The Haunting of Tram Car 015

by P. Djèlí Clark

  “ . . . and given the aforementioned charges,” Onsi continued, “you are hereby instructed to vacate these premises and return to your place of origin, or, barring that, to accompany us to the Ministry for further questioning.” Finishing, he turned with a satisfied nod.

  Rookies, Hamed grumbled quietly. Before he could respond, a low moaning sounded in the car. There was little doubt where it came from, as the gray smoke had stopped its slithering and gone still.

  “I think it understood me!” Onsi said eagerly.

  Yes, Hamed thought dryly. And you probably bored it to death. If it was already dead, you might have just bored it back to death.

  He was about say as much when there was a sudden terrible screeching.

  Hamed moved to cover his ears at the sound, but was sent stumbling back as a jolt went through the tram. He might have fallen flat had he not reached out for one of the stanchions—catching the vertical pole by a hand. He looked up to see the gray smoke swirling furiously like an angry cloud, screaming as it swelled and grew. The lamps that lined the walls flickered rapidly and the tram began to tremble.

  “Oh!” Onsi cried, trying to keep his footing. “Oh my!”

  “Out! Out!” Hamed was yelling, already heading for the door. At one point, he slipped to a knee as the car shuddered hard and had to pick himself up—grabbing Onsi by the coat and pulling him along. When they reached the stairs something heavy pushed at them from behind, and they went tumbling down in tangle of flailing arms and legs until they were deposited unceremoniously onto the platform. From outside they could still hear the screeching as the hanging craft bucked and jumped. With a fury, the door slammed shut and all was quiet and still at once.

  “I think,” Hamed heard Onsi put in from where they lay in a heap, “we may confirm that Tram 015 is indeed haunted.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Late the next morning, Hamed found himself back with Onsi in the office of the Superintendent of Tram Safety & Maintenance at Ramses Station. Like before, the small space was hot, cramped, and filled with the constant resonance of a rattling fan that pushed out tepid air. There was also more sweet sudjukh, which somehow hadn’t melted under the heat and remained tough as ever. He had to give his grudging respect to the candy’s resiliency.

  “So, it is not a ghost?” Superintendent Bashir was asking. His brow had wrinkled more and more as he listened to their report, until it now looked like crumpled parchment.

  Hamed shook his head, working hard at a bit of sudjukh that was beyond chewing. At least this time they’d been offered some tea, and he washed the morsel down with the cool taste of hibiscus and mint. “I’ve investigated well over a dozen haunting cases and never seen a ghost,” he answered. The fact was, in the Ministry’s almost thirty years of operation, there’d been no evidence for the existence of ghosts—despite the growing number of spiritualists and self-proclaimed mediums that now flourished in the back alleys of Cairo’s souks. Whatever became of the dead, it didn’t appear they cared to converse with the living.

  “Well, something is haunting the tram,” the superintendent persisted. “You saw for yourself.” He had the presence to look down at that, allowing Hamed to keep the embarrassment on his face to himself. It was still unseemly to remember how they’d been tossed about yesterday. Not the best look for the Ministry, and he was thankful his skin—the shade of harvested wheat—could not ever possibly show traces of red. Onsi, however, seemed wholly unbothered by the memory.

  “Likely the tram is haunted by a djinn,” he piped up, helping himself to a second glass of tea while secreting some sudjukh into a pocket.

  The superintendent’s eyebrows rose. “Djinn? In my tram? You’re certain?”

  “In these cases, it’s almost always a djinn,” Hamed replied.

  Bashir seemed skeptical. “I’ve met djinn. Some work for the Transportation Bureau, as you expect. An earth Jann lives on my street. Several djinn, including a very old and powerful Marid, attend my masjid. That creature does not look like any djinn I’ve encountered. It is rather . . . small.”

  “Oh, there are more kinds of djinn than the Ministry can even classify,” Onsi countered quickly. “Just four centuries prior, the scholar al-Suyūṭī wrote of djinn that caused illnesses in the human mind and body. The early kalam on natural science held—”

  “What Agent Onsi means to say,” Hamed interjected, before they were led down a rumination on philosophical manuscripts, “is that djinn come in all sorts. So, it’s quite possible for one to have taken over your tram.”

