A century ago in Baghdad, Perrin slipped into the singer’s memories. If there was a sign of a soul, it was in how the memories wrapped around her like layers of garments. Embodying her life as a second skin. Yet the singer didn’t selfishly keep Perrin at bay as Darda’il had. Who often left an ache of indifference between them. Instead, she let her inhabit her life and memories.

She was vibrant. Her opulence could seep through her pores. Whatever is said of the Djinn, one truth seemed to surface: as with the tales of The Thousand and One Nights, the humans they chose were always decoratively clever, perhaps even filled with infinite potential. But then, like the pruning of branches, the Djinn turned them into decorations. Display pieces in perfectly manicured gardens.

Mariama, he says. The word fills the inside of her bones with warm nectar and wraps around her skin.

Mariama turns toward him, drawn to the long shadow. Perrin advises against it, but she is a woman born centuries before her time. Perrin is only a passerby in her body.

Artiya’il had been unsure of the efficacy of his bond to Mariama. He’d only observed accounts of Djinn making pacts with humans. Any accounts in their libraries were obscured–and rightfully so. Documenting the process would be no different than detailing how to make homemade bombs or illicit drugs. Simply having the knowledge would encourage others to try it.

Yet here he was, seeing a contract play out in real time by his own hands. He would’ve never dared. It was an unlikely reality. He had no interest in humans. Only in Mariama.

For you, I’d unravel this world, he once promised her.

That’s the truth of existence: all our wishes do come true. But how they manifest is never as we expect. The world was unravelling–not just by his hands, but by another human he’d come to meet.

Still, the tenure of his expedition to 9th-century Baghdad stretched longer. It was no longer hours he spent there, but days that melted into weeks. The excuses piled on to leave the Djinn world, to bury himself in the dirt of humanity. He stopped following decontamination protocols. He no longer journaled his state of being.

The dust cloud on the horizon grew, Turkish riders moving closer to the Bedouin camp every day.

Artiya’il watched Mariama tend the cooking fire, her voice weaving through the evening as she sang to the children. Each note binds her deeper to these people. The nomads, his own kind, would dismiss them as primitive. But he saw what the Djinn refused to see, how they moved with the heartbeat of the Earth, how their lives pulsed against the sterility of his world.

“Let them call it uncivilized,” he says, pressing his palms against the sand. His power infused outwards, reinforcing the camp’s defenses for another night.

Mariama’s song ended. She approached him, silk wrapping around her shoulders, and settled beside him on the carpet. Her skin bore new markings where his energy had touched her, forming as dark scales that caught the firelight.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” she said, running her fingers along the transformed flesh of her arm.

He couldn’t answer. Each mark was a countdown to her destruction, and he was the one carving it across her body.

In the distance, torches flickered. The turks would reach them by dawn.

Instead, he focused on her bare legs wrapped around his hardened skin. Beneath the stars, she sang. Days and nights spiraled by as they held off raiders and intruders. This was the node in history he saw—the fall of the Bedouins, their skin and blood shed with their backs to old-world Baghdad, and the Turks at their necks. This moment in history was her death.

He had promised not to leave his mark on her. but he did.

Except no, it wasn’t Artiya’il holding Mariama now.

Their bodies had morphed.

It was Zaher holding Perrin. He was the one changing her. And in his touch, she allowed him close again.

And maybe that’s why Artiya’il grew to love. No, obsess over Zaher. It was the impossibility of what Djinn are. whatever they touched, they changed. they were the alchemy against their own nature.

Mariama asked him in earnest. Do we ever reach the stars together?

Your song does, Artiya’il replied.

She grabs an old wooden Oud and strummed it before passing it to Artiya’il. Play this, let’s see if you remember the chords I taught you.

He was shy and timid, holding the oud in awkward, languid fingers. The strings strummed a tired tune–fluid to her touch, but clumsy in his.

That’s how I feel handling the fire, I can sing to it, but your power is far more accustomed, Artiya’il. She says.

You’ll become proficient in time.

If we survive, she added. Her words hung in the air as she spread her weight across the woven carpet.

But he wasn’t with her, not fully. He looked out into the distance, his eyes glowing, even as they turned away from the fire.

Are they close?

They’ll be here by morning, he said.

She tightens her hand against his, her fingers running along the divots of his hips.

Don’t leave. Where do you disappear to in the twilight of night? She wonders.

Practice the breath I taught you, he suggested, leaning toward the fire. He pulled her with him, a long arm draped over her shoulder. Command it, sing to it, tell it what to do.

And she did. The song came from the bottom of her belly, and as it rose out of her, the fire responded. It moved, whipped and flourished, blooming in ringlets that wrapped the perimeter of the tents.

He leaned close pressing his hand to the back of her head, his lips to her forehead. I’ll return by sunrise. You won’t be alone.

Behind Mariama, a shadow curled and expanded, slithering. It formed into the hard-edged outline of a woman.

Now, now. There is no point waiting for him. He didn’t appear that morning, another broken promise. And that is how she dies, said Darda’il. Her voice was light, melodic.

You don’t belong here, Perrin. And at one point, neither did she.

The shadow placed razor-sharp fingers on Mariama’s shoulders, and she drew Perrin out of her consciousness, giving her tangible form again.

You can feel what she feels for him, can’t you, Perrin?

Perrin staggered one step as she takes a breath that was finally her own, no longer Mariama’s

And why should I still trust you, Dara? Her words felt vacuous.

Darda’il flicked a finger towards Mariama. Do you want to tell her if Artiya’il shows?

Mariama was neither a residual memory nor factually real. She was caught between the confines of Dara’s masonried timelines. That was her specialty, creating spaces that catered to the hiraeth of a memory.

A tinge of pain lapsed on Mariama’s face as she turned to Darda’il.

He never returned that morning.

I want to believe in the good you are, Dara. Perrin said. You could’ve used me to find Zaher without giving me time with the most important person in my life.

