The Nebula Awards Showcase 2011 (Nebula Awards Showcase (Paperback)) - Softcover
With this inaugural volume at Tor, the annual Nebula Award collection is reborn as a fiction-only anthology, edited by the incomparable Kevin J. Anderson. This collection of nominees for 2010's Nebula Awards includes all of the prior year's most celebrated stories, and will be published in time for the 2011 Nebula Awards in May, 2011.
2009's award winners, announced in May 2010, include Kage Baker's novella "The Women of Nell Gwynne's," Eugie Foster's novelette "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast," Kij Johnson's short story "Spar," plus Paolo Bacigalupi's novelette, "The Gambler."
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Kevin J. Anderson has written dozens of national bestsellers and has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFX Readers' Choice Award. His critically acclaimed novels include the ambitious space-opera series, The Saga of Seven Suns, as well as The Martian Wars, Captain Nemo, and Hopscotch. He also set the Guinness certified world record for the largest single-author book signing.
HOOVES AND THE HOVEL OF ABDEL JAMEELA
Saladin Ahmed
FROM THE AUTHOR: “Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela” is actually a prosification of a very short poem I wrote years ago. The poem consisted entirely of a single image—an old man somewhere in the medieval Islamic world defying the narrow-minded by declaring his love for a hooved woman. Translating this image into a story, of course, introduced deeper demands in terms of plot and character. These demands eventually led to the story that appears here. Most of the characters’ names, by the way, are vaguely allegorical or otherwise playful—“Abdel Jameela,” for instance, might be roughly translated as “servant (or slave) of beauty.”
As soon as I arrive in the village of Beit Zujaaj I begin to hear the mutters about Abdel Jameela, a strange old man supposedly unconnected to any of the local families. Two days into my stay the villagers fall over one another to share with me the rumors that Abdel Jameela is in fact distantly related to the esteemed Assad clan. By my third day in Beit Zujaaj, several of the Assads, omniscient as “important” families always are in these piles of cottages, have accosted me to deny the malicious whispers. No doubt they are worried about the bad impression such an association might make on me, favorite physicker of the Caliph’s own son.
The latest denial comes from Hajjar al-Assad himself, the middle-aged head of the clan and the sort of half-literate lout that passes for a Shaykh in these parts. Desperate for the approval of the young courtier whom he no doubt privately condemns as an overschooled sodomite, bristle-bearded Shaykh Hajjar has cornered me in the village’s only café—if the sitting room of a qat-chewing old woman can be called a café by anyone other than bumpkins.
I should not be so hard on Beit Zujaaj and its bumpkins. But when I look at the gray rock-heap houses, the withered gray vegetable-yards, and the stuporous gray lives that fill this village, I want to weep for the lost color of Baghdad.
Instead I sit and listen to the Shaykh.
“Abdel Jameela is not of Assad blood, O learned Professor. My grandfather took mercy, as God tells us we must, on the old man’s mother. Seventy-and-some years ago she showed up in Beit Zujaaj, half-dead from traveling and big with child, telling tales—God alone knows if they were true—of her Assad-clan husband, supposedly slain by highwaymen. Abdel Jameela was birthed and raised here, but he has never been of this village.” Shaykh Hajjar scowls. “For decades now—since I was a boy—he has lived up on the hilltop rather than among us. More of a hermit than a villager. And not of Assad blood,” he says again.
I stand up. I can take no more of the man’s unctuous voice and, praise God, I don’t have to.
“Of course, O Shaykh, of course. I understand. Now, if you will excuse me?”
Shaykh Hajjar blinks. He wishes to say more but doesn’t dare. For I have come from the Caliph’s court.
“Yes, Professor. Peace be upon you.” His voice is like a snuffed candle.
“And upon you, peace.” I head for the door as I speak.
The villagers would be less deferential if they knew of my current position at court—or rather, lack of one. The Caliph has sent me to Beit Zujaaj as an insult. I am here as a reminder that the well-read young physicker with the clever wit and impressive skill, whose company the Commander of the Faithful’s own bookish son enjoys, is worth less than the droppings of the Caliph’s favorite falcon. At least when gold and a Persian noble’s beautiful daughter are involved.
For God’s viceroy the Caliph has seen fit to promise my Shireen to another, despite her love for me. Her husband-to-be is older than her father—too ill, the last I heard, to even sign the marriage contract. But as soon as his palsied, liver-spotted hand is hale enough to raise a pen ...
