by P. B. Kerr
But things started to go a bit wrong when the hotel manager appeared and told Nimrod’s party that the air-conditioning in the hotel was not working, nor were the elevators. And it was at this point they discovered that their rooms were all on the hundredth floor. What was more, the hotel porters were on strike, which meant that there was no one to carry the luggage.
“How do you expect us to get all the way up to the hundredth floor carrying our own luggage?” Groanin demanded.
“The stairs,” said the manager. “You will find them very convenient as they go all the way up to the top of the hotel, where the view is the best in all of Fez.”
“Couldn’t we have rooms on a lower floor?” asked John.
The manager smiled sheepishly. “I regret that the rooms on the lower floors are not yet finished,” he said.
This was something of an understatement as it swiftly transpired that most of the hotel between the second and the ninetieth floors was one large building site, and the noise of men drilling walls, hammering nails into wood, or operating cement mixers was deafening.
Arriving on the hundredth floor, hot and out of breath, Groanin kicked open the door of his room, flung his bags down on the floor, and collapsed onto the bed only to discover that his bed had no mattress.
“I suppose it could be worse,” said Philippa, experimentally opening and closing her own door — which lacked not only a lock but a door handle, too.
Meanwhile, Groanin had discovered that his minibar was empty, which made him very cross indeed.
“Mine isn’t empty,” John reported. “There’s a large cockroach living in it.”
“Probably got the most comfortable room in the hotel, I shouldn’t wonder,” observed Groanin.
Philippa yelled for everyone to come to her room, and they all found her standing in the bathroom and looking down at the floor of the shower, which seemed to be made of bare earth. “There are no tiles on the floor of the shower,” she said. “It’ll just turn to mud when the shower is turned on.”
“Actually, that’s not true,” said Nimrod, trying to turn the shower faucet. “For the simple reason that you can’t actually turn the shower on. John, you’d better call downstairs and have someone see if they can come and fix it.”
John picked up the telephone, which wasn’t working. And then another, which wasn’t connected to the wall. Finally, he found a phone that was working and managed to speak to someone.
“What you want?” said a hostile voice.
John explained that the shower in Philippa’s room was not working.
“Why not just have a wash?” said the voice. “The hand basin works okay, I think.”
John insisted that the shower be fixed and the voice said that he would send someone just as soon as possible.
Half an hour later a very tall man wearing a red tarboosh — this being a kind of hat that is also sometimes called a fez — and a white robe appeared and said he had come to fix the shower.
“You got any tools?” asked the very tall man. “To fix the shower.”
John shook his head. “Er, no,” he said.
The tall man glanced around the room, picked up one of Groanin’s boots, and started to beat the faucet with it until, finally, the knob turned and water started to spray from the showerhead. Quickly, the floor of the shower turned to a small, square sea of mud. But he paid that no attention.
“Shower’s working now,” he said. Then he tossed the boot aside and walked out.
Philippa shrugged and went into the bathroom to turn off the shower and discovered that this was now impossible. “Hey,” she shouted after the man, “now it won’t turn off.”
But it was too late. The man had gone.
Naturally a little shy, Zagreus had waited until now before rematerializing. He walked on his knuckles around the interconnecting rooms for a while and then sat down to watch Moroccan television. On one channel it was Strictly Belly Dancing, on another it was So You Think You Can Belly Dance on Ice, and on the third it was Who Wants to be a Belly Dancer? Zagreus decided that he liked Moroccan television a lot more than he liked English television.
Groanin glanced at the television and then at the Jinx uncomfortably. “Just tell me that you’ve got nothing to do with any of this,” he said.
Zagreus gave a sheepish look. “Er, I really don’t know,” he said. “I mean, it’s possible, I guess.”
Nimrod grinned at his butler. “Really, Groanin, this isn’t known as the worst hotel in the world for nothing,” he said. “None of this has anything to do with Zagreus. Besides, I took the precaution of putting a binding on him while he’s with us, so you can rest assured that his jinx won’t affect us for now.”
“Thanks,” said Zagreus. “I was wondering about that myself.”
