61 pages • 2 hours read
Helene WeckerThe Golem and the Jinni
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 25-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 25 Summary
The narrative shifts back in time to Ahmad’s missing memories of the events after Fadwa succumbs to a coma. In that earlier time, Malik and Abu Yusuf ride out to his palace and pose as Jinn in need of help. He lets them in, but as he opens the door, two iron cuffs are quickly clamped around his wrists. Searing pain roils through his body. Malik performs a ritual that requires the death of Abu Yusuf, for the man’s blood is needed to cement the Jinni’s bonds. The Jinni tries to rebel against Malik. Proving his control, Malik forces the Jinni to choke Fadwa to death. Malik then forces the Jinni into a copper flask. The spell takes all of Malik’s strength to perform, weakening him immensely. With the last of his strength, Abu Yusuf stabs Malik, who barely manages to kill Yusuf. He then takes the copper flask outside to the waiting horse. However, Malik has lost too much blood and dies with the Jinni still trapped in the flask.
The narrative reveals that the spell binding Malik to the Jinni grants the wizard’s soul eternal life for as long as the Jinni remains alive. As a result, Malik is reincarnated repeatedly, always as a man obsessed with dark magic and eternal life who is unknowingly seeking out the Jinni. Schaalman is Malik’s current reincarnation. When Schaalman touches Ahmad, the explosion gives Schaalman access to the Jinni’s memories, and the man discovers Ahmad’s connection to the Golem he made.
Chapter 26 Summary
Ahmad runs while Schaalman is knocked unconscious from the blast. Saleh sees Ahmad and follows him. The Jinni runs to Central Park with Saleh on his heels. Ahmad, knowing that he must end his own life to stop Schaalman, knocks Saleh unconscious and lays him out on the bench.
Chava puts the Rabbi’s and Schaalman’s papers into a satchel. She considers what to do with the papers filled with spells and rituals. Anna finds her and gives Chava a message from Ahmad. Chava asks Anna to hide the satchel and papers somewhere that no one would look. Anna agrees. Chava worries that Ahmad will do something terrible. She runs to Central Park and the Angel of the Waters Fountain. She sees Saleh, who is just regaining consciousness, and then she finds Ahmad at the bottom of the fountain. The water is well on its way to extinguishing the Jinni. Chava and Saleh pull him out of the water and realize they need fire to keep him alive. Saleh recalls that Sophia’s mansion is nearby.
Chapter 27 Summary
Schaalman is overwhelmed by the memories from the Jinni and his past lives. In an internal battle with himself, Schaalman confronts Malik, accusing him of destroying his chance for happiness or a good life. Malik argues that he gave Schaalman endless knowledge.
Sophia is reading in front of a fire when Chava enters the room, carrying Ahmad and followed closely by Saleh. Sophia is startled, but she prevents her family’s servants from entering the room. Although Sophia tells them not to worry, they servants and her father decide to call the police. Chava places Ahmad into the burning fire, and he starts to heal. The police arrive as Ahmad wakes. He apologizes to Sophia, and Chava intuits the nature of their relationship. Sophia leaves to tell her father that the engagement is off and announces her intention to travel to warm places to heal herself. Chava, Saleh, and Ahmad leave the mansion.
Schaalman returns to the shelter house to retrieve his spells and finds them missing. He goes to Michael’s office and finds the man there. He antagonizes Michael and then kills him to take the few papers that Chava left behind by accident, including a ritual for binding a Golem to a new master. Schaalman concocts a way to control both Ahmad and Chava.
Chapter 28 Summary
Anna hides the satchel in the dance hall. Schaalman sees Anna in the Jinni’s memories and thinks she will be the perfect bait to get Chava to consent to the ritual. Meanwhile, Ahmad, Chava, and Saleh go to Little Syria to get the Jinni’s flask from Maryam. Saleh thinks his work is done and leaves. Chava and Ahmad plan to return Ahmad to the flask and hide it from Schaalman. Maryam gives him the flask, and they plan to retrieve the papers. Before the Golem and Jinni get far, Ahmad hears Schaalman through their psychic connection. Schaalman orders Ahmad to bring Chava to him, or he will kill her. Saleh returns to his original flat on an errand of his own but suddenly decides that he can’t leave Chava and Ahmad to face Schaalman alone, so he chooses to follow them at a distance.
