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Marid Changes His Mind

by George Alec Effinger

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First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction

Magazine, May 1989

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Marid Changes His Mind

by George Alec Effinger

We'd ridden for many days out the coast highway toward

Mauretania, the part of Algeria where I'd been born. In that

time, even at its lethargic pace, the broken-down old bus had

carried us from the city to some town forsaken by Allah

before it even learned what its name was. Centuries come,

centuries go: In the Arab world they arrive and depart loaded

on the roofs of shuddering, rattling buses that are more

trouble to keep in service than the long parades of camels

used to be. I remembered what those bus rides were like

from when I was a kid, sitting or standing in the aisle with

fifty other boys and men and maybe another two dozen

clinging up on the roof. The buses passed by my home then. I

saw turbaned heads, heads wearing fezes or knit caps, heads

in white or checked keffiyas . All men. That was something I

planned to ask my father about, if I ever met him. “O my

father,” I would say, “tell me why everyone on the bus is a

man. Where are their women?”

And I always imagined that my father—I pictured him tall

and lean with a fierce dark beard, a hawk or an eagle of a

man; he was, in my vision, Arab, although I had my mother's

word that he had been a French imam—I saw my father

gazing thoughtfully into the bright sunlight, framing a careful

reply to his young son. “O Marîd, my sweet one,” he would

say—and his voice would be deep and husky, issuing from the

back of his throat as if he never used his lips to speak,

although my mother said he wasn't like that at all—"Marîd,

the women will come later. The men will send for them later.”

Marid Changes His Mind

by George Alec Effinger

“Ah,” I would say. My father could pierce all riddles. I could

not pose a question that he did not have a proper answer for.

He was wiser than our village shaykh, more knowledgeable

than the man whose face filled the posters pasted on the wall

we were pissing on. “Father,” I would ask him, “why are we

pissing on this man's face?”

“Because it is idolatrous to put his face on such a poster,

and it is fit only for a filthy alley like this, and therefore the

Prophet, may the blessing of Allah be on him and peace, tells

us that what we are doing to these images is just and right.”

“And father?” I would always have one more question, and

he'd always be blissfully patient. He would smile down at me,

put one hand fondly behind my head. “Father? I have always

wanted to ask you, what do you do when you are pissing and

your bladder is so full it feels like it will explode before you

can relieve it and while you are pissing, just then , the

muezzin—”

Saied hit me hard in the left temple with the palm of his

hand. “You sleeping out here?”

I looked up at him. There was glare everywhere. I couldn't

remember where the hell we were. “Where the hell are we?” I

asked him.

He snorted. “ You're the one from the Maghreb, the great,

wild west. You tell me.”

“Have we got to Algeria yet?” I didn't think so.

“No, stupid. I've been sitting in that goddamn little

coffeehouse for three hours charming the warts off this fat

fool. His name is Hisham.”

“Where are we?”

Marid Changes His Mind

by George Alec Effinger

“Just crossed through Carthage. We're on the outskirts of

Old Tunis now. So listen to me. What's the old guy's name?”

“Huh? I don't remember.”

He hit me hard in the right temple with the palm of his

other hand. I hadn't slept in two nights. I was a little

confused. Anyway, he got the easy part of the job: Sitting

around the bus stops, drinking mint tea with the local

ringleaders and gossiping about the marauding Christians and

the marauding Jews and the marauding heathen niggers and

just in general being goddamn smooth; and I got the piss-

soaked alleys and the flies. I couldn't remember why we

divided this business up like that. After all, I was supposed to

be in charge—it was my idea to find this woman, it was my

trip, we were using my money. But Saied took the mint tea

and the gossip, and I got—well, I don't have to go into that

again.

We waited the appropriate amount of time. The sun was

disappearing behind a western wall; it was almost time for

the sunset call to prayer. I stared at Saied, who was now

dozing. Good, I thought, now I get to hit him in the head. I

had just gotten up and taken one little step, when he looked

up at me. “It's time, I guess,” he said, yawning. I nodded,

didn't have anything to add. So I sat back down, and Saied

the Half-Hajj went into his act.

Saied is a natural-born liar, and it's a pleasure to watch

him hustle. He had the personality module he liked best

plugged into his brain—his heavy-duty, steel-belted, mean

mother of a tough-guy moddy. Nobody messed with the Half-

Hajj when he was chipping that one in.

George Alec Effinger - Marid1 - Marid Changes his Mind.pdf

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