The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker Read Free Book Online

else the only real thing in the room. Arbeely supposed that others would sense it as well, but he doubted they’d ever guess at its meaning. The young mothers of Little Syria still tied iron beads around their babies’ wrists and made gestures to ward off the Evil Eye, but out of tradition and fond superstition more than true fear. This new world was far removed from the tales of their grandmothers—or at least so they’d thought.
    Not for the first time he wished he had a confidant, someone with whom he could share even the most outrageous secret. But in the tightly knit community, Boutros Arbeely was something of an outsider, even a recluse, happiest at his forge. He was terrible at idle chitchat, and at wedding banquets could be found sitting alone at a table, examining the stamp-marks on the cutlery. His neighbors greeted him warmly on the street, but never lingered long to talk. He had many acquaintances, but few close friends.
    It had been no different in Zahleh. In a family of women he’d been the silent, dreaming boy-child. He’d discovered smithing by lucky accident. Sent to run an errand, he’d stopped in front of the local forge and watched, fascinated, as a sweating man hammered a sheet of metal until it became a bucket. It was the transformation that enthralled him: useless to useful, nothing to something. He returned over and over to watch until the smith, exasperated with being spied upon, offered to take on the boy as an apprentice. And so smithing came to fill Arbeely’s life, to the near exclusion of all else; and though he supposed in a vague way that someday he’d find a wife and start a family, he was content with things as they were.
    But now, glancing at his guest’s prone form, he felt a premonition of lasting change. It was the same as when he’d been seven years old and heard his mother’s rising wail through the open window as she learned of her husband’s death, killed by bandits on the road from Beirut. Now as then, he sensed the threads of his life scattering and rearranging before this new and overwhelming thing that had landed among them.
    “What is that you’re doing?”
    Arbeely jumped. The Jinni hadn’t moved, but his eyes were open; Arbeely wondered how long he’d been watching. “I’m patching a teakettle,” he said. “Its owner left it on the stove too long.”
    The Jinni inclined his head toward the kettle. “And what metal is that?”
    “It’s two metals,” said Arbeely. “Steel, dipped in tin.” He found a scrap on the table and held it out to the Jinni, pointing out the layers with his fingernail. “Tin, steel, tin. You see? The tin is too soft to use on its own, and with steel there’s the problem of rust. But together like this, they’re very strong, and versatile.”
    “I see. Ingenious.” He sat up straighter, and held out his hand to the teakettle. “May I?” Arbeely handed him the kettle, and the Jinni peered at it, turning it over in his now-steady hands. “I assume the difficulty lies in thinning the edges of the patch without exposing the steel.”
    “That’s it exactly,” said Arbeely, surprised.
    The Jinni laid his hand over the patch. After a few moments, he began to carefully rub the patch around its edges. Arbeely watched, dumbfounded, as the outline of the patch disappeared.
    The Jinni handed the teakettle back to Arbeely. It was as though the hole had never been.
    “I have a proposition for you,” said the Jinni.
     

     
    Spring rains can come on suddenly in the desert. On the morning after the Jinni returned from following the caravan to the Ghouta, the skies clouded over, releasing first a thin patter of raindrops, and then a respectable downpour. The dry riverbeds and gullies began to run with water. The Jinni watched the rain sluice down the walls and crenellations of his palace, irritated at the inconvenience. He had planned to depart for the jinn habitations at first light, but now he would have to wait.
    And so he roamed