The Woman Who Was Thursday, Wednesday's dream
You don't even want to know all the things I Googled for this fic, for reals. ONE DAY I WILL DO REAL RESEARCH FOR A STORY I SWEAR.
This essay came to me in my hour of need, and it's really interesting, so I share it with you if you do not already know of it.
Note: The Man Who Was Thursday was published first in 1908, and as such contains a great deal of unfortunate language and themes (my love for this book consists of part of my brain going "OMG SYMBOLISM AND ALLEGORY AND POETRY YAY!" and another part of my brain going "Classist, racist, colonialist and patriarchal issues, much?"). As the primary reason I wished to write this fic was to have as much of the awesome as possible and as little of the fail, I have chosen to sacrifice pure historical accuracy in language to use less offensive terms whenever possible, and to cheerfully ignore any social difficulties that might have arisen in the early 20th century regarding such matters as, say, a black female doctor or an Iranian detective. The original book is something of a fantasy; I feel well-justified in extending that fantasy just a little farther to create a more pleasurable story for the non-white-upper-class-British world, which is in fact a pretty large section of the world.
... also it'd be more than a little weird to write a story in honor of an Islamic holiday that contained a bunch of things offensive to Muslims.
If I have at any point in this fic used any offensive (racist, classist, ableist, sizeist, transphobic, or homophobic) language, please point it out to me and I will apologize and change it at once. Similarly, if you spot a plot point or construction that is also offensive - um - that I might not be able to change, but I will do my best to fix it if possible, and if I can see no way around it in this story, I will put a warning for fail on it and make a giant sign to remind me not to do that in my next, which unfortunately is sometimes all one can do.
1. The Failure of Thursday
Gabrielle Syme had been on the trail of a young anarchist for two weeks and four days. She had hovered at the edges of crowds and listened to impassioned speech-making; pamphlets printed on rough paper had left smears of ink on her hands; her feet ached from hours of standing on uneven cobblestones and running down alleys after anyone who might have a lead. But for all her pains she had barely even caught a glimpse of the youth she sought - a flash of brown fingertips blackened with ink, the fluttering of brightly-colored robes as he ducked into a shop - and she had never gotten close enough to speak so much as a word to him directly.
On the fifth day she lost him entirely, when he disappeared into a section of the East End she did not know well.
Gabrielle was thoroughly vexed with herself. If she had only run a little faster, if she had gotten to a rally earlier, if this or that or the other... But she was not the sort to pity herself for long; after a morning of pacing along a street just outside Tower Hamlets in the wretched narrow skirts that had become fashionable lately, she forced herself to laugh at her own timidity ('Fight what you fear!' she told herself, as she had once before) and ventured within the twisting streets.
Naturally she was lost at once, which did not worry her particularly, but the crowds around her did. Syme was used to blending in, her neat blonde hair and restrained fashion well-suited both to parlour-meetings and open-air gatherings; this borough, however, had always been something of a haven for immigrants, and she found herself now quite surrounded by them - Indians, Bengali from Sylhet, Africans of both Africa and the Caribbean, Jews, even some Persians and others fleeing the reforms of the Young Turks. Gabrielle did not fear them, as she knew many did (and she had felt so before herself; but that fear had been burnt out of her), but it was terribly awkward to be a plainclothes detective wearing the wrong plain clothes and skin and hair. The anarchist, she supposed gloomily, should spot her coming from miles away, and she would never find him; even if she were to come upon him unawares at some café or park, he would know at once that she was no casual passer-by and would only flee again.
Gabrielle was nothing if not stubborn, and she found a small tea shop where she ordered a pot of a very fine black tea of a type she could not quite identify. As she took several delicate sips, she essayed a few sociable enquiries to the aged Indian lady who had brought her the tea, and ran into a third barrier: communication. 'Tea, please' appeared to be the sum of the elderly woman's English, and Gabrielle could not understand the lady's own soft-sounding language; they made a few embarrassed but polite noises at each other in their respective tongues, and then Gabrielle tried again, with her schoolgirl French, asking if there were perhaps any meetings of poets in the area.
The old woman went into the back of the shop and returned with a small girl dressed all in orange and red, like a little flame; the child spoke French well and swiftly - too swiftly for Gabrielle, whose French was of the 'my aunt has a blue pen' sort, and not very often used. Although they spoke for several minutes, Gabrielle could hardly understand a word, and could gather only a general impression that there was a good deal of socialising in the evenings after prayers, as it was some holy month, but whether poets or philosophers or anarchists were involved the little girl could not say, and at last Syme could hardly bear the awkwardness; she drank off the rest of her tea in unseemly haste, made some excuse and fled, leaving her change upon the table.
In her little flat across the Thames (a dreadfully modern and sterile place, not to her taste at all, but Eva Bull lived only a single floor down and quite made up for all the rest), Gabrielle gave herself over fully to exasperation. 'I am a fool! A coward! Worse than both!' she told herself; for to run from a place on account of nothing greater than a difference in languages seemed to her a terrible fault indeed, and she could make no excuse for such behaviour save a general and unwarranted nervousness. And (worse again!) the matter quite halted her investigation in its tracks. It was bad enough to stand out simply for her appearance; if she could not even speak with the people around her, how should she ever find her way to the anarchist? how speak to him and those with him? how reason with him?
Gabrielle could have cried. Instead she sat down to her writing-desk and dashed off a quick verse hymning the pure and respectable beauty of a schoolgirl in her modest dark uniform; then, guilty, she tore it up and wrote of children dressed in brighter shades, 'the little candles that will grow to be our lamps, shining as a beacon's fire,' and felt a bit better.
Not to be daunted, Gabrielle threw herself once more into the breach the next day. She dug up her old French dictionary, found a grey scarf in her closet to wrap around her hair, and went back to Tower Hamlets.
She got precisely nowhere.
She visited cafés (all nearly empty, save for an occasional solitary white face nursing tea or a pastry), she went into little parks and walked along the river and across bridges, bought dates and tea from sellers in the streets, and wherever she went she asked for poets and philosophers in her fumbling French or carefully enunciated English to no result. No one was deliberately unhelpful, there was that, but they hardly had need to be; even with dictionary at hand Gabrielle often could not follow their French when they had it, and in English they were generally deficient, at least in the areas of English useful for her investigation. At last, after a fruitless attempt to enter a small mosque near the docks (the imam's English had been more than sufficient for a polite but unequivocal refusal), she leaned up against a sooty brick wall, heedless of her nice grey coat, and wished passionately that she had gone into the study of languages. How useful it would be now if her French were better, or if she had learnt Hindi or Bengali or Persian or Somali...
