Alif the Unseen (31 page)

Alif prodded his still-sluggish brain.

“You said there are women on the other side, right? So that narrows it down.”

“I suppose so. There are still six other doors on this side, though.”

Alif glanced up and down and bit his lip.

“We couldn’t just open them all up? On both sides. The women—” He couldn’t finish his sentence.

NewQuarter tapped the flashlight against his leg.

“I know,” he said quietly. “But to be honest with you, Alif, the more we play liberating heroes the less our chances of getting out of here ourselves. If only two of you go
missing, the guards may not notice for several hours. If we instigate a jailbreak there will be immediate chaos. How are we supposed to extricate ourselves from that?”

“For God’s sake,” said Alif, “isn’t this what we’re meant to do? Or what was all our messing around with computers
for
? Fun? Aren’t we meant to
believe in something?”

“They’ll all be caught again anyway. You can’t just walk out of here, Alif—there are walls six-feet thick topped with razor wire, and beyond that, eighty kilometers of
desert between us and the City. And as you well know, most of the people in these cells are probably not in the best of health.”

Alif gazed at the rows of steel-doored cells that flickered in the beam of NewQuarter’s flashlight. He felt light-headed.

“We’re really going to leave them?” he asked in a softer voice.

“We don’t have a choice. You’re of more help to these people out of jail than in,
akhi
.” NewQuarter moved down the hallway and tapped on the cell door next to
Alif’s.

“Sheikh Bilal?” he called softly. A voice inside murmured a timid negative. The next two cells yielded similar results. When he tapped on the fourth, a familiar voice rasped out a
curse in flowery, classical Arabic.

“That’s him,” murmured Alif. NewQuarter produced a large ring of keys and sorted through them, flashlight balanced in the crook of his arm. Selecting one, he turned it in the
lock and pulled the heavy door open. Alif crowded over his shoulder to look inside: Sheikh Bilal, wrinkled and emaciated, blinked bloodshot eyes in the glare of the flashlight. Alif felt a rush of
embarrassment for the older man, whose rank made his nakedness somehow more grotesque. The sight of his bare head made Alif wince; to see the spotted, balding pate of a sheikh, fringed with white
hair, bereft of the dignity of even a skullcap, unnerved him. He could not bring himself to speak.

“Here, Uncle,” said NewQuarter, awkwardly holding out his backpack. “There are clothes inside. I’ve got water and food waiting. But we don’t have much
time.”

Sheikh Bilal took the backpack with shaking hands.

“What is this?” he croaked. “Is this one of your dog-cursed tricks?”

“It’s not a trick, Sheikh Uncle,” said Alif, voice catching in his throat. “NewQuarter is from the royal family. He’s here to spring us.”

Sheikh Bilal attempted to spit. A clot of drool ran down his chin.

“Any shred of loyalty I might have felt to the royal family died in this cell,” he said. “I don’t want anything from those inbred bastards.”

“And you won’t get anything,” said NewQuarter with a wry smile, “just me. One inbred bastard with a vendetta.”

The sheikh peered up at NewQuarter.

“How do I know you won’t simply deliver me to a worse fate than this?” he asked.

NewQuarter shrugged. “You don’t. I didn’t come here for you, I came here for Alif. He’s the one who insisted he couldn’t leave without you.”

The sheikh turned his bleary eyes on Alif.

“So you’re alive,” he muttered. “Much good may it do you.”

“I’m sorry, Sheikh Uncle,” said Alif. “I’m so sorry.”

Sheikh Bilal said nothing. NewQuarter glanced from the younger man to the elder one and slipped his arm under the sheikh’s elbow.

“You can scream at him later. Right now we’ve got to leave. Let me help you get dressed.”

* * *

They slipped down the corridor in single file. Alif ached at each door they passed, thinking of the silent inmates behind them. He thought he heard a muffled cry issue from a
food slot near the end of the hall and stopped.

“We can’t just—”

“Yes we can,” said NewQuarter firmly. “There is nothing we can do for them, Alif, nothing, not from in here.”

Alif trailed after him, straining for another sound, but heard none. At the end of the hall, NewQuarter paused with his hand on the lever of a large metal door.

“The guards will be waiting at the bottom of the stairs,” he muttered. “That’s the way out. Wait here while I send them for my car. I’ll knock on the outer door
when it’s safe.”

