with overflowing ashtrays and a dozen dirty tea glasses and plates. Food was available here too, but most of the men who came here just wanted to unwind after work and gather the news from the streets before heading home to their supper. These were rugged dark men, tanned and scared with the salt of the sea, workers on the docks and fish markets, sellers from the smaller bazaars, younger men looking for day work and leads on the few and dwindling jobs that might be had, and the predictable smattering of school boys in search of places to talk and smoke unmolested by meddling aunts.

But increasingly, there were the men in white, unbelievably bright and spotless white thobes or salwar kamiz, with their full thick beards and their little kufi hats. And always these men circled and zeroed in on the students and the young men and sat with them and spoke in low muttered voices and whispers, often bringing out a copy of the Qur’an or some other book or pamphlet. These conversations with the young men and students never lasted long and they usually ended in one of two ways. Either the men in white got up quickly and left as the youngsters laughed and waved them away, or else one or another of the young men got up from their tables and left the café with the men in white. When this happened, the young men seldom returned to the café to smoke and drink tea. And when they did sometimes return, they too now wore the spotless white, the thobe or the shalwar kamiz, and the kufi.

Nazer Silmi took careful note of these things. In his mind he remembered every face, every name when names were known to him, and every flow and changing tide of movement and men within this café. He had been coming to this café far longer than anyone knew, and despite the loud and boisterous din of the waiters and men and his own frequent instigations of laughter and merriment, always was Nazer Silmi watching and making note of the movement and flow of men within this café and elsewhere. Nazer Silmi had been watching far, far longer than anyone could imagine.

8
Azami left the café and stepped into the street and headed south towards the hammam, noticing that it was snowing heavily and already starting to accumulate. The temperature had dropped sharply and his breath froze in cloudy haze in front of his face. He dug his hands into his pockets and walked faster into the sunset. Knowing he would not make it home in time to pray Maghrib he slipped into a small mosque and removed his shoes and did wudu, the ritual washing. There were only a few other men gathered there and the Imam himself seemed half asleep and more interested perhaps in his supper than in leading the prayer on a cold afternoon. The heat had not come on in the place and everyone seemed rushed and anxious to be on their way.

As he slipped back out into the street, now completely dark with the storm, Azami felt someone at his elbow and turned quickly to see one of his fellow classmates from the university. He didn’t know the man other than by sight, although he had been in Michaela’s sociology class on political activism but had disappeared after the first few meetings. He was surprised to see the fellow approaching him now.

“Salam aleikum brother, remember me, from class? Abdul Hasîb.” The man was about Azami’s age, nineteen or twenty, with the fine down of an early beard tracing the jaw and chin and upper lip. But it was the long impeccably white thobe and kufi hat that caught Azami’s attention most about the man and set him on guard.

“Wa aleikum as-salaam, yes, Abdul Hasîb. I thought your name was Sadri? You were in Professor Butalib’s class, right? But you stopped coming, what happened? It’s a great class.” Azami tensed with anger as he saw the man sneer at the mention of Michaela’s name.

“Yes, that was my name, in my jahiliya, my ignorance. But I have embraced the true Islam and have taken a righteous name. And I stopped coming because that woman has no right to teach a class on anything about Islam! She is not a Muslim, how can she know the truth? Do not be mislead by her Azami, these kafir seek to destroy Islam by blending it with their sinful ways. She has no right to be at that school!” Abdul Hasib was walking quickly along side Azami who wanted nothing more than to get rid of the man.

“What are you talking about? Jahiliya? You were born a Muslim, what is this embracing true Islam? Did you not pray before, fast before, believe in the Prophet of Allah, peace be upon him, and the unity of God? And for your information, Professor Butalib is most definitely a Muslim.”

“No she is not, she is a westerner who is posing as a Muslim, I promise you Azami. I wanted to talk to you. I saw you in the café today with those men. They are just working men, I know they mean well and want to be sincere but they are lead astray and are little better than kafiroon themselves. You have to listen to me Azami. There are some very wise men in the city now. Come meet them, listen to them. They can speak better than I can on these matters and answer your questions, you will see.” The young man was almost pleading as Azami stopped and stared at him.

“Questions? I have no questions for such men!”

“Things are changing in the world and we will not be used and polluted by these kafir any longer! Come meet these men Azami, I beg you! I am inviting you to true Islam, take my hand, take a brother’s hand”

“What men are these?” Azami asked darkly, ignoring the hand that was shoved into his face. “The men in white like you are wearing before me? The men in white who come to the café and try to recruit the other students into secret societies and meetings? Is that it Sadri, or Abdul Hasîb, or whoever you are now? And I do not need to come to true Islam, I’m already there.” Azami turned and started to walk away.

“Be warned Azami, things are changing faster than anyone can know. Innocence and ignorance cannot save anyone if they turn willfully away.” Abdul Hasib grabbed Azami and turned him to face him and for a moment the two young men stood in the street, breathing hard in the cold night air. Azami’s heart pounded and he feared another anxiety attack might overcome him. But he was enraged and might leap on the man and beat him into the ground if he did not control himself.

“Brother, listen to me please! Azami, just give me a chance, come listen to these men, we are meeting later tonight, decide for yourself. If you still refuse to listen to the truth, then you are on your own and I won’t bother you anymore. You don’t know what this world is full of, the horrors and the suffering. We mean to bring a stop to all this once and for all.” Abdul Hasîb was almost pleading and Azami found himself dissolving into a calm and very dark place. He reached out and grabbed Abdul Hasîb’s coat lapels and dragged his face to within an inch of his own.

“You listen to me.” Azami growled menacingly between his teeth in the other man’s face. “I know more than you’ll ever know in your clean white thobe and your little knitted hat. You go to your meeting, you talk about whatever it is you talk about. Maybe you even plan big things, eh, is that it? You plan to blow things up, is that it? You think that’s going to change anything? You know what Sadri, you’re stupid. You’re still a little boy playing what you think is grown up men’s games and maybe some grown up men are using your stupid boyish enthusiasm. The world is a very bad place, but your way is only making it worse, much, much worse. You say I don’t know anything? I know what it’s like to see my mother and father’s blown up bodies lying in a pile of broken glass and booted footprints trailing through my mother’s blood, and I knew all this when I was just six years old. So go to your meeting and learn how to blow things up and see broken bodies. Been there, done that Sadri.” Azami sneered angrily in the other man’s face and shoved him away where he slid on the ice and almost fell. But Azami had already moved on quickly down the street.

Moments later he reached the Cemberlitas hammam where he hoped Suhayl was already waiting for him inside. He desperately needed a good long soak in dangerously hot water and an understanding ear that would let him rage for as long as he needed to without interruption.

9

Samir Butalib stared at his wife as she sat at her computer and gazed at the screen. Her hands, resting on the edge of her desk, were clenched and white and he could see her shoulders shaking.

“Michaela?” he said for the second time with no response. “Michaela, what has happened?” he went to her and put his hand on her back and felt her body trembling. She turned and looked up at him, her face pale and distraught.

“Oh God, Samir, read this. One of my students sent met his link to a website where a couple of my former students are talking about jihad and Islamism and the global fight. These boys were in my class at the beginning of the semester but they dropped out. Sadri and Abdi, two brothers. But on this site, they say they have changed their names after having forsaken the jahiliya of their youth. They’re now called Abdul Hasîb and Abdul Khâfid.”

“Hmm, I see, rather ominous. Slaves of The Reckoner and The Abaser. I wonder if they all take those Jalali names, ones invoking the magnificence of Allah and not His mercy? So what are they doing, arming themselves with the righteous qualities of God and presuming to act in His place? Too bad that your students are getting swept up in this. Who sent you the link?”

“A girl named Ceyda. Very smart, very modern and rather hip. I like her. She’s something of an internet watchdog, big on Facebook and Twitter. She’s been trying to get me to create a page. Maybe I should. But get this. They are also saying that I should be thrown off the university faculty.”

“What? Who are these people? What is this site? Let me see.” Samir angrily pulled up another chair and slid in next to Michaela.

“See here.” She said pointing to an article with a list of names. “These are faculty who are either non-Muslim or who the site leaders don’t think are Muslim enough. Here I am. The western stooge thing again, a kafir in Muslim’s clothing. Good God. And this guy writing this article seems to think my biggest sin is not wearing hijab. Well that’s a relief. I thought it was going to be my thin runny western kafir blood!” she shook her head and laughed angrily.

“Don’t joke! You’ve got to report this to the college, if they haven’t seen this already. They need to know their faculty is in danger. God knows what these sorts are capable of. No, I take that back, the whole world knows what these sorts can pull off. It’s so stupid, don’t they know that you are fighting the same oppressions they are, only you’re doing it in the sane rational way?”

“No Samir, as far as these people are concerned there is only one way to fight this fight. And if you hold back, then you’re part of the problem, you’re the enemy. You know this. This is why moderates all over the world are finding themselves with lame fatwas on their heads and calls for open warfare on all Muslims who don’t tow their line. This is Sayyid Qutb stuff pure and unfiltered. There is only one Islam, the true Islam, and they’re the ones deciding what that means. You’re either on the boat and taking orders or you’re in the water with the rest of the world. And a lot of moderates are scared, so they’re getting on the boat, or pretending to and just keeping their mouths shut.”

“Yeah, it’s going on like that all over. Moderates are held hostage in their own mosques. Hell, it was like that even back in the States before we came here. We knew that. That’s why we never got involved in any mosques back home. But you’re on the front line now. An academic at a major university giving courses in Islamic political ideology, and one with the audacity to be a westerner and a woman. You might as well have a target on your back. Alhamdu’lillah! What a wife Allah has given me!” He reached out and took her in his arms and then looked at her eyes to see where she really was. The seriousness was there, but the twinkle was far from clouded and he could see the thrill of engagement alive and on fire within her.

“You got the only wife Allah could find that you deserved Mr. Samir Butalib. One that would, if nothing else, never bore you.” She grinned and kissed him quickly and passionately, then turned her face back to the screen and started reading, her lips pressed once again in concentration and her eyes dark and narrow on the words before her.

“Phillip in his room and doing his homework?” she asked without looking up.

“Yeah, I’m going in to help him with the geometry, that is if I can remember it.”

“Good. I’ll be in before too long.” She said topping him a quick smile.

Samir breathed deeply, knowing that soon would be a few hours, and knowing that she loved this game, no matter how dangerous it got. And that worried him. No matter how brilliant the mind, no matter how sound and solid the ideas and the research, no matter how wise and benevolent the soul, in this game the body was always vulnerable to things that go boom in the night.

10

Azami didn’t see Suhayl waiting for him when he entered the hammam and he was too angry and exhausted to wait or look for his friend. They’d catch up somewhere and if Suhayl had gotten here earlier and was farther along in his bath, so be it. So he stowed his clothes and other things he carried in the locker, secured the key to the chain he wore around his neck and entered the first room of the baths, the petemal cloth secured snuggly around his naked body.

He entered the hot room and immediately began to relax as soon as he sat down on the huge hot slab heated by underground coals. He felt like he could almost melt here and fall asleep and had to rouse himself as the super heated steam air permeated body and soul. He thought back on the day. It had been a good enough day, even with the ribbing he had taken by the men in the café. Everything had been okay until he was accosted by Sadri on the sidewalk and reminded, once again, that the world was still consumed by a storm that was building on the horizon of each day like a bank of thunderheads. And all the books and articles and conferences attended by his friends at the university would not dispel those clouds and the storm they heralded.