She looked out from her spot against the wall and watched the people of the place go to and fro, talking and working and laughing with each other, and she had no idea how she felt. Was she homesick now for Saffron Park and the West End, for the crowds of solid British faces bustling round theatres and shops and inns, and for the sound of her native tongue in all its varieties flowing around her; or was it something else - some longing to be a true part of the people around her and no outsider, to speak as they spoke and hear what they heard, to walk among them unremarked and find her anarchist before he could throw his dynamite, and say to him in his own language, 'Let us go and talk together of your philosophy, and share what wisdom we have that we may understand one another...'
A red and golden evening was beginning to fall; Gabrielle could hear the muezzin calling out in long resonant tones, and the men and women in the streets vanished, hurrying to prayer. She sighed, and went home herself.
Dr. Bull made dinner for the two of them in her flat, as she often did; tonight it was a lamb curry that had already been simmering half an hour when Gabrielle came in and threw herself on Eva's couch, and said despairingly, 'I am quite done for - ooh, that smells heavenly. Is there anything better than to come home to a warm room, a soft couch, and the smell of fresh curry?'
'Yes,' said Eva, giving the mixture a quick stir and then replacing the lid, 'eating the curry, and then watching you take care of all the mess!'
Syme laughed. 'I am more than happy to oblige in that regard,' she said, 'as without your kitchen I should either starve or waste all my money dining at restaurants... My dear Eva, I am in your debt again.'
Bull waved off the debt and came to sit next to her, running her hand through her short-cropped wiry hair. 'Oh, don't fret about it,' she said, 'I am glad enough of the company, I hardly see anyone outside of the laboratory some days. What has done you in now? Not the job, is it?'
'It is indeed,' said Gabrielle, shamefaced. 'I have been looking for that young man who spoke so passionately in Leicester Square, but he went into the East End near Cubitt Town the other day and I can't - well, it is awful to admit, but I can hardly even talk to anyone there, let alone conduct a philosophical investigation, and I am sure that he would see me long before I saw him; I am at my wit's end.'
'That is because you are witless already,' Eva said cheerfully. 'Of course a paleface like you is going to stand out round there, and you are almost as bad with languages as I am; you are going about this entirely the wrong way, love.'
'Really, do tell,' Gabrielle said, a bit sharply.
Eva ignored her tone and said, 'I'm sure you have been trying your very hardest, but really, there is only one sensible thing to do. You must turn the case over to someone who does know their way around there and isn't going to stick out like a smashed thumb.'
Syme bolted upright with indignation to protest, but then sighed and leaned back, resting her head on Eva's shoulder. 'You are right, of course,' she said, 'though it stings to admit it. Still, I should like to remain a part of the case if I can; probably we ought to keep the matter within our branch, as well... I don't suppose you would care to take over?'
'Me?' said Bull, laughing. 'You may be terrible with languages, but I'm worse! I should be just as badly off as you, or more - I don't believe I've said my prayers or kept Ramadan once since I came to London, let alone worn my scarf; even my family thinks me an awful atheist, I suppose they are not too far off at that. No, it was another of us that I had in mind...'
2. Wednesday at Work
Nazhin was at the afternoon prayer when she heard the post arrive; she finished the greetings, said a quick supplication, and then went out to get it. There was, as usual, very little of interest: another letter from her parents begging her to come home and remarry, a postcard from her cousin in Tabriz, a sharp note from the Secretary about work, advertisements... She flipped past one for a sale at Harrods and found a surprise - a plain cream envelope addressed to 'Nazhin St. Eustache? (Wednesday).'
Inside was an invitation to a late lunch at a little inn nearby, the day after next, from two people she had not thought to hear from again.
Nazhin turned the paper over in her fingers and considered the proposal. She was busy with work at the moment and not inclined to socialise just for the sake of socialising, but it was only a lunch, and perhaps Syme and Bull could be of some help...
When she walked into the inn and saw them the first thing she said was, 'Syme, take off that headscarf at once, you look a proper fool; you have it wrapped wrong, and no one is expecting you to keep hijab.'
Gabrielle hastily unwrapped it, flushing, and muttered, 'Sorry - I only thought perhaps -'
'You weren't thinking at all,' Nazhin said; much more harshly than she had meant it, and she said at once, 'Ah, don't mind me overmuch, I am only tetchy from fasting. I beg your pardon humbly,' and could not stop herself from adding, 'but really, it would only make you stand out more.'
'I suppose,' Syme said. 'Anyway, apology accepted, but let us get you something to eat straightaway,' and signaled the waiter.
Nazhin rubbed her forehead. 'No, not for me, thank you; get whatever you like, but I cannot eat till after sunset. It is a holy month.'
Dr. Bull said, 'Ramadan, eh? Well, I shall join in the fast for this meal, at least; missing one shan't do me any harm, and it is past time I shaped up and rejoined the faith.'
'As you wish,' said Nazhin, though she thought little of Bull's chances; Eva Bull was a good woman, but too much wrapped up in her scientific work. Uncharitable thoughts again. Nazhin firmly put them out of her mind and said, 'What have you both been up to? I haven't really spoken to anyone but Monday since that incident...'
They chatted for a good while. It seemed that they had all kept in touch somewhat, in various ways; Bull and the former Tuesday Pela Jaromirski often wrote one another to discuss matters of scientific development, and Gabrielle kept up a lively correspondence with Wilks, who as of her latest letter was still playing the aged Professor de Worms - in Spain, apparently, and having an excellent time of it, 'though she does get quite weary of dressing as a man when she knows she isn't one,' Gabrielle explained gravely, 'and it quite aggravates her that it is so easy...'
'We ought to do something for her when she gets back,' Bull said, 'a party of some sort, or a gift - a properly tailored dress ought to be useful, help her curves and so on. Pela's visiting in Germany just now and has been talking to a most interesting fellow there, Hirschfeld or some such, and he's got quite a lot of ideas...'
'A party sounds like an excellent plan,' Nazhin said, 'I am sure Vivian can find dresses on her own.' She had no interest in trawling the shops when she had matters of consequence on her hands; a party at least could be planned for a time that she wasn't busy. She had never been much for shopping anyway; work was much more interesting, and the hunt, an enthusiasm to which her late husband had introduced her.
