The Five Fakirs of Faizabad

by P. B. Kerr

  “I say,” said Moo as the carpet hit an air pocket that felt like an earthquake. “Quite a roller coaster this trip, eh? Whoops. That one felt like I was in a barrel going over Niagara.”

  Moo’s description of the flight was extremely accurate. For a moment, the carpet fell several hundred feet, before another air pocket brought them up short with a loud bang as if they had hit a huge pothole in a road.

  “Oh, God,” said Mr. Swaraswati and, wiping the rain from his face and wringing out his beard, he began to pray, and pray quickly for the amber prayer beads he held in his gnarled hand were passing between his finger and thumb so fast that he might almost have been counting the individual air pockets that buffeted the flying carpet. “I think,” he said, not unreasonably, “I have a tremendous fear of flying.”

  Philippa concentrated on taking the carpet even higher, but the gray cloud, a cumulonimbus, heavy with rain like a giant dirty sponge filled with water, seemed to be interminable.

  Worse was to follow, however, as a sheet of lightning flashed in front of them and lit up the sky like a phalanx of photographers. And a few seconds later, a rumble of thunder turned into a virtual artillery barrage.

  “This isn’t good,” murmured Philippa.

  “I will never complain about British Airways again,” Moo shouted above the tumultuous noise.

  Mr. Swaraswati threw away his prayer beads and covered his ears with the palms of his hands. “Oh, calamity!” he cried. “Calamity!”

  “You’re not helping,” Philippa told her passengers. “Gee, no wonder pilots lock the door to the cockpit.”

  “Can’t you get us out of here?” Moo shouted again to make herself heard above the terrible storm.

  “I’m trying for Pete’s sake,” said Philippa, mentally redoubling her efforts to lift them clear of the tempest that now threatened to destroy them.

  “Use your djinn power to quiet the storm,” suggested Moo.

  Philippa frowned. Who does she think I am? she wondered crossly. Moses?

  “Or to make us feel more comfortable.”

  “Not while I’m flying this thing, I can’t,” Philippa said through gritted teeth. “I don’t dare take my mind off handling the carpet in order to do any of that. I might lose control.”

  That’s what comes of having a focus word that takes eight seconds to finish saying, she told herself, and resolved to go back to something shorter as soon as they were out of the storm.

  Another sheet of lightning illuminated the sky around them, only this time it seemed closer than before, flashing on and off like a huge neon light that was about to conk out.

  “I thought you said it was perfectly safe,” yelled Mr. Swaraswati. By now, he was completely prostrate on the carpet, eyes closed, face pressed down as if he hoped he was underground again.

  “It is,” said Philippa. “Just try to relax.”

  For a moment Philippa lost sight of Mr. Swaraswati and Moo as the carpet entered a particularly thick and dark part of the thundercloud. And she was reaching out to take hold of the old fakir’s hand when a third sheet of lightning split the darkening sky in front of her.

  It wasn’t just the sky that was split, only Philippa hardly knew this yet.

  She snatched her hand away as if she had been electrocuted. Her whole arm felt numb. And when she inspected her fingers she found they were black as if they had been burned. Being a djinn this was hardly a great problem and the realization that she had been struck by lightning quickly gave way to a fear that something had happened to Moo and to Mr. Swaraswati, who were still lost in the thick cloud that now enveloped them.

  “Moo?” said Philippa. “Mr. Swaraswati? Are you all right?”

  Hearing no reply, Philippa leaned to one side and stretched out her arm to reassure herself that they were still there. And not finding anyone, she leaned a little farther and then a little farther still until she almost fell off the carpet, or what was left of it.

  Philippa let out a horrified scream, for it was quickly apparent to her that the flying carpet had been cut in two by the sheet of lightning and that Moo and Mr. Swaraswati were gone. She herself was so close to the new edge of the bifurcated carpet that there was even a scorch mark on the trousers she was wearing.

  She shouted their names again, only this time more loudly; she did this several times until, to her huge relief, in the distance she heard them call back.

  “We’re all right,” shouted Moo. “We’re still in the air, but we seem to be going around in circles. That last bolt of lightning must have cut the carpet in half. Where are you?”

