Alif the Unseen

by G. Willow Wilson

“Shit, shit, shit.”

  Several students turned to shoot him looks of near-identical disgust. Alif hunched his shoulders and ignored them. A hissing cackle came from beneath his desk, where Vikram had somehow managed to cram himself.

  “Listen to this foul language. Were you raised in a brothel?”

  “Would you get out from under there?”

  “No.”

  Alif ground his teeth and opened up a new browser window. Logging on to a large, generic webmail provider, he created a new email address using a random string of letters and numbers. When he typed Intisar’s address into the ‘To’ field of a blank message, an unexpected rush of tenderness overcame him. To think that she might be nearby—that she might be in class at this very moment, or shopping at one of the small boutiques they had passed in the cab—was too much for his rational mind. He felt himself disappear into his heart and guts, ignoring the risk of detection and capture that even this anonymous contact would pose. Hayam, his mother would call it: love that stumbles over the earth in broken ecstasy.

  He remembered a thousand things at once: the subtle turns of phrase that convinced him she was different in the same way he was different; that she had a superior mind and fought the same internal battles against the monotonous demands of daily life. There was not one email from her that he had not read a dozen times over, not one pretty compliment, delivered with just the right level of modest reserve, that he could not recall. No other woman had ever flattered him. Occasionally his mother would propose one or another of the dull-eyed neighborhood girls as a potential match, but when Alif met them they inevitably responded to his nervous, polite questions with one-word answers, and he would leave feeling depressed. With Intisar it was different. She had pursued him as passionately as he pursued her, employing a kind of arch, feminine elusiveness that made her interest all the more maddening. He had, despite himself, been intrigued by her wealth. He spent so much time deriding the elite online that his relationship with Intisar seemed doubly transgressive, and the idea that a girl—a woman—with money wanted him was not unwelcome to his ego.

  The need to see her again overwhelmed all other considerations.

  3:30 pm at the chaiwalla’s in the new campus, he wrote. I love you.

  He hit send before giving himself time to think. Pushing his chair back from the workstation, he stretched, nervous muscles shuddering in his arms and legs. He had two and a half hours until the appointed time. Hunching back over his netbook, he ran a query for De La Croix on a black hat-built search engine. The first few results were about a nineteenth century painter; he discarded these. He clicked on an entry labeled Les Mille et Un Jours:

  Having worked six full months on the Shahnama, together with Mullah Kerim, the extreme dedication made me fall into an illness lasting two months-on the brink of death- from which I hardly recovered to find that notwithstanding the twenty volumes of books I had read, I still had to learn from a certain theological and very difficult book called Masnavi (comprising at least 90,000 verses

  -the good people of the country have it that it contains the Philosopher’s stone). I looked for someone who knew the book, but against payment I found no one and was obliged to turn to a great superior of the Mevlevi. A friend conducted me there and I had hardly paid my respects or he offered me his services for the understanding of the Masnavi and he allowed me during four or five months to see him very frequently to study. His name was Dervish Moqlas. Since he was capable of leading a party I knew he was under observation of the court and so I had to take my precautions. I did not hestitate to inform Monseigneur Murtaza, brother in law to the king, and Myrza Ali Reza, also from the king’s family and Cheikh al Islam, the head of the law, that I only went there to read the Masnavi, which they approved.

  “Vikram,” Alif said to the form under the workstation, “What do you know about a Persian guy named Moqlas who might have been up to no good in the 17th century?”

  “Moqlas the Dervish?”Vikram’s eyes reflected light like a cat’s. “He was a scholar of sorts. Very interested in the insides of books.”

  “What reason would the Shah have to be upset with him, or have him watched?”

  “He was what you would call a heretic.”

  “But a learned heretic.”

  “Some might say. Why do you care?”

  “This de la Croix the convert was so worked up about studied with him. He believed one of the books Moqlas was helping him study—the Mathnawi—contained the Philosopher’s Stone.” Alif looked back down at Vikram, who had managed to work his ankles over his shoulders like a circus acrobat. “But that doesn’t make any sense. The Philosopher’s Stone is supposed to be a physical substance, right? An alchemy thing. Like some kind of miraculous chemical that turns stuff into gold, or the water of life, or something. Not a book.”

