“Yes. Why would I spend three days alone sitting around in Muscat when I could be off in the sands with my own personal driver?”
They wandered on. “Do you think you can trust him?”
“I don’t know about trusting him,” said Thea, “but I can handle him. I mean, I don’t see a string of unresolved murders in this country and Abid clearly thinks highly of him.”
“Gabriel doesn’t fancy Abid.”
They stopped beside a solitary camel tied to a tree. Putting her hand on the curve of its neck, Kim looked across at Thea. “Here’s the thing. Cynically, the more we find out about ‘Jibril,’ the better it is for me, but as your friend . . .” she patted the camel’s coarse hair “. . . Gabriel’s got a jinn on his back of one sort or another and if you mess with him—”
“I wouldn’t mess with him.”
“You already are, without even trying! And is that fair to Gabriel?”
“I’m just trying to be fair to me.” The camel blinked slowly at Thea as she stroked its hump. “I have escaped domesticity, Kim. Last time I escaped the norm, I got to go home yellow and my wings were literally clipped. This is too good an opportunity to pass up. Gabriel can help me fill up my haversack a bit.”
“More than you might want him to.”
“Stop,” Thea said, smiling. “I thought I was going to be Amelia Earhart, remember? Not taking the personal details of people having hip replacements.”
“Amelia Earhart died a horrible lonely death in the ocean. You should count your blessings.”
“I do count my blessings, more than you know, so don’t worry.”
“It’s not only you I’m worried about. Gabriel is already wounded.”
“That hasn’t stopped you hounding him. You’re projecting—you want him to be more mysterious than he actually is. I mean, he’s flirting his head off with a married woman and teasing you at every opportunity. He’s not quite the tragic figure you’d like him to be.”
The camel blinked its long lashes again as a large Ameri-can woman, with big hair and a lime green suit, went past.
“Couldn’t agree more,” Kim said to it. “Just the kind of person who voted for Bush.”
Thea stroked the camel. “You know what her last recorded words were?”
“Who?”
“Amelia. The last thing the radio operator heard her say was ‘We’re running north and south.’ I’ve often wondered what that means.”
Abid strode up, looking disparagingly at the camel. “Only good for meat, this one.”
“No!” they wailed together.
As they wandered on, Thea scanned the marketplace. A Bedouin woman wearing the leather burqa was haggling with an old man over her goats; a cow, fussed by the push and shove of the crowd, bucked, sending buyers running; and, off to the side, two young women sat on a wall, one of whom was wearing a flamboyant black and pink scarf and a black facemask.
“Why is one masked and not the other?” she asked Abid.
“If they wear the mask,” Abid explained, “it means they are engaged, or married. No mask means they are still virgins.”
“You’d swear she’s proud to be wearing it,” Kim said.
“No different from flashing the engagement ring, I suppose,” said Thea.
No sign of Gabriel anywhere. For once, Thea didn’t feel watched—a blessing. A blessing and . . . an itch she couldn’t scratch. For all her flouncing off and snaps of outrage, those declarations he made, the suave cutting words in which he revealed what he knew of her, were nonetheless seductive and intriguing enough to keep her coming back for more.
They moved through a vegetable market stretched along a street with a great tree at one end. “All locally grown, juicy, fruity veggies, no air miles.” Kim flicked the switch on her tape-recorder. “Low baskets, pale green zucchini, bright orange carrots, cabbages as big as heads, scallions the size of leeks. Also . . .” She stopped by a stack of tin containers. “What are these for, Abid?”
He opened one and they peered in at a white greasy substance. “Laban,” he said. “A kind of butter.”
“Buttermilk,” Kim said into her gadget. “Also big bags of tea. Omanis are not traditionally tea drinkers. They once considered it poison. They used dates to sweeten the bitter coffee, so they distrusted tea, which had sugar in it.”
Thea looked down the street, with its flecks of vegetable color, men and women shopping and bartering. “While I get to do the weekly shop in a supermarket.”
On the way back to Muscat, Kim worked hard. So did Abid.
“Why do you think Gabriel’s jinn abandoned him?” she asked him.
“Because he tried to make her live in our world, but jinn cannot do this. He fought with her, so she has never shown herself to him since that time.”
“Never shown herself? Are you saying she’s still around?”
“People say his loneliness is because she is punishing him. That’s why he has never found a wife.” He glanced at Kim. “You like this story.”
“It breaks my heart.” Her phone went off. “Hello? . . . Gabriel, hi. Hey, you missed a cue—we didn’t run into you at the market.” She paused. He talked. “I’m leaving tonight, yeah. . . . About midnight. . . . That’s right, I do have to eat. . . . We’d love to, thanks. See you then.” She clicked off her phone. “He’s taking us to dinner tonight, Thea.” She looked again at Abid. “So was Gabriel’s companion a good’un or a bad’un, so far as jinn go?”
“They say she was good. Good for him, at that time. He could be happy with her even now, if he accepted her, but he should have a human wife too. And kids. What is life without children?”
“Absolutely,” said Thea. “A baby crying all night would certainly ground him.”
Abid pulled off the highway. “This is nice place for photograph,” he said, as they bumped up to another vantage-point, which overlooked a plantation, beyond which the ancient abandoned village of Birkat al-Mawz stood