Eventually Azami crawled to his feet and made his way sluggishly towards the washing tubs. He declined the rough hands of the scrubber today, but succumbed to a long wash and soak at the tubs before passing on towards the moment of truth: the icy bucket of water to be poured over his head to cool his body down and wash the last of the impurities away. This process was far more than any simple bath and broke down all the tensions and stress that his muscles carried and allowed all the anger and rage to flow away down the drains leaving nothing but a soapy trail. Almost.

As he made his way down past a couple of the private bathing cells, he caught the bobbing light of candles coming from one of the rooms. He glanced in and saw a man, a very tall man standing in the center of the room completely naked, his back facing the doorway and the body cloth laying discarded on the floor. The man stood with his legs apart and his arms raised high in the air. He was magnificently, powerfully built, but it was not the roping sinew and knotted muscles of his body that caught Azami’s attention and caused him to stop and stare at the man. It was the tattoos. Tattoos that most Muslims believed to be haram, forbidden by the Prophet. The rippling blaze of red and yellow flame danced along the arms and across his shoulder and down the center of the man’s torso front and back and flowed down his legs and onto his feet. They were clearly the work of a master, a maze of stunning beauty that coursed over the man’s flesh like another kind of skeleton.

Just then, another man came into view. It was one of the scrubbers and he hoisted a large wooden bucket of water and heaved it over the man’s body. As the water splashed over his back, the tattooed man gave a loud satisfied shout. A trick of the flickering candlelight perhaps, or the running movement of water as it trickled and flowed over the super heated skin, but Azami could have sworn that the flames burst to life to move and ebb over the man’s flesh with an eerie luminosity as he writhed and almost danced with pleasure under the icy water. Then he turned and Azami saw his face and recognized instantly the man Nazer Silmi who he had met with Zafer Yilmaz at the café today. The man glanced sharply towards him with a nodding grin and then quickly grabbed up his body cloth and secured it around his waste and disappeared into one of the side halls.

Azami staggered to one of the wash basins and sat down. He had almost passed out, but what had happened. For a moment it had seemed that the air in the hammam had slipped like a cracked mirror in a broken frame and he was not sure what he had seen. But he had almost lost his breath in the vision of Nazer Silmi and the cascade of flames that danced over his body. Perhaps it was the heat, too much heat on a cold night. Or the rage and the lingering touch of an anxiety attack Azami had barely escaped out on the street in his encounter with Sadri. Azami took a deep breath and went down the hall to the cooling room where Suhayl jumped up and called him to a place near the back wall.

Azami just sat quietly for a moment, not even looking at his friend. Strange. He had seen something very strange in that room and Nazer Silmi knew he had seen it. Azami could tell by the odd mischievous smile that lit up the other man’s face, and the speed with which he had grabbed up his towel and disappeared.

11

“Azami, you look like you just watched the ground open up in front of you and a big scaly hand grab for your throat. What’s wrong?” Suhayl asked, slicking his long wet blond hair back and rubbing the fragrant oil into his stinging scrubbed flesh.

“Maybe I did.” He was about to continue when a figure appeared in the doorway of their small hot room and the two men looked up. Nazer Silmi walked silently towards them and sat down on the stone bench between then, grinning in some private mirth.

“So, Azami, thought you’d have a nice soak did you? Always pleasing after a long conversation.”

“Yeah.” Azami mumbled, finding the fantastical vision of the man in the candlelight etched into his mind.

“Cool tattoos man, very cool.” Suhayl said as he admired the intricate flames that traced the lean muscular frame.

“Thanks, I am rather attached to them!” Nazer laughed heartily at his own joke and then eyed Azami again.

“They’re haram.” Azami mumbled, wishing Nazer Silmi would just disappear and let him relax and hopefully forget the weird vision of living flames dancing where he knew they could not exist.

“Well, that haram tattoo thing, depends on who you are. I’m alright with them. And they really are a part of me, you know?” he added darkly, clearly pushing Azami’s buttons as he had earlier in the café.

Suhayl, this is, I’m sorry brother, I don’t recall your name. Suhayl, I met the brother earlier today in the café.”

“Nazer Silmi, I am Nazer Silmi. Salaam aleikum.” He smiled and extended a hand towards Suhayl.

“Wa salaam. Suhayl Sutton. Nice to meet you.” They shook hands and then slipped momentarily into their own thoughts.

“Who is Abdul Hasîb?” Nazer Silmi said softly, his voice firm and commanding. Azami almost jumped, startled from his thoughts by the sudden question.

“What? Oh, a guy from school, how, why do you ask?” Azami felt his pulse begin to race as once again, everything began to recede from his thoughts but this strange man sitting next to him.

“I saw you talking to him on the street. Do you know him well?”

“When did you see me talking to him? That was just before I came here.” Azami’s body became tense and he was beginning to feel trapped and his curiosity about Nazer Silmi was quickly fading and being replaced by the desire to get away from him as fast as possible.

“I saw you talking to him on the street, I saw you push him and he almost fell. I take it you do not like this Abdul Hasîb?”

“No, no I don’t. Like you said about the guys in the white in the café, that’s where he’s at it seems. Although when I first met him at school a few months ago, he wasn’t like that. But where were you? I didn’t see anybody on the street and when I got here, you were already ----“

“I saw you on the street, Leave it at that.” Nazer Silmi said in a strange sharp tone that left no room for further discussion. “This Abdul Hasîb and his brother Abdul Khâfid, they’re bad news boys and are likely to end in a really ugly way. You seem like a good kid Azami. I’d stay away from the slaves of the Reckoner and the Abaser if I were you.” And with that he stood up and disappeared out the door without another word.

“What was that all about?” Suhayl was fascinated by his friend’s odd acquaintance and was sorry to see him leave.

“I have no idea. But I will find out. Oh, I will find out.”

12

After he left the hammam, Nazer Silmi trudged home through the driving snow, pulling his coat and scarf closer around his neck. He hated snow. Not the look of it, but the feel of it on his skin, the temperature, the invading dampness of each tiny flake as it sought to enter his flesh and collide in a primordial battle of wills with his deepest inner nature.

He climbed the narrow external wooden staircase and finally reached the door of his small garret apartment. Once inside, he immediately threw off his wet outer clothes and lit a few small candles. Then he took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his sleeves and crouched on the hearth in front of the cold remains of his morning fire. Gazing into the darkness he breathed deeply and rubbed his hands quickly over his face and then quickly thrust his open palms outwardly over the darkened logs that still lay on the grate. Instantly a fierce blaze erupted over the logs and filled the hearth with the light and warmth of fire.

“That’s more like it!” he smiled as the heat warmed his flesh and spoke to the rugged tattooed warren of flame that caressed his arms and disappeared into his shirt sleeves and down the collar at the back of his neck and throat. He stared a bit longer into the hot white center of the blaze and then smiled.

“Bismi’allah, ir-rahman, ir-rahim.” His lips moved reverently over the sacred words, then he plunged his hands into the crackling blaze and brought forth a handful of flame and rubbed it three times over his hands, washing them thoroughly as it burned away his thoughts and memories of the day. Then he brought a handful of flame up before him and buried his face three times in the cleansing wrath that ignited his soul and quickened his deepest nature. He proceeded then to cleanse his mouth and nose in this manner as well. The tattoos on his arms burst to life in anticipation as he brought his arms to the hearth and washed the flesh with the searing blaze and laughed in pleasure as the images leapt from his arms and danced in wild frenzy with the fiery mass of the hearth, then he completed the singular wudu of the jinn by washing his head and ears and scrubbing his feet as well. He sighed again and withdrew from the hearth and made his ritual prostrations in much the same way as do the sons and daughters of Adam. Then he retired to the couch to make his dua to his Lord.

Guidance, that was all he asked, all he ever wanted. And it always came, as the flames danced over his body and quickened his primordial soul, the guidance always came, and he never faltered. As his mind sunk into the dark silence, again, a face floated on the of his thoughts. The young man from the café, Azami. He must reveal himself to Azami and then discover what this unique configuration of man and jinn would mean. It was always thus with those of his kind who lived among humanity and provided whatever was needed, whatever was willed by the Guide of all creation. Azami was a good kid, a good soul, but he was by no means an innocent. This was good. Nazer Silmi smiled and nodded in the darkness. He was the same among his own kind.

13

Ceyda Edrissi had just served her father a glass of tea and as was his custom, he sucked the first steaming sip through a sugar cube, savoring the sensation of the sweetness melting in his mouth and sweetening his lips.

“Sit down Ceyda. You’re always flitting around, fiddling with that iPhone of yours or buried in your computer in your room with the door closed. Don’t you realize an old man gets lonely for his only child? Have a sugar cube, drink your tea through the sugar and let it melt all those worries and cares away. Let Allah worry about the world for one night while you worry about your dear sweet old father. You know, the zikr is like the tea? Did you know that Ceyda? It melts the sugar of the heart and sweetens everything around it.” Shaykh Khalid sat back and smiled, taking another sip and closing his eyes.

“Who said that Baba?” Ceyda asked happily, loving it when her father passed into these reveries.

“I said it!” he said with a wink. “You don’t think I can come up with a few good ones of my own?” he arched an eyebrow towards her, daring her to scoff and knowing she delighted in his aphorisms and probably wrote every one of them down in her journal and shared them on her Twitter and Facebook pages. Shaykh Hassan hadn’t really developed an appreciation for the new forms of digital media and networking, but he knew his daughter loved it and it connected her to people all over the world and allowed her to get her ideas out and the news she watched. And Shaykh Khalid approved of his daughter and everything she did. He was so proud of her, but he made her earn every kind word, ensuring that she didn’t become pampered and spoiled and full of the Shaytan of hubris.

“There’s news here at the khaniqah tonight. Better sit down and make yourself comfortable.” He mentioned casually, fingering his tasbih and glancing out of the corner of his eye at her.

“What news Baba? Something good I hope. I really need some good news for a change.”

“Good news and bad I’m afraid. The good news is that your friend Azadeh and her husband are coming tonight, they should be here any time now and they’re bringing someone new for us to meet. I think he has had a bad time with one of my scoundrel brother shaykhs who used him badly. We must be very nice to him Ceyda girl. He may or may not come to us but we have to make him feel welcome and safe here whatever he decides to do.”

“Of course Baba. More and more I feel like we’re becoming a half-way house for the casualties of that, that man who runs what he calls a khaniqah in that yali down by the water. Why do people fall for men like that? I just don’t understand.”

“Ceyda, some people want to be ordered around and the more painful the medicine the more they think it must be working. But there is more news. Khosro and Gary are coming to stay for a while, maybe a good long while.”

“Really? Oh Baba, that’s fantastic news! Why didn’t you tell me sooner, when did you find out?”

“I’ve been in touch with Khosro a lot of course. You know how things are in Tehran. I have been arguing with that man to get out of there for months. But he thinks he can protect his family’s farm if he stays there. I told him to lock the place up and get what’s left of the family out of there and to safe territory. And he’s been trying to get Gary out, but the obstinate young fool, that sweet loyal fool just wouldn’t listen. Now, things have gotten very ugly. A little over two weeks ago Gary was coming home through a neighborhood where they were protesting Ahmadinejad and his cronies. He was with a couple of Khosrow’s students and their friends. Well, the basij thugs were there and got a look at Gary and his blond hair and came after him assuming he was a western spy. They beat him pretty badly.”

Oh Allah no!” Ceyda cried out and bringing her hand to her mouth. “Is he okay? Why didn’t you say anything when this happened?”