Darda’il continued in a sterile tone, grabbing Mariama by the wrist. And what are you now? Why do you sing for the patrons, who live for your voice? Are they enslaved to you, or you to them?

Mariama turned her back on Darda’il. You’ve asked enough questions.

Perrin pushed Darda’il away. Let her be. She’s lost so much, even now.

You see, Perrin? Darda’il tone wrapped around her name, silk turned strangling vine.

That Djinn took everything from her. Worshipped her voice until there was nothing left. If you love that human, I will save him. But if he succeeds and brings his brother back, what will be left? Nothing but residual decay. That’s what Ifrits are. Driven by singularity then obssession. And when that’s done, who will he save? Then what?

Dara suggests there was no retention, no denial. But Artiya’il and I, well, we go way back.

Why didn’t Artiya’il come back? Perrin asks Mariama.

Darda’il places a hand over Mariama’s mouth.

Speak less, beautiful canary. Artiya’il, oh beautiful Artiya’il. He once studied humans. His greatest discovery was that all humans dream. Their whole existence, a cadence of highs and lows. So, he learned to show them hope—a chance for fame, for survival, to return a loved one. And at the end of it, he’d take them to the ruin of their decisions, their failures, their desperation. Only then did he become powerful beyond measure. Zaher will fail.

I’m with you, Dara. Why won’t you show your face?

Because I’m not foolish, Perrin, this is a trap. He wants to capture Artiya’il, and my power. It’s insidious.

Send me back to him. Or is that his reality drawing me back?

He is calling you.

/

The two women lay motionless across each other. The den shivers, unsettled by change. Caws echo. Lanterns on the walls no longer gleam in fluorescents. The laughter that once filled the room quiets.

Zaher pulls a tapestry from the wall, threads unravelling as he draped it as a shroud over both women. Beside her lies Mariama’s body eerily still. “Why didn’t you save her?”

Artiya’il crouches behind Zaher. Centuries of solitude gave him insight to the look Zaher had, in that moment, remembers how they are irrevocably bonded. “I never forget my debts. You’re here because you need me, aren’t you, Zaher?

“She can barely remember who she is.” Zaher says, voice cracking. “Why didn’t you save her?”

Artiya’il helps Zaher cover Mariama and gestures to Perrin. “Does she know you’re forgetting? I spent a century burying the emotions I felt. It won’t take you as long. How long will it take?”

“She knows. Whether she believes it, that’s another matter.” Zaher’s voice admits, flat.

Artiya’il hovers a hand over Mariama’s slender neck, not quite touching. “Release me, Zaher.”

Zaher’s laugh is bitter. “You’re asking me? You hid my brother’s name. And what’s left of every human you touch? A husk. A shell.”

Zaher runs a finger along Perrin’s cheek. “When she wakes up, Darda’il will come with her.”

What I did was always for Mariama. To change the mistakes I made. Then I met you—and you, too, wanted to change the past. Look at you. You’re beautiful in my image. You seek justice in a world that has none. You hate as I do. For her, for him. Even now you’ll betray Perrin. Again.

Betray her? What do you know? How different are these skies from the ones that birthed you? Were you born to war? To know the other side of the world would ruin the only home you knew? To light up your skies, only to unmake you for what you were? To be villainized?

A man picks up an oud near the stage, strumming it. The vibrations are weak, missing the power of the woman’s voice. Behind the bar, glasses are rinsed, others shivering, sliding off the shelves and onto the floor. Their collapse imminent without her voice.

That was her power as an Ifrit. Her voice carried the place, and all the lives within it, through time.

Artiya’il steps toward the stage, resigning himself to Zaher’s control. Let me play that.

He takes the oud and steps onto the stage. Nothing sings like her voice, Zaher.

Outside, the sky kaleidoscopes between day. Baghdad in the 9th century and the modern era cut jaggedly across the heavens. A stormy collage painted on the firmament.

Artiya’il’s fingers glide along the oud with practiced ease. A waking moment softens his smile, human in its composure.

It’s why I couldn’t let you go. Unlike the others, you didn’t crumble. You became what they made you. And I could only feel for you. To hide Alvan’s name—it was mercy.

Zaher joins him, sitting beside a darbuka. He taps its taut leather.

Can’t even be angry at you. We’re destined, aren’t we? You’re my escape. I am you, dressed in human flesh, only younger. I’ve caught up to what took you centuries—in decades. I’ve destroyed versions of time for what I want. Even if he deserves to return, I’ve traded everything. You’re right. I’ll betray her—one last time. That way, I know she’ll never come back. She won’t follow the shadow I cast. I’ll wander—with you.

Artiya’il chuckles. The strings that bound him loosen. He plays a familiar chord between them.
You know, she taught me how to hear music. Before her, it was all empty noise.

Zaher places the darbuka between his thighs, drumming a pulse into the room. He turns his shoulder from Perrin’s body.

Escaping a war-torn country wasn’t enough. Even when we got out—some how sharpnel had gotten in our skin, and our bodies buried under rubble. Worse, we carried scars none could see. The booming echoes. The exhaustion. Fear, gnawed at our backs. Alvan didn’t die that one night. Not in the bombings. Not the hunger. Not the blackout days. He died slowly. War reaches inside and becomes you. His escape wasn’t as lucky as mine.

And have you escaped? Or did you simply find your own destructive tools? We have enemies, you and I. My world studied yours—called your beliefs barbaric, your methods regressive. So we drained your resources, left you to war, famine, and poverty. Symptoms we’d already cured. I want the Djinn world to face its transgressions. You were collateral. I tried to shield you, to bring you back whole. But poor Mariama, she wasn’t allowed that. The Djinn should’ve devoured her. And now, I let humans undo them.

Artiya’il moves across the room, his dark coverings trailing. He rests a hand on Zaher’s arm. Why not become as I am? Any other path is bleak. Ifrits are mindless sheep. But we? We are better. Don’t complete this. Stay intact.

