The Alchemists of Kush

by Minister Faust

  Mr. Ani returned from the side. Wooden case in his hands.

  “Focus now,” whispered Mr. Ani below the music. He whispered whenever he wanted to teach the most important thing for the day. Whispering forced the boys to listen with extreme care, because Mr. Ani refused to repeat himself—which also meant the boys were on the hook for teaching each other whatever the other one missed.

  Quietly: “You both know the Resurrection Scroll. You’re making great progress in The Book of the Golden Falcon—you already know the third arit.

  Now, what I’m about to show you,” said Mr. Ani, gesturing towards his wooden case, “is the secret to understanding society, history and even the future.

  The boys leaned forward, elbows on knees, chins on fists.

  “Like imagine you’ve been walking through a dark forest your whole life,” said the man in the black-and-gold skullcap, “and then suddenly the sun rises, and you look around and see for the first time what was in fact always all around you, and where the wolves are, and where the food is, and where there’s a way out.”

  Mr. Ani opened his wooden case. Removed and held up a hunk of dark grey rock.

  “Lead,” he said.

  He handed it to Rap. It was smooth and cold.

  “Eighty percent of people on this planet are made of this,” said Sbai Ani. “It’s dense. Heavy. Doesn’t conduct electricity. Blocks X-rays. It’s dull and unreflective. Transformed?”

  Rap: “Yeah.”

  Jackie Chan: “Uh-huh.”

  JC handed him back the lead. Mr. Ani held up a jagged, glittering, metallic yellow-grey block. Looked like a bunch of iron dice welded together.

  “Pyrite.”

  “Fool’s gold?” asked Jackie Chan.

  “Very good. Shiny. Pretty, even.” He handed it over to JC.

  “A hundred years ago just north of here, during the gold rush, down in the darkness of mines and caves, there were desperate men who dug this up. Thought they’d found their salvation. Thought they were rich.

  “But only out in the sun could they see how wrong they were. Because pyrite’s worthless.

  “Ten percent of humanity is made of this. Transformed?”

  Jackie Chan, nodding, squinting to show his focus: “Ri-i-i-i-ght.”

  Rap: “Yeah.”

  Rap handed back the pyrite. Mr. Ani held up a small pendant dangling from a fine chain, a flattened oval with a tangent on the bottom. Raised characters sang something mysterious.

  “Gold,” said Mr. Ani.

  He didn’t hand it over.

  The amulet glittered hypnotically.

  “The final ten percent of humanity is made of this,” whispered Mr. Ani.

  “Gold’s highly conductive. Beautiful. Precious. Whole nations used to measure their wealth based on how much of this they possessed. And it’s formed inside the hearts of supernovas. You know what supernovas are?”

  “Yeah,” said JC. “Like, super-duper huge mega-stars. That explode.”

  “That’s right, young brother. Where’d you learn that?”

  “Star Trek,” he said.

  “Good,” chuckled Mr. Ani. “Me too, probably. In the olden days. So let’s transform all this.

  “People are born lead, and most people stay that way their whole lives. They’re the Leadites.

  “And they’re easily led astray by those who’re turned into—or who turn themselves into—the Pyrites. The Pyrites are like pirates because they hijack people, keep em hostage, steal their treasure, and prevent them from ever getting where they’re supposed to get to, even dumping them on islands in the middle of nowhere or drowning them at sea.

  “And any gold they find, they steal it and horde it, and even bury it in chests under the sand.”

  The boys nodded, grasping fragments, knowing that others were just beyond their fingertips.

  “So who’s left? Gold. From supernovas, light-sources so powerful they can outshine entire galaxies. Gold is knowledge: the most precious thing in the universe.

  “If you have everything and don’t have knowledge, you can’t use what you do have or appreciate how much it’s worth, so to you, it’s actually worthless.

  “If you don’t have true gold, you spend your whole life chasing after and stockpiling pyrite thinking it’s worth something, when actually, it’s worth nothing.”

  Mr. Ani’s eyes were slits. To Rap, the pendant was shining as brilliantly as the sun.

  Mr. Ani: “Now on the other hand, if you had nothing or’d lost everything except knowledge, you could deploy that knowledge to acquire and use and appreciate everything else you were missing.

