Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. Volume 10

We were at Bhati Gate.

The cab rolled to a stop in front of Kashi Manzil. A tall, narrow historical home-turned-hotel with a facade made of ochre and azure faience tiles. A wide terrace ran around the second floor and a small black copper pot hung from a nail on the edge of the doorway awning.

I recognized the superstition. Black to ward off black. Protection against the evil eye.

Welcome to Gramps’s world , I thought.

I looked down the street. Roadside bakeries, paan-and-cigarette shops, pirated DVD stalls, a girls’ school with peeling walls, and dust, dust everywhere; but my gaze of course went to Bhati and its double row of arches.

This was the place my grandfather had once gazed at, lived by, walked through. Somewhere around here used to be a tea stall run by a Mughal princess. Someplace close had been a eucalyptus from which a kid had fallen and gashed his head. A secret that had traveled the globe had come here with Gramps and awaited me in some dingy old alcove.

That stupid wanderlust in your eyes.

Sara’s voice in my brain was a gentle rebuke.

Later , I thought fiercely. Later.

THE NEXT DAY I began my search.

I had planned to start with the tea stalls. Places like this have long memories. Old Lahore was more or less the city’s ancient downtown and people here wouldn’t forget much. Least of all a Mughal princess who ran a tea shop. Gramps’s journal didn’t much touch on his life in the walled city. I certainly couldn’t discern any clues about the location of the eucalyptus treasure.

Where did you hide it, old man? Your shack? A friend’s place? Under that fucking tree stump?

If Gramps was correct and the tree had fallen half a century ago, that landmark was probably irretrievable. Gramps’s house seemed the next logical place. Trouble was I didn’t know where Gramps had lived. Before I left, I’d called Baba and asked him. He wasn’t helpful.

“It’s been a long time, son. Fifty years. Don’t tax an old man’s memory. You’ll make me senile.”

When I pressed, he reluctantly gave me the street where they used to live and his childhood friend Habib’s last name.

“I don’t remember our address, but I remember the street. Ask anyone in Hakiman Bazaar for Khajoor Gali. They’ll know it.”

Encircled by a wall raised by Akbar the Great, Old Lahore was bustling and dense. Two hundred thousand people lived in an area less than one square mile. Breezes drunk with the odor of cardamom, grease, and tobacco. The place boggled my mind as I strolled around taking in the niche pharmacies, foundries, rug shops, kite shops, and baked mud eateries.

I talked to everyone I encountered. The tea stall owner who poured Peshawari kahva in my clay cup. The fruit seller who handed me sliced oranges and guavas and frowned when I mentioned the pauper princess. Rug merchants, cigarette vendors, knife sellers. No one had heard of Zeenat Begum. Nobody knew of a young man named Sharif or his father who ran a calligraphy-and-design stall.

“Not around my shop, sahib.” They shook their heads and turned away.

I located Khajoor Gali – a winding narrow alley once dotted by palm trees (or so the locals claimed) now home to dusty ramshackle buildings hunched behind open manholes – and went door to door, asking. No luck. An aged man with henna-dyed hair and a shishamwood cane stared at me when I mentioned Baba’s friend Habib Ataywala, and said, “Habib. Ah, he and his family moved to Karachi several years ago. No one knows where.”

“How about a eucalyptus tree?” I asked. “An ancient eucalyptus that used to stand next to Bhati Gate?”

Nope.

Listlessly I wandered, gazing at the mist lifting off the edges of the streets and billowing toward me. On the third day it was like slicing through a hundred rippling white shrouds. As night fell and fairy lights blinked on the minarets of Lahore’s patron saint Data Sahib’s shrine across the road from Bhati, I felt displaced. Depersonalized. I was a mote drifting in a slat of light surrounded by endless dark. Gramps was correct. Old Lahore had betrayed him. It was as if the city had deliberately rescinded all memory or trace of his family and the princess’s. Sara was right. Coming here was a mistake. My life since Gramps’s death was a mistake. Seeing this world as it was rather than through the fabular lens of Gramps’s stories was fucking enlightening.

In this fog, the city’s fresh anemia, I thought of things I hadn’t thought about in years. The time Gramps taught me to perform the salat. The first time he brought my palms together to form the supplicant’s cup. Be the beggar at Allah’s door , he told me gently. He loves humility. It’s in the mendicant’s bowl that the secrets of Self are revealed. In the tashahuud position Gramps’s index finger would shoot from a clenched fist and flutter up and down.

“This is how we beat the devil on the head,” he said.

But what devil was I trying to beat? I’d been following a ghost and hoping for recognition from the living.

By the fifth day I’d made up my mind. I sat shivering on a wooden bench and watched my breath flute its way across Khajoor Gali as my finger tapped my cell phone and thousands of miles away Sara’s phone rang.

She picked up almost immediately. Her voice was wary. “Sal?”

“Hey.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

A pause. “You didn’t call before you left.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to.”

“I was worried sick. One call after you landed would’ve been nice.”

I was surprised but pleased. After so much disappointment, her concern was welcome. “Sorry.”

“Jesus. I was...” She trailed off, her breath harsh and rapid in my ear. “Find the magic treasure yet?”

“No.”

“Pity.” She seemed distracted now. In the background water was running. “How long will you stay there?”

“I honest to God don’t know, but I’ll tell you this. I’m fucking exhausted.”

“I’m sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry. I smiled a little.

“Must be around five in the morning there. Why’re you up?” I said.

“I was... worried, I guess. Couldn’t sleep. Bad dreams.” She sighed. I imagined her rubbing her neck, her long fingers curling around the muscles, kneading them, and I wanted to touch her.

“I miss you,” I said.

Pause. “Yeah. Me too. It’s a mystery how much I’m used to you being around. And now that...” She stopped and exhaled. “Never mind.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” She grunted. “This damn weather. I think I’m coming down with something. Been headachy all day.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. It’ll go away. Listen, I’m gonna go take a shower. You have fun.”

Was that reproach? “Yeah, you too. Be safe.”

“Sure.” She sounded as if she were pondering. “Hey, I discovered something. Been meaning to tell you, but... you know.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Remember what your gramps said in the story. Lightning trees?”

“Yes.”

“Well, lemme text it to you. I mentioned the term to a friend at school and turned out he recognized it too. From a lecture we both attended at MIT years ago about fractal similarities and diffusion-limited aggregation.”

“Fractal what?” My phone beeped. I removed it from my ear and looked at the screen. A high-definition picture of a man with what looked like a tree-shaped henna tattoo on his left shoulder branching all the way down his arm. Pretty.

I put her on speakerphone. “Why’re you sending me pictures of henna tattoos?”

She was quiet, then started laughing. “That didn’t even occur to me, but, yeah, it does look like henna art.”