Alif was incredulous.

“The prison guards are going to bring your car around like a bunch of valets?”

“You’d better believe it.” NewQuarter grinned and disappeared into the stairwell on the opposite side of the door. Sheikh Bilal quaked, wobbling on his feet; Alif took his arm
to steady him.

“Forgive me,” Alif whispered.

The sheikh snorted.

“I have no breath left to waste. Talk to me again when I’ve eaten.”

Alif looked away, face burning. They stood in silence for several more minutes, jumping at echoes from other wings of the prison. Finally the sound of a well-oiled motor became audible. Three
sharp knocks followed, rattling up the stairwell beyond the door. Alif felt his palms begin to sweat.

“Let’s go,” he said, pushing open the door. Sheikh Bilal needed help getting down the soldered metal stairs. Alif prevented himself from screaming in frustration, gamely
lending the old man his hands. At the bottom of the stairs, Alif pushed open a very heavy door, tasting night air, deep and clean and cool.

“Now,” hissed NewQuarter from the interior of a black town car. “Now now now.”

Alif bundled the sheikh into the backseat before climbing in the passenger door.

“In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful,” said NewQuarter, gunning the motor. Alif slid down in his seat, heart pounding. NewQuarter pulled the car around the exterior of a
windowless, dun-colored building. It took Alif a moment to realize that this was where he had been living for the past three months, that this was the shape of his lightless hell. It seemed both
surreal and alarmingly ordinary, like an office building that had blinked, obscuring visual access to its innards.

The building was surrounded by a paved courtyard that ended at the foot of a high wall, two stories perhaps, topped with ugly jumbles of wire. Pairs of security personnel patrolled the inner
perimeter on horseback. With detached anxiety, Alif observed that the horses of each duo matched: a pair of black ones, a pair of reddish ones, a sandy-colored pair with white manes and tails. This
seemed, to him, the final perversity: matched horses at the gate of an abattoir. He closed his eyes. His head was pounding, as if the blood vessels in his brain had swelled.

“Here we go,” murmured NewQuarter. They were approaching a barred metal gate. There was a guard on either end, each armed with an automatic rifle. NewQuarter slowed the car.

“Oh, Captain!” he called through his window, snapping his fingers at the guard on the left. “Open up, I’m finished here.”

The guard scurried up to the driver’s-side window of the car.

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir,” he said. His eyes flickered over Alif in the passenger’s seat. Alif looked dead ahead.

“I’m sorry, sir—these men—”

“Are my personal attendants,” NewQuarter snapped. “You think I drive around by myself like some delivery boy?”

“No, sir, of course not. It’s only that—there is a certain
smell
—”

“Who wouldn’t smell after spending an hour in this filthy place? Open the gate.”

The guard backed away, muttering into the walkie-talkie hanging from his shirt front. Motioning to the guard opposite, he pressed a series of numbers into a keypad on the edge of the gate. The
metal bar began to rise.

“Thank God,” said NewQuarter. “I swear I’ve sweat all the way through my
thobe
.”

As the gate opened, NewQuarter inched the car forward. Alif heard Sheikh Bilal breathe out a sigh. Alif’s shoulders ached; he realized he had been tensing them since before they left the
prison.

“And that, my friends,” said NewQuarter triumphantly, pressing a button to roll up his window, “is how you break out of prison.”

There was a flicker of black in the rearview mirror. Alif frowned: a guard was running toward them from the direction of the prison complex, waving his arms angrily. Through the tinted,
insulated glass, Alif couldn’t hear what he was saying. He turned his head to see the guard at the gate jamming a red button on the bottom of the keypad.

The gate began to close.

“Shit!” There was a squeal of rubber as NewQuarter jammed his foot against the accelerator. The car shot forward. Alif heard a series of loud pops. Swiveling in his seat, he saw the
guard on the other end of the gate level his rifle at the car.

“They’re shooting at us!” Alif shrieked. He fell back in his seat as the car swerved, skidding on sand that had blown across the road that rose in front of them. NewQuarter was
hunched over the wheel, gritting his teeth. From the backseat, Alif heard Sheikh Bilal begin to mutter an incantatory prayer, asking God to protect them from the evil of His creation.

Another loud pop put a fractal pattern in the glass of the car’s rear window. The sheikh threw himself across the seat.

