NAZER SILMI - Jinn Sanctuary

(Sequel to book 1, JINN SANCTUARY - this Jinn is fixed temporally but can move through time and is a Watcher who has lived on the earth for a very long time, never interfering with the great events of history but observing them all and occassionally mentoring individuals.

CHAPTER 10 -

Azami didn’t see Suhayl waiting for him when he entered the hammam and he was too angry and exhausted to wait or look for his friend. They’d catch up somewhere and if Suhayl had gotten here earlier and was farther along in his bath, so be it. So he stowed his clothes and other things he carried in the locker, secured the key to the chain he wore around his neck and entered the first room of the baths, the petemal cloth secured snuggly around his naked body.

He entered the hot room and immediately began to relax as soon as he sat down on the huge hot slab heated by underground coals. He felt like he could almost melt here and fall asleep and had to rouse himself as the super heated steam air permeated body and soul. He thought back on the day. It had been a good enough day, even with the ribbing he had taken by the men in the café. Everything had been okay until he was accosted by Sadri on the sidewalk and reminded, once again, that the world was still consumed by a storm that was building on the horizon of each day like a bank of thunderheads. And all the books and articles and conferences attended by his friends at the university would not dispel those clouds and the storm they heralded.

Eventually Azami crawled to his feet and made his way sluggishly towards the washing tubs. He declined the rough hands of the scrubber today, but succumbed to a long wash and soak at the tubs before passing on towards the moment of truth: the icy bucket of water to be poured over his head to cool his body down and wash the last of the impurities away. This process was far more than any simple bath and broke down all the tensions and stress that his muscles carried and allowed all the anger and rage to flow away down the drains leaving nothing but a soapy trail. Almost.

As he made his way down past a couple of the private bathing cells, he caught the bobbing light of candles coming from one of the rooms. He glanced in and saw a man, a very tall man standing in the center of the room completely naked, his back facing the doorway and the body cloth laying discarded on the floor. The man stood with his legs apart and his arms raised high in the air. He was magnificently, powerfully built, but it was not the roping sinew and knotted muscles of his body that caught Azami’s attention and caused him to stop and stare at the man. It was the tattoos. Tattoos that most Muslims believed to be haram, forbidden by the Prophet. The rippling blaze of red and yellow flame danced along the arms and across his shoulder and down the center of the man’s torso front and back and flowed down his legs and onto his feet. They were clearly the work of a master, a maze of stunning beauty that coursed over the man’s flesh like another kind of skeleton.

Just then, another man came into view. It was one of the scrubbers and he hoisted a large wooden bucket of water and heaved it over the man’s body. As the water splashed over his back, the tattooed man gave a loud satisfied shout. A trick of the flickering candlelight perhaps, or the running movement of water as it trickled and flowed over the super heated skin, but Azami could have sworn that the flames burst to life to move and ebb over the man’s flesh with an eerie luminosity as he writhed and almost danced with pleasure under the icy water. Then he turned and Azami saw his face and recognized instantly the man Nazer Silmi who he had met with Zafer Yilmaz at the café today. The man glanced sharply towards him with a nodding grin and then quickly grabbed up his body cloth and secured it around his waste and disappeared into one of the side halls.

Azami staggered to one of the wash basins and sat down. He had almost passed out, but what had happened. For a moment it had seemed that the air in the hammam had slipped like a cracked mirror in a broken frame and he was not sure what he had seen. But he had almost lost his breath in the vision of Nazer Silmi and the cascade of flames that danced over his body. Perhaps it was the heat, too much heat on a cold night. Or the rage and the lingering touch of an anxiety attack Azami had barely escaped out on the street in his encounter with Sadri. Azami took a deep breath and went down the hall to the cooling room where Suhayl jumped up and called him to a place near the back wall.

Azami just sat quietly for a moment, not even looking at his friend. Strange. He had seen something very strange in that room and Nazer Silmi knew he had seen it. Azami could tell by the odd mischievous smile that lit up the other man’s face, and the speed with which he had grabbed up his towel and disappeared.


CHAPTER 11 -


“Azami, you look like you just watched the ground open up in front of you and a big scaly hand grab for your throat. What’s wrong?” Suhayl asked, slicking his long wet blond hair back and rubbing the fragrant oil into his stinging scrubbed flesh.


“Maybe I did.” He was about to continue when a figure appeared in the doorway of their small hot room and the two men looked up. Nazer Silmi walked silently towards them and sat down on the stone bench between then, grinning in some private mirth.

“So, Azami, thought you’d have a nice soak did you? Always pleasing after a long conversation.”

“Yeah.” Azami mumbled, finding the fantastical vision of the man in the candlelight etched into his mind.

