THE THUNDEROUS ROAR OF WATER crashing over rocks jolted me awake. I opened my eyes to a clear blue sky and a waterfall to my left. The air was warm and humid, and the scent of cinnamon drifted through the air. Except for a faint sweetness from the magical potion that clung to my lips, the bizarre scene in the hospital bathroom seemed like nothing more than the lingering tendril of a bad dream.
I looked at my body and sat upright. I was completely naked, not even wearing my watch. A woman was lying beside me wearing nothing either, but her wheat-coloured skin was radiant and a veil of jet-black hair was thrown over her face. She was asleep; her arms were spread out and her breasts displayed like golden dunes rising from a desert ground.
Mesmerized, I let my gaze follow her luscious curves until it fell on the black book pressed between the grass and her right hip. My red headband had slid to the edge of the cover and was about to fall off.
Was this Laila? I wasn’t sure because I had never actually seen her face. I remembered zoning out in the bathroom after dissolving that tiny piece of paper under my tongue as Pir had instructed. I had been completely immobilized as Laila pinned me to the ground and her hot tongue ravaged the inside of my mouth.
The woman stirred in her sleep, her beautiful face looking toward the sky. Her shaved pubic area was as smooth as a baby’s belly and an insistent stirring in my loins made me look around for something to cover myself with.
We lay in a grassy sloped meadow. One side merged into a bay bordered by steep blue granite cliffs of an inlet that led to the sea. Near the shore, a hundred feet or so from us, the huge waterfall poured down the face of the cliff and crashed against the rocks, sending plumes of mist and spray into the air. On the other side of the meadow, rocky cliffs were crowned by a knoll covered with shrubs that shimmered as if lit by the sun.
Except that no sun hung in this strange monochromatic blue sky. Luminescence seemed to be radiating from the ground and everything glowed as if lit from within. I got to my feet and stood, marvelling at the stark alien beauty of this dreamlike terrain and the unknown woman who slept at my side, oblivious of her surroundings.
Could this beauty be a hoor; one who had drifted away from her flock? I glanced at the girl’s ankles, looking for signs described in the traditional Islamic texts, but her ankles were not translucent. I walked over to a patch of vegetation, my feet relishing the exquisitely soft grass beneath, but my mind scattered like beads of mercury. Something had gone very wrong. There was no sign or word from Pir. Hopefully, he was on his way and would appear any moment. It was 11.30 p.m. when I had last looked at my watch but I had no idea what time it was here or if there even was a ‘here’.
I broke off several leafy shoots from the shrubs and wrapped them around my waist, tying each of them in a knot. Satisfied that they had adequately covered my private parts, I thought of taking some for the woman but decided against it. I was in no hurry to give up the vision of such a beautiful naked woman.
By the time I got back, she was awake. She sat like a yogin, her back straight, her radiant black hair covering her breasts and her hands covering her face except her eyes. They were Laila’s eyes; and in her lap lay the black book.
‘Ismael! Is that you?’ she asked, keeping her face covered and pretending not to see me. ‘Where are we?’
‘Laila! What the hell are you doing here?’ I demanded, drawing closer to her. ‘You were supposed to be attending to a head injury back in the emergency room.’ As I said this, I realized how ridiculous I must have sounded.
‘Is this a dream? Everything here is so—so beautiful.’ She said, gazing at our surroundings with bewildered eyes.
‘Yes, it is. In a dream, you know, you’re permitted to unveil your face.’
‘No!’ she hissed. ‘You won’t like me if I let you see my face,’ she cried, her head still buried in her hands and thrashing back and forth like a village mourner. Her reaction completely baffled me.
‘Why would you say such a thing?’ I knelt beside her.
‘See this side of my face?’ She pressed her right cheek with her fingers without lifting her palms. ‘The first stone hit me here,’ she said through her tears. ‘It blew my cheekbone and knocked me out. That’s the only reason I’m alive today. They thought I was dead and left me there to rot.’ Her shoulders shook.
‘Who are these people?’
‘Men.’
‘My God!’ I placed my hands on her head and stroked her hair.
‘It took a long time to heal, leaving this ugly scar under my eye. That’s why I refused to take my veil off when you asked me to.’ Her sobbing continued.
I held her wrists and gently moved them away, only to find an impeccably beautiful and unblemished face.
‘But your face is perfect and lovely. I don’t see any scar. What are you talking about?’ As she touched her cheek and slid her trembling fingers over the soft flawless skin, her eyes widened and she gasped in happiness and covered her mouth. ‘You’re right! Oh my God! Ismael, how can this be?’
‘May I have the book, please? Actually, just the headband.’ I asked.