“Yes, he’ll be okay. Shukran Allah he was with the other boys, they surrounded him and got him away. Fortunately some other students were taking pictures and the basij were more interested in not being photographed and ending up on maybe your Twitter page, so they left Gary and went after the photographers, may Allah keep them all safe. I didn’t want to say anything until the whole drama played out and we knew where we stood. I didn’t want anyone to know they were on the move until they were safely out of Iran. Sorry my darling Ceyda, but that includes you. Anyone as active as you are on these news blogs or whatever they are, these web sites where anyone can be listening and watching, well, it just wasn’t safe.””

“The whole drama? In God’s name what has happened?” she demanded, setting her tea glass down and looking at her father and trembling.

“Well, just listen. So they got Gary home and saw to his wounds. Nothing serious but it looked bad and there was a lot of blood. But he’s fine, if a little harrowed. The get- away was all very daring. They got a caravan together of a few cars that set out one at a time and drove up the Caspian and into Rasht where they got Khosro’s family out and then up to Astara and into Azerbaijan where he placed them with some of the mureeds there. They’ll be safe and cared for. Then their friends melted back into Tehran one at a time to keep an eye on things. Khosro and Gary went on to Baku of all places and by way of one strange circuitous route. They should be flying in here day after tomorrow.”

Well, that’s all pretty exciting. I want to hear every word of it! I’ll get that story out of Gary you can be sure of it!”

“I am sure you will my daughter. But take great care, Gary has been through a lot. Let him rest when he gets here, be patient and let him tell you the story in his own time. The beauty is the circles of protection that exist for our people and the ones who are dear to us. Allah is most generous. And maybe it took a little beating to get some sense into Gary to listen to Khosro more closely when he gives him counsel and maybe it was just in time that the old man got his family out of there and into safe territory. Safe for now anyway.” Khalid shook his head slowly and Ceyda could see a look of worry that was not often to be seen on her father’s face.

“Old man? You are older than Khosro by five years Baba, and you are spry as a whip!” she grinned and rubbed his arm, attempting to ease his darkening mood.

“Yes, but at times he acts like an obstinate old fool.”

“But this is all good in the end. We will have them here with us. Is this why Azadeh and Hamid are coming tonight? It’s not Friday night you know? Azadeh must have been beside herself with worry for her brother. She did know didn’t she?” Ceyda reminded him gently, observing that it was indeed not Friday, the night when the dervishes under Shaykh Khalid’s protection held their usual zikr.

“It’s good news yes, at the expense of bad times and worse tidings. And yes, of course Azadeh knew. But yes, I breathe a sigh of relief that they are coming. They’ll stay here for a very long time if I have anything to say about it.” Khalid combed his fingers thoughtfully through his long wispy beard and cast his glance inward.

“Baba, there’s something else isn’t there? You seem very low and dark this evening. Is it mama?” she asked gently stroking his shoulder. “Are you missing her so much tonight? I miss her too you know.”

“Oh Ceyda, this place seems so empty and quiet without her. Not even my wild Ceyda girl can fill all the empty places in this old heart.” He said sadly shaking his head and pursing his lips. “Whatever will I do without her?”

“Oh Baba, you talk about her like she was dead! She has only been gone two weeks, she will be back from Nana’s in another two weeks.” Ceyda reminded him with a laugh and a shake of her head.

“Two weeks! Ceyda it feels like forever. Your mother is my heart and my life. My best friend! Allah is my Beloved, and your mother is happy to be second best. My best friend. How can a man get by without his best friend for even a day?”

“That’s very sweet Baba. And I am delighted that after so many years of marriage my parents are still best friends. But she goes for a month to Nana’s every year.”

“I know! And every year I die for a whole month.”

“And you could go with her, they beg you every year and every year it’s the same thing. You cannot leave the mureeds and your friends. So be strong dear Baba, she will return. And remember, the longing is sweeter than the tasting and this absence makes the reunion all the more joyous.”

“Indeed, you are right. But you should humor your old Baba in his misery. It says so in the Qur’an.”

“Oh, where does it say that?”

Ceyda, you know very well it says you must obey your parents and pamper their misery.” Shaykh Khalid said with a wily glance.

“It says that?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes of course, would I lie about Qur’an?” he added indignantly.

“That last part? That’s in there?”

“Well, that’s what it means, I am sure. But enough of that, I heard the door bell, our friends must be here. Go and make them welcome, go on! And tuck those silly braids up into that hijab or turban or whatever it is. Or take it off altogether!”

“Baba, Azadeh and Hamid have known me all my life!” She tossed towards him narrowing her glance.

“And our guest? What about him?”

“What better visit to get the lay of the land here than the first one?” she winked and ran to the door to welcome her friends and her father’s mureeds.

14

Ceyda went to the front door of the khaniqah and threw it open to welcome their friends and guests and was in for a mild shock.

Salaam aleikum, welcome. Azadeh! Hamid, come in, all of you. Suhayl? Ha! You’re our guest tonight?” she said laughing and ushering them into the reception room.

“Yeah. Ceyda, I had no idea you were here, were a member of this order. Salaam aleikum, good to see you.” He smiled warmly as she took his arm and showed him to where they could stow their shoes and coats and all the trappings of the stormy winter night.

“Well how would you know? Not like we talk too much about Sufism in the Computer Sciences Lab!” she said with a wink as she hugged Azadeh.

“You two know each other from school I take it. What a nice coincidence. Suhayl lives on our street, at the little mosque right across from the restaurant. I love these kinds of connections. It reminds us how small and close our world really is, or can be for those of like mind.” Azadeh linked arms with Ceyda and directed her to their other guest for the evening.

“Ceyda my darling, this is Ramsay Hamza, he’s on our street too, he has a delightful bakery that keeps us all very happy. Particularly on Fridays when I have my day off!” she added with a wink and they all laughed and walked into the main room and sat down.

“Azadeh is too kind.” Ramsay said emphatically. “And it’s her kitchen that keeps the people on that street happy. Sometimes I think we have a little enclave there, a world of our own where we could live the rest of our lives and never bother with the outside world.”

“Mmmm. Yes, I feel that way too.” Azadeh agreed warmly. “But we can’t let the rest of the world elude us either Ramsay Hamza. This khaniqah is a very nice place too, and it is not on that street.”

“Welcome Ramsay Hamza, I know my father will be delighted to meet you, and you too Suhayl. We have been waiting for all of you. Please, come in and join the others and I will bring tea.”

“Your father?” Suhayl asked, wondering how many more surprises the night would hold. She squeezed his arm and gave him a smile while introducing him and Ramsay Hamza to the others seated in the main room.

There were always a few people seated here, talking quietly, engaged in their silent zikr, remembrance of Allah, or reading from one of the many books in shelves that lined the walls floor to ceiling. Besides these books, the room was furnished only with a massive antique Baluchi carpet that Khalid had brought from his own master’s khaniqah so many years ago. He always said the carpet had a memory, and it embraced those it loved and who truly loved Allah. Everyone else it sent gently away never to return.

After they had been introduced and all sat down and Ceyda went to prepare tea for everyone and let her father know they had arrived, Suhayl spoke quietly to some of the others seated around the room.

“Salaam aleikum! Ali and Linda? I’m surprised to see you here. How are you?” Suhayl said in surprise, recognizing two of the mureeds from his old khaniqah that had its center in the beautifully restored yali by the water.

“Wa salaam Suhayl, we’re very good thank you.” Ali said nodding happily at the newcomer.

“How are you doing Suhayl? It’s great to see you here. We wondered how you were, what you were up to.” Linda said smiling and taking the small elegant tea and saucer from Ceyda and two sugar cubes and a date. “Thanks Ceyda. Come join us if you can.”

“I will if I can. In about five minutes you guys should do wudu and then we will pray. My father will lead us tonight.”

“Alhamdu’lillah.” Ali added as he took his tasbih from his pocket. “Suhayl, Shaykh Khalid does not always lead the prayer but when he does, it’s ---“ he broke off with a grin.

“It’s very lively! And exhilarating. And beautiful.” Linda finished her husband’s comment and sipped her tea with a glance over her wireframe glasses at their friend.

“I’m really good. I’m back in school, and writing, working on an academic journal. This is my first time here. And you guys? You’ve been here before? What about Dr. Abusalem?” Suhayl asked tentatively, surprised as the other two glanced strangely at each other and their cheerful eyes darkened.

“How long have you been gone Suhayl?” Ali asked quietly.

“Oh, about six months. Why? Are you both, still mureeds of Shaykh Abusalem?” It was an awkward question, but Suhayl had to know.

“No, we left not long after you did actually. So did quite a number of the others.” Linda replied in a near whisper. It was bad adab, bad manners to speak negatively about others, particularly in such an place as this And yet, as they all three looked at one another, they knew their suspicions needed to be aired and their stories shared.

“A number of the others? What do you mean, what happened?” Suhayl felt his pulse begin to race. He was not happy to hear that there had been problems at the old khaniqah, but if others were having the same problems as he, if there were other complaints and dissatisfactions, then he had been right to leave, and hadn’t misunderstood the troubling signs emerging from Hassan Abusalem and the goings on at the khaniqah.

Ali glanced at his wife and the two held each other’s gaze for a moment, and then nodded as Linda slipped her hand into her husband’s and held it tight while flashing a sad sweet smile at Suhayl.

“Look, Suhayl, I know this is not the time and place, but you need to know and I apologize to this sacred space, and to Allah, but, but you have to know. You got out of there just in time.” Ali said cryptically as he took a chunk of date and a swallow of tea into his mouth.

“Go on Ali, I’m all ears.” Suhayl said darkly.

“ Well,” he began with a deep sigh. “It started with a few odd things. The young wife of his was strange, and the fact that she was obviously just some girl, not even interested in Islam or Sufism, it was just weird and it started to sour things even then. And her ordering the mureeds around like they were her servants. Not good. But then, and it wasn’t clear at first, but after a few of us started exchanging stories, it became all too clear. Abusalem started to intentionally alienate the western mureeds, the Europeans and a couple of Americans, like yourself. Bob and Cathy, Hussein from Syria and Elizabeth, Rick, everyone, started being targeted with orders from Abusalem, orders that were supposedly for the good of their path, orders that were summarily untenable and in hindsight, designed unquestionably to drive them all away.” He said flatly, waiting for the impact to set in on Suhayl. It didn’t take long, and a knowing glance flashed between the three of them.

“What kind of orders, what were they told to do?” Suhayl felt himself growing agitated, confirming his own indignation at being ordered not to go to a doctor for his migraine attacks and being ordered again to cut of relations with Rafiq.

“A lot of stuff.” Linda interjected angrily. “Things I am sure Abusalem knew the western mureeds would never comply with but would send them running. And clearly that was his plan. He told Bob and Cathy, basically, to empty their bank account into his and rely on whatever little stipend he happened to generously bestow upon them.”

“Wow. What did they do?”

“Well, I guess they gave him a donation, what they were comfortable with. But then he angrily demanded all of it, as a trial of their faith! Well that didn’t fly. Cathy’s money was tied up in trusts and not something, shukran Allah, that she could just turn over on demand. He pushed them and told them if they loved Allah they would find a way. The bastard!” Ali spat out and then immediately apologized for his outburst.

“Right, and it was that way with the others too. But with us, a mixed racial couple, he tried a different tack.” Linda said bitterly, and Ali lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly.

“With us, he tried to destroy our marriage. It was useless and we never succumbed to it for a minute. But he tried to sell me a line that Linda was cheating, Linda was an American and no American could ever be a good Muslim ---“

“Oh really? Isn’t that interesting?” Suhayl growled angrily.

