{"id":3464,"date":"2022-04-11T13:31:39","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T13:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3464"},"modified":"2022-04-15T11:53:07","modified_gmt":"2022-04-15T11:53:07","slug":"muallim-by-ray-nayler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3464","title":{"rendered":"Muallim by Ray Nayler"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Muallim <\/em><\/strong>by Ray Nayler (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, November-December 2021) begins with Irada, the blacksmith of an Azerbaijani village, repairing Muallim, the robot schoolteacher:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to have to remove your whole chest plate, Muallim. It will take some work to repair. In the meantime, I can trade it out for your spare chest plate. I still have it here in the shop. But I haven\u2019t had time to fix it. That one is more battered than this one is.\u201d
\u201cHow long will it take to fix these dents. An hour?\u201d Muallim asked.
\u201cNo. More like an afternoon. I can\u2019t do it now. Can you come back after school? You can wait in the house. You can help my father with his Ketshmits grammar. You know how he loves that.\u201d
\u201cI am scheduled to chop wood for Mrs. Hasanova.\u201d
\u201cTell her you will chop wood tomorrow.\u201d
She watched Muallim consider this. They must have programmed this gesture into the robot, the way it tilted its watering can of a head to the side and slightly down, just like a human.
\u201cYes,\u201d Muallim said, \u201cI think that will work. I will stop by Mrs. Hasanova\u2019s and tell her I will come tomorrow.\u201d  p. 36<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This opening passage contains a number of hints about various happenings that occur in the story that follows, which alternates between the point of view of Irada the blacksmith, Muallim the robot, and Maarja, an NGO worker who is writing a report on the educational efficacy of the robot in this remote location. In the ensuing narrative we learn that Muallim is being used inappropriately (the wood chopping referenced above, which is causing undue wear and tear); that Muallim is stoned by the village children when it goes to cajole them to go to school; and that the village is generally quite a dysfunctional place where the robot (when it isn\u2019t being attacked by an aggressive rooster) is seemingly making little progress. We also see various aspects of village life, mostly centred on Irada and her widowed and one-armed Mayor father.
When Maarja finally finishes her report it becomes clear that Muallim is going to be taken from the village but, before this happens, she gets an urgent message from one of the children that something has happened to robot. She goes to a local ravine and sees it smashed to pieces two hundred meters below, presumably an act of vandalism.
After Maarja leaves (spoiler) it becomes apparent that the locals have faked Muallim\u2019s destruction using the removed chest-plate (see the passage above) and various scrap metal so they can keep the robot in the village.
This has some nice local colour, but it\u2019s essentially a well done \u201cyokels put one over on the city folks\u201d piece.
*** (Good). 4,950 words. Story link<\/a>.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Muallim by Ray Nayler (Asimov\u2019s SF, November-December 2021) begins with Irada, the blacksmith of an Azerbaijani village, repairing Muallim, the robot schoolteacher: \u201cI\u2019m going to have to remove your whole chest plate, Muallim. It will take some work to repair. In the meantime, I can trade it out for your spare chest plate. I still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[50,24,4,148,841,12],"class_list":["post-3464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ray-nayler","tag-50","tag-3-2","tag-asimovs-sf","tag-ray-nayler","tag-robot-teacher","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3464"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3563,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3464\/revisions\/3563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}