The Five Fakirs of Faizabad Read online

  Children of

  the Lamp

  BOOK SIX

  THE FIVE FAKIRS

  OF FAIZABAD

  P. B. KERR

  For Linda Shaughnessy

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1: TARANUSHI

  CHAPTER 2: THE UNLUCKIEST TOWN IN THE WORLD

  CHAPTER 3: THE UNLUCKIEST MAN IN THE WORLD

  CHAPTER 4: BUMBY’S JINX

  CHAPTER 5: THE KGB AND THE LUCK OF THE BRITISH

  CHAPTER 6: THE MENDICANT FAKIRS OF BENGAL

  CHAPTER 7: THE PRISON HULK

  CHAPTER 8: A SMALL PROBLEM

  CHAPTER 9: FEZ

  CHAPTER 10: THE WORST HOTEL IN THE WORLD

  CHAPTER 11: THE VERY SPECIAL RUG EMPORIUM OF ASAF IBN BARKHIYA

  CHAPTER 12: THE FLYING CARPET

  CHAPTER 13: THE THREE RIDDLES OF THE FAKIR OF JEBEL TOUBKAL

  CHAPTER 14: FALERNIAN WINE

  CHAPTER 15: THE FAKIR’S ADVICE

  CHAPTER 16: THE TEN FAKIRS OF FAIZABAD

  CHAPTER 17: RESCUE MISSION

  CHAPTER 18: GROANIN GOES WEST

  CHAPTER 19: CHEESE AND BISCUITS

  CHAPTER 20: THE NAVEL OF THE WORLD

  CHAPTER 21: A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY

  CHAPTER 22: WHAT HAPPENED TO JOHN AND ZAGREUS

  CHAPTER 23: BIGFOOT PUTS HIS FOOT IN IT

  CHAPTER 24: TERROR IN MUCKHOLE TERRACE

  CHAPTER 25: RUMBLE IN THE FOREST

  CHAPTER 26: THE DREAM OF LIFE

  CHAPTER 27: A MESSAGE FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

  CHAPTER 28: KABBAL BABBEL

  CHAPTER 29: MR. SWARASWATI’S FEAR OF FLYING

  CHAPTER 30: UNCLE NIMROD’S FLYING CARPET

  CHAPTER 31: THE HUNGER CRY

  CHAPTER 32: GOOD HEALTH AND A BAD MEMORY

  CHAPTER 33: UP ON THE ROOF

  CHAPTER 34: THE MAN IN BLACK

  CHAPTER 35: A BIGGER SPLASH

  CHAPTER 36: GETTING THE HUMP

  CHAPTER 37: AUF WIEDERSEHEN

  CHAPTER 38: FINAL THEORY

  CHAPTER 39: ENGLISH AFTERNOON TEA

  CHAPTER 40: THE DICKENS OF A FRIGHT

  CHAPTER 41: SHAMBA-LA

  CHAPTER 42: IN THE PRESENCE OF THE HIGH LAMA

  CHAPTER 43: THE MANDALA

  CHAPTER 1: REVISITED

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  TARANUSHI

  The twins John and Philippa left their house on East 77th Street in New York, and walked around the corner to the Carlyle hotel where their uncle Nimrod, who was staying there with his butler, Groanin, had invited them both to come and have lunch.

  Following her complete and irrevocable renunciation of her djinn powers, Nimrod’s sister, Layla, who was also the twins’ mother, had made it adequately clear to her brother that she and her husband no longer cared to have any djinn matters even mentioned in their presence. Although Nimrod strongly disapproved of any djinn denying his or her true nature, his impeccable British manners required that he respect his sister’s decision — enough to have written a short note to her informing her exactly why he had invited her two children to lunch.

  Since no objection to their lunch had been forthcoming, Nimrod had gone ahead and booked a table in the hotel’s swanky restaurant where he and Groanin now met the twins.

  After a very large feast of Cornish lobster bisque, peekytoe Maine crab, pan-seared Hudson Valley foie gras (which Philippa did not eat), Atlantic black bass, roasted Amish chicken, and desserts from the trolley, Nimrod finally arrived at the subject he wished to discuss with his nephew and niece.