Things would have gone differently were I a wealthy man. Shireen’s father would have heard my proposal happily enough if I’d been able to provide the grand dowry he sought. The Caliph’s son, fond of his brilliant physicker, even asked that Shireen be wedded to me. But the boy’s fondness could only get me so far. The Commander of the Faithful saw no reason to impose a raggedy scholar of a son-in-law on the Persian when a rich old vulture would please the man more. I am, in the Caliph’s eyes, an amusing companion to his son, but one whom the boy will lose like a doll once he grows to love killing and gold-getting more than learning. Certainly I am nothing worth upsetting Shireen’s coin-crazed courtier father over.
For a man is not merely who he is, but what he has. Had I land or caravans I would be a different man—the sort who could compete for Shireen’s hand. But I have only books and instruments and a tiny inheritance, and thus that is all that I am. A man made of books and pittances would be a fool to protest when the Commander of the Faithful told him that his love would soon wed another.
I am a fool.
My outburst in court did not quite cost me my head, but I was sent to Beit Zujaaj “for a time, only, to minister to the villagers as a representative of Our beneficent concern for Our subjects.” And my fiery, tree-climbing Shireen was locked away to await her half-dead suitor’s recovery.
“O Professor! Looks like you might get a chance to see Abdel Jameela for yourself!” Just outside the café, the gravelly voice of Umm Hikma the café-keeper pierces the cool morning air and pulls me out of my reverie. I like old Umm Hikma, with her qat-chewer’s irascibility and her blacksmithish arms. Beside her is a broad-shouldered man I don’t know. He scuffs the dusty ground with his sandal and speaks to me in a worried stutter.
“P-peace be upon you, O learned Professor. We haven’t yet met. I’m Yousef, the porter.”
“And upon you, peace, O Yousef. A pleasure to meet you.”
“The pleasure’s mine, O Professor. But I am here on behalf of another. To bring you a message. From Abdel Jameela.”
For the first time since arriving in Beit Zujaaj, I am surprised. “A message? For me?”
“Yes, Professor. I am just returned from the old hermit’s hovel, a half-day’s walk from here, on the hilltop. Five, six times a year I bring things to Abdel Jameela, you see. In exchange he gives a few coins, praise God.”
“And where does he get these coins, up there on the hill?” Shaykh Hajjar’s voice spits out the words from the café doorway behind me. I glare and he falls silent.
I turn back to the porter. “What message do you bear, O Yousef? And how does this graybeard know of me?”
Broad-shouldered Yousef looks terrified. The power of the court. “Forgive me, O learned Professor! Abdel Jameela asked what news from the village and I ... I told him that a court physicker was in Beit Zujaaj. He grew excited and told me beg upon his behalf for your aid. He said his wife was horribly ill. He fears she will lose her legs, and perhaps her life.”
“His wife?” I’ve never heard of a married hermit.
Umm Hikma raises her charcoaled eyebrows, chews her qat, and says nothing.
Shaykh Hajjar is more vocal. “No one save God knows where she came from, or how many years she’s been up there. The people have had glimpses only. She doesn’t wear the head scarf that our women wear. She is wrapped all in black cloth from head to toe and mesh-masked like a foreigner. She has spoken to no one. Do you know, O Professor, what the old rascal said to me years ago when I asked why his wife never comes down to the village? He said, ‘She is very religious’! The old dog! Where is it written that a woman can’t speak to other women? Other women who are good Muslims? The old son of a whore! What should his wife fear here? The truth of the matter is—”
“The truth, O Shaykh, is that in this village only your poor wife need live in fear!” Umm Hikma lets out a rockslide chuckle and gives me a conspiratorial wink. Before the Shaykh can sputter out his offended reply, I turn to Yousef again.
“On this visit, did you see Abdel Jameela’s wife?” If he can describe the sick woman, I may be able to make some guesses about her condition. But the porter frowns.
“He does not ask me into his home, O Professor. No one has been asked into his home for thirty years.”
Except for the gifted young physicker from the Caliph’s court. Well, it may prove more interesting than what I’ve seen of Beit Zujaaj thus far. I do have a fondness for hermits. Or, rather, for the idea of hermits. I can’t say that I have ever met one. But as a student I always fantasized that I would one day be a hermit, alone with God and my many books in the barren hills.
That was before I met Shireen.
“There is one thing more,” Yousef says, his broad face looking even more nervous. “He asked that you come alone.”
