A Creature of Smokeless Flame

by Margaret Ball

  “We’re still working it out. But do you really think we’re going to abandon those children?”

  Victor heaved a weary sigh. “No. I get that. I just – wish you’d left me out of it.”

  “You’ve been a tremendous help already,” I said, and he winced. Oops – praise wasn’t going to work in this situation, was it? Once again, I wished we had developed a practical algorithm for telepathy. I would have loved to reach into Victor’s brain and extract everything he knew about Jeshi-la-Rashiduni.

  Oops again. Maybe it was just as well we didn’t have those powers. I was starting to sound like Steve Harrison, wasn’t I?

  I still wanted to see this rumored video, but that could wait. There was bound to be a wi-fi hot spot in town where I could take out my phone and do a search. For now, I needed to concentrate on, well, finding out everything Victor knew about the Rashiduni.

  Politely. Gently. Without force or telepathy – neither of which were available to me anyway. Wasn’t that great? Society was still safe from me.

  And the Jeshi-la-Rashiduni were safe from Victor, who claimed to know nothing but the most common gossip. They were a new group, supposedly Mombasa-based, but they had consolidated power on some of the offshore islands as well. And he knew absolutely nothing about any children being taken by the group.

  He said this so firmly that I couldn’t help but suspect he’d heard something even before I mentioned the kidnapping. But I didn’t know what, much less how to get it out of him. Lensky was the professional; we could have used his interrogation skills here. But Victor had shut himself up in the front bedroom “to transcribe informant interviews” long before Brad returned to the apartment.

  Brad’s arrival did eventually tempt Victor out of his room, but by that time we had other things to talk about. Victor hovered, as curious as I was about what the CIA guys had learned today.

  “Tell me about the video,” I asked. “Was it a ransom demand?”

  Lensky sighed dramatically, the way he usually did when he wanted me to feel like an unnecessarily troublesome female. “It was not a ransom demand, but it did suggest that the Rashiduni have Sam Harrison and the other two children. It was nothing but threats. The best that we wazungu could hope for was never to see the children again. If we left East Africa immediately, we could enjoy that outcome. If not… we might see their bodies.”

  I swallowed, hard. How did you deal with people who used the bodies of innocent children as weapons of war?

  “So… are we leaving?”

  “Thalia, we can’t comply with their demands. Even if it weren’t against all American policy… who exactly did they mean, when they said the wazungu must leave? You and me and Ben? Finch and Taylor? Every foreigner in Mombasa?” He shook his head. “If the three of us leave, we lose our best chance of finding those kids, and yet they’ll still be able to claim their demands haven’t been met. Where’s Ben?”

  “Taking a nap, why?” There wasn’t much else to do during the hottest part of the day here. Ben and I had both been too curious about that video to take off for the beach again.

  “I want him to come back to the office with me to analyze the video. Maybe he can think of some way that your special skills can help us identify the speaker and location.”

  “Good idea, I’ll come too.”

  “You will not.”

  “Brad, what did you bring me for, if you weren’t going to let me do anything to help?”

  “What, specifically, are you offering to do?”

  “Well, I can think about topological applications as well as Ben.”

  “I don’t need the two of you on the same task.”

  “What, you have something else for me to do?”

  Victor intervened at that point. “If you like, Thalia, I could introduce you to Mama Aesha’s household this evening. She and her family have been some of my most helpful informants. You might learn something from listening to them, if only understanding the culture better. You’ll have to leave that snake thing here, though,” he cautioned. “They’re sure to think it’s a djinn.” I’m not sure what Victor himself thought Mr. M. was; we hadn’t exactly explained much. He mostly coped by looking away and pretending he hadn’t noticed the silver talking snake with the turtle head.

  Lensky brightened. “The very thing! It would be extremely helpful, Thalia, if you could start making contacts in the local community. Just as you did in Mogadishu. We’d never have got this far if you hadn’t befriended Fatima.”

  “Fadiya.”

  “Whoever.”