  “Since you have both recently turned fourteen,” he said, “the time has come when you must observe a tradition in the Marid tribe that we call taranushi.”

  “Why is it called taranushi?” asked John.

  “Well,” said Nimrod, “as you may know, Taranushi was the name of the first great djinn. Before the time of the six tribes, he was charged with controlling the rest, but he was opposed by another wicked djinn named Azazal, and defeated. This Marid tribal tradition is meant to commemorate his overthrow by wicked djinn.”

  “Why was he opposed?” asked Philippa.

  “For the simple reason that he tried to improve the lot of mundanes —” Nimrod glanced at Groanin, who was loosening a button on the waist of his trousers to accommodate his enormously full stomach. “Sorry, Groanin, I was speaking about human beings. I meant no offense.”

  “None taken, sir.”

  “Yes,” continued Nimrod. “Well, as I was saying, Taranushi tried to improve the lot of human beings by occasionally giving some of them three wishes. In fact, it was he who initiated the custom of giving three wishes.”

  “So what’s the tradition?” asked John.

  “The tradition is that each of you will go somewhere of your own choosing and find someone you consider to be deserving of three wishes. But it has to be someone truly deserving because upon your return, you have to justify it to a panel of adjudicators that includes me, Mr. Vodyannoy —”

  “After I get back from my holiday,” said Groanin. “I say, after I get back from my holiday. And not before. It’s been ages since I had a proper holiday.”

  Nimrod continued with the names of the panel of taranushi adjudicators. “There’s Jenny Sachertorte, and Uma Ayer the Eremite. Also, it ought to be a secret where you two go, just in case anyone tries to put themselves in the way of being granted three wishes. So, even I shouldn’t know where that is. Although that’s not so important, given it’s me. But either way, you’re very much on your own for this one.”

  “Anywhere we want?” said John.

  “Anywhere you want,” confirmed Nimrod.

  “Maybe I should go on holiday with you, Groanin,” said John. “There must be something I can do for that funny little town in Yorkshire where you take your vacation. Bumby, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, no,” said Groanin. “You’re not coming there and that’s final. Bumby is just fine the way it is without you messing the place up with three wishes ‘n’ all.”

  “There must be something I could do for it,” teased John.

  “Nothing,” said Groanin. “Nothing at all. Things are just dandy in Bumby the way they are.”

  “Please yourself.” John shrugged. “Either way, it doesn’t sound so difficult.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Groanin laughed. “It’s also traditional,” he said, “in case you’d forgotten, for a young novice djinn like you to make a complete pig’s ear out of granting three wishes. And to have little or no idea of how a wish will turn out. That’s why I don’t want you within a hundred miles of Bumby, young man. Especially not when I’m on me holiday.”

  “All right, all right.” John laughed. “I was just kidding, all right?”

  “Maybe,” said Groanin. “But just remember what old Mr. Rakshasas used to say? ‘A wish is a dish that’s a lot like a fish: Once it’s been eaten it’s harder to throw back.’“

  “I remember,” said John. “I’m not about to forget anything he said, okay?” He frowned. “I just wish I knew what had happened to him for sure.”

  There was a moment’s silence while everyone spared a thought for Mr. Rakshasas, who, it seemed, had been fatally absorbed by a Chinese terra-cotta warrior in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  “Groanin makes a good point,” said Nimrod, returning to the subject in hand. “Because it’s not just that the recipient has to be judged deserving of three wishes. You also have to justify what they do with their three wishes. And, as I think you know, that can be a very different kettle of fish. People are unpredictable. And greedy.”
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br />   Groanin managed to stifle a burp. “You can say that again,” he said, and, waving the waiter over, he ordered himself a second dessert.

  “Even the most honest, upstanding sort of person can turn rapacious when three wishes are involved,” added Nimrod.

  “Aye, it’s not everyone that wishes for world peace,” said Groanin. “I say, it’s not everyone that wishes for world peace these days. Even if that was something within your power.”

  “Which, sadly, it isn’t,” said Nimrod.

  “How are we going to discover if someone is really deserving of three wishes?” said John.

  “Research,” said Nimrod. “Read books. Read the newspapers. Find out what’s happening in the world.”

  John groaned. “I might have known that there’d be some reading involved.”

  “It saves time finding out things for yourself,” said Nimrod.