'What of you?' asked Bull. 'Have you kept up with anyone? You haven't -' She looked about, then leaned over the table and lowered her voice. '- haven't heard from Sunday, by any chance?'
Someone came in through the inn's door, letting in a gust of dank October air. Nazhin shivered, drew her headscarf a little closer around her; a curious conviction came upon her that if she turned and looked she would see Sunday pacing into the room, her steps light as a young girl's, and she would say in her deep and playful voice, 'You young asses, why have you not come to breakfast in the Square with me?'
'No,' Nazhin said quietly, 'no, I have not heard from Sunday.' Then the fancy passed, and she rubbed at her forehead again; she was damnably tired, and her head was aching. 'I keep up with Victoria - the Secretary, that is - but only for work, really. In fact I am on a case at the moment; some silly boy of my own branch has gotten in over his head and is really starting to think of himself as an anarchist... Anyway I am rather busy trying to track him down. I saw him last going into a mosque by the docks and it seems he has taken refuge there, but with the Ramadan crowds trying to get him on his own has been difficult - Syme, what under heaven are you doing?'
Gabrielle had hit her forehead with the palm of her hand; now she said, 'Nothing; but damn it all, we have come to talk to you of the very same youth, I think. Mohammed Chowdhry Sarang is his name, isn't it? Spoke at that rally in Leicester Square? And I even tried to look in that same mosque, but I was not allowed in...'
'Of course not, no one wants unbelievers poking their noses in during a holy month,' Nazhin said, a bit weakly; then she slammed her hands down on the table. 'The devil you say, Syme! Do you mean to tell me that you two have been hunting Sarang for who knows how long and you are only now coming to me? When I live and work here? Did neither of you even suppose that I would already be on the case -'
'No, no, not at all,' said Bull hastily, 'I'm only along for the fun of it - bit busy with the day job... It was I suggested that we talk the case over with you, Gabrielle is quite lost.'
'I am hardly surprised,' Nazhin snapped, charity flying out the window, 'I don't know what you thought you should find out when you don't even know the languages of the place. And for that matter do the two of you think that because we share the faith I must be just the same as -'
Glass shattered behind her, and the world exploded.
---
She woke to grey smoke in her eyes and Eva Bull's anxious voice saying 'Nazhin? Nazhin, Wednesday, are you hurt?'
'I don't know,' she said thickly, in Farsi; she blinked away the smoke to see Eva kneeling above her and sat up with caution, but there was only a slight, sharp pain in her back and a deep ache in her stomach where the blast had thrown her into the table. 'No, I don't think so - not too badly,' in English this time, and Eva smiled with relief.
'Thank goodness,' she said, 'I was afraid for a minute - well, never mind what I thought.'
Nazhin touched her head carefully to check it and found no injuries, but that her scarf was dreadfully askew; cheeks warming, she re-wrapped it quickly. Only then did she look up and see the dark shadows of bruises forming under Bull's brown skin, and blood spreading down one of her shirtsleeves. 'Eva!'
Bull shook her head and said cheerfully, 'Just a scratch, really, I shall be right as rain in no time - but I've got to see to everyone else, would you be so kind as to look after Gabrielle for me for a moment? She's taken it a bit hard...'
'I am hardly in the mood to nurse your friend,' Nazhin said, but mostly out of habit, and she turned to look for Syme.
Syme was at the remains of one of the inn's windows, looking out; her grey-and-pink dress was now mostly only black, and when Nazhin went to stand beside her she saw a cut on Gabrielle's cheek, shallow but dripping. 'Well,' she began weakly, a bit put-off by the distant look Syme wore, 'that was a bit of a surprise, now, wasn't it?' Oh, how did one speak to those in shock? Nazhin was no good at this; she just wanted to give Syme a good shake for daydreaming in a crisis.
'He was angry,' said Gabrielle. Her voice too was distant, yet rough with smoke or an emotion Nazhin could not guess. 'I heard him - I suppose you did not, as you were speaking - but I heard him, just before he threw it, condemning us all. It was Sarang.'
'I see,' Nazhin said, and put her hand to her mouth, thinking. If Sarang had fallen so far already as to throw dynamite... This was not going to be easy to resolve. If only she knew what had won him over so thoroughly to the anarchists...
'I can't forgive him,' Syme said, and Nazhin looked at her, startled, then alarmed to see that Syme had her hands on the window-sill amongst the broken glass. 'I wanted to speak with him, but this - damn the dynamiters! Damn them all! I would see them hanged if I could, or shot, or -'
'Enough, Syme!' Nazhin said sharply, and pulled Gabrielle's hands away from the sill - idiot woman, did she not care how Eva would worry for her? 'Calm yourself - it was only a very weak charge, no one is gravely hurt. Don't be so rash.'
Syme clenched her hands, then let them relax, a few bloody splinters of glass falling from her grip; a little of the madness left her face, and she said, 'Oh, Nazhin - I am sorry, you are perfectly right. But they make me so - so bloody angry!'
'Well, no one can blame you for that,' said Nazhin, 'but really, this is not the time. We've got to find him as soon as we can.' Her mind was already racing with possibilities - the ways he could have gone, the places he might hide, the people who might be waiting for him... 'You've heard him speak in Leicester Square - what did he say?'
'Oh, the usual sort of thing, I suppose.' Gabrielle frowned as she thought. 'I can't recall it exactly - revolution, equality, freedom from prejudice, you know how it goes. Do you suppose that he's gone back to the mosque?'
'No,' Nazhin said automatically, and then made a mental grab for the thread of reasoning going on in the back of her head. 'No, he wouldn't - he would go home...'
The tattered remains of the drapes in the windows caught her eye; they were green, a bright green that stood out oddly with the inn's dark decor. She took hold of them, heedless of the glass dust in the folds, and followed the thread down.
He would go home, of course; he had to wash his hands, think matters over. But his family will be there, she thought, recalling Sarang's profile when he had joined the branch - his father and two of his uncles were at sea, but he still had his mother, a grandmother, two grandfathers, aunts, younger sisters and brothers... He can't face them, not for long. He'll go home but he won't stay...
'Nazhin? Are you quite all right?'
'I thought you were a poet, Syme,' said Nazhin, shutting her eyes and running her fingers obsessively over the green drapes, drapes the green of spring leaves, the green of Wednesday, 'you ought to know how this works, do be quiet... He can't stay, he'll leave once he cleans up.' But where will he go...