  He went on lavishing praise on me for that bit of luck until even the vainest of women would have had to realize he was overdoing it madly. Easy enough to read between these lines. Brad was the founder and president of the “Keep Thalia out of trouble” club, and Victor and Ben had signed on as charter members.

  I couldn’t force him to let me in on the CIA’s plans, though. So I pretended to swallow all the overblown compliments at face value and played like I was perfectly happy to spend an evening getting to know Victor’s informants while Brad and Ben went off to do the heavy lifting. I’d just have to find some way to insert myself back into the loop tomorrow.

  Besides, I wanted to ask Mr. M. something, preferably out of Lensky’s hearing. I’d been thinking over Fadiya’s story and thought I’d finally recognized the most important thing she’d told us.

  Twice.

  In the back bedroom, while I was supposed to be getting myself up in the bui-bui for a visit in Old Town, I asked Mr. M. about his translations.

  “You told me that Fadiya referred to ‘that fiend’ Omar married. What was the actual word she used?”

  “Jini, of course.”

  “She wasn’t just being rude about her husband’s second wife?”

  “No. It was an entirely accurate description.”

  “Omar the Zanzibari married a djinn? Can people do that?”

  “Even though they were created of smokeless fire rather than of earth, the Djnoun are also creatures of Allah,” Mr. M. reminded me. “They can have faith or reject it, follow the Prophet or not, as their free will dictates. Certainly they marry among themselves, and I know of no reason why one could not wed a human being.”

  “And – was that the djinn who visited us last night? Omar’s second wife?”

  “Occam’s razor would suggest an affirmative answer.”

  Mr. M’s description of the djnoun suggested another question. “Do they have names? I mean, does this one have a name?”

  Mr. M. considered the question. “Not exactly. She is a sila, a rare type of djinn who specializes in the seduction of humans, and she thinks of herself simply as TheSila.”

  “The sila,” I repeated.

  “No. TheSila. Capital letters, no spaces.”

  “And you know her preferred punctuation how?”

  Mr. M. sniffed. “It is obvious to the meanest intelligence.”

  Victor banged on the door and asked just how long it was going to take me to put on the bui-bui.

  10. A friend and a djinn

  Since Victor hadn’t been trained in counter-surveillance, I expected that our walk to his informant’s house would be straightforward and that I’d have no trouble finding my way back to the apartment.

  Anybody who’s familiar with Mombasa’s Old Town – you can stop laughing now, okay?

  Part of the problem was that the bui-bui interfered with rubbernecking. As Victor led me down one twisting alley after another, I tried to take in all the exotic details illuminated by the fading sunlight. There was plenty to look at: the windows covered with ornamental iron grilles like the one in our bedroom, the whitewashed arches opening onto private gardens, the second-story balconies built out over the street, the shops advertising everything from authentic tribal drums to African costumes. I quickly learned that Fadiya’s lesson in how to wear the bui-bui had not covered such fine points as how not to trip over the hem while gawking at the carved balcony overhead or how not to
drop the veil while raising my skirts above the unidentifiable glop in the gutter at my feet. Victor wouldn’t even let me window-shop; he took a firm hold of my elbow through the bui-bui and yanked me away from the infinitely promising Mvita Boutique.

  “Only tourists shop there,” he told me.

  “I am a tourist.”

  “Fine, you can go back there when you’re dressed like a tourist. Right now, you’re impersonating a modest Swahili girl. Do you want to ruin my standing with Mama Aesha?”

  I gazed wistfully at three women on the other side of the narrow street. Their bui-buis floated freely from the face ties and the skirts were tucked into their belts, displaying their colorful dresses and giving them plenty of freedom to laugh, gesture, and call greetings up to their friends on the balconies.

  It did just flit across my mind that I was not personally invested in Victor’s good standing with this Aesha woman. But I refrained from picking a fight with him in the street. As he’d said, I could always come back later without the bui-bui.