  “On the other half,” called Philippa. “Keep shouting, and I’ll come and look for you.”

  “I’ve never been a very shouty sort of person,” said Moo. “But I’ll do my best. Perhaps, if I was to recite a poem, that might help.”

  “I don’t see how reciting poetry could help the situation,” said Mr. Swaraswati. “A prayer might be better.”

  “I mean that Philippa can hear me reciting it,” shouted Moo. “There’s one I know by Kipling that has five verses, so that should give her plenty of time to get a fix on us. I often used to recite it to the girls at my school in India. Many years ago.”

  “Good idea,” shouted Philippa, and wheeled the carpet around in the direction of Moo’s voice even as the storm died away.

  “There’s nothing like a bit of Kipling,” Moo told Mr. Swaraswati, “to keep your spirits up.” Moo started to recite the poem.

  Philippa steered the flying carpet back and forth, up and down through the huge gray cloud, but she continued to fail to see her two companions, and having the strong impression that, if anything, Moo’s voice was getting even farther away, Philippa shouted out again.

  “I can’t hear you,” she said. “What’s the matter? Moo? Answer me. Have you stopped? You said there were five verses of that poem. I’ve only heard three.”

  There was no reply.

  On she flew, around and around until at last she started to fear that she might end up getting as lost as Moo and Mr. Swaraswati.

  “It’s no good,” she said after almost an hour’s search had passed without result. “I can’t see you and I can’t hear you. I’m hoping that maybe the strip of carpet you’re on will carry you on to London and my uncle Nimrod’s house, like it was supposed to do. That’s where I’m going, too. And if you’re not there then Uncle Nimrod will probably know what to do, so don’t panic. Don’t panic. We’ll think of a way to find you. I promise.”

  CHAPTER 30

  UNCLE NIMROD’S FLYING CARPET

  Nimrod, flying back to London with Mr. Burton, tried to read the Joseph Rock papers that Rabbi Joshua had lent to him from the Jewish National Library. But his mind was elsewhere. Mostly his mind was back at the library in Jerusalem and the scene in the Einstein Archive where several hundred papers, including the great scientist’s personal diary, were now missing, to say nothing of one golem.

  “Remind me,” said Nimrod. “The Lahore earthquake was when exactly?”

  “April 1905,” said Burton.

  “A month before Einstein published his first great work on special relativity.”

  “Exactly. But why do you ask?”

  “I was trying to think of a good reason why Jirjis Ibn Rajmus would want to steal Einstein’s diary for the year of 1905. When he was working for the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. And I think I just thought of a good reason. Because the diary must explain something about the Faizabad fakir whose live burial was disturbed by the Lahore earthquake. There must be something in that diary about the man who quite possibly revealed to Einstein one of the great mysteries of the universe.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean,” said Mr. Burton, stroking his long beard. “Who is this Jirjis Ibn Rajmus, anyway?”

  “Jirjis is the son of Rajmus, who is himself the cousin of Iblis the Ifrit,” said Nimrod. “Jirjis lives in the state of Georgia, in the southern United States of America.”

  “A djinn?”
/>   “Yes, and a particularly nasty one, too,” said Nimrod. “Jirjis killed his wife, you know — chopped her into pieces with an ax. And her, he loved. Imagine what he might do to someone he didn’t like.”

  “It doesn’t bear thinking of,” agreed Mr. Burton. “But perhaps she provoked him in some way. The course of true love ne’er runs smooth, and all that sort of thing.”

  “The man who had tried to rescue her from a hole in the ground Jirjis turned into an ape.”

  “Better than killing him, I’d say,” said Mr. Burton. “Still, I take your point. This Jirjis sounds like a thoroughly bad fellow.”

  “Oh, he is.”

  “Have you ever met him?”

  “No, but I know his father, Rajmus,” said Nimrod. “I fought a djinn duel against him once.”

  “Which I suppose you won,” said Mr. Burton. “Since you’re still here.”

  “Yes.”

  “So this Jirjis is not likely to feel particularly well-disposed to you or any member of your family,” said Mr. Burton. “Or any of your friends.”

