Nura and the Immortal Palace

Reminiscent of many fables and stories that send the protagonist into magical places, in her debut novel author M.T. Khan sends Nura from her home in a small town in Pakistan, where the 12-year-old toils from dawn to dusk in a mica mine every single day, to the Sijj Palace Hotel, where everything Nura could possibly want and more is at her fingertips—if she only says yes.

How does Nura come to be in such a place? What happens to her there? And is this glittering palace where she’ll spend the rest of her natural life, and centuries more?

Nura, her mother (Maa), brother Adeel, and two sisters Kinza and Rabia, live in a two-room, dirt-floor hut in Meerabagh, a town located a few kilometers from mines that contain mica. When she was five, Nura’s Baba (father) was killed in a mine collapse. Her Maa works in a sweatshop but earns barely enough to feed the family. So, when she was six, Nura followed her father’s footsteps and went to work at the mines.

Though it’s illegal, many of the mine employees are kids because kids can fit into crevices adults can’t. Few tools are provided for the children to work with, and Nura’s cut and bloody hands show the toll the work takes on her. Maa wants her to quit working and go to school, a nonsensical idea as far as Nura is concerned. Maa can’t pay for school. Besides, who’d want to spend the day with boring books?

Nura is competitive, so competitive her best friend, Faisal, is continually warning her in the stutter that causes others to tease him to not dig so deep because it’s dangerous. She brushes him off. Only by taking chances is she one of the top two workers in the mine. Only by taking chances can she earn enough rupees to pay for the sweet gulab jamuns Mr. Waleed sells from his cart every Tuesday. And only by taking chances is she going to be the one to find the Demon’s Tongue, a legendary treasure that would let her family live in luxury for the rest of their lives. If she works the way Faisal badgers her to, or quits working, she’ll never find that prize.

But the day comes when Maa tells Nura the next day will be her last day in the mines, no argument. For Nura, that means that’s the day she has to find the Demon’s Tongue. What it turns out to be is the day she pushes her luck too far. She digs too deep, the tunnels collapse, and Faisal and three other children are buried in rocks and dirt. The contractors search, but no one finds them.

Grief-stricken, the following day Nura stays at the mine after she’s been told to go home. In her frenzy to save her friend, she digs even deeper and breaks through to a place where the sea is pink, the sky is purple and there’s an island on which sits an unbelievably opulent place called the Sijj Palace Hotel, owned by jinn. Faisal is there, too, and so are the other lost children. Or so Nura is led to believe.

Nura knows about jinn. They are born of fire and are treacherously tricky. But this place offers more than she ever knew existed, and all she has to do to be treated like royalty is win a contest. She’s well aware that, with jinn, nothing is at it seems, and there is always a price to pay. She also knows she can be the best at anything she does. She can win. So how can she refuse?

By grounding readers in the realistic setting of life as it exists for Nura and Faisal in a Pakistani mining town, then expanding their reality to include life in a magical setting, M.T. Khan explores a wide variety of themes. Poverty — living with it, ending it; greed; child labor and exploitation of others; betrayal; grief; love — of family, friends and self; the many faces of self; education; culture — including life-style, history, myth and magic, are all woven through this fast-paced, high-stakes tale of one young girl’s journey of discovery.

Along with telling a compelling, multi-layered story, Khan is also skilled at creating complex characters readers will be drawn to, even those who aren’t particularly likeable: tough, clever, stubborn, ambitious Nura and her equally stubborn but far less honorable qareen counterpart, Dura; self-effacing, cautious, poetic Faisal and his counterpart Raisal; loving parents who want better for their kids; not-so-loving parents who use their children to further their own ends; the Craftsman, a teacher who, in difficult circumstances, is able to give his students what they need but who remains stuck in his own terrible situation; and employers whose greed dominates their decisions and actions, but who might, on close inspection, come from a place where their behavior is understandable, if not forgivable. Through the course of the story, readers see Nura and Faisal face their demons and grow, and several secondary characters also develop, sometimes with surprising twists.

Throughout the book, the author uses vibrant description.

I crouch, my trousers matted in dust, matching the grime that stains my body like a second layer of skin.”

And the world-building Khan accomplishes with the Sijj Palace is rich and disgusting at the same time.

A giant woman waves and takes a seat at a table. Her gold crown is slightly askew, but she clearly doesn’t care, as her sharp yellow eyes glare down at the food as if it’s about to sprout legs and run away. Tendrils of sleek black hair reach the ground, and her scaly green dress glistens from moon-light or sweat—I really can’t tell.

Nura and the Immortal Palace could provide many hours of discussion between adults and children on many different levels. Adding to those discussions, the author’s note makes it clear the struggle of some to lift themselves out of poverty and the darkest means of exploitation of children and adults continue to exist today.