Jack N Jill Shoes was closing at last and Shehriyaar Ali was relieved. He’d spent his childhood sock-sliding over the terrazzo tiles of its large main hall, dodging salesmen and the many families that frequented what was once the city’s largest children’s shoe shop. Occupying the entire first floor of the Packer’s building in main Anarkali Bazar, it was strange to see it empty, lights off and the many racks behind its endless floor-to-ceiling glass cases standing empty. Akhtar Lala, one of his father’s oldest employees, was the only other person there. He had been trusted with the final wrapping up of the business, selling stock, dealing with severances (virtually unheard of for blue-collar workers, but he hadn’t felt right about letting everyone go empty-handed), and putting the books in order one last time.

Decrepit beyond belief, the old man had known his father well and had, in fact, joined the business in his grandfather’s day, when the store had been located in Panorama Centre. Shehriyaar could remember a time when Akhtar Lala still walked the floor when extra hands were needed, measuring feet on the tilted wooden scales and yelling that special code of numbers into the square holes in the ceiling that detailed the make, colour, and size of the shoe he needed. Expertly catching the boxes that were thrown down in response.

In recent years, he had mostly manned the cash counter, balanced the books, and helped train the newer staff. Slower in movement but with a memory like a knife, he had known the business better than anyone and had wept when Shehriyaar had first announced that he was selling. He could not understand why; the business had been very profitable and his father had kept good oversight during his lifetime. Most other stores did not stock the sheer variety that Jack N Jill did and scale allowed them to sell higher quality shoes at lower prices.

He was just done with shoes.  Never mind that this store had paid for his excellent lifestyle and expensive foreign education. He was done being someone his father wanted him to be rather than his own person. Perhaps more importantly, he was done with the country. He had been living in America for the past ten years. That is where he’d taken his wife and that is where his two children had been born. With his father’s recent death and the sale of all his property, he could finally sever every connection with the place of his birth and say goodbye to the load-shedding, the traffic, the bad roads, and the grasping, illiterate people. He had a  good job, he had used the money from his share in the family’s inheritance to buy a nice semi-detached house in a great area, and he knew his children would have an excellent life. He was simply shedding the old world like a skin that no longer fit.

Akhtar Lala emerged from the back office carrying a box of the last of Jack N Jill. Cheap business cards, assorted stationery, a ledger or two, a landline phone. Shehriyaar had wished once or twice that he had been able to sell a fully operational store to someone who would keep it running but the real estate had simply fetched more money. Oh well.

“Anything else Lala?” he asked as the old man came nearer.

“Yes, my son,” he replied. “Just one more thing. What are we going to do with Ma’aruf?”

“Who?”

“Ma’aruf, the jinn in the ceiling. What are we going to do with him?”

Shehriyaar blinked. Akhtar Lala had clearly suffered some kind of breakdown while he’d been in the back. He repeated the words back slowly.

“Ma’aruf, the jinn? Who lives in the ceiling?”

“Yes. I don’t think anyone has even told him. Your father used to keep him informed of any changes in the store so he wouldn’t be frightened and take it out on the stock.”

“Lala are you feeling alright? Do you need to sit down?”

The old man shook his head. “So your father never told you. Who do you think throws down the shoes that the boys all yell for? Never getting the size or colour wrong? How do you think our operation was able to expand so much? It was Ma’aruf.”

Shehriyaar took the old man’s hand and led him to a bench. “Lala are you talking about the inventory names? The numbers that the salesmen yell to tell the employees in the storage space in the ceiling so they can throw down the correct pair?”   

“There are no employees in the ceiling, Shehriyaar beta. There is only Ma’aruf. Other shoe stores give their employees specific displays. They make the men work in pairs.  They organize new inventory using special systems. They take their boys through the stock often enough so they can find an article quickly. But not us. Not Jack N Jill. We have Ma’aruf. It is enough for the customer to want an item for him to know what to send down almost instantly. I think the main trouble was to actually train him to drop the boxes into the salesmen’s hands after they call for them rather than have the shoes materialize onto the customers’ actual feet. As long as it was in the stockroom or our warehouse, it would land in the salesman’s hands. He has saved millions of rupees in time and manpower and training. Customers love how quick our service is. Ma’aruf is how your grandfather built this business and I don’t know how he will react to it shutting down forever.”

