The next morning, Agent Hamed found himself standing outside Tram 015 at the aerial yard above Ramses Station. He had managed to get Sheikha Nadiyaa to take up the matter immediately, rather than placing them on her busy schedule—in which case she might not have attended to the tram until next Mawlid. It had cost him extra, of course. There seemed to be a fee for everything! She claimed she was only being fair, making them meet in kind what she did every petitioner. Still, it was yet far cheaper than soliciting the aid of a high-priced djinn. Besides, this Zār came with one of its own.
He looked to the ruby-skinned djinn—at present a woman—who was helping prepare the tram for the ceremony. It turned out the djinn was more than just a secretary. “Jizzu has been with my family for generations,” the sheikha had informed him. “Long before al-Jahiz, we accepted without question that djinn lived and worked among us. The ritual I perform today has come out of that bond.”
Some kind of personal djinn, Hamed suspected. Perhaps even a Qareen. There were only a few such cases recorded by the Ministry—djinn like Jizzu who attached themselves directly to persons, whole families, or lineages, sometimes even counted among them. He would have to remember to jot this down in his report. That was, provided this plan worked out at all.
“I pray it goes well,” Onsi had replied, when Hamed shared as much. He spoke through bites of sweet sudjukh, having replenished his stores of the candy from Bashir’s dish that morning. The superintendent had looked on in growing bafflement as Sheikha Nadiyaa and her retinue filed into his small office, all holding bundles and various items—from candles to foodstuffs, even several live chickens. By the time Jizzu and Fahima appeared, Bashir couldn’t decide if he wanted more to stare at the captivatingly attractive djinn or the enunciating boilerplate eunuch.
“God willing,” Hamed intoned in answer. He watched as the women draped parts of the tram with white cloth. “What is it they’re doing now?”
“I spent the night reading on the ritual,” Onsi related. “Do you know, the Zār is very different depending on the region? Even some clans living in close proximity in Soudan practice it different from one another. And Christians different from Muslims, though at times it is practiced together. I believe what they are doing now is preparing the patient. Ordinarily this would be a woman placed into white robes. Ah yes, see there? Now they are applying the kohl beneath the eyes.”
Hamed could see the women were now indeed using brushes to paint the black cosmetic beneath the two bulbous lanterns of the tram. It seemed Onsi had impressed the sheikha enough with his argument to have her treat the car as an actual person. Remembering all that talk of “liberating” Cairo’s machines, he hoped they wouldn’t regret putting the radical notion into her head.
“This will be quite a thing to witness,” Onsi remarked. “Is Superintendent Bashir certain he doesn’t want to see?”
“Quite certain,” Hamed drolled. The man had been so put off by the idea of the ritual—and the prospect of encountering the djinn haunting his tram car—that he’d made some excuse of work duties, leaving them to their own devices.
“Agents!” Nadiyaa called. “We’ll need your help here.”
Hamed walked over with Onsi. He hoped the women only needed him to carry things. He’d been eyeing the cages of chickens dubiously. As he understood, the Zār had to end in a sacrifice. He wasn’t averse to such things, but the blood and feathers were likely to get onto his uniform. And he’d just had it cleaned and pressed. But when they got closer, he saw that she held out two round flat Tar drums.
“The Zār is always accompanied by music,” she told them. “Ordinarily I would hire a troupe of men to play. But with such short notice, none were readily available. We will have to make do with what we can. And you will help. Now find your places, we’re set to begin.”
Hamed took the broad drum hesitantly. He hadn’t even known men were allowed into the Zār, and hadn’t expected he’d be called on to participate. But there was no time to object, as they were quickly hustled among the group of women. A few of them were Nadiyaa’s age, but most were younger—with faces that reflected the variety of Soudan, Egypt, perhaps even Abyssinia. All were dressed in patterned dresses and hijab, in contrast with the simple white they’d hung about the tram. The two men were hurried into bright blue gallabiyahs over their uniforms—colors, they were told, the djinn might find pleasing.
In moments, the strumming strings of an oud and the fluty resonance of several reed neys played in the morning air. The sounds emanated from Fahima, who seemed to make them as easily as Hamed could whistle. The machine-woman walked alongside Nadiyaa in the front, flanking the sheikha’s left as Jizzu took her right. An odd enough trio, he judged, as he began to slap a palm on the goatskin hide of the Tar drum.
