Alif the Unseen

by G. Willow Wilson

  “Once upon a time,” said the man, walking at a brisk pace, “You’d never see this road so empty. I suppose it isn’t really empty even now—for there are things in heaven and earth that we can’t see either, and are known only to God. But for argument’s sake: Irem is not the place it used to be.”

  “Why’s that?” asked NewQuarter, scuffing the surface of the road experimentally with one foot.

  “I’m afraid it’s mostly your fault,” said the man, without malice. “It was left to Adam to tell all the birds and beasts and angels and jinn their rightful names, but his heirs have forgotten many of them. Irem is passing out of memory.”

  “I thought jinn are supposed to like abandoned places,” said Alif.

  “We like places abandoned by men,” said the man, “not by history. You should have seen Irem five hundred years ago, when our peoples still acknowledged one another. Caravans, poetry competitions, trade in all manner of bizarre knick-knacks you third-borns kept inventing. It was a sight to be seen. The toilet—now that will never be equaled. We all thought the toilet was pretty hysterical.”

  “I would love a toilet just now,” said NewQuarter.

  “You have such an odd relationship to your environment,” mused the man. “Such a paranoid relationship. You seem intent on existing in smaller and smaller spaces, filled with more and more gadgets, with the mistaken impression that this will give you more control over your lives. There’s something a little impious about it.”

  “Nothing wrong with gadgets,” muttered Alif.

  “No, except that they’re not magic,” said the man, “And a lot of you seem to believe they should be.”

  Silence followed this observation. They walked for what seemed to Alif like a very long time, though the ineffable position of the sun and moon made time difficult to tell. This depressed him, and again he was hounded by the feeling that he did not belong here, and had traded one kind of danger for another. He longed for a full day of sun followed by a full night without it, and wondered how something so basic should come to be denied to him. He felt there must be some lesson locked up in his celestial dislocation, first in the Hand’s lightless cell and then in the Empty Quarter, but he could not determine what it was.

  A quiet sound was the first hint he had of trouble. The desert of the jinn, like the banal one he knew, was silent, lacking water or trees or the critical mass of living things necessary for noise. So a sound was something. It was innocuous in and of itself; like the distant cry of a fox or some other small plaintive creature. But their guide stiffened when he heard it, halting in mid-step on the quartz road.

  “You must be very calm,” he said, his own voice low and deliberate. “Do not cower or run, and do not under any circumstance answer its questions.”

  NewQuarter opened his mouth to respond, then clapped it shut, eyes bulging as he stared at the thing that had appeared in the road.

  It was a beast, though unlike any other animal Alif had ever encountered: massive, reddish, indistinct, a bloodstain on the pale paving stones. Fur hung down in clumps over the goatish pupils in its gas-blue eyes. There were no teeth in its primitive jaws; instead, row after row of knives receded into the darkness of its gullet. It was a child’s nightmare, the fantasy of a mind too innocent to encompass human evil, but capable of imagining something far worse. Alif heard a high, thin cry, and was mortified to realize he had made it.

  “Banu Adam,” the beast said in a voice like grinding metal. “Banu Adam on the road to Irem.”

  “They’re nothing,” said the man. “A couple of children and an old man.”

  “That’s three more things than nothing,” said the beast. “Not to you,” said the man. “To you they are nothing. Let us

  pass.”

  The beast gave another foxlike cry, all the more terrible to Alif because it was so soft, and seemed to come from somewhere else.

  “If they’re in here, it means someone out there is looking for them,” it said. “That’s the only reason for three third-born notnothings to be on the road to Irem at such an hour in history, when the war drums of the Deceiver are all their kind remember of the unseen.”

  “So? That still doesn’t mean they’re worth anything to you.”

  Alif detected an edge in their guide’s voice.

  “But they are worth something to someone,” said the beast, lumbering toward them, “And that makes them interesting.” It stopped in front of NewQuarter, who had gone as white as his robe. “Tell me, mud-boy, how would you like to die?”

