"A Master of Djinn"

P. Djèlí Clark's tale blends steampunk with the roaring 10s and early feminism and Egyptian mythology, and the resulting alternative universe is a bit of a hodge-podge. There are some good moments like visiting the chief of forensics, the self-proclaimed angels warrant a sequel, but the big reveal of the imposter just wasn't much of a surprise, and the romance as a fait accompli is tepid if not quite perfunctory.

• Dalton was obsessed with mummies—part of proving his theory that Egypt’s ancient rulers were truly flaxen-haired relatives to Anglo-Saxons, who held sway over the darker hordes of their realm. Archibald was as much a racialist as the next man, but even he found such claims rubbish and tommyrot.
• More important, he was a he, which still held weight even in Cairo’s flaunted modernity—which explained the smile on his dark lips.
• Taking a long pull from the wooden pipe, she let the enchanted maassel work through her, before exhaling a thick column.
  It didn’t look like regular smoke—more silver than gray. Didn’t move like smoke either, knitting together instead of dissipating. It took some seconds to coalesce, but when it did, Fatma couldn’t help feeling a bit of triumph. A vaporous river snaked across the air as a felucca sailed its surface, the triangular lateen sail stretched taut, and leaving ripples its wake.
• Should have known the kid wouldn’t be an honest broker, not with all the wallahis he threw around. Anybody who swore to God that habitually couldn’t be trusted.
• “It’s worse than that,” she said. “Their wish grants them long life. But it doesn’t say how. They could live out their whole lives with a terrible disease, unable to die. Same thing if an accident leaves them in unbearable pain. Their ‘gift’ could easily become a prison.”
  Khalid slowly lowered his teacup and murmured a prayer. That was the thing a lot of people didn’t understand. Magic abhorred imbalance. And always exacted a price.
• “The mission is in New York—Harlem. Worked with immigrants in Brooklyn too—Roma, Sicilians, Jews. All people suspected of bringing in ‘foreign customs.’” She wrinkled a bold nose in distaste.
  No need to explain. America’s anti-magic edicts were infamous.
• a statement by the government vowing the peace summit would go on, and the ensuing investigation. Nothing about flames that burned only flesh, a corpse with its head on backward, or a mysterious man in a gold mask. The rest of the front page included speculation on the growing closeness between the German kaiser and the Ottoman sultan, the usual worries of war, and a write-up on another daring heist by the Forty Leopards.
• Fatma frowned. “I thought Nephthys was Set’s sister-wife.” Siti shook her head quietly. Too late. Ahmad’s generous nostrils flared as he gritted his sharp teeth.
  “Why is everyone so slavish to texts written thousands of years ago?” he snapped. “Gods can change. Grow apart. Try new things. Besides, Set was a jerk. He never knew how to treat her properly. How to worship her.”
• The high priestess sat back, disappointed. She did love her dramatics. “The Hermetic Brotherhood of Al-Jahiz.” Her fingers tapped the card depicting the banner. “The hexagram, a symbol of alchemy representing the great elements.”
• “Even a rich man must sometimes eat with beggars,” Ahmad remarked.
• So that was it. Fatma had proposed new ways to recruit women years ago, and was mostly ignored. Now the Ministry was playing catch-up. And she and Hadia were to be some kind of public relations campaign.
  “Honestly, I’m surprised. I’d think you’d welcome more women in our ranks. You know I’ve always supported you. Do you know, I was an early subscriber to La Modernite?”
• Fatma walked inside, a cacophony of music and carousing washing over her like a small storm.
  The Jasmine wasn’t listed in the directory. Outside, no one ever said its name. They just called it the Spot.
• When al-Jahiz sent magic back in the world, it hadn’t just happened in Egypt. It had happened everywhere. The whole world over. In America, the return of magic had been met with persecution. Benny and the others still whispered wide-eyed about a sorcerer named Robert Charles who’d nearly brought New Orleans to its knees. They claimed this Buddy Bolden worked another kind of magic with his music, and had suffered dearly for his gift.
• “You’re thinking whoever is masquerading as al-Jahiz probably created his persona based from books like these. And Lord Worthington’s brotherhood did the same. We’re not building a profile of al-Jahiz; we’re building one on how people remember him.”
• The ten years after al-Jahiz’s disappearance saw the rise of a nationalist movement as Isma’il Basha fell into debt and ceded greater control to European powers. The djinn mostly hid behind the scenes, but they were there too. It wasn’t until Tell El Kebir in ’82 that they made themselves fully known—where djinn magic joined nationalist fervor to drive the British from Egypt and into the sea. That event was now commemorated as the Emerging.
• “That they went about hunting al-Jahiz’s secrets and held odd rituals. Alistair believed those secrets could bring a new age to the world—as if we don’t have enough on our hands.”
• You have come because your souls are thirsty, dry as the dust at your feet. You have come because even in this age where wonders are so abundant”—he gestured into the distance, toward greater Cairo—“there is yet emptiness, a hole at your center. This new world has failed you. This claimed ‘modernity’ has left you unfulfilled—like a man adrift in an ocean without a drop of water to drink.”
• Other than Onsi, most of my class barely interacted with me—as if just being courteous was somehow eib, or worse, haram. The unsolicited lectures from male teachers on the dangers of women in the workplace were my favorite—as if their own grandmothers weren’t probably selling goods out at market or helping with the farming. I expected when I got assigned, I’d have to deal with people who didn’t think I could measure up. Who thought I was in the wrong place. Who only saw some girl they’d stick behind a desk. But, wallahi, I didn’t think one of them would be you!”
