The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years
Akbar Manzil, a mansion neglected and abandoned, is seeing new life with a motley crew of tenants taking up residence in its assorted rooms and wandering its grounds of crumbling walls, “mournful” fountains, and overgrown gardens. Fifteen-year-old Sana and her father, Bilal Malek, arrive in Durban, South Africa to this mysterious mansion. Her furtive new home fascinates her, and the odd, eccentric tenants welcome her – Fancy, Pinky, Razia Bibi, Zuleika, the Doctor, and the parrot Mr. Patel. Unknown to Sana, a djinn has lived a hundred years in the deserted east wing, where a room, locked for 82 years, is waiting to be discovered. Movement in the corner of Sana’s eye – is it just a shadow? Dust motes floating in the dim halls? “The quietness inside is a crouching thing ready to spring.” There are secrets waiting for her to discover. “The garden is better at keeping secrets than the house. Whereas the house has grown still and slow and occasionally drops a piece of history from the rafters…”
When Sana discovers the key to the locked room, she enters a world lost in time. Here she discovers Meena’s diary. In 1919 Akbar Ali Khan arrives in Africa from Bombay with his wife Jahanara Begum, to start his own sugar mill and build his fabulous mansion. His life is complete when he falls deeply in love with Meena, his factory worker. He takes her as his second wife, which brings happiness and tragedy into his life. The reader is pulled into this fascinating time.
In prose rich with description that animates the inanimate, Khan gives life to the mansion and its objects as they take on features of living beings. It is the djinn, weeping and mournful, that fascinates and enthralls as we discover why its all-consuming grief infuses the mansion with its sorrow.
