Alif the Unseen (22 page)

“You can take the shape of a man,” he said. “How did you do that?”

“I turned sideways.”

Sheikh Bilal shook his head. Crossing the
musala,
he muttered something about brewing more tea. Alif went to kneel next to Dina, who had taken off her shoes and sat on the carpet with
her knees pulled up.

“How is your arm?” he asked tentatively.

“It hurts,” she said. “I want to go home.”

“I don’t know if it’s safe yet.”

“I don’t care anymore. This is crazy. If they come for me I’ll tell them everything. Maybe they’ll be generous when they realize I had nothing to do with your
schemes.”

Alif felt stung. “You would really hand me over to State? Just like that?”

Dina looked up at him. Her eyelids glistened with sweat. Alif realized in alarm that she might need real medical care, that being stitched up in a tent by Vikram could hardly be sufficient for a
bullet wound. He told himself she was overtired.

“You still need rest,” he said. “Here—there’s a cot in one of the offices. It’s not bad. I was asleep when you all showed up.”

Dina followed him across the
musala
without saying a word. He led her into the room across from Sheikh Bilal’s office, from which issued the scent of boiling mint. Dina collapsed
on the cot, digging her toes into the musty fabric, and let out a sort of half-moan.

“I’m sorry,” said Alif. “If I had known any of this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have—”

“You keep saying
sorry
without really meaning it. I was so worried, lying there alone in that girl’s apartment—and then when they came back looking like death and
saying they’d lost you, I thought I would faint. Or scream. It was terrible. And you’re not sorry.”

Alif felt his patience giving out. “Whatever. Believe what you want. I’ve been trying my best. It’s not like you haven’t made mistakes, even though you pretend to be
perfect. If you stayed down while that guy was shooting at us, you never would have gotten hurt.”

“I panicked!”

“So did I, but even I know not to
stand up
while bullets are hitting the wall over my head.”

“You were lying on top of me! I had to do
something
.”

Alif was incredulous. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I was trying to protect you from getting shot. Are you seriously telling me you stood up because you’d rather be
killed than touch me for five seconds? Am I as disgusting and sinful as that?”

A choked, exhausted sound escaped her throat. “No! You don’t understand, you don’t want to understand.”

“You’re right. I don’t care.” Alif walked out the door and slammed it shut on her heartbroken sobbing.

* * *

In the
musala,
Sheikh Bilal was pouring out cups of tea on a copper tray. Vikram sprawled on his side while the convert sat with her knees tucked beneath her, looking
nervous.

“How is the other sister?” Sheikh Bilal asked as Alif came into the room. There was a note of coolness in his voice. Alif clenched and unclenched one hand.

“She needs a good night of sleep,” he said curtly.

“She’s welcome to it. Our sister here can join her on the cot in the storeroom. You will have to sleep here in the
musala
. And you—” The sheikh looked up at
Vikram with an unfriendly expression.

“Don’t worry,” said Vikram, smiling. “I don’t sleep.”

“As you like. You all must be gone before the noon prayer tomorrow.”

Alif knelt on the floor next to the tea tray. “I’m sorry, Sheikh Uncle,” he said in a thin voice. “I didn’t mean to make such a mess of things. Vikram really
isn’t all bad. And I didn’t know they were going to show up in the middle of the night. You’ve been so nice to me—I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

The sheikh’s expression softened. “
Khalas
. It’s all right. I’ll go to my rest—the dawn prayer is in three hours. You’ll hear the call go up.”
He tucked his robe about him and walked toward the rear of the
musala,
throwing a last look at Vikram before disappearing down the corridor toward his office.

“Why do you always have to make such a scene?” Alif snapped when the sheikh had gone. “Why did he think you were a dog?”

“In his eyes, I was one.” Vikram lounged on his side, sipping tea.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Could we talk English again?” asked the convert.

“Okay, fine,” said Alif, rubbing his eyes.

