Thea pulled in what air she could. Her banging heart was hurting her chest, so she tried to take deep, even breaths, like her aunt always told her to do, to help her body relax, let go, but fear had better tricks. She hated to be afraid, to be squeezed until her faculties—movement, logic, control—were disabled, as when she had once gamely stepped out across an Incan suspension bridge made of grass and, a few meters in, felt a shaking in its fibers and forgot how to move. Paralysis. Fifteen minutes of it, during which terror held her so tightly that she couldn’t even hear the voices urging her forward, or back, because she knew with certainty that if she stepped either way, she would slip between the ropes and tumble into the gully.
Fear, again, in the wild seas off county Clare, when, lying on the surfboard and gripping its waxy rails, she realized she couldn’t read the waves. They were contrary, slapping about, bullying, like a battalion of grubby soldiers, white steam coming off their shoulders. The lads had told her not to go in: it was too gnarly for the likes of her, and when the sheer, clean slate face of one determined sucker reared over her head, it was only the nose of her board that got her over the top of its razor-sharp lip. And so she continued, flat on her belly, gripping for dear life, unable to make a clear decision, any decision, until an Australian had to come to shepherd her back to the foamy slop by the shore. “Properly clucked, eh?”
“Clucked?”
“Scared of the waves. Never go in when you’re scared.”
She was properly clucked now, too. Rigid, she lay in her hotel bed, every sinew alert. Her door was locked, secure; there was no way her caller could get into the room, and yet . . . he might get in. Fear: that most unreasonable of reasonable emotions.
There were no more disturbances and, just after dawn, she fell asleep.
It was Friday, so breakfast came late, and when the knock woke her, she pulled her robe firmly around her before opening the door. There would be no more lying in bed when breakfast was delivered. She stood by the door while the waiter—he might or might not have been the prankster—put the tray on the table by the window, gave her the docket to sign, and left.
Kim was appalled. “You need to tell Reggie,” she said, in the lift.
“Nah, it was a prank. His mates probably put him up to it. He won’t try it again.”
That day they drove to Babylon. Thea, tired, stared out as Reggie took them along the Euphrates, through Hillah, and out to the mound that was all that remained of the fabled Babylon. Its Hanging Gardens, had they ever existed, had long been surrendered to earthquakes and time, but the brick outlines of old homes and streets gave a strong sense of the distant past. As she wandered, Thea could hear voices—those of the women who had once stood gossiping by this doorway, perhaps, or the merchants who had hurried toward the grand ziggurat, making deals, or the people crossing the moat. . . . She could hear voices.
She turned. It must be a group. Tourists? But there were only a few meandering couples. “Reggie?” He was a few steps behind her. “Who is that?”
“Who?”
“Can’t you—can you hear them?”
He listened, shook his head.
“It’s like a kind of muttering.”
As she spoke, a column of dust swirled up before them in a sudden twist. They shielded their faces and kept their eyes tight shut until it dropped to the ground.
“Ha,” said Reggie. “You summoned a jinn!”
She wiped dust from her face. “I did what?”
“Dust devils the world over,” he coughed, “are seen as spir-itual manifestations of one sort or another. Here, they say they’re jinn. You know, earthbound beings made from fire that we can’t see. You heard voices and then, whoop, a dust devil whirls.”
“I really don’t want to hear this right now. I’d like to be able to sleep tonight, if that’s not too much to ask. Ugh, my hair is full of sand!”
“So this is Babylon,” Geoffrey declared, in his trombone voice. His hair was greasy, his eyebrows bushy. “A little underwhelming, wouldn’t you say?”
“What did you expect?” Kim asked, bringing up the rear. “Fresh vines hanging down from the ziggurat three millennia on?”
“Apparently there’s a considerable body of evidence that suggests the Hanging Gardens were in Nineveh,” said Reggie. “Not here.” He enjoyed being a fount of information, but in a gentle, unprepossessing way; he wasn’t showing off, and what he knew, Kim and Thea wanted to learn. Potted history, as they took their Friday outings, was as much as they could absorb, in view of the extraordinary heritage of this country. As Reggie rattled on about Nebuchadnezzar, who had built the gardens for his queen, Amytis, because she was homesick for Iran’s green slopes, Thea felt embarrassed. She had been ridiculous during the night—she had probably imagined the whole key-in-the-door scenario, and in the blue light of day, here at Babylon, it all struck her as very silly. Bored staff, playing up.
The Ishtar Gate was newly built, its blue tiles studded with frescos of golden lions, but the Lion of Babylon had survived in crumbling basalt. Kim and Thea stood quietly. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Thea looked over Kim’s shoulder. “You mean that the man under the lion is the Iraqi people, and the lion,” she dropped her voice, “is . . . ho-hum?”
Kim threw a squinting glance toward the hovering guides.
“Don’t be mean to lions,” Thea went on. “They