“
Allahu akbar!
” he shouted. “
Allahu akbar!
”

“Fuck! Are you hurt?” Alif leaned toward the old man and was rewarded by being half-choked by his seatbelt when the car swerved again.

“I’m not shot, if that’s what you mean,” said the sheikh, clinging to his head covering.

Lights flashed on the road: two Peugeots painted matte black were speeding toward them.

“Screw this.” NewQuarter yanked the steering wheel to the left, running the car off the road. They bumped along soft veins of sand. High dunes loomed against a star-patterned sky.
NewQuarter accelerated toward one of them.

“What are you doing?” Alif wailed. The car began to tilt upward.

“Going on a safari, you tremendous ass-coveter. How’s the view?”

Alif clamped his hands around his head as the car crested the top of the dune. For a moment he saw only sky. Dark and speckled with shimmering points, it seemed to surround them, separating them
in some essential way from the earth, gravity, dust. Alif gasped. His stomach turned.

With a crash, the car tipped over the crest of the dune and began to slide down the opposite side. NewQuarter pressed on the brakes. The car fishtailed, its rear wheels sliding back and forth on
the sand.

“Hold on!” He gunned the motor. They raced down the dune, slamming into level ground again. Alif’s head hit the ceiling.

“Where are we—”

“Away, just away. Maybe they’ll crash or get lost.” NewQuarter wheeled around the foot of another dune, sending a spray of sand against the back windows. Alif saw a black shape
crest the dune behind them and begin sliding down. A second followed.

“They’re still behind us!”

“Okay, okay.” They raced along a narrow corridor between two hills of sand. The ground grew unexpectedly rocky and the car shuddered as it crushed the remains of fossilized shells
beneath its wheels, remnants of an ancient sea. Alif looked over his shoulder again. The two Peugeots slid around a bend and pursued them into the corridor. NewQuarter shifted gears, accelerating,
and turned toward another dune. It loomed in front of them like a pyramid, massive and unshakable, the survivor of hundreds, perhaps thousands of years of windstorms. Alif’s mouth fell
open.

“We’ll never make it up that one!”

“Your mother’s cunt! Neither will they.”

The car roared up the side of the dune at a terrifying angle. Alif leaned forward, with the vague notion that the counterbalance of his weight could keep them from tipping. Sheikh Bilal began
slapping his head rhythmically.

“Oh, God,” whimpered Alif. “Oh, God.”

The upper edge of the dune came into view. They were now perpendicular to the ground, preserved only by momentum. The wheels of the car threw sand in every direction. The engine struggled.
Cursing, NewQuarter shifted gears again. With a burst of speed, they slid over the top and dangled into space.

For a moment Alif thought they might be all right. The front wheels of the car touched down on the far side of the dune almost gently, in a modest puff of sand. Then physics caught up with them.
In a sudden rush, the car began to spin, whipping around in circles as it slid downward. NewQuarter took his hands off the steering wheel, eyes wide. Alif felt pressure building in his bladder and
squeezed his legs shut in alarm. It felt as though he had no control over his muscles; he was in free fall, voiding all unnecessary weight. The car continued to spin.

When they hit the bottom, Alif felt his bones shudder. A ripple swept through the car, shattering all the windows; metal groaned as the front fender crumpled into the sand. Someone was
screaming. Alif shielded his face against bits of glass that seemed to fly at him from all sides, stinging his arms through his thin white robe. He thought of Vikram. He thought of Dina. He shut
his eyes.

The silence came suddenly. Night penetrated the car through its empty windows, touching Alif’s face with a crisp, assertive breeze. He lowered his arms. They were sitting diagonally
across the gap where the dune met flat earth, back wheels propped up at an incline, nose collapsed like a crumpled can. NewQuarter was pale and blinking.

“Wow,” he whispered.

There was a cough from the backseat: Sheikh Bilal cleared his throat, shaking fragments of glass from his robe.

“Well, my son, I promise never to ask to see your driver’s license,” he said, sounding, to Alif’s relief, more like himself.

“Thank you, Uncle,” said NewQuarter, still staring straight ahead. Alif struggled with his seatbelt and pushed open the door. Ruined, the hinges made an embarrassed noise as the door
swung out. Alif limped into the sand. It was soft and cold beneath his feet, glinting in the reflected light of the sky. A moon hung low over the horizon.