The sound of the instruments dims the den to candlelight. The doorman leans into the frame, his shoulders heavy with breath.

They don’t have a choice but to be here. What makes you think I do?

You’d do anything to bring Alvan back, wouldn’t you?

Everything. I want him to see a clear sky. No bombs. No war. Just silence. A quiet night I never saw.

I chose the same burden—for her.

Why didn’t you save her?

I tried. He opens his palm. See?

/

A century ago, he stood at the cusp of the realm of humans and the Djinn. Artiya’il packed carefully packed his clothing, left his attire immaculate, dropping the metallic garbs he wore in his world, replacing them with faded and torn threads.

He watched at a countdown, to when he had to return to intercept Mariama and her people. The Turks were moving. She couldn’t hold them off for long–she wasn’t ready–not without burning through the snippet of power he imbued in her. If she reached deeper, it would become a corrosive seed painting her body into purples and ink blues. Her body would salivate for salvation, and find only the prison of desire.

He pressed a hand against a console of old stone. It glowed. It would transmit him to the human world. He had done it. Cleared the hurdle, protecting Mariama consumed him, all for her people.

There was a consideration of all the wars he’d observed, passively. The Middle East at a turning point. A land of wisdom and spirituality, poised to collapse. Devoured by the very wealth that sits under it, a black vein bludgeoning it with greed.

He once petitioned to the Djinn councils: what if they intervened? Saved the Arabian Peninsula, in its reach to North Africa. United it as the center of the world. An ongoing cradle of civilization, to act as a place of unity and union for the world of Djinn and Man.

Except, Djinn only desired peace when it was the tool of the oppressor. As peace often is.

Enough.

He would not allow it. They didn’t deserve his consideration. Their rules were mere suggestion. He’d seen the future; there would be 4.5 to 8 million dead. All for what? To hold a grounding of their policy of non-interference?

What would saving one encampment cost?

The stone glowed. A desert night. sharpened into view. Below, a fire bowed to the woman who stole his heart with her song. The whole encampment gathered in enthrallment. Women cover their mouths with their hands. Children cheered. And on the cusp, light shaped itself into a sharp axis across the horizon.

The stars pricked the sky. A thousand watchful eyes. They slid past his vision as he began to transmute into the world of Man.

Then, a jarring bang to the back of his head. a hand slammed his face into the console. Its light dimmed. The world is calibrating back to the Djinn realm. Heat surged from his body. Sand turned to black glass, his influence lingering on the other side.

No, release me, Artiya’il shouts.

This is the day of your biggest failure, hope you enjoy living it in perpetuity. Her voice was silk. Taunting.

A long, lithe arm with dense, manicured fingers slammed his face into the rocks gain. The console glowed, then went dark.

On the other side, he saw it: Mariama. Human, perfect. Using his power with no failsafe. Soldiers encircling her camp. Her tears fell as people collapsed around her.

He had brought death to their door.

As his vision blacks out, he feels pressure at his clavicle. fully restrained. Her lips brushed his ear.

Tell me, why give up the prestige you had? All of it, for the khamer (intoxication) of humanity. The hangovers are brutal, I hear.

In this story, we’re caught in a train station with a thick brush of forest. The railroad tracks deadend into a curtain of black that stops light from permeating. Yet the Djinn’s voice still reaches him. Come wander with me.

A man that is no longer human but not quite a djinn; he exists someplace between. Zaher runs a hand along the tracks, and from behind the curtain of darkness ash strews from a place far off. It wants him to remember.

The ash binds to the tip of his fingers, discoloring his skin. It reeks of the places that were irrevocably changed. The failed memories, the dead timelines, and the versions of him that seized to be.

Shades enter and leave this train station or remain at the bordello. At times aware, other times unaware. The dead were often like that, each caught in a life tailored to their specific memories.

One of the shades sitting in a red chair gives a cough and pulls on straight dark hair. Each of them caught in the Barzakh, a place that guides them to a world beyond Earth. Some of the shades resemble their human form, others changed, from blank facial features, to missing limbs.

They stare with eyes that shimmer. A milkcrate sits between them with cards folded on top, and one gives a tap to it.

“My turn?” Zaher presses a hand of five cards.

A man in a high-collared red jacket plays a pair of cards and a three-of-a-kind.

Then play passes on in a circle. Til another shade puts down another five cards and shouts. “Big two. Looks like you lose again, new guy.”

“That’s hardly fair. Do you know what the issue is here? Its my first day playing this game, how would I have known how to play Cantonese poker. Two, you don’t even have facial expressions, only blank eyes staring as the ultimate poker face.”

In the bordello’s rectangular doorway, Hildie watches Zaher lost as everyone here. Behind her a women who’s hips sway in a forest green nightgown, and orange curls that peek through a bonnett walking through the bordello. She manages the affairs of the dead, coralling them like sheep. The bordello provides a reminder of their lives, as a passion of mercy.

She places a glass against a wooden coffee table for the Turkish soldier, Hamza. Who looks up from a reclined leather chair with a nod of gratitude. “You can thank me by letting the girls have a time with him, that boy’s the first fresh blood we’ve had here in a while, and he’s not dead, he’s something different. It’ll remind them of a well-lived life.” She speaks through boxy teeth.

Hamza chuckles. “I have an intuition that Hildie won’t allow that, not before he remembers.”

“Again?” Dora, the bordello owner, says.

Hildie watches them and whistles through two fingers, looking back into the building. “You believe it’s time you remind him? He’s going to forget til it eats him bit by bit.”

Hamza lifts his eyes up from the fire. “Again? A little self-reflection should do wonders.”

“You men are always so hard on your boys,” Hildie says. “You forget the little boys never forget their fears even as men.”

Outside, the tracks disappear into a blithe of black. Only the echoes of a train whistle can be heard, from beyond tracks that disappear into a blithe of black. Til pellucid wheels appear on moss-covered tracks. with every wheel turn they churn thicker and clearer materializing out of the smoke they came out of. Another train pulls into the station.

