You Must Turn the Pages Gently — Full Story
By Kehkashan Khalid
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I make the golem from stolen things. I always have. The only difference is, these stolen parts lie in a heap at my feet rather than in an official PASBAAN inventory, and I must improvise. The Chaya, the Shadows, as the rebels call themselves, watch me work, their expressions inscrutable behind their black masks. The pages in my pocket rustle with guilt as I move. Soon, soon. I pat them down and keep working.
“Well, this is the best I can do...” I step away from the machine, hands splayed out. It sits behind me, hulking, its long limbs trailing the floor, its emerald eyes inactive, “With the parts you’ve provided.”
I hold out a hand towards the one I think is their leader, signifying that our deal is done. The Chaya leader looks down at my hand but does not take it.
“Activate it.”
A bead of sweat forms on my temple and snakes down to my chin. It quivers there and then hits the floor, audible in the stark silence.
“A body for a body.” I say through gritted teeth.
I know what it takes to activate the golem. I’ve grown up watching my parents bring these machines to life. I was there when they gave up their family, their loyalty, and everything that was sacred just for a chance at a better life. I was too young to be ashamed when they whispered long-held secrets to the Galactic Khilafat. When they delivered the red-clay from Tirich Mir, the mountain we called the ShadowKing, to make the beating heart of these machines. And I am not ready to give it all up.
The leader of the rebels chuckles. He waves a hand and some of his crew drag a coffin into the room. The lid thuds to the floor.
“There’s your sister.”
I keep my eyes trained on him. I dare not look at your face for fear I might not recognize it. It has been over twenty years since I last saw you. In that time, you wrote me letters I never replied to, though you, who were left behind, had more right to be angry than I ever did. And then you died, and I still didn’t go back. I wasn’t going to change that now.
I nod, as gracefully as I can, and walk towards the exit.
“There are only two places you can find the red clay to make the heart of the golem.” He is speaking as nonchalantly as a professor teaching a class, but it stops me cold in my tracks.
“One is in the heart of the PASBAAN, where your every move will be recorded as your card scans your way through the doors. The other is at the foot of Tirich Mir in a desolate city, once ravaged, now ignored by the Khilafat. We can get you in and out of there unnoticed.”
Anger, fueled by desperation bubbles up inside me. I spin around, hissing.
“I did what you asked. I’m not going to risk my job, my life, my very existence, by going back there!”
“Then we give no guarantees about whether PASBAAN will find out who not only leaked their blueprints but also aided in the construction of one of their Pasbaan’s to be used against the Khilafat.”
I curl my fingers into fists in defiance, but my face spells my defeat.
That night, I release you to the sky-river. Your body looks peaceful–I still refuse to look at your face–your hands folded across your chest as the trail of smoke pulls you upwards to wherever bodies must go. In Tirich Mir, we believed souls waited until nightfall and then rose, drawn towards the ShadowKing. In its deep, dark center, they dispersed through a portal into a netherworld where all ethereal beings reside.
It wasn’t just that my parents had given the Khilafat a reason to invade us, it was that we believed the red-clay was the source of all life. It was what our very bodies were sculpted out of. It was the reason we had souls at all. And now it was used to make bodyguards for the corrupt upper echelons of the empire. I shudder.
“Do you want to say anything?”
He sounds impatient, the man in the hazmat suit, as if I have forced him to repeat himself several times. I nod clumsily, and pull the papers from the pocket of my own suit. I smooth the browned edges and pieces of them flake off and drift into the mist like your very own sparkle. These pages are from some books you had once sent me. And though I never replied to that letter either, I spent years clutching those books to my chest, reading the tales of the Trickster Prince I was named after. Panha. Pan. Until, I joined PASBAAN, following the footsteps of my parents who had, by then, been lowered into the mist of the sky-river like so much refuse.
Before I was handed the little card that granted me access to the biggest laboratory in Assyria, every inch of my home had been scanned and these books had been confiscated. Such fanciful stories had no place in the expeditious capitalism of the Khilafat. And, though my heart clenched, I didn’t resist. I didn’t want them to start doubting my loyalties. So all I had left were a few random pages unceremoniously ripped from those books, even as I heard your voice chiding me. They’re very old and very fragile! You must turn the pages gently!
The hazmat suits look bored when I finish reading, even though my eyes are shining with tears. Even tales of sorcerers who can animate paper dragons and make stars fall from the sky don’t seem enough to revive minds hammered into submission by the empire. As soon as the last words have left my mouth the hazmat suits give your toes a shove and your body slides upwards into the mist, and I am left alone with my regrets.