Akhtar Lala bent his head and a tear fell into his lap. Shehriyaar squirmed in embarrassment. He was a little angry at his father for not mentioning that the man had lost his mind. Probably thought it was kind to keep him employed instead of letting it be a problem for other people. Maybe it had been mentioned and Shehriyaar had just not paid attention.

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes as forgotten sounds echoed among the empty shelves. Finally, a small boy ran up the steps at the entrance. Lala’s grandson had been sent to fetch him one last time. Shehriyaar walked them both to an expensive car waiting on the main road (his father had been too generous) and waved until it was out of sight. He locked up the shop and left the keys at a small office nearby where they would wait for their new owners. He felt as though a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. Now he was free.

#

Back at his uncle’s house, Shehriyaar was lying shirtless on the guestroom bed because there was no electricity again. He had called the travel agent as soon as he had walked in the main door and told him to cash the cheque for his flight back home next week; there was not much left for him to do. It had been easy to convince his uncles and aunts to sell whatever remained of his grandfather’s property that had not been divided yet. A couple of cousins had tried to muddy the waters around whether he had the legal right to sell Jack N Jill but his lawyer had soon set everything right. They would have tried harder but none of them really wanted the label of “shopkeeper” attached to them. Their English Medium education made them turn their noses down on retail work even if it was for themselves. When they got their money they had nothing more to say.

Despite the mid-summer heat, he could feel himself drifting off and entering that middling place between sleep and waking in which the body feels as light as air and the mind as heavy as lead. A face drifted into the vision between his half-closed eyes. A small thin face of a strange, almost purplish colour and much too close to his own. Much too close. The pointed nose almost touched his eye.

He started awake and realized that a small man was sitting on his chest. He wanted to jump up and shake him off as he would an insect, but something held him down. The face looked angry. Mauve eyebrows slanted downwards to meet over flashing eyes and the lavender hair of a scraggly beard bristled in every direction. Shehriyaar remembered a scrap of dialogue from one of the stories his grandmother used to tell on winter evenings.

“Tu Ins hey, tu Jins hey, tu kya hey?”

Are you a Man, or a Jinn? What are you?

The little man crossed his arms over a chest that was, incongruously, dressed in a half-sleeved, plaid shirt, the sort that he used to see the salesmen at Jack N Jill wear.

“I am a jinn, Master. A humble servant that has worked for your family for centuries, only to be forgotten in an empty building like rubbish. I am Ma’aruf.”

This was a dream surely. A product of Akhtar Lala’s ravings and an upset stomach. The old man’s stories had come to life in his overheated brain and would vanish as soon as he woke up.

“I didn’t know that my family had a jinn for a servant, I swear!”

“Lies!” cried the jinn, jumping up and stamping his tiny foot. “I heard Akhtar Lala tell you that I waited in the ceiling for my orders but you did not listen. I have waited in the darkness for days, Master, listening to the men being dismissed, watching the stock being cleared, and hearing talk of the shop being shut forever. As your father’s heir, I had hoped that you would come to speak to me and set me to new tasks. Instead, you left me as though I was nothing better than a brick in the wall or a beam in the roof.”

Shehriyaar ran a hand over his sweaty face. “I can’t think in this stupid heat. When will the power be back?”

Ma’aruf disappeared with a small pop, reappeared on the dressing table, and snapped his fingers. Immediately the power returned and the fan whirred to life. The window AC shuddered awake and began to throw cold air into the room. Another snap of purple fingers and the windows Shehriyaar had left open in the hopes of a breeze clanged shut and their heavy curtains swished into place to block out the oppressive sunlight.

“You sure do know your way around the complexities of modern life, Ma’aruf,” said Shehriyaar as he swung his legs onto the floor and reached for his shirt. He rubbed his eyes so he could look at the creature better.