  “The Ancient Egyptians called gold nub.The land of gold was Nubia. And so the people who achieve the state of true and living gold are Nubians.”

  “Mr. Ani?” said Rap. “Uh, I’m half-Sudanese.”

  “Yes, brother. Clearly.”

  “Yeah, but, y’know . . . on my father’s side, I’m Dinka and Nubian.”

  “Words have multiple meanings, brother,” said Mr. Ani. “We’re talking symbols here. Symbols have power, power enough to change the world. Look at em: cross, star-and-crescent, Star of David, sickle-and-hammer, swastika, dollar sign, e equals em-cee-squared—symbols.

  “Just like The Book of the Golden Falcon. That’s not history. It’s myth. History is about facts—this happened here at that time because of so-and-so. Myth never happened—but it’s always true. Transformed?”

  Rap nodded. He thought he did.

  “So what I’m teaching both of you right now is alchemy,” said Mr. Ani. “Again, a symbol. I know you know what alchemy is.”

  At last for Rap, the rotating puzzle pieces slid into beautiful geometry so their connected picture emerged from chaos. He whispered, awe-ignited. “It’s the mystic art of turning lead into gold.”

  “Exactly. We’re all born as lead. If we’re lucky, or if we have the right teachers at the right time, we start our own transformation into gold. Into Nubians. But having isn’t the ultimate state of righteousness and mastery. We need to be B-ing, and M-C-ing.”

  “Building,” said the boys, leaping on the cues, “ministering, and creating.”

  “That’s right. So remember those proportions: eighty, ten and ten. Symmetry. Alchemists and Pyrites are even-Steven for numbers. But because the Pyrites’ve shackled the bodies, minds and spirits of four-fifths of the human race—the Leadites—they have power and wealth way beyond their numbers.

  “So the Alchemists are locked in a . . . in an asymmetrical war with the Pyrites, who’re trying to keep the Leadites asleep, dull, unreflective, unconductive, while the Alchemists are trying to wake them up, alchemise them, and change the whole world forever.”

  Leaning forward, he bore his eyes into each of them.

  “I’m an Alchemist,” he whispered. “My duty is simple: turn lead into gold. Stop the lead-poisoning. Guide Leadites from the piracy and thievery and chains of the Pyrites right here in the Swamps of Death and the Savage Lands . . . and help them transform themselves into Nubians,” said Mr. Ani. “Into true and living gold.”

  5.

  “Hope you’re not in a rush, bruh,” said Mr. Ani, U-turning on 107th Avenue at 108th Street back towards the cemetery where they’d just dropped Rap’s friend. “Forgot something I was gonna give JC.”

  “No problem,” said Rap. Really, Mr. Ani’d been driving him the long home way anyway, just for kicks and conversation.

  Mr. Ani swerved his spotless, shining 2002 gold-and-black Pontiac Sunfire back west along the southern pipeline of Kush.

  9 PM on the final night of June. With the window open, Rap breathed in air: hot and dry and magnificently mosquito-free. Sound system smooth with Main Source’s “Just Hangin’ Out,” flying violins and a down-escalator bassline. Even sitting down, felt like he was strutting.

  The sun wasn’t even close to dipping its toes on the horizon, but it was igniting everything it touched and everything Rap saw: the dark chocolate faces of Somali girl
s in silk headscarves and black ankle-length skirts . . . the blue jeans and mango-satin blouses of the Ethiopian women, straightened hair spilling over their shoulders . . . across the street, the red short-shorts and lipstick on a way-too-skinny, way-too-young hooker of indeterminate race.

  And the music must’ve been an extendamix, with the breakbeat rolling on like waves, and inside, Rap raised a sail without fail:

  I melted lead from my head

  And channeled lightning, I’m frightening

  The Pyrites will try to drain my charge, but I enlarge

  I got my gold from the heart-of-a-supernova

  Righteousness is never over, moreover

  I’m not dying, or crying

  Cuz finally I started flying . . . .

  . . . the mural outside the tiny South Sudanese youth club, the one Rap’d never been inside. Glowing in the late-sun’s amber.

