The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories

by Mahvesh Murad

  He was in the fringes of the river side area of Narayanganj, where the alert level was perpetually screaming red due to unspeakable life forms breeding in the water, a sort of adjacent sub-city swallowed by Dhaka a hundred years ago, a pustule avoided by even the moderately desperate homeless, one step away from being cluster-bombed into oblivion by the satellites above. Thus he was able to finish his meal in peace, and was just contemplating brewing some tea when a gust of wind knocked the tent askew, and a lumpy black dog nosed in.

  Hanu sighed, and gave the dog a bit of rice. It ate directly from his hand, thumping its tail in appreciation. Hanu got out of the tent, to prevent the creature from breaking it. Where the dog roamed, its master would not be far behind.

  “You’re corrupting my hound,” a voice said. In the shadows a slow form materialized, a man-like thing extruding a field of disturbance around it. It was the djinn Imbidor, an ancient creature recently woken from centuries of sleep, diving again into the cut and thrust of mortal life, puzzled somewhat by the rapacious change in humanity.

  “He’s a mongrel, Imbi,” Hanu said. “Even more bastardized than you.”

  Imbidor frowned. “Are you sure? The one who sold it to me, that man by the sweet shop with the bird cages, he said that it was a pure breed Mirpur Mastiff.”

  “Mirpur Mastiff?” Hanu laughed. “Cheeky bastard. Mirpur Mastiff is a euphemism, for the most mangled blood line possible. Your hound is descended from the original street dogs that roamed Dhaka, before they started injecting turtle genes into them.”

  “Oh.” He scowled. “Humans are always ripping me off.”

  “You want some rice?”

  “With cardamom and saffron?”

  “Of course.”

  The Djinn took the pot and ate the last of the rice. He had his own spoon, a silver filigreed thing which no doubt came from some kingly horde. “Thanks, Hanu. You’re a good cook, I always say.”

  “Not much demand for cooks, these days,” Hanu said shortly. His father had been a cook once, long ago, before the banking cartel had pushed all the Cardless out of the better neighborhoods into the subsidized boroughs, little better than feral slums. There had been a time when there was apparently a ‘middle class’ sandwiched between rich and poor.

  He shook his head. His father had told a lot of fairy stories. Then he had fucked off. “Plus it’s illegal to use real plants. They’d probably arrest me. Endangering the cardamom or something.”

  “Well, for the Fringe, then,” Imbidor said. “We should have a restaurant. Something like the old days, a place for people to gather. Plenty of the Fringe would like it. Even some of the citizens.”

  The citizens were general populace without capital, whose main contribution to society was the biotech their bodies spewed, adding to the mass of benevolent nanites fighting the good fight in the sky, scrubbing the air, killing disease, controlling the microclimate, forming the bubble which protected Dhaka from the big bad world outside. The Fringe was a subset of the citizenry: the homeless, the drifters, the thrill-seekers, the darker edge of the maladjusted. And djinn. More and more often, djinn emerged from slumber, found a world near wrecked by hubris, found that the lonely places they favored despoiled, unlivable. Many returned to sleep right away. It was rumored that djinn did not age while they slept, that they could afford to while away centuries waiting for a better time downstream. Of course there was no guarantee such a time would come.

  “I would cook and you would serve,” Hanu joked. “We could call it ‘Bring Your Own Spoon.’”

  “And the hound would be the lookout,” Imbi said, enthused.

  “We already have everything. The tent, the stove, the pot.”

  “The mosques give away free bowls,” Imbidor said. “Their food is some horrible grey sludge, but the bowls are good. I’ve collected a stack of them since I woke up. And we’d give real food. No discrimination against the Cardless either. Pay however you can.”

  “Why not?” Hanu said, suddenly struck by the thought. “Why can’t we do it?”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying!” Imbidor shouted. “Come on Hanu! I’m so bored.” Boredom was the reason the djinn went to sleep so often in the first place.