“You there, the tall broad one!” a woman behind him called. “We’re trying to appease the djinn, not drive it off! Try to catch the beat. You keep rhythm like an Englishman!”
There were some titters at this and Hamed felt his face flush. He did not keep rhythm like an Englishman! It was only that it was hard just starting out. And all the different sounds were a bit confusing. He cast a glance over to Onsi—who was pounding away on his drum at a hearty pace, moving in perfect time to the music. A few of the women offered him compliments and Hamed gritted his teeth. He was being shown up by someone who had gone to school at Oxford? He renewed his efforts as the door to the tram was opened. They had to enter single-file through the narrow passage, and by the time Hamed made his way up the steps, the car was already filled with people.
It had that same feel as before—the air thick, cold, and heavy. Nadiyaa and Jizzu stood off at one end while he and the other women occupied another. A round wooden tray had been placed on a three-legged stool in the center of the car. It was covered in white cloth, but beneath could be made out heaps of nuts and dried fruits. Nearby sat the cages of chickens—an altar of offerings to the djinn. The already dim space fast filled with incense smoke billowing from two coffers that could be seen under the flickering lamps. The pungent smell of frankincense soon filled the air. It all mixed with the drums, Fahima’s music, and a steady chanting led by the sheikha and the other women, creating a heady atmosphere.
Hamed squinted through the haze to the clockwork mass in the tram’s ceiling, searching for the spirit. He found it almost immediately—that sinuous tendril of gray smoke that slithered among the turning gears. It appeared to take notice of the visitors and ceased its constant movement. Going still, it sat there in one place and he couldn’t help shake an eerie feeling of being watched.
His attention was drawn to Nadiyaa, who had begun the ceremony in earnest. She was singing loudly, her voice carrying a piercing cry, calling out her name and speaking to the spirit directly. Then, she began to dance.
Hamed had been told of this part of the ritual. Before a spirit could be reasoned with and appeased, it had to be identified. In a way, the Ministry observed similar rules. Only where he used classification charts, the sheikha used dance—quick circular whirls that made her garments spin like a dervish.
Every class of djinn the Zār dealt with was said to have its own particular song and rhythm. As she danced each in turn, she kept an unwavering eye on the hovering spirit above, gauging its reaction. At her side, Jizzu moved in harmony. The djinn had shifted to a male form, and now spun beside Nadiyaa with a fluid grace. This must be what it meant, he now realized, for a sheikha to dance with her djinn. The two seemed to enter a trance, becoming one graceful being as they sought to commune with the unknown djinn. Had he put on his spectral goggles, Hamed would not have been surprised to see waves of magic churning about them. He could feel it even here, washing over him and setting the fine hairs along his skin to standing.
In his own circle, where the other women danced and tossed their hair about, Hamed kept his eyes and wits sharp. Nadiyaa had proven stubbornly reluctant about forcing the djinn to leave the tram. But through Onsi’s philosophical wrangling, they’d managed to convince her that she might appeal to the spirit to find a host more amenable to its wants. Despite all that business about sentient machines, he couldn’t fathom why any djinn would want to spend years possessing a tram car. Maybe the thing just didn’t know where it was.
A sudden commotion caught his attention. The spirit had become active again, mimicking Nadiyaa and Jizzu, trying to match their movements. As it did so, it also began to grow, becoming bigger by the moment. No, not just grow, Hamed realized—it was taking form! They had been told about this beforehand. The djinn might choose to reveal itself when ready to make contact, perhaps even becoming corporeal. It was working! Slowly he watched as what had once been an obscure mass coalesced into a more definable shape. It took on aspects of a head, then added a torso with arms and legs until reaching what it desired.
Hamed stared in surprise. The djinn he knew could take on any shape. Some had the heads of beasts or fantastic creatures. Others, like Jizzu, seemed like more majestic versions of humans—taller, stronger, or abnormally beautiful. This djinn didn’t look like any of those. It instead looked nothing more than a girl.
A ghostly girl, certainly, whose moon-pale skin carried an ethereal gray cast, almost glowing amid the gloom and incense smoke. She was thin. Not the type of thin that looked starved, but instead delicate—as if she were made of something that might shatter if touched. Her eyes were overly large, with pitch black liquid pupils set into a pale gray face with a small nose and even smaller lips tinged in blue—the only color on her. A bone-white dress covered her like a slip down to her ankles, where her bare feet showed. She hovered horizontally above them, staring down with her bold eyes while long strands of slivery hair flowed about as if she were submerged in water.
