by Nafiza Azad
“If you had really stopped making these so-called talismans, baba, they wouldn’t have burned your shop down,” Valentina says, and the old man flinches.
“They? Who are they? How did they find out? I was so careful!” The man licks his dry lips and his eyes well up.
“They are the ones who walk unseen amongst humans. You must have felt them? Their creatures can smell human conjury,” Paheli says. Her voice gentles. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
The man wipes his tears with shaking hands. “What am I supposed to do now? My home is gone. The place I have lived in for sixty years is gone. Everything that remained of my wife is gone.”
We don’t know how to comfort him; our sense of home is tethered more to a person than to a place.
“Well, what do you want with me?” Old Mahmoud asks when reason returns to him. “Are you here to threaten me? I’m telling you, I’m not as weak as you think.”
Paheli purses her lips, perhaps gathering her thoughts. “You must have realized by now that we’re not as human as you are,” she says. The old man shakes his head, denying her words and our existence. “We need you to create a conjury for us.”
“My home was burned down because of these conjuries you keep mentioning. I’m never making them one again!” The old man stands up, but his legs are unsteady, so he sits back down.
“Your words would have more weight if this table weren’t covered with paper conjury,” Talei says sweetly.
“These are just talismans to keep my family safe!” the old man insists.
Paper conjuries won’t work for us. They broadcast their identity with the purple aura; there’s no way Baarish would pick one up willingly, and there’s little chance of us tricking him into doing so.
“Do you have anything other than these paper conjuries?” Paheli asks.
“They’re not conjuries, I’m telling you. These are talismans to keep my family safe.” Old Mahmoud regains his hostility. “Why should I help you?”
“Without us, you’d be dead right now, old man,” Valentina replies. “If we hadn’t told the old woman to call your son, you’d have returned home yesterday, and those who burned your store would have burned you.”
“You don’t have to believe us,” Paheli says. “We’ll give you a lot of money for your… talismans. A lot. Enough that your son no longer needs to run a shop in the old souk, enough that you can leave this country and build a home somewhere else. How about that?”
The old man’s expression becomes complicated. Money is, after all, a limited resource, available only to a select few.
“Well?” Paheli prompts.
“What do you want?” The old man gives in. We knew he would. Not many humans can resist the allure of money.
“Something that isn’t obviously a conj… talisman,” Paheli replies.
The old man frowns, thinking hard. “Can you tell if something is a talisman just by looking at it?”
We all nod.
Seeing that, the old man gets up from his chair and rummages in a cupboard in a corner of the room. After a while he picks out a small box and brings it to the table. From the box, he takes out small rectangular boxes, each one wrapped in yellowed pieces of newspaper. He unwraps one and opens it to reveal a pendant wrought in silver with a semiprecious gem in the center. There is no glow to it, nothing that indicates it is a conjury. It looks like a normal piece of jewelry.
“These talismans protect wearers from harm and injury, but to use them, you have to waken the gem first. To do that, you have to speak the word bound to the gem. Until the word is spoken, the pendant is nothing but simple jewelry.”
“Demonstrate it for us,” Valentina says. When Paheli levels a look at her, she adds, “Please.”
Old Mahmoud slides the pendant through a silver chain and drops the chain over his head and around his neck. He closes his palm around the pendant, closes his eyes, and whispers a word. Then he opens his hand to reveal the pendant, which has a purple aura.
“Do we have to touch it to awaken it? Does it have to be on our person for us to awaken it?” Paheli asks.
“No,” Old Mahmoud replies to both questions. “Is this good?”
“It is good. It is more than good.” Paheli beams. “Sell us all the pendants in your inventory. Take the money we give you and leave this place. Change your name. Change your son’s name. Disappear.” She looks at the old man. “We will give you enough money to do that.”
The old man nods, but he doesn’t thank us. We understand. We have brought him nothing but bad news.
When we step out of the souk, the sun has set and the speakers are broadcasting the azaan for Maghrib. This means the food stalls in the Jemaa el-Fna are open.
Jemaa el-Fna: The Mosque at the End of the World
Magic is thick in places where blood has been spilled. The Jemaa el-Fna, the large square that is our destination, was the site for public executions back in the days of the Almohads, who, according to our understanding, were the nice and kind rulers who did things like public executions. They spilled enough blood in the square that it draws all middle-world creatures in the area, especially after the sun sets.
For humans, the square holds its own attractions. We have sat among crowds of humans, as enthralled as anyone else present, with the tales woven by the storytellers whose rich and rough voices make stories come to life in ways that make your breath hitch and your heart pound. We have seen snakes charmed by the wailing music that charmers play. The chained monkeys set us free, and sometimes we secretly set them free.
The ensuing chaos is always worth it.
When we emerge from the souks out into the square, the sun is a recent memory in the sky and the night is fresh and ripe with possibilities. We skirt past the carts selling fresh orange juice and weave through the increasing numbers of people toward the food stalls that glimmer more enticingly to us than a store selling nothing but diamonds would at this moment.