  “Okay, I’m in. We have to find a good place to set up the kitchen. And food suppliers, well, I know a few. Benches? Clean water? We’ll need a place without the cameras, if possible...” The possibilities seemed endless. Problems jostled in his mind, shifting in priority as solutions clicked into place. It felt good to think again.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Imbidor said. “I know the perfect place.”

  He extended his distortion field around Hanu like a ragged cloak, keeping out the bad stuff in the air. Hanu stumbled from the slight vertigo it caused, felt that familiar tinge of nausea brought by proximity to the field, but in truth Imbi’s power was tatty, weakened from some ancient conflict, his touch feather-light compared to the great djinn. Once Hanu had seen a marid with a field so powerful it was opaque, reflecting the sun, a solid fist that rammed through the crowd unheeding, had seen a man caught in its center pulped to death by unimaginable pressures.

  Djinn did not officially exist, although the Fringe knew perfectly well they were there, often out in plain sight, going about their business. There were rumors that great djinn lords ruled human corporations, wielding terrible power from the shadows. Imbidor was not that kind of djinn. He had no dignatas, the peculiar currency the djinn traded in; he commanded no respect, had no followers, no wealth in either world. Even mighty djinnkind had the indigent.

  THEY WORKED THEIR way ever deeper into Narayanganj, Hanu suppressing the atavistic fear of the bad air. The street was still lined with shanties, extruded sheets lashed together with adhesive bands, cheap stuff which could be printed out by the many blackmarket operations found in greater Dhaka. Here the people seemed sicker, farther away from the center, and their progress was tracked warily, with more than one weapon being raised, although the djinn was recognized and allowed to pass. People moved here out of desperation, for though the main boroughs of the Cardless were crowded, at least the air was good, basic supplies were provided, and there was work. Here by the river the town was semi-abandoned, and as they got closer to the water, the citizens became more furtive, many carrying deformities, the scarring of errant nanites. The big pharmas liked to experiment their new designs on high-density populations, beta-testing algorithms on live users – for good nanites, of course, never anything weaponized; that would be immoral. There were always side effects, though.

  “Here we are,” Imbi said, stopping.

  It was a six-storey shell of a building, built in the old style with concrete and steel, the bricks, wires, windows, doors, anything electrical looted long ago. It was near the river bank, close enough that Hanu could feel the cool air stirring, and his instinctive fear of the water made him cringe.

  “Smugglers,” Imbi said, knocking on the door of a makeshift room.

  A man with an electric sword came out and watched them without speaking. Hanu glanced at him disinterestedly. The Fringe was full of smugglers with swords.

  “We want the empty room,” Imbi said.

  “For the night? Or do you actually intend to live here?”

  “More than a night,” Hanu said. “We want to try something out.”

  The swordsman shrugged. “The djinn crashes here sometimes. I’m okay with that. I give him electricity and he sweeps for bad bugs with the distortion thing of his.”

  “It’s a pretty good spot,” Imbi said, embarrassed by his poverty. People who lived riverside were the scum of the earth. “I can clean the air, at least enough for us few.”

  “You don’t get sick here? No black lung? None of the skin stuff?” Hanu stared at the smuggler, trying to spot defects.

  The smuggler turned his sword off. “Not so far.”

  “How?”

  “There’s a lot more people living here than you think,” the man said. “The djinn cleans the air a
nd we have a nanite replicator. It’s old, but it helps. What business did you say you were in?”

  “Hanu Khillick,” Hanu said. “Restaurateur.”

  The smuggler burst out laughing. “Karka. Riverboat smuggler and pirate.”

  “Imbidor of Gangaridai,” said Imbi. “Djinn. Professional giraffe racer. Ahem. Of course, there are no giraffes left.”

  “Come inside,” Karka said. “Let’s get you set up. I’m not going to charge you rent, as long as the Djinn helps out. Once in a while surveillance drones show up. You have to take care of those fast, or corporate security will send someone down to investigate.”

  Inside was a sparsely furnished space, well swept, covered with the blackmarket geegaws of the smuggler’s trade, and a few solid pieces – a power generator, an ancient nanite replicator, and a squat printer with its guts out. Karka was well-set-up; no wonder he survived out here. Hanu wondered what he smuggled. Karka motioned them to sit on the futons covering the floor.