  “At the age of ninety,” said NewQuarter shrilly, “on a bed made of money in a villa overlooking the sea, while at least three wives beat themselves bloody with grief.”

  The beast roared with laughter.

  “Imbecile,” hissed their guide. “I told you not to answer its questions.”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “Let the boy speak.” The knives in the beast’s mouth rang as it smiled. “What’s your name, little friend?”

  To Alif ’s horror, NewQuarter seemed on the verge of replying.

  Alif seized his arm and jerked him back.

  “Not your name,” he breathed. “For God’s sake not your name.”

  The beast’s gaze shifted, alighting on Alif ’s face.

  “So. This one knows a thing. Or two.” It snapped its mouth shut, the knives in its jaws slamming together like a trap.

  “He doesn’t know anything.” The man glared at Alif with unconcealed fury.

  “I’m an idiot,” Alif agreed meekly.

  “No. This one has a tang about him.”The beast sniffed the air near Alif ’s neck. “Copper wire and rare earth elements and electricity. He barely smells of mud at all. Why are you here, chemical man?”

  “I’m—” Alif fought the terror that made answering seem like the easiest way out. He retreated into the things that he knew. Diminishing helixes and parabolas appeared in his mind, and he remembered that one could avoid faulty output by adding a new input parameter.

  “Who wants to know?” he hazarded. When the beast merely blinked, he grew bolder. “Why should I answer your questions if you won’t answer mine? Why should my friend give you his name if you won’t give him yours?”

  The beast gaped at him, looking almost hurt.

  “I liked them better when they were forgetting,” it said in a small voice. Seeming to shrink, it shuffled off the road into the dust, fading slowly from view. For several moments the only sound was labored breathing. Sheikh Bilal was shivering visibly, his eyes vacant. Alif slipped a supporting hand under his elbow.

  “That was well done,” said their guide in a mollified tone.

  “But I didn’t do anything at all,” said Alif.

  “You answered questions with questions. That’s more presence of mind than most banu adam would have in the presence of a demon.” He laughed. “The look on its face—like a fox chasing a rabbit when suddenly the rabbit turns and bares its teeth.”

  “That was a demon?” NewQuarter reeled in a circle, clutching his head. “Oh God, oh God.”

  “Yes, a demon.” The man gave a musical sigh and continued down the road at a faster pace. “In times of ignorance they grow bolder.”

  NewQuarter’s high, unbridled laugh made Alif nervous. “Who knew demons were such cowards?” he said in a manic

  falsetto. “Alif chased it away by looking at it funny.”

  “They are cowards,” said Sheikh Bilal quietly, breaking his silence. “As the Enemy of Man is a coward. We are not meant to

  fear them because they are powerful, but because we ourselves are so easily misled.”

  They walked for what seemed to Alif like a very long time,

  though the altered paths of the sun and moon, which seemed to

  revolved around the sky without rising or setting, made it difficult to tell. A glimmer on the horizon was the first sign of the

  jinn city. As they grew closer, Alif saw slender pillars of the samemineral that made up the road, risin
g to some indefinite height above the dunes. They were illuminated by a light whose source was unclear, and appeared to generate from within the pillars themselves, casting shadows of amber and pink across the dust. A large, arched gate was visible among the pillars, carved with geometric patterns resembling starbursts. The road ran beneath it, into the city itself.

  As they approached, Sheikh Bilal and NewQuarter fell into an awed silence. Alif became nervous. Figures began to appear on the road around them, most of which seemed not to notice the human migrants in their midst: some were simple shadows, walking upright and independent of any surface; others, like their guide, were blurred amalgams of man and animal. One creature made Alif fall back with a cry of alarm: it was the height of a two-story building, hairless and muscular, with a torso that fell away into mist as it moved along the road.

  “What—what is—”

  “It’s a marid,” said the man, his tone disinterested. “Like the lamp genie from your Aladdin stories. Don’t worry, you’re much too puny to be worth his bother.”

