Budayeen Nights Read Free Page B

thee and that which was revealed before thee, how they would go for judgment in their disputes to false deities when they have been ordered to abjure them? Satan would lead them all astray.’”
    Heisenberg laughed heartily. “Your Allah isn’t just talking about Gottingen there,” he said. “He’s got Bohr in mind, too, and Einstein in Berlin.”
    Jehan frowned at his impiety. It was the irreverence and ignorant ridicule of the kafir, the unbeliever. She wondered if the old religion that had never truly had any claim on her was yet still part of her. She wondered how she’d feel after all these years, walking the narrow, crowded, clangorous ways of the Budayeen again. “You mustn’t speak that way,” she said at last.
    “Hmm?” said Heisenberg. He had already forgotten what he’d said to her.
    “Look out there,” said Jehan. “What do you see?”
    “The ocean,” said Heisenberg. “Waves.”
    “Allah created those waves. What do you know about that?”
    “I could determine their frequency,” said the scientist. “I could measure their amplitude.”
    “Measure!” cried Jehan. Her own long years of scientific study were suddenly overshadowed by an imagined insult to her heritage. “Look here,” she demanded. “A handful of sand. Allah created this sand. What do you know about it?”
    Heisenberg couldn’t see what Jehan was trying to tell him. “With the proper instruments,” he said, a little afraid of offending her, “in the proper setting, I could take any single grain of sand and tell you—“His words broke off suddenly. He got to his feet slowly, like an old man. He looked first at the sea, then down at the shore, then back out at the water. “Waves,” he murmured, “particles, it makes no difference. All that counts is what we can actually measure. We can’t measure Bohr’s orbits, because they don’t really exist ! So the spectral lines we see are caused by transitions between two states. Pairs of states, yes; but that will mean an entirely new form of mathematical expression just to describe them, referencing tables listing every possible—“
    “Werner.” Jehan knew that he was now lost to her.
    “Just the computations alone will take days, if not weeks.”
    “Werner, listen to me. This island is so small, you can throw a stone from one end to the other. I’m not going to sit on this freezing beach or up on your bleak and dreary cliff while you make your brilliant breakthrough, whatever it is. I’m saying goodbye.”
    “What? Jehan?” Heisenberg blinked and returned to the tangible world.
    She couldn’t face him any longer. She was pouring one handful of sand through the fingers of her other hand. It came suddenly to her mind then: If you had no water to perform the necessary ablution before prayer in the direction of Makkah, you were permitted to wash with clean sand instead. She began to weep. She couldn’t hear what Heisenberg was saying to her—if indeed he was.
     

    It was a couple hours later in the alley now, and it was getting even colder. Jehan wrapped herself in her robe and paced back and forth. She’d had visions of this particular night for four years, glimpses of the possible ways that it might conclude. Sometimes the young man saw her in the alley shortly after dawn, sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes she killed him, sometimes she didn’t. And, of course, there was the open question of whether her actions would lead to her freedom or to her execution.
    When she’d had the first vision, she hadn’t known what was happening or what she was seeing. She knew only the fear and the pain and the terror. The boy threw her roughly to the ground, ripped her clothing, and raped her. Then the vision passed. Jehan told no one about it; her family would have thought her insane. About three months later, the vision returned; only this time it was different in subtle ways. She was in the alley as before, but this time she smiled and gestured to the boy, inviting him.