The Golem and the Jinni

In Little Syria, a neighborhood in Manhattan, lives a tin smith named Boutros Arbeely: a Maronite Catholic who immigrated from Zahleh, Syria. Maryam Faddoul, a café owner, brings Arbeely a battered copper flask to repair. While inspecting it, Arbeely feels an instinctual dread and wariness. Ignoring the feeling, he takes a rubbing of its design. Suddenly, Arbeely feels a jolt of electricity, and a naked man appears on his shop floor. Wearing only iron cuffs on his wrists, the man attacks Arbeely and demands to know the location of the wizard who imprisoned him in the flask. Arbeely remembers the stories his grandmother told him and realizes that the man is a Jinni. Arbeely states there are no more wizards and that the Jinni may have been in the flask for a long time. The Jinni is both fascinated and horrified to learn that he is in New York City. At first, he thinks the city is an illusion made by the wizard, but when Arbeely clothes him and shows him around the area, he realizes the truth. The Jinni tries to remove the cuffs but cannot.

The Jinni thinks about his life in Syria during the 7th century. Young Jinn often heard stories warning them to stay away from humans, but in the 7th century, the Jinn grew curious about humans and began to follow the caravans that crossed the desert, connecting with the people’s storytelling, camaraderie, and singing. He remembers learning about the construction of the Umayyad Mosque, and this causes Arbeely to believe that the Jinni was trapped for 800 years. The Jinni tries to shift out of his human form, but the iron cuffs prevent him from returning to his incorporeal form. The cold of the New York air and the harbor cause the Jinni to faint, and Arbeely carries him back inside. Arbeely thinks about how disconcerting waking up nearly 1,000 years into the future would be and wonders whether others will realize the Jinni’s true nature.

The narrative flashes back to the Jinni’s early history. He followed a Bedouin caravan for two days and realizing how lonely he was when he left them. He decided to go back to a Jinni settlement, but a rainstorm prevented him from leaving the caravan. When the weather shifted, the Jinni was no longer interested in visiting his fellow Jinn.

As the Golem walks through the New York City streets, she tries to ignore the thoughts and needs of the people she passes. She enters a neighborhood filled with people speaking Yiddish and is quickly comforted by the familiar language. She sits and rests on a stoop, people-watching throughout the day. A bird lands on her thigh, and she sits still as it balances on her hand. After the bird leaves, the Golem notices an older-looking man staring at her and overhears his thoughts; he is wondering if she is a Golem. Worried about his intentions, the Golem gets up and tries to evade him. The Golem passes a starving child and knish stand. A man orders a knish, and the child desperately wants it. Unable to stop herself, the Golem grabs the man’s knish and gives it to the starving child, who takes the food and runs. The surrounding crowd yells at the Golem, and she panics as she finds herself unable to give the people what they want or need. The older man she saw before intervenes and pays for the knish. He escorts her away and tells her that he knows she’s a Golem. The Golem can hear him thinking about how to destroy her. The man tells her to focus on people’s actions, not their thoughts. He takes her to his cramped apartment and introduces himself as Rabbi Avram Meyer. He is a retired widower with no children. The Golem sees herself for the first time and wonders how she has real fingernails, teeth, and hair. The Rabbi tells her that she cannot be blamed for the circumstances of her creation. He leaves her in his apartment and buys her some clothes so that she can dress like a proper New York woman.

Meanwhile, Arbeely shows the Jinni his room in a tenement. The Jinni believes that it is barely habitable. Together, they have agreed that the Jinni will pose as Arbeely’s apprentice. The Jinni needs no sleep, so he stays in the shop overnight, practicing human metalsmithing techniques. Arbeely has only brought the Jinni to his room because the Jinni feels caged in the shop. Arbeely urges the Jinni to be more patient and to fit in with the people in Little Syria so that he will not draw attention to himself. The Jinni agrees and decides to go back to the tinsmith shop.

The narrative flashes back to the Jinni’s early history in the 7th century. He was excited to follow the Bedouin again and watched a young Bedouin girl tending to goats near his glass palace. He let her catch sight of it briefly, and she stared at the palace, amazed. The Jinni wondered what she would dream about.

Avram and the Golem get used to living together. The Rabbi’s home is small, and he prefers being alone. This prompts the Golem to leave the room when he enters it so as to obey his wishes for solitude. Eventually, Avram tells her that she doesn’t need to do this, explaining that she can see into people’s minds in a way that no one else can, and that she needs to “discount” such thoughts. Wanting to feel useful, the Golem struggles to obey the Rabbi’s instructions to ignore his unspoken thoughts and needs. Avram realizes that he made her feel useless and eventually allows her help with the chores despite feeling guilty about asking her to do them. The Rabbi makes a living by teaching Hebrew and the Torah to boys preparing for their bar mitzvah. The Golem hides under his bed whenever the students come. She practices ignoring the wants and needs of the other tenants in the building. One night, she picks up a book to read. However, the text is dense and confusing, so she elects to watch people outside instead. She mentions the book in the morning, and the Rabbi gives her an illustrated children’s version of the Torah. She questions why the people in the Torah act the way they do, following their impulses and wants without worrying about the consequences. She wants to go outside at night, but Avram tells her not to because women aren’t safe, and she would draw attention to herself. Avram offers to start going on walks with her during the day. Over time, as the Golem adjusts to being around other people, he lets her go alone for part of the walk. The Golem has forgotten the few items she had from Rotfeld, including the necessary commands to destroy her, but the Rabbi still has them.

