Bathtub Jinn

If you have ever believed that your brain is more perfect or beautiful than other brains, an MRI will sort that out. I was hurt by the bland mediocrity of my own brain. It was generic, typical—the sort of brain that you could see in stock images or textbooks. It matched the illustrations that accompany boilerplate lore about grey matter on The Mayo Clinic site that you might scroll through in a sweaty, hypochondriacal panic at three in the morning.

Dr. Steve was very clever for a man whose surname should have been his first name. As we considered the results of my MRI, I asked him a question I thought he could handle, given his rather warped sense of humor: “Do you think exposure to massive doses of human stupidity—I’m talking about abject, incorrigible stupidity accompanied by smug pride, mind you—might cause multiple sclerosis?”

He did not disappoint. He grinned, turned from the screen where the afflicted, spongy seat of my consciousness was spread out like a meal on a table, and said: “If that were true, Dr. Seonta, every physician would have MS, never mind teachers of all kinds, like you. I am busy, but I am not that busy.”

“Am I eligible for the MAID program, in light of this diagnosis?”

He skipped a beat there. MAID is the Medical Assistance in Dying program here in Canada. The person who plays our Prime Minister on television has dramatically expanded eligibility for it. He is at home with drama. I thought it was worth a shot.

Dr. Steve’s eyes drifted to the clock behind me; he might have been monitoring the rate at which he was crafting a response. You’ve got to admire real professionalism when it is accompanied by actual talent. Dr. Steve struck me as the sort of doctor who was always trying to beat his former self in a competition whose only participant was also its ruthless judge. I trusted him, which was infuriating. He couldn't be wrong.

“No. The lumbar puncture confirmed your diagnosis, given the presence of oligoclonal banding. Current protocols are actually promising, and you can live a long and mostly normal life with MS at this point. It’s not like it was for your uncle.”

I had been candid with Dr. Steve about my family history. My uncle had been diagnosed in his youth. My memories of him are all of a man in a wheelchair, with only one good hand. He was the funniest person I have ever known. Joking with him about what an insufferable twit my stepmother turned out to be saved me from despair many times. We also joked about the stereotype (I tried to convince him to call it a trope, but he found my tendency to treat reality like a work of fiction stupid) and the poor taste it took to live up to it so precisely.

“It’s like she’s never heard a fairy tale, or even seen a Disney film. I mean, you don’t have the skills to be a decent scullery maid. But if you did, you can bet you’d never finish washing those dishes,” he once said through a miasma of pipe smoke. He died before I could tell him I wished he wouldn’t.

"So, what you thought was Meniere’s: the vertigo, the weird gait, the tinnitus; all of that was MS?”

“That is what the tests confirm, yes,” said Dr. Steve.

I was disappointed. Van Gogh had Meniere’s. It’s sexy. MS isn’t sexy. I’ve seen its work. On someone I loved.

“What should I do, then?” He told me. It was not encouraging.

My first impulse was to get drunk and naked with an intelligent, mischievous woman. That sort of thing has always made living seem a better idea. But the doctor had seen that coming: "Drinking is risky," he shrugged. "There could be...accidents." I can learn, if I have an effective teacher. When you lend your friend your bike, you don't feel obliged to show him how. He can figure it out, once he's got it.

I was trying to get a grip on the obstinate fact that I was sick. It was embarrassing. My ordinary, vanilla brain had ordinary, vanilla dreams. I did not want to embark upon any sort of “journey.” I had been earnestly authentic and therefore “polarizing,” for years. This was really predictable and therefore boring. Such a dumb transition from a mediocre second act to an ugly, humiliating third.

I had the day off, which is rare for “adjunct” or “sessional” or “contract” lecturers like me. All of the work of a real professor with none of the perks. I obeyed my generic, standard issue brain. I went to Tim Hortons. I laughed at the missing apostrophe. I looked across the street at Earls and laughed harder. I savored my double double and thought about incontinence, paralysis, suffocation in a shrinking suit of my own skin. If Canada is unlikely, Alberta is completely implausible—just like most of my life.

I got “home.” Poor people can’t buy castles. They rent shacks. You know what species has made a comeback, despite all of the justified hysteria about the next great extinction? Bed bugs. If you doubt the existence of real evil, you have never met a bed bug. Some creatures live on the suffering of others. They feed their families with it. They are usurers who charge exorbitant, bloody interest. The fumigation had probably done wonders for my nervous system. I think I gave the bug guy an F at some point. His revenge is complete.

I turned on the computer and looked at the notes for Monday’s lecture. I would have to be able to walk more normally by then. My handwriting on the white board was bound to be stranger and uglier than usual. I decided to take a nap.

The dream was luxurious. I was surrounded by friends. Dry, bitter old friends, who would never allow me to be harmed. The sky was the inky pelt of a leopard with incandescent spots. I would never be alone again. I was glad.

Water was running. It drowned the dream. I sat up. My typical brain, soon to be monstrously atypical, sorted the files I had accumulated before logging off. No, I hadn’t left the water running. I definitely hadn’t turned on the shower. Without grace, I got up.

