The Seven Keys of Balabad Read online

  “Cool. Great,” Silas said. He glanced up at Oliver and smiled briefly, then resumed his assault on the keyboard.

  Silas Finch was almost always typing when Oliver got home, partially because there was always a lot of news in Balabad, and partially because the country was so incredibly far away from the United States that it was always late in the Baladi afternoon when the editors of the New York Courier gathered for their morning meeting to decide which stories were going to go in the paper that day.

  Oliver still couldn't get over the time difference. When he was drinking tea with Mr. Haji or walking around the city with Zee, his old friends back in New York were all sound asleep, and when they were dragging themselves out of bed, he was practically getting ready for dinner. Yankees games in New York started at five a.m. the next day in Balabad.

  Now, that was a scary thought.

  Silas had converted the ground floor of the Finches’ house on Afridi Street into the Courier's Balabad office. The walls were filled with news clippings, photos of top government ministers, and lists of important phone numbers, and notepads lay open everywhere on the chairs and sofa.

  Oliver didn't mind. Coming home was like getting his own CNN report every night, and it was usually a lot more entertaining.

  Oliver walked into the kitchen to grab a soda from the fridge. His mother was seated at the table, poring over a thick book entitled Balabad: A People and Their Pottery.

  Scarlett had a purple pashmina scarf thrown over her shoulder and was wearing a cotton kameez top embroidered with tiny mirrors that were sewn into the fabric in the shape of flowers. The silver bracelets around her wrist jangled as she slowly turned the pages of the book.

  “So, what did you boys do today?” Scarlett asked.

  “Oh, you know. We ended up at Mr. Haji's shop, just like we always do,” Oliver said with a shrug. “He told us some crazy story about his grandfather saving Balabad from starvation. The usual.”

  “Hmm,” Scarlett said.

  Oliver waited a minute to see if his mother was going to say something else, then popped open the soda and walked back into the living room. He grabbed a magazine, plopped down on the sofa, and listened to the clack of his father's keyboard. Silas's foot jiggling was in full swing, and he was mumbling the words as he typed them.

  “What brings you boys to see me today?”

  “… completely vanished … one of the biggest carpets in the world … nobody saw anything.”

  “Sorry,” Silas said. “I'm a little distracted. I've only got half an hour to file this story before the editors call.”

  “Why, what's up?” Oliver asked, putting down his magazine and walking over to his father's desk. Oliver peered over his shoulder and started reading the article on the screen:

  By Silas Finch

  BALABAD CITY, Balabad—Balabad was shaken by twin mysteries Wednes day, when thieves made off with the star- crossed country's most famous carpet, and hours later, its one- legged culture minister vanished without a trace.

  The five- hundred- year- old, fifty-foot- long Sacred Carpet of Agamon was spirited out of a mosque in the northern village of Ghot- e- Bhari overnight Sun day, without so much as one witness seeing anything. Hours later, Culture Minister Aziz Aziz disappeared from his Balabad City office following a breakfast with ministry employees and a photo opportunity with Hugo Schleim, a visiting archaeologist. Aides checking up on the minister found no trace of him, other than the leather slipper the senior government official wore on his left foot, which was placed neatly under his desk.

  The suspicious shoe was apparently still warm, and Baladi police said they were examining it for possible clues.

  As Silas typed, Oliver read on. He had never heard of the Sacred Carpet of Agamon, but it sounded important. According to the article, it was incredibly beautiful and had seven sides of exactly equal dimensions.

  “How in the world did they steal it?” Oliver mumbled.

  Silas glanced up at him and shook his head.

  “Beats me,” he said. “It would have taken at least ten men to carry it. But a guard at the mosque said he didn't see anybody enter or leave the place all night.”

  “Pretty weird about the minister, too,” Oliver said.

  “Well, yeah, Aziz Aziz is another puzzle,” Silas said. “I mean, how could a one- legged man vanish from a big government building without any of his assistants seeing him leave? I think he must have been kidnapped, though there was no sign of a struggle.”

