11 - Rohan
W hile Rohan bounded after Jafar, he thought about those qatayef again, mostly to keep his mind preoccupied, but also because he truly couldn’t stop thinking about them. The pistachios were crunchy, the ashta cream thick and dreamy with just the right sweetness, the coned pancakes soft and fluffy. Food had a way of settling his nerves. This place did, too.
The beauty and wonder and magnitude of this kingdom had given him the confidence to act like his brother, to be more brazen and bold. But he’d still gone and ruined it.
“This is going great, isn’t it?” Iago simply could not let Rohan linger in his own thoughts. It was impossible enough that he was a talking parrot, but to talk more than the average human? Sorcery, really.
They ran, boots beating the sandy ground. The people meandering through the bazaar fled, dispersing like a bag of marbles as Rohan and Jafar neared. A spear slammed into the bench beside them. Rohan yelped.
“What are they, clothes made of gold?” Iago exclaimed.
“This is all your fault, Rohan,” Jafar yelled back, but he was laughing. They wrenched to a halt when they came to a crossroads where throngs of people were pulling carts or children, carrying produce or their own purses.
“Which way do we go?” Rohan asked.
“You were the one studying that map,” Jafar sputtered.
“I—I did,” Rohan stammered out. He shoved the robes under his arm and pulled the map out of his pocket, trying to make sense of it. But his hands were shaking too hard and his brain was in a frenzy as the guards clamored behind them. “Let’s go—”
“Right,” Iago squawked.
Jafar hesitated, and Rohan didn’t know why that made him feel so good about himself. Jafar considered the path to their left, which was darker but seemed linear, and then he looked to the right. “But it’s a maze.”
“And I can guide you two through it,” Iago replied.
Rohan could see his brother considering the parrot’s route. “Jafar, I—”
Iago swerved between them, flapping his wings at eye level with Jafar. “Do you trust me?”
Jafar took a deep breath, and Rohan couldn’t see if he nodded, but he heard his decision loud and clear: “We don’t have time. Iago, lead the way.”
He disappeared into the fray, Iago’s bright red form guiding from above, zooming through date palms and hanging laundry.
Rohan gritted his teeth and followed, trying to stay on Jafar’s heels.
Jafar veered right, between two posts carved with attempts at inspiring inscriptions, and Rohan struggled to keep up. He might have been more muscled, but Jafar was far taller. At a particularly gruff shout, some part of him seized up, thinking of Baba. Thinking of the fire. Thinking of death.
I killed him. Rohan didn’t welcome the thought, but he had no power to stop it.
If only he were more like Jafar. Certain and calm. Confident and fearless and—
“This way!” Iago yelled, leading them through a massive hole in the wall.
—stupidly never questioning that bird even when Rohan wished he would. Jafar toppled an abandoned cart behind them to slow the guards even further. They finally came to a wide alley, clear of people and secluded from view.
Iago landed on a window ledge. “You’re welcome.”
“Well done, Iago,” Jafar panted, and Rohan hated the grin that spread across the parrot’s face. It was also a little terrifying.
Iago rose to the skies and returned, nearly diving into a line of laundry dancing in the dry breeze. “It looks like they’re catching up.”
The alley stretched to either side of them. Jafar looked over at Iago. “Which way?”
Rohan stepped between them with the map in hand and squared his shoulders. “Left.”
“Are you sure?” Jafar asked, eyeing the rubble in their path.
“Yes, Jafar,” Rohan said, not the least bit certain, but he wasn’t going to let the bird take any more credit or any more of Jafar’s attention. Baba was gone, Jafar was all he had left, and if Iago kept at it, Rohan would take care of him, too.
Rohan paused but didn’t have time to dwell on his dark thoughts before Jafar took off to the left, glancing back only to make sure Rohan was keeping up. Iago flew away with a loud harrumph, but Rohan couldn’t have cared less. He and his brother ducked through clothes hung to dry, darted past a man slipping a woman coin, and then meandered through barrels waiting to be toppled.
Until they skidded to a breathless halt.
A dead end.
The alley ended at a building, tall and imposing. There was no way around it.
“There they are!”
And the guards had found them again.
“Well,” Jafar mused. “Too late to go right.”
“Too bad you two can’t fly,” Iago snarked.
Rohan wanted to crush the bird’s skull. He wanted to be swallowed whole by the ground and freed of this embarrassment. He wanted—
“Wait. Jafar! There are plenty of footholds,” Iago called from the sky. “You can make the climb if you hurry.”
The building was lined with windows, worn wooden pegs, deformed stones, and tiny windcatchers. And if they could climb the precarious stack of crates in front of them, they would get halfway up the building.
Jafar turned to Rohan and paused with a wistful smile. “Just like old times, eh?”
Rohan immediately felt a little better. He watched Jafar leap atop the first row of crates, slowly making his way up the teetering pile. Back in their village, the two of them would sometimes scale an old apartment building and share ma’moul. It was a secret treat whenever their father sent them out on errands and Jafar would get the task done in record time, always bartering for a dinar less so he could spend it on the sweet date-filled cookie.
This was a little less leisurely, but at least Rohan wasn’t alone. He paused when he spotted something shiny between two of the crates. He reached for the dull end of it and pulled out a sword.
“Oi!”
Rohan turned at the voice, sword in hand. The guards froze, staring up at him.
“He’s got a sword!” one of them exclaimed.
The others looked as stunned as Rohan before another one of them yelled, “Idiots, so do we!”
They brandished their own swords as one and began running for him. Rohan couldn’t climb with a sword, nor did he have a desire to use such a thing. He chucked it off the crates and hurried after Jafar.