She was in the tub. My tub. I was not proud to call it that. The paint over her head was old and peeling like psoriasis sundered skin. The tub was not especially clean. The standard aroma of a melancholy bachelor’s bathroom: shaving cream, cheap antibacterial soap and despair, was dancing with a stranger. I thought of awkward, boring Masses in childish Decembers. I think it was the smell of myrrh. If cats could name aromas, they would all be called myrrh.

“You will finally be mine, Majnun!” She said it as if she was telling a dirty joke. She winked.

There was a woman where there hadn't been. At least, she seemed to be the female form of something. I could make out horns, delicate wings and a barbed tail. I had to believe my eyes, as no others were available. Ordinary brains don’t like to play with space invaders. They greet them with fear and suspicion.

But I was looking at her, which complicated things. Her beauty was terrible. It was wrong. I felt it move through every part of me. I was surprised by the distribution pattern. It wasn’t concentrated where I expected at all. I felt strong for the first time in years.

“What are you doing in my shower?” I tried to seem calm and self-assured. I failed.

“I am being your jinn, Majnun, just as you wished.” Her voice was improving my hearing. I don’t know if you have ever experienced tinnitus. I hope not. It is the anthem of self-loathing. Your own brain conspires to distract you with a meaningless, clumsily played score. It was mulled when she spoke. It did a provocative dance and became sultry music.

“I don’t remember wishing,” I said.

“You will, Majnun. When you are mine, you will forget how to forget.”

Light emanated from her that reminded me of the cherished, antique lamp that was on my grandfather’s desk, long ago. I remember reading in its mature, sophisticated radiance and feeling as if I was getting away with something. I thought the pages might show me secrets ordinarily visible only to him. An amber glow, clear and soft, came from her skin. It was warm, faint but steady, tattooed with elegant strands of iridescent ink. What looked like caramel or blown glass in the shape of a sea shell covered the parts of her that ought to be covered when you are a guest in a stranger’s shower.

It did not matter.

You have seen the achingly smooth, eloquent curves of a cello. They were hers, too. Her eyes were twin nights. It had always been hypnotic to me: the sense that darkness was visible, and possessed vision. Unwittingly, I had been looking for her eyes. I recognized them the first time. So many had been frauds. They turned out to be prose. She looked at me in verse.

“What is a jinn?” I asked in as gentle and polite a way as I could muster. I am Canadian, after all.

She laughed. I have spent a long time trying to become more adept at making beautiful women laugh. I understood why just then.

“You are made of clay, Majnun. I am made of fire without smoke. My kind was made ahead of yours. That is why you try to pretend we were not made. It is easy to feel like a proud orphan if you deny your family ever lived. Such originals, you…copies of copies.” She was washing. I had never envied my loofa before. "When I take orders, they are from angels. I give them to your kind. You are all pots. What can you cook without us?” She wagged her tail at me. The distribution pattern was modulated accordingly.

“What did I wish, exactly?” The steam from the shower fogged my glasses. I was afraid to remove them. She might vanish.

“You are sick and soon you will be dead. You are part of a disappointing crop of human beings. You all pretend that nothing is true and you could not be more gullible. You hide your greed and fear behind vague stories about beings you don't understand. It has been hard for you, this life. I will make it easy. You will be mine."

“Why?” It was the oldest and best of stupid questions. I was fond of it, especially when I was afraid.

“It is your wish, of course, Majnun, and therefore mine. Do you like the idea of being mine?” She kept washing with languid elegance, moving the loofa along paths I feared and ached to tread. She extended her left hand as her right carried on with the sudsy sashaying over her luscious, faintly luminous form. She clenched her fist. She grinned. Her index finger rose and curled into the eldest kind of beckoning. Thrice.

"I'm not sure I know what's happening. I like it quite a lot, don't get me wrong, but it's weird. When you say that I'll be yours, you know I'm not well. How much fun do you think that will be?" I think I was perspiring. I really should keep the tub sparkling at all times.

"You scholars, you teachers--you have always been dim. Did you know that there was an important scholar in the 11th Century--Ibn Hazm is how he is remembered--who dismissed jinn like me and my kind as mere superstitious hogwash; so much mist?" Her fingers pirouetted through the steam gathering in my small, sad bathroom. There were mountains, valleys, fortresses and towers in the air for a moment. She swept her hand through them. "You see how beautiful illusions can be, Majnun?" She winked again and bit her lip.

"Why was he so opposed to the idea that you might show up in my shower one day?" Dr. Steve hadn't said anything about hallucinations or seizures, per se. All of the symptoms he told me to stay alert for were purely bodily: spasm, strange sensations, numbness, even blindness of an eye. What if this was just a new symptom? I was too interested to be afraid any more.

She smiled ferociously at that. "I seduced him. He wanted me all to himself, yes? How can you be naughty with someone who isn't real? You know what it is like to teach other people all day. He begged for me. Your fashionable ideas have changed, of course. What do you expect from fashion? Truth does not change, but that's not your concern. You read and you feel guilty for all sorts of reasons that other people invented to make you feel that way. Some of my sisters were poorly written characters in some of your favorite old stories. As I said, yours is a gullible people, Majnun." She leaned out of the tub and licked my left lens. I could have lifted a car.