Hamza takes a seat on a red chair. “Deal me in,” he says to Zaher.

Zaher flips a set of cards over on a corner of the milk carton. “You playing? Games like poker, but the two’s are the biggest card in the game. Suit order matters.”

“Not my first time. Had a Cantonese veteran with me back in the day, we still have the score sheet somewhere.”

Zaher observes Hamza’s intact limbs, his clothing still fresh and pressed. “Tell me, every man who is here too long, begins to forget, let alone lose themselves in pleasure, in idle. How is it you’re still together?”

“Do you ever wonder why you cannot see past the train tracks? Where do they come or go?” Hamza rebuttals.

“The present is all there is here.” Zaher says, bored and looking on. “You can feel the past and future trying to break through, don’t you? But not here, it doesn’t have to.”

Hamza’s shorter frame leans forward, and his presence commands attention at the train ledge. “That’s what every shade here says. And as they forget the past and future, so do they forget their shape. So, what tethers you? A man, a djinn, an ifrit, what tames you?”

“Tames me?” He questions.

“You don’t even know what you might belong to? How rich. Do you wonder why djinns have the story of lamps or golden bracers that summon them when rubbed three times? It’s about taming.”

A vapid coldness wraps around his chest. He remembers the way he walked through the bordello, unable to speak, a reverie of his old behaviors. So, Hamza was speaking the truth. “I haven’t forgotten. It’s easier to not think about it. You’re here to ask me to help her granddaughter, aren’t you?”

“She’s not only her granddaughter, you once loved her. Quit divorcing reality as mere objectivity.”

“Once,” Zaher says. “If I don’t save my brother, all this damage and ash will be for nothing. That’s the reality here. I walked into this bordello unable to speak, and I was forgetting what I was. Remember the lore of Ifrits? A creature that functions on their last memories, their last desires. What are your yours?”

“A woman in the brothel keeps me together.”

“And that woman is Hildie.”

“That’s her.”

“I took her away from Perrin, isn’t she angry at me for it? Perrin lost her grandmother again. All thanks to me.”

Hamza laughs tightens his grip around Zahers shirt, pushing him towards the track. “Quite easily.”

“Easily?”

“She has also seen what her granddaughter has done.” He rolls his sleeve higher, and discolored skin shines in the gas lamp light, like Zaher. “We are the same now, aren’t we?”

Zaher grabs Hamza’s arm inspecting it. “But how is this possible? Wait, you aren’t here by choice. You’re stuck.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “And yet love finds me here.” He motions to the Bordello. “See? Even Perrin’s efforts to follow the rules and abide by her djinn have altered what it touched. She didn’t intend it, but when I died. It never stuck.”

“And you aren’t bothered?”

“It’s inconvenient, but life looks a little different when you’re past it.” Hamza laughs. “I debated throwing you on the tracks. But I’m letting you choose, when you’re ready or need help mustering the courage, I’ll give you a little push. Think of it as a goodbye.”

Come wander with me. Zaher feels the words sing in his bones like a pipe flute deep in his marrow. The dead move in the Bordello, now aware of their fragility, the scars on their skin, hidden beneath mink coats, and wide brim hats. “They’re all stuck here.”

“The lucky ones receive guests from the great beyond. And I’m lucky.”

Zaher places his cards down and looks at all the other shades. “Sorry boys, this game is over. Now to find where Perrin is.”

Through his lips, Zaher motions to the tracks, and asks the train to come back, for the Phantom Train to be whole. Even as he knows its shattered remains exist in a facsimile of a Saharan desert. Nothing hears his call. All the whistles that blow, and horns that moan no longer exist.

“I should go back in, I was going to lose this game anyway,” Hamza observes his watch, and gives a tap to its face. “One last question. Is it fun? To not remember? To be powerful?”

It was different. The world glazed in a fire-kiln of imperceptible colors, colors bite and swim in his vision. They were moving backward in time, and it made it easy to laugh at how silly he felt the present was. When he saw the reason, all human decisions were insurmountable and infintisemly small, all at once.

“Fun? It’s like that moment before you fall asleep, and you’re falling except there’s no bottom. Why would I want to go back to the world of the living? To live is to find a thousand ways to betray yourself over a lifetime.”

“Tough.” Hamza gives Zaher a playful kick behind the knee, and it pushes him off-kilter. He falls back on bent elbows before Hamza grabs his shirt. Letting him hang over the railroad tracks. “Listen to me, Zaher. This is going to hurt, but if you’ve never rock bottomed, then you’ve never known the sweetness of what comes after. Tell me to let you go.”

Zaher smiles. “I should’ve seen that coming. Any advice, old man?”

“You’re going to a playground the Djinn keep humans in, a place between the waking world and sleep. It’s a place they can’t enter, only build it, so everything there is hostile to anything not human. And it’s a dream, a waking dream, it can warp turn into a nightmare. Good luck making her realize she’s in it.”

Hamza loosens his fingers, and steps towards the bordello. “For now, a woman waits for both of us.”

Zaher lets his frame fall into the train tracks.

/

The wind brushes past Perrin’s hair, against a carpet of long white fur that cradles her. Dara observes the curls of her hair, and with a slow tilt of her head, she runs a finger against her fragile arm. Perrin wraps her hands around her waist, feeling the heart beat of the floating creature, as its ears fold and flip in the wind.

“You brought Falkor back?” She turns her head to Dara.

“I thought it would give you comfort, and I can only capsulate what your imagination allowed to come.” Dara’s eyes glow, as they often did when she was not present, focused elsewhere.

A sizzling sound bellows below, and Dara turns to the fire underneath them. The Ishtar Gates crumbled, and the train crashed to the side of a desert mound. There was nothing left for Artiya’il to use, and his human apparatus, Zaher, had been crippled.

Perrin forces her body to move, her limbs ache with a lack of use. “Well, they aren’t going anywhere.”