“Cool tattoos man, very cool.” Suhayl said as he admired the intricate flames that traced the lean muscular frame.

“Thanks, I am rather attached to them!” Nazer laughed heartily at his own joke and then eyed Azami again.

“They’re haram.” Azami mumbled, wishing Nazer Silmi would just disappear and let him relax and hopefully forget the weird vision of living flames dancing where he knew they could not exist.

“Well, that haram tattoo thing, depends on who you are. I’m alright with them. And they really are a part of me, you know?” he added darkly, clearly pushing Azami’s buttons as he had earlier in the café.

Suhayl, this is, I’m sorry brother, I don’t recall your name. Suhayl, I met the brother earlier today in the café.”

“Nazer Silmi, I am Nazer Silmi. Salaam aleikum.” He smiled and extended a hand towards Suhayl.

“Wa salaam. Suhayl Sutton. Nice to meet you.” They shook hands and then slipped momentarily into their own thoughts.

“Who is Abdul Hasîb?” Nazer Silmi said softly, his voice firm and commanding. Azami almost jumped, startled from his thoughts by the sudden question.

“What? Oh, a guy from school, how, why do you ask?” Azami felt his pulse begin to race as once again, everything began to recede from his thoughts but this strange man sitting next to him.

“I saw you talking to him on the street. Do you know him well?”

“When did you see me talking to him? That was just before I came here.” Azami’s body became tense and he was beginning to feel trapped and his curiosity about Nazer Silmi was quickly fading and being replaced by the desire to get away from him as fast as possible.

“I saw you talking to him on the street, I saw you push him and he almost fell. I take it you do not like this Abdul Hasîb?”

“No, no I don’t. Like you said about the guys in the white in the café, that’s where he’s at it seems. Although when I first met him at school a few months ago, he wasn’t like that. But where were you? I didn’t see anybody on the street and when I got here, you were already ----“

“I saw you on the street, Leave it at that.” Nazer Silmi said in a strange sharp tone that left no room for further discussion. “This Abdul Hasîb and his brother Abdul Khâfid, they’re bad news boys and are likely to end in a really ugly way. You seem like a good kid Azami. I’d stay away from the slaves of the Reckoner and the Abaser if I were you.” And with that he stood up and disappeared out the door without another word.

“What was that all about?” Suhayl was fascinated by his friend’s odd acquaintance and was sorry to see him leave.

“I have no idea. But I will find out. Oh, I will find out.”

CHAPTER 12 -

After he left the hammam, Nazer Silmi trudged home through the driving snow, pulling his coat and scarf closer around his neck. He hated snow. Not the look of it, but the feel of it on his skin, the temperature, the invading dampness of each tiny flake as it sought to enter his flesh and collide in a primordial battle of wills with his deepest inner nature.


He climbed the narrow external wooden staircase and finally reached the door of his small garret apartment. Once inside, he immediately threw off his wet outer clothes and lit a few small candles. Then he took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his sleeves and crouched on the hearth in front of the cold remains of his morning fire. Gazing into the darkness he breathed deeply and rubbed his hands quickly over his face and then quickly thrust his open palms outwardly over the darkened logs that still lay on the grate. Instantly a fierce blaze erupted over the logs and filled the hearth with the light and warmth of fire.

“That’s more like it!” he smiled as the heat warmed his flesh and spoke to the rugged tattooed warren of flame that caressed his arms and disappeared into his shirt sleeves and down the collar at the back of his neck and throat. He stared a bit longer into the hot white center of the blaze and then smiled.

“Bismi’allah, ir-rahman, ir-rahim.” His lips moved reverently over the sacred words, then he plunged his hands into the crackling blaze and brought forth a handful of flame and rubbed it three times over his hands, washing them thoroughly as it burned away his thoughts and memories of the day. Then he brought a handful of flame up before him and buried his face three times in the cleansing wrath that ignited his soul and quickened his deepest nature. He proceeded then to cleanse his mouth and nose in this manner as well. The tattoos on his arms burst to life in anticipation as he brought his arms to the hearth and washed the flesh with the searing blaze and laughed in pleasure as the images leapt from his arms and danced in wild frenzy with the fiery mass of the hearth, then he completed the singular wudu of the jinn by washing his head and ears and scrubbing his feet as well. He sighed again and withdrew from the hearth and made his ritual prostrations in much the same way as do the sons and daughters of Adam. Then he retired to the couch to make his dua to his Lord.