  “It does that,” agreed Groanin.

  “Maybe I’ll go to Canada,” said John. “I bet there are lots of people in Canada who could do with three wishes.” He grinned. “Stands to reason, doesn’t it?”

  “Don’t tell me,” insisted Nimrod. “Even your parents aren’t supposed to know. It’s a secret, remember?”

  “He doesn’t know how to keep a secret,” said Philippa.

  “I like that,” said John. “You’re the biggest gossip I know.”

  Noticing that Groanin had a newspaper in his pocket, John asked to borrow it and, absently, Groanin agreed. It was an English newspaper called the Yorkshire Post and, to John’s surprise, there was a story on the front page that described Bumby as the unluckiest town in the world, and listed all the reasons why.

  “You know, I could do a lot worse than go to Bumby,” said John. “There’s a story here in your newspaper, Groanin, that makes me think Bumby is the perfect place to go and offer someone three wishes.”

  “Oh?” said Nimrod. “May I see that please, John?”

  Groanin pulled a face. “You keep away from Bumby, I tell you. I don’t want you mucking up my holiday with your djinn power.”

  “I wouldn’t ‘muck things up,’ as you put it,” insisted John. “I’d only be going to help.”

  “Why don’t you go to Miami and that Kidz with Gutz awards ceremony for young people who have demonstrated selflessness or presence of mind?” said Groanin. “You might have a lot in common with one of those interfering young so-and-sos. I’ll bet you’d find one of them who would be deserving of three wishes. Or better still, why don’t you go to Italy and try to help that bloke what’s supposed to be the unluckiest man in the world? I say, why don’t you go and help him?”

  “Where in Italy?” asked Philippa.

  “I think he works in Pompeii,” said Groanin. “Fellow called Silvio Prezzolini.”

  “Tempting fate, isn’t it?” snorted Philippa. “To be the unluckiest man in the world and working in Pompeii?”

  “Why?” asked John.

  “Duh! Because Pompeii was a Roman town destroyed by a volcano,” said Philippa. “And the volcano, Vesuvius, is still very active.” She shook her head as if in pity of her brother’s ignorance.

  “I know that,” said John.

  “You know something, John?” Philippa smiled. “It’s true. You get everything I get, only it takes just a little longer.”

  Privately, Philippa was considering going to India. For one thing, in India they believed in the djinn, and experience had already taught her that it was a lot easier granting someone three wishes when they believed such a thing was even possible. Another thing was that there were lots of deserving people in India. Just about everywhere you went you could see them. But the more she thought about it, the more the Kidz with Gutz awards or even Pompeii also seemed like attractive options. She’d never been to Pompeii.

  “Suppose you and these other adjudicators decide that the three wishes were not justified,” said Philippa. “What happens then?”

  “I’m glad you mentioned that,” said Nimrod. “There’s a penalty to be paid.”

  “You mean like a punishment?” said John.

  “What could be a bigger punishment than being related to him?” asked Philippa.

  “Not a punishment exactly,” said Nimrod.

  “Well, what is it?” said John. “Come on.”

  “You lose your power for a year,” said Nimrod.

  “What?” John was outraged. “Well, how does that work?”

  “A simple djinn binding made by me and the others on the panel,” explained Nimrod. “You have to be able to demonstrate that you can use your power responsibly.”

  “A year seems harsh,” said Philippa.

  Nimrod shrugged. “That’s the tradition.”

  “Did you and Mom have a taranushi?” asked John. “When you were our age?”

  “Yes,” said Nimrod. “Your mother passed, of course. But I was failed. By Mr. Rakshasas, as it happens.”

  “And you lost your power for a year?” John’s eyes widened.

  “Best thing that ever happened to me,” said Nimrod. “It taught me … humility, among many other things.”

  “This must have been a long time ago,” said Groanin.

  Nimrod handed John back Groanin’s newspaper.

  “Bumby at this time of year must be very beautiful,” he said pointedly. “I should be interested to see what you might make of it. A silk purse out of a sow’s ear, perhaps. We shall see.”

  CHAPTER 2

  THE UNLUCKIEST TOWN IN THE WORLD

  Every year, Mr. Groanin took two weeks’ holiday and, not being fond of “abroad,” as he was want to call anywhere outside of England, he almost always went to the seaside town of Bumby, near Scarborough in North Yorkshire.