“Thanks. I’m worried about Dina,” she continued. “I think she’s starting to crack. I mean, she was
shot
. She might need medicine or something.”

Vikram laid his head on the convert’s leg. “You’ve hurt me. Do you doubt my abilities as a nursemaid?”

The convert jerked away. “Yes, frankly. I think there need to be doctors and a game plan in place at this point.”

Though he agreed, Alif felt a need to change the subject. “Did you hear anything else from your advisor? About the book, I mean?”

The convert flushed. “You didn’t get my first message?”

Alif’s hand went to the pocket where he carried his phone. It was warm from the pressure of his body. Strange to think that until very recently he had depended on this little sheath of
silicon more than his own limbs.

“I haven’t been checking my messages,” he said.

“Oh. Okay. The gist is—the basic thing is—they’ve decided what that awful-smelling resin is made from.”

Alif waited. The convert seemed unwilling to continue.

“And what is that?” he prompted.

She cleared her throat. “
Pistacia lentiscus,
which is mastic sap. That’s not an uncommon ingredient in ancient resins, though it’s a little weird to see it used to
treat paper. But they also found traces of amniotic material. Human amniotic material.”

“
Anioteek
what?”

“The birth caul,” supplied Vikram in Arabic.

Alif made a face. “That’s disgusting! Who would do such a thing? I’ve been carrying that awful book around and touching it and holding it for three days now. I’m going to
burn my backpack.”

“I wouldn’t do that. This book is tremendously valuable. I bet you could sell it to some western research institute for half a million bucks.”

Alif thought of something horrible. “This anioteek,” he said, “you don’t think it means the babies were—?”

The convert gave him an exasperated look. “What? Sacrificed? Eaten? No way, not in medieval Persia. They probably just thought the amniotic sac would protect the book the same way it
protected the baby.”

“That is
extremely gross
.”

“Don’t be such a presentist.”

“It was common, back then,” said Vikram, rolling his tea glass between his palms. “Living books. Alchemists were always trying to create them. There was the Quran, which
shattered language and put it back together again in a way no one had been able to replicate, using words whose meanings evolved over time without the alteration of a single dot or brushstroke. As
above, so below, the alchemists reasoned—they thought they could reverse-engineer the living word using chemical compounds. If they could create a book that was literally alive, perhaps it
would also produce knowledge that transcended time.”

“That’s pretty blasphemous,” said the convert.

“Oh, very. Heretics, my dear. They made the
hashisheen
look orthodox.”

“What do you mean, words whose meanings evolved?” asked Alif. “That doesn’t make sense. The Quran is the Quran.”

Vikram folded his legs—Alif did not watch this operation closely—and smiled at his audience.

“The convert will understand. How do they translate
in your English interpretation?”

“Atom,” said the convert.

“You don’t find that strange, considering atoms were unknown in the sixth century?”

The convert chewed her lip. “I never thought of that,” she said. “You’re right. There’s no way
atom
is the original meaning of that word.”

“Ah.” Vikram held up two fingers in a sign of benediction. He looked, Alif thought, like some demonic caricature of a saint. “But it is. In the twentieth century,
atom
became the original meaning of
, because an atom was the tiniest object known to man. Then man split the atom. Today, the original meaning
might be hadron. But why stop there? Tomorrow, it might be quark. In a hundred years, some vanishingly small object so foreign to the human mind that only Adam remembers its name. Each of those
will be the original meaning of
.”

Alif snorted. “That’s impossible.
must refer to some fundamental thing. It’s attached to an object.”

“Yes it is. The smallest indivisible particle. That is the meaning packaged in the word. No part of it lifts out—it does not mean smallest, nor indivisible, nor particle, but all
those things at once. Thus, in man’s infancy,
was a grain of sand. Then a mote of dust. Then a cell. Then a molecule. Then an atom.
And so on. Man’s knowledge of the universe may grow, but
does not change.”