Meanwhile, Groanin picked up his boot off the floor, where the man with the fez had tossed it. “What’s this doing here?” And then, “Flipping heck, the heel’s come off me boot. How did that happen?”
“The guy with the fez was using it as a hammer to fix Philippa’s shower,” explained John. “My boot? A hammer?”
“Better put that boot on, Groanin,” said Nimrod. “You’re going to need a pair of sturdy boots where we’re going.”
“And where’s that?” asked Philippa.
“A better hotel, I hope,” said Groanin. “I said, a better hotel, I hope.”
“The Atlas Mountains,” said Nimrod. “Specifically Jebel Toubkal, the highest peak in Morocco.”
“Anything’s better than actually staying here, I suppose,” said John.
“There’s a man called James Burton who lives there,” continued Nimrod. “He’s one of the reasons we came to Morocco in the first place. Mr. Burton used to be a butler — a very good butler, actually. And now I urgently need his help.”
The twins looked at each other with horror and then at Groanin, who was now looking thoroughly offended.
His lip quivering with self-pity, the butler turned his back on the three djinn and walked quietly across the room.
“I see,” Groanin said stiffly. “So that’s the way the wind blows. Maybe I should just stay here and start looking for another job?”
The butler leaned his forehead thoughtfully upon the windowpane; at least he did until the pane fell out of the window frame. He leaped back with fright, collided with a small table, knocked over a lamp, slipped, and sat down heavily on top of Zagreus. Nimrod helped Groanin to his feet.
“You mistake me,” said Nimrod. “It’s not Mr. Burton’s skills as a butler I need to enlist. It’s his experience as a holy man.”
“You mean, I’m not being sacked, sir?” said Groanin.
“Of course not,” said Nimrod. “Mr. Burton is a fakir. And a very good one, I believe. Which he should be, as he had an excellent teacher. Before he was a fakir, Mr. Burton was for many years a butler in the service of Mr. Rakshasas.”
“He was a butler?” said John. “And now he’s a fakir?”
“That’s a career path I hadn’t thought of,” Groanin said wryly.
“Weird, isn’t it?” said Nimrod. “Although there’s not much an English butler can’t do when he puts his mind to it. Isn’t that right, Groanin?”
“Yes, sir.” Groanin grinned back at his employer. “Might I inquire, sir, how we are to get to the Atlas Mountains?”
“I’m glad you asked me that,” said Nimrod. “That’s the other reason we came to Morocco. We need to go and get ourselves a decent carpet.”
John inspected the floor of the hotel room.
“I guess this one is a little threadbare in parts,” he said. “But it seems to me there are plenty of other things in this place that are a heck of a lot worse than the carpet.” He shrugged. “Wouldn’t it just be easier to go to another hotel?”
“I’m not talking about that kind of carpet, my boy,” said Nimrod. “I am referring to the flying carpet of King Solomon.”
“But I thought magic carpets didn’t exist,” objected Phili
ppa. “That’s what you said. Isn’t it?”
Nimrod shook his head. “I said nothing of the sort. I said that nearly all modern djinn prefer to travel by whirlwind. Or airplane. And we did. But since it’s no longer permitted for good djinn to travel by whirlwind, and since it is notoriously difficult to get to the summit of Jebel Toubkal, we must needs look to more old-fashioned methods of transport. Such as a flying carpet. Of the kind described — as I’m quite sure you will both remember — in night number five hundred and seventy of the Arabian Nights. And please don’t let me hear you describing it as a ‘magic carpet.’ You know my views on the use of that word. A flying carpet is vulgar, clichéd, embarrassing — you, John, would probably say it was corny — but I can now see no alternative to owning one. A flying carpet must be procured. Which is why, before we do anything, we must visit the rug emporium of Mr. Barkhiya, in the medina, which is the old part of Fez.”
