72 pages • 2 hours read
P. Djèlí ClarkA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
After pouring through documents related to Worthington all day, Fatma and Hadia find nothing. Fatma sends Hadia home and heads for the Jasmine, a secret nightclub only referred to as The Spot when outside.
A man named Benny, a jazz musician who fled New Orleans’ Jim Crow laws, greets Fatma at the bar. Other musicians join, and they discuss the music and musicians left behind in Louisiana. When al-Jahiz brought magic back to the world, the United States met it with persecution; the musicians praise Cairo for being better, though racial problems still exist. Siti arrives, and Fatma tells her about Hadia, her new partner. Siti wants to meet Hadia, but Fatma believes Hadia is too strait-laced for a jazz nightclub.
After the nightclub, the two flirt while walking home, though Fatma somewhat spoils the mood by mentioning Siti’s father. Siti distracts from the moment by pointing out that someone has been following them. The two women round a corner, wait, and knock the man to the ground—it’s Ahmad.
Ahmad wanted to see how Fatma was handling the case. He was upset to find her cavorting at a nightclub, but tells her he has a lead. They hop into an automated carriage to pursue it. On the ride, Fatma suspects Ahmad’s features appear more reptilian, like the crocodile god he worships. She and Siti briefly muse that he’s taking them to be fed to crocodiles, and Ahmad counters, “Sobek holds no taste for mortal flesh […] but has excellent hearing” (90).
Ahmad takes them to a city slum, where the people all seem to be heading to an old factory building. He gives a boy a coin to explain their destination; the boy thanks him, referring to Ahmad as a djinn, and says they’re going to see “the man in black […] with the gold mask” (91).
At the factory, a man exactly as Abigail Worthington described is delivering a rousing speech about the decadence of the wealthy. An old man identifies him as al-Jahiz, though they are discouraged from speaking his name.
A single man beside al-Jahiz leaps to the ground, becoming two men before he lands. Both move like jackals, pressing on Fatma and Siti. When Fatma impales her assailant with her sword cane, he seems unaffected. A loud cry distracts them, and Ahmad points to a wall: a scorched message reads, “Behold, I am al-Jahiz. And I have returned” (96).
Fatma recounts the events of the previous night with Hadia, omitting details about Siti and Ahmad. Hadia is quick to believe the man was al-Jahiz, but Fatma encourages skepticism. They go to the library below the Ministry where they meet Zagros, the snobbish djinn librarian who tries to get them to leave. Fatma appeals to his intellect by asking him about the book he is working with, written in Meroitic, an ancient Nubian language that no one can translate.
The djinn appreciates the gesture and helps Fatma find reliable sources about al-Jahiz. She believes the man in black created his al-Jahiz persona from books, so she intends to build a profile based on how people remember the man. His name, to begin with, is lost, and “al-Jahiz” is more of a sobriquet. Meaning “boggle-eyed,” most historians believe he had a malformation of the cornea. The Temporalist school believes him to be a time traveler and that several figures throughout history named al-Jahiz are a single man. Another school, the Transmigrationists, believe all versions of al-Jahiz are reincarnations of the same person, but most people denounce this as heretical. With over a dozen other schools of thought, an impostor could remain vague, letting different interpretations fill in the details.
Hadia then mentions Umar Tal, the author credited with the first mention of al-Jahiz. Umar Tal prophesied a man would come to shake up the world and called him “the Master of Djinn.” Al-Jahiz himself first appeared in 1837, the same year as a border skirmish, but then he vanished for 32 years until he arrived in Cairo, teaching alchemy and “lost arts.” After a war in 1872, al-Jahiz was arrested as a traitor, but he soon won over his captor and received a place in the palace to experiment with new machines. There, he built a grand machine of alchemy and magic that engulfed the palace in light, weakening barriers between the realms, science that only the angel Maker, who Fatma and Siti defeated, had ever replicated. As djinn poured into the world, al-Jahiz refused to make magical weapons to fight them. When soldiers came to confiscate his machines, he and the machines had vanished.
However, the al-Jahiz that Fatma witnessed did not appear 100 years old, so they speculate the impostor had some connection to Worthington, intimate enough to know the brotherhood’s meeting dates and enter the estate unseen.
Zagros arrives with a message for Fatma, saying they can find an informant at Cite-Jardin. Hadia asks to pray before they leave.
