Bird Summons

sounded like a child’s cry. Not one of distress but of a child playing outside, calling out to one of his friends. Moni filled her glass and closed the tap. She imagined a group of young boys kicking a ball, playing five-a-side. But they wouldn’t be playing now, not so late at night. Mullin had said there were others here at the loch, other holidaymakers, presumably families. Their children would play throughout the grounds. Moni, well travelled, had lived in parts of the world where children stayed up past midnight when the schools were closed, where there was no concept of bedtime. Often this was because it was too hot to play during the day. So, at night, boys played football in the street until they were tired out. Girls watched television with their mothers and all these children slept till noon. She peered out through the window but all she saw was her own reflection. Of course, there were no children out and about.

She sat at the kitchen table and gulped down the cool, soft water. Even after finishing the whole glass, she still felt thirsty. I must have put a lot of salt in the food, she thought. Good thing the others didn’t complain. She got up and refilled her glass, caught the sound of playing children again. Joyful, passionate in its own way. It made her smile to think of them, their enjoyments and little triumphs, free from responsibilities and worries.

When she joined the others in the living room, she found that Iman had finally agreed to sing. At first, she sang grudgingly, but then she let the beauty slide through. Outside the cottage, her voice could be heard, the foreign words landing on the grass, picked up by the ears of djinns and those with wings, who understood even more than all three women did what Iman’s song was saying, who she was describing, for whom the longing was due.

Chapter Five

Later, lying in her narrow bed underneath the open window, Iman could see the night sky. It would never be completely dark, they were too far north for that. Instead, pink twilight glowed over the western horizon. There were clouds that looked round and full like candyfloss and ones that were as flat as milk stains. Low streaks of light touched the ground as if there would never be a deep dark night. In the east there was a crescent – low, orange and perfect. The stars were distant, much more distant than she could remember seeing before.

Back home, her family slept outdoors in the summer and indoors in the winter. The desert gave them scorching heat and bitter cold. Hers were a hardy people, able to adjust and pickle and organise. But it was not memories of home that Iman embraced, not memories of walks along the Euphrates or vendors selling grilled corn. Instead her ears caught the sound of wings, a rustle of movement, sounds that were at first gentle but then became distinct. Through the window, a shy creature hesitated, asked permission to come in and speak to her. I am dreaming, she thought. I am dreaming, and this is a good dream.

The creature was a bird, but it belonged to the night. The creature could be a bat, but it had feathers. It spoke a language that she could understand. It knew her from long ago, it had travelled with her all those miles, never left her side, was always there but only here, in this special place, could it make itself known. Yet it was not entirely visible, not exactly, for when she looked at it directly it disappeared. She had to pretend she was looking in another direction or at something else for the orange, black and white to materialise again. But this was not a problem, Iman wanted to listen to it and talk to it more than she wanted to look at it. The creature had a name. Hoopoe, it said, named after the bird in the Qur’an. You are too big for a hoopoe, said Iman. You are fat. She was not afraid to tease it.

He said, ‘You are bigger than me, but I know more. I can find hidden sources of water. You are stronger, but I have flown further. I have seen east and west, north and south. Inhuman creatures that trail purple clouds. Remote forests, trapped people, animals as big as giants, humans as small as plants. I’ve seen surplus, building and tearing down. At times, I’ve seen nothing because in some places there was nothing, nothing alive. But all things submit to the rule of time. We can’t stop it moving, it pulls us forwards; it takes us away. There is no escape. I am here to warn you. Do not stay here in this cottage, at this loch, for too long.’

‘Oh, I love it here,’ she said. ‘A room all to myself and the cupboard full of clothes. I don’t want to leave.’

‘This is not a destination but a stage. The stage of consequence where what you do and what you want and what you secretly think will take a tangible shape. Things you will see and experience. Leave before this happens. Continue.’

‘We are going,’ she said, ‘to visit Lady Evelyn’s grave. The three of us.’

‘Only one of you will get there,’ the Hoopoe said. ‘The one who is least distracted. The one who has learnt that to keep going it’s best not to look right or left.’

This confused her, and she started asking why, how come, how did he know? When she got no reply, she wanted to know which one of them it would be. Moni? Salma? Herself? Which one of them would visit that difficult-to-reach place? Say Iman, she begged.

Instead the Hoopoe told her a story. ‘This story is about a landowner from here, from the loch, long before it was called the loch. His name was Nathan and he was a Christian at a time when most people