it. So perhaps he had wanted to make Max pay. How else to explain what he had done, three days before the wedding? Under the broad blue sky of the desert, in solitude and silence, he might find out what had sparked that one warped, thwarted idea, so ghastly to him now that he hesitated to look over his shoulder in case it was right behind him. Like a devil on his back. It was a devil—something nobody could look at, face on. His own sister seemed wary of being alone with him in case it popped up, joined them, his disgusting idea. We all have them, he wanted to say, we all have putrid imaginings, beyond our control. The difference was that he, and some others, had carried it out. Perhaps, in the wilderness, he would have a biblical encounter with himself and slay his own sins, like Jesus had done.
He snorted. Where was this religious stuff coming from?
Abid, their driver, was a tall man with a thin mustache and a glint in his eyes. He glanced over, smiling and curious, while he drove. He had offered to take him out for the day. Annie had probably engineered it, concerned that Gabriel was becoming too reclusive, so now they were on the Nakhal road, heading into the grooves of landscape.
“Nakhal is a nice place,” Abid told him. “The fort is two hundred and fifty years old. It is built on a big rock, to keep them safe.”
There were forts in a state of collapse everywhere. On every excuse for a hill, there stood at least one tower, looking all around over the humps of its own ruins.
“One of the ways they pushed back the enemy,” Abid gesticulated, “at Nakhal is—they poured down boiling date honey over them.”
“Agh, Jesus!” Gabriel grimaced. “Talk about sweet torture.”
Nakhal was surrounded by an ocean of date palms, fed by the falaj, Abid explained—an ancient irrigation system of channels bringing water from al-Hajar. The fort curled around its own rock base, like a creeper climbing a tree, until the main tower sat up on its perch with a 360-degree view of al-Batinah Plain on one side and al-Hajar Mountains on the other. A purple cloud had gathered over their peaks.
“It will rain,” Abid said, frowning.
“Have we time to check out the hot springs before it does?”
“Of course. Yes.”
Down by the river, Gabriel pulled on his trunks and fell backward into the water. His body exulted. He was getting used to the contrasts in this country—the way crevassed slopes of gray rock were suddenly interrupted by a bulge of green, and blinding white gravel riverbeds invariably led toward a suburb of Paradise hidden in an S-bend.
Abid sat on the bank, munching hard-boiled eggs and bread. It took only one prompt from Gabriel: “My sister has been trying to explain to me about jinn,” he said, lying in the shallows, and Abid was off, one story hurrying after another, flowing out in his imperfect English.
“There is a house in Muttrah,” he began, “a house like any other, where no one lives any more. The family who owned it, they tried to live in there, but every time they brought their things and put them inside the house, the jinn removed them.”
“How do you mean?”
“The family would come home and find their belongings outside. On the street, on the roof. So they would bring them back in again, but whenever they went out, they came home and even the furniture was outside the house. They said, ‘No more!’ and left, but another man, he came and said he would live there. He did not mind about jinn. Jinn, you see, are weaker than men. They cannot control us. We have the stronger soul. So he moved into the house and he brought some things, and for two days everything was fine. Until one night, he was thrown from his bed. The wall pushed him out. He was very frightened, but he stayed another night. And the same thing—something pushed from behind and he fell on the floor. Still he would not leave. He did not want to be weaker than the jinn, but he had no sleep and was afraid of being hurt, and he was becoming crazy. His sister, she say, ‘Come to my house, and you will sleep like a baby.’ So he went with her and slept for two days and then he went back to his house—and, ya Allah! All his belongings were in the street. He left then and that house is still empty. The jinn have it now. They wanted it. They have it.”
“So . . . in this case, they were stronger than the humans?”
“This man had a weak soul.”
He had another story, and then another, in which jinn were angels of mercy.
The warm waters of the spring were tingling on Gabriel’s skin. “So they’re not evil? I mean, dangerous?”
Abid wobbled his head. “Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Men are stronger, so bad men can use jinn to do bad things to their enemies.”
“You mean like casting a spell on someone?”
“A spell, yes.”
“And you believe in them?”
“God made man and jinn to worship Him. They are like us—Muslim and Jew and non-believer.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
Abid looked down along the gurgling river. “Yes.”
“And?”
But Abid got up, wiping the dust off the back of his dishdasha.
“So humans can see jinn, yeah?”
“If the jinni wants you to see him, you can see him. We must hurry.” Abid was heading back to the car. “It will rain soon.”
A black cloud had darkened the river, which no longer seemed so tame; in the gloaming, it looked very much like a hideaway for spooks and specters. Gabriel felt edgy as they set off for Rustaq to see another fort, especially when a few drops of water on the windscreen suddenly became slashing rain that thundered down onto the jeep.
With a glance at the sky, Abid invoked Allah as the vehicle bumped off the stones and back up to the track. “This is not good. It has been raining in the mountains. The wadis will flood.”
“Flash floods? Really?”
“Don’t worry. It will be fine.”
They managed to get across one wadi, where the river was rising, before coming to another just as a great torrent of brown water came roiling past. Abid drove back to a more elevated spot and parked. They could go neither forward nor back. “We have to wait.”
“So this is a flash flood?” Gabriel asked, raising his voice to be heard above the lashing on the roof and watching the slow flow of sludge. “Not exactly flashy, is it?”
“But it is very strong.”
Raindrops bounced around the bonnet, furious.
“How long will we be here?”
“A few hours maybe.”
“How many hours?”
Abid shrugged. “Five. Six.”
“Jesus.” They might be there all night. Omanis were loose with time. It was an elastic concept: five, six hours could mean ten, or two, and Gabriel loved it. He’d be happy to get into the groove of a time-loose existence—but this flood was keeping him from her.
From her, his jinniya. No way. For one thing, she had an Irish accent. She wasn’t Eastern in any respect. Irish jinn—now there’s a concept.
The water, thick as mud and full of debris, pushed past, with sporadic rushes, as if upstream someone was sweeping out a lake.
Unprompted, Abid began to talk again. His uncle, he said, had married a jinn and had a jinn family—female jinniya, he explained, always gave birth to jinn children—and they lived alongside his human family in another house beyond the orchard, but no one knew about them until his uncle died. He had divided his estate between his jinn family and his human family, since the Quran insists that all wives and children should be equally cared for, but his mortal children could not accept this. His eldest son even moved his own family into the house where the