This Djinn is Going Places!

Some Djinn were enslaved by Solomon the wise to build the Temple.

Some Djinn saw how things were going, did not want to surrender their freedom, and high-tailed it out to the desert places.

And some of them travel the earth searching for those who remember the name of God.

But the hero of our story, Biwaras, did none of these things. He worked for a small office of Djinn who granted wishes. His feelings towards human beings was — ambivalent. On the one hand he could not help but respect the human capacity for Free Will, which made them in some respect, resemble the infinite abysses contained within the subjectivity of the Most Merciful. But on the other hand they were often a Bit Much — they were greedy, and selfish, and needed to be taught a lesson about where they were in the great scheme of things. They were not the star of the show — they were not the All Merciful — although they resembled Him.

For example.

Sarah Esmond Jones was the best seller for her group and was rewarded with a vacation to an exotic clime where upon a day trip to the abandoned tomb of a mighty monarch she came across a gem inscribed with runes, from the days of magic, and pocketed it. In dreams her soul was vouchsafed the secret that this gem entitled her to a boon from a djinn, the djinn being — you guessed it — Biwaras. Upon return to New York City Jones found herself in a romantic triangle in which she was over-matched (cf. D. Parton, “Jolene”) and in order to make her battle for the heart of her beloved (Matt) more equal she wished to have an intoxicating smell. As she and Matt drove to the Hamptons he became intoxicated by Sarah’s smell, his BAC reached .28, he crashed the car and let’s just say “He ain’t Pretty No More.”

Biswaras received a promotion. “Well done granting that wish ironically” said his boss the entity Kabkab.

Sarah traveled the Earth and became a mendicant. Whenever she became too close to people they became foolish, intoxicated by her fragrance. She could not be driven in a car or airplane, and she was shunned by the sober. In a souk in Cairo her eye fell upon a medallion. With her last Bitcoin she purchased it. Lightning does struck twice in the same place. It was a medallion that enabled the possessor to extract a boon from Biswaras. She learned as such that night in dream land while her body remained in the Cairo Holiday Inn. When she woke up she went out on the balcony and looked at the Moon Above the Sphinx and said “I want a life that is good. Unironically.”

Biswaras conclaved with Kabkab. “Do I just give her a good life?”

“No. Just kill her.”

“That seems ironic. She wants something good and I kill her.”

“Yeah it’s ironic. The good life for humans is a brief one b/c less suffering. Crack a book.”

“Yes I got that. But that is first level. What about her wish that it be both good and NOT ironic?”

“The ironic thing is that she asked it to be unironic and it was ironic.”

“That seems like bullshit. That seems like “ironic” is just an excuse for fucking over humans.”

“Do I look like a professor of literature?”

“A little.”

“Fine mister smarty pants — you tell me whether the best response to a request for an absence of irony is irony, or a lack of irony? Both of them seem wanting. An absence of irony is simply giving the human what she asks for. Where’s the wit in that? While irony when irony is on the table seems the opposite of unexpected. And where’s the wit in that?”

Biswaras pondered.

Millions of universes below Sarah found her life was good in all ways that she could imagine except one — it was no longer ironic. And, ironically, this provided a mouse of disquiet that nibbled at her treasures of satisfaction. And, even more ironically, her life was even better than it would have been, had it not been ironic. Or not ironic? Who could tell.

Up in the heaven of Djinns, exhausted from working out the logic of all this in order to grant Sarah her wish, Biswaras tendered his resignation to the Demon King Kabkab, afflicter of Man.

If he was going to have to work this hard he concluded, he might as well build the third Temple.