“Yeah, that was just the beginning of that. He finally told me to divorce Linda and as a pure ethnic Muslim, I was worthy, worthy, of a good Muslim wife, a real Muslim wife and he would be gracious enough to find me one! Can you believe it? I know for some of these backwoods types a wife is as interchangeable as a tire. But I was disgusted. I told him I was taking my real Muslim wife and leaving because he had insulted her honor. He tried the same thing with Hussein and Elizabeth. And they were here training supposedly to open a new khaniqah for him in the States. But then everything changed. They packed up and went back to Damascus. Who knows what they’re up to now.”

“But that wasn’t the end.” Linda continued. “We started hearing more from other mureeds before they left, and a lot of the locals too, people born into Islam. Some new foreign shaykhs starting showing up giving khutbas and sermons and privately counseling some of the, for lack of a better term, ethnic mureeds.” Ali explained quietly.

“Foreign shaykhs? What kind of foreign shaykhs?” Suhayl was getting a very dark feeling about where this tale was going.

“The Saudi Arab variety. And not the good kind.” Ali whispered, glancing around and hoping that no one else heard them and thought they were merely gossiping. “We only heard a bit of it. But it went something like, purifying the order of kafiroon and defending Islam, true Islam, home and abroad. And he’s closing all his US and European branches too. You get the picture I’m sure.” Ali said as his lips tightened in a scowl and he fell silent.

“Oh yeah, as a matter of fact I get the picture. Want to know why I left?”

“Of course Suhayl, we didn’t want to pry, but we assumed it was something like this for you too.” Linda said softly.

“Well, I get migraines and they were starting to get pretty bad a few months before I left. Abusalem refused to let me go to see a doctor, he just gave me more zikr to perform. And they got worse, and he still refused. Same thing you were talking about. It was a test of my faith in Allah.”

“Typical.” Linda said shaking her head and narrowing her eyes. “I suppose he said he did not believe in medicine. Well he sure went to the doctor for his diabetes and didn’t just recite the divine names when he got attacks of gout. The other ethnic mureeds went to doctors too went hey needed it, you can be sure of it.”

“Huh. Isn’t that something? And then he told me I had to cut off my friendship with someone I respect a lot, a whole lot. He even tricked me into going to the man’s shop where he tried to corner Rafiq, that’s his name, and intimidate him, tried to challenge him. I was mortified and humiliated. Then he ordered me back to the yali, I can’t even call it a khaniqah anymore, but we got there and he was really nasty. He dismissed me to go contemplate my ignorance, but I just packed up and left.” Suhayl almost spat the last words out as the memory poisoned his thoughts.

“Do wudu everybody, almost time to pray.” Ceyda poked her head out of her father’s study with a grin.

“Okay, we better get to it. More of this later.” Linda said as she stood up to head towards the women’s bathroom.

“But Suhayl,” Ali added as his friend started to stand up as well. “This shaykh here, Shaykh Khalid, you will love him! He is the real deal. He’s a friend of Allah first and foremost and last. And he’ll make you laugh, where Abusalem only made you angry.” He added with a smile. And then the two men rose to go get in line to do their wudu along with Ramsay Hamza and Hamid and the other men.

15

Azami reclined amongst a pile of cushions on the thickly carpeted floor of the mosque. Maghreb had long past and he was thoroughly absorbed in his usual contemplations which slowly gave way to a colorful mix of plans and aspirations and the disjointed notes of an unfinished paper for Michaela’s class. He sighed deeply, savoring the peace of the mosque when no one was around and he could enjoy the place all to himself. Selim was out more and more these days, foraging around the city, digging through the libraries researching projects that he was working on with Michaela for the Journal of Contemporary Islamic Studies she edited at the university, and even managing to find time to work out regularly at the gym. Azami saw considerably less of Selim than he had when he lived with him in the small apartment adjoining the mosque. But now their conversations were much more engaging and complex, and drawing more upon the exchange of ideas between equals than ever before. And they both seemed to thrive in this new phase in their relationship and the newfound respect they had for each other.

Increasingly though, it was someone else who was encroaching on Azami’s thoughts and demanding a greater place in the orchestra of faces that filled and colored his new life out in the world and which centered on the university campus and a growing circle of friends and acquaintances. He didn’t even know her name, yet. But he thought of her as Hijab Girl. There were plenty of hijabi girls on campus. It was an American based university so they could get away with wearing the regulation head scarf in unlimited variations, or not at all, a freedom they didn’t always enjoy on the national campuses where the hijab had been banned in an attempt to fight the rising demands of various Islamic factions that worked ceaselessly for a more traditional and politically potent gender segregation. But even that ban was now eroding, and new constitutional amendments had begun to ease that ban and more and more girls began showing up on all the campuses with a variety of regulation head scarves and ever more creative answers to the desire to wear the hijab for a variety of reasons.

Azami’s Hijab Girl was different. She seemed bold and defiant an in offhanded but respectful and playful way, enchanting, mischievous, and completely unique. Many girls wore hijab while sneering haughtily at everyone else and daring them to make a comment, while others wore it and looked like terrified rabbits who barely managed to leave the house. It’s a piece of cloth, he often mused. If women wanted to wear it, why make such a big deal out of it, one way or the other. But he understood too, the symbol, the rallying flag that the hijab had become for many in the polarized fight between, between what? Modern and traditional? East and west? God and atheism? Azami was glad to be a man, glad not to have to worry about the hijab. But this girl who had burrowed into his thoughts and seemed to pop up everywhere in his path on campus and even in the surrounding cafes where students hung out, she was different. She wore the hijab more like a head wrap or a modified turban, while leaving her hair, knotted into dozen’s of tiny braids, flying free and trailing down her back and beaded like some of the American black girls he had seen on campus. Very cool, he thought smiling to himself, very cool indeed. Everything about Hijab Girl is cool. He had even seen this girl walking with Michaela and talking and laughing. This gave him hope that soon, at some point when he was in Michaela’s office or walking to class with her, Hijab Girl would join them and he could be introduced to her properly. Never would he dare to approach this girl on his own, for no other reason than his own desire to speak with her.

As he sat smiling to himself, lost in thoughts of the first girl in his life that had captured his thoughts and refused to release them, it took several moments before he roused himself and registered the sound of sirens encroaching on the dusky silence of the mosque and bring his mind to full awareness. Sirens! Fire sirens! Sirens coming closer and obviously right on this very street!

Azami tore out of the mosque and down the street without even slipping on his shoes and coat, oblivious to the freezing cold. Wherever those sirens stopped, he’d know the people inside, had probably been inside and spent time with the residents or owners of those shops. As he got half way down the street he saw where the fire engines had stopped and his heart sunk, they were right in front of Rafiq’s carpet and antique store. He picked up his pace until he stopped dead in his tracks, seeing the fire patrol officers running not towards Rafiq’s side of the street, but to his own, toward Ramsay Hamza’s bakery, the bakery that had been his home for the last six months and where he worked with the older man, assisting him and learning every aspect of his business and becoming his good friend along the way.

“No, oh no! God no!” he cried as he careened up to the front of the shop and saw the roaring flames tearing through the glass front of the shop and the upper windows of the apartment. Piles of glass from all of the windows lay at his feet and already the men from the engines were opening their hoses in a desperate attempt to combat the blaze. He tried to barge into the shop through the smoke but the patrol officers grabbed his arms and forcefully held him back.

“Ramsay Hamza!” he screamed, hoping the older man could hear him and had made it out safely. “Where is he? Where’s Ramsay Hamza?” he yelled desperately.

“We’ve seen no one. No one’s come out. You can’t go in there, it’s too dangerous. If somebody’s in there, we’ll find them.” One man yelled as he released Azami and returned to the truck and grabbed an armful of tools.

Azami took the opportunity to dart inside the burning building. Ramsay Hamza had to be inside. Where else would he be? He had said nothing about going anywhere and he never strayed far from this street or Rafiq’s shop, and the store across the street was dark and shuttered for the night and Rafiq was nowhere in sight.

Azami charged through the storefront and saw the flames nearing the ovens. Instantly he knew he had to get to the gas spigots. Behind the back wall of the retail part of the shop were the gas lines, and he was just able to get those turned off before he heard the fire officers charging in behind him. Then he disappeared up the back steps leading to the apartments, looking over his shoulder he saw the staircase behind him swallowed in flames as it consumed the lower part of the retail area of the shop.

“Ramsay Hamza! Are you here? Can you hear me, where are you?” he yelled as loudly as he could, praying it was not too late and that his friend and mentor was still alive and not overcome by the deadly heat.

He got into the apartment, but it was already filled with smoke and the heavy air was suffocating. He felt the hair on his arms singe as he pulled the front of his shirt over his face shielding his mouth so he could take in what dwindling oxygen was left. He looked everywhere, but there was no sign of Ramsay Hamza. He heard a loud crash and knew that the bathroom windows had blown out. Good and bad, he thought. More oxygen for me, and the fire. He raced to the bathroom but saw no one. He had looked into every room on this floor and was about to give up and try to make his way back downstairs, when he remembered that the stairs were now engulfed in flames and there was no hope of getting back to the first floor that way. He thought about trying to make his way to the back stairs or going to one of the rear windows and jumping. It was only two stories and he’d probably survive, even if he broke a bone or two.

But the smoke had now become overbearing and he couldn’t tell where the back hall where the windows looking out onto the alley was and he was getting dizzy and very tired. He tripped and staggered along for a few paces, bracing himself against the wall. The flames were in the room now, he could hear the roar, louder and louder like a deafening red hot wave steadily advancing and ready to wash over him. He stumbled again and this time crashed to the floor. But he just didn’t have the strength to stand up, or even to try to save himself. Every ounce of strength was consumed by the wracking coughs that convulsed his body.

He rolled over onto his back and watched as the flames drew nearer, marveling in his near delirium at their staggering beauty, the power and majesty of the blaze and his utter helplessness before it. His mind wandered momentarily to Hijab Girl and her beauty that he knew now he would never be able to explore, to reach out and touch and maybe see that strange little half smile of hers light up that beautiful face in response to some action or clever word of his own. He looked again at the flames, and wondered in awe at the swirling mass as it bobbed and flickered before him and the pounding drum beat of his pulse in his arms and the sides of his forehead, almost a martial cadence, beautiful and savage in its own way. He looked again, and he blinked hard and tried to wipe the smoke from his eyes.

It appeared that the flames in front of him were congealing and ebbing into a form and a face, dozens of faces emerging and then melting back into the white hot center only to appear again. Laughing faces, dying faces, angry faces, faces that seemed to peer into his own in curiosity and sadness. Azami laughed, thinking he must be near death and not even caring. He just wanted to lay there and watch the flames as they transformed into a million fantastical scenes in front of his clouded eyes. It almost didn’t seem as hot as before, and he almost didn’t care if they even found him in time or not.

So close, never before had he been this close to open flame, felt the imminent kiss of its countless tiny tongues on his heated flesh. Even when his parents had been killed, he had not been this close to the flames. Is this what they had seen in their last moments? Was it the last mercy from Allah that you became so distracted by the beauty and spectacle of the flames that you lost even your fear of the agonizing grip of death on the body and soul? He looked again and saw the fire congealing once more into new fantastical shapes. He almost thought he saw the form of a solitary man amidst the swirling abyss, almost thought he saw a particular face, a strangely familiar face. Yes! There was a face! A face he had seen before. The man Nazer Silmi from the café and the hammam, the man covered in flame tattoos.