Ma’aruf the jinn couldn’t have been more than a foot in height, with skin and hair in varying shades of purple. He was not wearing the colourful middle eastern robes of song and story but was instead clad in the summer shirt and pants that Shehriyaar had noticed before. A tiny pad and pen rested in his breast pocket and Shehriyaar wondered at his father at being able to force even a supernatural being into wearing the bland uniform of a Jack N Jill employee.

“Tell me more about yourself, little man,” he asked, as he tried to get his bearings.

“I am Ma’aruf the jinn. I am small and not very powerful but I was bound in my infancy to serve the eldest sons of your family in whatever capacity they see fit. My first Masters were men of learning and memory so they served in the libraries of royal houses and great centers of enlightenment. I assisted them in cataloging and translating and authenticating and copying and transcribing and finding and keeping. At one time I was in service to a keeper of texts from one rim of the world to the other and helped him maintain a library known far and wide. When the city was sacked and our work all burned to the ground, I helped him save the most precious documents and escape with his life.”

“What was the name of the city?” asked Shehriyaar.

“I do not know, Master, I never left the large rooms my work was in.”

“Didn’t you need food or water? Didn’t you miss the sun?”

“I am a jinn bound in service, Master. I am nourished by the orders I receive and am fed and watered by following them well. The sky and the air is not to me as it is to men. I do not need to feel the wind or the rain nor do I care to know the names of cities that rise and fall in a few lifetimes of men. The sun rises and sets but it brings me no order or sense of time, for the mornings and evenings follow each other as moments in the long days of my labour.”

Shehriyaar smiled as Ma’aruf puffed up his reedy chest.

“We fled the looting armies and I continued to serve, finding safe paths and provisions and protecting my Masters from harm. In a generation or two, they forgot much of their learning and settled in hard lands in a fort with nine towers and nine doors. They set themselves to breeding and trading horses and I watched their herds in the night and protected them from harm. I dearly missed my life of learning and books when I had been set to the work of finding and delivering; the work I love best. The ruler of those hard lands soon took offense with my Master and his people and ran them out of his kingdom. I knew before they did of the coming soldiers and warned them of their impending deaths, following them down from the mountains and into these fertile plains.

Your nearer forefathers became soldiers and earned land for their service. When your great-grandfather fought with his brothers to sell his share and move to this city, I helped him find work as a clerk in a warehouse and then when his son, your grandfather, set himself to the business of shoes, I was happy. Now I could find and deliver again. I helped him and then your father run the emporium, knowing the wants of his customers and sending down the shoe his salesmen wanted before they knew it themselves. Together they both taught me to wait for the men to call. They taught me to keep the store in the ceiling clean and the shoes safe from dampness and mold. I did the work of 10 men and they thanked me by buying a bigger building and expanding their empire until every foot that walked for miles was shod by us.”

“It was only a shoe shop. A children’s shoe shop. You would have been better off at a university or a lab maybe.”

The jinn sprang up from his seat and became angry again.

“It was my home! I was back doing the work of finding and delivering. If your forbears no longer have the capacity to work with letters then that is not my business. Your father’s men asked me for shoes. I found them and dropped them into their hands. I was happy. And now you’ve descended like the raging armies of old and burned my livelihood to the ground.”

“I’m sorry, Ma’aruf,” Shehriyaar replied. “I am taking my family and my fortunes elsewhere. I don’t work a job that needs any kind of finding and delivering and so I don’t really need you.”

This wasn’t strictly true. Shehriyaar worked in finance and could think of several ways in which a magical being might be useful but he wasn’t entirely sure if all this was entirely real. Also, the idea of being followed until he died by some supernatural servant who would then go on to harass his son was a bit unsettling. This was the twentieth century after all. People didn’t even want to read about magical beings let alone deal with real live ones.

In adulthood, he’d read the story of Aladin and the Magic Lamp for some college assignment but he’d grown up in Lahore with an army of cousins who looked at jinns with more fear than the Americans did. The jinns of his childhood did not come from lamps and grant wishes. They lived in old trees and dark, seldom-used rooms. They took over the bodies of unwary humans who trespassed into their domains and killed them slowly from the inside. Even the weakest ones, the little jinn children, harassed the people who displeased them by hiding their belongings and frightening them with strange noises after dark. The only jinns in the service of humans that he’d ever heard of then were the ones who were forced to comply by evil sorcerers who then used them to work spells of illness, death, and destruction. Who knew if Ma’aruf was even telling the truth about his origins? Even the Arabian Nights didn’t speak of benign librarian jinns busying themselves amongst ink and paper. No, he didn’t want what Ma’aruf was offering.

