The houses of the Old Quarter were panelled in the style known as Rawashin. The shutters looked down on an ancient market in the Arabian seaport of Jeddah. It was mid-morning and already forty degrees. A row of brass coffee pots were standing on a dusty carpet, the pattern intricate and faded by years of fierce sun. A Bedouin sat cross legged and looked up at the passer by. A Westerner. Greetings were exchanged. The Bedouin knew no English, the Westerner cursory Arabic. He was leaving next day, a return to the grey skies and drizzle of an English winter. A coffee pot would be a good souvenir. He indicated one. A price was agreed. As he walked away, the Arab looked upward and smiled, thanking a benevolent God. The coffee pot, and all that went with it, had left his keeping.
The pot was scorched from fires that died centuries ago. Made of dented copper, it had a hinged lid. The Westerner brought it home. It stood on a shelf, unmoving, for two years. Years were meaningless to the occupant. For reasons that were lost in time before time could be measured, a desert spirit had been imprisoned. It was a djinn, a genie, a desert spirit. The sin had been forgotten, and those it sinned against were now dust on the hot desert winds. The centuries passed, the djinn with a lingering hope of release. The sorcerer who had imprisoned the genie was not without mercy, though those who had fallen under his influence would not have credited this. There are twelve million words in the Arabic language. The sorcerer decreed that one of these words would bring about the release of the djinn, but it had to be spoken alone, not in a sentence and within one qabdah – a palm’s length – of the pot. The possibility of this was infinite and known only to God.
In the room where the pot stood, a three-year-old boy was playing with his cars. He was driving them into a toy petrol station. He accompanied this with his own sounds, the sounds that cars make. One car rolled across the wooden floor and stopped at the base of the shelf where the pot stood. It had been aimed at the entrance of the petrol station. It missed and the boy thumped his way across and picked it up. Toddlers often mispronounce words, a source of amusement for parents. He admonished the car for missing the petrol station. He pointed. The boy said ‘garage’, but the sound he made was akin to the Arabic word ‘Kharij’. He was very close – within one qabdah of the coffee pot. ‘Kharij’ means ‘out’, and correctly pronounced sounds very close to the English word ‘garage.’ In the timeless past when the sorcerer had imprisoned it,’kharij’ – meaning out – was the word that secured its freedom. There was a rush of air, of wind and flashing colours. A tall, turbaned figure appeared in the room. He glanced down at the little boy. All genies must offer a wish to those that release them. The being folded his arms. He spoke his first words in countless ages.
‘Shubbaik. Lubbaik.’ At your command.’
The boy picked up a battered bear. The Arabic word for teddy bear is dimyat doub. What he said-gesturing to the bear-was what sounded like ‘damaa aldababa.’ This is toddler-speak. In phonetic Arabic, however, this means ‘teddy bears.’ The genie, a brief look of puzzlement on his face, made a gesture. Behind the boy, teddy bears of all colours and varieties appeared, spreading around the carpet behind the little boy. Few people know this, but the collective name for a group of teddies is ‘tumbling’, hence, a tumbling of teddies.
The genie looked around. Rain beat on the windows. Grey skies promised more. The Being had thought to be released – if God willed it – into the furnace like heat of the desert summer. He retained his powers but the world was strange.
The little boy was trusting of the figure, in the way children can be. He was safe. Daddy was in the kitchen, making tea. The kitchen door, which had his drawings taped to it, was closed. He could hear a kettle boiling and a radio. The boy saw the genie, the desert spirit long trapped by thin brass, as a friend. He had showed him his teddy bear, and the room behind him had filled with a veritable tumbling of the teddies. The sorcerer that had imprisoned the genie foresaw that one day ,in time again unmeasured, the genie would be released. The sorcerer had been dust for millennia, but his final spell endured. There were two words in Arabic that would return the genie to captivity. The spell had been cast. It was debated by scholars, poring over forbidden grimoires from lands now buried. The words had never been found.
The little boy lifted up a toy car, its paint slightly chipped. He explained to the tall figure of the genie what it was. Again, with a toddler’s understandable mispronunciation, he had wanted to say ‘Here. Car.’
What the genie heard, to his eternal misfortune, was ‘Ir ja.’
In the Arabic language, this is a simple and unmistakable command. It means ‘go back’. The sound of wind.
The sorcerer’s final spell had worked. In an instant, the genie was returned to the coffee pot, and the lid clinked shut. The boy looked around him, and teddies tumbled, hundreds of them in furry heaps. The boy, delighted, called to his father who opened the door and entered. He saw his boy smiling and pointing, and a great many teddy bears.
The rain still beat on the window. Somewhere in a desert, perhaps heard only by the boy, there came a sound of fading laughter, borne across the sands till it faded slowly into the blackest of nights, and silence returned.
Paul Radcliffe is based in New Zealand, has worked in the Middle East, is apprehensive about looking in coffee pots, and is a fluent toddler speaker.
Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash.