  “The distinction is relevant only to a fleshy idiot like you. The Philosopher’s Stone is knowledge, pure knowledge—a fragment of the formula by which the universe was written.”

  Alif rubbed his eyes. “And this thing is in the Mathnawi?”

  “Well, it’s in a mathnawi, or so the theory goes.”

  “What do you mean, a? Wasn’t the Mathnawi written by Rumi? Is there more than one?”

  Vikram snorted. “Of course there’s more than one. Plenty of morons who thought they’d reached some great understanding of the cosmos claimed to have written one. But most of them were terrible. Rumi’s was the only one that stuck.”

  “You don’t think the Philosopher’s Stone was in Rumi’s Mathnawi, though.”

  “If I did, I would be out conquering time, not sitting under this desk. What would happen if I pulled on that green wire?”

  “Don’t, don’t!”

  Vikram cackled gleefully.

  “Would you just concentrate for two minutes?” snapped Alif. “I need to figure this out.”

  “You’ve already figured it out. Obviously the mathnawi to which this De La Croix refers is the Alf Yeom. Ninety thousand verses is about right, length-wise. Obviously Moqlas the Dervish is the Persian mystic who initiated him into the study of the text, just as he was initiated by his teachers, and they by theirs, and so on, all the way back to whatever 14th century rapscallion first heard it from the jinn. Obviously Moqlas believed he could somehow decode it and come up with the Philosopher’s Stone, and thereby empower himself to manipulate matter and time.”

  Alif made a skeptical face.

  “Is that true?” he asked. “Can reading the Alf Yeom really do that?”

  Vikram shifted, craning his neck in an unnatural way to meet Alif ’s eye.

  “A human being with a lust for forbidden knowledge might certainly think so. Whether he would ultimately succeed—no, that has never happened. Nor will it do you any good, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “I’m not wondering. I’m not interested in cosmic powers. I just want to figure out where Intisar picked this thing up and what she expects me to do with it.”

  By way of response, Vikram sank his teeth into Alif ’s ankle. Alif closed his netbook, cursing, and kicked the arm that reached out for his power cord. The convert appeared in the doorway of the computer lab and motioned to them. Vikram extricated himself from beneath the desk, bending in ways that made Alif vaguely sick, and stood to greet her as though lurking under desks was something ordinary.The convert had a strange expression: chin tucked, mouth pursed, brows drawn into a brooding look. She held the Alf Yeom in both hands like a platter. It had been wrapped in some kind of protective film and sealed with surgical tape.

  “How was archival science?” Alif hazarded.

  The convert ran one thumb along a corner of the book, making the plastic film crackle. “Do you want the short answer or the long answer?” she asked.

  “The long answer, naturally,” said Vikram. “You can tell us while we are sniffing out lunch. You do have such a thing as shawarma in this upper class pile, don’t you?”

  “I can take you to the cafeteri
a.”

  “Splendid.”

  “I have to meet someone in a couple of hours,” Alif interjected. “At the chaiwalla’s we passed near the front entrance.”

  Vikram looked interested. “What’s this? Meet whom?”

  “The—my—the girl who sent me the Alf Yeom.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?”Vikram’s yellow eyes were merry. “We’ll all go and bear witness to your little tryst. It will be more romantic entertainment than the convert has had in years.”

  “Bastard,” the convert muttered.

  “No one is going,” said Alif. “I don’t care what else you do, but I see her alone.”

  “Well, whatever. The cafeteria is back that way in any case.” With a frigid glance at Vikram, the convert led the way out of the computer lab and down the hall. Radiant air hit Alif in the face as they emerged into the overheated afternoon. He regretted the loss of the climate-controlled lab, so solicitous of both body and machine. Outside everything warred with everything else; heat against skin, skin against propriety, propriety against nature. Alif rubbed sweat from the back of his neck, irritated.