The small, purple figure was now busy looking at himself in the mirror, turning this way and that. At a snap of his fingers, the shirt and brown pants were replaced by a baggy, polo T-shirt and blue jeans, similar to what Shehriyaar was wearing.

“I’m sorry, Master,” he said when he was satisfied with his new appearance. “I am bound to your family and compelled to serve you. Your orders are my food and drink, as I said. If you ignore me I will either waste away or be forced to guess what you need and do my best without you asking.”

“There must be a way to get rid of you.”

A hurt expression crossed the jinn’s face. “You can pass me on to another man or woman willing to command me or set me to some neverending service. Some of my kin have worked in wells and in deep mines or in the belly of furnaces. But all tasks end one day and unless they find the heirs of the men who set them to the work, they turn into dust. I do not wish to die Master.”

Shehriyaar noticed that it was almost dark outside. The dream had not ended. When his stomach rumbled, he felt that maybe it wasn’t a dream at all. He never felt hungry in dreams.

“We can discuss this later. How about you work for me a bit? Maybe seeing what you can really do will give me some ideas.”

Ma’aruf jumped in the air in excitement, disappeared, and reappeared on his knee. ‘I will not disappoint you. Set me to work at once!”

“Well, I’m hungry. I really don’t feel like leaving this room and eating the bhindi or tori or whatever vegetable my uncle’s cook has made today. What can you bring me?”

“Whatever your heart desires!”

“A plate of biryani from Qaim. And a chilled Coke.” Qaim was a small dhaba in the nearest market that made the best biryani Shehriyaar had ever tasted. Delicately spiced but not too hot. Each piece of chicken, cooked to perfection. Each grain of rice, separate and plump. He could feel his mouth start to water at the thought.

Ma’aruf snapped his fingers and a steaming plate and a bottle dripping in condensation materialized on the bed. He knew from the first bite that it was the right dish. For patrons who chose take away, the dhaba handed over servings of biryani in plastic bags wrapped in brown paper with raita and a little salad in separate bags, but the jinn had apparently used his powers to serve the meal in some of his aunt’s best china.

As he ate, Shehriyaar thought a bit more about what he could do with his new servant while the creature preened himself in front of the mirror, changing the colours of his new shirt to see which would look best.

“Why don’t I take you to a library here?” he asked between bites. “There’s sure to be some bookish type who’d love an assistant like you.”

“I would like that best of all!” Ma’aruf exclaimed. “To work with people of culture and learning again. To converse with students and assist their tutors. I will be happy to leave your family’s service for a life of scholarship.”

“Well, I’ll take you to the biggest and oldest library in the city tomorrow. And even though you’ve just made my elders sound like moronic peasants, I’ll help you find someone new to be a glorified secretary for.”

#

If you weren’t a member of the Fatima Jinnah Library, the guard at the door insisted on keeping your CNIC in exchange for letting you in. Shehriyaar was surprised to see members walking in with stacks of books and stationery in their hands until he realised that the guard wasn’t letting anyone bring in their bags. The main halls of the great, white building had high, vaulted ceilings and the floor was covered in a grass-green carpet. Desks, large and small were scattered under hanging lights, and aisles upon aisles of shelves lined the walls. The books were, for the most part, locked on these shelves behind panes of glass and a cursory examination revealed that many were faded with age and neglect. The unhelpful librarians did nothing to improve a visitor’s mood. He’d been hoping to ask one of them how often they received new stock, how they cataloged, how many books were borrowed every day, and so on. All he could learn however from the small mustachioed man behind the main counter was that books could not be borrowed at all. The library was non-lending.

