world is changing, she told him. At times of great upheaval when the wind blows and the tide of history surges, cool heads are needed to navigate a path to calmer waters. I will be here with you. Find the jinni within yourself and you may be a bigger hero than your Natraj. It’s in there. You will find it.
The wormhole closed. He was sitting on his bed holding his head in his hands. “This is what happens to me now,” he muttered. “They build a transworld railway station three feet from my bed . No construction permit, yo? There’s no, like, zoning laws in hyperspace? I’m a complain ’bout that. I’m a call 3-1-1 right now. ” His hysteria was talking. She let it play itself out. It was his way of dealing with the situation. She waited. He flung himself down on his bed and his shoulders shook. He was trying to hide his tears from her. She pretended she did not see them. She was there to tell him he was not alone, to introduce him to his cousins. Quietly, she planted the information in his mind. The jinn part of him absorbed, understood, knew. You know where they are now, she told him. You can help one another in the time that is to come.
He sat up, clutched his head again. “I don’t need all this contact info at present,” he said. “I need Vicodin. ”
She waited. He would come back to her soon. He looked up at her and attempted a smile. “It’s a lot,” he said. “Whatever that was … whatever you are … whatever you’re saying I am. I’m going to need some time.”
You don’t have time, she told him. I don’t know why the portal opened in your room. I know that what appeared last night was not your Natraj Hero. Somebody took that form, to frighten you, or just because it was funny. Somebody you should hope never to meet again. Move out. Take your mother to a safe place. She won’t understand. She won’t see the swirling black smoke because she is not of the Duniazát. That comes from your father’s side.
“That bastard,” Jimmy said. “He sure disappeared like a jinni or wat. Didn’t grant us wishes, but. Just, went off in a puff of smoke with Secretary Bird.”
Take your mother away, Dunia told him. It isn’t safe for either of you here anymore.
“Vow,” Jimmy Kapoor marveled. “Worst. Halloween. Ever.”
The discovery of a girl baby in the office of the recently elected mayor Rosa Fast, swaddled in the national flag of India and gurgling contentedly in a bassinet on the mayoral desk, was thought by our superstitious and sentimental citizenry to be, on the whole, a good thing, especially when it was announced that the baby was approximately four months old and must have been born at the time of the great storm, and survived it. Storm Baby, the media called her, and the name stuck. She became Storm Doe, conjuring up the image of a Bambi-like fawn bravely facing down the tempest on unsteady legs: an instant short-term heroine for our instant and forgetful times. It won’t be long, many of us surmised, considering her apparent South Asian ethnicity, before she’s old enough to become the national spelling bee champion. She made the cover of India Abroad and was the subject of an exhibition of “imaginary portraits” of her future, adult self, commissioned from prominent New York artists by an Indo-American arts organization and auctioned off as a fund-raising ploy. But the mystery of her arrival enraged those who were already outraged by the election of a second consecutive woman mayor of progressive inclinations. It would never have happened, these nostalgists cried, back in the tough-guy days. Whether the rest of us agreed with that or not, it was true that in the age of maximum security her arrival on Mayor Fast’s desk felt like a small miracle.
Where did Storm Doe come from and how did she get into City Hall? The evidence from the battery of security cameras that constantly swept City Hall showed a woman in a purple balaclava strolling through every checkpoint late at
The wormhole closed. He was sitting on his bed holding his head in his hands. “This is what happens to me now,” he muttered. “They build a transworld railway station three feet from my bed . No construction permit, yo? There’s no, like, zoning laws in hyperspace? I’m a complain ’bout that. I’m a call 3-1-1 right now. ” His hysteria was talking. She let it play itself out. It was his way of dealing with the situation. She waited. He flung himself down on his bed and his shoulders shook. He was trying to hide his tears from her. She pretended she did not see them. She was there to tell him he was not alone, to introduce him to his cousins. Quietly, she planted the information in his mind. The jinn part of him absorbed, understood, knew. You know where they are now, she told him. You can help one another in the time that is to come.
He sat up, clutched his head again. “I don’t need all this contact info at present,” he said. “I need Vicodin. ”
She waited. He would come back to her soon. He looked up at her and attempted a smile. “It’s a lot,” he said. “Whatever that was … whatever you are … whatever you’re saying I am. I’m going to need some time.”
You don’t have time, she told him. I don’t know why the portal opened in your room. I know that what appeared last night was not your Natraj Hero. Somebody took that form, to frighten you, or just because it was funny. Somebody you should hope never to meet again. Move out. Take your mother to a safe place. She won’t understand. She won’t see the swirling black smoke because she is not of the Duniazát. That comes from your father’s side.
“That bastard,” Jimmy said. “He sure disappeared like a jinni or wat. Didn’t grant us wishes, but. Just, went off in a puff of smoke with Secretary Bird.”
Take your mother away, Dunia told him. It isn’t safe for either of you here anymore.
“Vow,” Jimmy Kapoor marveled. “Worst. Halloween. Ever.”
The discovery of a girl baby in the office of the recently elected mayor Rosa Fast, swaddled in the national flag of India and gurgling contentedly in a bassinet on the mayoral desk, was thought by our superstitious and sentimental citizenry to be, on the whole, a good thing, especially when it was announced that the baby was approximately four months old and must have been born at the time of the great storm, and survived it. Storm Baby, the media called her, and the name stuck. She became Storm Doe, conjuring up the image of a Bambi-like fawn bravely facing down the tempest on unsteady legs: an instant short-term heroine for our instant and forgetful times. It won’t be long, many of us surmised, considering her apparent South Asian ethnicity, before she’s old enough to become the national spelling bee champion. She made the cover of India Abroad and was the subject of an exhibition of “imaginary portraits” of her future, adult self, commissioned from prominent New York artists by an Indo-American arts organization and auctioned off as a fund-raising ploy. But the mystery of her arrival enraged those who were already outraged by the election of a second consecutive woman mayor of progressive inclinations. It would never have happened, these nostalgists cried, back in the tough-guy days. Whether the rest of us agreed with that or not, it was true that in the age of maximum security her arrival on Mayor Fast’s desk felt like a small miracle.
Where did Storm Doe come from and how did she get into City Hall? The evidence from the battery of security cameras that constantly swept City Hall showed a woman in a purple balaclava strolling through every checkpoint late at
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