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

Through the howling of the wind and the pounding of the rain Mr. Geronimo heard a woman’s voice shrieking abuse at the jinni entourage, How would you like it if your world was devastated the way you have ruined ours? — that was the question this voice asked over and over again, punctuated by much bad language. Mr. Geronimo realized that the screaming woman was Teresa Saca, whom Dunia had summoned to fight at their side. She seemed more than a little deranged to Geronimo Manezes. It was also unclear if her wrath was aimed only at the Grand Ifrit and his followers. It was an anger that seemed to spread like a plague, infecting everything it touched, and maybe, Mr. Geronimo thought, a part of this anger was directed at Dunia as well. It was a hate-filled shriek that if aimed at any human group of people, tarring them all with the same brush, would have been called — yes — racially prejudiced. Teresa Saca, it seemed to him, listening to her shriek into the raging elements, matching their fury with her own, crackling with electricity around the edges of her body, was bigoted against all the descended creatures of the upper world, and therefore, of course, against the jinnia within herself as well. Her hatred of the other was also a hatred of the self. She was a dangerous ally.

Meanwhile, like a cornerman at a title bout, Mr. Geronimo was becoming worried about Dunia’s approach to the fight. She seemed content to react rather than take the initiative, which felt like a mistake to him. He tried to tell her, wordlessly, but she was listening to nobody now, all her effort bent on the battle. Zumurrud was changing form, unleashing the worst of all the monsters within him: the creature with iron teeth and a thousand heads with a thousand tongues, once known as the Blatant Beast. With the thousand tongues he could not only bark like a dog, snarl like a tiger, growl like a bear, yowl like a dragon, and seek to bite his adversary with many three-pronged serpent stings; he could also hurl literally hundreds of hexes, spells and enchantments at Dunia simultaneously, paralyzing spells, weakening spells, killing spells. And there were many tongues to spare for abuse, abuse in many languages, the languages of men and jinn, which revealed in Zumurrud a level of moral degradation that shocked all who heard it.

And as he watched Zumurrud in the form of the Blatant Beast assault Dunia in many hundreds of different ways, and saw her whirl and spin and deflect and defend like a great Valkyrie, or a goddess of Olympus or Kailash, and as he wondered how long even she could withstand so ferocious an assault, and as he listened to Teresa Saca’s screams, How would you feel if it happened to you, Mr. Geronimo experienced a sort of inner vision or epiphany. The doors of perception opened and he saw that what was evil and monstrous about the jinn was a mirror of the monstrous and evil part of human beings, that human nature too contained the same irrationality, wanton, willful, malevolent, and cruel, and that the battle against the jinn was a portrait of the battle within the human heart, which meant that the jinn were somehow abstractions as well as realities, and that their descent to the lower world served to show that world what had to be eradicated within itself, which was unreason itself, unreason which was the name of the dark jinn within people, and as he understood this, he also understood Teresa Saca’s self-hatred, and knew, as she knew, that the jinn self within them both needed to be expunged, the irrational in man as well as jinn had to be defeated, so that an age of reason could begin.

We listened to what he told us. We are still listening, after a thousand years. This is Mr. Geronimo the Gardener, after all. We all know what he understood that night, the Thousandth Night, when Dunia, the Lightning Queen Aasmaan Peri, which is to say Skyfairy, fought against Zumurrud the Great.

She was tiring. Zumurrud could see that. This was the moment he had waited for, as a matador waits to see the acceptance of defeat in the eyes of the bull. This was the moment when he abandoned the persona of the Beast, resumed his own form, produced the blue bottle from a fold in his red shirt, removed the cork, and cried out with all his force:

Jinnia foolish, jinnia blind,

Now I hold you in my mind!

In this place confinèd be,

Ever more belong to me.

This was said in the Secret Language of the jinn, in which the most potent of spells are written, and which demands an immense expenditure of power on the part of the speaker. The humans watching the scene did not understand the words but they saw their effect, saw Dunia stagger and fall, saw her being dragged feet first along the grass towards the little bottle which gaped at her like the devil’s mouth.

What did he say? the Lady Philosopher screamed at Omar the Ayyar, but Omar was watching wide-eyed as Dunia was pulled towards the bottle. Tell me, Alexandra cried, and so Omar absently did, repeating the words of power in a whisper and offering a rough translation. Then Zumurrud in triumph spoke again.

Jinnia fierce and jinnia grand,

Now I hold you in my hand.

In this place confinèd be,

Ever more belong to me.

What? Alexandra demanded, and Omar told her. It’s over, he said. She has lost.

Then Dunia screamed. It was the scream of power Mr. Geronimo had heard when her father died. It knocked humans and jinn flat on their backs and it broke Zumurrud’s hold over the spell. He staggered backwards clutching at his ears and the little blue bottle spiraled through the air and landed in Dunia’s right hand, and the cork in her left. Now she drew herself to her feet and reversed the spell.

Mighty, proud and strong Ifrit,

Come and sit thou at my feet.

In this place confinèd be,

Ever more belong to me.

What did she say? cried Alexandra, and Omar told her. Now it was Zumurrud being pulled towards the bottle, headfirst, his beard stretched out before him as if an invisible hand had grabbed it and was pulling it, and its owner, into the prison of the blue bottle. And Dunia cried out once again, with her last strength:

Feared and powerful Ifrit,

Today your mistress you must meet.

In this place confinèd be,

Ever more belong to me.

She knew at once, everyone knew, that she had overdone it. Her strength failed her. She fell into a deep swoon. The spell broke. Zumurrud began to rise in all his gigantic puissance. And the bottle,

to everyone’s surprise,

chose to spiral almost lazily through the air,

and came to rest in the outstretched right hand of Alexandra Bliss Fariña the Lady Philosopher,

and the cork in her left hand,

and to the consternation of all, and the joy of her allies, she repeated, word perfect, the first entrapment spell cast by the Lightning Queen, and Zumurrud crashed again to the ground, exhausted as he had exhausted Dunia, and was drawn relentlessly forward, until his whole huge spent body had squeezed into the tiny blue bottle, whereupon Alexandra pushed the cork into the neck, and he was caught, and it was over, and his flunkeys fled. They would be found afterwards and dealt with, but let that pass.

Mr. Geronimo and Omar the Ayyar and Jimmy Kapoor crowded around Alexandra and asked, How? How on earth? How in the name of? How by all that’s? How, how, how?

I was always quick with languages, she said deliriously, giggling lightly, as if she were flirting with young bucks at a summer garden party. Ask anyone at Harvard, she tittered. I picked them up in no time, like shiny pebbles on a beach.

Then she fainted away entirely, and Mr. Geronimo caught her, and Jimmy Kapoor snatched up the bottle before it hit the ground.