As if sensing the change, the woman extended her arms and gently guided him until he lay prone again, cradled in soft cushions. A warm drowsiness settled on him, but he passed a moment of keen awareness when the woman slipped off the silver gray robe and slid next to him. She lay at his side, pressing close and draping a long, brown leg over his body. A floral fragrance surrounded him. Her arms pulled him into a silky embrace, a hand whispering softly over his chest to his throat and then up to smooth through his hair. She nuzzled at his neck, and he felt a warm, moist kiss there. What in God’s name was happening here?
The light in the room seemed to diminish, and his vision faded. Now there was only scent, and smell, and touch; warmth, and the soft trailing caress of the woman’s hand. He heard something whispered in his ear, but he did not understand the words. The voice at his ear became a soft kiss, laden with affection and the barest hint of a tease. A tingling heat seemed to effuse his body, as he passed into a state of semi-consciousness.
He had to be dreaming, he thought—a dream so real that it was totally convincing; totally absorbing. One moment he had been falling to a certain death, and then the water. Tattered memories intruded on the dream as his mind struggled to create some sense of his situation. But the dream became ever more engrossing, suffusing his body with an ardent heat. As his consciousness faded, a fleeting thought suggested that he may have died after all! He must have fallen on the rocks, but how could this be happening?
It was as if he had landed in Paradise.
9
He awoke to find he was alone, the room dark and masked with purple shadow. Off in the distance he could hear the faint sound of water running over stones. The smell of sweet incense was still on the air, and now it was mingled with another aroma that seemed to summon his senses to clarity—coffee! He moved with languid motion, his limbs still numbed and sluggish. Images of the soft skinned beauty still floated in his mind, bound up with the rising notion of incredulity, but she was nowhere to be seen, and he was inclined to think the whole episode a dream. Yet… the room he was in was the same. Where was he? Could this be a hidden sanctuary in the heart of Wadi Rumm? He knew the place had long been a hideaway for the Bedouin tribes, but this was more than he could have imagined.
There was a sound, and shadowed movement. He heard a sharp scrape and then the darkness was scored with a bright flash. Someone was there, sitting quietly in the shadows. He strained against the darkness, hoping to see the lovely woman he had awoken to earlier. An oil lamp sputtered to life and the warm glow pressed back the shadows to reveal the figure of a robed man seated on a billowy cushion. Paul squinted, trying to focus on the man, but his vision was blurred and indistinct. The figure leaned closer, and Paul saw that he had a thin, hungry face, with delicate bone structure, long hollow cheeks and a scraggly gray beard falling just a few inches from the point of his chin. The eyes were dark and deeply set over a narrow nose. On his head the man wore a headpiece of thatched palm fronds woven to an onion dome point. The eyes seemed to penetrate him with an unblinking gaze. They were full of knowledge; full of silent conclusions, and they stared at him with just the hint of curiosity in their welcome.
“Bismi llaahi r-hrahmaani r-rahiim. As Salam ’alaykom ” The words whispered out in Arabic, and then, to Paul’s surprise, in English.
“In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful. Peace be with you.” The man’s voice was quiet, yet firm. He waited as Paul struggled to sit upright.
Paul cleared his throat to speak, yet his mouth was very dry. The man extended a small porcelain cup, eyes bright with invitation. Paul looked at it with some suspicion at first, but the aroma of pungent coffee pulled at him. He reached out and took the cup, raising it to his lips with a shaky hand. The nutty earthiness of the brew seemed to enliven him, and he drank, grateful for the taste of dark, roasted coffee after missing it for—how long had he been here this way?
“Arabica,” the man said softly. “I see you find it enjoyable. Please, indulge yourself. It is polite to drink three times before we speak.”
Paul let the rich coffee swill a bit in his dry mouth, tasting the hint of cardamom and ginger root in the cup. His mind was shouting questions, but for the moment he was more than happy to simply smell and drink the delectable coffee—a brew worthy of Peet’s, he thought. The cup was small and it did not take him long to drink it down. As he finished the stranger extended a thin arm holding a golden pot with a long spout shaped like a raven’s beak. He finished the third cup in little time.
“Al-hamdillaah,” the man breathed. “Praise be to Allah. You have taken a sufficiency of our hospitality, I hope. For a Bedu this is a duty and great pleasure. Samirah has attended to your bodily needs, as is our custom. I trust she was pleasing to you. Now you have slept and awakened, and soon we will fill the yawning chasm of your stomach with a feast that would satisfy the Sultan himself. But first we will speak, if you are able.”
The man proffered a smile, and Paul could not help seeing more in those eyes than his words seemed to offer. The visitor was watching him very closely, studying him with a mixture of both dignified respect and wary caution. Paul chanced to speak, his voice cracking a bit as he cleared his throat.
“Where am I?”
The visitor smiled, as though the question was little more than a ruse and not to be taken seriously. “You either know very well where you are, or you take me for more of a fool than I appear if you are sincere. Come now. Let us begin more graciously, as equals. For you have come in through the Well Of Souls, and you are changed now. You are here. Is it not a place you intended to be?” Again, the smile that masked more than it revealed, a thin veil over layers of hidden emotion.
Paul was confused. “The Well Of Souls,” he said, pulling the odd piece of fruit from the man’s basket. “You mean the sink I fell into…” He rubbed the back of his hand over his forehead in a moment of distress as he recalled snatches of that headlong, rushing fall. “I thought I was dying.”
“Yes,” the man maintained his knowing smile. “It is often so when you jump. In a way you have died, yes? The harmony has changed, as you have changed. Now you are here. Your soul has been reborn, and if your body follows reluctantly, it is but a small price to pay. Tell me, were you bold enough to open your eyes when you fell? Did you see it? I think you were brave, my friend. Otherwise you would not have needed three days, and all the considerable skills of Samirah to persuade you to return to the world of men. But you are safe now. You are solid. The vibration has resolved itself. You must tell me why you have come.” The question was tacked on quickly, with forced levity dressed out in a thin grin above pearly teeth. Yet the more the man said, the more confused Paul became.
The man waited a brief moment, and the bemused expression on Paul’s face swung him to a new tack. “Forgive me.” The dark eyes shifted and the smile faded. “I have not introduced myself. I am Jabr Ali S’ad, the Gatekeeper here. And you?”
“Dorland,” said Paul more on instinct than anything else. “Paul Dorland”
“Ah, is it a noble name—an ancient name? Pa’ul Do-Rahlan! It sounds fearsome. Would that I had such a name, but the Bedu speak of things in very simple terms. It is the desert in us. We see things with a clarity and simplicity that you Westerners may not fully appreciate. My name is an ancient one and, for that reason, it is common. But it is also a lucky name as well. And you? What is signified in your name? Is the house of Do-Rahlan a venerable one?”