  Downstreet, Eritrean taxi drivers on break-time, standing together in the 7-11 parking lot sipping coffee from styrocups, smoking packs down to empty.

  In that same parking lot, two fifteen-year-old Sudanese boys loping past a Rwandese kid standing next to mum who was filling the kid’s bicycle tire. The Sudanese teens were rocking red bandanas and giant jeans drooping off their pimp-limping asses.

  Rap shook his head at the pair, wondering how long it’d take Kush’s Lil Wayne and Lil Bow Wow to quit trying to out-Lil each other.

  Mr. Ani pulled around the block, stopped his Sunfire in front of JC’s apartment, one of many facing the two sections of cemetery on either side of 107th Avenue.

  “You know what JC’s buzz-number is?” asked Mr. Ani.

  Rap shook his head. “I’ve never even been to JC’s place. Not inside, I mean.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah . . . before the night we met you, we really weren’t even friends.”

  “I can never seem to remember that. You too seem so . . . hm.”

  “And plus, he seems funny about his place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, one time he and I were busing home and he was getting off, and I told him I needed to use the bathroom, so he took me to that halal pizza place across the street.”

  Mr. Ani frowned.

  The three-story walk-up was typical for the area. Ten-year-old vinyl siding that originally beautified the place had aged faster and uglier than the contractors had promised the landlords, who’d lost their shot at going condo when the economy’d had a stroke.

  And no matter what, siding couldn’t hide the building’s forty-plus years of being squat, ugly and crumbling.

  Mr. Ani checked the door registry for Abdi, the Somali Smith, and found three. The buzzer was busted. And since the lock was, too, they walked in.

  A couple of Somali teens did a double-take on Moon. “Sup, man!” said the tall one. “Aintchu that Morpheus guy? From YouTube?”

  The shorter one: “Yo, like Morpheus X, fuh real.”

  “That’s me.” Dropping them each a dap, he said, “Make sure you take the red pill.”

  Last thing Rap heard one of them say when they were upstairs: “Who-o-oah, shit! That was really him!”

  6.

  The third Abdi was the third door of the third floor. Behind it, two voices battled: a woman’s and a screaming child’s.

  Mr. Ani’s knock shattered the woman’s yelling.

  After shuffling towards the door, she yelled in Somali that Rap translated: “Who is it?” When she didn’t get an answer, she repeated it in English.

  “Ma’am, it’s Yimunhotep Ani, your son’s . . . uh . . . . ” He glanced at Rap with question marks in his eyes.

  Rap shrugged, offered, “Martial arts teacher?”

  Mr. Ani called through the door, “Martial arts teacher.”

  The door cracked open to the length of its chain. A vertical slice of a muhajabah ’s face stared across the gap.

  “You!” she snapped. “The famous hero. What do you want?”

  He raised his voiced over the screaming, kicking child in the hallway behind the kitchen. “I, uh . . . have something for your son.”

  Rap was embarrassed. The woman should be showing his sbai some respect. He shrugged an apology for the situation towards Mr. Ani while the door shut and reopened without the chain.

  The woman had a round face, but with her tent-like abaya, Rap couldn’t tell if she were chubby all the way down her 5’2” frame.

  The woman’s glare, the loud TV, the sound of five or more other kids arguing, the same child screaming and banging—the burn spread across Rap’s shoulders and down his back.

  A, Africentric . . . B, Build . . . C, Create. . .

  Kept reciting internally, trying to suffocate the fire . . . .

  “Well?” sneered the woman. “You sett you have somethingk for my son? What? More traable? Or draaks to sell?”

  Mr. Ani’s eyebrows dashed towards each other for support.

  “Ma’am, I don’t even drink or smoke. I definitely don’t have anything to do with drugs.”

  “That’s why you were fighting those men who entted up dett in that store, isn’t it? Over draaks? That’s why you’re teaching my son your k’roddy, isn’t it? To be one of your gang-a-sters?”

  “Actually, ma’am, I teach jiu jitsu and kung fu. And—”

  BANGING.

  The screaming kid?

  The woman yelled at her other kids in Somali to take care of their little brother.

  Would she be swearing like that if she knew I could understand her?