She opened her eyes, saw the green, and said, 'The river - he'll go to the river, down towards the Greenwich Reach and the Isle of Dogs.'
Syme stared at her with wide grey eyes. 'How under heaven do you know that?'
'I don't, Thursday; it is only a line of reasoning,' Nazhin said, and went to grab her coat. 'Stay here and help Bull, I must get there before he does - if he doesn't come I shall come back up to meet you at the shipyards, we will work out where to go from there together.'
'Oh, do be careful, Wednesday!' Gabrielle exclaimed, and threw her arms around Nazhin. 'We shall catch up as quickly as we can, I promise!'
Nazhin patted her shoulder and said, 'Don't rush on my account.' Then she slipped out of the inn's door and disappeared into the crowds.
3. Anarchy in the East End
Wednesday ran down the streets, darting and dodging through swarms of people, and oh how wonderful it felt to be on such a chase again - to be free and alone on the divine hunt, to do the will of the Peace of God (may Your peace descend upon me, o Allah!). Her pace was swift, her footsteps sure, her breathing steady and her heart racing with excitement. She raced down an alley and burst into the High Street just past the East India Docks, and spun around on her toes just once for the joy of it.
Then she stood still, took a few deep breaths, calmed herself. She looked up and down the street for any sign of Sarang, but he had not yet come.
Nazhin crossed the street and went down Prestons to Manchester Road, close to the river but not so close that she would get in the way of the workers at the docks and yards. Her headscarf had slipped loose again, and she re-wrapped it with a little reluctance - it was pleasant to run with her hair down, as she had in the great chase with Sunday, but not appropriate now. She settled in to her watch, keeping an eye on the street and the people; it was time to wait.
She was good at waiting.
Mid-afternoon passed, the light fading towards evening; not daring to leave, Nazhin said her prayer standing and without ablution, swearing that she would make it up on the morrow. With the docks in full swing she could not even hear the call and only guessed at the proper time. Damn Sarang, anyway, where was he - surely he had not gone some other way? And Syme and Bull, they had not come; were they waiting at King Street, or had they left entirely? She looked along the street, searching for Sarang's face; if she missed the evening prayer as well she was just going to explode.
She saw him - there, down the street, hanging on a fence and looking into the Thames without seeing it. He was dressed like any young man of London, in suit and hat and a long scarf against the autumn chill; she might have thought him any young Londoner, save for the haunted look on his face.
Courage, Nazhin thought, and remembered the morning she had gone with the other detectives to face Sunday. That had been terrifying, a desperate sortie against an impossible foe; this was mere child's play, really, nothing to be afraid of.
She walked down the road and leaned against the fence next to him; he jumped a little and looked up, and she said, 'The peace of Allah be upon you, Mohammed Chowdhry Sarang.'
He took a step back from her. 'You - you're head of the branch -'
'Too right I am,' she said - too harshly, and she softened her voice. 'It's been a bit since we saw you round the office, though.'
'And you're not seeing me round there again,' he said, and stood up straight, clearly trying to look impressively defiant. 'I quit! I've got better work to do now...'
'Throwing dynamite,' said Nazhin, and held out her sleeves, still blackened with the smoke from the explosion. 'That's your better work, Sarang? It's a fine thing when a detective stoops to the level of his enemies; the criminals celebrate in the streets when they hear.'
His face lost a bit of color, but he still said, 'It's not - I'm not like that! I - I threw it for the faith, for my people -' His voice was starting to crack. 'You - you don't even know what it's like, I was born here, I went to school here, I know more about bloody English kings and queens than I do about the land of my parents, but they just laugh me off or give me funny looks - ooh, look at the little brown boy who can almost talk proper like us, fancy that, give 'im a shilling or a kick, but I'm not real British, oh no, never that - and it's never going to change unless we make them change! Until we're all equal, without laws, without borders, no stupid queens or kings or presidents to lord themselves all over us -'
Nazhin looked out across the river and said calmly, 'You've got a good point there.'
'- everybody equal as people - what?'
'Don't act thick, Sarang, I know you're not, I hired you,' she said. 'It's a good point and a noble dream you have there. You don't suppose I don't get a lot of funny looks going about in hijab, do you? And the things people would say about my late husband for having converted, and the really damned annoying way they had of never hearing what I said about Islam, only listening when he would rephrase it...' Victoria refusing to let me have Eid off, Gabrielle's absurd fears when we dueled... 'No, I know just what it's like, and something of how you feel. It is how I could get myself recruited as Wednesday on the Anarchist's Council.'
Sarang's jaw dropped. 'You were on the Council? The Council of Days?'
'I was,' Nazhin said, 'and so was our Chief Inspector Litmund herself, and Wilks the actress, and Eva Bull - for a week all the Council members were detectives, and a silly lot of anarchists we made, scaring each other half to death and then finding each other out until - well, we all found each other out in the end, and that was that. But yes, I played the anarchist; you will note, however, that I am not doing so now.'
'Why not?' Sarang demanded. 'Why would you turn your back on us, and spit on your own faith?'
'Because,' Nazhin said crisply, 'there must be someone in the system to look out for us. I cannot change things alone, but I can make sure that due process is followed, that everything is handled fairly. Change itself will come from the people outside the system, the revolutionaries and the protesters and the lawyers who will fight for us - and they must fight for us, no one else will. But the change you want will not come from the anarchists. They have lied to you.'
'They told me the truth!' he protested. 'They want us all to be free - to be equal -'
'The freedom of the grave,' she said, 'the equality of dirt and worms! Do not mistake them, Sarang; it is not freedom they want for all humans, but death. Their philosophy is not Buddhist or Christian or our own philosophy, not even scientific, it is nothing - nothing for everything.' Nazhin softened her voice again, coaxing. 'That isn't what you want, Mohammed. You were made for better things than this.'
He put his head in his hands, slumping against the fence; he said in a weary and broken voice, 'But I am already so tired - of them, of fighting them... What more can I do?'
Behind him Nazhin saw Syme and Bull, standing together holding hands, looking anxious - how they could have found her she couldn't guess, but she was glad to see them, anyway, and their fingers woven together for comfort; she held up a hand to stop them coming closer and interfering. She looked beyond them to the sky and thought of Sunday in her silver robes, the setting sun, the worn-away moon and the nearing end of the month.
She held her hand out to him and smiled, and said, 'We can pray, and open our fast, and take the rest that we need; everything else let us leave to Allah for now.'
Sarang looked up, and above the dying din of the docks came a muezzin's voice, calling them home.
