“Was he not Sachiv, really?”
“That would have defeated the purpose. I can’t really say what he looked like, my rebound guy, except that . . . you’re going to think me bonkers.”
“I already do, hon.”
“He had Gabriel’s mannerisms, Kim. Gabriel’s . . . presence.”
Had a prowling leopard come at him at that moment, Gabriel could not have moved.
Inside the tent, with a sudden jerk, Kim seemed to be on her feet. “What are you saying? That Gabriel is, like, imagi-nation made flesh? And isn’t that what he’s been saying to you?”
“I hope not. I hope we’re not saying the same thing.”
“I mean,” Kim was excited, talking fast, “that would be like, well, as if your daydream became his reality.”
“Put that in your Dictaphone and see if it swallows it.”
An enclosure fenced off by dead branches housed a small brick kitchen, a room with tables and chairs that looked like a low-grade cafeteria, and a broad dining area with low square tables. Kim and Thea were having dinner there, sitting cross-legged on cushions, when Gabriel headed across to them.
“Is she still alive, your aunt?” Kim was asking, as he approached.
“No.”
“You must miss her.”
“I do, but we had that time, the two of us. Seven, eight weeks. I arrived thinking my life was over, and when I left, Alex was waiting with a bouquet in one hand and my future in the other.”
“Evening, ladies.”
Kim, chewing, gave Thea a look, then said to him, “Gabriel. Are you attached to us by an invisible string?”
“They’ve sent me over to get ‘Abid’s wives.’ There’s going to be music and stuff by the fire.”
Kim waved her fork around the compound. “Isn’t it rather quiet for high season?”
“There’s been torrential rain in Muscat. Lots of tours didn’t get out.”
With a great dash of incongruity, one of the staff came from the kitchen carrying an almost fluorescent cake, with garish orange and pink icing, and placed it before one of the guests, who hooted with surprise, as her friends started singing “Happy Birthday.”
“Oh, God,” said Thea. “We’re in Butlins.”
Soon after, carrying coffee and halva, she and Kim joined the circle around the fire, where cake was being handed around on paper plates and a hunched Bedouin woman was offering embroidery for sale. A joint of dead tree was thrown on the flames, as a couple of drivers started singing and clapping, and another played the lute. Gabriel went to the 4x4 to get his own instrument, then sat some way behind Thea. When he started to play, she turned in surprise and for a moment watched his fingers moving along the tiny frets of his ukulele, while its unlikely notes found their place with the clapping and the lute and the rhythms of the desert.
But when Abid came out of the gloom and leaned over Kim’s shoulder to speak to her, she and Thea immediately got up and went to the back of the enclosure, where other drivers and guides had gathered around a table.
Compelled to follow, Gabriel elbowed between Thea and Abid. “Was the music that bad?” he asked, taking a tumbler of whiskey from one of the guides.
“Jinn stories,” Thea replied, nodding at Kim. “She’s very taken with the notion.”
Abid was explaining to Kim that Omar, one of the younger guides who was sitting beside her, had been talking about the good jinn who had helped with the family business but had also made him quarrelsome. Kim placed her recorder on the table.
“The jinniya brought him many new customers,” Abid went on, “and also a temper. Bad temper.”
The others baited and teased poor Omar, who laughed, demonstrating no sign of bad temper.
Over at the fire, guests were retreating in clumps to their tents, but around the gas light on the guides’ table, the mood settled and the conversation flourished, plump with stories. Kim’s eyes moved from speaker to speaker, soaking it all up.
Jamil, he of the excellent diction, began another oft-told story. “There was a man who had a big date plantation, and one night he was going to water the plantation, when he felt something jumping on his back. A jinniya. And this one, she was very attracted to strong men. He said: ‘I hope you can hold on properly or you’ll fall down.’ When she wouldn’t let go, he went to a date tree and rubbed against it. She screamed, ‘Stop, stop!’
“But he said, ‘I’m not going to stop unless you tell me what caused you to jump on my back.’
“She said, ‘I’m in love with you. I want you. I’ll do anything for you.’
“He told her, ‘If you are like that, you know I’m married.’
“‘Yes, I know.’
“‘And you know I have kids.’
“‘Yes.’
“‘Okay,’ he said, ‘you show me your face,’ because jinn,” Jamil explained to Kim, “if they want something, they will show themselves as they are. And she did.”
“They show themselves if they want something bad enough,” she repeated, with a cool glance at Gabriel. “I see.”
“That man,” Jamil went on, “never had seen a beautiful woman like that ever in his life, so she started telling him, ‘My father he brought six jinni for me, but I want to marry a human, a strong man, so I will take you to our world and introduce you to our father. Only problem is fear,’ she said. ‘If you have fear, you might not make it, but so far you are the bravest man I’ve ever seen.’ So they agreed she would take him there, to see what would happen.
“Then he went home, slept with his wife, washed and all that, and came back to the plantation. When he’s going there, to her world, all he feels is a lot of strange people coming close to him. He wonders, what the hell? But they’re her brothers, and then he can see a huge light