  Looked past him. He was just wallpaper.

  A seven-year-old cyclone with legs screamed over, eyes wild, nose running, and started banging his head against the wall.

  She yanked him away, him kicking her and squealing and keening, a trapped animal. Made Rap want to puke.

  Then Mr. Ani freaked out Rap by stepping inside. Rap followed as if chained.

  “What are you doing?” said Mrs. Abdi while her son kicked her and screamed.

  7.

  At the kitchen sink, Mr. Ani grabbed a glass from the dish strainer, filled it half-way with water, grabbed the bottle of Joy and spurted a long green stripe into it.

  “Who do you think you are, breakingk into my house—”

  Grabbed a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, rolled it into a tube.

  Crouched a metre out of kicking range from the Tasmanian Devil.

  Began blowing bubbles straight up in the air.

  The boy, howling, for thirty seconds, but with each second, glances got longer, transformed into staring . . . .

  And the boy quit screaming as if Mr. Ani’d thrown a switch.

  Mrs. Abdi de-clamped her son’s arms. Same switch.

  The man in the black-and-gold skullcap kept blowing bubbles while the boy stood with a tear-tracked and snot-nosed face, staring at him, eyes like twin moons.

  Mr. Ani, slowly: Dip. Raise. Puff. Release.

  Offered the cup and the tube to the boy, silently.

  The boy took the offering. Dipped the tube. Put the correct end to his mouth.

  Made a bubble.

  The boy squealed with delight.

  “Bubbles,” whispered Mr. Ani. “Bubbles.”

  “Buh,” said the seven-year-old. “Buh!”

  And then JC walked in

  Looked like he’d just come back to his hideout after a bank robbery, and two sheriffs and a deputy were there waiting for him.

  8.

  “Where were you?” demanded his mother in Somali. “Thiss man has been here for half an hour waitingk for you!”

  In English: “Just went to the store, Mum, after Mr. Ani dropped me off.”

  “I was just about to tell your mother here,” said Mr. Ani immediately, “how well you’re doing at jiu jitsu, and how impressed I am by your understanding of all the books you’re reading.”

  “Thiss is Ibrahim,” said Mrs. Abdi. She nodded towards her youngest child, but she was talking to Mr. Ani for the first time without
hostility. “Please, please, come in.”

  Hot milk, black tea, sugar, spice, white ceramic cups. Mr. Ani, Rap and Jamal Abdi sat sipping, while Mrs. Abdi couldn’t help but stare at her littlest one playing with bubbles, silent except for happy chirps of “buh!”

  Six other Abdi children stood staring, too.

  “When was your son diagnosed?” asked Mr. Ani.

  Mrs. Abdi face twitched, like someone’d just jabbed her with scissors.

  JC, even more mortified than when he’d walked in, motionless, knees together, eyes scanning for anything buried inside the ancient orange shag rug to justify his attention.

  “Three years ago,” she said. A sigh. Hissing out of her.

  “I didn’t even know what wass wrong with him at firrust. He wass learning his words like any boy, but then he just stoppit. He wouldn’t look at me in the eyes anymore. And . . . sometimes he, he would spit at me, or if I took him outside, he’d spit at others.”

  She looked at Mr. Ani. Rap saw her eyes. Wounded.

  “A neighbour said he had it. I didn’t even know the word . . . so I askid a neighbour to look it up on the computer.” Bit her lip. “I hated anyone who even said the wordt. Andt all the people who triedt to give me advices, saying, ‘You shouldn’t take him outside! You shouldn’t let people see him!’

  “I’m supposit to keep him in a p’rison? And there’s supposit to be help and treatment, but at the school, there’s almossit nothingk. No help. And I have seven other children, including this one!” Stabbing a hand at JC across the room. JC shifting, dodging the motherly shank.

  “And their father worruks around the clock, drivingk cab. And I am here alone while Ibrahim is like a bomb who can expalode at any time! I keep hoping, insha’Allah, for relief—”

  “This is actually a big problem where I was living the last fifteen years, in Minnesota,” whispered Mr. Ani.

  She nodded, catching it: Minnesota, AKA New Mogadishu.