Original setting created by G. K. Chesterton, and I can obviously take no credit.
This essay came to me in my hour of need, and it's really interesting, so I share it with you if you do not already know of it.
Note: The Man Who Was Thursday was published first in 1908, and as such contains a great deal of unfortunate language and themes (my love for this book consists of part of my brain going "OMG SYMBOLISM AND ALLEGORY AND POETRY YAY!" and another part of my brain going "Classist, racist, colonialist and patriarchal issues, much?"). As the primary reason I wished to write this fic was to have as much of the awesome as possible and as little of the fail, I have chosen to sacrifice pure historical accuracy in language to use less offensive terms whenever possible, and to cheerfully ignore any social difficulties that might have arisen in the early 20th century regarding such matters as, say, a black female doctor or an Iranian detective. The original book is something of a fantasy; I feel well-justified in extending that fantasy just a little farther to create a more pleasurable story for the non-white-upper-class-British world, which is in fact a pretty large section of the world.
... also it'd be more than a little weird to write a story in honor of an Islamic holiday that contained a bunch of things offensive to Muslims.
If I have at any point in this fic used any offensive (racist, classist, ableist, sizeist, transphobic, or homophobic) language, please point it out to me and I will apologize and change it at once. Similarly, if you spot a plot point or construction that is also offensive - um - that I might not be able to change, but I will do my best to fix it if possible, and if I can see no way around it in this story, I will put a warning for fail on it and make a giant sign to remind me not to do that in my next, which unfortunately is sometimes all one can do.
1. The Failure of Thursday
Gabrielle Syme had been on the trail of a young anarchist for two weeks and four days. She had hovered at the edges of crowds and listened to impassioned speech-making; pamphlets printed on rough paper had left smears of ink on her hands; her feet ached from hours of standing on uneven cobblestones and running down alleys after anyone who might have a lead. But for all her pains she had barely even caught a glimpse of the youth she sought - a flash of brown fingertips blackened with ink, the fluttering of brightly-colored robes as he ducked into a shop - and she had never gotten close enough to speak so much as a word to him directly.
On the fifth day she lost him entirely, when he disappeared into a section of the East End she did not know well.
Gabrielle was thoroughly vexed with herself. If she had only run a little faster, if she had gotten to a rally earlier, if this or that or the other... But she was not the sort to pity herself for long; after a morning of pacing along a street just outside Tower Hamlets in the wretched narrow skirts that had become fashionable lately, she forced herself to laugh at her own timidity ('Fight what you fear!' she told herself, as she had once before) and ventured within the twisting streets.
Naturally she was lost at once, which did not worry her particularly, but the crowds around her did. Syme was used to blending in, her neat blonde hair and restrained fashion well-suited both to parlour-meetings and open-air gatherings; this borough, however, had always been something of a haven for immigrants, and she found herself now quite surrounded by them - Indians, Bengali from Sylhet, Africans of both Africa and the Caribbean, Jews, even some Persians and others fleeing the reforms of the Young Turks. Gabrielle did not fear them, as she knew many did (and she had felt so before herself; but that fear had been burnt out of her), but it was terribly awkward to be a plainclothes detective wearing the wrong plain clothes and skin and hair. The anarchist, she supposed gloomily, should spot her coming from miles away, and she would never find him; even if she were to come upon him unawares at some café or park, he would know at once that she was no casual passer-by and would only flee again.
Gabrielle was nothing if not stubborn, and she found a small tea shop where she ordered a pot of a very fine black tea of a type she could not quite identify. As she took several delicate sips, she essayed a few sociable enquiries to the aged Indian lady who had brought her the tea, and ran into a third barrier: communication. 'Tea, please' appeared to be the sum of the elderly woman's English, and Gabrielle could not understand the lady's own soft-sounding language; they made a few embarrassed but polite noises at each other in their respective tongues, and then Gabrielle tried again, with her schoolgirl French, asking if there were perhaps any meetings of poets in the area.
The old woman went into the back of the shop and returned with a small girl dressed all in orange and red, like a little flame; the child spoke French well and swiftly - too swiftly for Gabrielle, whose French was of the 'my aunt has a blue pen' sort, and not very often used. Although they spoke for several minutes, Gabrielle could hardly understand a word, and could gather only a general impression that there was a good deal of socialising in the evenings after prayers, as it was some holy month, but whether poets or philosophers or anarchists were involved the little girl could not say, and at last Syme could hardly bear the awkwardness; she drank off the rest of her tea in unseemly haste, made some excuse and fled, leaving her change upon the table.
In her little flat across the Thames (a dreadfully modern and sterile place, not to her taste at all, but Eva Bull lived only a single floor down and quite made up for all the rest), Gabrielle gave herself over fully to exasperation. 'I am a fool! A coward! Worse than both!' she told herself; for to run from a place on account of nothing greater than a difference in languages seemed to her a terrible fault indeed, and she could make no excuse for such behaviour save a general and unwarranted nervousness. And (worse again!) the matter quite halted her investigation in its tracks. It was bad enough to stand out simply for her appearance; if she could not even speak with the people around her, how should she ever find her way to the anarchist? how speak to him and those with him? how reason with him?
Gabrielle could have cried. Instead she sat down to her writing-desk and dashed off a quick verse hymning the pure and respectable beauty of a schoolgirl in her modest dark uniform; then, guilty, she tore it up and wrote of children dressed in brighter shades, 'the little candles that will grow to be our lamps, shining as a beacon's fire,' and felt a bit better.
Not to be daunted, Gabrielle threw herself once more into the breach the next day. She dug up her old French dictionary, found a grey scarf in her closet to wrap around her hair, and went back to Tower Hamlets.
She got precisely nowhere.
She visited cafés (all nearly empty, save for an occasional solitary white face nursing tea or a pastry), she went into little parks and walked along the river and across bridges, bought dates and tea from sellers in the streets, and wherever she went she asked for poets and philosophers in her fumbling French or carefully enunciated English to no result. No one was deliberately unhelpful, there was that, but they hardly had need to be; even with dictionary at hand Gabrielle often could not follow their French when they had it, and in English they were generally deficient, at least in the areas of English useful for her investigation. At last, after a fruitless attempt to enter a small mosque near the docks (the imam's English had been more than sufficient for a polite but unequivocal refusal), she leaned up against a sooty brick wall, heedless of her nice grey coat, and wished passionately that she had gone into the study of languages. How useful it would be now if her French were better, or if she had learnt Hindi or Bengali or Persian or Somali...