CHAPTER 11
THE VERY SPECIAL RUG EMPORIUM OF ASAF IBN BARKHIYA
Entering the old medina of Fez through a dome-shaped gate in a high white wall, Nimrod led the twins and Groanin through a succession of narrow, winding streets and covered, shadowy alleys that were full of shopkeepers, tourists, chickens, dogs, and donkeys. Wonderful smells of spices and herbs assailed their nostrils, while their ears were filled with sounds of music and commerce that had changed little in centuries.
The twins considered themselves well-traveled, but the medina was like nothing they had encountered before. It was, thought Philippa, like stepping back into one of the seven journeys of Sinbad or, perhaps, the tales of Aladdin and Ali Baba. But Nimrod seemed to know the place like the back of his hand.
After ten or fifteen minutes, they arrived in a dusty, plain little square in the darkest and most ancient part of the medina, where Nimrod approached a small and very old-looking wooden door. And there he addressed his companions, who included Moo but not Zagreus, who had elected to remain in the hotel and watch The Belly Factor on television.
“This is it,” he said. “This is the place.”
“You mean this door?” asked Moo.
“It doesn’t much look like a rug emporium,” observed John. “It looks more like a prison.”
“Certainly somewhere secret,” said Moo.
“My dad used to work in carpets,” said Groanin quietly. But no one was listening. “He was a carpet fitter all his life.”
“This shop has been here for two thousand years,” said Nimrod. “Mr. Barkhiya is the direct descendant of the vizier of King Solomon.”
“You mean the chap in the Bible?” asked Moo.
Nimrod nodded.
“What’s a vizier?” asked John.
“A high-ranking minister or advisor to the king,” said Nimrod. “When Solomon died, Mr. Barkhiya and his family inherited the king’s famous flying carpet. Originally, this was an enormous blue rug, sixty miles long and sixty miles wide, and when it flew, it was shaded from the sun by a canopy of birds. Thousands of djinn and people could ride upon it at any one time. On one occasion, so the story goes, the wind, which is not known for its patience, became jealous of Solomon and shook the carpet, and forty thousand people fell to their deaths.”
“That’s one way of trimming your frequent-flyer program,” observed Groanin.
“Over the years, the carpet has been cut up many times,” continued Nimrod. “Today all flying carpets are smaller pieces of the larger one once owned by Solomon. Of course in more recent times, flying on a carpet was deemed most unfashionable. And business was slow for Mr. Barkhiya. But all of that is different now. Which means that it may be hard to negotiate a fair price for exactly what we want. So it might be best if you say as little as possible while I’m bargaining with him. Because it’s certain that Asaf will want something more than just money. Is that clear?”
The twins nodded. “Clear,” they said in unison.
Inside, the rug emporium was more like a church — a huge, echoing, dark Byzantine church with a circular marble floor and many brass lamps hanging from a very high ceiling. The vast floor was surrounded with a series of enormous pillars that were unusual in that they appeared to be made out of giant rolls of carpet: a blue silk carpet with a gold weft.
Nimrod clapped his hands loudly, and lifted a hand in salute as a man wearing a plain white turban and silken white robes, who was seated cross-legged on a little square of blue carpet, floated across the floor toward them like a scoop of ice cream on a Frisbee.
“Peace be with you,” said Nimrod.
“And with you,” said the man.
Dismounting the carpet, which stayed floating several inches above the ground, the man bowed gravely and said:
“Let mountain and desert tremble. Let cities shudder and turn in fear of mighty Nimrod. Welcome, esteemed sir. Since I last saw you, great djinn, I have often thought of you and wondered how long it would be before you would come back to my humble establishment. And I bless this day, since we now meet again.”
Philippa shuddered to look at the man. Mr. Barkhiya had the nose and eyes of a hawk, a large gap between his front teeth, and a long black beard that was divided into two points like a pitchfork. He was not very tall but he carried himself like a man of enormous height, and his voice was as deep and almost as dramatic as that of a great orator.
“Permit me to introduce my nephew, John, and my niece, Philippa,” said Nimrod.
“I am your servant,” said Mr. Barkhiya, and he bowed again. “May both of you continue to live happily until the very distant hour of your death.”
“You too,” said Philippa.