When I could speak, I said, "I'm not sure it's guilt, exactly. I'm intimidated. I admire great chefs, but who wants to make a wellington with Gordon Ramsey? I mean, I've only just had my first 'flare,' understand? I can't walk a straight line. I'll disappoint both of us."

She laughed. I think you are familiar with the kind of thing her laugh did to me. You have heard all sorts of things, I'm sure. You know what it is like to hear something for the first time--a poem read aloud, a song, the voice of a particular human being, the sound that the right door makes when it opens--and resent that it is the first time. You know. The sort of sound that reminds you that most of what you hear is mere noise. Then you hear something that is exactly as it should be. I hoped I was not hallucinating. Actually, I hoped that if I was hallucinating, I wouldn't stop.

"You will be mine, Majnun. What shall we do before you are mine?"

She leaned out of the tub again and shook her head. The myrrh grew stronger, almost violent. The light went out but she was bright.

"Before? I'm sorry. Won't I be yours, you know, during...?"

She had leaned from noon to afternoon without taking her eye from my defogged lens. Her grin was the grin of a mechanic when you just don't know where that noise is coming from. "Oh, no. I never surprise myself anymore. I will not live forever, but I will sit at the funerals of those who are born today. I am bored."

She touched my left thigh, just above my knee. With her nose. Why hadn't anyone had the good sense to do that before?

"Your people are all confused about their bodies. So much guilt, so much anger, so much pain and hatred. You think you are your body, Majnun? If that is so obvious why do the wise doubt it? You are always busy killing each other. You wouldn't be if you knew how ordinary bodies are. You have better parts. I am more real than your body, Majnun. Let me show you." She rose to noon once more.

One of the most subtle insults a fresh diagnosis of MS delivers is its erasure of harmless trembling. I was pretty obviously trembling. But I couldn't be sure that was all I was doing--ever again.

"You feel guilty for your gaze and your ways and the long list of stupid ideas to which you are a footnote. What about joy, Majnun? You are still alive. You cannot objectify or shame or, how do you say, exoticize or orientalize or 'other' me. I gave Edward Said a tip about cover art. You are not safe with me."

She brushed her fingers through my beard and owned it.

"Your great grandmother gossiped about a scandal I created because my lunch was salty." Her tail touched the millimeter her nose had. She did not look. I could have cried.

"But what will happen, uh, afterwards?" There are lines you wish you could edit as soon as you've said them.

"Oh." She turned off the shower with a flick of her tail. It was not the first time she had done that in her life. Ease is the daughter of practice.

"You are all pots, yes? Some are more valuable than others, on the current market anyway. There was a time when pots like you were precious, even coveted. Now, you can be bought at a discount online. But you're still more comfortable than most." I'm quite sure she wrote something filthy on my chest with her left, index finger. The nail would have been shocked to be called anything but a talon.

"I have been myself since before this new plague. As if you know what a real plague smells like, Majnun. I am looking for change. Afterwards, you will be mine." She put her palm against my chest. I used to touch my dog the same way when a potential source of stupid excitement approached. She steadied me--her own animal.

"Are you talking about, well, some kind of possession?" It seemed much less likely that I was hallucinating now. If I was, it wasn't the sort of hallucination that you could mistake for a sunny dream. I had missed my chance. It was probably my last one.

"Mass is a better vintage, as names go. No touch is more intimate. You will be mine." She swept her fingers through her hair and raised her eyebrows. The light came on. She dimmed.

"But I'm not well. Why would you want me?" It seemed a good question, so I stuck with it. I shrank next to it.

"I can take care of that. But it is an inside job." Her kiss was soft and nun chaste.

"Just have it, then. It wants to be rid of me, anyway." I touched my own, tired body.

The exquisitely molded, caramel shells that were her synonyms for modesty opened all at once, like oysters. She threw her head back and stuck out her tongue at the mildewed ceiling, mocking everything above. Her tail bound my ankle. Things changed.

What are you supposed to do when your bathroom becomes a desert? I felt cold. It was the world. That was the smallest surprise of the day, but it counted. I was not sure which star was mine. There were so many. The dunes were the color of spilled wine.

"You want to turn to the end, fine. You have done what we were going to do before, with ordinary clay pots. Cats can swim if they must. We would have been fish." I am a student of dark eyes, as you know. Never before had I seen irises darker than pupils. The stars spelled regret in seven languages.

"Here we are though, as you wished. I like to do business at home. Where shall I send you, when you are mine?"

I found my star. Our first meeting was a dream compared to this.

I considered the sand. "That looks familiar," I said. "It would be easy, grainy life. What is your name? Mine isn't Majnun, by the way: it's Ian, but it won't be for long, I suppose."

"You know I am your Layla, for you are my Majnun. I will take good care of you." She licked my throat. She taught me to shed myself and accept a smaller shape. Engulfed in the desert's parched silence, I was nothing but another grain of sand in the wind.