• Camel racing had always been more popular out in the eastern desert, or back home near Luxor. Anywhere with flat wide spaces, which were hard to come by in Cairo. That was, until the djinn created their mechanical steam-powered camels, which could reach breakneck speeds. A track sat outside the city, and the high bets on riders and their clockwork mounts were notorious. Nothing emptied pockets faster.
• “No cadets have gone gardening at the Settlement for two years,” Hadia said. “Gardening” was the euphemism for the yearly culling of ghuls, carried out by academy instructors and trainees. Like a field trip. But with guns, sharp things, and lots of undead. “Not since that one class was nearly overrun and eaten. Didn’t you read about it in the alumni newsletter?”
  Fatma shrugged. Who read alumni newsletters? “So how are you ‘sort of’ trained to fight ghuls?”
• A part of her was itching to face off with him again. They’d be ready this time. Eat your enemy for lunch, before he can eat you for dinner, her mother’s voice urged.
• True Qareen were said to be personal djinn tied to individuals: a type of lifelong companion or shadow, even perhaps one’s spirit double. This particular type of djinn, however, did far more—attaching to whole lineages, like living heirlooms that passed themselves down through time. While they were popularly referred to as Qareen, the Ministry officially listed them among the unclassifiable djinn. As a rule they could be troublesome, flighty, or fiercely protective of those they bonded with—one never knew.
• Fatma looked to find her holding a blunderbuss with a flared muzzle. She’d been carrying that in pieces under her dress this whole time? The gun went off with a terrific boom, tearing through an ash-ghul and sending whole appendages flying.
• “Usually the secrets we keep deep down, ain’t meant to hurt other people,” he said. “Not saying they won’t, but not through intentions. Those deep secrets, we hide away because we’re afraid what other people might think. How they might judge us, if they knew.
• a white porcelain cup with a mechanical “Buna tetu.” The Amharic phrase, literally “Drink coffee,” had joined the lingua franca of Cairo as Ethiopian brews grew more popular. It was now a polite comment and even a greeting among the more modish that frequented coffee shops. A few of that sort were here now, in their telltale black coats and black tarbooshes—the women with stylish black dresses and bright white hijabs. They threw around words like “post Neo-Pharaonic” and “epistemologies of alchemic modernity,” eyes veiled behind dark glasses and lips pulling leisurely at thin cigarettes
• She did actually. “Last night when I broke the imposter’s mask, I saw his face.”
  “How is that good news? We’ve seen his face. Soudanese. A bit fanatic.”
  “Yes, but this time, it rippled.”
  Hadia frowned before understanding played out on her face. “An illusion!”
• “Not exactly. When I saw the crack, I knew it couldn’t be gold. But it wouldn’t change for me. This illusion appeared attuned to you—making your perception the focal point. Perhaps because you were the last to see it woven around the person meant to be concealed.”
  “But the mask appeared as gold to us as well,” Hadia put in. “You’re saying that’s because Fatma believed it was gold?”
  “Illusion magic often works by creating a mass shared delusion,” the doctor explained. “Some people in a crowd see a man in a gold mask. Then, like a contagion, they spread the deception to others. Soon, everyone sees a gold mask.”
• “Winds often blow against the way ships want!” the doctor snapped, sounding uncannily like Fatma’s mother. “The solution to loosen up magical bonds could also dissolve the hair itself. Go too fast, and you’ll end up with nothing.”
• The bookseller ignored his wife, continuing. “I would go back to read a page again and again, feeling I was missing something. Then one day, I caught a peek. The magic, it turns out, has its own gaps—spaces that can’t account for every mind. Once I was given that glimpse, it was only a matter of time before I could perceive it all.”
• It was one of the oldest medieval buildings in Cairo, joined to several masjid—including one named for the basha. That had been its greatest claim to fame, until the angels arrived. They’d established their leadership here immediately, in Al-Gawhara Palace. No one had objected. One rarely did when angels were concerned. Since their arrival sometime after the djinn, they’d commandeered numerous such historical buildings, often paying the government large sums for their lease.
  Al-Gawhara had been built by Muhammad Ali, on the same avenue where he’d invited several hundred Mamluke leaders to a feast—only to slaughter them all.
• Angels were notorious for their bureaucracy. They required every little thing be recorded, signed, stamped, and reviewed—often in triplicate. Cairenes joked that they must have invented paperwork.
• “We know who you are, agents,” one of the angels spoke. His voice was a melodic rumble: a beautiful song mingled with thunder.
• “It also stopped the djinn from speaking about it,” Fatma added.
  “Magic abhors imbalance,” Harmony said. “The djinn could not ask for this thing and be exempt. The price exacted for balance was their own silence.”
• “The magic is removed,” he rumbled. “I could have done so without pain.” His mouth broke into a wide toothy grin. “But you didn’t make that clear in your request.”
  Fatma lifted a trembling hand to form a rude gesture. She really did hate this djinn.
• The lady thieves had started out as shoplifters, often wearing full bur’a, sebleh, and milaya lef to hide their ill-gained goods. They’d gone on to ransack homes of the wealthy, posing as servants and maids, then to heists that made off with jewels, art, and once an entire armored carriage carrying casks of gold coins.
• “It’s what Lady Dhāt al-Himma says to her son after lifting her veil: ‘So you did not care for full-bosomed companions? How does it suit you to be tested by the lion of the forest?’ Those are the same words spoken by this Illusion djinn. Perhaps you can find meaning in them?”
• Lifting the hem of her gallabiyah, she hurried off, her two attendants following. Fatma watched them disappear into the dust haze—a West African princess, the German kaiser, and a Russian general, wandering the broken Abdeen Palace on this very strange night in Cairo.