Jamal caught the clank-clank of running soldiers. He leaned out to look and make sure. Then he whistled to his dog and was gone, so swiftly and quietly that Abdullah could only admire. Jamal had even spared time to move the meat off the grill so that it would not burn. All the soldiers were going to find here was a caldron of half-boiled squid.

Abdullah whispered to the carpet. “To the desert. Fast!”

The carpet was off at once, with its usual sideways rush. Abdullah thought he certainly would have been thrown off it but for the weight of his chains, which caused the carpet to bulge downward in the center, rather like a hammock. And speed was necessary. The soldiers shouted behind him. There were some loud bangs. For a few instants two bullets and a crossbow bolt carved the blue sky beside the carpet and then fell behind. The carpet hurtled on, across roofs, over walls, beside towers, and then skimming palm trees and market gardens. Finally it shot forth into hot gray emptiness, shimmering white and yellow under a huge bowl of sky, where Abdullah’s chains began to grow uncomfortably warm.

The rushing of air stopped. Abdullah raised his head and saw Zanzib as a surprisingly small clump of towers on the horizon. The carpet sailed slowly past a person riding a camel, who turned his well-veiled face to watch. It began to sink toward the sand. At this the person on the camel turned his camel, too, and urged it into a trot after the carpet. Abdullah could almost see him thinking gleefully that here was his chance to get his hands on a genuine, working magic carpet, and its owner in chains and in no position to resist him.

“Up, up!” he almost shrieked at the carpet. “Fly north!”

The carpet lumbered up into the air again. Annoyance and reluctance breathed from every thread of it. It turned in a heavy half circle and sailed gently northward at walking pace. The person on the camel cut across the middle of the half circle and came on at a gallop. Since the carpet was only about nine feet in the air, it was a sitting target for someone on a galloping camel.