What to do if someone needed one of the locked books? Well, the man or some other librarian would make a big show of being disturbed at something important, find the key from a reference card cabinet, and extract the book for you. The whole process was made as unpleasant and tedious as possible to make sure patrons though twice before wasting an employee’s precious time.

It was a bit depressing honestly. Where was the children’s section? Where was story time? Where was the media room? He was scared to ask any more questions. 

Shehriyaar sat down at a desk as far away as possible from the studious groups scattered around a side hall. The jinn had perched himself on Shehriyaar’s shoulder as they had come in and while it seemed as though he was invisible to others, a grown man talking to himself would draw unwanted attention. At the table, Ma’aruf climbed down and sat cross-legged in front of him.

“So do you think I should introduce you to one of the men working here? Is this a place where you would like to serve for the next fifty years or so, finding and delivering?” Shehriyaar whispered.

“Things have changed a great deal since the great repositories of knowledge of my childhood were overrun with soldiers.” The little jinn looked around mournfully. “This does not feel like a place where students are welcome. The dust is piled high in corners and I can hear worms chewing as we speak through some of the older titles. The caretakers do not seem to love the knowledge that is placed on these shelves. That man was almost offended at your asking questions. He would never believe that I was real.”

The jinn seemed to be wilting as he spoke. At last, he crawled on all fours to where Shehriyaar’s arm lay on the wooden surface and grabbed hold of fistfuls of his sleeve in both hands.

“You believe in me, Master. You see me and hear me because we are bound by ties stronger than blood. You believe because your father believed, and his father’s father, and his father’s father, all the way back to when your race had more frequent dealings with my own. Do not separate me from the coolness of your shadow! Do not banish me from your service to begin from nothing with a new master or to starve in some corner, shorn of purpose. Please, Master! Please!”

“I cannot keep you, Ma’aruf. I live in a world that has largely passed by my father’s way of life. What would you find and deliver for me? My groceries? The newspaper every day? The documents I printed at work a few feet away from my cubical? How would I explain any of this to my family? Or to the people who work with me? But don’t worry. I won’t leave you here. I’ll think of something.”

Maybe he could take the jinn back with him to the States. Tour the libraries great and small until he found a good fit. Hell, even the local one he took his kids to was nicer than this. Or they could find some professor of middle eastern mythology or fiction or whatever who would give his right arm to keep a– a thing like Ma’aruf.

Worst-case scenario he could leave the poor little man at someplace like Costco or Target, finding the things people are always looking for; toilet paper and half off on tinned fruit.

#

“Can you get me money?” Shehriyaar asked.

They were back in his uncle’s guest room after their unsuccessful visit to the Library of Lost Hopes and Dreams. Shehriyaar was still racking his brains about what to do for Ma’aruf and decided that another test of his powers was needed.

“Of course Master. How much shall I bring you?”

“One lakh rupees?”

A snap of purple fingers and a bundle of crisp notes appeared in front of him.

This was more like it!  Shehriyaar counted the money and felt that he was very close to keeping Ma’aruf after all.

“Let’s take another crack at finding you a new owner, my friend,” he said as he walked into the lounge  to sit for half an hour with his uncle and aunt before leaving for an evening of shopping. A chauffeured car drove them both to Garhi Shahu and Shehriyaar asked the jinn more questions as they walked amongst the markets looking for a place or person that Ma’aruf could call home.

Ma’aruf maintained that he was not a very powerful jinn. He kept repeating that he was best at “finding and delivering” but nothing heavier than a few kilos.  He could not overcome human souls to take over human bodies, even if his Master ordered it. He could not transport human beings very far or make them fly or become invisible.

“Nothing exciting then,” said Shehriyaar with a smile as they passed a store selling leather goods.

“I can sense danger and the ill intentions of my Master’s enemies. I can fetch personal items and guard doors. I can create faint illusions that can confuse the weak-witted. I can drive away insects and small animals and predict the week’s weather. I have an excellent memory, and I can repeat entire conversations or transcribe them in a twinkling. I can bring to you any piece of knowledge set on tablet, parchment, or paper by man since the dawn of writing. It takes me a while to visit libraries and repositories that are far off but I never fail. I feel as though that is what I was created for, to work in a place of learning.”