She slid it off the book and handed it to me without uncovering her lap.
Pulling it over my head and adjusting the logo, I collected my thoughts and beamed them to Pir, my brows furrowed with the effort. But there was no reply.
‘Hello! Can you hear me? Pir, can you hear me?’ I whispered, tapping my temple this time.
‘Who are you talking to?’ she asked, her voice filled with curiosity and amusement.
I stayed silent for if I mentioned Pir, I would have to explain a whole lot more. And the last thing I wanted to do was compromise Pir’s mission. I struck my temple several more times in order to establish the connection but without success.
‘Look, I’m really sorry about last night,’ she said. Her cheeks flushed. ‘I couldn’t control myself and when I came back and saw you lying on the floor, I just couldn’t help it.’
‘I thought it was illegal for women to drink Hoor Afza.’
She turned her face away without saying anything.
‘You see this,’ I told her, taking the headband off and holding it in my hand. ‘This is a special kind of phone. If we can’t make it work, we’re struck here forever.’
‘The minute I saw you in the emergency room that night, I knew you were different. Special,’ she said, her eyes searching mine, not having heard what I had just told her.
‘Well, thank you,’ I slid the headband back over my head, giving my temple yet another tap. ‘Hello, hello.’
‘Ismael, it’s so strange. I feel it all happened such a long time ago.’
‘What happened a long time ago?’ I asked distractedly, listening for the sound of Pir’s voice in my head.
‘The stuff in the bathroom—the time when we met. It all feels as if it happened in another life. Do you feel that way too?’
‘I need to make this thing work,’ I said, ignoring her questions, speaking more to myself than her. I took the infuriating piece of red fabric off my head and lashed the air with it several times before putting it back on.
‘So what’s next, boss?’ She was now composed and her lips curled in a smile.
Her beauty was mesmerizing; her supple skin radiated vitality and her eyes were suffused with a calm, steady desire.
‘I’m going to take a walk up that hill and see what’s on the other side.’ I pointed towards the grassy knoll. ‘It looks like a ten-to fifteen-minute walk.’
‘Ismael, you are a true gentleman. How many men can keep their cool with a naked woman sitting right beside them?’
Had she known what was stirring beneath the canopy of leaves around my waist, she would have thought otherwise.
‘You want to come along?’ I asked, jumping to my feet and quickly turning away from her.
‘No, I want to go look at that waterfall. It’s so magnificent! You go on up. We’ll meet back here. Sound good?’ she asked. ‘And please, don’t forget to bring some leaves back for me,’ she added, rising to her feet with effortless grace and making sure the book still concealed her.
I wondered what would happen if the book got wet. It could wash away whatever the pages were coated with. Then it struck me: why not tear out a couple of the tiny squares and put them under our tongues. That would probably beam us out of here. It was a wild thought, but certainly worth a try—but only if Pir and I failed to make contact, in the next twenty-four hours.
‘Would you mind trading that book for my leaves?’ I asked Laila, thinking that on my way up the hill I would harvest another eco-friendly organic loincloth.
Laila pursed her lips and stared at my canopy of leaves as if giving the trade a great deal of thought. I felt uncomfortable under her mischievous gaze as it wandered over my not-so-well-hidden private parts. I wished I had used a few more leaves to make my cover denser.
‘Sure, that works. Here,’ she said, thrusting the book toward me and locking her eyes on mine in case my gaze was to drop. ‘Now, may I please have the leaves?’ She demanded with a smile and an outstretched hand.
Keeping my eyes on hers, I smiled and untied the precarious foliage from my waist and extended the leafy strands to her. A few had fallen off during this maneuver. We made our exchange without allowing our eyes to take unfair advantage of the awkward trade-off. As soon as I got the book in my hand, I turned and sprinted in the direction of the hilltop, savouring her hot stare on my bare ass.
‘Wait!’ she yelled from behind. ‘Would you be kind enough to loan me that headband of yours? I need something to tie my hair with.’ Her request was innocent enough, but I knew better than to part with it. What if Pir tried to contact me?
‘You can have it when I get back,’ I said, turning to look at her. She had her hands on her waist and looked ablaze with an inner light but was modest as hell. She had certainly made better use of the leaves than I had. She nodded, then turned around and headed toward the waterfall.
I continued toward the top of the hill, the book held firmly in my hand. Had Laila been accidentally transported here because she was kissing me when I passed out? Or was she here as a trap? I remembered her soft, hot tongue probing the inside of my mouth and tried to block the memory as it rose to demand the renewed attention of my cock.
I stopped by the shrubs and took my time to make a new garment for myself. To my satisfaction, it turned out to be a significantly improved design over the earlier version.
