Chapter 28

            Mubarak took my hand and we rose up in the air, leaving the central plaza quickly behind as we climbed higher and higher. I gasped, overcome with vertigo, but he put his other hand over my eyes and suddenly I felt a great calm sweep over me. When he removed his hand and I opened my eyes, I saw that we were perched on the capital of an alabaster column at the highest point above the City of Iram, within a vast, upside-down pyramid far beneath the desert sands, just below the stunning, flattened pearl dome that capped it all.

            Mubarak wanted privacy, so he could discuss something important with me. I was all ears, but a bit apprehensive. I wasn’t looking forward to tomorrow, to the departure of the jinn. That would mean I would never see this amazing – man? jinni? – again.

            The vertigo was totally gone. I looked out over the City, absorbing all I could with my wide-open eyes. This might be the last time I ever saw Iram from this perspective, and I was positively drinking it in.

            Mubarak waited patiently for a while, then took me by the shoulders and turned me toward him. He kissed me gently and held me close for the longest time. I felt so safe with him. I wanted the moment to continue forever.

            “Emily,” he said. His brown eyes were so earnest, almost pleading. “I want you to come with me.”

            I didn’t answer. I just stared at him. I’m sure my jaw had dropped.

            Finally, I said: “I can’t do that.”

            He smiled. He could be very persuasive!

            “Yes, you can.”

            He leaned forward and kissed me again, as if to give me confidence. My lips tingled, as if I’d tasted some exotic spice.

            “Mubarak, that’s crazy! You and your people are heading out into space, to some far-off planet, God knows where, and you want me to tag along? It’s totally insane!”

            “Not really, Emily. We’re going to an Earth-like world with water, air, vegetation and all the rest. We’ll be like the early colonists who settled America, only with advanced technology!”

            “And what about the ‘Indians’?” I asked.

            “Hah!” Mubarak said, with a semi-laugh. “Yes, there will be ‘Indians,’ as you call them. We will help them, like we helped you.”

            “They probably look like huge purple lobsters, with clacking claws.”

            He smiled again. “No, they are very much like humans. We have seen them. This galaxy, what you call the Milky Way, is full of humanoids – or more properly, hominins, members of your extended family. The planets were seeded long, long ago – maybe by God.”

            I rested my hand on Mubarak’s arm. His muscles were taut, like a drawn bow. He was clearly worried I would say no. I was going to say no, really. I gave him more reasons why I couldn’t leave. I didn’t have any family to speak of, so I turned elsewhere for excuses.

            “Mubarak, I have my work! I am a professor! I have students back in the USA who are waiting for me.”

            “This world is full of teachers. Your students will survive. And you can do your work, your research, wherever you are. You can study the jinn up close and personal, as they say. Besides….”

            “Besides what?”

            I searched his eyes. They were so deep, and I felt I was being drawn in, like paper boat in a whirlpool.

            “Besides, I love you, Emily. I have always loved you.”
            I guess that’s what you would call a sucker punch. It was hard for me to recover from “I love you.”

            After I surrendered, Mubarak sat patiently with me and explained all I would need to know: how jinn technology would enable us to survive the journey through space, how we would navigate the networks of crisscrossing wormholes that penetrate the fabric of spacetime, how long it would take to reach our destination, how we and the rest of Earth’s jinn would settle our new home. There were still many questions unanswered. But it was a start.

            Not long afterward, he took me out of the subterranean city and into the trackless desert above. I didn’t exactly see how this happened, because my eyes were screwed shut in fear. We passed through some sort of opening, and Mubarak had me kneel forward, and suddenly my knees were in hot sand. I looked around. It was late afternoon, the orange sun was sinking toward the western horizon and the ovenlike heat of the Empty Quarter was beginning – ever so slightly – to abate. Our world was made of nothing but dunes – waves and waves of orangish, pudding-y dunes – stretching as far as the eye could see. We were at a high point, and the perspective was wonderful.

            Despite the view, there was something slightly melancholy about it all. Apart from the two of us, there was no life, none at all – just the plaintive moan of the wind. As an academic, I knew that this was not completely true. If you looked carefully, living creatures could be found in the valleys, on the edges of sabkhas, hiding in holes and among scrawny, gray salt bushes. There were camel spiders, scorpions, sand snakes, spiny-tailed lizards, even the occasional small mammal, like a jerboa or fennec fox. But while the sun was out, most life stayed hidden, waiting patiently under the sand for darkness and dinnertime.