  The convert wove through clusters of chatting students toward a low building near the campus entrance. The scent of fry oil and chickpea flour wafted from its windows. Alif felt his stomach rumble, and wished he had eaten more of the minted yogurt Azalel had offered them in the morning. He trailed behind the convert as she pushed through a pair of double doors and into a large hall. Long tables and benches were set up on one end; on the other, sour desi women in uniform served food from behind metal counters.

  “It’s campus food, but it’s hot,” said the convert, handing Alif a tray. He needed no more prompting, and loaded the tray with vegetable pakoras, naan, and kabsa with chicken that smelled as though it had been sitting on a hotplate for many hours. The convert found an empty table and sat down, setting the Alf Yeom on a bower of clean napkins.

  “Careful with that tray!” She slid the book further along the table as Alif sat down across from her. “You’ll get grease on the manuscript.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Where’s mine?”Vikram pounced on the spoon Alif was reaching for, helping himself to the kabsa. Alif curled his lip.

  “Okay, so here’s the deal.” The convert paused and steepled her hands beneath her chin like a Catholic icon. “I took a five millimeter by five millimeter sample from one of the pages in the middle that had some blank space. I had my advisor look at it. Because the pages are paper instead of vellum and the condition of the book is so good, I assumed it couldn’t be more than a couple hundred years old.”

  Vikram smiled through his food, looking, Alif thought, like a man anticipating the punchline of a joke.

  “My advisor—and I didn’t tell him anything, just asked him to look at the sample—disagrees. He thinks it’s no less than seven hundred years old.”

  Alif quickly swallowed the lump of pakora in his mouth.

  “He says the paper was made using a process that went out of vogue in Central Asia by the fourteenth century. It’s almost certainly Persian too, or at least the paper itself was made in Persia. He thinks that awful-smelling resin is what has kept the book in such good condition, though he can’t tell offhand what it’s made of. He wants to have the lab analyze it.”

  “So . . .” Alif trailed off, unsure of what he wanted to say.

  “So I was wrong.” The convert smiled wryly. She looked tired. “This is the genuine article. De la Croix wasn’t making it all up. The Alf Yeom is real.”

  Vikram leaned back in his chair with a satisfied purr.The convert gazed at him steadily, mouth twisting in exaggerated contempt. He seemed amused by her silent fury. His eyes shone, reflecting the blue in hers as he stared back, unflinching, and it seemed to Alif as though he was saying something, though his lips did not move. Whatever it was, it caused the convert’s pout to evaporate. She blushed and looked away, biting her lower lip in a way that was almost coy, and it occurred to Alif that she was prettyish when she didn’t scowl.

  “Now I’m really interested to know how your friend got her hands on this,” she said, clearing her throat self-consciously, “This is not the kind of artifact you find lying around in a used bookstore. Or in a rare bookstore. Or in the Smithsonian. I ran searches on all the major lending libraries in the City, and called up a couple of the antiques dealers who sell stuff they shouldn’t. No one’s ever heard of it.”

  Alif studied the plastic-shrouded manuscript on its bed of napkins. It could not weigh more than half a kilogram, yet it felt like an unbearable load; an unasked-for, ill-defined responsibility, an unknown unknown. How like Intisar, he thought, to drop this in his lap in her imperious way without thought for his broken heart. He was seized with contempt.

  “I’m sick of guessing what all this means,” he said. “I want some facts.”

  The convert shrugged. “I’ve told you all I know,” she said. “The lab will come back to us with the results of the resin test in a few hours. But I can’t tell you where the book comes from.”

  “I may be able to do as much,” mused Vikram, stroking his goatee. “But it would involve taking you someplace you shouldn’t really go.”

  “Where’s that?” asked Alif, suspicion roused.

  “The Immovable Alley. There’s an entrance to it in the City, but I haven’t used it in years—it’s probably moved by now.”

  “But . . .” Alif attempted to collect his thoughts. “Alleys don’t move. So how could the entrance be somewhere other than where it used to be?”

  “It moves.”

  “But it’s called the Immovable Alley!”