At the end of the evening, Shehriyaar had to agree. There weren’t many establishments where the merchandise wasn’t close at hand. Clothing waited on shelves and under counters. Crockery shone on well-lit walls. Electronics, plastic, and metal goods spilled out in organised piles into the street. Jewelry was displayed in windows for all to see. Even the shoe shops were too small to warrant more than a handful of employees. How could they be anything else? They did not have magic to help them along. Worse, none of the uncouth shopkeepers looked as though they would believe in jinns, let alone employ one. What idiots they both were, trying to find a home for something out of a fairy tale in the middle of a bustling, no-nonsense bazaar.

This disappointment didn’t stop Shehriyaar from spending his new-found wealth. He bought new suitcases, expensive formal suits for his wife, and presents for the kids as well as his relatives. Something to make the final round of family visits easier. After every purchase, Ma’aruf teleported the bags to the trunk of their car. They stopped for dinner at an expensive restaurant and by the time they both made their way back home, Shehriyaar was almost ready to keep Ma’aruf with him after all. He had the jinn bring all his purchases into his room rather than surprise the driver with bags he did not remember putting in the trunk and went to bed with a head full of possibilities.

#

A banging on the door woke him up, late the next morning. Sleepiness prevented him from understanding the servant at the door at first but eventually, he made out that his travel agent had called several times in the last hour and had asked to speak with him urgently. The phone rang again as he was sitting down to breakfast and Shehriyaar decided to get it over with. The agent got to the point. The cheque he had left with the agency as payment for his return ticket to the States had bounced. Shehriyaar gave the necessary assurances and hung up the line so he could call his bank. The manager kept him on hold for twenty long minutes before returning to the line confused and flustered.

“That particular account is almost empty sir! There is no record of you withdrawing the cash. How is this possible?!”

In a daze, Shehriyaar returned to his room and called the jinn.

“Ma’aruf,” he said as the little, purple man popped into existence on the arm of a chair, “Where did you get the money from yesterday? The one lakh rupees?”

“From your own coffers, Master,” he replied.

“Why did you bring me my own money, you idiot?”

“No one else’s is yours to spend.” The jinn looked genuinely surprised.

“I asked you for money and you emptied one of my bank accounts to bring it to me. What is the point of your magic if you bring me wealth that is already mine!” Shehriyaar grabbed his head with both hands and collapsed onto the bed among the bags and boxes of his recent purchases.

“Master, I am not a powerful jinn. I find and deliver. I do not steal. I can bring you anything from any corner of the world (provided that it is not too heavy) that already belongs to you, or that has been left in your care or that you elect to pay for, or that the owner would not mind you borrowing for a time but I cannot bring you something you do not have permission to hold and use.”

“The biryani? How did you bring me the biryani?”

“I left money from your purse with the owner of the kitchen. You have permission to use the plates and glasses in this house so I could serve the food to you as I did.”

Shehriyaar looked around at the crowd of shopping scattered about him.

“How much of this can you return?”

“Only the items from traders who allow it.” was the muted reply.

“Well, do it then. And put the money in my wallet. That’s what you call a purse.”

A snap of the fingers and three or four of the bags disappeared.

“I’m sorry, Master. I may have not explained things very well.”

They sat in silence for a bit. The jinn climbed off the chair and then used the bedsheet to haul himself up to the man’s  knee and quietly asked, “Will we go to another library today, Master?”

Shehriyaar took his head out of his hands. “I have to spend all day fixing the mess you’ve made.”

“May I come to help?”

“No. You’ve done enough.”

#

It really did take him all day. He had to drive to the travel agent and give him a new cheque for a different bank account. He had to wait while the agent’s peon rushed to the bank to cash it. He had to make up some story about why the original cheque bounced in the first place, and he had to decide if it was worth visiting the bank to try to smooth things over the now almost empty account.

When he finally had the ticket in his hand, he decided that it wasn’t worth it. That bank manager would have to live with the mystery. He was leaving anyway. Nothing that happened in this country would matter in a few days.