Nadiyaa had stopped both her dance and song. She took guarded steps forward, looking up at the spirit, speaking and offering her name. The ghostly girl tilted her head curiously, then answered back. Hamed listened close to her speech. Her voice had the same grating quality as the screech that had driven him and Onsi from the tram on their first visit. This time it wasn’t nearly as bad, as she was speaking, not screaming. But he still couldn’t make her out. What language was that? By the look on Nadiyaa’s face, she was equally puzzled. She seemed set to try again when the girl unexpectedly pounced.
It happened so fast, Hamed wasn’t certain what he’d seen. The spirit had lunged for the sheikha, only it wasn’t the girl. At least not any more. In a blur, it had changed once again, this time into something horrifying. The young girl’s face became ancient, shriveled and decayed like the mummified dead that lay buried deep in Egypt’s oldest tombs. Her long silvery hair turned wan, and now hung in uneven and tangled tresses. The rest of her body had grown and elongated, becoming tall and monstrous. Narrow arms jutted from hulking shoulders, stretching to the knee and ending in long fingers of sharpened bone.
The hag opened her mouth and let out that familiar screech, so that the other women clutched at their ears in pain. Nadiyaa had gone down under the attack, and the spirit raised one of those deadly arms to slash. Hamed already had his pistol out—though he had no idea what bullets would do against such a thing. But Jizzu was there first, taking on a form that looked like the man and woman at once. They moved to stand protectively over Nadiyaa, baring sharp ivory teeth in threat as the ruby in their eyes burned fierce. The hag gave another great screech, realizing there was easier prey, and turned abruptly on the car’s other inhabitants.
Hamed took aim as the spirit came and jumped out in front. He never got off a shot as she batted him aside without stopping. He went tumbling at the strong blow, sliding across the tram floor to knock over the altar, where terrified chickens flapped and squawked noisily in their cages. He didn’t stop until slamming up against a bolted down chair, losing his tarboosh along the way. He watched helplessly as the spirit fell upon the gathered women, scattering them like dolls. There were stomach-turning screams as those claws slashed away, adding the sounds of tearing cloth to the air.
Somehow Fahima managed to get herself between them, standing with arms flung wide. The spirit tore at her dress, ripping the front to shreds. As if angered at finding brass beneath rather than flesh, the hag raked the machine-woman’s metal torso—throwing off showering sparks to light up the dim gloom of incense smoke. Those claws might have reduced the machine-woman to shrapnel if not for a voice that boomed through the car to draw everyone’s attention.
Nadiyaa was standing. Her face was awash with fury, and she was chanting at the top of her lungs. The spirit twisted her neck unnaturally, fixing the sheikha with emptied eye sockets, and opened a mouth crammed full of jagged teeth to let fly a string of words in its unknown language. Hamed didn’t need to understand to know the things were curses. The foul magic that clung to them sent up a deathly sour stench, and he gagged reflexively.
But where the curses struck, hair-thin golden lines of Sufi geometric symbols could be seen, infusing the air about the sheikha like a ward of light. She remained steadfast, chanting and pushing forward. Soon the spirit was in retreat and howling in rage. The hag’s arms began to shrink and her whole body collapsed in on itself until once again there was only a small trail of gray smoke. Retreating back to the clockwork brain in the tram’s ceiling, the spirit played out its anger—setting the car to tremble and quake.
Hamed didn’t waste time. He ran to help several of the women up, pausing only to snatch up his tarboosh. Onsi was doing the same, escorting them quickly to the door. In ones and twos, they filed out of the tram and onto the safety of the platform. Outside, everyone watched as the car shook wildly. There was a sudden lapse of silence—before a mass of blood, feathers, and gore came flying out the door. What was left of the altar and the chickens was now mangled and reduced to pulp. With a slam, the door to the tram shut and all went quiet.
Releasing a long-held breath, Hamed tried to get his bearings—still dazed at what had just happened. He hastily counted over the women to see that everyone was there. Miraculously, none of them had been seriously hurt. The front of their clothes had been torn terribly, but those bony claws hadn’t broken the skin. Fahima was another matter. Deep gashes, rent across the machine-woman’s middle, even now leaked bits of steam and fluid. Nadiyaa knelt, tending to her with evident worry. When she was done, she stood and stalked toward the men.
