Kim’s Dictaphone slid between the seats. “So what happens at these ceremonies?”
“All the usual stuff. Drumming, dancing, unguents and ruqya, chanting, and the sorcerer does his thing, invoking certain suras of the Quran. As in Catholicism, there are two kinds of exorcism. In the official sort, condoned by Islam, there’s no messing—they recite Surat al-Jinn to banish the evil spirit.” He recited what he knew of it, mostly because Thea had already confessed a susceptibility to the bewitchery of Arabic. “Then there’s the off-the-record approach, where anything can happen.”
“Wasn’t it scary?”
“I was scared I’d catch a bad jinn, not be cured of the one I didn’t have.” He swung his eyes to Thea. “Whatever you believe, it is powerful. I’ve been to a few and there’s an atmosphere, for sure. You feel relaxed, lifted. Maybe it’s the force of belief, or those pounding rhythms, but you sense a strong sense of something beyond yourself.”
Kim leaned toward Thea. “Sounds like your aunt’s place.”
“What’s with your aunt’s place?”
“My place. It’s mine now.”
“It has jinn?”
“Something like that.”
Kim’s head turned to Gabriel. “Abid said that subjects writhe and gag as the jinn leaves them. Did you?”
“No. I was a very meek subject. Just wanted it over with.”
“But have you seen that happen?” Kim persisted. “People struggling and grunting?”
“Often. I’ve even held a guy down. Their strength can be overwhelming—that much is certainly true.”
“So how do you explain it, rationally?”
“I can’t. I don’t try to.”
Bahla, until then a huddle of greenery in the distance, was stretching out to them. An impressive modern mosque, its twin minarets magnificent against the fading blue sky, staked its claim on the outskirts of the town.
“If you’re so sure it’s all hokum,” Thea said, “why did you subject yourself to it?”
“For my sister. She was very caught up in it, for her own reasons. But the truth is, we were both masking something else. We were . . .” he looked in the mirror, pulled out to give room to a man on a donkey “. . . crevés. You know, shattered. We’d had a family tragedy. Double tragedy, you could say, and my crash into self-pity was too much for Annie, so if getting myself exorcized would make her feel better, it was the least I could do.”
“Did it help?” Kim asked.
“It helped Annie get pregnant.”
“Really?” Thea turned.
“She came to Bahla when she was having trouble conceiving and, voilà, she conceived soon afterwards. The woman told her bad stuff had been preventing her from becoming pregnant. They called it exorcism,” he said, with a shrug. “I call it the placebo effect. She believed it would make her feel better, so she did feel better, and that helped her relax. Job done.”
“That’s rather dismissive,” said Kim, “not to say arrogant.”
“That’s what she said.”
“But don’t you . . .”
“What?” He glanced at Kim in the mirror.
“Well, it happened to you. Stories about the supernatural are always about the friend of a friend of a friend, but you were at the center of it. And you can’t explain what happened to you, so you have very little with which to back up your cynicism.”
“Except that I’ve been proved right,” he said, jerking his thumb toward Thea. “That’s no jinniya.”
“That is someone who has never set foot in Oman before,” said Kim, “and who, when you were romancing your invisible woman, was flat on her back in the West of Ireland recovering from hepatitis.”
Gabriel forced himself to blink. Hepatitis. The sunlit room, her wafting presence. Weak, watery . . . ill. It pulled on him. Apples and water. One step, one dip in concentration, and he would be there again with the limpid Prudence. So vague. So thirsty. Absolutely no energy. . . . Of course.
The convalescence she had spoken of was not, as he had supposed, in reference merely to her broken heart, but more than that. . . .
Back. Back to the road. He adopted an impassive mien. “Hepatitis, eh? No wonder. You didn’t look at all well. I kept telling you so.”
“Yeah, well,” she said flatly, “being in two places at the one time plays hell with your complexion.”
They smiled at one another. Something had changed. No longer angered by his assertions of intimacies past, she now made fun of them. She had taken the power back—he would not unsettle her—and was consequently warmer toward him; affectionate almost.
He was getting there. By holding this course, he would get to where he intended to be.
“So Bahla worked for your sister, but did it work for you?”
Oh, God, he thought, glancing at Kim in the mirror. Is she still here? “They still call me the most miserable man in Oman. Reach your own conclusions.”
“You didn’t stop missing her, even a little bit?”
“I stopped missing her four days ago.”
“The city of sorcerers flickers in the evening light,” Kim told her Dictaphone. “A mud-brick wall snakes around the date palms, holding in bits of the town, which has nonetheless spewed out, through gaps, into pockets of homes and yards. Behind it, a soccer match, boys in red and white, and the solitary figure of a man, sitting on the wall, watching. Jebel Akhdar rises on the right, glowing in the sunny areas, but dark on those slopes already in night shade.” She clicked it off. “Why they call it the green mountain is anyone’s guess. It looks black to me.”
“Black gold,” said Thea. “Like a pint of Guinness.”
“Or the wrapping on an expensive bar of chocolate.”
“Eighty-five percent cocoa.” Thea smiled over her shoulder.
“Abid told us we mustn’t make eye contact with anyone,” said Kim, “in case we get the evil eye.”
“Look sideways, they say of Bahla,” Gabriel agreed, “or you could pick up bad karma in a blink.”
“I’ve never been to a place and not looked at the people,” said Thea.
“Pretty town, though, isn’t it?” said Kim. “The ramparts are impressive.”
“We’ll head up to a vantage-point now,” said Gabriel, “where
