used it for olive oil, had given it to Maryam when she’d sailed to America. “So you’ll always have a piece of home with you,” her mother had said.
With her husband Sayeed, Maryam had opened a coffeehouse on Washington Street, which quickly became a thriving hub of the neighborhood. One afternoon, while surveying her bustling kitchen, Maryam decided that the flask, while still beloved, had grown a bit too pockmarked and worn. Would it be possible, she asked Arbeely, to repair a few of the dents? And perhaps restore the polish?
Alone in his shop, Arbeely examined the flask. It was about nine inches high, with a round, bulbous body that tapered to a thin neck. Its maker had decorated it with a very precise and detailed band of scrollwork. Instead of the usual repeating pattern, the loops and whorls threaded through their neighbors seemingly at random, before joining up with themselves again.
Arbeely turned the flask around in his hands, fascinated. Clearly it was old, older perhaps than Maryam or her mother knew. Copper was rarely used on its own anymore, owing to its softness; brass and tin were much more durable and easier to work. In fact, given its likely age, the flask didn’t seem as battered as perhaps it should have been. There was no way to determine its provenance, for it had no forger’s stamp on its bottom, no identifying mark of any kind.
He examined the deep dents in the scrollwork, and realized that correcting them would lead to visible seams between the new work and the old. Better, he decided, to smooth out the copper, repair the flask, and then rework the entire design.
He wrapped a sheet of thin vellum around the base, found a stick of charcoal, and took a rubbing of the scrollwork, careful to catch every mark of the maker’s awl. Then he secured the flask in a vise, and fetched his smallest soldering iron from the fire.
As he stood there, his iron poised above the flask, a strange feeling of foreboding stole over him. His arms and back turned to gooseflesh. Shivering, he put down the iron, and took a deep breath. What could possibly be bothering him? It was a warm day, and he’d eaten a hearty breakfast. He was healthy, and business was good. He shook his head, took up the iron again, and touched it to the scrollwork, erasing one of the loops.
A powerful jolt blasted him off his feet, as though he’d been struck by lightning. He flew through the air and landed in a heap beside a worktable. Stunned, ears ringing, he turned over and looked around.
There was a naked man lying on the floor of his shop.
As Arbeely stared in amazement, the man drew himself to sitting and pressed his hands to his face. Then he dropped his hands and gazed around, eyes wide and burning. He looked as though he’d been chained for years in the world’s deepest, darkest dungeon, and then hauled roughly into the light.
The man staggered to his feet. He was tall and well built, with handsome features. Too handsome, in fact—his face had an eerie flawlessness, like a painting come to life. His dark hair was cropped short. He seemed unconscious of his nakedness.
On the man’s right wrist was a wide metal cuff. The man appeared to notice it at the same time as Arbeely. He held up his arm and stared at it, horrified. “Iron,” he said. And then, “But that’s impossible.”
Finally the man’s glance caught Arbeely, who still crouched next to the table, not even daring to breathe.
With a sudden terrible grace, the man swooped down upon Arbeely, grabbed him around the neck, and lifted him clean off the floor. A dark red haze filled Arbeely’s sight. He felt his head brush the ceiling.
“Where is he?” the man shouted.
“Who?” wheezed Arbeely.
“The wizard!”
Arbeely tried to speak but could only gargle. Snarling, the naked man threw him back to the ground. Arbeely gasped for air. He looked around for a weapon, anything, and saw the soldering iron lying in a pile of rags, gently smoldering. He grabbed its handle, and lunged.
A blur of movement—and then Arbeely was stretched out on the floor again, this time with the iron’s curved handle pressed at the hollow of his throat. The man knelt over him, holding the iron by its red-hot tip. There was no smell of burning flesh. The man didn’t so much as flinch. And as Arbeely stared aghast into that too-perfect face, he could feel the cool handle at his throat turn warm, and then hot, and then hotter still—as though the man were heating it somehow.
This, Arbeely thought, is very, very impossible.
“Tell me where the wizard is,” the man said, “so I can kill him.”
Arbeely gaped at him.
“He trapped me in human form! Tell me where he is!”
The tinsmith’s mind began to race. He looked down at the soldering iron, and remembered that strange foreboding he’d felt before he touched it to the flask. He recalled his grandmother’s stories of flasks and oil lamps, all with creatures trapped inside.
No. It was ludicrous. Such things were only stories. But then, the only alternative was to conclude that he’d gone mad.
“Sir,” he whispered, “are you a djinni?”
The man’s mouth tightened, and his gaze turned wary. But he didn’t laugh at Arbeely, or call him insane.
“You are,” Arbeely said. “Dear God, you are.” He swallowed, wincing against the touch of the soldering iron. “Please. I don’t know this wizard, whoever he is. In fact, I’m not sure there are any wizards left at all.” He paused. “You may have been inside that flask for a very long time.”
The man seemed to take this in. Slowly the metal moved away from the tinsmith’s neck. The man stood and turned about, as though seeing the workshop for the first time. Through the high window came the noises of the street: of horse-drawn carts, and the shouts of the paperboys. On the Hudson, a steamship horn sounded long and low.
“Where am I?” the man asked.
“You’re in my shop,” Arbeely said. “In New York City.” He was trying to speak calmly. “In a place called America.”
The man walked over to Arbeely’s workbench and picked up one of the tinsmith’s long, thin irons. He gripped it with a look of horrified fascination.
“It’s real,” the man said. “This is all real.”
“Yes,” Arbeely said. “I’m afraid it is.”
The man put down the iron. Muscles in his jaw spasmed. He seemed to be readying himself for the worst.
“Show me,” he said finally.
Barefoot, clad only in an old work shirt of Arbeely’s and a pair of dungarees, the Djinni stood at the railing at Castle Gardens, at the southern tip of Manhattan, and stared out across the bay. Arbeely stood nearby, perhaps afraid to draw too close. The shirt and dungarees had come from a pile of old rags in the corner of Arbeely’s workshop. The dungarees were solder-stained, and there were holes burned into the shirtsleeves. Arbeely had had to show him how to do up the buttons.
The Djinni leaned against the railing, transfixed by the view. He was a creature of the desert, and never in