“Bad news. It seems where you go, Zaher follows. I’ve been informed that I can’t let you go back to your life til he’s dealt with.”

Perrin gives a light chuckle. “So Zaher wasn’t full of shit, I should’ve been weary of you.”

Darda’il pairs her gaze, eyes no longer shimmering, back in the present. She was choosing to follow the command, this was on her. “I never wanted it this way. The plan was for you to return to where I found you and your life would pick up where you left. What sort of fantasy would you like to live in?”

She shakes her head. “Zaher kept escaping in made-up fantasies, and look where it got him? What good would it do me?”

“Zaher is not like you anymore. More Ifrit than man, and without a tether to this world, he’ll fade away, no one will remember him. But you were the last to see him, so we need you away from him til you forget his existence.”

Perrin laughs. “You could put me in a place of my old life, somewhere happy that it won’t matter, but if you think you’ll stop him. Well, best of luck.”

Dara lifts her palm over Perrins’s forehead but pauses. “I’ve enjoyed our time for what it is worth. The job can often be tedious, but this has not been.”

“One question, will I lose my memories?”

“Til Zaher is gone, it’s likely you’ll have none of them. He has to go.”

“So, a trap, with my memories.”

“That’s Artiya’il’s device to dilute memories, to rewrite them. I won’t do that to you, they are who you are. But why forgive him? You’ve been down that path. An inevitable beating against the current.”

“I-I don’t know,” Perrin’s fingers tighten against the fur of the flying animal.

“How little do humans change. Let me help ;p

you forget.” Dara says as a savior.

/

When Perrin opens her eyes again. There is no rustle of wind. Instead, she’s drunk on morning champagne and pastries, and she remembers this day. An arm hangs off the side of the bed, and a man kisses her lips with clean-shaven cheeks against her chest.

Her wedding gown half on, it was never the color she said it would be and it hangs off her shoulders in a way she’d never wear.

“Are we okay?” She knows this isn’t Zaher’s lips, instead, it’s her husband. She can hear the canary sing out of their flat overlooking Broadway. And soon she forgets his name altogether.

“We’ve never been more okay than now.”

Her lips taste tart strawberries, and out the window, the sky is in pink hues. It should’ve been surreal, but wasn’t this wedding, this morning her dream?

He kisses the round of her shoulder, and her body convulses, trying to remember what another kiss is like. But it’s out of reach, and all her memories draw a blank in a hazy pleasurable faze. She’d forgotten Zaher.

“Soon, we’ll be Mr. and Mrs’s, funny how we got here, isn’t it?”

She thinks of how they got there, til her mother’s voice comes from downstairs. Then the world begins to crack.

/

When Hamza let Zaher fall onto the train tracks, he never crashed. He never could, they were manifestations, a highway to places that were no longer there.

Hamza was right, what tugged on Zaher transported him to the familiar. When he opens his eyes, his body no longer aching to be in a foreign place. He was peskily sober, and all the winnings he’d made off the Big Two poker game were gone.

A woman straddles her thighs on his hips between sheets. “Another round?” He opens a single eyelid and stares up, in any other timeline he would’ve agreed, but he had a reason for being here.

“Unfortunately, my dear, I have someone to find.” he pieces his clothing all over the floor. He had no idea how he got here. And taht was the smoking gun that he knew it couldn’t be a place he’d lived, it was visceral, crushingly real, someone took meticulous details to craft it.

The woman with the soft voice ran a hand against his tight skin when he was still human, and not more of an abomination. It was his first clue on where in time this was. “So, this was before I met Arti.”

He extends an arm out to grab a shirt. She presses her hands against his chest, “You sure you have to go?”

After a moment of thought, he lifts the sheets off his warm body inspecting his hips. “Yeah. Neither of us is game right now.”

He begins to slide her off of him, but before his feet touch the cold tile, she tightens her thighs around his hips. She runs her hands against his chest again to the round his neck, her grip stronger than he was. “All you had to do was let her be. This is her escape.”

He laughs, attempting to force her off. She doesn’t budge, her lithe frame warps, and her weight sinks deceptive of her small frame. A lithe tongue escapes her lips, as her fingers tighten around the deep tissue of his neck, and his larynx begins to tighten. Til it collapses.

His eyes roll in the back of his head, as his body shakes in one final spasm, failed attempts to raise his hands to stop her. A blip of sun peaks through the clouds, it refracts to a faded orange-pink. This world fixed on his distractions, it needed him to be unaware and in a daydream. He could find her but he couldn’t let the prison wardens find him.

He gasps a deep breath and opens his eyes. his bare back sprawls on the train tracks, feeling returning to his appendages through his neural pathways.

Hamza places a cigarette in his shirt pocket, taking off his wool coat, and placing it over Zaher’s bare body. “You were out for a while there.”

“What was that?”

Hamza runs a hand against Zaher’s neck, still blue and black. “Not your kink, is it?”

Zaher laughs, and his throat aches. “That’s a relief.”

“Perfectly manicured fantasies require you to be in a role. Do not pretend to be aware of the world there. Get back in there, and play nice with the make-believe, or they’ll notice. Remember. You aren’t supposed to be there.”

/

In the bright streets of Montenegro, a wooden front bookstore stands in contrast. Inside she’s with her mother and bridesmaids, a small ensemble moves through the store. The sun never sets, shining on every corner of the room, teas steep in the shop.

She fingers searching through shelves for a book. A habit she’d formed with an old lover, his name escapes her, but his memory surfaces in the smell of the cherry wood, and in the open pages of old books.

Ah-ha. She found it. Or so she thinks. She grabs the spine of a book, searching the fantasy shelves, then literary fiction, to the sci-fi, and she knows it’ll call to her.

As prim fingers touch a copy of Cloud Cuckoo Land, a stranger’s hand lands on hers. “You’re going to love this book one day.”

She reads the name of it and pulls the neckline of her shirt tight. “What makes you think that?”