Hamed almost backed away at sight of the storm cloud churning in her face, but instead asked: “Will she be all right?”
Nadiyaa gave a curt nod. “Yes. Praise be to God, she is strongly made. A machinist will have to repair her wounds and rebuild what was broken.”
“What happened? Why did the spirit attack you?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, her voice heating. “I only know one thing—that is no djinn! I went through all seven classes of lesser djinn spirits that are known to the Zār, and that thing belongs to none of them. Your tram is haunted by some foreign, unknown spirit. But don’t call it a djinn!”
Hamed listened, dumbfounded. Not a djinn? A foreign spirit? “But from where?” he asked.
“I don’t know that either,” the sheikha replied. “It spoke in some other tongue, a dialect of Turkic maybe.” She held out a piece of paper for Hamed to take. He grimaced at finding that it was the bill. “I’ll be sending out the fees for the other incidentals.” Her arms gestured to her haggard and beaten entourage. With a polite but stiff farewell, she walked back to her group. They took a while longer to gather up themselves and their belongings before leaving Hamed and Onsi on the empty platform where Tram 015 sat deceptively still.
Hamed sighed wearily, looking down at the bill and trying not to think of the added costs to come. In truth, his mind was more consumed by what the sheikha had just revealed. All this time they’d been chasing the wrong lead. A Marid djinn wouldn’t have helped, not with some foreign, unknown spirit. All that effort, wasted. The worst of it was, he had no idea what to do next. He was a seasoned investigator without a clue to go on. That was a depressing circumstance. Onsi, who stood beside him, was muttering beneath his breath.
“Do you have something to say, Agent Onsi?” Hamed asked testily.
“Oh, I was just thinking that it wasn’t Turkic,” he spoke up.
“What?” Hamed asked.
“Sheikha Nadiyaa suggested that the spirit was speaking a Turkic dialect,” he explained. “But I don’t think so. Yes, the stress falls on the last syllable just the same, but it didn’t carry the same vowel harmony. Also, Turkic doesn’t have any diphthongs. . . .”
Hamed let him go on, sorry now that he had even asked.
“If I had to venture a guess,” the man continued, pensively tapping his spectacles, “I’d say the spirit was speaking some form of archaic or classical Armenian.”
Hamed’s head shot up, and he rounded on Onsi, who stepped back under his glare. The shorter man yelped as Hamed went searching in his coat pockets, rifling about until he found what he sought—drawing it out. He held up the piece of sweet sudjukh between a thumb and forefinger before Onsi’s nose, so that the man had to look at it cross-eyed. Then, in triumph, he growled out one word.
“Armenian!”
* * *
It turned out that Superintendent Bashir had the fortitude not of a devious mastermind, but a jellyfish. Once Hamed had confronted him with the evidence of his involvement with the foreign spirit, he had confessed everything in a torrent. That had been nearly twenty minutes ago. Now Bashir was collapsed completely onto his desk in the most undignified manner, wailing and slapping at his cheeks. He might have begun to pull out his hair, if he had much left to grasp. Hamed was all for contrition, but this had become ridiculous.
“That’s enough,” he snapped.
The superintendent choked back several sobs like a scolded child, reduced now to making a whimpering noise through his nostrils.
“Let me see if I understand this fully,” Hamed began, going over the story he’d been told between the cries of self-pity. “You’ve been running a smuggling ring using Tram 015, shipping candies and pastries coming in from Armenia to the Old City.”
It was an ingenious enterprise, when you considered it on the merits. The superintendent hadn’t been the only one who’d taken a liking to sweet sudjukh. So had his wife, and his family. Her brother, it turned out, had contacts within the Armenian district in both Cairo and the Old City. What had begun as a few gifts from home, given as tokens in exchange for favors, had fast turned into a full-scale operation bringing in sudjukh by the barrel. They’d managed to corner the Armenian sweets market in scattered communities between here and Luxor. Everyone was getting a cut: the dirigibles from Alexandria shipping it in, the customs officers who ignored the tariffs, and, of course, Superintendent Bashir, who provided a steady and reliable means of transport for the goods.
“Only something went wrong with one of the shipments,” Hamed continued. “And some Armenian spirit got smuggled in with one of your cargo. Do you know the penalty, superintendent, for transporting unregistered supernatural entities across Egypt’s borders?”
Bashir took a deep swallow, shaking his head emphatically. “I would never involve myself in such a thing! As God is my witness, I took no offers for such contraband! And I would have forbidden attempts to do so! You must believe me!”