In Konin, Yehudah Schaalman wonders what has happened to Rotfeld and the Golem. The narrative relates his past history. When Schaalman was young, he had a bright future and a dream that caused him to believe he was damned. The dream prompted Schaalman to abandon his studies and travel aimlessly. He started to take odd jobs and to steal. He continued in this behavior until a woman he worked with accused him of raping her, and he was imprisoned. Fifteen years later, when he was released, he came across a burned-down synagogue; within the temple, he found a book written in Yiddish describing mystic instructions. He decided to seal his fate and walk down the path of magic.

Arbeely introduces the Jinni to the rest of Little Syria. The Jinni decides to go by the name Ahmad, and the two develop his origin story. Arbeely introduces Ahmad to a woman named Maryam, knowing that she will share the news of his arrival with the rest of Little Syria. When she meets Ahmad, Maryam has the same instinctual wariness of the Jinni that Arbeely did. The word of Ahmad’s existence spreads in no time, and many community members stop by to meet him under the guise of getting repairs. Maryam also tells a man called Ice Cream Saleh about Ahmad. Saleh is a strange older man who sells ice cream in Little Syria. He avoids eye contact and is a loner, but Maryam still likes him. No one in New York knows who Saleh used to be, and he likes it that way.

The narrative flashes back in time to describe Saleh’s history. He used to be a well-respected doctor in Homs, Syria. He had a wife and daughter and lived an affluent lifestyle. One day, a landowner called him to care for a Bedouin girl who was deathly ill, convulsing and spitting. When he tended to her, a healer woman told him that an ifrit, a type of Jinni, was possessing the girl. The healer woman exorcised the ifrit, but Saleh was too close, and the ifrit jumped into his mind, causing him extreme pain. The healer woman cast the ifrit out of him as well, but the damage was done. When he awoke, everything took on a spectral appearance to him, making it painful for him to look at anyone directly. He also lost any sense of reality with his senses and depth perception. Because he could no longer practice medicine, Saleh and his family struggled. Eventually, his wife grew ill and died. Her last coherent request to him was for some ice cream to cool her fever. He quickly made her some, but by the time he served it to her, she was on the brink of death. Amidst grief, Saleh’s daughter realized that her father was talented at making ice cream, so to support her, Saleh began to sell ice cream and moved in with his brother. Saleh often suffered from fits that caused him to froth at the mouth and fall to the ground. When his daughter married and died from complications during childbirth, Saleh boarded a ship to America. Fellow passengers found him a room to rent, and he continued making and selling ice cream. Eventually, he met Maryam, who folded him into the Syrian community. Bemused and annoyed, Saleh continued to live.

The narrative shifts to Ahmed’s history in the 7th century. It rained for days in the Syrian desert. As the clouds cleared, the Jinni saw a Bedouin girl named Fadwa near his glass palace. The Jinni let her see his palace, and she was awed. She told her father about it later, but he indignantly dismissed her tale. However, he and some men went to see if she was telling the truth. Fadwa was frustrated with her role as the oldest daughter in her family. Her mother wanted her to be a good daughter. Her father, Abu Yusuf, once told her about the time he “saw an entire caravan that wasn’t there” (82). It was a similar experience to the glass palace she had seen. Abu Yusuf also told Fadwa about his father’s strange encounter with a woman who wasn’t real. However, he didn’t tell Fadwa that he glimpsed the glass palace himself before it disappeared in the blink of an eye.

The novel returns to the narrative present. Avram decides not to fast for Yom Kippur for the first time since his bar mitzvah. The Golem has taken up baking, and despite feeling guilty for eating lunch, Avram enjoys the fruits of her labor. He contemplates her recent interest in cooking. She first started cooking after he gave her a cookbook from the Boston Cooking School, buying the needed ingredients from a nearby grocer. One morning, Avram woke up to a shocking number of baked goods, and the Golem was devastated to realize that she had misspent too much money on ingredients. However, Avram told her that they would take the baked goods to his nephew, Michael, at a hostel that housed newly arrived immigrants in need. Michael is the son of Avram’s deceased sister; Avram and his wife raised the boy, but instead of becoming a Rabbi as Avram hoped, Michael became a social worker, believing it to be the best way for him to help people. Avram and Michael have fallen out with each other ever since Michael became an atheist.

Now, Avram realizes that he must develop a backstory for the Golem so that no one can learn her true nature. he gives her the name Chava, meaning life. They decide that she is the widow of a man who died on the way to America, which is technically true, and that the Rabbi has taken her under his wing out of charity.

Michael is the head of the Hebrew Sheltering House. When Avram and Chava arrive, Michael is amazed at the quality of their baked goods. Chava goes to the parlor to distribute them to the residents while Michael and Avram talk. Michael suggests that the Rabbi ask Moe Radzin to employ Chava at his bakery. Meanwhile, Chava is overwhelmed by the intense needs and wants of the men in the shelter and is on the brink of losing control when Avram finds her. They leave, discussing human nature.