  “I will be most happy to help,” Imbi said.

  “You guys need anything else, you’re gonna have to pay. Air scrubbing for three ain’t cheap. You got any money?”

  Hanu shook his head.

  “I am the descendent of an ancient empire, known as the first city. I have lived hundreds of years, I have looked into the void of the abyss, I have seen the dark universe of the djinn, I hold over three hundred patents currently pending litigation in the celestial courts...” Imbi said.

  “So no cash, I guess?”

  “Er, no.”

  “Any sat minutes?”

  Hanu shook his head. Sat minutes were hire time from the satellites, a secure pin which activated the chip in your head for a designated time, showing you the vastly expanded VR universe the rich people inhabited. Everyone got chipped, for consumer tracking and census purposes, but very few of the Cardless ever actually got to walk the VR world. Bandwidth was jealously guarded. Sat minutes were the way, a brief glimpse into paradise, a ten-minute birthday treat for a child, a wedding gift, a de facto currency, hoarded but never consumed, a drug for the VR junkies, news, communication, vital information, everything rolled into one.

  “Do I look like I have sat minutes? I’m a cook. I’ll cook you food.”

  “I got an old vat maker,” Karka said, looking at him dubiously.

  “Chinese or Indian?”

  “Post crash Malay.”

  “Everything tastes of coconut, right?”

  “Haha, yea, I don’t even know what coconut is. Some kind of nut?”

  “There were big trees once, and these were the fruit, kind of like big balls full of liquid.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s fucken food for me, coconut seaweed.”

  “I’ll make you rice right now that will make you cry.”

  “No, thanks.” Karka looked queasy. “I already ate. Look, man, don’t worry. I’ll help. Imbi sorted me out a couple of times with his djinnjitsu.”

  Hanu scrounged in his bag of provisions and brought out something he had been saving, a rare find. It was a raw mango, from a tree near the red zone which had miraculously survived all these years, and now had suddenly given fruit. No one touched them, of course, fearing some hideous mutation; even the street kids stayed away. They had all heard stories of trees bursting open to release deadly nanite spores, of the terrible Two-Head Disease, which caused a bulbous protuberance to come out of your ass, or of the Factory Germ, which slowly hardened your body into metal. Hanu’s father had taught him to forage, however, as the very poorest must do, and this foraging had given him an instinct for what could or could not be eaten.

  He sliced the mango with his knife, letting the slivers fall inside his pot, careful not to lose the precious juice. Then he brought out a small lemon, nursed carefully from his errant herb garden, cut it and squeezed half of it onto the fruit. Salt, pepper, turmeric, mustard seed paste and chili flakes followed, a little bit each because the flavors were intensely different from vat food, almost alien. He mixed it together by hand, till the slices were covered, glistening. Karka and Imbi had gathered around, mouths open, inhaling the smell of raw cut mango and the sharp tang of mustard, drawn to it.

  “What the hell?” Karka lowered his head involuntarily, breathing in the smells.

  Hanu ate a piece, showed it was safe. “It’s good.”

  Imbi, who had largely bypassed the Dissolution Era, had no such qualms and quickly forked a third of the mango onto his palm.

  “It is good,” Karka said, unable to resist a slice. He looked entranced. “It’s damn good. You are a cook.”

  “You in?”

  “You seriously want to open a restaurant.”

  “You’ve got a perfect view of the river.”

  “You realize they call this the river of the dead?”

  THE NEXT MORNING they got started, Karka joining them for a breakfast of rice, the last of Hanu’s hoard. Afterwards he handed over a key for the spare room, and a handful of electronics, a solar battery, some basic furniture. He dragged out the air scrubber and put it between their doors. “I eat for free. Plus Imbi does his shit. We share the air. If it runs out, we split the costs.”

  “Deal.”