My heartbeat quickens, though there is no good reason for fear. Surely this is just an old hater-of-men’s surly whim. A physicker deals with such temperamental oddities as often as maladies of the liver or lungs. Still ... “Why does he ask this?”
“He says that his wife is very modest and that in her state the frightening presence of men might worsen her illness.”
Shaykh Hajjar erupts at this. “Bah! Illness! More likely they’ve done something shameful they don’t want the village to know of. Almighty God forbid, maybe they—”
Whatever malicious thing the Shaykh is going to say...
Saladin Ahmed
FROM THE AUTHOR: “Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela” is actually a prosification of a very short poem I wrote years ago. The poem consisted entirely of a single image—an old man somewhere in the medieval Islamic world defying the narrow-minded by declaring his love for a hooved woman. Translating this image into a story, of course, introduced deeper demands in terms of plot and character. These demands eventually led to the story that appears here. Most of the characters’ names, by the way, are vaguely allegorical or otherwise playful—“Abdel Jameela,” for instance, might be roughly translated as “servant (or slave) of beauty.”
As soon as I arrive in the village of Beit Zujaaj I begin to hear the mutters about Abdel Jameela, a strange old man supposedly unconnected to any of the local families. Two days into my stay the villagers fall over one another to share with me the rumors that Abdel Jameela is in fact distantly related to the esteemed Assad clan. By my third day in Beit Zujaaj, several of the Assads, omniscient as “important” families always are in these piles of cottages, have accosted me to deny the malicious whispers. No doubt they are worried about the bad impression such an association might make on me, favorite physicker of the Caliph’s own son.
The latest denial comes from Hajjar al-Assad himself, the middle-aged head of the clan and the sort of half-literate lout that passes for a Shaykh in these parts. Desperate for the approval of the young courtier whom he no doubt privately condemns as an overschooled sodomite, bristle-bearded Shaykh Hajjar has cornered me in the village’s only café—if the sitting room of a qat-chewing old woman can be called a café by anyone other than bumpkins.
I should not be so hard on Beit Zujaaj and its bumpkins. But when I look at the gray rock-heap houses, the withered gray vegetable-yards, and the stuporous gray lives that fill this village, I want to weep for the lost color of Baghdad.
Instead I sit and listen to the Shaykh.
“Abdel Jameela is not of Assad blood, O learned Professor. My grandfather took mercy, as God tells us we must, on the old man’s mother. Seventy-and-some years ago she showed up in Beit Zujaaj, half-dead from traveling and big with child, telling tales—God alone knows if they were true—of her Assad-clan husband, supposedly slain by highwaymen. Abdel Jameela was birthed and raised here, but he has never been of this village.” Shaykh Hajjar scowls. “For decades now—since I was a boy—he has lived up on the hilltop rather than among us. More of a hermit than a villager. And not of Assad blood,” he says again.
I stand up. I can take no more of the man’s unctuous voice and, praise God, I don’t have to.
“Of course, O Shaykh, of course. I understand. Now, if you will excuse me?”
Shaykh Hajjar blinks. He wishes to say more but doesn’t dare. For I have come from the Caliph’s court.
“Yes, Professor. Peace be upon you.” His voice is like a snuffed candle.
“And upon you, peace.” I head for the door as I speak.
The villagers would be less deferential if they knew of my current position at court—or rather, lack of one. The Caliph has sent me to Beit Zujaaj as an insult. I am here as a reminder that the well-read young physicker with the clever wit and impressive skill, whose company the Commander of the Faithful’s own bookish son enjoys, is worth less than the droppings of the Caliph’s favorite falcon. At least when gold and a Persian noble’s beautiful daughter are involved.
For God’s viceroy the Caliph has seen fit to promise my Shireen to another, despite her love for me. Her husband-to-be is older than her father—too ill, the last I heard, to even sign the marriage contract. But as soon as his palsied, liver-spotted hand is hale enough to raise a pen ...
Things would have gone differently were I a wealthy man. Shireen’s father would have heard my proposal happily enough if I’d been able to provide the grand dowry he sought. The Caliph’s son, fond of his brilliant physicker, even asked that Shireen be wedded to me. But the boy’s fondness could only get me so far. The Commander of the Faithful saw no reason to impose a raggedy scholar of a son-in-law on the Persian when a rich old vulture would please the man more. I am, in the Caliph’s eyes, an amusing companion to his son, but one whom the boy will lose like a doll once he grows to love killing and gold-getting more than learning. Certainly I am nothing worth upsetting Shireen’s coin-crazed courtier father over.