  If I could find the place again. Just as it began to sink in how far from the apartment we’d come and how short on street signs this place was, Victor halted in front of one of those white arches in the wall. It was partially closed off by a huge wooden door standing slightly ajar.

  With spikes on.

  No, really. Most of the doors along this street were ornamented with patterns of nasty-looking spikes protruding anywhere from three to nine inches out into the street, and this was one of the most impressive doors we’d come across.

  “Hodi,” he called through the opening. “Mama Aesha?”

  “Vikitori! Karibu, mwanangu mzungu!” An enormous woman draped in black pushed the door out of the way and surged forward, all but enveloping Victor in a motherly embrace. I was impressed. My own mother does quite a majestic surge-and-billow move, but Mama Aesha must have been three times her size. Now there was a bui-bui that could have accommodated even Brad’s shoulders; clearly Victor had been wrong when he told us they were all the same size.

  Like the cheerful women I’d seen on the street, Mama Aesha wore her bui-bui so open that it was only a token cover-up. Underneath it she was wearing a few miles of bright yellow cotton fabric printed with large blue and purple flowers. As Victor struggled out of her embrace, he waved one hand towards me and said something that I assumed was an introduction. Mama Aesha grabbed me with one plump hand and urged me forward into the courtyard. I stepped on my hem and would have gone flat on my face if Victor hadn’t caught me; Mama Aesha had taken the hand I was using to keep my skirts out of the street.

  More rapid-fire Swahili followed, seasoned with plenty of laughter, as the other women sitting in the courtyard took in my appearance. A couple of the younger women made a sort of half-hearted gesture towards twitching their veils in front of their faces as Victor came in; the old ladies didn’t even bother with that much.

  “Don’t worry,” Victor murmured. “They think you’re cute.”

  Many people who didn’t know me suffered from the same misapprehension.

  “And you made a big hit by wearing the bui-bui,” he went on. “Shows you respect their customs.”

  I really wished I’d ignored Victor’s advice and tucked Mr. M. under the bui-bui. How was I going to find out anything useful when I couldn’t understand a word they said?

  This melancholy reflection was interrupted by a round of “Hujambo” and “Sijambo” with the women sitting around the courtyard. Okay, so I could understand two words. That didn’t get me much farther.

  It did get me some smiles of approval, though. Using the correct coastal forms for greetings, rather than the simplified up-country version, might even have bought me more points than the bui-bui. Too bad that was all the Swahili I knew.

  Victor’s promise to translate for me was worth almost as much as my promise to Lensky that I’d stay out of the CIA’s investigation until called for. He did try at the beginning, but there were too many women and children giggling and talking and expecting him to respond. Then an older man wearing a white coat and an embroidered fez-type hat came outside and said something to him, gesturing towards the shadowy interior of the house.

  “I’m invited to have coffee with Sheikh Abdallah and the other men before dinner,” Victor said. “You’ll be all right here. The women will probably talk more freely without a man’s presence anyway.”

  And a lot of good that was going to do me.

  I’d thought the ladies in Mama Aesha’s extended family looked pretty comfortable already, but on Victor’s departure they relaxed visibly and the younger women let their veils float free again. There was an extremely old lady squatting on the ground, beneath a huge tree that shaded the whole courtyard. She picked up a flat basket piled with rice and began shaking it, just as Fadiya had done in Mogadishu. Two of the children started peeling some kind of bright fruit, and the woman beside Mama Aesha knelt on the ground to chop up something on a broad, scarred wooden board. Another old lady hobbled up to hand me two coconut halves and an iron thing about thirty inches tall. It had a crossbar at the bottom and something that looked like the silhouette of a pineapple or an outsize grenade at the top. That top bit had ugly-looking sharp edges. I thanked her and looked blankly at the coconut halves. The iron thing was a total mystery to me. I knew what the coconut halves were, but what was I supposed to do with them?