  They dispersed, Hanu going on an herb run, Imbi dispatched to spread the word and hunt for sources of raw material. It was, after all, useless to have a restaurant without any food. Hanu knew this was the biggest hurdle. He expected the dream to end soon, for where on earth would Imbi find so much real food?

  Nonetheless, he set up his station on time, arranging his supplies of herbs and spices, warming up water from the ancient ion filter, even setting up a bench for the customers. If Imbi came back, they would open for lunch. By eleven o’clock, hopeful looking-people invited by Imbi were ambling around, steering away from the glaring Karka, maintaining nonchalance. Hanu studied his prospective customers, and had to conclude that they hadn’t a penny to their name collectively. He might as well have started a vat kitchen, feeding the homeless, like the mosques.

  “This lot couldn’t buy crabs from a brothel,” Karka said, sword hilt at hand. “If Imbi’s not back by noon, they’re going to start looting.”

  “The road is my home,” Hanu said. “I am not afraid.” People always assume that poor people are dangerous. They wouldn’t be here, if they were.

  Imbi staggered in half past noon carrying a large burlap sack. There were a solid dozen customers still loitering, despite Karka’s best efforts. The three of them gathered inside the room, where the Djinn threw open his sack with obvious pride.

  “What the hell is it?” Karka recoiled with disgust.

  “It’s a fish,” Imbi said. “From the river.”

  It was, indeed, an enormous fish, scales glistening, gills still flapping for air. Hanu remembered his father bringing one home once. Karka had never seen one, was clearly repulsed with the whole idea of eating something from the river.

  “Look, there’s a dozen people outside, and we have to feed them something,” Hanu said. “I know how to cook this, I remember.”

  “What’s wrong?” Imbi asked Karka. “We used to fish from the river all the time...”

  “That was two hundred years ago, Imbi,” Karka said. “We don’t touch that shit anymore...”

  Hanu ignored them. He had a fish to scale, and he’d only ever seen it done as a child. It took rather longer than an hour to get it right, the pieces prepped, somewhat mangled, but soon thereafter the smell and sizzle of grilled fish permeated from the pre-fab, and his customers sat down and waited in an almost hypnotized state, so docile and silent that even Karka had no complaints.

  WHEN HE WAS ready, he brought it out, fifteen pieces of grilled fish with crispy skin, flavored with ginger, garlic and chili, with little balls of rice. He had used up everything. They took their portions solemnly, signifying the importance of the moment, ate with their hands along the makeshift bench, with all the dignity of a state banquet. There was no hesitation, no question of what they were ingesting. It
simply smelled too good. Karka ate the last piece, his resistance melted away.

  “God, this is a good way to die,” he said.

  It started up the conversation, rounds of introductions, stumbling praise for the food, old recollections of when they had last seen food like this, of the myriad turns of their lives that had left them Cardless and desperate on the streets. Imbi sat amongst them, extending his field for them, and they marveled at the distortion, wondered aloud that such a powerful creature should be wandering the road with them. And then, by some unspoken consensus, it was time to leave, and they began to make their offerings. A knife, much handled, the last thing a man would give up; an old card for sat minutes, so old, so carefully preserved, to receive a call that never came; a silver locket with the picture taken out, a book of short stories, an ancient watch. The last lady stood up, her hands empty.

  “I have nothing,” she said. “But there is a place with birds... chickens. If I bring them, will you cook?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Hanu. He looked at the small pile of treasure, and tears leaked from his eyes.

  “Hanu and Imbi,” the Djinn said, sweeping his hand back towards the establishment. “We are open for business.”

  OPEN THEY WERE, for six months and more, feeding crowds, sometimes with feasts, sometimes with nothing but onions and rice. Their customers scavenged, bringing food from unknown places. There were unspoken rules. Everything was eaten. No one was turned away. At first, Imbi kept his field up like a tent, kept the bad air at bay, visibly exhausting himself, burning surveillance drones out of the sky. When their accrued wealth piled up, Karka could afford to charge up his replicator, spewing out the good nanites, and people stayed by the river out of faith, adding their bodies to the critical mass required to power these things, the human fuel which made their community work.