  For Nimrod’s nephew, John Gaunt, who, in spite of the butler’s loud objections, had chosen to accompany Groanin on his annual Easter vacation after all, it was hard to associate the little Yorkshire town with holiday making. Bumby was a grim, inhospitable place. The skyline was dominated by the black ruins of St. Archibald’s Cathedral, high on Bumby’s North Cliff. Below the ruins, on the other side of the River Rust, was a maze of dark alleyways and sinister, narrow streets that ran down to the once busy, but now almost derelict, quayside. The fishing industry that had once helped to sustain the town was no more. And Bumby was now only famous as being the place where Count Dracula had stopped, very briefly, before continuing his voyage to the nearby town of Whitby, in an earlier, unpublished version of Bram Stoker’s famous book Dracula.

  “So bad that even Count Dracula wouldn’t stay here” was how the people who lived in Bumby were jokingly apt to describe the place. But like many jokes it also contained a grain of truth.

  John could see Dracula’s point. The town seemed utterly miserable. And the idea that the steady rain, gray skies, and biting north wind that seemed to persistently afflict the town had anything to do with spring or a vacation was, to the young djinn, incomprehensible, and prompted him to ask the bald butler a question.

  “If this is what Bumby is like in spring, what’s it like in winter?”

  “Aye, well, there’s no denying it’s not been the best of weather this year,” admitted Groanin. “I say, it’s not been the best of weather. But when you do get a fine day, you can’t beat Bumby.”

  “I find it kind of hard to believe the sun could ever shine in a place like this,” said John. “Why do you come to such a crummy place for a vacation, Groanin?”

  They were on the beach at the time, seated on deck chairs and swaddled with blankets against the stiff sea breeze. John was eating an ice cream that was more ice than cream.

  “Habit,” said Groanin. “I always come to Bumby at Easter. I used to go on holiday to Harrogate. But that got very expensive. Bumby’s a lot cheaper.”

  “I can easily see why,” said John.

  “Nobody asked you to come, young man,” said Groanin. “So I’ll thank you to keep your views about Bumby to yourself.”

  “You know why I came,” sa
id John.

  “That I do,” said Groanin. “And let me just remind you that you’ve agreed to leave the place alone until my holiday is nearly over. I don’t want you mucking things up for me here with your djinn power, just yet.”

  “I’m not here to ‘muck things up,’ as you put it,” insisted John. “I’m here to help.”

  The boy djinn searched his pockets for the newspaper clipping from the Yorkshire Post that had prompted him to accompany Groanin on his holiday. And, finding the cutting, he unfolded it and spread it on his knee, which was not so easy in the cold sea breeze.

  “Here,” he said. “Read it yourself. ‘The Unluckiest Town in the World.’“

  “I know what it says,” Groanin said stiffly. “It’s me what reads the Yorkshire Post, not you, young man.”

  “I don’t get it,” said John. “Why you’re so dead against this. You heard what Nimrod said. Now that I’ve turned fourteen I have to go somewhere and hand out three wishes, for my taranushi. It’s traditional for a young djinn like me.”

  “I told you why,” grumbled Groanin. “Because it’s also traditional for a young whippersnapper novice djinn like you to make a complete pig’s ear out of granting three wishes.”

  “C’mon,” said John. “I’m much better at this than I used to be. I fixed your arm, didn’t I?”

  Formerly, Groanin had been a butler with one arm (the other having been eaten by a tiger) — until John and Philippa and their friend Dybbuk had used djinn power to give him a new one.

  “Aye, but you had the help of others to do it,” said Groanin. “Your sister for one. And that makes a big difference.”

  “Are you implying she’s better at this than me?”

  “I’m not implying it,” said Groanin. “I’m stating it as a bald fact.”

  “We’re twins, so that’s impossible,” insisted John. “Anything she’s good at, I’m good at, too. Stands to reason.”

  Groanin made a noise that indicated polite disagreement. “Besides,” he added, “as for your wanting to help Bumby, I reckon the only reason your uncle Nimrod agreed to that was because he figured it wouldn’t matter much if things went wrong in a place like this.”