  “Well, what does it want?” Bashir asked.

  “Hard to say,” Hamed answered. “The djinn we’re used to generally choose to interact and live among humans. There are others, Ifrit for instance, who we know keep their distance—most not even staying on this plane. Some we can’t even communicate with. Those are often the haunting sort, lesser djinn beyond our classification. Likely, this one was drawn to the magic that operates your tram and has made its home there.”

  The superintendent sighed lengthily. “Djinn haunting my tram and attacking passengers.” He finished with the hand gesture that accompanied the all-too-common Cairo slang: “Thank you, al-Jahiz.”

  It had been some forty years since the wandering Soudanese genius—or madman, take your pick—had, through a mix of alchemy and machines, bored a hole into the Kaf. The opening of the doorway to the other-realm of the djinn had sent magic pouring out, changing the world forever. Now Cairenes evoked the disappeared mystic at every turn, his sobriquet uttered more often in mockery than praise to complain over the troubles of the age.

  Hamed had never understood the phrase’s ubiquity. Whether the Sufis were right, and al-Jahiz was indeed a herald of the Mahdi, or, as Copts feared, a sign of the apocalypse, seemed irrelevant. So too, he thought, were the continuing debates on whether al-Jahiz was the same as the medieval thinker of Basra, either traveled through time or reborn. Whatever the truth of it, without al-Jahiz there would be no Ministry. Egypt would not be one of the world’s foremost powers. Indeed, the British might not even have been pushed out if not for the aid of the djinn. And those same djinn had built up Cairo to rival London or Paris. It often seemed that while the country proudly touted its modernity, it yet yearned wistfully for some simpler past.

  “Al-Jahiz may have released more djinn upon the world,” Onsi put in, as if reading Hamed’s mind. “But it’s hardly all his doing. Some number of djinn have always lived among us. They appear in too many of our oldest texts to believe otherwise: the Kitab al-Fihrist, the Hamzanama, and of course, the Kitab al-Bulhan. Why, it’s commonly believed the old Khedive Muhammad Ali kept a secret djinn advisor, well over fifty years before al-Jahiz arrived in Cairo. His victory over the Mamluks has even been credited to—”

  “Before we wander down our national past,” Hamed cut in once again—the man was like a stack of history books! “I think it’s best I share our proposal for solving your problem.” He untied the string holding together the leather folder he carried, and took out a sheet of paper, placing it on the desk and pushing it toward the superintendent. The man took it up and as he began to read, his eyebrows made a steady climb.

  “Goodness!” he said at last, mopping at his temples. “This is quite detailed.”

  Hamed allowed a slight smile. He’d spent half the past day putting together the plan. Every element had been itemized with care. He was a bit proud. Even if the case was only a haunting.

  “But this price,” Bashir brooded. “So much?”

  “Coaxing a djinn of unknown classification from your tram won’t be easy,” Hamed explained. “Much of the pricing you’re seeing is the consultation fee for an elder djinn, a Marid who specializes in functioning as an intermediary. They’re about the only class of djinn these entities will listen to. Besides that, we’ll need to purchase some basic alchemical elixirs to purify the tram, in addition to a barrier spell—for safety you understand—and assorted other tools. We think that’s the best wa
y to assure the job is done effectively.”

  “It certainly is thorough,” the superintendent admitted. “But I’m afraid it won’t do.”

  Hamed’s smile slid away. “What? Why? It’s a very sound plan.” He was somewhat offended. He knew well what he was about.

  “Oh, I don’t question your abilities, Agent Hamed,” the superintendent said soothingly. “I mean this price. I simply can’t pay it.” Seeing Hamed’s startled look he went on. “My office has limited expenditures for this sort of thing. The parliament is ever trying to find ways to cut our budget, yet demands we keep our systems running smoothly. Not to mention the Transportation Bureau is planning construction on several new lines to Heliopolis. There’s just no money.”

  Hamed was at a loss. He hadn’t anticipated that response. “I’m sorry,” was all he could say. And he was. It was a very well-conceived and written-up plan. “I wish we could do more.”

