The Golem and the Djinni - Helene Wecker

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from a woman passing between two men …

      … this sixty-lettered Name of God is especially useful, though it is not to be uttered during the month of Adar …

      Page after page, the secrets of long-dead mystics laid themselves before him. Many were irredeemably lost save for a few brief words, but some were whole and undamaged, and others were tantalizingly close to complete. This was the knowledge forbidden to all but the most pious and learned. His teachers had once hinted that wonders such as these would someday be his; but they’d denied him even the briefest glimpse, saying he was still far too young. To utter a charm or an exorcism or a Name of God without purity of heart and intention, they’d said, would be to risk one’s soul to the fires of Gehenna.

      But for Schaalman, the fires of Gehenna had long been a foregone conclusion. If that was to be his end, then he would make the most of the meantime. Some influence, divine or demonic, had led him to this place, and had placed unutterable mysteries in his hands. He would take that power, and he would use it to his own ends.

      The papers lay crisped and quietly crackling beneath his fingers. In the distant dizziness of his hunger, he could swear he felt them vibrate like a plucked string.

       5.

      After a few more days of nervous coaching, Arbeely decided that the time had come to introduce the Djinni to the rest of Little Syria. The plan he’d devised to do so relied on the very woman who was, in a sense, responsible for the Djinni’s new life in Manhattan: Maryam Faddoul, the coffeehouse proprietress, who’d brought Arbeely a copper flask in need of repairing.

      The Faddouls’ coffeehouse was famous for having the best gossip in the neighborhood, a distinction due entirely to the female half of its management. Maryam Faddoul’s great gifts in life were a pair of guileless brown eyes and an earnest desire for the happiness and success of all her acquaintances. Her sympathetic nature made her a popular audience for the airing of grievances; she agreed wholeheartedly with every opinion and saw the wisdom in every argument. “That poor Saleem,” she might say, “it’s so obvious how much he loves Nadia Haddad! Even a blind goat could see it. It’s such a shame that her parents don’t approve.”

      And then a customer might protest, “But, Maryam, only yesterday her father was here, and you agreed with him that Saleem was still too young, and not yet ready to be a good provider. How can both be right?”

      “If all our parents had waited until they were ready to marry,” she’d reply, “then how many of us would be here?”

      Maryam was a master at the beneficial application of gossip. If a businessman was drinking coffee and smoking a narghile, and bemoaning the smallness of his shop—business was booming, if only he had space for larger orders!—Maryam would appear at his side, refill his cup with an easy tilt of her wrist, and say, “You should ask George Shalhoub if you can take over his lease when he moves away.”

      “But George Shalhoub isn’t moving.”

      “Is that so? Then it must have been some other Sarah Shalhoub I talked to yesterday. Now that her son is going to work in Albany she can’t stand the thought of being away from him, so she is trying to convince George that they must go as well. If someone hinted they were willing to take the lease off his hands, then George might find himself much more willing.” And the man would hurriedly settle the bill and head out the door in search of George Shalhoub.

      All the while, Sayeed Faddoul would be watching from the small kitchen, a smile in his eyes. Another man might grow jealous of his wife’s attentions, but not him. Sayeed was a quiet man—not awkward, as Arbeely could be, but possessed of a calm and steady nature that complemented his wife’s heartfelt vivacity. He knew that it was his presence that let Maryam be so free; an unmarried woman, or one whose husband was less visible, would be forced to rein in her exuberance, or else risk the sorts of insinuations that might damage her name. But everyone could see that Sayeed was proud of his wife and was more than content to remain the unobtrusive partner, allowing her to shine.

      At last Arbeely set his plan into motion. A message boy was dispatched to the Faddouls, alerting Maryam that her flask had been repaired. Accordingly she arrived that afternoon, still dressed in her apron and bringing with her the dark smell of roasted coffee. As always, Arbeely’s heart squeezed at the sight of her, a not unpleasant ache, as if to say, Ah well. Like many of the men of the neighborhood, he was a little bit in love with Maryam Faddoul. What luck to be that Sayeed, her admirers thought, to live always in the light of her bright eyes and understanding smile! But none would dream of approaching her, even those who regarded the conventions of propriety as obstacles to be overcome. It was clear that Maryam’s smile shone from her belief in the better nature of those around her. To demand more of that smile for themselves would only serve to extinguish it.

      “My dear Boutros!” she said. “Why don’t I see you at the coffeehouse more often? Please tell me business has doubled and you must work night and day, because that is the only excuse I’ll accept.”

      Arbeely blushed and smiled, and wished he were not so nervous. “Business has been good, actually, and I have more work than I can handle alone. In fact, I must introduce you to my new assistant. He arrived a week ago. Ahmad!” he called toward the back room. “Come meet Maryam Faddoul!”

      The Djinni emerged from the storeroom, ducking his head to clear the threshold. In his hands he held the flask. He smiled. “Good day, madam,” he said, and offered the flask to her. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

      The woman was plainly astounded. She stared at the Djinni. For a moment, his eyes darting between them, Arbeely’s fears were lost in a sudden flush of envy. Was it only the Djinni’s good looks that caused her to stare like that? No, there was something else, and Arbeely had felt it too, at their calamitous first encounter: an instant and compelling magnetism, almost instinctual, the human animal confronting something new, and not yet knowing whether to count it as friend or foe.

      Then Maryam turned to Arbeely and swatted him across the shoulder.

      “Ow!”

      “Boutros, you’re horrible! Hiding him from everyone, and not saying a word! No announcement, no welcome—he must think us all terribly rude! Or are you ashamed of us?”

      “Please, Mrs. Faddoul, it was at my request,” the Djinni said. “I fell ill during the crossing, and was bedridden until a few days ago.”

      In an instant the woman’s indignation turned to concern. “Oh, you poor man,” she said. “Did you cross from Beirut?”

      “No, Cairo,” he said. “In a freighter. I paid a man to hide me on board, and it was there I became ill. We docked in New Jersey, and I was able to sneak away.” He spoke the learned story easily.

      “But we could have helped you! It must have been so frightening, to be sick in a strange country, with only Boutros for a nursemaid!”

      The Djinni smiled. “He was an excellent nursemaid. And I had no wish to be a burden.”

      Maryam shook her head. “You mustn’t let pride get the better of you. We all turn to each other here, it’s how we make our way.”

      “You are right, of course,” the Djinni said smoothly.

      Her eyebrows arched. “And our secretive Mister Arbeely, how did you meet him?”

      “Last year I passed through Zahleh, and met the smith who taught him. He saw that I was interested in the craft, and told me about his apprentice who had gone to America.”

      “And imagine my surprise,” interjected Arbeely, “when this half-dead man knocks on my door and asks if I am the tinsmith from Zahleh!”

      “This world works in strange ways,” Maryam said, shaking her head.

      Arbeely studied her for signs of skepticism. Did she really believe this concocted story? Many Syrians had traveled odd and winding paths to New York—on foot through the

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