Azami thought perhaps he was already dead as the manlike form of flame emerged from the mass that swirled through the room and actually appeared to draw close and reach out a hand to him. Through the smoke and tears and nearing hallucinations of death, Azami thought he could see the eyes of the man, and his mouth curling in a broad smile as his hand reached out to Azami’s own. Azami was barely able to lift his arm and raise his hand to the man of flames that looked so much like Nazer Silmi. He reached out as the fingers of flame grasped his own and the shimmering tattooed flames danced to life along the man’s arm and flowed down over his hands to grasp Azami’s almost lifeless fingers.

Azami waited to see if this would be his final moment as the flames overcame him for the last time. But there was a strange sense of peace and coolness as the flames from the man’s arms, the tattoos flowed over his own flesh and coiled around his wrists and forearms like the writhing bodies of coiling snakes.

“Get up.” a voice in the flames said commanded. “You have to rise and follow me out of here, I can’t carry you as I am. If you can’t walk, then crawl behind me and I will lead you out. But stay right behind me and don’t stray from my wake.”

Azami tried to heave himself up to his feet, but he couldn’t. So he did as the voice instructed. He crawled like a dying infant behind him as the swirling flame with the shape of a man strode through the blaze, now and then stretching out an arm and brushing the flames aside with his hand. Strangely, in the form’s wake, it was much cooler than it had been, and Azami could breathe a little better and his strength grew. Finally he was able to stand and the two made their way to the back stairs and out the small back door into the cool night air. Azami stumbled down the stairs and fell into the alley rolling and coughing. But as his head and vision cleared and he looked around, the man of flames was gone. But Azami knew what he had seen, just as he knew what he had seen that night in the hammam.

He looked down at his wrists and arms and gasped. Expecting to see horrible blistering burns and peeling flesh from the creature’s touch, instead he saw the twining flames coiled around his own wrists and flowing up his arms. Cool and quiet, the tattoos of flame were now his own, just like those on the arms of Nazer Silmi.

As his head cleared, he started to run to the front of the shop to see if the fire engineers had begin to contain the blaze. But a shadow emerged from the darkness and spoke.

“Ramsay Hamza is okay. He’s out in front with friends. He wasn’t here when the fire started. And they’re containing the blaze. Alhamdu’lillah, the damage is not as bad as it seemed from the amount of flame and smoke. You can repair, all is not lost.” Nazer Silmi said calmly, now once again appearing as an ordinary man no different from any other in form and nature.

“This? What in Allah’s name are you? Is this your doing? Azami growled coughing through his raw smoke ravaged throat.

“What I am, make no mistake, is indeed in Allah’s name. And this, is not my style.” Nazer Silmi said darkly, eyeing the scene and reading, what, Azami had no idea.

“Not your style?”

“No.”

“What exactly is, your style?”

“From the looks of your arms, I’d say you’ll find out soon enough.” Nazer Silmi said laughing.

“What the hell does this mean? I don’t understand.” Azami rubbed his arms and stared at the flame tattoos in disbelief, and then he slumped to the ground, overcome at last by smoke, and exhaustion, and a very bizarre strain on his human nerves.

“Good question my young friend.” Nazer Silmi said softly, hoisting Azami over his shoulder. “A very good question. We’ll have to just wait and see what that means, and then get to work.” He knew Azami could not hear him, that the boy had slid into a healing oblivion.

16

Nazer Silmi turned off the stove and poured the boiling water over the mixture of mint leaves and other ingredients he had found in the cupboard and set the sweet pungent smelling brew next to Azami who slumped in a chair in the kitchen of the mosque. His eyes were closed, but he was not asleep. Nazer Silmi set out the glasses and saucers and grabbed some cheese from the refrigerator and tore off a chunk of bread. Azami would need to eat when he woke up, which would be right about now. Then he snapped his fingers in front of Azami’s eyes and he bolted upright awake and looked around.

“Where, oh. Ramsay Hamza!” Azami leapt to his feet but Nazer gently shoved him back down and he succumbed and collapsed into the seat again.

“Your friend is okay, fine. He wasn’t there tonight, he was out for the evening with friends. They got there after the fire officers had things pretty well contained and then went downtown to file a report. If it was arson they will need to investigate, and if not they need a complete report for insurance in any case. There wasn’t a lot of damage.”

“How did I get here?” Azami asked groggily, but then rapidly regained full memory of all that had happened in the upstairs apartment of the bakery.

“I carried you here through the alley so no one would see us. I remember you talking about this mosque the other day in the cafe. It seemed the only place to bring you. Does your friend always leave the door unlocked?”

“No, not at all. He probably went down to investigate too when he heard the sirens. Did he go with them I wonder?” he rubbed his eyes and dragged his fingers through his hair and coughed again. “Thanks for the tea.”

“You won’t thank me for long. I put a few more spices in there, you’ll need to get rid of that smoke in your lungs. After the first glass you’ll puke your guts out. But you need to.” Nazer Simi said, filing his own glass from another pot.

“Great, look forward to it.” And then he coughed again and tossed off the contents of the glass and then bolted for the bathroom leaving Nazer Silmi to laugh and shake his head.

When he came back to the kitchen and sat down Nazer gave him a long look.

“So you’ve had quite a shock tonight, several of them. What you saw in the apartment, in the fire, what you saw in the hammam, you can’t ever speak of it, to anyone. No skin off my back if you do, but people will think you’re insane, or a fanatic, or both. You understand?”

“Yeah, I understand. And these?” Azami asked looking at his bared arms and the twining flame tattoos that had not been there an hour ago.

“Yeah, those.” Nazer Silmi stared at the boy’s arms lost in his own thoughts for a long infuriating moment. “Like I said in the alley, we’ll have to wait and see how this develops.”

“How this develops? This? What, is this?”

“Whatever is between us, why I’ve met you. I don’t know why yet. But you tell me something Azami. I know you’re mad right now, in shock about tonight and the fire and all, worried for your friend, but you don’t seem too surprised otherwise by what you have seen of me tonight. Why is that? Have you encountered another of my kind before someplace in your life maybe?” Nazer Silmi eyed Azami with a mix of curiosity and growing suspicion.

“Yeah, maybe I have.”

“When? Where? What was his name? Tell me! Or, perhaps, was it, her name?” Nazer Silmi raised an eyebrow and smiled at Azami questioningly.

“Him, it was him. And I do not know his name. I don’t think any of us ever knew his name.”

“Any of us? There were others, like you, sons of Adam who met his Jinn?”

“Yes. Selim, from the mosque here, Rafiq, the man whose shop is across from the bakery, my friend Suhayl, and two others. One now gone.”

“So many!” he hissed in surprise. “One gone you say? What do you mean, gone? Dead? One of the sons of Adam dead, as a result of this encounter? Tell me everything boy! Now.” Nazer Silmi was excited and delighted to hear the story of another of his kind who walked among humanity. And he also wanted to know if this jinn were friend, or foe.

“No, not dead. He disappeared. It was during that huge storm we had some months ago. We each encountered him that night, although Khosro and Tursun and Rafiq had encountered him before. In the morning, Tursun, Tursun Nourazar, he was gone. He had been taken by the Jinn, willingly, somewhere. But didn’t die.”

“Fabulous! Tell me everything, please, you must. Where did all this happen?”

“Right here, we were all gathered in the mosque the night of the storm.”

“What? Take me there, take me to the exact spot. I can learn much about him from his memory imprinted on the space there. Let’s go, now!”

Azami lead Nazer Silmi into the darkened mosque. Azami noticed the Jinn put his fingers to the floor before entering and then touch them to his lips as his mouth moved silently over the sacred words. Then he stood in the center of the room, his eyes closed, his body still.

“Can you feel him?” Azami whispered sharply.

“Shhh! His memory is here like a fragrance. Yes, he was very good. Of course he was, he wouldn’t have chosen a mosque for his dealings with the sons of Adam if he were himself the son of Shaytan.” Nazer Silmi stood smiling sadly as if recalling a memory from his own past. Azami was startled to see the single tear fall down the rugged craggy face. Then he opened his eyes and smiled and breathed deeply and then sat down and motioned Azami to join him.

“Nazer Silmi, you said he was very good. He is no more? And what of Tursun?”

That Jinn is no more. Alhamdu’lillah! He is with his Lord. Your friend Tursun, I just don’t know.”

“You seem so very different from him though. You seem, well, I can see you, talk to you, I joked with you in the café. I never dreamed you were, well, You!” Azami laughed in amazement.

”We’re of different kinds boy. With different tasks in the world. That Jinn and I, yes, very, very different. He wasn’t of this world, so he entered it only of necessity and with very great regret. I live in this world and was created in it and so I love it. So I seem more like a man. I live in an apartment like you, I work for my living like you sons of Adam.”

“But you were nothing at all like a man tonight in the apartment.” Azami said softly.

“No, nothing like a man. The similarities are really very few and superficial. And I’ve been here for a very long time, far, far longer than any man’s lifetime. I am a Watcher, Azami.” Nazer Silmi said slowly, his eyes glittering with pleasure as though he were making a very important and wonderful declaration.

“A Watcher?” Azami whispered smiling, his eyes narrowing in fascination.

Just then the door to the mosque burst open and a Selim and Ramsay Hamza came in, relieved to find him there.

“Alhamdu’lillah you are here!” both men yelled, then they saw Nazer Silmi.

“Brother, welcome, salaam aleikum.”

“Wa aleikum as salaam.” Nazer Silmi said solemnly, his hand placed over his heart.

“Azami, are you all right?” Selim asked sitting down beside the two. “Where were you? We thought you were inside, the officers said they saw you dart inside but then they couldn’t find you. Were you crazy?” Selim admonished him sharply, shaking his head in relief.

“I was afraid Ramsay Hamza was inside. I had to find him, I couldn’t just ---“

“No, of course not, understood.” Selim heaved a sigh of relief and then sunk into the cushions near the wall of the mosque.

“I thought you knew we were going to dinner with Hamid and Azadeh and Suhayl and then to their zikr?” Ramsay Hamza asked. “They all stayed overnight there and Selim and I were coming home in a taxi when the fire must have broken out. By the time we got here, they had it under control but we had to go down and make a statement anyway, we just got back. We feared, oh God, we prayed you were okay, that you had gotten out but, oh how we feared.” Ramsay Hamza was visibly shaken as was Selim.

“The thought of you in that fire, just the thought of it. What were you thinking? Those men, they are equipped to make rescues, but, we thought you knew.” Selim was horrified at the thought of losing Azami in a fire, and the horrible memory of rescuing him as a small child just six years old from a burning and smoke filled building was more than he could stand.

“But the bakery? What could have caused that fire? We are lost Ramsay! But we can rebuild, you’ll see.” Azami smiled weakly and Ramsay Hamza who nodded in agreement.

“Of course we will. There is damage, but not as much as there could have been, Alhamdu’lillah, shukran Allah. It’s very strange. But please, we are being rude to your friend. Brother, welcome, I am Ramsay Hamza, and this is Selim. He leads the prayer here.”

“Welcome, brother.” Selim said softly, taking in the measure of Nazer Silmi for the first time and noticing all that he had overlooked when they had first arrived and were so relieved to find Azami alive and unharmed.

“Thank you brothers, I am sorry to intrude in such a troubled time.” Nazer said warmly, locking Selim’s gaze firmly in his own and knowing he had been here on that night of the storm and had seen the Jinn and that this man Selim could probably see that Nazer Silmi was not the man he appeared to be, or any man at all for that matter.