Hamed eyed the man appraisingly. Trafficking of mystical creatures into the country was a well-known problem to the Ministry. But smugglers usually traded in things like unhatched rukh eggs or re’em calves—selling unwary collectors infant animals that quickly grew into unmanageable monsters. There’d been a craze over lightning birds two years back. Just five of the things had wreaked havoc for days: disabling trams, shutting down factory machines, and setting off blackouts in the posher streets of Cairo now lined by electric lamps. The Ministry had to fly in a troupe of Sangoma diviners from Bambata City to recapture them. But Hamed had to admit that he couldn’t believe anyone would have willingly smuggled in the ghastly spirit that now resided in Tram 015. More likely, the thing had snuck into a shipment while still in Armenia.
“When did you realize that you’d possibly contaminated your tram?” he asked Bashir.
The superintendent winced. “When I encountered it for myself. I heard it speak and knew right away it was Armenian. I sought to expel it from the tram. But when I told the Armenians about it. . . .”
“They became scarce,” Hamed finished.
“They cut me out of my own trade!” Bashir cried, recapturing some of his indignation. “They claimed I was cursed and would have no more to do with me!” He shuddered. “Am I? Cursed, I mean?”
Hamed wished he could tell the man he was. “You’re not cursed. But you have broken more laws than I can count!” He waved off Onsi, who seemed set to tick each one off. “You tried to keep the matter quiet, almost firing a worker who found out about the spirit. Then you kept the contaminated vehicle in service, so that nothing would look as if it were wrong. Only after the spirit attacked a passenger did you have the moral sense to ground the tram.”
“It almost tore the woman to pieces!” Bashir exclaimed, waving his arms. “All I could think was what would have happened if the passenger had been harmed! I couldn’t have such a blight on my record! Or my conscience,” he added hastily. “I put Tram 015 out of commission until I could find a way to fix things.”
“That was when you lured us here under false pretenses,” Hamed continued. “Even when you knew all along the source of the problem! If you’d been up front from the beginning, we wouldn’t have wasted all this time. And several innocent women wouldn’t have nearly been killed today!”
“I’m very disappointed by your unscrupulousness, Superintendent Bashir,” Onsi said, shaking his head.
Bashir had the decency to hang his head, stung by the reprimand. A nice touch, Hamed thought. He sat back in his chair, tenting his fingers. “The question is, what do we do now?” Onsi mimicked Hamed’s posture, though he needed to work on pulling it off. Perhaps a flourish first with his spectacles.
“What will you do?” the superintendent quavered.
Hamed shrugged nonchalantly. “We could become heroes. The men who broke up a smuggling ring and corruption in the transit sector. Oh, the dailies would love that headline!” Bashir’s skin turned a lighter shade of beige, and he looked like he might faint. Hamed let the threat hang there for a while, letting the man’s imagination work.
“But luckily for you we don’t handle petty bureaucratic malfeasance.” he said at last, sitting up and leaning forward. He ignored Onsi, who in trying a similar maneuver had almost fallen from his chair. “We’re agents with the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, and we’re going to do as we set out to do—and solve the case of Tram 015!”
“You’re not going to turn me in?” Bashir piped up, his voice reedy.
“No,” Hamed answered magnanimously. It was just a candy smuggling ring, after all. A bit ridiculous when you thought about it.
The superintendent, however, was effusive with his praise. “Oh! God bless your head! Your eyes! God the Merciful look after you!”
Hamed let it go on for a while before holding up a hand to stop. That would do.
“You are, however, going to do no more smuggling or any other thing of the sort,” he commanded. “From this day on you walk a straight path, Superintendent Bashir.”
“Yes! Yes!” The man nodded in clear relief. “A straight path!”
Hamed stood, and Onsi with him. Pulling out a sheet of paper from his jacket, Hamed unfolded it and placed it face down on the desk before sliding it forward. Bashir picked it up, turning it over and reading in confusion.
“I don’t understand, what’s this?” he asked.
“The bill from Sheikha Nadiyaa,” Hamed answered curtly. “You’ll be getting a few more. Including one for repairs on a boilerplate eunuch, if I had to guess.” Seeing the man’s eyes glaze over as he did the calculations in his head, Hamed smiled. Picking up the bronze dish, he offered it up with a rattle of its contents. “More sweet sudjukh, Superintendent Bashir?”