The guards were getting closer, and Jafar was nearing the top.
“Hurry!” Iago shouted.
“Oh, shut it, bird!” Rohan shouted back as he picked up the pace. Splinters in the old crates nicked his skin, and he nearly lost his footing one too many times before he reached the top.
But the tower of crates had already survived one boy and wasn’t eager to sustain another. It groaned in warning and teetered toward the alley, threatening to pull Rohan down, too. With a shout, he jumped to one of the wooden beams, swinging his legs out of reach when a guard tried grabbing him. He swung to another beam with all his weight, then used a windcatcher to climb higher.
The guards were on his tail.
“Faster, Rohan!” Jafar yelled from the top. Rohan leaped to another windcatcher, feet scrambling for purchase in the grooves of the stone.
A hand clamped around his leg before he could pull himself up to the next window ledge. He looked down, head spinning.
A guard was grinning toothily up at him. “I’ve got you now, boy.”
The rest of the guards were crawling up the wall behind him. Rohan threw a glance up, but Jafar was nowhere to be seen. Panic squeezed his lungs, making it hard to breathe. Had Iago convinced Jafar to leave him? Another thought shot through him like ice, unwelcome and unbidden: Had Iago convinced Jafar to leave Baba behind?
No, that was all you, Rohan told himself. He was confused and lost and why was he in his head when he was fighting for his life?
Rohan tried shaking the guard off, but his grip was iron tight. It was hopeless. Rohan was doomed. All for a set of robes he didn’t even want.
Something zoomed past his cheek, hitting the guard on the head with a thwack. Rohan stared, certain he’d imagined it. Even the guard looked just as stunned.
“Take that!” Iago shouted, followed by Jafar’s whoop from the rooftop. He was there, more rocks in hand.
Another one struck the guard. He yelped, his hold loosening enough for Rohan to yank free. He pulled himself up to the next ledge before the guard could grab him again. Sweat was trickling down his back, slickening his grip, but he was almost there. He swung his legs to the side, throwing his arm out to grip the nearest post. The wood, baking in the heat of the sun, scorched his palm, and then Jafar was reaching for him, pulling him up as the guards continued clamoring beneath them.
At last, Rohan was on his own two feet beside Jafar.
“Good?” Jafar asked. The dry breeze ruffled Jafar’s hair and whipped at his clothes, but his eyes were steady on Rohan, attentive and caring.
“Good,” Rohan replied with a nod, even as he wobbled on his feet.
A hand grabbed the edge of the rooftop. The guards were truly relentless for something as trivial as clothes. Rohan and Jafar glanced at one another and took off across the rooftops, leaping from one to the next. Jafar laughed again, and Rohan came alive at the sound.
He wasn’t in danger then; he wasn’t running for his life. They were eight and six years old again, and Jafar would protect him. Rohan found himself giving in to the moment: the wind running through his hair, the freedom of being on top of the world, the glee when they finally lost the guards.
It made him feel as if the past was still possible. Mama, laughing. Baba, brightening at the sound of it. Jafar, spending hours with Rohan.
A family.
For the first time since he’d smelled smoke, he felt hope. Jafar straightened out their new clothes, panting when he ruffled Rohan’s hair like they were still children. Rohan felt, just then, like a stray cat suddenly overwhelmed by attention.
“I did it,” he blurted out on the rooftop. The sun was dropping lower, burning a line of red along the horizon.
Jafar tilted his head at him. “Did what?”
“I killed Baba,” Rohan whispered. “And before him, Mama. I’m cursed, can’t you see?”
Jafar narrowed his eyes, considering him. “You killed Mama when you were six years old? You made her sick enough to cough up blood? Where is this coming from?”
He said nothing about Baba, but then again, Jafar didn’t care much for Baba. Iago settled on Jafar’s shoulder, quietly watching the exchange.
“I— She told us about the genie,” Rohan stuttered, “and then I made wishes, and they came true years later, but—but don’t you understand? She was the cost.”
Jafar smiled. The desert breeze rustled his hair. They were free here, above the world, and Rohan’s emotions felt different, almost outside of him. “You always did like looking for signs. There’s nothing wrong with that, but at some point, you’ll begin creating signs yourself.”
“It’s true,” Iago piped up, and for once, Rohan didn’t immediately sour at his voice.
“So no, you didn’t kill Mama,” Jafar said, crossing the rooftop over to the ladder at the end. “Besides, Mama was too strong to die by a measly six-year-old’s hand.”
Rohan lightened at Jafar’s teasing tone. “Yes. She was.”
“Then there you have it,” Jafar replied. “You’re not cursed.”
Jafar’s words loosened a knot in Rohan’s lungs, but he still didn’t think it was that simple. He felt as if his emotions had trapped him in a maze with no way out. He didn’t know if Jafar was simply placating him, or if he truly believed Rohan had no hand in Mama’s death. It had been so sudden, so immediate, how could Jafar know for certain?
“But what about Baba? The same happened to him,” Rohan ventured.
“The same?” Jafar asked, pausing at the edge of the rooftop.
“I wasn’t there for your mama’s death, but it sounds to me like your baba died a lot more violently,” Iago piped up.
Rohan didn’t know how that was supposed to make him feel better. He hadn’t mentioned specifics when he’d made his wish. He’d been desperate, hurting. As he was now— always .
“Violent, indeed,” Jafar said, and when he faced him, Rohan wished the sun weren’t to his back, stretching shadows over his face, darkening the pools of his eyes. “There are deaths, and there are punishments, Rohan. Now come, we have a big day tomorrow.”
Rohan followed, pretending Jafar’s words hadn’t chilled him to the bone.