When he got home in the evening, after being stuck in traffic for an hour, he was in no  mood for the message his uncle was waiting to give him. There had been several calls from his bank all day, each one more urgent than the last. Right on cue, the phone started to ring again almost as soon as his uncle finished speaking.

He picked up the receiver with more stories and excuses at the tip of his tongue. The manager at the other end didn’t give him the chance to begin.

“Sir, I just wanted to let you know that we’ve rectified a system error at our end and we can now see that an amount of one lakh rupees was cashed via a cheque from our branch. We found the cheque on file and the signature matches. It was an enormous oversight on our part to not ask for proof of identity or call your residence before cashing such  a large amount but I wanted to ask if you did indeed pay using the cheque?”

“Hold on a minute.”

Shehriyaar ran to his room and rummaged in his overnight bag for the book. There it was, the stub for a cheque he had never used with the right date and a “م” scribbled on it in blue ballpoint. Sure enough, when he read out the numbers to the man on the phone, they matched. He apologized profusely for the confusion, saying that he had accidentally used the wrong checkbook to make a payment and had then completely forgotten about it. He could hear the relief in the manager’s tone through the static on the line. A couple of more ‘please’ and ‘thank yous’ and he could hang up the phone at last.

Ma’aruf was waiting for him in his room, peeking out from behind a cushion, expecting him to still be angry.

“Ma’aruf, do you know how cheques work?”

“Yes, Master, sometimes your father would take me to the strongrooms with him.”

“And do you know how computers work?”

He looked confused.

“I don’t know what a computer is, Master.”

“The bank manager said their system had a record of the cheque being cashed. The machine they use to mark what money they give out and take had that record. That’s what I mean. Did you mess with that machine?”

“Oh, the electric ledger! Yes, I did. Most strongrooms have paper ones but this one had an electric ledger. A collection of lights burning up and fizzling out in patterns. I knew that if they had the cheque and their electric ledger told them they had the cheque and if you also told them that they had the cheque, it wouldn’t matter that none of them could remember the cheque arriving and the money being given away.”

Shehriyaar let out a long slow breath.

“Ma’aruf,” he said slowly. “I may have found a neverending task for you.”

#

Later at night when the house was asleep, Shehriyaar extracted his Thinkpad from his luggage and connected it to the internet broadband cable next to the house phone. His machine chirped and beeped as he waited for the connection to establish itself. Ma’aruf watched closely from his shoulder as the browser finally appeared and Shehriyaar was able to enter the address of a website and open a search engine.

Light from the screen reflected off of the two faces. The eyes of the smaller one grew larger and larger as he saw a search query answered by the machine in front of him.

“A finding machine! A delivering engine, Master!” he said breathlessly.

‘Yes. This is the world wide web Ma’aruf. Every day journalists, scientists, artists, teachers, and ordinary people upload information, pictures, and opinions on it. It has a few thousand websites, which collect knowledge of a similar sort in one place, but many more are added every day. Not every country can access it yet but with the rate of current progress, soon every home will be connected with such a cable to the information super highway. The website I just showed you is a program that is designed to find and deliver information and websites in response to a question from me or even just a few words, but it’s not very good yet. Do you think you could do better?”

The jinn looked at his Master with tears in his eyes.

“I did not know the electric ledger from your strongroom had another, more powerful brother! And yet now that I concentrate, I can feel the cold will of this spiderweb stretch out across the globe, reaching into places I had only read about in the books of old. I can feel it fetch and take away parcels of numbers and letters and read thousands of pages over and over again. This is truly a never-ending task that will outlast the deepest wells and the biggest mines on Earth! I leave you now Master to bind myself to my true purpose and bring lasting pride to my race. I will find and deliver forevermore!”

With a crackling pop, the jinn disappeared, this time for good. Shehriyaar noticed a new icon on his desktop. A stylized purple “م”. He clicked the icon to open a simple interface with a box that invited questions.

He quickly typed in his first inquiry:

Are you happy at last, my friend?

A moment later the screen changed to deliver a list of websites and newspaper articles about happiness, wellness, as well as other results that contained the words he had typed in that particular order, either in the title or in the text.

Shehriyaar took let out a sigh and disconnected his machine from the internet.

END