  “Ah!” the superintendent exclaimed. “It’s interesting you should say that.” He reached into a desk drawer and drew out a sheet of paper of his own. “By chance, I was reading this interoffice memorandum on public safety earlier this morning. It was handed down several months ago from the national government and signed off by the Minister of the Interior. It deems any threat to the public good arising from mystical or preternatural occurrences a matter that falls under the jurisdiction of your agency.”

  Hamed took the paper from the man, trying not to snatch it as it was offered. By chance, was it? As if anyone went around reading months-old interoffice memoranda. A quick scan brought up brief memories of the Ministry lobbying for greater authority over public facilities. He thrust the paper over to Onsi, who took it and began reading in murmurs beneath his breath.

  “I believe, since the haunting of the tram is now officially under your agency’s dominion,” Bashir stated delicately, “that any costs associated with its restoration to a less hazardous state should need come from your own funding.” He paused in feigned uncertainty. “That is, if I have understood matters correctly?”

  “I believe you have, superintendent,” Onsi answered, finishing his read.

  Hamed shot the younger man an annoyed look, but it was no use. He had gathered as much already. Somebody down at the Ministry hadn’t anticipated this possible loophole. They certainly hadn’t come across the likes of the wily Superintendent Bashir, either. The man put on a contrite smile that hid nothing before reaching for the bronze dish and offering it forward.

  “More sweet sudjukh, Agent Hamed?”

  * * *

  Hamed trod heavily across the main floor of Ramses Station, indignation and humiliation knotted at the back of his head. Behind him, Onsi’s shorter strides hurried to keep pace, weaving through the midday crowds. Around them sat Cairo’s expansive transportation hub—a structure of glass and iron done up in the latest Neo-Pharaonic style. Gold-plated colonnades carved into bundles of papyrus lined the expansive hall, extending up to end in blossoming lotuses whose broad metal petals shifted and took on new shapes by the moment. The rows of columns supported a rotating ceiling of watery blue tiles that rippled like water, complete with swaying brass reeds timed to mechanical precision.

  “I suppose,” Onsi huffed, coming alongside, “we can take solace that you have secured a plan to solve the problem.”

  Hamed stopped and rounded on him. “Solving the problem isn’t our problem,” he snapped. “Paying for it is.” He regretted it almost immediately. None of this was the younger man’s fault. What a fine way to bring up a new investigator just raised from a cadet. “I mean,” he started again, evening his voice, “the cost would eat through almost all of our discretionary budget.”

  Onsi mulled this over, pushing his spectacles further onto a blunt nose. “Perhaps we could make do with what’s left until our funds are replenished?” he suggested.

  “That’s months away,” Hamed muttered. “The Ministry will just put us both on desk duty until then, so we can’t run up any more expenses.”

  “Oh, that’s dreadful!” Onsi said.

  Quite dreadful. No one liked desk duty. It often seemed half their job was paperwork as it was. Who joined the Ministry for the thrill of filling out endless reports, in triplicate no less? Then again, he thought dismally, neither did they expect to spend their days haggling with government bureaucrats over haunted tram cars.

  “We’ll just have to find another way,” he conceded, resigned to the prospect. He never got to say more as a sudden cry broke through the air—a high-pitched voice that was decidedly not the lilting chant of a muezzin. A few other passersby stopped at the sound, raising their hands up to each other in question and confusion.

  “I believe it’s coming from over there,” Onsi suggested.

  He had already begun to walk toward the commotion, and Hamed followed. They were approaching the center of the floor, toward a towering statue of the pharaoh for whom the station had been named. The colossal carving stood with hands at its side, right leg striding forward, and chiseled eyes of stone looking out with an eternal gaze. As they came closer the source of the cries could be seen plainly.

  At the base of the statue was a group of women, some thirty or so. Many wore dresses reflecting modern Cairene or Parisian styles, while others were in more common loose seblehs. A few were veiled. At least two of their number were djinn—both female as well. Nearly all held signs and placards, listening as one of their number stood atop a ladder and spoke energetically.