            “I wanted to see this place one more time before we left,” Mubarak said, his arm around me, as we watched the sun set. “It’s austere, but I will miss it.”

            The sun bulged and glowed like a copper skillet as it descended toward the horizon.

            I held on to him tightly as a light breeze hit us. He was so human, so male, at moments like this.

            “It’s hard to believe you’re not human,” I murmured, my head against his warm chest.

            “What makes you think I’m not human?” he asked.

            I looked up at him quizzically.

            “You’re a jinni, Mubarak!” I said.     

            He smiled and nodded. “Yes. But still….”

            “Still?”

            “Listen, Emily,” he said, “I want to share a little secret with you.”

            He sat us down in the sand, face to face, and he told me the truth.

            It was very hard at first for me to accept this, but after all that had happened in recent days, I was becoming more accepting of new ideas, and as it sank in, I grew more comfortable with the notion. You know how humans make use of only a small part of their brains? Well, if we could somehow learn to use more of our precious gray matter, we would be able to do some amazing things. We would develop telekinetic and telepathic abilities. We would be able to create visual illusions and change our shapes. We would be able to see the rips in the fabric of spacetime, and slip out of our three spatial dimensions and into other higher ones. In short, we would become jinn….

            “There’s nothing mysterious about this,” said Mubarak. “It’s simple biological evolution.”

            “So you – the jinn – climbed higher up the evolutionary ladder, and we – the humans – stayed behind.”

            “Well, that’s an oversimplification. Let’s just say, we got a head start.”

            “So that’s why jinn and humans can marry and have children together.” An image flashed through my mind, of Mubarak and me, standing in the front yard of some exotic cottage on another planet, surrounded by a brood of frolicking half-jinn children, some levitating, some shape-shifting, all just being kids….

            “Yes, our DNA is very similar. We are all members of the hominin family. We jinn are the lucky ones. We developed first. We feel it is our duty to help others learn to use their brains more fully, and take the next steps up the ladder. We have done that with your people. You are on the very verge. When we leave, your species will learn to expand their brain power from the knowledge we leave behind. It will help them to become jinn, so to speak.”

            “And me?”

            Mubarak laughed softly. “Yes, you will become one of the jinn – even faster than the others!”

            The sun dipped below the distant dunes. The wind toyed with us. I snuggled up beside him and hugged him. Maybe I could actually do this, I thought.

            Another thing puzzled me. It was one of those academic questions that most people don’t think of until later. (Don’t ask me why; my mind works in strange ways.)

            “Mubarak, how do you know where to go next?”

            “Sorry? What do you mean?”

            “How do the jinn decide what planet is their next destination?”
            “Oh! We don’t decide. The decision is made for us.”           

            “Who makes the decision, then?”

            “Actually, we don’t know. Again, it could be God. Perhaps a superior species. One day, a meteorite strikes the planet where we live. The indigenous people find a chunk of the meteoric rock, and decide it comes from heaven. The meteorite is revered and protected. Amazing as it sounds, the rock, the meteorite, has invariably come from our next destination. It was sent to us, as a message. We study it, and then we know where to go.”

            I put my hand on his forearm.

            “The Black Stone!” I said.

            “Yes.”

            “The jinn took it?”

            “With the help of the Qarmatians, yes. Each meteorite that falls from the sky has a signature, a characteristic mineral structure that tells us where it originated. We know our galaxy rather well. We are able to tell which meteorites are deliberately sent. We studied the Stone, and determined the message – our next destination. The Stone was returned, after the Abbasids paid a big ransom to the Qarmatians. The Qarmatians thought they were returning a fake, but it was indeed the real thing.”

            “When they returned it, it was broken into seven pieces.”

            “Yes, but that was not our doing, The Qarmatians were less than respectful in returning the Stone; they thought they were handling a fake.”

            “How do you know all this?”

            “It’s part of our history. It was a long time ago. But our records go way back.”

            “How about you? Do you go ‘way back’?”

            “You mean, am I old? Not that old!”

            “How long do you jinn live?”

            “A couple hundred years. I’m barely 70.”

            He looked 30. I shook my head in amazement.

            “Don’t worry,” Mubarak said. “When you expand your brain power, you’ll live much longer too.”

            “That’s a relief,” I responded. “I’ve got so much to do, and so little time to do it.”

            My big, strong jinn lover grinned and wrapped his arms tightly around me.
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