“In a thousand lifetimes, if there’s one thing I come to know, it’s you.” his eyes burn in deep browns of a kiln. It’s hard to distinguish whether he speaks in flattery or he’s privy to what she can’t see.

The mid-day sun reflects behind him obscuring the details of his face, only the contours of his silhouette. “And who are you?”

“Of course,” he bites his tongue. “A fantasy would not have me in it.”

Whoever he was, he was searching. As she was. “I’m looking for something, but I’m not sure what it is,” she says.

She grabs a book off the shelf, and its pages are empty. He follows her. “Person? Place? Any idea? I can show you.”

She pauses and pivots to look at him. “Do I know you? Do the words stranger danger mean anything to you?”

He raises his palms to his shoulders. “No, I, uh, I’m trying to help.”

She gives a weary nod. “Yes. Everyone is always trying to ‘help’.”

A woman slides between the shelves, her hands leaning against Zaher’s shoulders. “Good news. I remember you just fine.”

She’s in a matching lavender dress with the other bridesmaids. She moved behind the shelves, her eyes peeking through stacks of books. Til she slid closer to him leaning a hand against Zaher’s back. “Do you remember? Because I do. I Remember the time we fucked, me bent against a tree, your grunts? I still think about it. And how often I had to lie to Perrin about you.”

Zaher’s temperature rises, his humanity rising to the surface. “Tamara? This was before she and I got together.”

In one nimble movement she reaches for a sharpened envelope knife from a desk, and before he can pivot away she runs it along his neck. With a pull, then a push into his jugular. “A poke for a poke, I’d say.” Her teeth curl under her smile. “So she gets to be in your heart, and you get to be in me? Doesn’t sound fair.”

/

His palm presses as a tourniquet against his neck. His blood leaks with the drip of wine, til it congeals, and a hole seals up where the envelope knife had pierced. Remnants of blood pool underneath him, running toward a milk crate, between a woman’s feet.

He smiles wide, and Hildie edges her butt to the corner of the wooden crate, She taps the point of his chin. “Ain’t you just the cat that got the cream.”

“I’m not sure I can do this, Hildie, but–” His breath catches in his throat, a bungee cord ripping him away against the gravity of the Earth. “–I know they don’t want me there. I have to go back in.”

“Zaher, before you go. It helps to use memories she’d know. All her defenses are her imagination, favorite places, or movies, and settings that wouldn’t seem out of tune to her. With me, she used my past memories, and she’d use movies she loved as backdrops. Perhaps be mindful not to press her.”

“Movies, huh?” When he closes his eyes he’s pulled back in, a cord ripping him through space. Then he’s awake again, and whole.

The coastal air from a beach peppers his skin. He walks past tall torches, with flames hissing against the wind. He walks up a pearly white brick courtyard wrapped around a marble fountain. Cars pull up to an estate where two men in three-piece suits greet guests at the door, logging their names on a docket.

He approaches. His clothing alters from a henley to a white blazer with coat tails. He runs a finger between the collar and his neck, then checks the buttons on his sleeve placket. An Aston Martin pulls past him, and an older gentleman with a young courtesan enters. He follows patiently behind.

“Name, sir?”

“Zaher Salman.”

They run a pen against the paper. “Don’t see it here.”

Zaher rolls his eyes, and waves a finger around his waist, bending the reality to accommodate him. “It’s with a Z.”

The man in the suit gives a cough and checks again. The water in the fountain outside slows, as a small tremor affects the minute changes in reality. And Zaher hopes the apparitions of this reality don’t notice.

The doorman rests a hand on his waist against a hidden holster behind his jacket. An itch of anxiety slithers through his skin. Then the doorman pulls his hand back to the black booklet in hand.

“Oh. I see it now.” They cross off his name and motion him in.

He understands he has to navigate the crowds of wedding gatherers. The wedding was perfect, it was on guard rails, with an itinerary of what happens and when. He sees why the fantasies remain static. The Officiation, the speeches. The dinner. The dancing. He couldn’t guide the narrative in a different direction. It was safe.

But why Montenegro? Why did she choose here? And he remembers a movie she loved, one of a foregone conclusion of sweet tender love, that ends submerged in water. Two people forced to work together amid a poker tournament, and this would put him as a double agent.

Zaher presses a hand against his ribcage and realizes a gun resting on a holster. “Perfect. Now I can shoot things.”

He weaves in and through the crowds of wedding gatherers, an older man with a furrowing mustache laments. “If only they had poker tables here, a little excitement to drum up.”

The world was already reverbing off of him, and Zaher needed an escape as a woman approached him. “Here for the wedding?”

“No.” He points to a catty-corner room. And the room rattles in a low hum, rearranging, with chairs lining up filled with a kidney-shaped oval table. A table with grassy green felt, and a dealer slides a chair into the crevice of the table. “Actually, I’m here for the private poker game.”

Private undersold what it was. The wedding now had to cater to a double booking, as a room filled with white and brown men, and women in glamour. Zaher fit right in, and he could feel his chest open up.

Zaher breaks off to the bar with brass and gold shelves. And all Zaher had to do was preoccupy the sentinels of wedding guests and bridesmaids.

He leans against the mahogany bar, a separation of the two cliche worlds. The bartender in a velvet suit asks. “Your order, sir?”

“A whiskey.”

“Just a whiskey?”

This was the other part of the world building, to let the make-belief make the ask, and respond. “Any last-minute deal-ins before the tournament starts?” A short rotund man asks, waiting in the door frame.

Zaher raises two fingers. “Here.”

“Buy-in is fifty thousand. Is that acceptable?”

“Insisted on,” Zaher says, then turns back to the bartender. “Scratch that. Make it a rye with cognac, add benedictine and vermouth, and a dash of Peychauds.”

“That’s only more liquors, sir.”

A woman in an ivory dress whose colors reflect off of the mahogany bar top. “I knew a man who’d only drink those, and New Orleans was where he became a fan of that boozy drink.”