  “We meet today as a parliament!” she shouted. “A true parliament! Of women! We are half the nation! We helped found the nation! We represent its hopes and its despair! So long as we are not represented among those who vote for its leaders, the parliament of Egypt cannot be a true reflection of its people! We may have freed ourselves from foreign rule, but a nation cannot be liberated while its women are enchained!”

  A great cry went up from the group, giving cheers and shouts in answer to her words.

  Hamed accepted a leaflet from a young woman in a colorfully patterned hijab who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. It featured a Janus-faced rendition of the pharaoh Hatshepsut: one side with the appearance of a mother holding a child and the other of a factory worker with tools. The words WE DEMAND THE VOTE! were printed in bold beneath.

  “Ooh!” Onsi exclaimed, eyeing the handout. “Suffragettes! The bill on granting women the vote is being debated in parliament this week, I believe.”

  Who didn’t know that, Hamed thought. It was on the front of every Cairo newspaper and the topic of debate in every coffee shop. Judging by the flyer, these women were part of the Egyptian Feminist Sisterhood—they had been pressing for reforms for over a decade now. They’d gotten more vocal in the past year, taking to the streets and public spaces. It was little wonder they’d chosen Ramses Station to protest. It was here, after all, that a young writer at the popular Egyptian magazine La Modernité had openly removed her veil back in 1899—causing a national sensation and revitalizing the movement.

  “Do you think they’ll actually get it?” Onsi asked. “The vote, I mean? In London, women can barely get a hearing in public on the issue.”

  Hamed shrugged. “Who can say?” He couldn’t imagine Englishwomen anywhere near as bold as this. “They’ve managed to get the queen on their side, so that’s in their favor.” He watched as another woman rose to speak, this one veiled in a long Turkish-styled yashmak.

  “Exciting times,” Onsi remarked.

  Perhaps too exciting for some, Hamed thought. More than a few faces in the station displayed shock at the scene. One old woman slapped her cheeks and her chest in dramatic fashion—muttering lamentations at the gathering. Other bystanders shook their heads, a few men yelling angry words in parting. Most, however—especially the women, Hamed noticed—listened with interest. One way or the other, the country would see itself through this tumult, God willing.

  “All this politics is making me hungry,” he commented. “And we still have to figure
out how to solve our case.” He turned, gesturing to Onsi. “I know a place we can do both.”

  * * *

  “My father’s family is Coptic, from right here in Cairo,” Onsi said. He absently ran a finger over the small black cross tattooed onto the inside of his right wrist, while nibbling away at a bit of sudjukh. He’d taken the superintendent up on his offer, making off with almost half the bowl, and had stashed it in his pockets.

  “They live mostly in Shubra, and own a set of candy stores,” he continued. That would explain the man’s sweet tooth, Hamed assessed. “Now, my mother’s family on her father’s side are Copts as well, from down south in Minya—all cotton merchants. Made their wealth when the Americans had their troubles back in the sixties. Her mother, however, was a Nubian from Luxor. That produced quite the scandal, as this was before the religious tolerance laws. At any rate, this is all to say that of course I love Nubian food! My grandmother prepared it for us on feast days—enough for me and all nine of my sisters.”

  Hamed sipped at his qasab, letting the cool sugarcane juice swirl around his tongue. That had to be the most roundabout way of getting to a point he’d ever witnessed. And did the man say nine sisters?

  After departing Ramses Station, Onsi had waited while Hamed washed up and attended to prayer. They’d then made the short trip downtown to Makka, a Nubian restaurant of which Hamed was fond. The small eatery was styled to mimic a Nubian house: wooden yellow window frames, green-and-brown tiles on the floor, and sky-blue walls that matched the close-set tables and chairs. It wasn’t like the upscale spots near the embassies, and you had to wind your way through some backstreets to find it. But the food was superb, and the mingled scents of cumin and garlic wafted through the air.

  Onsi Youssef had been assigned to Hamed just this week, part of the Ministry’s initiative to pair new recruits with seasoned agents. No doubt a barely concealed attempt to break the habits of investigators who generally preferred working alone. If they were going to be partners—the word still sounded odd to Hamed—it was probably advantageous to learn more about him than could be gleaned from his personnel record. Nothing like food and drink to loosen the tongue. Though the man hardly needed encouragement.