There is an easy assumption to be made that Helene Wecker’s The Golem and the Djinni probably offers some kind of “why can’t we all get along” parable for the state of the world today.
Both creatures are rooted in cultures that in our time have become associated with bitter and unresolved, perhaps unresolvable conflict. Djinni – or djinn – are a rarely glimpsed race of entities made of fire whose presence is acknowledged in the Quran, along with mankind and angels. Golem – a less familiar concept here – are brutish creatures of mud from Hebrew mythology, conjured into life using ancient Kabbalistic spells to serve a single master.
So if an Islamic djinni and a Jewish golem can bond in an unlikely friendship in the most difficult of circumstances, then why can’t we have peace in the Middle East? Wecker’s debut novel has nothing to do with contemporary tensions between Islam and Judaism, and everything to do with loneliness, alienation, loss and the need for companionship. In other words, despite the otherworldliness of the protagonists, the human condition.
Ahmad, the djinni, has been trapped for hundreds of years in a copper flask under a magician’s spell. Transported at the turn of the 19th century from Greater Syria to New York by a Maronite refugee, the flask is sent for repair to a metal worker, who inadvertently breaks the spell and suddenly discovers, on his workshop floor, a naked man who can mould metal with his bare hands.
Just a few blocks away, on the Lower East Side, is another melting pot, this time a rapidly swelling community of Jews fleeing the pogroms of eastern Europe. Among them is the golem, later to acquire the name Chava, fashioned so exquisitely by her creator that she resembles a striking young woman.
The golem’s life is already one of tragedy, although she has no concept of such a sensation. Created in the old country as a surrogate wife, her only master dies of a burst appendix on board the steamship that is bringing both to a new life in the New World. Now bereft of purpose, Chava wanders the streets of Manhattan’s transplanted shtetl until she is recognised and rescued by a kindly elderly rabbi.
For Ahmad and Chava, the first challenge is to survive and find their place in this alien world. This is often the immigrant’s tale, but here made all the more difficult by not just having to pass as Americans but also humans.
Both the golem and djinni are in daily, casual peril. Possessed of incredible strength and the ability to sense – and the desire to help – the needs of any passing stranger, the golem can also be destroyed with a single sentence that will return her to clay.
The djinni, bound to human form by an unbreakable iron band placed on his wrist by his ancient jailer, can be destroyed by water but also undone if anyone sees through his external human appearance to his fiery essence.
In time, both creatures make a passable stab at passing for people. Ahmed assists the one person who knows his secret – the Syrian tinsmith who liberated him – and acquires a reputation as a superb craftsman. The golem, posing as a widow, finds work in a bakery, tirelessly creating culinary masterpieces (neither she nor the djinni need sleep) and with an unnatural intuition for customer service that astonishes her employers.
Despite more or less successfully pulling off this trick, the two instantly recognise their otherworldliness after a chance encounter in the street. The friendship that develops is at the core of the novel. There is no hint of romance – neither is capable of such a highly personal emotional engagement – but there is companionship and intimacy of a kind.
It is this – not humanity obviously, maybe spirit? – that drives the novel over almost 500 pages.
Wecker’s background – she is Jewish, her husband Arab-American – informs the narrative but does not dictate it. In its way, this is secular work. Both the golem and djinni are magical creations but live outside the faiths that determine them. Indeed, Ahmad is openly scornful about the existence of God. In a city of millions, both creatures are cut off from everyone but each other.
Towards the end, the golem and the djinni must confront an enemy that threatens to destroy them both. As the sense of impending tragedy that has haunted the narrative from the opening pages threatens to sweep away these creatures of myth, the reader’s only too human hope is that they survive.
James Langton is a senior editor at The National.