“She took him deep into the jinn world, where he met her father and it was agreed, so he married her. He have a place for her and he have his wife as well. These jinn, they give him huge wealth and he never had to water his plantation again—it was done for him every day—and they’re having a fantastic life, but the problem usually comes when the husband dies. Recognition is a huge problem. But this time his human family, because they had seen great things, like wealth and no one getting sick, they recognized his jinn family and all stayed together in that place.”
“Oh, good,” said Kim. “I do like a happy ending.”
Malik, a young driver, then urged Gabriel to tell everyone of his experience, a story Gabriel also knew well. Thea seemed entranced, so he delivered. “Malik,” he began, his eyes on hers, “had a bad experience last year. Not long after his grandfather died, he became immobilized. He couldn’t move from his bed, and at one point he couldn’t even speak. His family tried everything—doctors, medication, but finally they called in a sorcerer, who said his grandfather had had a bad jinn, which had not been able to trouble him—”
“Because he was a strong person, his grandfather,” Abid explained.
“—but it transferred itself to Malik, where it could do more damage, because he’s young and impressionable. But the sorcerer told them what to do to get rid of the evil jinn and,” he looked at Malik, “it worked, yeah?”
Malik nodded. “Much better.”
“I don’t get it,” said Kim. “I thought jinn were beings in a parallel world?”
“They can be within as well as without,” Gabriel explained. “Some people believe jinn can take over your body, fight over your soul, that kind of thing.”
“Who usually wins?”
“Generally, the host will undergo an exorcism, as in Christianity.”
“And you believe all this stuff?”
“It isn’t for me to say.”
“Honestly?” Kim eyeballed him. “You have no view?”
“It’s part of my surroundings, and if you live any place long enough, you absorb it and it absorbs you. It’s a question of respect. Anytime someone back home told me they’d seen a ghost or that some building was haunted, I respected that. Same here.”
“Have you ever seen any jinn yourself?” she asked.
“Not as far as I know.”
Abid chortled at his friends, slapping Gabriel across the shoulders.
“So who was she then, your lover?” Kim asked, across the table.
“Kim,” said Thea. “That’s private.”
“It really isn’t,” he said to her. “Everyone has their own jinn story.” He turned back to Kim. “In my view, she was flesh and blood.”
“But why does everyone else say she was a jinn?”
“Your driver talks too much,” he said, and made an affectionate dig at Abid in Arabic. “She knew how to get into my house and how to leave it unnoticed, that’s all.”
“Maybe she existed in a parallel universe,” Kim said, with a glance at Thea.
“Ah, the dark-matter theory.” He nodded. “Yes, jinn do have features in common with that theory.”
“What are you two on about?” Thea asked.
“The multi-verse concept,” Kim said, making space for a solitary South African, who had come to join them. “Your aunt knew about it. She was a woman ahead of her time, because now some scientists believe that ours might not be the only universe, so it isn’t unique—therefore not a uni- but a multi-verse, so there could be another universe going on, just here, within a centimeter of us, but because we’re restricted to so few dimensions, we can’t see what might be there.”
“Like jinn,” said Abid. “You see? Science has proved it.”
“But I have her shirt,” Gabriel said, “and that is very much within this universe, whether it be multi, twinned or otherwise.”
Kim’s shoulders sagged. “Really?”
Abid shook his head at Gabriel. “She melted away from you. You told me this.”
“What about the shared-consciousness concept?” Kim persisted. “You know, that we own our bodies and brains, but not our minds, which are part of a universal consciousness, and we can dip in and out of it, go anywhere. Maybe you were dipping into your own future.”
Gabriel heard Thea groan. No doubt she would have liked her friend to be more subtle in her pursuit of him, but worse than that, Kim had also managed to exclude the drivers, to interrupt the flow of their stories, the catching up and sharing of news that was often their relaxation at the end of a long day’s driving.
Somewhat off the point, but to the relief of most, the South African stepped into the lull. “You know Wilfred Thesiger?” he asked, in tight, rigid English.
“Ya, ya, of course,” said Jamil. “He was a friend of Oman. In fact, one of the elders from my tribe saved his life when he was in the desert. Some young men wanted to kill Thesiger, but an old man of the tribe, he asked them what would they achieve? And the guys said, ‘We will show that we are greater than the Englishman.’
“And the old man replied, ‘No, if you kill him—one guy doing no harm—you will show yourselves to be smaller than the Englishman.’”
“But this is in the book!” said the South African, taking a well-worn paperback of Arabian Sands from his knapsack. “This very story is in here!”
Jamil shrugged, as if to say, Well, obviously.
Malik asked to see the book.
“Last year,” Jamil said to Thea, “I took a TV crew from Brazil across the Empty Quarter, the same way Thesiger went, but even with GPS,” he laughed, “we got lost!”
The drivers leaned over the book, discussing the various camels in the photographs, nodding and talking, until an argument broke out about which tribes had escorted Thesiger across the Empty Quarter. Voices were raised; eyes flashed.
“I’ve no idea what they’re on about,” Thea said to Gabriel, “but I could listen to this all night. You’re so lucky to be able to speak Arabic.”
He dipped his chin. “One of the unexpected gifts in my life.”
Kim was still where they had