Guidance, that was all he asked, all he ever wanted. And it always came, as the flames danced over his body and quickened his primordial soul, the guidance always came, and he never faltered. As his mind sunk into the dark silence, again, a face floated on the of his thoughts. The young man from the café, Azami. He must reveal himself to Azami and then discover what this unique configuration of man and jinn would mean. It was always thus with those of his kind who lived among humanity and provided whatever was needed, whatever was willed by the Guide of all creation. Azami was a good kid, a good soul, but he was by no means an innocent. This was good. Nazer Silmi smiled and nodded in the darkness. He was the same among his own kind.

CHAPTER 14 -
As he sat smiling to himself, lost in thoughts of the first girl in his life that had captured his thoughts and refused to release them, it took several moments before he roused himself and registered the sound of sirens encroaching on the dusky silence of the mosque and bring his mind to full awareness. Sirens! Fire sirens! Sirens coming closer and obviously right on this very street!


Azami tore out of the mosque and down the street without even slipping on his shoes and coat, oblivious to the freezing cold. Wherever those sirens stopped, he’d know the people inside, had probably been inside and spent time with the residents or owners of those shops. As he got half way down the street he saw where the fire engines had stopped and his heart sunk, they were right in front of Rafiq’s carpet and antique store. He picked up his pace until he stopped dead in his tracks, seeing the fire patrol officers running not towards Rafiq’s side of the street, but to his own, toward Ramsay Hamza’s bakery, the bakery that had been his home for the last six months and where he worked with the older man, assisting him and learning every aspect of his business and becoming his good friend along the way.

“No, oh no! God no!” he cried as he careened up to the front of the shop and saw the roaring flames tearing through the glass front of the shop and the upper windows of the apartment. Piles of glass from all of the windows lay at his feet and already the men from the engines were opening their hoses in a desperate attempt to combat the blaze. He tried to barge into the shop through the smoke but the patrol officers grabbed his arms and forcefully held him back.

“Ramsay Hamza!” he screamed, hoping the older man could hear him and had made it out safely. “Where is he? Where’s Ramsay Hamza?” he yelled desperately.

“We’ve seen no one. No one’s come out. You can’t go in there, it’s too dangerous. If somebody’s in there, we’ll find them.” One man yelled as he released Azami and returned to the truck and grabbed an armful of tools.

Azami took the opportunity to dart inside the burning building. Ramsay Hamza had to be inside. Where else would he be? He had said nothing about going anywhere and he never strayed far from this street or Rafiq’s shop, and the store across the street was dark and shuttered for the night and Rafiq was nowhere in sight.

Azami charged through the storefront and saw the flames nearing the ovens. Instantly he knew he had to get to the gas spigots. Behind the back wall of the retail part of the shop were the gas lines, and he was just able to get those turned off before he heard the fire officers charging in behind him. Then he disappeared up the back steps leading to the apartments, looking over his shoulder he saw the staircase behind him swallowed in flames as it consumed the lower part of the retail area of the shop.

“Ramsay Hamza! Are you here? Can you hear me, where are you?” he yelled as loudly as he could, praying it was not too late and that his friend and mentor was still alive and not overcome by the deadly heat.

He got into the apartment, but it was already filled with smoke and the heavy air was suffocating. He felt the hair on his arms singe as he pulled the front of his shirt over his face shielding his mouth so he could take in what dwindling oxygen was left. He looked everywhere, but there was no sign of Ramsay Hamza. He heard a loud crash and knew that the bathroom windows had blown out. Good and bad, he thought. More oxygen for me, and the fire. He raced to the bathroom but saw no one. He had looked into every room on this floor and was about to give up and try to make his way back downstairs, when he remembered that the stairs were now engulfed in flames and there was no hope of getting back to the first floor that way. He thought about trying to make his way to the back stairs or going to one of the rear windows and jumping. It was only two stories and he’d probably survive, even if he broke a bone or two.

But the smoke had now become overbearing and he couldn’t tell where the back hall where the windows looking out onto the alley was and he was getting dizzy and very tired. He tripped and staggered along for a few paces, bracing himself against the wall. The flames were in the room now, he could hear the roar, louder and louder like a deafening red hot wave steadily advancing and ready to wash over him. He stumbled again and this time crashed to the floor. But he just didn’t have the strength to stand up, or even to try to save himself. Every ounce of strength was consumed by the wracking coughs that convulsed his body.

He rolled over onto his back and watched as the flames drew nearer, marveling in his near delirium at their staggering beauty, the power and majesty of the blaze and his utter helplessness before it. His mind wandered momentarily to Hijab Girl and her beauty that he knew now he would never be able to explore, to reach out and touch and maybe see that strange little half smile of hers light up that beautiful face in response to some action or clever word of his own. He looked again at the flames, and wondered in awe at the swirling mass as it bobbed and flickered before him and the pounding drum beat of his pulse in his arms and the sides of his forehead, almost a martial cadence, beautiful and savage in its own way. He looked again, and he blinked hard and tried to wipe the smoke from his eyes.