“Azami, I’m sure Ramsay Hamza is exhausted. You two will be staying here for a while of course. Get him settled in your old room. Suhayl is going to be staying at Hamid’s khaniqah for a few days. You can bring the futon into my room and bunk with me. I’d like to talk to your friend Nazer Silmi for a bit.” Selim didn’t take his gaze from Nazer Silmi as the two explored each other with their eyes. “And when you get back, maybe the two of you can tell me about the tattoos you’re sporting that you didn’t have this morning at Fajr.” Selim whispered in Azami’s ear, pulling the boy close for a moment before he stood and went off to settle Ramsay Hamza in for a long sleepless night.


17

The three of them sat in a small circle almost knee to knee on the floor of the mosque. Selim had lit a couple of candles that cast a warm flickering glow over the scene where shadows danced upon the walls and in the windows like another sort of congregation, an ummah of light and darkness and unknown possibilities not usually drawn close to the world of men.


Selim found the silence unbearable as he watched the other two, one man, one Jinn, lost in their own thoughts.

“Okay, so what’s going on? And who are you?” Selim directed his question to Nazer Silmi, startled by the sound of his own voice as it barked the question and amazed that he felt so at ease in demanding answers from an otherworldly creature. But he certainly didn’t look otherworldly, not at all. The man, Jinn, sitting in front of him was unshaven and his longish curly black hair was sticking out of a fisherman’s cap that matched the rest of his attire. In fact, had Selim not gotten that odd feeling the fist minute he sets eyes on the man, he would have thought that’s just what he was and no more. Some guy from the docks, a fisherman or one of the bazzaris. He did have the smell of the sea about him though, like Zafer Yilmaz. But Selim had never seen this guy before, not in the bazaars anyway. Somewhere though. He had seen this man somewhere.

The Jinn cleared his throat. “My name is Nazer Silmi. It’s been Nazer Silmi for a very long time, but of course that’s not the name Allah gave me when He created me.”

“I see.” Selim said almost inaudibly. “Can you tell me what’s going on, what has happened to Azami?”

“I’m not exactly sure.”

“What do you mean, not exactly sure? Isn’t this your doing, this, these, markings, these tattoos on his arms?” Selim was feeling more uncomfortable by the moment in this strange encounter.

“Selim, he saved me from the fire. He carried me here.” Azami interjected hurriedly in Nazer Silmi’s defense.

“It’s all right Azami, your friend is worried and rightfully so. He should be wary, any son of Adam should be very wary in the presence of my kind. But I can’t answer his questions just yet.”

“Can’t answer them, or won’t?” Selim grew visibly angry with the creature’s vague replies. “How can you not know what’s going on?”

“I can’t answer because I just don’t know, not yet.” Nazer Silmi said flatly, examining Selim and taking the full measure of the man. He liked him already. The man was indeed cautious, very cautious, but not afraid to let his growing anger show, like a cat who let’s his claws be seen. He was neither intimidated nor frightened by the presence of Jinn. Yes, Nazer Silmi liked that. It either meant he was a fool, or he was a man prepared to embrace the unknown in whatever form it happened to appear. And Nazer Silmi could see that the man was no fool.

Selim glanced at Azami who sat quiet and sullen, locked in his own thoughts and just listening intently as the two others talked.

“The tattoos?” Selim repeated firmly, noticing that his fists were clenched on his knees. He opened his hands and relaxed them, not wanting to seem tense and off guard.

“The tattoos are my sigil, my name and the doorway through which I may enter my natural state of being through the element of Fire from which I am created.” Nazer Silmi began, his voice firm and commanding.

“Go on. What do they have to do with this boy and how’d they come to be etched on his body like that?”

“I touched him, in the fire in the bakery. He would have died if I didn’t get him out of there. I was at home, I had prayed Maghreb and was in, my contemplations, when I saw the boy in my mind, where he was, that he was in danger, and I was compelled to find him and bring him out of the flames to safety.”

“Compelled? Compelled by who, what?” Selim was ignited himself in an inexplicable way by this encounter, by the very presence of this Jinn.

“There is only One Compeller, son of Adam. Only One. I answered His call, as His slave must.”

“I see. Well, Alhamdu’lillah. Shukran Allah for your saving my friend.” Selim sighed, feeling that there was nothing to fear here and that the creature was truthful in what he said. “But what do the markings mean for Azami now? Is some, connection formed between the two of you? I’ve got to know what this all means. You can understand that.”

“Of course. And as I said, I really don’t know what it all means yet.”

“How can you not know? You’re, a Jinn, how can you not know what your nature and presence means in the life of a human being? You’re making no sense!” Selim was growing angry and frustrated, hoping the Jinn was not playing some game with them and fearful that he might not even be able to do anything about it if he was.

“I don’t know everything. Azami, go to sleep.” Nazer said gently and then placed his hands over Azami’s eyes. The boy slumped against Selim and the older man gently laid him down onto the carpets and looked at the Jinn in horror.

“He’s fine! It’s a natural sleep. Now listen to me, I told you I don’t know everything right now but I will, soon. This boy here was pointed out to me to take an interest in. Such an interest as always serves nothing but the will of Allah. You got that? So relax. I know it’s weird but just relax. I know you care for the boy. But he’s not a boy anymore Selim. Do you know that he’s in love?” The Jinn smiled and looked around the room, taking in every detail of the place.

“In love? With who? How do you know, has he told you and not me?” Selim asked angrily.

“No, he hasn’t told me. But I can see it on him. The sons of Adam, glow, when they are in love. I can see these things. And seeing the kind of creature Azami is, I believe this must be a very singular and elegant young female, in form and in soul.”

“Well, it is natural. I just hope he takes care and respects the order of things. I’ll talk to him.”

“It won’t matter what you say, he will do what all young men do, and young women too. These are strange times Selim, not even a Jinn can predict what will happen.”

“What do you know of love Jinn, who are you to offer advice?” Selim growled but instantly regretted it and just shrugged and held his silence.

“I was created in an act of love Selim, as were all creatures. But the act of love that created my kind, was a love that burned alone and unformed in the mind of Allah. I do not love the creatures of Allah, I love only Him as is my nature. But I have known the sons of Adam for a very long time and have heard their stories. And I’ve known women too Selim, daughters of Eve, beautiful women of flesh and blood. But never did I take more from them than I gave. And they always knew only joy.”

Selim blushed and turned away and then cleared his throat.

“And children, are there children created between the Jinn and the sons--between jinn and men and women?”

The Jinn laughed and shook his head. “Selim, there are so many silly old stories. But no, it’s not possible, there can be no material conjoining of the seed of Jinn and the seed of Man. But what of you Selim, what do you know of love, of women?” The Jinn asked suggestively with a warm complicitous smile.

“I love Allah.” Selim said solemnly.

“Yes, yes, I can see that Selim. The fitra in you glows hot and sweet like that of a small child. Your love for Allah is very new.”

“Sadly, yes.” Selim looked steadily at the Jinn but held his tongue.

“And before that Selim, before that? What of women, what of love?” the Jinn boomed loudly and gestured around the room as if the whole of the world were but one great harem of delight.

“Jinn, I have had a very dark and painful life. Of course I have known women, I have known love, but that was clearly not to be the destiny of my life, to dally in the happy precincts of human existence.”

“You sound like a bitter old man trying to sound wise. You cannot truly know the love of Allah without tasting everything in the world to compare it to.” The Jinn said softly, trying to get Selim’s gaze.

“I thought we were talking about Azami, when did this turn on me?” Selim growled.

“The moment you were born Selim, the moment you were born. But I’ve had my say, and I’m right. If you truly love Allah, He will show you all the ways of love, and then reveal Himself as the heart and soul of all love and then, if He wants you, He will take you for Himself, and you will know what all you have lost, and you won’t care Selim, you won’t care once you have truly tasted the source of love.” Nazer Silmi smiled and fell silent, nodding with a reassuring smile that Selim found very disconcerting.

“This is a good place.” The Jinn said suddenly, changing the subject and breaking the morose spell that had descended on Selim. Looking around the room again, nodding with satisfaction, he added slyly “I can see why he chose it.”

“Why who chose it?” Selim asked, trying to keep himself calm and waiting for the Jinn to reveal what he knew.

“The individual you encountered on the previous occasion. Azami told me about the Jinn you met in the storm. I can feel him here, feel his memory. He was very good Selim, you were honored to have met him.” Nazer Silmi smiled sadly and leaned back against the cushions.

“Yes, we were very honored. He was a completely different sort of creature than you ---“

“Very different indeed. I too am honored to have tasted his memory in this place.”

“Are you as good as he?” Selim asked carefully.

“Few are as good as he, if you mean good as pure and undefiled by the world of matter. I am good, good how you mean it. But I have lived long in the world with the sons of Adam and so I know more of their ways and am comfortable with them but yes, I am good, do not concern yourself with that. I am a slave of Allah and nothing more, and nothing less.” Nazer Silmi nodded and looked around the room again as though he were reading signs on the very currents of the air around them.

“I like you Son of Adam!” he announced suddenly with a wide.

“I like you Jinn. So where do we go from here?”

“Anywhere we like my friend, anywhere we like!” Nazer Silmi broke into a roar of joyous laugher such as Selim had never heard before. Then the Jinn slapped him on the back. “Be of good cheer Selim, be of good cheer.”

Selim flinched at the touch of the Jinn and the strange phrase, fearing he might disappear as had Tursun. But he remained himself, staring in disbelief as he saw the flames dancing wildly in Nazer Silmi’s eyes even though the candles had all blown out and the room was very, very dark. The Jinn looked at him and shook his head. “Ah, so much to learn, the Son of Adam has so much to learn! And I like this place too Selim. It’s, it’s a sanctuary, a jinn sanctuary. Alhamdulillah!”

Azami awoke to the sound of the two men laughing and wondered what all he had missed and why he had suddenly fallen into so deep a sleep.

18

Nurhan Şahin had been searching for her hairbrush for over an hour. Where could it have gotten off to? Where else would she have used it but in the bathroom or her bedroom? Oh yes. That girl was in the apartment yesterday and she had been fussing around with things, moving her belongings, tidying up she had said. But who was she, and how did she get in? Perhaps she had stolen the beautiful tortoise shell brush and comb that had belonged to her grandmother. That girl had even done the dishes. Well, that was kind of her. But why had she done these things, why did she come, and, who was she?

Then she remembered, yes! Rafiq had come yesterday and brought the girl with him to help organize things. Yes, of course. How silly not to remember that. Why hadn’t she remembered that? Rafiq had brought lunch and they had all eaten and talked together. Rafiq had said they were having a picnic and they had all laughed. That was fun! The girl was a college student who worked with that lovely American woman Rafiq had brought here some time ago. But why did the place need tidying up? She had always taken perfect care of her home. It was kind of insulting for someone to come in and suggest that her house was dirty. But Rafiq was not like that, he meant well, and she was glad the girl had done the dishes and brought the laundry to the cleaners. That delivery this morning, that big sack sitting unopened by the door, that must be the laundry. She had wondered about that boy too who had come and left that big sack. She was going to look into it later, see just what was inside. What had been that American woman’s name? A writer, or a professor, something like that. Mary? No, Michaela! Yes. She had been so very charming.

But now she was just so tired, and so cold. Rafiq had made a fire in the fireplace yesterday, saying it was too cold in here. How embarrassing for a friend to complain of the cold in such an apartment as this. He said he was going to fix things. But, what needed fixing? And why oh why was it so cold in here? Even the little red cat seemed to be cold. Where was he? His furry little body would warm her lap and hands at least.