  “Aziz Aziz has disappeared?” said Scarlett, who had popped in from the kitchen. “My gosh, I just went to see him a couple of days ago.”

  “You did?” said Oliver.

  “Yeah,” said Scarlett. “To complain, actually.”

  “What about?” Silas asked, looking up from his keyboard.

  “On Monday, when I got to work, there was a notice posted up saying the government had run out of funds for the museum restoration project and that work was to stop until future notice, on orders from the Culture Ministry,” said Scarlett. “Just like that. The whole building is going to be mothballed for a month!”

  “But why?” said Oliver.

  “That's what I went to see Aziz Aziz about,” his mother replied. “They never mentioned anything to us about budget problems before. Everyone I work with is devastated. We've poured our hearts and souls into that museum.”

  “What did Aziz Aziz say?” Oliver asked.

  “He just smiled at me and said something about how much he appreciated the work we were doing, but that these were circumstances beyond his control,” said Scarlett. “He assured me that we would be up and running again shortly, but, between you and me, I wouldn't trust that guy as far as I could throw him. He seemed like a real slimeball.”

  Silas leaned into the computer and stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth. He jiggled his foot up and down and started to tap away again on the keyboard.

  “Well, darling,” he mumbled. “It looks like he's a missing slimeball now.”

  he heavy iron cover fell against the cobblestones with a thud, and Bahauddin Shah pulled himself up into a narrow alleyway in a forgotten section of the city. He had used a secret exit from the Salt Caverns, one even the king would have had trouble finding.

  Even here, about a mile from the Royal Palace, death was all around.

  A foreign soldier lay moaning against the wall at the end of the alleyway, and a dead horse was slumped over the branch of a fallen tree. Bahauddin could hear the thunder of explosions and the clank of swords in the distance, and the screams of those who could not run fast enough to get out of the way.

  He glanced up at the sky. The air was so thick with smoke that for a moment he panicked, thinking that night had already fallen and that everything would be lost. But he soon found the fading glow of the sun, setting low over the rubble of a smoldering house.

  There was still a little time. The princes would be waiting for him.

  Bahauddin lay in the alleyway and listened as the sounds of warfare slowly receded. When he was sure the fighting had passed several streets away, he got up, jogged to the end of the alley, and peered out at the street in front of him. It had been a teeming marketplace just hours earlier, but it was a graveyard now.

  Fruit stalls were smashed, horse carts were overturned, and shopping bags lay hastily discarded on the ground. A stream of blood trickled through the cracks in the cobblestone, winding its way slowly past a pair of smashed shoes.

  Bahauddin dropped to his knee and let out a short gasp, halfway between a whisper and a wail. It was the sound of someone who had seen everything in life but was still not prepared for this. He looked down at his hands and was surprised to see that they were shaking violently.

  “Why do you have to be so frail?” Bahauddin scolded himself. “Be tough.”

  He held one hand against his chest, balled the other into a fist, and squeezed his eyes shut, until finally the trembling stopped.

  “You are an old lion,” Bahau
ddin told himself. “And you have God on your side.”

  Bahauddin took a deep breath and opened his eyes.

  He looked right, then left down the street. When he was sure the coast was clear, he gritted his teeth and sprinted across.

  Bahauddin reached the other side of the ruined bazaar and pressed himself against the wall of one of the stores.

  He inched his way along the street for a couple of hundred yards until he reached a tea shop, grim, dark, and abandoned. The front door was hanging off its hinges, and the panes in the front window had been smashed.

  Bahauddin stepped gingerly over the threshold and into the dim interior of the tea shop. In the fading daylight, he could make out red pillows propped against the side of the room and coarse carpets hanging from the walls. Teapots, cups, and trays lay about in small circles, just where the fleeing patrons must have left them.

