{"id":3933,"date":"2022-05-13T11:42:56","date_gmt":"2022-05-13T11:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3933"},"modified":"2022-08-10T18:39:04","modified_gmt":"2022-08-10T18:39:04","slug":"the-bahrain-underground-bazaar-by-nadia-afifi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3933","title":{"rendered":"The Bahrain Underground Bazaar by Nadia Afifi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Bahrain Underground Bazaar<\/em><\/strong> by Nadia Afifi (F&SF<\/em>, November\/December 2020) opens with Mansour, a woman with terminal cancer, going to the Bahrain Underground Bazaar. There she experiences the deaths of others (these have been harvested by an internet like brain implant called a NeuroLync):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Underground Bazaar\u2019s virtual immersion chambers, I\u2019ve experienced many anonymous souls\u2019 final moments. Through them, I\u2019ve drowned, been strangled, shot in the mouth, and suffered a heart attack. And I do mean suffer \u2014 the heart attack was one of the worst. I try on deaths like T-shirts. Violent ones and peaceful passings. Murders, suicides, and accidents. All practice for the real thing.
The room tilts and my vision blurs momentarily. Dizzy, I press my hands, bruised from chemo drips, into the counter to steady myself. The tumor wedged between my skull and brain likes to assert itself at random moments. A burst of vision trouble, spasms of pain or nausea. I imagine shrinking it down, but even that won\u2019t matter now. It\u2019s in my blood and bones. The only thing it\u2019s left me so far, ironically, is my mind. I\u2019m still sharp enough to make my own decisions. And I\u2019ve decided one thing \u2014 I\u2019ll die on my terms, before cancer takes that last bit of power from me.  pp. 7-8<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

On this occasion she experiences the death of a woman who is leading a donkey down a cliff path, and who either jumps or slips to her death (there is a death-wish moment at the edge, but it is unclear whether the fall is intentional). Then, after the blackness that normally denotes death, Mansour experiences something else:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then nothing. The world is dark and soundless. Free of pain, or of any feeling at all. And then voices.
The darkness is softened by a strange awareness. I sense, rather than see, my surroundings. My own mangled body spread across a rock. Dry plants and a gravel path nearby. Muted screams from above. I know, somehow, that my companions are running down the path now, toward me. Be careful, I want to cry out. Don\u2019t fall. They want to help me. Don\u2019t they know I\u2019m dead?
But if I\u2019m dead, why am I still here? I\u2019m not in complete oblivion and I\u2019m also not going toward a light. I\u2019m sinking backward into something, a deep pool of nothing, but a feeling of warmth surrounds me, enveloping me like a blanket on a cold night. I have no body now, I\u2019m a ball of light, floating toward a bigger light behind me. I know it\u2019s there without seeing it. It is bliss and beauty, peace and kindness, and all that remains is to join it.  pp. 10-11<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is the seed for the story\u2019s further developments, but Mansour\u2019s desire to find out more about the woman and that post-death experience is derailed when she is intercepted by her concerned daughter-in-law outside the bazaar (\u201cYou don\u2019t need dark thoughts \u2014 you\u2019ll beat this by staying positive.\u201d). Later that evening Mansour\u2019s son Firaz also expresses his worry, but this doesn\u2019t stop her going back to the bazaar the next day and asking the proprietor to show her the dead woman\u2019s \u201chighlights reel\u201d. Mansour discovers that the women was a Bedouin mother who lived a largely unremarkable life, and then, even though Mansour doesn\u2019t feel any particular connection with her, she impulsively buys a train ticket to Petra in Jordan, the area where the woman lived.
On her arrival in Petra (spoiler) Mansour hires a teenager with a donkey to take her to see the tourist sights. First they go to the nearby Treasury, and then she asks to be taken up the cliff-edge path to the Monastery:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo people ever fall?\u201d
Rami\u2019s eyes are trained ahead, but I catch the tightness in his jawline.
\u201cIt\u2019s rare, ma\u2019am. Don\u2019t worry.\u201d
My skin prickles. His voice carries a familiar strain, the sound of a battle between what one wants to say and what one should say. Does he know my old woman? Has he heard the story?
While I craft my next question, the donkey turns another corner and my stomach lurches. We\u2019re at the same spot where she fell. I recognize the curve of the trail, the small bush protruding into its path. I lean forward, trying to peer down the cliff.
\u201cCan we stop for a minute?\u201d
\u201cNot a good place to stop, ma\u2019am.\u201d The boy\u2019s voice is firm, tight as a knot, but I slide off the saddle and walk to the ledge.
Wind, warm under the peak sun, attacks my thinning hair. I step closer to the edge.
\u201cPlease, sayida<\/em>!\u201d
Switching to Arabic. I must really be stressing the boy. But I can\u2019t pull back now.
Another step, and I look down. My stomach clenches. It\u2019s there \u2014 the boulder that broke her fall. It\u2019s free of blood and gore, presumably washed clean a long time ago, but I can remember the scene as it once was, when a woman died and left her body, a witness to her own demise.
But when I lean further, my body turns rigid. I\u2019m a rock myself, welded in place. I won\u2019t jump. I can\u2019t. I know this with a cold, brutal certainty that knocks the air from my lungs. I\u2019m terrified of the fall. Every second feels like cool water on a parched throat. I could stand here for hours and nothing would change.  pp. 20-21<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

They continue up the mountain to the Monastery. There they eat and drink, and Mansour discovers that the boy is the grandson of the woman who fell to her death. She asks him about his grandmother, and listens to what he has to say, but does not tell him about the recording of her death. Then she asks him to use his NeuroLync to call her son (she has left her phone behind so Firaz and her daughter-in-law cannot track her).
The last part of the story sees her reconciled with Firaz, and her approaching death (or at least to the extent anyone can be).
I liked this story quite a bit. Afifi\u2019s writing style is concise but conjures up a believable world and characters\u2014and there is a plot here too, even though it is essentially a mainstream one (one slight quibble is that the writer went for a mainstream ending\u2014reconcilement, acceptance\u2014rather than doing a transcendent call-back to the post-death experience). If the ending had been stronger (i.e. melded the mainstream and SFnal endings), I would have probably given this four stars.
A writer to watch, I think (I had the rare impulse to check out her novel1<\/sup>), and a story that would probably appeal to Ray Nayler fans.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 7,600 words.

1. The Sentient<\/a><\/em>, 2020, first in the \u201cCosmic\u201d series (the next one, Emergent<\/em>, is due any day now). \u201cThe race to stop the first human clones uncovers a dark secret.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bahrain Underground Bazaar by Nadia Afifi (F&SF, November\/December 2020) opens with Mansour, a woman with terminal cancer, going to the Bahrain Underground Bazaar. There she experiences the deaths of others (these have been harvested by an internet like brain implant called a NeuroLync): In the Underground Bazaar\u2019s virtual immersion chambers, I\u2019ve experienced many anonymous […]<\/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":[933],"tags":[296,217,937,25,935,934,7,936,601],"class_list":["post-3933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nadia-afifi","tag-296","tag-3-5","tag-cancer","tag-fsf","tag-life-recordings","tag-nadia-afifi","tag-novelette","tag-post-death-experience","tag-virtual-reality"],"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\/3933","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=3933"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5276,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3933\/revisions\/5276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}