We probably shouldn’t be here; we should have returned to the riad with Taraana or chosen a more hidden place to eat, but we are flush with success after finally finding conjury we can hopefully use. We are living dangerously. The crowd around us is composed of locals, tourists, and middle worlders who give themselves away by the liquid way in which they move. We pull Taraana’s hood over his head so his face is in shadow. The glasses make him look nothing more than human anyway. We receive one or two piercing looks from middle worlders, but most of them are too busy with their own errands to give us a second look. It should be fine. We’re only staying here for the length of a meal anyway.
We stop a moment to appreciate the spectacle of the food stalls that spring up in the Jemaa el-Fna every day after dusk. Each stall is numbered, though the numbers are not in sequence. Stall number five, for example, might be right beside stall number 105.
Imagine a cool October night. The heavens high above are heavy with stars—not that you will have the time or inclination to look up. A million conversations are happening simultaneously around you. Somewhere, a storyteller’s deep voice is poised on the tip of a precipice, the pungi of a snake charmer wails plaintively, voices accompanied by a darabukka sing to entice your stomach and your hunger. Meat sizzles on grills, and a thousand different aromas compete to awaken your appetite. Smoke obscures the view sometimes, but your nose is not easily distracted.
We walk around the stalls for a while before choosing one filled with locals. Dinner is a fantastic explosion of intense flavors, and entirely satisfying. After the meal, we get cups of mint tea and start to navigate our way through the crowd.
It is Ghufran who first notices the men. She doesn’t speak much, our Ghufran, but you will never find anyone more observant than her. She plucks at Paheli’s sleeve, and when Paheli turns to her, she whispers in her ear. Paheli doesn’t miss a beat. She doesn’t react visibly at all to Ghufran’s words but turns slightly so she can look at the men following us. There is nothing specifically conspicuous about them; they are not giv
ing us any more attention than others are. Still, there is the way they don’t look at us but still manage to be everywhere we go. Though Ghufran remains the most damaged amongst us, we all have sung the song she sings, and in these men, we recognize the notes of that dreaded music.
We move so Taraana is snug in the middle; they will need to get us out of the way to reach him. We are assuming it is him they want and not us. Well, they will have to work harder if they want us. We have more thorns than Taraana does. Paheli and Valentina look at each other for a long, silent moment. Have they prepared for this inevitability? It seems like we are going to find out.
We are in the middle of the Jemaa el-Fna with no walls immediately at hand, so we can’t run into the Between. The nearest uninterrupted wall is about ten minutes way, more if the crowds get thicker. Since magic doesn’t work on us, will Baarish’s men resort to violence? Can they, in the middle of this crowded square? Can we trust them not to?
Well, of course not.
We pass a man with three chained monkeys trained to do tricks. The monkeys are pulling at their chains, and the owner keeps swatting at them. A possibility. Talei, moving so quickly she is but a blur, reaches in and opens their collars, setting them free. Ligaya throws her cup of tea at a passing tourist, while Areum bumps into two women carrying trays of oranges.
The monkeys take a moment to realize their freedom, then flee from their owner and jump onto shoulders. They steal food and throw fruits at people. The tourist with tea dripping down his face looks for someone to yell at. The women with the trays full of oranges wail at the loss of their goods. Someone swears. Someone else bumps into a crowd of people all carrying food and drinks. The moment turns to madness.
In that madness, we flee. Not in the direction we were going but in the opposite. We do not let go of Taraana’s hands. Not once. It takes us seven minutes to reach a wall and thirty seconds to enter the Between. It is only when the door shuts behind us that Taraana realizes that Paheli is not with us.
He pulls the hood of his djellaba down and looks around at each of us, as if he has made a mistake and Paheli will somehow appear. His eyes widen and the stars in them dim. He looks at the door leading to Marrakech, and Valentina moves to stand in front of it.
“We left her behind,” he whispers. “I need to go get her back.”
He moves to open the door, but Valentina won’t budge from her position in front of it.
His panic spreads until he is practically shaking from the force of it. “Get out of my way. Please. I need to get her back,” he entreats. Then angrily. “How could you leave her behind?”
“She will return to us,” Valentina says gently. She tries hard, but we can see her uncertainty snag on her words until they are more of a question than a statement.
“How can you be certain of that? What if they take her? I can’t let that happen. I will go back.” He stands in front of Valentina, as if he will physically remove her.
“Paheli would never forgive us if we let you do that,” Talei says. “We didn’t leave her behind, Taraana. She chose to move in the other direction, perhaps to lead those men away from us. She knows what she’s doing. Come on, we need to go before our pursuers enter the Between.”
“You do not understand,” Taraana says, his head bowed, “and I don’t know what to say to make you understand. She wears my star in her palm. I can feel her terror right now. Don’t you get it? You think she’s prepared and strong and whatnot. She’s not. She just pretends she is. She’s always pretending!” He breathes harshly, on the brink of tears. “I can’t. I won’t stay here and be safe. Not when she is not here with me.”
“It is not that we don’t know she’s scared, Taraana,” Daraja says. “It’s not that we don’t know she’s pretending not to be scared. It is just that all of us here pretend. We pretend so hard that sometimes what we pretend becomes true. We pretend we aren’t scared. We pretend we’re all right. We pretend we don’t yearn for homes and roots. We pretend until we believe it and once we believe it, it becomes true. So, we will pretend Paheli is all right. We will believe she is all right. And she will be.”