She looked out from her spot against the wall and watched the people of the place go to and fro, talking and working and laughing with each other, and she had no idea how she felt. Was she homesick now for Saffron Park and the West End, for the crowds of solid British faces bustling round theatres and shops and inns, and for the sound of her native tongue in all its varieties flowing around her; or was it something else - some longing to be a true part of the people around her and no outsider, to speak as they spoke and hear what they heard, to walk among them unremarked and find her anarchist before he could throw his dynamite, and say to him in his own language, 'Let us go and talk together of your philosophy, and share what wisdom we have that we may understand one another...'
A red and golden evening was beginning to fall; Gabrielle could hear the muezzin calling out in long resonant tones, and the men and women in the streets vanished, hurrying to prayer. She sighed, and went home herself.
Dr. Bull made dinner for the two of them in her flat, as she often did; tonight it was a lamb curry that had already been simmering half an hour when Gabrielle came in and threw herself on Eva's couch, and said despairingly, 'I am quite done for - ooh, that smells heavenly. Is there anything better than to come home to a warm room, a soft couch, and the smell of fresh curry?'
'Yes,' said Eva, giving the mixture a quick stir and then replacing the lid, 'eating the curry, and then watching you take care of all the mess!'
Syme laughed. 'I am more than happy to oblige in that regard,' she said, 'as without your kitchen I should either starve or waste all my money dining at restaurants... My dear Eva, I am in your debt again.'
Bull waved off the debt and came to sit next to her, running her hand through her short-cropped wiry hair. 'Oh, don't fret about it,' she said, 'I am glad enough of the company, I hardly see anyone outside of the laboratory some days. What has done you in now? Not the job, is it?'
'It is indeed,' said Gabrielle, shamefaced. 'I have been looking for that young man who spoke so passionately in Leicester Square, but he went into the East End near Cubitt Town the other day and I can't - well, it is awful to admit, but I can hardly even talk to anyone there, let alone conduct a philosophical investigation, and I am sure that he would see me long before I saw him; I am at my wit's end.'
'That is because you are witless already,' Eva said cheerfully. 'Of course a paleface like you is going to stand out round there, and you are almost as bad with languages as I am; you are going about this entirely the wrong way, love.'
'Really, do tell,' Gabrielle said, a bit sharply.
Eva ignored her tone and said, 'I'm sure you have been trying your very hardest, but really, there is only one sensible thing to do. You must turn the case over to someone who does know their way around there and isn't going to stick out like a smashed thumb.'
Syme bolted upright with indignation to protest, but then sighed and leaned back, resting her head on Eva's shoulder. 'You are right, of course,' she said, 'though it stings to admit it. Still, I should like to remain a part of the case if I can; probably we ought to keep the matter within our branch, as well... I don't suppose you would care to take over?'
'Me?' said Bull, laughing. 'You may be terrible with languages, but I'm worse! I should be just as badly off as you, or more - I don't believe I've said my prayers or kept Ramadan once since I came to London, let alone worn my scarf; even my family thinks me an awful atheist, I suppose they are not too far off at that. No, it was another of us that I had in mind...'
2. Wednesday at Work
Nazhin was at the afternoon prayer when she heard the post arrive; she finished the greetings, said a quick supplication, and then went out to get it. There was, as usual, very little of interest: another letter from her parents begging her to come home and remarry, a postcard from her cousin in Tabriz, a sharp note from the Secretary about work, advertisements... She flipped past one for a sale at Harrods and found a surprise - a plain cream envelope addressed to 'Nazhin St. Eustache? (Wednesday).'
Inside was an invitation to a late lunch at a little inn nearby, the day after next, from two people she had not thought to hear from again.
Nazhin turned the paper over in her fingers and considered the proposal. She was busy with work at the moment and not inclined to socialise just for the sake of socialising, but it was only a lunch, and perhaps Syme and Bull could be of some help...
When she walked into the inn and saw them the first thing she said was, 'Syme, take off that headscarf at once, you look a proper fool; you have it wrapped wrong, and no one is expecting you to keep hijab.'
Gabrielle hastily unwrapped it, flushing, and muttered, 'Sorry - I only thought perhaps -'
'You weren't thinking at all,' Nazhin said; much more harshly than she had meant it, and she said at once, 'Ah, don't mind me overmuch, I am only tetchy from fasting. I beg your pardon humbly,' and could not stop herself from adding, 'but really, it would only make you stand out more.'
'I suppose,' Syme said. 'Anyway, apology accepted, but let us get you something to eat straightaway,' and signaled the waiter.
Nazhin rubbed her forehead. 'No, not for me, thank you; get whatever you like, but I cannot eat till after sunset. It is a holy month.'
Dr. Bull said, 'Ramadan, eh? Well, I shall join in the fast for this meal, at least; missing one shan't do me any harm, and it is past time I shaped up and rejoined the faith.'
'As you wish,' said Nazhin, though she thought little of Bull's chances; Eva Bull was a good woman, but too much wrapped up in her scientific work. Uncharitable thoughts again. Nazhin firmly put them out of her mind and said, 'What have you both been up to? I haven't really spoken to anyone but Monday since that incident...'
They chatted for a good while. It seemed that they had all kept in touch somewhat, in various ways; Bull and the former Tuesday Pela Jaromirski often wrote one another to discuss matters of scientific development, and Gabrielle kept up a lively correspondence with Wilks, who as of her latest letter was still playing the aged Professor de Worms - in Spain, apparently, and having an excellent time of it, 'though she does get quite weary of dressing as a man when she knows she isn't one,' Gabrielle explained gravely, 'and it quite aggravates her that it is so easy...'
'We ought to do something for her when she gets back,' Bull said, 'a party of some sort, or a gift - a properly tailored dress ought to be useful, help her curves and so on. Pela's visiting in Germany just now and has been talking to a most interesting fellow there, Hirschfeld or some such, and he's got quite a lot of ideas...'
'A party sounds like an excellent plan,' Nazhin said, 'I am sure Vivian can find dresses on her own.' She had no interest in trawling the shops when she had matters of consequence on her hands; a party at least could be planned for a time that she wasn't busy. She had never been much for shopping anyway; work was much more interesting, and the hunt, an enthusiasm to which her late husband had introduced her.
'What of you?' asked Bull. 'Have you kept up with anyone? You haven't -' She looked about, then leaned over the table and lowered her voice. '- haven't heard from Sunday, by any chance?'