  “No, indeed,” said Nimrod. “If ever we met, I think I can safely say it would be him or me.”

  “And you think he might be connected with the change in the world’s luck?”

  “It would certainly explain a great deal about what’s going on,” said Nimrod. “Possession of one or more as yet unrevealed secrets of the universe would be just the kind of power a djinn like him would crave. I imagine he wanted the Einstein papers for some clue that might be there as to how he might find one of the five remaining fakirs.”

  “But if he’s a powerful djinn,” said Mr. Burton.

  “He is,” said Nimrod. “Very powerful.”

  “Then what could he want with human knowledge?”

  “Knowledge is knowledge,” said Nimrod. “Whether it’s human or djinn. And physics is physics. If there’s another secret of the universe that’s as important and momentous as e equals mc squared, then Jirjis would certainly want to have that knowledge. To build a weapon perhaps. To make himself more powerful. Who knows what’s in a mind as warped as that?”

  “I had forgotten how much wickedness is in the world,” said Mr. Burton.

  Arriving back in the garden of his house in Kensington and Bayswater, Nimrod eyed the flying carpet that was already lying on his lawn with concern because it was smaller than he remembered and scorched along one edge. And full of worry that something might have happened to Philippa, or to John — he was as yet uncertain to whom the flying carpet belonged — he hurried through the back door of his house.

  Philippa was sitting in the kitchen nursing a cup of coffee, and seeing her uncle again she stood up and faced him nervously.

  “It’s not my fault,” she said. “It’s not my fault because there was this terrible storm, right? And the flying carpet got struck by a sheet of lightning. And the carpet got split into two and we got separated in a thick cloud and I flew around and looked for them for ages. And Moo recited a poem for me so that I might have some idea where they were. But it was no good because I couldn’t see a thing inside the cloud and for all I know, she and Mr. Swaraswati are still up there, because they’re not here like I hoped they would be. And I really didn’t know what to do so I came back here, but they weren’t and now you are, thank goodness, because we have to go back and look for them right away even though I’m tired and I just want to go to bed and sleep for, like, a thousand years.”

  Philippa sat down and looked miserable.

  “Mr. Swaraswati?” asked Nimrod.

  “Mr. Swaraswati is the fakir,” said Philippa. “The real fakir. One of the fakirs who got told one of the secrets of the universe by the Tirthankar of Faizabad. And not one of those fake mendicant fakirs. I had to deal with them. Two of them. They were really unpleasant. I had to turn them into budgies. Only they got eaten by a couple of ferrets. Which kind of upset me.” Philippa swallowed with difficulty. “A lot, because I guess that means they’re dead. Which makes it my fault. And I’m really not very happy about that. I mean, I’m beginning to see my mother’s POV on this one, Uncle Nimrod.”

  Tears welled up in Philippa’s eyes and, taking off her glasses, she blinked several times and tried to hold on to herself.

  Nimrod handed her a handkerchief and she wiped her eyes and blew her nose loudly.

  “And you left him alone on a cloud, with one of the last great secrets of the universe?” said Mr. Burton.

  “And Moo,” said Philippa. “He’s not alone. Moo’s with him.” She offered Nimrod back his handkerchief.

  “Oh, well, I suppose that makes it all right,” said Mr. Burton.

  “Keep it.” Nimrod tutted loudly. “Budgies, eh?” “Yes.”

  “Pity,” said Nimrod. “It would have been useful to have questioned them.”

  “Oh, I did,” said Philippa. “They told me they were working for some sheikh who lives in Cairo. A man called —”

  “Jirjis Ibn Rajmus,” said Nimrod.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  Nimrod shook his head. “Never mind that. We’ve got to find that fakir before someone else does.” Nimrod pointed at the garden. “Come on,” he said. “There’s no time to lose. A flying carpet without a guiding mind could end up just about anywhere, depending on the wind. Fortunately for us, when properly directed to do so, one rug will follow the other. I shall simply direct my own carpet to pursue what remains of your own carpet, much as I would instruct a bloodhound to go after a scent.”

  “I might have done that myself,” explained Philippa. “But I didn’t know how.”

  “Didn’t you see me do it with Groanin?” asked Nimrod. “Back in the Atlas Mountains?”