It appeared that the flames in front of him were congealing and ebbing into a form and a face, dozens of faces emerging and then melting back into the white hot center only to appear again. Laughing faces, dying faces, angry faces, faces that seemed to peer into his own in curiosity and sadness. Azami laughed, thinking he must be near death and not even caring. He just wanted to lay there and watch the flames as they transformed into a million fantastical scenes in front of his clouded eyes. It almost didn’t seem as hot as before, and he almost didn’t care if they even found him in time or not.

So close, never before had he been this close to open flame, felt the imminent kiss of its countless tiny tongues on his heated flesh. Even when his parents had been killed, he had not been this close to the flames. Is this what they had seen in their last moments? Was it the last mercy from Allah that you became so distracted by the beauty and spectacle of the flames that you lost even your fear of the agonizing grip of death on the body and soul? He looked again and saw the fire congealing once more into new fantastical shapes. He almost thought he saw the form of a solitary man amidst the swirling abyss, almost thought he saw a particular face, a strangely familiar face. Yes! There was a face! A face he had seen before. The man Nazer Silmi from the café and the hammam, the man covered in flame tattoos.

Azami thought perhaps he was already dead as the manlike form of flame emerged from the mass that swirled through the room and actually appeared to draw close and reach out a hand to him. Through the smoke and tears and nearing hallucinations of death, Azami thought he could see the eyes of the man, and his mouth curling in a broad smile as his hand reached out to Azami’s own. Azami was barely able to lift his arm and raise his hand to the man of flames that looked so much like Nazer Silmi. He reached out as the fingers of flame grasped his own and the shimmering tattooed flames danced to life along the man’s arm and flowed down over his hands to grasp Azami’s almost lifeless fingers.

Azami waited to see if this would be his final moment as the flames overcame him for the last time. But there was a strange sense of peace and coolness as the flames from the man’s arms, the tattoos flowed over his own flesh and coiled around his wrists and forearms like the writhing bodies of coiling snakes.

“Get up.” a voice in the flames said commanded. “You have to rise and follow me out of here, I can’t carry you as I am. If you can’t walk, then crawl behind me and I will lead you out. But stay right behind me and don’t stray from my wake.”

Azami tried to heave himself up to his feet, but he couldn’t. So he did as the voice instructed. He crawled like a dying infant behind him as the swirling flame with the shape of a man strode through the blaze, now and then stretching out an arm and brushing the flames aside with his hand. Strangely, in the form’s wake, it was much cooler than it had been, and Azami could breathe a little better and his strength grew. Finally he was able to stand and the two made their way to the back stairs and out the small back door into the cool night air. Azami stumbled down the stairs and fell into the alley rolling and coughing. But as his head and vision cleared and he looked around, the man of flames was gone. But Azami knew what he had seen, just as he knew what he had seen that night in the hammam.

He looked down at his wrists and arms and gasped. Expecting to see horrible blistering burns and peeling flesh from the creature’s touch, instead he saw the twining flames coiled around his own wrists and flowing up his arms. Cool and quiet, the tattoos of flame were now his own, just like those on the arms of Nazer Silmi.

As his head cleared, he started to run to the front of the shop to see if the fire engineers had begin to contain the blaze. But a shadow emerged from the darkness and spoke.

“Ramsay Hamza is okay. He’s out in front with friends. He wasn’t here when the fire started. And they’re containing the blaze. Alhamdu’lillah, the damage is not as bad as it seemed from the amount of flame and smoke. You can repair, all is not lost.” Nazer Silmi said calmly, now once again appearing as an ordinary man no different from any other in form and nature.

“This? What in Allah’s name are you? Is this your doing? Azami growled coughing through his raw smoke ravaged throat.

“What I am, make no mistake, is indeed in Allah’s name. And this, is not my style.” Nazer Silmi said darkly, eyeing the scene and reading, what, Azami had no idea.

“Not your style?”

“No.”

“What exactly is, your style?”

“From the looks of your arms, I’d say you’ll find out soon enough.” Nazer Silmi said laughing.

“What the hell does this mean? I don’t understand.” Azami rubbed his arms and stared at the flame tattoos in disbelief, and then he slumped to the ground, overcome at last by smoke, and exhaustion, and a very bizarre strain on his human nerves.

“Good question my young friend.” Nazer Silmi said softly, hoisting Azami over his shoulder. “A very good question. We’ll have to just wait and see what that means, and then get to work.” He knew Azami could not hear him, that the boy had slid into a healing oblivion.