  “The alley is stationary.That’s the whole point. The world moves around it. So entrances and exits can pop up anywhere.” Vikram smiled, evidently pleased with himself.

  “What a bunch of bull,” said the convert, wrinkling her nose. “Immovable Alley my ass. He wants to get us down some dark side street and rob us. Then when we call the police we can tell them we were following a dude who thinks he’s a genie to a place that doesn’t exist, and they can lock us up in jail for being nuts.”

  “My dear woman, how long have we known one another? I am hurt by your lack of confidence.” Vikram pulled his handsome face into a pout.

  “I don’t care. I’m not falling for your tricks.”The convert crossed her arms and set her mouth in a thin, masculine line. Vikram imitated her. She pretended not to notice.

  “I’ll go,” said Alif, feeling emboldened. “Any alley, immovable or not, as long as there’s someone there who can tell me what I need to know.”

  “Alternately,” said the convert in a slow, condescending voice, such as one would use with a child, “You could just wait until you meet your friend and ask her where she got it and what she expects you to do with it.”

  Alif rubbed pakora grease on his jeans, wilting under the convert’s scrutiny.

  “I could,” he mumbled, “But I don’t even know for sure that she’s going to show up. Or what she’ll say when she does.”

  The convert sighed, tucking a loose strand of hair beneath her headscarf.

  “Okay,” she said. Narrowing her eyes at Alif, she stood. “But if I end up beaten, raped or robbed, I’m blaming you. You are officially responsible for my well-being. Let it be known that I’m only doing this under duress.”

  “Nonsense,” scoffed Vikram. “You’re doing this because you’re curious. Come along, children.”

  He loped toward the door of the cafeteria, humming. Alif and the convert followed, keeping a brittle distance between themselves. Outside, Vikram turned downhill, toward the edge of campus and the Old Quarter Wall beyond it. They threaded their way into the Old Quarter proper, beyond the university, along stone-paved streets that threw curious echoes. Everything here felt older, grander, wealthier than the City Alif knew; there were trees that had been carefully cultivated against the dry desert air for a century or more, dust-caked and wide-rooted, spreading their leaves over the ar
ched entranceways of townhouses and villas. Gone were the stocky apartment blocks and duplexes like the one he and Dina inhabited. Baqara District was indifferent to taste or beauty, and if one wanted either, one had to look further than the outsides of things. Here were both in abundance.

  “I wish I had money,” said Alif. “Money buys beauty.”

  “What a cynical thing to say,” said the convert.

  “He’s right,” said Vikram, cavorting a few steps, “However much we may wish to deny it. Money smooths the path for many things.”

  “It’s different back home.” The convert spoke with a kind of offhanded confidence Alif associated with foreigners.

  “I doubt that very much,” said Vikram. “America is a country like any other, with rich and poor. If you asked a poor American whether he’d rather remain so, or wake up with a million dollars under his pillow, I guarantee you would get the same answer every time.”

  The convert raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Have you ever even been to the States?”

  “In what sense?”

  “Is there more than one?”

  “But naturally.”

  “God, you’re ridiculous.” Flouncing her long skirt, the convert pulled ahead of Vikram, walking down the street with a purposeful gait. Vikram laughed.

  “I didn’t mean to offend your vanity, my dear,” he called. “Slow down. I meet so few westerners that I forget how prickly your little consciences are.”

  “Do you know how many words for foreigner I know?” the convert asked. She didn’t turn to speak; her voice seemed to float from the back of her silk-clad head. “Many. Ajnabi. Ferenghi. Khawagga. Gori. Pardesi. And I’ve been called all of them. They’re not nice words, no matter what you people claim.”

  “Wait a minute, who is you people?” called Alif.

  “Easterners. Non-westerners. Whatever you want to call yourselves. It doesn’t matter to you what concessions we make—whether we dress respectfully, learn the language, follow all the insane rules about when to speak and how and to whom. I even adopted your religion—adopted it, out of my own free will, thinking I was doing something noble and righteous. But it’s not enough. You’ll always second-guess every thought and opinion that comes out of my mouth, even when I talk about my own fucking country. I’ll always be foreign.”