Salman Rushdie - Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

“I understand,” said Zumurrud the Great. “Rest now. No more words are necessary.”

There ended the lesson. As Ghazali would soon discover, sending the most potent of the dark jinn down the path of extreme violence could have results that alarmed the sender. The student soon surpassed the master.

Dunia awakened Ibn Rushd in his grave for the last time. I’ve come to say goodbye, she told him. I won’t be back to see you after today.

What has taken my place in your affections? he asked, his voice heavy with sarcasm. A pile of dust knows its limitations.

She told him about the war. The enemy is strong, she said.

The enemy is stupid, he replied. That is ground for hope. There is no originality in tyrants, and they learn nothing from the demise of their precursors. They will be brutal and stifling and engender hatred and destroy what men love and that will defeat them. All important battles are, in the end, conflicts between hatred and love, and we must hold to the idea that love is stronger than hate.

I don’t know if I can do that, she said, for now I too am full of hatred. I look at the jinn world and see my dead father there, yes, but beyond that I see its shallowness: its obsession with shiny baubles, its amorality, its widespread contempt for human beings, which I must call by its true name, racism. I see the narcissistic malice of the Ifrits and I know that a little of that is in me too, there is always darkness as well as light. I don’t see any light in the dark jinn now but I sense the darkness in myself. It’s the place from which the hate comes. So I question myself as well as my world but I also know that this is no time for discussions. This is war. In wartime one must not ask, but do. So our discussions too must end, and what has to be done must be done.

That is a sad speech, he said. Reconsider. You need my guidance now.

Goodbye, she answered.

You’re abandoning me.

You abandoned me once.

Then this is your revenge. To leave me conscious and impotent in my grave for all eternity.

No, she said, kindly. No revenge. Only farewell. Sleep.

Natraj Hero dancing the destruction dance. Find the jinni within yourself, the hot girl told him, the skinny little chick who said she was his great-great-great-great-and-more- great s-granny. His home was gone his mother didn’t last much longer his mother who so far in life was the only woman he had truly loved. The shock of the night of the giant and the burning house did her in. He buried her and then was stuck on his cousin Normal’s couch missing her more every minute of every day. His cousin who he fuckin’ hated more every minute of every day. When I get in charge of my inner goblin, Normal, you jus might be the first a-hole I blast. Jus waitonly, waitansee.

The whole world gone to hell in a handcart and he, Jimmy Kapoor, spending his nights hittin’ the graveyards with, because he’s a funny guy, a lightning bolt painted on his matha like Harry P. He uses St. Michael’s mostly, cradled in the outstretched arms of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway or the way he really thinks of it the fuck-you V-sign of the BQE, all those headstones with lady angels perched on top looking down sad-faced at the stiffs. He’s different now, ever since his hot granny whispered against his body, first his temples then his heart, bleeve it bruh she put her lips against my chest and worked her Hogwarts magic. Bam his head blew open like in that Kubrick flick like a rushing towards somewhere very cool and he’s seeing shit he never dreamed, the grid of jinn knowledge and capability. It’s actually mind-blowing, fuck, his mind is literally blown, but hey, interestingly, it hasn’t made him crazy. Guess why. Guess that inner goblin is awake inside him and can handle this stuff. This must be what it feels like when people say, I feel like another person, or, I feel like a new man.

So now he’s another person who has no other name, just his own. And that other person is him.

First there was the wormhole and the giant pretending to be his cartoon character just to fuck with his head but now his hot granny really fucked with his head and whaddya know it’s like he’s the superhero. The magic dancing king. Having the time of your life.

And oh yeah he’s getting it. He can move really fast, slow the world down and speed himself up, that is sick. He can turn this into that. A handful of pebbles, hey presto, jewelry. A fallen branch when he squeezes it becomes a block of gold, who needs you Normal with your lousy couch I’m rich. But then Dunia’s voice in his head, as if she hears every thought, if you don’t concentrate on the fighting you’ll be dead sooner than you think. He thinks about his mother and that gives him the anger. That puts the rage in him. Dunia says she’s putting together an army. In different cities different Jimmys. He looks into his new brain and sees the network spreading. He reaches out his arm and the juice flows down it and wham, the thunderbolt, and one less sad-face angel. This he can’t believe. It’s his dream.

Somebody left pumpkins over there at that last resting place, well, thas jus askin’ for it dude I’m sorry. Boom . Pumpkin soup.

When he got into it, it wasn’t lightning with him. It was metamorphosis. Sure he blew the heads off a few stone angels, that was fun, he was exercising his Second Amendment right to bear arms, though probably the Founding Fathers didn’t mean actual arms— but he discovered soon enough that he was better at the transformation thing. It didn’t have to be jewelry, that was the key. Not just pebble into ruby. It has to be admitted that he tried his powers out on living things. Birds. Stray cats. Mangy curs. Rats. Well, nobody minds if you turn rats into rat turds or rat sausages, but birds, cats, dogs, there are people who care about those entities, starting with his late mother the bird-keeper, so, sorry, people, sorry, Mom.

The best bit was when he found out he could turn his targets into, for example, sounds. Whoa. He could turn a bird into birdsong, no bird, just the song hanging there, he could turn a cat into a meow. Once he got the hang of that he started getting playful, he zapped a headstone and then there was just a kind of sobbing sound hanging in that space, yeah, he was discovering kind of a sick streak, maybe inside every tax accountant there was a sicko superhero trying to get out, and hey, he thought, what about colors , can I turn roaches or flags or cheeseburgers into just colors hanging in space and then, yeah, dissipating . He needed to practice on larger animals. Any sheep around here? Nobody’s gonna miss a few sheep, right? Maybe the metamorphoses were reversible, in which case, hey, no sheep were harmed in the making of this superpower. But the sheep were upstate on farms, unless the farms had broken down and the animals were just wandering about loose up there, who could he get to bring him where he needed to be, Asia had a car, she probably even knew where to get gas, gorgeous Ah-see-ah not Ay-sha, Italian signorina, not a brown girl, a dancer, no, bitch, not a stripper, she was pure class, ballet; probably had a line of men a mile long waiting for her with full gas cans in each hand. Now if he only had the really useful superpower of talking slick to girls.

Turned out he had the chops after all. He made the call, found a few words and told ballet girl what had happened to him, all of it, the hot granny, the whispering, bam, Stanley Kubrick space-odyssey FX, the works, and she didn’t believe-believe him but believed him enough to go to the graveyard with him and, man, he showed her. Having her to perform for, he was, truth, amazing. The sound transformations the color changes the lightning.