Chapter 29 Summary
Upon finding Anna at the dance hall, Schaalman placed her under a soothing spell. Now, Chava goes there, unwilling to let another person suffer. Ahmad follows, unable to disobey. Schaalman offers Chava a deal; if she agrees to be bound to him, he will let Anna go. Chava quickly agrees. Using Avram’s ritual, Schaalman binds her to him. Looking back to Wahab ibn Malik’s memories, he finds the incantation to bind the Jinni to the flask and tells it to Chava, then orders her to seal Ahmad in the copper bottle. He tasks Chava with this because he doesn’t want to weaken himself the same way that Malik did. However, when recollecting the spell, he stirs the many reincarnations of Malik, and they begin to overwhelm him.
As Chava approaches Ahmad, he pulls out the paper with the commands to destroy a Golem, and the two struggle. The flask is cast aside, and Saleh takes advantage of the distraction to grab it. As the spell is in Arabic, he easily remembers and repeats it, pointing it at Schaalman. Schaalman is too fragmented and cannot prevent himself from being sealed into the flask. This breaks his control over Chava, who stops attacking Ahmad. The powerful spell drains Saleh’s strength, and he dies.
Epilogue Summary
Ahmad decides to go to Syria to find the modern-day Jinn. While on his way, he escorts Matthew to France to meet his grandmother. When Ahmad reaches Syria, he quickly tracks down the Jinn and asks them to watch the flask and keep it safe. They are wary of him, but when he explains what happened, they eventually agree to guard it and keep Schaalman trapped. Ahmad travels through the desert and finds his old palace. He grieves for Fadwa and Abu Yusuf and takes their last name so that their legacy will live on through him.
Chava and Anna walk through Central Park. Anna pushes a stroller with her baby. They talk about Chava’s relationship with Ahmad and what they will do when he returns. Chava doesn’t know. The women part ways, and Chava returns to her new boarding house, where she receives a telegram from Ahmad, telling her that he is on his way.
Chapter 25-Epilogue Analysis
In the final chapters of “The Golem and the Jinni,” Wecker carefully weaves the disparate storylines together in an intensifying crescendo that resolves all major conflicts almost simultaneously. In the midst of the action, the many mysteries surrounding Ahmad, Schaalman, and Chava are solved in such a way as to raise more questions that can only be answered in Wecker’s sequel, The Hidden Palace. For this reason, the many philosophical debates about the nature of humanity suddenly take a secondary position compared to the growing prominence of the novel’s fantasy elements. However, as the mystical narrative gains importance, Wecker continues to ponder complex questions about the interplay of humanity, culture, and nature.
During this section, the revelation that Schaalman is the latest reincarnation of Wahab ibn Malik allows the author to unveil the close connections that link the many storylines and characters in The Golem and the Jinni, for the wizard Malik is responsible for Fadwa and her father’s deaths, and he is the catalyst of all the events in the novel. Without Malik’s actions in the earlier time frame, Ahmad would never have been captured, Schaalman would not exist, and Chava would never have been created at all. In Chapter 27, Schaalman argues with Malik, blaming him for the life he has led, but Schaalman is essentially arguing with his nature, thereby presenting a new angle of the Nature Versus Nurture theme. The narrative implies that from the moment Schaalman was born, he was destined to learn dark magic and follow the pursuit of eternal life, just as Malik did. This exchange between the two incarnations raises the question of who Schaalman might have become had he been an autonomous being rather than the most recent reincarnation of Malik. In this moment, he reels with the knowledge that just like Chava, he too is a construct of sorts, and he now wonders whether the knowledge he has been compelled to seek since birth is worth the price of finding it, for his life has been lonely and difficult at best. As an outsider without a community, he feels as though he never had a choice regarding his destiny. To him, a being’s nature is set, and no matter what interventions are made, they will always return to their nature; that is how he views Chava and Ahmad, and ironically it is also how Malik sees his reincarnated self. All of Malik’s reincarnations are essentially version of him in their very core, and as such, they will always follow in his footsteps.
The closing section also demonstrates how tightly knit the connection between the Golem and the Jinni has become. Between them, Chava and Ahmad have created the sense of community they both lacked, for they both understand what it is like to play at being human. Their shared culture therefore transcends their vastly different and inhuman natures. After defeating Schaalman, Ahmad and Chava must reckon with the destruction left behind. As beings formerly under his control, they realize that they can only move on by accepting these events as part of their identities. Instead of permanently separating, as they had initially planned, they find themselves newly bound together by their common experiences, and the novel’s conclusion implies that both characters can use their connection to each other to overcome the fundamental difficulties of their natures, thereby blending their true identities into a common community and culture. Thus, in the novel’s final moments, Wecker brings together many of the predominant themes revolving around humanity and the immigrant experience. Chava and Ahmad, like many immigrants, now realize that the hardships they have faced are not yet over, but they know that if they work hard and with hope, they can forge a viable path forward.