  Alif was not comforted by this reassurance.

  “The ones you should be worried about are the sila,” said their guide. “You won’t find a marid hiding in your basement, but the sila can take many forms, and they like to live around human beings. They’re all female, you know. They might look less terrifying, but they’re twice as dangerous. Remember that when you go home.”

  “As if we see female spirits every day,” snorted NewQuarter.

  Their guide shrugged.

  “You probably do.”

  As they approached the first pillars of the city, the activity around

  them increased, and Alif could hear a low murmur of voices speaking in a language—or languages—he could not understand. He was reminded of the cacophony of voices in the Immovable Alley, and thought at once of Sakina.

  “I think I know a way for you to get rid of us,” he said, turning to their guide, “Do you know a woman, an information-trader in the Immovable Alley, whose name is Sakina?”

  The man started in surprise.

  “You’ve been to the Alley? Who took you? Why?”

  “It was Vikram. He was trying to source something for us,” Alif hedged, hoping the man did not share Vikram’s uncanny ability to read into half-truths.

  “You seem intent on getting into a lot of trouble,” said the man, though his tone was admiring. “I don’t know this Sakina woman, but it would be easy enough to track her down. Let me stash you somewhere first, and then see what I can sniff out.”

  He led them under the archway and into a teeming thoroughfare. Quartz buildings lined the street, their windows covered in

  wooden tracery like mansions in the Old Quarter of the City. Whether they housed dwellings or shops Alif couldn’t tell; their

  inhabitants were screened behind the wooden window-lattices and visible only as interruptions in the light that spilled out into the street. Around them, Irem bustled with nameless activity, none of it clearly identifiable to Alif as commerce or socializing or work; just speech and movement. There was, he thought, a numb quality to it all. It was as though the city remembered the pageantry of its former self, and failing to replicate it, had lapsed into indifference.

  “In here.”The man ushered them through the wooden doubledoors of a large, square building. Inside were long tables where a scattering of strange figures sat in conversation. There was a tall, slim, coal-orange individual who looked like a moving candle flame, two women with the heads of goats, and a creature the size of a large toad which sat on the table itself, gesticulating with a pair of fat glistening hands.Their voices rose in laughter and died down again, backlit by a bluish fire burning in a metal grate at one end of the room. The grate was molded to look like a man and a woman engaged in an act Alif himself had never performed. As he watched, unable to look away, the fire dancing behind the carvings seemed to animate them, bringing them to lurid life and throwing their images across the ceiling.

  A shelf nearby was stocked with bottles of liquid in an array of unnatural-looking colors. Alif was surprised to see a large flatscreen television affixed to the opposite wall, tuned to Al Jazeera, and was struck by sudden recognition.

  “Is this a bar?”

  The man laughed.

  “You could call it that. We come here to eat and drink and discuss things. Sit in the corner there—they’ll bring you something to fill your stomachs.” Before Alif could protest, the man was off across the room, vanishing through the doorway. Sheikh Bilal and NewQuarter, looking profoundly out of place, sat down on a bench at the table the man had indicated. Alif perched across from them. He opened his mouth to speak, intending to diffuse his embarrassment over the suggestive grate by making a joke, but a loud squeal interrupted him. At the table across the room, the toadish creature had seized the candle flame by what Alif assumed was its throat, and with strength alarming for something so small, proceeded to throttle it violently. One of the goat-headed women snatched a bottle from the shelf, and with a summary swing, broke it over the toad’s head. The toad went belly up on the table with a loud croak.

  “This looks suspiciously like a den of vice,” the sheikh muttered.

  “Does it?” NewQuarter made a nervous study of the room. “I can’t tell what it looks like. It might not look like anything. Who is this woman you’ve sent that guy to find? How do you know these people?”

  Alif rubbed his eyes. His body was making feeble complaints, demanding food and rest.