“Tursun! Where is my little red Tursun? Where is my cat, where are you my bad cat?” she sighed and went to sit by the window. She pulled a blanket around her and looked out the window. Cold today, much colder than she had ever remembered feeling in her life. And she was sore, strange pains in her arms and legs. Perhaps the cold did these things when someone was as thin as she had become in recent months. She chuckled, recalling how hard it had always been for her to keep her figure. And now, now! The weight had fled from her body like snow melting in the sun.

Just then, the small red cat leapt into her lap and curled up and started to purr.

“Aha! My little Tursun, where did you come from?” she said smiling and stroking the soft fur. “Ah, if only it wasn’t so cold, and I wasn’t so tired and sore, I’d get right up and fix you a nice plate of cream.”

Nurhan Şahin sat quietly for a very long time, her hand resting on the sleeping form of the small red cat named Tursun. The day faded and the sun set and the last light in the room disappeared. And still she sat, until her hand fell away from her lap and her chin rested on her chest and the small red cat lay silent and still.

“Nurhan?” The voice whispered softly from the darkness not far from where she sat.

“Nurhan my darling, wake up now and look at me.” The voice was gentle and strained, and because it was so dark, she would not be able to see the tears that filled his eyes.

“What? Who’s there?” she said thickly, opening her eyes and stroking the little cat. “Oh, he’s so cold and still. I need to get a blanket for him.

“Nurhan, can you hear me? I am here.”

She looked into the darkness and saw her husband’s favorite carved chair. She rubbed her eyes and gasped. The man who sat in the chair was not her husband.

“Tursun Nourazar? Oh my goodness, how young and handsome you are! What a wonderful dream, or have I died?”

The figure seated in Mehmet’s chair was indeed Tursun Nourazar, as she had known him as a girl, and secretly loved him and his rival who became her husband. Tall, black turbaned and beautifully dressed after the Persian fashion of the late 1950s.

“Not a dream my darling, not a dream, and you are yet very much alive. But your time is drawing near, and this is why I am here, to beg you to come with me, to a new life.”

“A new life? Whatever can you mean Tursun? And I cannot believe I am talking to a dream, but oh! What a beautiful and beloved dream. I have heard that in death, a loved one appears in your dreams to guide you, and Tursun, I am so glad it is you!” she smiled and nodded, her eyes closing as if she slipped into a doze.

“No! Nurhan, come with me, I beg you. There is time, there is so much to know, so much I can show you, so much good in the world that we can still do, if you can trust me.” he pleaded, feeling her slip away and tortured that his visit might have been in vain.

“I cannot imagine what other world you could be talking about. I do not even know if there is anything waiting for me on the other side of this darkness. But if there is, I pray that it is my beloved husband Mehmet with Darius and Martha by his side, that we can all be together again. But oh my sweet dream, thank you, thank you for coming to me, even though I am still aware enough to know this could never be, I thank you just the same. And even though you are a dream, I can tell you now. Oh my darling Tursun, how I loved you all these years, the precious secret of my heart. And how I loved my Mehmet. I loved you both from the very beginning, both of you!” she said softly as he head came to rest on her shoulder and the tea cup she was holding in her lap all day fell to the floor.

“No! Nurhan, no, don’t go.” He cried weakly as he watched her spirit flee and the night grow colder. But Tursun Nourazar felt nothing but sorrow. He had retreated into his own thoughts, keeping watch over her tiny form as it cradled the still red body of the little cat she can come to love and that had carried his own spirit.

The door opened around 8:00pm that night and Rafiq entered with a load of wood.

“Nurhan, we have to get the place heated up. I called the oil company, everything is settled now, it’ll be warm and toasty in here by morning. Why are you sitting in the dark?” He asked cheerfully flipping on the small lamp beside her chair. When he saw her, Rafiq immediately dropped to his knees and looked into her face.

“Oh Nurhan, oh no, what happened here?” his voice was chocked with tears as he felt her cold form and the body of the little cat cold and stiff in her lap. “My God Nurhan, what happened? Why didn’t you call me?” He laid his head in her lap and stroked her thin cold arms and hated himself for not getting here in time.

“I was with her through the end. When she went, she was at peace, she was smiling, I think.” The voice said from the darkness.

Rafiq stiffened, an unearthly cold prickled and danced over his flesh as the impossibly familiar voice spoke again.

“I just came to give her a choice. But she chose death. My presence seemed to give her the strength to face that darkness, when I had hoped, I had hoped to bring her into a whole new life.” Tursun’s voice drifted as Rafiq stood up quickly and turned to face him.

“Sweet Allah!” Rafiq hissed through is teeth. “How are you here? Are you really here? What has happened?” Rafiq could barely form his words. Before him sat the form of Tursun Nourazar, the man who had walked out of the world through the touch of a jinn and had never been seen since. He had resumed the form of the wily old Tursun that Rafiq had known.

“Sit down Rafiq. I am here, but I can only stay for a short while and this form is painfully heavy on me now. Nurhan was known to me in my youth and I loved her with all my soul. I never married because of her, keeping her alone of all women in my heart.”

Rafiq breathed heavily, pulling his coat closer around him, seeing his breath cloud the air in front of him, and no such breath coloring the air in front of Tursun Nourazar’s face.

“Tursun, I, what has happened to you? You must tell me everything.” He said pulling a chair up to seat himself beside Nurhan’s seated body.

“Rafiq, I cannot tell you everything, that is not meant to be and there is no point. I know you and the others will have many questions. And I won’t be around, often, to answer them. But that doesn’t matter. You have to seek your own mysteries and bring them into the world. I cannot share mine with you just to satisfy curiosities.”

“Curiosities? No, knowledge, wisdom, ma’rifa.”

“That cannot come from me, you know where that comes from. Perhaps I can share something of what I have experienced, but it’s just not in the order of things for you to know all. Because my experience shapes me, relates to me alone. I have to go now. It’s too painful to see her like this, and you will soon join her if you do not get warm. Rafiq, goodbye. Perhaps soon I will come to you again. Goodbye.” And then he was gone, leaving Rafiq to stare at the empty carved chair.

19
It had been dark for some time by the time Rafiq put out the closed sign and dimmed the chandeliers in the shop. He had laid out a few more of the carpets over the floor which made it nice and thick for his slippered feet. This time of year the stone floor got so cold even winter shoes could not keep the toes from tingling and he wanted his customers to stay as long as they needed to in order to see everything that might catch their eye. And of course the tea kettle was always close to the boil.

After he dimmed the lights and lowered the security gate, he made a final glass of tea and sat in his chair and just surrendered to his thoughts. Nurhan’s death had really upset him. He had noticed small changes, but nothing that indicated she was sick. Had she really died from the cold, hypothermia? And the little cat too. God, it broke his heart. He’d never forgive himself, fearing that he could have done more. When he discovered her oil tank was empty, he had gone immediately to the company and paid for a delivery. They were going to deliver it that very night. She would have been warm by morning. Damn. Please Allah, take care of her.

And then the unbelievable appearance of Tursun in her apartment, claiming to have loved her for a lifetime. It was all just too fantastical, the continuing connection between all their lives. He couldn’t even make sense of it. And then Tursun was gone again without answering any of his questions. Who knew if he’d turn up again, or what it would mean if he did. He had made no promises. And he’d have to decide how and when to let the others know that he had seen Tursun. Of course those others would only be Azami and Selim. And of course Khosro. He had emailed Khosro the day after Nurhan’s death, the night he had seen Tursun in her apartment. He hadn’t heard anything back, but that wasn’t so strange as the older man traveled a lot. But in this day and age of laptops and iPhones? It was still strange that he hadn’t had a reply about something so unusual. If he didn’t hear something by tomorrow night, he was planning on dropping by Hamid’s for dinner and hedge around to see if Azadeh had any news from her brother. iPhone or not, Tehran was a long way and many troubled bridges distant from them in the relatively calm environs of Istanbul.

Rafiq roused himself to the sound of someone banging on the security grate. Whoever it was must have glimpsed him through the bars and known he was inside. So he went to the small side door and opened it to see Azami breathing hard in the lightly falling snow, his face strained and agitated and his eyes boring into Rafiq’s own as if looking for answers only he could provide. Rafiq didn’t think this was a casual drop-by and braced himself for more of whatever was gathering again in his life like a strange dream that’s only half familiar, and that’s the weird half.

Rafiq ushered Azami inside, got his coat hung up and his feet drying by the fire he had stoked back to life and placed a cup of hot tea in his hands. The boy’s face was brooding as he started into the flames with an almost crazed look on his face, so Rafiq decided to open the bidding gingerly.

“So, how’s school going?”

“Huh, oh, great, fine. Really well. We’re already into midterms.” He muttered trying to break off whatever thoughts had claimed him.

“Great, I guess that’s why I haven’t seen much of Michaela. This time of year has to be like a marathon. And the bakery, what a nightmare. Have you assessed the damage, got insurance forms and process going?”

“Yeah, Ramsay is dealing with all that. When it’s time to start the repair work we’ll be really busy and beating the calendar. You know, I can see myself in that bakery for a while, maybe a long while.” He said sipping the tea and rubbing his feet in front of the fire.

“Glad to hear it. And you know Selim and I, and Michaela and Samir will be there on the crew, and a lot more from this neighborhood too, you can count on it. Any new friends at school?”

“Thanks Rafiq, it means a lot, and we’ll need you too. Yeah, some new friends at school, and maybe even an enemy or two.” He snorted recalling his encounter with Abdul Hasib on the street a few days before the fire and a whole lifetime ago.

“Well that’s to be expected. Nothing serious hopefully.”

“No, just a misguided soul, one that will hopefully wake up and grow out of it. Nothing spectacular though.”

“So, Azami, I doubt you came out on an evening like this just to subject yourself to my stunning twenty questions about school. So what’s up? Is something else wrong? Something besides the fire and all the upheaval around that? As if that’s not enough. But is something else going on?” Rafiq poured himself a second glass of tea and put out some dates and pastries. He could sense a long disclosure looming and this might be all either of them saw of dinner, unless he could persuade Azami to continue this at Hamid’s restaurant across from the mosque at the end of the street.

“Yeah, Rafiq, when you met the jinn for the first time, what was it like, I mean, how did you feel, physically I mean?”

Oh, well, it was strange, hard to describe, no doubt about that. There was this faint tingly sort of feeling, not unpleasant, but kind of disorienting, like a slipping of, something, not sure, but a strange sensation like absolutely nothing else in this world I have ever felt. And you? What did you feel that night in the mosque, that night of the storm?”

“The same thing I guess. But it wasn’t really that strong. I mean the storm really freaked me out, I had just come from a really bad scene with Suhayl down by the docks and I was really worried about him. Then everything that happened, everything was crazy and I was just trying to hang on. It was just, all really intense, and the jinn was a big part of it to be sure, but it’s hard to say exactly what specifically was from him, it, whatever. I was psyched too at the prospect of change in my life, and I knew it was coming. Things between me and Selim had changed radically. It was all overwhelming. Anyway, I was just curious how it was, on its own. You and the jinn.”

“Well, I only saw him twice, the first time in my shop and then that night. Not like we were paling around. I think Tursun and Khosro only saw him twice too, when they were boys and then again that last night. Although he had guided them quietly, in other ways. I am not even sure how. But I had some strange little warnings, hints really that we was around, but no sight of him until he appeared here in this shop and revealed himself to me.”

“Hints? Like what?” Azami leaned forward and rested his jaw in his hand. Clearly the young man was heading somewhere and not just catching up on old news and past events. He considered telling him about Tursun, but, what would he say? He showed up, didn’t say much and poof, he was gone? No, better wait to see if anything else came of that strange sad visitation in Nurhan’s apartment.