I spend the night tossing and turning. This mission seems like a death sentence. Or perhaps I had sentenced myself to death the moment I risked everything and made a deal with the rebels just so I could give your body a fitting burial. I sweat through strange nightmares of your body lying in the house we left behind, your soul rising up blue and shimmering, tugged towards the mountain like metal to a magnet. I chase after you, calling your name, but you can’t hear me. And when we reach the opening to the netherworld, the ShadowKing turns me away. And it is not just because I have a body, but because I am a traitor.
The starship carries me home for the first time in twenty years. Its motor slows to a purr as it skirts past Istoro-nal and docks into the port at Tirich Mir. Alarms blare to signal the opening of the cargo bay doors. I unplug myself from the foldable seat as uniformed officers run inside to unhook the cargo. This was the only way they could send me here, bartering for passage on a ship that had unloaded enough of its cargo to make passengers worthwhile. There are no tourist cruisers carrying eager faces and full pockets to this sector of the universe.
I descend from the aircraft. Behind me, the gaping maw of the port shows a smattering of rocks disappearing into the inky blackness, named after a mountain as forgotten as the asteroid belt itself.
“Carefully now! Watch that corner!”
I step aside as porters ferry a giant crate across the hold, carrying the same red sand I’m here to collect. Once upon a time, it would have been forbidden to steal sand from the ShadowKing. But now, Tirich Mir will sell anything just to survive.
“Affiliation?”
The immigration officer near the exit barely glances up as I flash my PASBAAN badge. It doesn’t matter who wanders in, it is those leaving that have to prove their worth in talent or privilege. He grunts and I step through the automated doorways, straight into the whirling red sands of the city of my birth.
Momentarily blinded by desperate grains of sand and a hot wind that licks my face like flames, I stand there until someone jostles past me.
“Move out of the way!”
The dust clears, clinging to my eyelashes, and I see a city both familiar and unknown. An entanglement of paved roads, dotted with jagged buildings of crumbling emerald said to have come from the netherworld itself. That’s fiction, not fact. I remind myself. The years have blurred the stories on the foxed pages of the secret books I grew up reading, spread their words like grout between my synapses, so I can’t tell what’s memory and what’s fantasy. I glance around the dust-cloud city. I haven’t the first idea where to go, and yet, there is an ache in my heart that tells me I’m home.
You’re not welcome. The nightmares from last night speak in your voice.
I shove them aside along with some messages that pop up in the periphery of my vision.
--Have you obtained the raw material?
--How soon can we expect you back?
I tap my ear twice to silence any further communication from the insufferable Chaya. I am no longer sure of this commitment I made in a flurry of passion, but it is one I have to abide by. At the very least, I can take my sweet time getting it done.
I study a map of the city on a fading piece of paper tacked to the side of a building, flapping uselessly.
“Ha! That won’t be no use anymore. Not since they broke down the western roads, and harvested the emeralds from all those historic buildings.”
I turn towards the speaker, an old man with few teeth and even fewer hair. He sees the PASBAAN logo on my chest and his lips turn downwards in disappointment. He must have mistaken me, with my ruddy skin, for a local, but now he knew I was one of them.
“Could you direct me to the Bagi family home?” My lips taste the red dust as soon as I open my mouth, as if Tirich Mir is clawing its way into my heart again.
“There’s no one baqi there.” He snickers, switching a letter in the name to change the meaning from rebel to remnant. Still, he points me on my way before shuffling down the desolate streets until a wall of wind and sand hides him from view.
I know that house is empty. There was only one person left behind when my parents abandoned it in the hopes of creating a new, better future. My older sister, my half-sister—you. Born to my mother so early that my grandmother had adopted her. It was best that way, she always said, because when my mother got married again, my father didn’t have the patience to raise a child that wasn’t his own. Except, when they found their traitorous golden ticket out of this miserable city, you weren’t included.
I push open the fence door and the plants snap and crackle as they loosen their hold. The garden has gone wild, an anarchic shrubbery of crimson vines and burnt mushrooms. I remember when it used to bloom with flowers full of nectarines, and you and I played hide and seek in the fronds.
“Pan. Pa-aan!”
The echoes of your voice fade away as I open the door to the house. Everything smells of the dust that settles on abandoned things, intent on burying them. The clocks still tick in the shadows. I put a hand on the knob of the banister, and a memory comes rushing vividly back.
“We can’t just leave her here!”
“We’re not going to get another opportunity like this!”
My parents were gesticulating wildly, pacing in the lounge as if they could outrun their destinies. I didn’t understand what they were talking about, nor did I care. My head was stuck between the bars of the banister, my eyes watering as I tried to pull my reddened ears through them.