  “I don’t know them,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s possible for people like us to know them. It’s only—there was a man who died helping me and my friends, and he was one of them. He told me about this place. He took two girls I know here to hide them from State, and I’d like to find out what happened to them.”

  NewQuarter broke out into a high, helpless laugh. “Is this what it takes to escape State these days? Is there literally

  nowhere on earth that is safe, leaving Never Never Land the only logical place to flee? I’ve gone mad, Alif. I’ve gone mad.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Alif. It occurred to him that he had done more apologizing in the last few months than in all twenty-three

  previous years of his life put together. It seemed absurd that in his attempt to put a few simple things right he should have made such astronomical miscalculations. A girl he loved had decided she did not love him—at least, not enough. How was such a problem usually addressed? Surely not with the clandestine exchange of books, and computer surveillance, and recourse to the jinn. He struggled to fix on the exact moment when he had run his life off the rails. A shadow appeared carrying a platter of food and glasses filled with greenish liquid. It set these down on the table between Alif and his companions without a word, as NewQuarter stared in silent horror. The sheikh touched the glass in front of him with a frown.

  “Is this alcohol?” he asked, as though accustomed to speaking to wraiths.

  No, came a voice in Alif ’s head, Alcohol is not something we can make or consume. But it is certainly an intoxicant, if that’s what you meant to ask.

  “It was, thank you,” said the sheikh, pushing the glass away with two fingers.

  “Might I have some plain water?”

  “Me too,” said Alif.

  If you wish. The shadow moved away.

  “I’ll stick with the intoxicant, by God,” said NewQuarter, clutching his glass. “After the day we’ve had I think I deserve it.”

  “Khumr is khumr,” said Sheikh Bilal. He gave NewQuarter a severe look.

  “Khumr is booze, uncle,” said NewQuarter. “And that thing just said this isn’t booze.”

  “Nonsense. Khumr is any substance that clouds the mind for recreational rather than medical reasons. This is clearly forbidden.”

  “Well I think our fiasco qualifies as a medical reason.” NewQuarter tipped his head back and took a long swallow of the phosphoric drink. Alif watched, fascinated in spite of himself, as the younger


  man’s face went pale and broke out with sweat.

  “Well? How does it taste?” he asked.

  “Like Windex,” rasped NewQuarter. He coughed, and a thread of smoke issued from his lips. “Oh God.”

  Alif was reminded of his first and only experience with alcohol: Abdullah had been given a half-empty bottle of Scotch in exchange for a DVD-R drive, and they had done shots together in the storage closet at Radio Sheikh. It had taken all of Alif’s willpower not to vomit the burning liquid up again.

  “You don’t drink!” he exclaimed, divining the source of NewQuarter’s bravado.

  “No,” said NewQuarter miserably, clearing his throat. “I don’t. But when you put something in front of me, I panic—you have no idea how many awful parties I’ve been to, with princes and hired women getting wasted everywhere once the help is gone and the liquor cabinets are unlocked. They practically pour vodka down your throat. If I don’t take at least one swallow and pretend I’m into it, my manhood is suddenly in question.”

  Sheikh Bilal laughed—the first real, unguarded laugh Alif had heard him make since their escape.

  “You’re wrong,” he said. “It’s their manhood which is at stake, and this is why they bully you. If you were to refuse, you would make them look weak. You should be proud to abstain.”

  NewQuarter belched, one hand over his stomach.

  “Making a prince seem weak is a bad idea,” he said. “Especially if you’re another prince. It looks like competition. One of these days one of those bastards is going to find out whose side I’m really on, and then it will be you coming to rescue me from a prison in the desert.”

  “Is that why you retired?” Alif asked.

  “Yes,” said NewQuarter, wiping the sweat from his brow. “The thing was—when I figured out that the Hand must be someone in the aristocracy, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I probably knew him. Had met him at family lunches, Ramadans, Eids, hell, maybe he was one of the weekend vodka-swillers. It made me nervous.”