“Yeah, hints. Odd little occurrences in the shop. Things moving that shouldn’t, a fabulous coin that turned up in my shoe one morning when it hadn’t been there a moment before. A coin that belonged in a museum, not this shop, a coin I had never laid eyes on before. Things like that. And, a strange little tingle that said, this is weird, not dangerous but, weird. And the tinkling of bells, like somebody’s wind chimes got hit with a light breeze.”

“Yes! I remember that too. That night. I found it calming, even though I wasn’t even really sure I had heard it over the storm. But yes. I remember that.” Azami was now smiling and Rafiq could see that he was calmer now.

“But why do you ask? Has something happened? You haven’t, met someone have you?” Rafiq asked looking more closely at the boy and starting to get that prickly feeling of his own as he sat there in the light of the fire on his hearth.

“Look at this.” Azami said rolling up his sleeves to the elbow and revealing the intricate tendrils of flame encircling his wrists and arms. Then he knelt on the hearth and brought his arms close to the flame. “What do you make of this?”

Rafiq came and knelt by his side and peered into the crackling glow and his eyes widened and his jaw dropped as he saw the flames on Azami’s arms burst into liquid movement as his skin neared the hearth, twining and flowing over his skin like molten gold and crimson.

“Yeah, I think it’s safe to say, I’ve met someone.”

20
Samir Butalib was waiting outside of Rafiq’s shop the morning after Azami’s strange visit. It was snowing, and he dug his hands deeper into his pockets and tried to disappear inside his coat, but to no avail. It was cold and getting colder and the snow was driving visibility into extinction. Rafiq was right up to him before he even saw him.

“Samir! What the devil are you doing out in this? Salaam aleikum. Get inside!” Rafiq said scrambling with his keys to get the security gate open and then the front door wide enough for the two of them to slip inside without ushering in a gust of icy snow.

“Wa salaam Rafiq. It’s wild out there! I only came from the end of the block and it feels like I came ten miles. Can I get the tea started while you make a fire?”

“Please, yeah. I need to get some wood from the basement. There are some things in the refrigerator there too, get those out if you would and let them warm up a bit.”

“Will do.” Samir hung up his coat and started the tea and set out some plates and glasses and the bag of bread and cheese he had retrieved from the small refrigerator, then he settled down in one of the large kilim covered chairs and waited for his friend to return.

Samir was tall and gangly and had the appearance of a big good natured kid. A good natured kid in his forties whose most prominent feature was his beaklike nose and the thick dark brown hair he kept in a pony tail brushed back from the nape of his neck. Half Moroccan and half English he had inherited his father’s olive skin and dark hair and his mother’s green eyes. But the height, that was all his own and a mystery as both his parents were shorter than he and his English mother was downright tiny. He rubbed his hands to warm them over his wide wale corduroy pants and fingered the coarse woolen djelleba he had cut just above the knees to wear on cold days. That’s me, he mused, funky fusion mix.

His mind wandered to his parents as it often did these days. They had had a very rough few years of an ugly separation and bitter divorce, descent into alcoholism for the both of them and God only knows what for his playboy father before a crisis and his mother’s attempted suicide brought the two idiots back to their senses. They were still on a long road back to the land of a happy marriage, but things were heading nicely in that direction and both of them were relieved to be trying to work things out. They had even gone on a second honeymoon back to some of the places they had visited on their first honeymoon so many years ago. Jordan, that’s where the most recent postcard had originated, his Nana’s in Fez and Egypt before that. They were stopping back here in Istanbul for a couple of weeks before heading back home to his father’s place in Venice to make arrangements for his mother’s belongings to be shipped there.

Samir breathed a sigh of relief. Who would have thought six months ago, before that night of the big storm and all that chaos that here, today, his parents would be on their second honeymoon. Alhamdu’lillah, praise be to God that he had given them another chance. He shook his head, worrying now about Michaela, his wife. Who knew six months ago that it would be her that he was worried about?

“Here we go, sorry that took so long. All I had down there was kindling and logs. I had to chop a few. This won’t take long to get started. But tell me, what brings you out on a day like this? You can’t be in desperate need of a carpet or a book by a guy who’s been dead for centuries.” They both laughed as Rafiq poured the water into the pot and brought it close and then sat down next to his friend.

“No, I just needed to get out, walk, even on a day like this. And I needed to get something off my chest. Maybe it’s nothing, but it’s kind of worrying me.” Samir was obviously down. Rafiq had only known him and Michaela for six months and he knew considerably less of Samir than of his wife. But the other man was always so friendly and happy, this turn seemed startling and Rafiq worried that something might be wrong with the family.

“How are your parents? Is everything still okay with them?” Rafiq asked tentatively.

“Oh yeah, they’re great it seems. If they are as happy and into each other now as they seem, they’ve got smooth sailing and I can finally relax and get back to not worrying about them and start worrying about my own wife.”

“Oh no. What’s wrong Samir? Michaela isn’t sick is she?” Rafiq was alarmed to hear that something might be amiss with his new friend. She hadn’t been around as much but he assumed that was because midterms had come and that she would resurface when things lightened up.

“No, not sick, no. Nothing like that. Thank God. And it may be nothing, like I said. But, and I guess the reason I wanted to talk to you about this is because you’re of mixed ancestry, and maybe I am looking at it this way because I am too. Or maybe it’s nothing. I don’t know.” Samir tossed off his glass of scalding tea and gestured for a refill.

“Well, what is it, what’s going on?” Rafiq refilled his friend’s glass and looked squarely at him and organized his words carefully.

“Samir, I’m trying to understand. Maybe you could tell me a bit more. You and Michaela, forgive me for prying, but I just need to know what you are talking about so I can help, or at least listen intelligently. But, you and your wife are, happy?” he asked gingerly as the other man smiled and looked up.

“I adore my wife Rafiq, my family is my whole world. And I think she’s pretty happy to. It’s nothing like that.”

“Thank God then! But what, what is it man?” Rafiq was getting frustrated, but he knew this must be very hard for Samir to talk about or the usually bubbling enthusiasm would have had the story out immediately.

“Rafiq, I am worried that Michaela is getting too wrapped up in her work, that it could, well, that it could become dangerous, and I don’t think she gets that, or recognizes it. Or worse yet, that she doesn’t care, or even somehow finds it exciting.” He said wistfully, his voice falling to little more than a whisper.

“What do you mean dangerous? Michaela seems always to have been deeply engaged and focused on her work, her career. Her classes, her writing, all of it, it’s who she is and why she’s so good at it.”

“I know that Rafiq. But she is spending more and more time, getting more deeply engaged in aspects of these studies and what’s going on that, it’s almost like she is pulling away. It’s weird. Not pulling away from me, or from our son, but pulling away from everything that doesn’t have directly to do with these growing political tides in the Muslim world. When we came here last year, it wasn’t that I thought we were moving to some idyllic Muslim enclave ala Andalusia where everybody wandered around the gardens and discussed Ibn Arabi. We’re big kids, we knew the score. But there was always a buffer it seemed. Academic writing, critique, sitting on the top floor of our flat looking out on the world and writing articles, dissecting the past and present of these global conflicts.”

“Yeah. But? “

“Yeah, but, ever since she started at the university here and began working with the students, she’s been set on fire with all this, and become so much more closely involved with what I can only call on the ground with these matters and no longer just in the library.”

“But that’s good Samir, a natural progression. Your wife is a superb scholar and an engaged woman. Is it a surprise she would connect so closely with her students and embrace new levels of the work?” Rafiq still wasn’t seeing what Samir was getting at.

“Yeah, I know how it sounds. And that’s why I came and wanted to run all this past you Rafiq, get a reality check. Maybe I am just getting jealous that my wife is spending more time, more excited happy time with her students and less engaged at home. But that’s not just it either. There’s more, a lot more. Two of her students, former students who dropped her class earlier this semester have turned up on a nasty little website promoting violent jihad and enforced hijab for all females in the country. They call themselves Abdul Hasîb and Abdul Khâfid.”

“Nice. The Reckoner and the Abaser. Why don’t they leave those names to Allah, only He knows what to do with them.”

“Yeah, and there’s even more. Their website has blacklisted a number of faculty from some of the universities who they claim are western spies for the kafiroon. And Michaela is on that list.”

“Ho boy.” Rafiq’s heart sunk. They all knew the score, but they all hoped that their intentions would speak for themselves and when the heart was in the right place, the world would support them. But sadly, it wasn’t always so.

”Yeah, ho boy. And that’s what scares me. What’s weird is, she seems increasingly energized by this, like it was some sort of game, some virtual reality game they’re all playing. The heroes and the bad guys. I know she takes it seriously, don’t get me wrong. There’s another student of hers, a girl. I haven’t met her. But she is very active politically on the blogs and Twitter, Facebook, all that stuff. And she has caught these guys’ attention too. And she’s just like Michaela. She knows if this is a game, it’s a deadly one, but she is defiant and unapologetic about her resistance to these extremist ideas and she doesn’t hide who she is. That’s the scary part for the girl. A lot of these people like her, most of them, the smart ones, use fake names and screen handles. But not Ceyda, she’s right there out in the open. Ceyda Edrissi, that’s her name and she signs every word, dots every ‘I” and crosses every “T” with her full name. And they know where she is. These two students on the website, they know her, what she looks like, where she lives. That’s a moving target as far as I’m concerned. And my wife is working closer and closer with this girl and meeting more of her friends.”

“I see the problem. But on the other hand, how brave and admirable of this girl. To stand up unafraid and say “No” to these people. When you act scared and hide, you send the message that you’re not really sure of where you stand.”

“Oh Rafiq, I know. This is why I am so chewed up over it. On the one hand, I am proud of Michaela and her work, so proud. Hell yes, I think it’s cool too. When we were dating in college, this was the kind of thing we were all up to, and one of the things that caught my eye about this Michaela in the first place. But now ---“

“Now Samir?” Rafiq asked softly.

“Now, she is the mother of my son, and the woman I want, need, to spend the rest of my life with.” He added softly.

“Yes. That seems to be written, if I am not mistaken. Samir, I will talk to her, get a closer read on all this, make sure she knows what she is doing and what all the risks are. I am sure she knows very well what they are. But involvement in this kind of thing requires a cool head and an eye for complex strategy. And the most dangerous and fatal flaw in a person who engages with warfare of any kind, is that they take too much pleasure in it, that they are blinded and take the wrong chances and make mistakes. What else do you know about the girl?”

“Exactly. Not much really. Her father is some sort of Sufi shaykh, but from what Michaela tells me, he is neither involved nor interested in any of the political stuff, beyond making sure his own friends and family are safe. She’s acting on her own it seems. And maybe this father ought to know what is daughter’s up to and what the dangers are. But how could he not? But Rafiq, if you could talk to her, sort this out, you have no idea how grateful I’d be.” Samir said rising and putting his coat on.

“Samir, not a problem. I’m on it and no thanks are necessary. Thank you for telling me all this. I have wondered why I haven’t seen as much of her lately.”

“And this is why Rafiq!”

“Yes, I can see that now. And believe me, the safety and happiness of this woman is very important to me too.” Rafiq assured him as he walked him to the door and braced it open slightly so his friend could leave.

“I know that Rafiq, that’s why I came to you, on a day like this. We have to keep our Michaela safe.” He added with a sad smile.

“And we will, you have my promise.” Rafiq assured his friend as he turned and hunched into the driving wind and snow and walked slowly back towards his apartment.