  Bahauddin wondered what must have become of Mohammed Gul, the shop's tubby owner and his own youngest brother, who could always be counted on for a laugh as he served pots of sweet green tea. Bahauddin muttered a short prayer that God had given him the strength to get away before it was too late.

  Bahauddin felt his way deeper into the shop. He stood in the center of the room in the gathering darkness, peering into the shadows.

  “Your Highnesses?” Bahauddin whispered, but there was no reply.

  He raised his voice.

  “Your Highnesses!” he said. Not a footstep, not a flutter, not a breath came back to him from the gloom.

  Where in God's name were the princes? Had some tragedy befallen all seven of Agamon's sons? It was unthinkable.

  Or perhaps he had come too late. Had they been forced to flee, or perhaps been captured?

  Bahauddin's heart began to pound in his throat, his knees buckled, and he sank to the floor. All was lost. After his long journey, there was nothing left to do but die right here in this ruined tea shop, not at the hands of any invader but of a shattered heart. He was so tired that for a moment the thought was almost comforting.

  For the first time since he had bid farewell to his family and the king early that morning, Bahauddin felt tears welling up in his eyes.

  Bahauddin Shah, into whose hands the king had entrusted the safety of the nation's greatest treasure, bowed his head in the darkness and cried.

  Suddenly, he heard a tiny sound from the very back of the room, no louder than the turning of a screw.

  Bahauddin looked up with a start and squinted into the shadows. As he stared, he thought he saw something move in the darkness.

  “Who goes there?” he whispered breathlessly, and this time a voice answered back.

  “Tell us your name,” came a fierce whisper.

  If he was going to die, Bahauddin thought, he would rather do it with honor. His killer would know exactly who he was and that he had not been afraid.

  “I am Bahauddin Shah, patriarch of the Shah clan and loyal subject of King Agamon the Great,” Bahauddin said proudly, rising slowly to his feet.

  There was a long pause.

  Bahauddin felt for the sheath of his dagger, which hung from his waist right next to the keys.

  There was a swish of cloth and a sudden glow of light as someone pulled a lantern out from under the folds of his clothes. Seven looming figures leapt out of the gloom.

  Bahauddin held his hand to his face in surprise. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light. When he took his hand away, he gasped.

  Standing before him were seven young men cloaked in peasants’ robes, their faces hidden in the shadows.

  “We thank God that you have made it,” one of them said, pulling back his hood.

  One by one, the princes of Balabad revealed themselves. The sons of Agamon were grim- faced and serious, but their eyes sparkled with youth.

  Bahauddin Shah dropped to his knees and wept, this time not out of anguish at all the destruction he had seen that day but out of joy at the sight of Balabad's future before him.

  There was still a little time. The princes would be waiting for him.

  He pulled the keys from his waist and flung them onto the floor before him.

  he Baladi summer was always hot, but for some reason this year's version was particularly brutal. When the wind kicked up, it was like having the world's largest blow- dryer pointed straight at your face. When the breeze died down, it was much, much worse.

  Oliver couldn't understand why people in such a mind-bogglingly awful climate would choose to wear so many clothes. No matter how hot it was, Baladis remained covered from head to toe. Oliver longed to pull off his T-shirt and tie it around his head like a giant sweatband, the way he used to do in sunbaked Yankee Stadium.

  But that was not an option here.

  The best Oliver could hope for in Balabad was a seat on the floor at Mr. Haji's shop, as close to the carpet salesman's electric fan as he could get. When it was this hot, the fan just pushed the air from one corner of the room to the other, but it did scare off some of the flies.

  When Oliver got to the shop, he found Mr. Haji seated on the floor with his legs crossed and a look of deep concern on his face.

  On the floor in front of him was a Baladi- language newspaper, upon which Mr. Haji was focusing all of his attention. Every time the fan whooshed across the room, it blew the newspaper pages up, but the carpet salesman was too deep in thought to notice that.