Fatma and Hadia head to Cite-Jardin, a luxurious district built by a djinn architect who incorporated the natural world into the design. On the way, as Hadia invites Fatma to an Egyptian Feminist Sisterhood meeting, Siti unexpectedly greets them. Siti introduces herself as an idolator, as well as Fatma’s informant, and insists on joining them.
The three women arrive at a white, wealthy-looking house owned by the al-Mansur steel industrialist family. Thanks to Siti’s connections, they know that Nabila al-Mansur has pressured the press into covering up the story of Worthington’s death. A servant takes them to Nabila al-Mansur, who gives them her attention at the mention of the brotherhood, but demands that Siti, being Nubian, stay outside. Inside, Nabila makes several racist comments.
Nabila explains that Worthington, as a business partner, confided in both her and her late husband, but the couple never shared Worthington’s interest in al-Jahiz; Nabila’s husband joined the brotherhood only for status. Worthington had mostly abandoned his business to his son, Alexander. Nabila claims she covered up the story about Lord Worthington’s death to save Alexander from embarrassment.
When pressed, Nabila says Worthington had no enemies capable of the depravity required for the deaths. However, she reveals that Alexander, who she speculates was a brotherhood member himself, was in fact in Cairo the morning of the deaths, having arrived shortly before.
Fatma and Hadia rejoin Siti, and the three women wonder why Worthington’s daughter, Abigail, lied about her brother’s whereabouts. However, they rule Alexander out as a suspect—the masked stranger from last night “didn’t sound English” (121). Inspector Aasim greets them at the ministry—he has information on the impostor, and he knows where “al-Jahiz” will appear next.
The theme of Racial Supremacy and Power Structures is especially evident in these chapters.
The jazz musicians who have fled Jim Crow—the collective name for a series of laws passed by mostly Southern US states as an effort to restrict the rights of Black Americans—make the theme explicit. Fatma observes how these artists brought to Egypt “their hopes, their dreams, and their fantastic music” (80); they are, in their own way, magic. Their description of Jim Crow coincides with Fatma’s observation that, when al-Jahiz returned literal magic to the world, “in America, the return of magic had been met with persecution” (81). Although Egypt now benefits from the musicians’ “magic,” however, the country is no better. The Black musicians from the United States are seen as somewhat “exotic” in Egypt, which affords them leniency that local people with dark skin do not enjoy: “Other folk dark as us, though, not so lucky. […] And who you find in the slums? Boo-coo faces look like ours. Same as back home” (82). The novel makes clear in this exchange that there is a strong racial element at work in the social power structures of Egypt.
Madame Nabila’s racism further embeds racial discrimination into the narrative. She drops overtly racist comments, seemingly sizing up Fatma’s and Hadia’s response to them. Likely, Nabila is dropping a sort of “secret handshake,” looking for clues as to whether or not the government agents will be sympathetic to her interests. This behavior subtly implies that racism is not merely a naturally occurring phenomenon, but a tool of social order used consciously by the elite. Thematically, this instance furthers the vital role that racial justice and social inequality play in the story. Functionally, it also provides a subtle clue; by noting that racism is codified among the elite—Nabila’s husband, after all, had joined Worthington’s brotherhood—the impostor’s enslavement of djinn suggests the criminal belongs to the upper class.
The themes of The Power of Faith and The Role of Illusions and Expectations in Society are also present and interwoven in these chapters. The impostor is stealing the image of a man in which many people have placed their faith—a mystic who literally brought magic into the world. The impostor’s speeches strike at real injustices too. The crowds that follow him are not foolish but desperate, hungry for change in a world that has left them deeply disadvantaged for generations.
In these chapters, the novel establishes Hadia as a foil to the impostor al-Jahiz. The impostor craves attention: “He stood, arms behind his back, drinking in the crowd’s praise” (93). He wears a mask of gold, and he thrives on showmanship, using a literal stage. Hadia, in contrast, has worked diligently alongside disadvantaged people around the world to improve their circumstances. She quotes scripture at Madame Nabila, demonstrating how her faith guides her dedication to appreciating and empowering others different from herself. Hadia demonstrates that the nature of faith in the novel is to support, empower, and uplift—not to destroy or subjugate. It is the racial supremacists, with faith only in their own superiority, who do that.
By P. Djèlí Clark
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