“I understand that. I do. But you can’t ask me to leave her behind.” He looks at Valentina, a plea on his face. “Her feelings, her desire to live no matter what, her will, and her strength were the things that made it possible for me to continue living. As long as she wears my star, she and I are connected. I can feel what you all feel too, but with her, it is more intense. Perhaps because my heart is involved. Perhaps because I seek out the connection between us.
“I have loved her without knowing where in the world she was, what she looked like at any moment in time. I have loved her so long that time seems immaterial to me. It was enough that she existed somewhere. That she breathed, felt, and loved. It was enough. I knew if I searched her out, I would put her in danger. So, I didn’t until I had no choice but to seek her out. Seek you all out.”
He looks at us. The stars in his eyes are lustrous, but the tears don’t fall. “And now that I have found her, have held her, I can’t continue without her. I know what Baarish does. I can’t stand aside and let him hurt her. I will die first.”
“Nobody is going to die,” Valentina says, frowning. She takes a deep breath. “Paheli will come back to us, Taraana. She is stronger than you give her credit for. She is stronger and wilier than any of us. You need to trust her.”
“I do trust her, but you are underestimating Baarish and his desire to capture me,” Taraana says. “He will do anything to get me back in his power, and if he finds out what Paheli means to me, he will use her as bait.”
“They can’t use magic against her,” Ligaya says.
“Baarish never used magic against me. He just hurt me. Over and over again. Until I didn’t know what it meant to exist without pain.”
“They won’t catch her,” Valentina says. “I refuse to consider that possibility.”
Taraana is far from convinced. Clenching his fists, he looks at the door leading to Marrakech as if he can will it open. The unseen lights in the Between flicker, and we are reminded that while he may seem helpless, Taraana is not entirely without power. Especially not here in the Between. If he wanted to, he could probably force Valentina to move. That he doesn’t says a lot about him.
“What do we do now?” Ghufran says. We have never lost Paheli before. This unanchored feeling is new to us, and we don’t much like it.
“We need to start walking before our pursuers enter the Between,” Talei says again. Of us all, she is the most anxious. “Where are we going, V?”
“To the safe house,” Valentina replies shortly.
“Safe house?” Kamboja echoes. “What safe house?” This is the first time most of us have heard of it.
“Areum.” Valentina raises an eyebrow.
“Follow me,” Areum says, and, choosing a branch of the Between, starts walking. Taraana takes one last look at the door leading to Marrakech before following her. Valentina leaves last.
Paheli: A Moment in Chartreuse
Bang, bang! How easily the chaos is curbed and the crowds quieted. People stop, one step away from a stampede. Too bad. Now I have to return to fear.
You learn fear all at once, you know. In less than one second, your body will understand all its shades and ken all its depths. Corners will become sinister and the sound of footsteps will become reasons to panic. Darkness will begin to mean more than just the absence of light. A half-second is all it takes to learn fear. But it will take you a lifetime to unlearn it.
Me? I am not there yet, and I have lived several lifetimes. Make of that what you will.
The girls are gone and with them, so is Taraana. I am left as the landmark of a disappeared quarry. I watch as our pursuers realize this fact. I could have gone with them. I should have gone with them. But see, there is this quality in me that makes me want to poke at a beehive. So that’s what I am going to do. Poke it. Because the fear that I struggle with is 50 percent anger. Anger t
hat even so many years, centuries, later, I still can’t walk down a dark road alone without “asking for it.” Anger that my female body makes me available for consumption whether I consent to it or not. Anger that those with strength continuously try to use that strength against me. Angry. I am so angry.
I look around. The pursuers are whispering to each other, making sure to keep me in their sight. I pretend that I am not watching them watch me.
One of the pursuers, a not-human man with a beard red from henna, glances at me and then quickly away. I ignore the middle worlder for the moment and help the two human women whose trays of oranges we sacrificed. We pick up their now-trodden fruit. I press some money into their hands and watch the enemy numbers reduce to four as the rest of the men leave to presumably comb the square for the girls and Taraana, who are all hopefully on their way to our safe house.
The middle worlders left to shadow me are doing an abominably bad job of being circumspect. They stalk me as I meander from one food stall to another, though I have no intention of eating anything. The night is full of lights, colors, and scents, and I am alone. This is the first time I have been truly alone in a long while. I don’t dislike solitude, but I am wary of how close it skews to loneliness.
“Are you buying?” a stall owner asks me hopefully. I shake my head, give him a smile, and move on.
The red-bearded middle worlder is so close that I could turn around and scream into his ear if I so wished. I don’t, though. That would be too easy and too messy. You need not always bloody your hands to win a fight.
Three quarters of an hour pass by with them tailing me around the food stalls. Do they think I am unaware of their presence? Maybe they simply don’t care. Maybe they want to intimidate me. Hmm. What do they see when they look at me? Prey? And if they catch me, what will they do? Drag me to their master? And what will he do? Force me to give up the star embedded in my palm? How? Will he torture me? The same way he tortured Taraana?