  “No.”

  “By the way, have you heard anything from Groanin? Or John?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, well, I’m sure they’re all right. I armed Groanin with a discrimens, just in case of an emergency. Not to mention enough stores to equip an expedition to the South Pole.” Nimrod frowned. “Now where was I?”

  “Telling me how to sic one carpet on another.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, it’s quite simple,” said Nimrod, and in the garden he showed Philippa how it was done.

  “You take a very sharp knife or a razor,” he explained. “And with it you lightly shave the surface of the carpet until you have collected a small amount of material on the blade’s edge.” Nimrod produced a disposable razor from his coat pocket and scraped it across the carpet until there were a few millimeters of blue fibers visible on the blade. “Now, the carpet is made of silk, of course, so you have to make a mark of respect to the carpet by crushing the larva of a Bombyx mori in your hand. That’s a domesticated silk moth to an American like you, Philippa.”

  Muttering his focus word, which was QWERTYUIOP, Nimrod opened his palm to reveal a white lepidopteran larva, about one inch long, with a little horn on its back.

  “Like this,” he added. “Fascinating little creatures, really. Each one can make a cocoon that’s made of a raw silk thread of up to three thousand feet long. Think of it: Just ten of these little blighters and you could have a thread that’s the height of Mount Everest.” He sighed. “Shame to kill it really, but that’s the thing about a lot of old djinn bindings. It is rather cruel. But then so is meat, I suppose.”

  Philippa pulled a face at the sight of the worm in Nimrod’s hand.

  “Then you blow the fluff from the blade into the air above the carpet and strike it hard, three times with the palm of the hand in which you just crushed the silkworm larva, and shout ‘suivi,’ as if you were playing baccarat or chemin de fer. I kid you not.”

  “I’m surprised I didn’t work it out myself,” said Philippa.

  Nimrod shrugged. “I know it all sounds terribly arcane and old-fashioned, but this is one of the reasons we djinn abandoned flying carpets in the first place and took up riding whirlwinds. That and bad weather, of course. Flying carpets aren’t so good in storms, as you’ve already dis
covered.”

  “And how.”

  When Mr. Burton and Philippa had seated themselves on the flying carpet, Nimrod blew the silk fibers into the air, crushed the silkworm larva in his hand, and banged hard three times on the surface of the carpet. Nothing happened.

  “Ah,” said Nimrod. “I was forgetting something.” And taking hold of Philippa’s thumb, he stabbed it quickly with a pin. “The scent.”

  “Ow,” she protested loudly.

  Nimrod held her thumb so that a large red pearl of blood dripped onto his carpet.

  “Didn’t you have some of my blood already?” she said, wincing as her uncle squeezed her thumb like the rubber end of an eyedropper.

  “Fresh is best, I think,” said Nimrod. “Besides, I already used that blood to set Groanin on his way from Morocco.”

  Once again, he slapped the carpet three times with the flat of his caterpillar-sticky hand and shouted “suivi,” and, once again, nothing happened.

  “Perhaps it already thinks it’s found what it was supposed to be looking for,” said Philippa, pointing to her flying carpet that lay a few yards away on the lawn of Nimrod’s back garden.

  “Yes, of course,” said Nimrod. “Stupid of me.” And uttering his focus word once again he flicked a small ball of fire at the remnant of Philippa’s carpet, which disappeared in a cloud of smoke. “Sorry about that. But we’ll get you another when we have to take Mr. Burton back home to Morocco.”

  As soon as Philippa’s carpet was no more, the carpet rose in the air, and soon they were flying south.

  “Er, are you sure about this direction?” Philippa asked her uncle. “Yorkshire’s north of here, isn’t it? Not southeast.”

  “A suivi binding is quite infallible,” insisted Nimrod. “This must be the direction where the other half of your carpet is headed or has ended up.”

  “I hope they’re all right,” said Philippa.

  And on they flew, across the English Channel and into mainland Europe.

  “This is all to the good,” insisted Nimrod. “We’d have to fly in this direction, anyway. Because as soon as we have rescued Moo and Mr. Swaraswati, we are headed for Tibet.”