“Shussh, shusshh…” I heard a gentle whisper as even gentler hands landed on either side of my head. With one twist my head was free of the banister and I was burying it in your pinafore, breathing in your leafy, sweaty, mountain-dust scent.
You had been my baby-sitter, my friend, my confidant, my teacher. And, yet, how easily I had forgotten you amongst the glittering luxury of Assyria. In my parent’s penthouse, gifted to them by PASBAAN, I spent my days lounging and learning from the little orbs that whizzed around my head like a knowledge shield, while my parents worked behind closed doors, their voices excited but muffled. I could see the whole city from that penthouse, from the sky-river of the dead to the airships that could ferry you to adjacent cities. Everything was at my fingertips, and my future was written too. PASBAAN were excited at the prospect that my parents would train me right into their hands. There was only one thing that nagged at me, and that too, only when I sat at the marble kitchen counter, playing with pieces of toast in the early quiet of the morning. I was all alone.
The chimes woven among the plants tinkle as I make my way up the stairs, my footprints leaving craters in the dust. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. My shoes whisper with each step. I never reached out to you while you were alive, and now what? I was throwing away all my hard work, and everything my parents lived for just to bring your body to a city you had never known?
At the top of the staircase the room widens out into a circular shape. There is no light here except what filters in from the dust-caked windows, so it takes my eyes a few moments to adjust. And then I see them all. Canvases lining the walls and the floors, propped up on easels, plant pots, piles of books. All of them are paintings of the beings from your books. Monstrous devs with curling horns, sorcerers shooting flame from their fingertips, witches with braids that turn into snakes, and a city, vast and magical, mirrored above and below, the tilism, the city of illusions where they all reside. My earpiece begins to buzz, a call breaking through the do-not-disturb mode. I accept, and a glitchy, buzzing voice comes through.
Did you get it?
Not yet. I reply through gritted teeth.
A pause, and then. There’s a complication.
My heart begins to beat faster. As the Chaya explain what has happened, I can see my world crumbling around me. Everything that was familiar will now be foreign. The PASBAAN, and therefore the Khilafat, know I was the one responsible. Someone has ratted me out.
Just… Just get the job done. We can protect you. A ship will be waiting at the port to spirit you away. By the time they realize where you are, you’ll be long gone.
I click to end the call and then sit down in the middle of the floor, surrounded by the many faces of your stories. I’d lived up to the family name. I had become a rebel. For so long, I’d watched the Khilafat fatten itself, leaching resources from surrounding territories until they went bust, until they had no option but to leave dying homes behind and crawl to Assyria where they could be treated as second-class citizens unless they could dedicate their life to that oppressive system. My parents called it an opportunity when it was really a prison where you could be safe if you betrayed the other inmates. Yet, despite knowing all this, I’d chosen that life too, until it rejected me. I make a hysterical little noise, somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
The sun dips down below the horizon, casting one last red glare before the shadow of the mountain falls over the city. If the city wasn’t already half-empty, it would grow silent now. People would lock themselves in their homes. Nobody wanted to be around when it was time for the souls to commune with the mountain, in case they get summoned as well.
I unlock the door, and leave it open as I walk out, towards the mountain, past the broken emerald buildings, like hands lifted in prayer, casting a greenish glow in the darkening sky. When I am close enough, I pull a device from my pocket. A little box with a sphere embedded in its lid. I hesitate. I owe the rebels nothing. But neither do I owe the Khilafat, and I’ve already given them too much. I kneel and scoop red clay into the box and, when it is sufficiently full, the sphere activates, turning into a little orb with claws that clutches the box tightly and whirs away into the sky.
I look back, over my shoulder, at the lights of the station inviting me to return. A ship waiting to take me to a new home now that I’ll be a wanted woman in Assyria. For a minute I think it won’t be so bad. I can change my hair, and my name, and bury myself in a city where no one knows me, working secretly for the rebels in guerilla moves against the empire. But then the shadow of the mountain falls across my face. And I think, what if the stories are true?
I climb to my feet and, like metal towards a magnet, stumble in the direction of the mountain. And this time, I know I won’t be a stranger or a traitor. This time, I can hear your voice calling me home.
Afterword
The seed of this story came from one of my favorite poems: Sujata Bhatt’s A Different History. The Indian Subcontinent is a place of wild and artistic beauty, and she captures that sense of wonder so well. But it is also a poem about immigration, colonization, and the ways empires bruise what seems intangible, stories, spirits, and histories. I wanted to write inside that same tension.
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