  There followed a lively session of laughter – lots of laughter – and demonstrations from Old Lady Two, one of the young women, and a girl who couldn’t have been more than seven. Evidently you were supposed to put your feet on the crossbar, clamp your knees around the upright, drop half a coconut over the sharp-edged bit at the top, and move the coconut around over the sharp edges to cut off the meat. Which, when anybody else demonstrated the thing, dropped compliantly into the shallow dish at their feet. When I tried it, I got a few mini-shreds of coconut, most of which flew off to mix with the dirt of the courtyard.

  They assured me with gestures that I’d get the hang of it if I kept practicing – and apparently they intended to keep me at it until I got it right. I’d had a softball coach like that once. In fourth grade, where softball was not optional. She gave up on me after three weeks of extra practices.

  The young woman who’d given the best demonstration dropped down on the bench beside me. “Don’t let them bother you,” she said. “They actually love it that you’re willing to try.”

  I wouldn’t have described myself as “willing” so much as “bullied into complaisance,” but by now I was only too happy to get any positive feedback, however undeserved.

  “You speak English!” I said. Being, you know, a highly trained observer and almost an official CIA operative, I pick up on these little details.

  “I went to college in America for two years,” the girl said. She started to offer me her hand, then realized that both my hands were fully occupied with fighting the coconut half. “My name is Zawadi. Mama Aesha is my great-grandmother.”

  I blinked in surprise. Sea air must be extremely good for the complexion, if the vital woman who’d hugged Victor was a great-grandmother. Then, remembering Fadiya, I reminded myself that they started early here.

  “My name is Thalia,” I started, and then remembered that didn’t work in Swahili. “Except most people here call me Saliya.” I wanted to ask Zawadi a lot of things, but most of them seemed too rude to blurt out on first acquaintance. Things like, “Why on earth did you come back from America?” and “You’re not going to marry someone here, are you? Because based on Fadiya’s experience, I don’t recommend it.”

  For all I knew, she could be a married mother of three already. I settled for an anodyne, “It’s nice to meet someone who speaks English. After Victor went inside I was afraid I wouldn’t understand anything anybody said.”

  “Ah, Vikitori.” Even Zawadi, who was quite well able to handle the consonant clusters in words like ‘great-grandmother,’ took a firm line with proper names and forced th
em into a Swahili format. “Yes, he speaks quite good Swahili… for an mzungu. He is your husband?”

  “Good Lord, no!” I sawed at the coconut half for a moment, trying to think of a culture-appropriate way to describe our relationship. “Paid agent,” probably wasn’t a concept that had a large following in these parts. “He is, ah, a friend of my husband’s,” I managed eventually. “My husband had to work tonight, so he asked Victor to introduce me to some of his Swahili friends.” I hoped that sounded adequately respectable.

  “Ah, you are married! Lucky you!” exclaimed Zawadi, following that up with, “Married women have so much more freedom.”

  “Not always.” I thought of a way to edge round to the topic I most wanted to discuss. “I knew a girl in Mogadishu, her husband married her here and made her move to Somalia with him and then he went back to Zanzibar and married again and then he divorced her and abandoned her in Mogadishu.”

  “You must not judge all Swahili by one bad man,” Zawadi said.

  “I suppose you’re right. I’d like to find her husband, though, maybe try and shame him into at least paying her way home. She said he’d settled in Mombasa with his new wife. Do any of your family happen to know him, I wonder? Omar al-Zanji?”

  Zawadi’s whole body tensed, and Mama Aesha spoke to her sharply. She lowered her head and answered humbly, fingers spread in a deprecating gesture. I thought I heard “Omar” and “Unguja,” in her brief answer.

  “Unguja” was the Swahili name for Zanzibar, I knew that much.

  Mama Aesha’s long reply ended with her slicing one hand downwards in an emphatic “cut it out” gesture.

  Before she got to that, though, she made copious use of another word that I happened to know.

  Jini.

  11. The Army of Peace

  Lensky and Ben still weren’t back by the time Victor and I returned from a late dinner at Mama Aesha’s compound. We didn’t compare notes until the next morning, over coffee and some kind of pastries from the store downstairs.