“May I also present Lady Silvia Stone and my servant, Groanin.”
“The honor is all mine,” said Mr. Barkhiya.
“We’ve come about a carpet,” said Nimrod.
Mr. Barkhiya smiled as if such a thing was obvious. He bowed again and then lifted his arms.
“And when Solomon sat upon the carpet he was caught up by the wind and sailed through the air so quickly that he breakfasted at Damascus and dined in Medina,” said Mr. Barkhiya. “And the wind followed Solomon’s commands.” The carpet seller grinned happily. “Of course you have come about carpets, my dear fellow. Why else would you be here? Just the one carpet, is it? I could perhaps let you have a discount for three. A very special price.”
While he talked, Mr. Barkhiya stroked one of the great blue carpet pillars, which rippled and undulated under his touch like a hide of some great beast. He nodded at John and Philippa. “Come, children, touch it.”
John and Philippa glanced at their uncle, who nodded his assent, and the twins stepped forward to rub their hands up and down the smooth surface of the blue carpet pillar. At the same time, Nimrod lifted the sesquipedalian binding that stopped the twins using their focus words. He wanted to make sure that they would feel the djinn power that was present in every fiber of the carpet.
“Is it not smooth?” Mr. Barkhiya asked John. “Is it not silky?” he asked Philippa. “Is it not marvelous? Is it not very special?”
The twins nodded.
“Very,” said Philippa.
“It’s like something alive,” observed John.
“There’s a vibration in every fiber,” added Philippa.
“Truly,” said Mr. Barkhiya. “But only a djinn such as yourself can feel this special vibration. I have never felt this sensation myself. I am merely the great carpet’s custodian. Not its master.”
“To weave such a carpet,” said Moo, “that must have taken a very long thread.”
“It is said that the thread used to make the first great flying carpet of Solomon was as long as eternity,” said Mr. Barkhiya. “And the carpet was handwoven by a thousand djinn.”
“And do you only sell to djinn?” said Moo. “Or to human beings, also?”
Mr. Barkhiya smiled his gap-toothed smile. “I regret, dear Lady Silvia, that only a djinn may control such a carpet as this, otherwise I should be delighted to sell you one, too. The tiny fragmen
t of rug you saw me appear on earlier is as much as I am able to safely control myself. And even that is only thanks to my having been granted wishes by another grateful customer. Each knot of the carpet contains an uttered word of djinn power. What the djinn themselves call a focus word. Is it not so, Nimrod? And that this is where the power of the flying comes from. From the djinn power over mathematics and physics and the great Golden Ratio and the secret meaning of 1.61803.”
Nimrod nodded. “That’s quite right,” he said. “Many human beings have been killed trying to ride a flying carpet.”
“That’s a comforting thought,” remarked Groanin.
“I think an extra-large one for the great Nimrod, and two junior models, one each for your two young friends.”
“Very generous of you, Asaf,” said Nimrod.
Mr. Barkhiya said, “But you have not yet heard my price, O great one.”
“I’m listening, old friend.”
“Three wishes.”
“That is fair.”
“From each of you.”
Nimrod shook his head. “No. That is too much.” He nodded. “But the three wishes shall come from me.”
“Very well, I agree.”
“One more thing,” said Nimrod. “I know you to be a religious man, Asaf. And a man of your word. So, you must state your three wishes in advance and confine yourself to wishing for them and only them, by all that’s holy to you. Is that agreed, also?”
Asaf grinned. “Don’t you trust me, O great one?”
Nimrod shook his head. “You’re only human, my friend. It’s been my experience that wishing for whatever your heart desires is more than any mundane can cope with. And it is always wise to remember to be careful what you wish for just in case you get it.”
“True,” said Mr. Barkhiya. “For power of such greatness as yours, it is good that you counsel caution. I am a poor man of the desert; however, I have wished before, and I have survived the extraordinary magic. I have eight sons and fifteen grandchildren and it will be my wish that my family shall remain in happiness and health. And so that all djinn who come here may know that I am not a selfish man, it will be my wish that the king, too, shall remain in happiness and health.”