For a man is not merely who he is, but what he has. Had I land or caravans I would be a different man—the sort who could compete for Shireen’s hand. But I have only books and instruments and a tiny inheritance, and thus that is all that I am. A man made of books and pittances would be a fool to protest when the Commander of the Faithful told him that his love would soon wed another.
I am a fool.
My outburst in court did not quite cost me my head, but I was sent to Beit Zujaaj “for a time, only, to minister to the villagers as a representative of Our beneficent concern for Our subjects.” And my fiery, tree-climbing Shireen was locked away to await her half-dead suitor’s recovery.
“O Professor! Looks like you might get a chance to see Abdel Jameela for yourself!” Just outside the café, the gravelly voice of Umm Hikma the café-keeper pierces the cool morning air and pulls me out of my reverie. I like old Umm Hikma, with her qat-chewer’s irascibility and her blacksmithish arms. Beside her is a broad-shouldered man I don’t know. He scuffs the dusty ground with his sandal and speaks to me in a worried stutter.
“P-peace be upon you, O learned Professor. We haven’t yet met. I’m Yousef, the porter.”
“And upon you, peace, O Yousef. A pleasure to meet you.”
“The pleasure’s mine, O Professor. But I am here on behalf of another. To bring you a message. From Abdel Jameela.”
For the first time since arriving in Beit Zujaaj, I am surprised. “A message? For me?”
“Yes, Professor. I am just returned from the old hermit’s hovel, a half-day’s walk from here, on the hilltop. Five, six times a year I bring things to Abdel Jameela, you see. In exchange he gives a few coins, praise God.”
“And where does he get these coins, up there on the hill?” Shaykh Hajjar’s voice spits out the words from the café doorway behind me. I glare and he falls silent.
I turn back to the porter. “What message do you bear, O Yousef? And how does this graybeard know of me?”
Broad-shouldered Yousef looks terrified. The power of the court. “Forgive me, O learned Professor! Abdel Jameela asked what news from the village and I ... I told him that a court physicker was in Beit Zujaaj. He grew excited and told me beg upon his behalf for your aid. He said his wife was horribly ill. He fears she will lose her legs, and perhaps her life.”
“His wife?” I’ve never heard of a married hermit.
Umm Hikma raises her charcoaled eyebrows, chews her qat, and says nothing.
Shaykh Hajjar is more vocal. “No one save God knows where she came from, or how many years she’s been up there. The people have had glimpses only. She doesn’t wear the head scarf that our women wear. She is wrapped all in black cloth from head to toe and mesh-masked like a foreigner. She has spoken to no one. Do you know, O Professor, what the old rascal said to me years ago when I asked why his wife never comes down to the village? He said, ‘She is very religious’! The old dog! Where is it written that a woman can’t speak to other women? Other women who are good Muslims? The old son of a whore! What should his wife fear here? The truth of the matter is—”
“The truth, O Shaykh, is that in this village only your poor wife need live in fear!” Umm Hikma lets out a rockslide chuckle and gives me a conspiratorial wink. Before the Shaykh can sputter out his offended reply, I turn to Yousef again.
“On this visit, did you see Abdel Jameela’s wife?” If he can describe the sick woman, I may be able to make some guesses about her condition. But the porter frowns.
“He does not ask me into his home, O Professor. No one has been asked into his home for thirty years.”
Except for the gifted young physicker from the Caliph’s court. Well, it may prove more interesting than what I’ve seen of Beit Zujaaj thus far. I do have a fondness for hermits. Or, rather, for the idea of hermits. I can’t say that I have ever met one. But as a student I always fantasized that I would one day be a hermit, alone with God and my many books in the barren hills.
That was before I met Shireen.
“There is one thing more,” Yousef says, his broad face looking even more nervous. “He asked that you come alone.”
My heartbeat quickens, though there is no good reason for fear. Surely this is just an old hater-of-men’s surly whim. A physicker deals with such temperamental oddities as often as maladies of the liver or lungs. Still ... “Why does he ask this?”
“He says that his wife is very modest and that in her state the frightening presence of men might worsen her illness.”
Shaykh Hajjar erupts at this. “Bah! Illness! More likely they’ve done something shameful they don’t want the village to know of. Almighty God forbid, maybe they—”
Whatever malicious thing the Shaykh is going to say...
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- PublisherTor Books
- Publication date2011
- ISBN 10 0765328429
- ISBN 13 9780765328427
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages412
- EditorKevin J. Anderson
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