Scheherazade's Chamber

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1001 Arabian Nights

Asked Bulukiya, "And hath Allah created other mountains behind the mountain Kaf?" Whereto the angel answered, "Yes, behind this mountain is a range of mountains five hundred years' journey long, of snow and ice, and this it is that wardeth off the heat of Jahannam from the world, which verily would else be consumed thereby. "Moreover, behind the mountain Kaf are forty worlds, each one the bigness of this world forty times told, some of gold and some of silver and others of carnelian. Each of these worlds hath its own colour, and Allah hath peopled them with angels, that know not Eve nor Adam nor night nor day, and have no other business than to celebrate His praises and hallow Him and make profession of His Unity and proclaim His Omnipotence and supplicate Him on behalf of the followers of Mohammed (whom Allah bless and keep!)" -- From The Voyage of Buluqiya, The Arabian Nights

The Hermit

The Hermit, created by me in NightCafe Twenty years had passed in the wilderness of sand and ruins beyond the Nile's reach. Twenty years had the hermit guarded the caves; twenty years he had watched, with some boredom, the tegmu ball balancing atop its pinnacle within the shadowed, ancient hall of the ruined sepulcher. He was awakened from his doze by a shifting stream of sand and a clatter. The tegmu fell and rolled across the floor. The hermit lifted his head and stopped the ball with one stiff, aged paw. They were coming! He bolted upright. His vigil was over. He took the tegmu and leapt across the courtyard like a cat fifteen years his junior. They were coming! Already the sand had begun to pour from the sides of the temple as the mechanism buried deep below its stones shuddered to life. The hermit placed the glowing tegmu in a slot in the wall and the ball rolled away, down a series of tubes beneath the dunes. His life's work had finished--or had it just begun? He leane

Research Notes for Djinn, ch. 29: Saints and Liars

I tried hard in this chapter to imagine what it would be like to encounter a train for the first time in your life--a life that included no cars or trucks or even tractors. A life with no mechanical things at all. The railroad is of course inspired by the famous Hejaz line, but for drama's sake I have made the engines on the al Qarya to Bdellum line standard gauge instead of those little narrow gauge engines. I am indebted to the movie Theeb for my understanding of the effects of the railway on local Bedouins, though we will see more of that in later chapters. A camel can walk about 25 miles a day, and it takes Nazeem three days to reach the fair, so we can estimate that he traveled about 75 miles. The "Bedouin Fair" is fictional, but based on real gatherings of a similar nature. Where people herd, an abundance of rain means an abundance of plants, which means the land can support large herds of animals--and the people who depend on those animals. Take, for example, I

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