The bartender shrugs his shoulders, and Zaher avoids eye contact with her.

“Hello?” She waves a hand in front of his face.

“Get her one on my credit.” He says, a hiccup in his heart, and a resistant desire to see her in a wedding gown. He turns his back to the bar, resting his elbows on the glass top.

“You don’t have to,” she says.

“Consider it a good luck charm for my game.”

The bartender mixes the rye, Peychauds, and cognac in different parts then pours them into crystal glasses. “Courtesy of the gentleman.”

“Do you get nervous?” She raises her glass to the room. “Didn’t expect an international poker tournament during my wedding.”

He glances back. “No more nervous than I’d be in front of a crowd of a hundred or so at an altar. How about you?”

She correct. “A hundred and fifty-two. Often I thought I’d run away and elope, in a different place, and at a different time.”

“If you’re all nervous, here’s a tip. In the middle of a game, I find a focal point, something unrelated. Whether I fold or clean house, that one thing isn’t affected by it. Something perfect.”

He concedes and turns his shoulder, raising his glass to her. Before she knocks her glass against his. Men walk behind them, pressing their hands at guns on their hips. He can sense their high alert, and he regulates his breathing. Even Perrin’s mental state could alert them.

“You’ll be mine for this game.” The men pause their surveillance settling on Zaher. “I should get going.”

She yanks on the bottom of her dress and sits on a stool next to him. “And you’ll be mine? A good luck charm.”

He takes a sip of his drink. “Of course, I would be. You’re remembering. Look in the back of the room if you’re nervous, I’ll be at the grand circle balcony. And imagine a man is out there, one you’ve almost forgotten, looking for you. Would you want to remember him?”

“Depends. Why don’t I remember him?”

“He’s likely to hurt you.”

“A friend? A lover? An arch-enemy?”

“I don’t know, maybe? Lately closer to an antagonist.”

“I’ve always wanted someone to try to foil my plans, am I trying to do the same to him?”

“You have no idea. You would’ve upended all his well-laid-out plans. It’s actually rather surreal.”

“Or maybe real. Always a pain-in-the-ass.”

“Such a pain in the ass, you have no idea how real it feels.”

“Real.” She repeats the word. Her pink nail spins around the rim of her drink.

/

“Real.”

The word resonates in his ear, as his scorched skin begins to grow anew. His body is on the brick blocks of the train station, his skin scorched. Hamza leans over an arm pressing the tip of a cigar against Zaher’s burning nose.

“She’s happy,” Zaher states. “And she doesn’t remember me. I was at the top of a balcony watching down, between an intermission on the poker game, and she couldn’t say my name. She’s happy.”

Hamza gives the cigar another tap against Zaher’s nose before it heals, and his cheeks form with fresh flesh. “Not sure that explains the third-degree burns?”

“Oh, that, they couldn’t help themselves. There were security guards everywhere, and so many guns and a bullet would’ve been easier. The defenses of her fabrications are becoming hostile to the point of cruelty. The plan was to interject during the ceremony wedding, but I got jumped, poker chips cleared off the table and they tied me to it. Then lit the whole thing on fire, using the money as kindling.”

“You aren’t learning, are you? There’s an Arabic proverb, think of a woman as a rib, do not try to bend her, she won’t change, she’ll only break. You have to change and then she remembers.”

Zaher rolls to his side, resting his face on the cold, unburning ground. “Why would I want to change that world? She’s happy. And wherever the memory of me is, it’s imprisoned somewhere in there, in her own little Casablanca. People go in, they don’t leave. So, why would I want to wake her from being happy?”

Hamza presses the cigar to Zaher’s lips. “Because none of it is real. And Perrin has seen the world where Alvan lives.”

Zaher takes an inhale and releases smoke out into the sky. “Of course, she beat me to it. How did she find it?” Zaher raises his hand in front of him and stares at his fingers, reminding each one to move. He gives his finger a snap, to take him back.

Behind Hamza, an apparition sits. “Well, there is one thing that would bother him. He should let the girl be happy.”

“And who are you?”

She scoffs. “I’m the girl’s guardian. Every return, the world I built for Perrin will become more hostile to him.” Her figure sinks into the ground as melting ember, slithering as a long shadow that tendrils up Zaher’s catatonic body. “Stupid bastard child of war, perhaps you should join her.” The words rivet the shadows that warp and climb up his limbs.

Hamza leans on one side and taps his cigar against the crate. “You’re her djinn? Quite the bitch, ain’t you?”

/

The sun hits the horizon, reflecting languid shadows against red brick streets. Zaher walks through a door and his arrival is an omen, as the sky drips and drains of its color, Thick oranges and blues sink out of the skyline. They chasing down the horizon in a suffocated burst of color that disappears between the cracks of red brick, now in muted grays and blacks.

In the Barzakh, Dara let the shadows play against his skin, digging into his memories. Far enough in she sees that war never left him, and it transmutes to the dull sounds of explosive shells in the sky. They fade into new formed clouds of nothing. Bomber planes rip through streaming bombs that crumble the buildings they touch.

Zaher digs his nails into his palms, pressing his back against the side of a mudbrick building. He’d wished that even as an apparition to avoid the dread and trepidation of war, and he wishes for an out. No. He pleads for Artiya’il to stop this world from crushing in on him, as his lungs tighten, and his muscles ache.

The ashy color of his skin reminds him of the way bodies burned in shelters, smoldering, aching, and climbing. It all had a taste of ashe that filmed like static on his lips.

He lowers the wide wide-brim cotton hat and rushes to open a metal door under arched neons. They glow with the words Rick’s Cafe Americain. The door sets into a brick building with large black framed windows, show casing an interior brim with white lights.

Inside, a dark-skinned man sits in a sharp suit of light cotton, thick fingers pressing on a piano. In the backdrop, soldiers question guests at roulette tables. Zaher sneaks behind the bar and leaning his back against glass bottles that shake at his weight. His hands turn red pressed against his ears. The world rivets in black and white gradients, yet the sounds gain pitch and resonate off every glass and light in the room. His childhood memories were colliding with the fantastical movie this world drew from.