Someone came in through the inn's door, letting in a gust of dank October air. Nazhin shivered, drew her headscarf a little closer around her; a curious conviction came upon her that if she turned and looked she would see Sunday pacing into the room, her steps light as a young girl's, and she would say in her deep and playful voice, 'You young asses, why have you not come to breakfast in the Square with me?'
'No,' Nazhin said quietly, 'no, I have not heard from Sunday.' Then the fancy passed, and she rubbed at her forehead again; she was damnably tired, and her head was aching. 'I keep up with Victoria - the Secretary, that is - but only for work, really. In fact I am on a case at the moment; some silly boy of my own branch has gotten in over his head and is really starting to think of himself as an anarchist... Anyway I am rather busy trying to track him down. I saw him last going into a mosque by the docks and it seems he has taken refuge there, but with the Ramadan crowds trying to get him on his own has been difficult - Syme, what under heaven are you doing?'
Gabrielle had hit her forehead with the palm of her hand; now she said, 'Nothing; but damn it all, we have come to talk to you of the very same youth, I think. Mohammed Chowdhry Sarang is his name, isn't it? Spoke at that rally in Leicester Square? And I even tried to look in that same mosque, but I was not allowed in...'
'Of course not, no one wants unbelievers poking their noses in during a holy month,' Nazhin said, a bit weakly; then she slammed her hands down on the table. 'The devil you say, Syme! Do you mean to tell me that you two have been hunting Sarang for who knows how long and you are only now coming to me? When I live and work here? Did neither of you even suppose that I would already be on the case -'
'No, no, not at all,' said Bull hastily, 'I'm only along for the fun of it - bit busy with the day job... It was I suggested that we talk the case over with you, Gabrielle is quite lost.'
'I am hardly surprised,' Nazhin snapped, charity flying out the window, 'I don't know what you thought you should find out when you don't even know the languages of the place. And for that matter do the two of you think that because we share the faith I must be just the same as -'
Glass shattered behind her, and the world exploded.
---
She woke to grey smoke in her eyes and Eva Bull's anxious voice saying 'Nazhin? Nazhin, Wednesday, are you hurt?'
'I don't know,' she said thickly, in Farsi; she blinked away the smoke to see Eva kneeling above her and sat up with caution, but there was only a slight, sharp pain in her back and a deep ache in her stomach where the blast had thrown her into the table. 'No, I don't think so - not too badly,' in English this time, and Eva smiled with relief.
'Thank goodness,' she said, 'I was afraid for a minute - well, never mind what I thought.'
Nazhin touched her head carefully to check it and found no injuries, but that her scarf was dreadfully askew; cheeks warming, she re-wrapped it quickly. Only then did she look up and see the dark shadows of bruises forming under Bull's brown skin, and blood spreading down one of her shirtsleeves. 'Eva!'
Bull shook her head and said cheerfully, 'Just a scratch, really, I shall be right as rain in no time - but I've got to see to everyone else, would you be so kind as to look after Gabrielle for me for a moment? She's taken it a bit hard...'
'I am hardly in the mood to nurse your friend,' Nazhin said, but mostly out of habit, and she turned to look for Syme.
Syme was at the remains of one of the inn's windows, looking out; her grey-and-pink dress was now mostly only black, and when Nazhin went to stand beside her she saw a cut on Gabrielle's cheek, shallow but dripping. 'Well,' she began weakly, a bit put-off by the distant look Syme wore, 'that was a bit of a surprise, now, wasn't it?' Oh, how did one speak to those in shock? Nazhin was no good at this; she just wanted to give Syme a good shake for daydreaming in a crisis.
'He was angry,' said Gabrielle. Her voice too was distant, yet rough with smoke or an emotion Nazhin could not guess. 'I heard him - I suppose you did not, as you were speaking - but I heard him, just before he threw it, condemning us all. It was Sarang.'
'I see,' Nazhin said, and put her hand to her mouth, thinking. If Sarang had fallen so far already as to throw dynamite... This was not going to be easy to resolve. If only she knew what had won him over so thoroughly to the anarchists...
'I can't forgive him,' Syme said, and Nazhin looked at her, startled, then alarmed to see that Syme had her hands on the window-sill amongst the broken glass. 'I wanted to speak with him, but this - damn the dynamiters! Damn them all! I would see them hanged if I could, or shot, or -'
'Enough, Syme!' Nazhin said sharply, and pulled Gabrielle's hands away from the sill - idiot woman, did she not care how Eva would worry for her? 'Calm yourself - it was only a very weak charge, no one is gravely hurt. Don't be so rash.'
Syme clenched her hands, then let them relax, a few bloody splinters of glass falling from her grip; a little of the madness left her face, and she said, 'Oh, Nazhin - I am sorry, you are perfectly right. But they make me so - so bloody angry!'
'Well, no one can blame you for that,' said Nazhin, 'but really, this is not the time. We've got to find him as soon as we can.' Her mind was already racing with possibilities - the ways he could have gone, the places he might hide, the people who might be waiting for him... 'You've heard him speak in Leicester Square - what did he say?'
'Oh, the usual sort of thing, I suppose.' Gabrielle frowned as she thought. 'I can't recall it exactly - revolution, equality, freedom from prejudice, you know how it goes. Do you suppose that he's gone back to the mosque?'
'No,' Nazhin said automatically, and then made a mental grab for the thread of reasoning going on in the back of her head. 'No, he wouldn't - he would go home...'
The tattered remains of the drapes in the windows caught her eye; they were green, a bright green that stood out oddly with the inn's dark decor. She took hold of them, heedless of the glass dust in the folds, and followed the thread down.
He would go home, of course; he had to wash his hands, think matters over. But his family will be there, she thought, recalling Sarang's profile when he had joined the branch - his father and two of his uncles were at sea, but he still had his mother, a grandmother, two grandfathers, aunts, younger sisters and brothers... He can't face them, not for long. He'll go home but he won't stay...
'Nazhin? Are you quite all right?'
'I thought you were a poet, Syme,' said Nazhin, shutting her eyes and running her fingers obsessively over the green drapes, drapes the green of spring leaves, the green of Wednesday, 'you ought to know how this works, do be quiet... He can't stay, he'll leave once he cleans up.' But where will he go...
She opened her eyes, saw the green, and said, 'The river - he'll go to the river, down towards the Greenwich Reach and the Isle of Dogs.'