  The old man was holding a string of amber prayer beads, turning them over slowly as he read. In Islam, the beads are traditionally used to keep count of how many times one has recited a prayer, but Mr. Haji often rolled them over in his hand even when he wasn't praying, just to have something to do with his fingers.

  Oliver stood in the threshold of the shop for some time before Mr. Haji became aware of his presence. He looked up slowly, as if emerging from another world.

  “My dear boy,” the old man said. “Come in. Come in. I am in need of some company on this very sad day. You've heard about the terrible theft, I presume?”

  “You mean the carpet?” Oliver asked. “Yeah, my dad had to write about it last night.”

  “Of course he did,” Mr. Haji said. “I imagine the whole world knows about Balabad's shame by now. That we are scoundrels and cheats.”

  “Well, I don't think he put it that way in the story,” Oliver protested.

  “Hmm, well, he should have,” Mr. Haji grumbled. “Any culture that cannot protect its own history is not worth a single rupee, as far as I am concerned.”

  “Sounds like it was one humongous carpet,” Oliver said. “I didn't know they made them that big.”

  Mr. Haji stared at Oliver for a long time. There was something in his face that Oliver had never seen before. He looked older, as if his eyes were seeing more than what was in the room.

  “The Sacred Carpet of Agamon was one of a kind,” Mr. Haji said grimly. “It was irreplaceable. These people have entered a place nobody should have entered and taken something too precious for any one man to own. Even thieves must have some honor, but what they have done cannot be forgiven.”

  “I think you are being a little hard on your countrymen. It's not like everyone is responsible,” Oliver said, hoping to lighten the mood.

  “Oh no. I disagree,” said the carpet man, wagging his finger in the air. “We must all share in this shame. It is a dishonor to us all. Don't take this the wrong way, Oliver, but I don't expect you to understand, you being an American. Things are quite different here.”

  Oliver tried not to take it the wrong way, but he had to admit his feelings were a little hurt.

  “It's just a carpet,” Oliver mumbled, throwing himself down on the floor in front of the old man.

  “It's hardly that,” came a voice from behind him. It was Zee.

  “Sorry I'm late, gentlemen,” he said, flipping up his sunglasses and making his way, slowly, across the room.

  He leaned down and embraced Mr. Haji in the traditional Baladi way, pressing his right shoulder against the carp
et salesman's heart. Then he clasped Oliver's hand in the Western style so that their palms made a smacking sound and their thumbs locked.

  “Oliver, after six months in Balabad, you still have so much to learn. I blame myself,” Zee said, placing both his hands on his chest. “The Sacred Carpet of Agamon is one of Balabad's most important treasures. It is five hundred years old and was made using wool taken exclusively from the underbellies of the finest sheep in the land, which were each sheared only once, when their coats were softest. It is most definitely not just a carpet.”

  “Wow,” Oliver agreed. “That's a lot of sheep.”

  With Zee's English accent and expensive clothes, Oliver often forgot he was a Baladi. As he rattled off his knowledge of King Agamon, Oliver felt just a little bit left out.

  “The Sacred Carpet is the most complicated carpet ever made,” Zee continued. “The patterns have never been replicated, and no one alive knows what they mean. Some say the design was inspired by God. Others say the knots of the carpet hold the king's deepest secrets. Many people have spent their lives trying to decipher it, but nobody has figured it out yet, and now it looks like nobody ever will. Am I right, Mr. Haji?”

  The carpet salesman fumbled his prayer beads as he listened to Zee's account. Now he clasped them in his hand and closed it in a fist. He pointed an approving finger in Zee's direction.

  “You know your country's history very well, but there are many things you cannot know, my young friend. That carpet was even more important than you realize,” Mr. Haji said. “I feel certain that bad times are ahead. Dark clouds are forming on the horizon.”

  Oliver and Zee waited for Mr. Haji to explain what he meant, but the old man just sat there.

  Zee walked over to a little fridge behind the counter and got out three bottles of 7UP, taking his time as he popped them open. He sauntered back over and handed one each to Oliver and Mr. Haji.