He removes his hands from his ears and notices that the ash has built against his fingertips, crawling up his palm. What was he now? He felt so little til now, had Artiya’il freed him from human fears, or burdened him with apathy.

An explosion in the distance shakes the beaded and stenciled brasslighting hanging from the ceiling. Smoke seeps into the building, and dissipates.

“A Sour Jdid, please.” She asks. Another strike against the roof and the lights fumble. The trimmed with brass shakes in violent hums. The lights reflect off the sequins of blues on Perrin’s dress as she takes a seat at the bar.

He could recognize her voice through any violence this world pressed on. He composes and presses a dress shoe into the ground rotating from behind the bar, but not before pausing to wrap his fingers around a bottle of cognac. He rushes to the middle of the room, sliding down into a crouch against the back of the upright piano. The soldiers are obtuse to his presence, Perrin had only noticed him in her peripheral vision.

Even in the black and white film of the room, with dust dislodging from rafters, he can hear the sirens. Their sounds pointed louder than what’s around him. So he tightens his spine against the back of the piano to feel the vibrations of the wood and ivory keys.

He raises the rounded bottle to his lips and drinks to deafen the sound and the beating of his heart, his blood electrified under his skin.

She walks up to him slender knees in dark heels, and taps thin fingers against the back of the bottle. “They can’t see you.”

Perrin presses on the folds of the aquamarine sequin dress and leans toward the piano player. “Sam, play As Time Goes By.”

“Honey, you know, I can’t. Zaher ain’t going to want to hear it.”

She looks back down at the man crouched against the piano. “Zaher.” As if she were saying it for the first time, testing the name on her lips. As Darda’il claws the war-torn Iraq out of his consciousness, and parses it into the memories of Casablanca, so did it return who he was to Perrin.

Zaher raises the cognac bottle, liquid swishes inside in amber-gray tones, reflecting the hanging lights. “Sam, play the song for the lady.” He hadn’t forgotten his ability to manipulate the space he was in.

Sam gives a nod, and his perfect ebony skin taps against the ivory keys. “You must remember this–” He begins.

Her body slides against the case of the piano, and the slit in her dress climbs up her thigh. Her drink swishes every drop still in the glass held in her hand.

The soldiers pause at another poker table. They inspect IDs and their eyes dart like the scent of bloodhounds picking up a change in the room.

She reaches over to wrap her translucent white fingers against tan hands with darkened fingertips. “The ash isn’t coming off, is it?”

She raises a hand to her face and inspects it. “You being here reminds me of what I should’ve forgotten.”

“And what do you remember?”

“Men only come to Casablanca to leave their lives behind. And I once knew a man. Who wanted to love me more than anything else, but there was no room in his heart for me, war and fear had filled the space. And he found comfort in a bottle.” She taps her finger against the label of the cognac itself. “In other women, and I couldn’t begin to know what he needed, to help seal all the cracks.”

She turns his hand so his palm presses gently against her cheek. “And maybe that’s why we’re here. Casablanca is his, a place where he’d given up on it all. No war. No love. Only absence till his time comes.”

She runs his fingers against glossy lips with a gentle kiss to his wedding finger, then the middle finger. After each kiss, a little less ash sits on his hand. “Is it coming off?” she asks behind closed eyes.

He tilts his chin towards her. “It’s helping.”

“Good,” she whispers and continues to kiss his index finger, caught between parted lips.

Sam leans over the piano. “Boss, you might want to know they’re looking for you.”

Zaher tilts his head up. “They aren’t catching me anytime soon.” He extends his hand out to Perrin. “You coming? My office is on the second floor.”

The soldiers with thick brown and red armbands look away from the poker table they are at. Their chief stands up with them, putting his final hand of cards down. Perrin’s elevated heart rate drew their attention.

Zaher wraps an arm around Perrin and they climb a curving staircase step by step til they dead end to a door. They peek over the railing as the soldiers scamper to follow them, and Zaher begins to put the code in the door.

The manual lock dejects with a tightened deadbolt. This was her world.

Zaher turns to Perrin and presses his hand on her shoulder. “What’s the password, Perrin?”

She gives a small tilt of her head. “I don’t know.”

The soldiers begin to reach the stairs, a line of them with guns pointed in Zaher’s direction. He attempts another combination, commanding this world to bend to his will. But his power paled in comparison to Artiya’il’s, as if he was running on empty.

The lock rejects him again. This was his office. He had bent the memory enough to be imposed in it. Yet the sounds of shell bombings outside of the Cafe dejected his concentration.

Her hands tighten on the railings watching the soldiers sharpen their aim crouching on a knee and others closing an eye to line their marksman shots.

Zaher releases the handle and turns around to face them. “You know, fuck it. Perrin, you had everything. You had a fiance, someone who loved you, and here we are in a place where people go to escape. Why would I try to keep you here? You had everything, didn’t you, Perrin?”

He takes a step past her and eyes the soldiers, “How bad can it hurt this time, yeah?”

Her face flips in demeanor. “Had. I had everything, Zaher. And sometimes you’re still incredibly obtuse. Have you considered I care about Alvan as you do? Even as Hildie is gone. I know where he does live, You may not want want that future, but I know”

His eyes widen, and his words catch in his throat, til they finally tumble out. “You remember me.”

Behind them, the soldiers begin to cock their guns depreciating the trigger of the semi-automatics. Perrin wraps around Zaher and presses him against the door. Her body frames him, and her lips lock onto his.

All the soldiers stop as if frozen in time. A fountain flowing in the middle of the room begins to slow into little droplets of water. Every breath pauses, and it’s only them.

Behind them, the lock clicks on the door, open a crack, its blue metal frame creaks. She presses his body against the door and they fall through. Her fingers tense around his back as her weight presses on him, lips still tight.