Syme stared at her with wide grey eyes. 'How under heaven do you know that?'
'I don't, Thursday; it is only a line of reasoning,' Nazhin said, and went to grab her coat. 'Stay here and help Bull, I must get there before he does - if he doesn't come I shall come back up to meet you at the shipyards, we will work out where to go from there together.'
'Oh, do be careful, Wednesday!' Gabrielle exclaimed, and threw her arms around Nazhin. 'We shall catch up as quickly as we can, I promise!'
Nazhin patted her shoulder and said, 'Don't rush on my account.' Then she slipped out of the inn's door and disappeared into the crowds.
3. Anarchy in the East End
Wednesday ran down the streets, darting and dodging through swarms of people, and oh how wonderful it felt to be on such a chase again - to be free and alone on the divine hunt, to do the will of the Peace of God (may Your peace descend upon me, o Allah!). Her pace was swift, her footsteps sure, her breathing steady and her heart racing with excitement. She raced down an alley and burst into the High Street just past the East India Docks, and spun around on her toes just once for the joy of it.
Then she stood still, took a few deep breaths, calmed herself. She looked up and down the street for any sign of Sarang, but he had not yet come.
Nazhin crossed the street and went down Prestons to Manchester Road, close to the river but not so close that she would get in the way of the workers at the docks and yards. Her headscarf had slipped loose again, and she re-wrapped it with a little reluctance - it was pleasant to run with her hair down, as she had in the great chase with Sunday, but not appropriate now. She settled in to her watch, keeping an eye on the street and the people; it was time to wait.
She was good at waiting.
Mid-afternoon passed, the light fading towards evening; not daring to leave, Nazhin said her prayer standing and without ablution, swearing that she would make it up on the morrow. With the docks in full swing she could not even hear the call and only guessed at the proper time. Damn Sarang, anyway, where was he - surely he had not gone some other way? And Syme and Bull, they had not come; were they waiting at King Street, or had they left entirely? She looked along the street, searching for Sarang's face; if she missed the evening prayer as well she was just going to explode.
She saw him - there, down the street, hanging on a fence and looking into the Thames without seeing it. He was dressed like any young man of London, in suit and hat and a long scarf against the autumn chill; she might have thought him any young Londoner, save for the haunted look on his face.
Courage, Nazhin thought, and remembered the morning she had gone with the other detectives to face Sunday. That had been terrifying, a desperate sortie against an impossible foe; this was mere child's play, really, nothing to be afraid of.
She walked down the road and leaned against the fence next to him; he jumped a little and looked up, and she said, 'The peace of Allah be upon you, Mohammed Chowdhry Sarang.'
He took a step back from her. 'You - you're head of the branch -'
'Too right I am,' she said - too harshly, and she softened her voice. 'It's been a bit since we saw you round the office, though.'
'And you're not seeing me round there again,' he said, and stood up straight, clearly trying to look impressively defiant. 'I quit! I've got better work to do now...'
'Throwing dynamite,' said Nazhin, and held out her sleeves, still blackened with the smoke from the explosion. 'That's your better work, Sarang? It's a fine thing when a detective stoops to the level of his enemies; the criminals celebrate in the streets when they hear.'
His face lost a bit of color, but he still said, 'It's not - I'm not like that! I - I threw it for the faith, for my people -' His voice was starting to crack. 'You - you don't even know what it's like, I was born here, I went to school here, I know more about bloody English kings and queens than I do about the land of my parents, but they just laugh me off or give me funny looks - ooh, look at the little brown boy who can almost talk proper like us, fancy that, give 'im a shilling or a kick, but I'm not real British, oh no, never that - and it's never going to change unless we make them change! Until we're all equal, without laws, without borders, no stupid queens or kings or presidents to lord themselves all over us -'
Nazhin looked out across the river and said calmly, 'You've got a good point there.'
'- everybody equal as people - what?'
'Don't act thick, Sarang, I know you're not, I hired you,' she said. 'It's a good point and a noble dream you have there. You don't suppose I don't get a lot of funny looks going about in hijab, do you? And the things people would say about my late husband for having converted, and the really damned annoying way they had of never hearing what I said about Islam, only listening when he would rephrase it...' Victoria refusing to let me have Eid off, Gabrielle's absurd fears when we dueled... 'No, I know just what it's like, and something of how you feel. It is how I could get myself recruited as Wednesday on the Anarchist's Council.'
Sarang's jaw dropped. 'You were on the Council? The Council of Days?'
'I was,' Nazhin said, 'and so was our Chief Inspector Litmund herself, and Wilks the actress, and Eva Bull - for a week all the Council members were detectives, and a silly lot of anarchists we made, scaring each other half to death and then finding each other out until - well, we all found each other out in the end, and that was that. But yes, I played the anarchist; you will note, however, that I am not doing so now.'
'Why not?' Sarang demanded. 'Why would you turn your back on us, and spit on your own faith?'
'Because,' Nazhin said crisply, 'there must be someone in the system to look out for us. I cannot change things alone, but I can make sure that due process is followed, that everything is handled fairly. Change itself will come from the people outside the system, the revolutionaries and the protesters and the lawyers who will fight for us - and they must fight for us, no one else will. But the change you want will not come from the anarchists. They have lied to you.'
'They told me the truth!' he protested. 'They want us all to be free - to be equal -'
'The freedom of the grave,' she said, 'the equality of dirt and worms! Do not mistake them, Sarang; it is not freedom they want for all humans, but death. Their philosophy is not Buddhist or Christian or our own philosophy, not even scientific, it is nothing - nothing for everything.' Nazhin softened her voice again, coaxing. 'That isn't what you want, Mohammed. You were made for better things than this.'
He put his head in his hands, slumping against the fence; he said in a weary and broken voice, 'But I am already so tired - of them, of fighting them... What more can I do?'
Behind him Nazhin saw Syme and Bull, standing together holding hands, looking anxious - how they could have found her she couldn't guess, but she was glad to see them, anyway, and their fingers woven together for comfort; she held up a hand to stop them coming closer and interfering. She looked beyond them to the sky and thought of Sunday in her silver robes, the setting sun, the worn-away moon and the nearing end of the month.
She held her hand out to him and smiled, and said, 'We can pray, and open our fast, and take the rest that we need; everything else let us leave to Allah for now.'
Sarang looked up, and above the dying din of the docks came a muezzin's voice, calling them home.
Original setting created by G. K. Chesterton, and I can obviously take no credit.