What I thought would be a fifteen-minute hike to the top turned into what felt like an hour. The sound of the waterfall had faded and the light had dimmed. The once-blue sky changed to a pale mauve. I had trouble locating Laila near the water, but then spotted her running in my direction. I stopped and waited for her to catch up with me. When she reached, she was out of breath, her face beaming with joy. Quite a few leaves had fallen away thanks to her sprint.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked, stealing a glance at her breasts, at the rosy orb of flesh around her nipples that showed through her hair.
‘I was looking at my reflection in the water. My face really is fine, perfectly normal! Ismael, I want to stay here forever.’
‘Are you crazy?’ I asked her, resuming my walk up the hill and adjusting the leaves around my waist.
‘Ismael, we can live a perfect, happy life here—just you and I,’ she said, following me. ‘We’ll make love—day and night and have lots and lots of children.’
‘And then what?’ I asked, without looking back at her.
‘Then we’ll grow old, watching our children grow. We’ll play with our grandchildren and then one day we’ll move on to the next world,’ she explained, as though I should be delighted by the proposition.
‘I’m afraid we’re already in the next world,’ I told her, wondering where the hell these grandchildren of ours were going to come from, barring incest. It all seemed like a very creepy idea.
She remained quiet as we ascended the grassy slope, zigzagging our way toward the ridge. Just below the summit we stopped to catch our breath. Standing in front of me, she clasped her hands under her chin, closed her eyes and started moving her lips.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Praying,’ she said, opening one eye.
‘That may be the only way we get out of here. Maybe I should join you,’ I said.
‘I’m praying to Allah to keep us here forever.’
‘Isn’t that like meddling with his plans?’ I did not like where this was heading.
‘He’s known to change his mind if you ask sincerely.’ A model of piety, she touched her face with her palms and blew her breath over her chest.
‘How do you know for sure what’s right for you and what isn’t?’ I asked, trying not to show the irritation I felt at this line of talk.
‘Allah has given us the ability to know right from wrong.’
‘Oh. The moral sense!’
‘Yes, that.’
‘So you seriously believe that staying here is right for you?’ I asked, thinking she be completely out of her mind.
‘Yes.’
‘And what about me?’ I threw my hands in the air, growing more and more annoyed.
‘Man doesn’t know what’s right for him. That’s why Allah created women to help them out.’ She stated this way too forcefully.
‘I don’t agree with you.’
As the words left my mouth, the sky darkened over the inlet and the air exploded with a crescendo of noise. A black undulating shape filled the chasm over the water and advanced toward us. The screeching was unbearable and we had to cover our ears.
Ababeels!
It was the exact same sound I had heard just before I zoned out from drinking tea at the Bihishti Tea Corner.
We stood and watching in awe as a vast flock of tiny black birds zoomed over our heads. And just as suddenly it became still, silent, and the sky returned to its previous shade of mauve.
‘What was that?’ Laila asked with had her hands over her temples, her eyes wide.
‘Ababeels,’ I replied.
‘Ababeels? So frightful!’
At that instant, the text of the surah Al-Fil, the Elephant, shot across my upper visual field in blazing red-gold Arabic script: ‘Have you not seen what your Lord did with the companions of the elephant? And send on them birds in flocks. To throw on them stones of baked clay. And He made them like eaten straw.’ It was one of a handful of surah I knew the translation of.
I recited these lines silently, imagining the sea of bloody carnage in the wake of Abraha’s army as it advanced upon the Kaaba with its legion of elephants 1,500 years ago.
We continued walking, watching as the treetops came into view over the crest of the ridge. One of the trees shook and something moved within the canopy of leaves.
‘Did you see that?’ I shouted, pointing toward the tree.
‘What was it?’ Laila asked, equally alarmed.
‘I’m not sure. Maybe some animal.’
The rocky cliff on each side of the knoll formed a natural pass which separated the stark landscape of the inlet from a strangely contoured country on the other side. It was like standing on the rim of a bowl and looking into it. Brimming with an exotic array of plant life and dotted with waterfalls, a seemingly interminable slope directed our gaze toward something hazy green at the bottom of the valley before ascending again. There it was, forming the opposite rim, occupying the elevated horizon like a band of dark clouds. The Wall! The perimeter of the most coveted real estate in the universe, Paradise. Laila gasped at the sight of it and gripped my arm, her body lightly trembling against mine.
‘All praise to Allah! This surely is Paradise.’ Her face was illumined by a peaceful glow of love; not passion this time, but love.
‘Not exactly, technically speaking.’
‘But look at that massive wall! None other than jinns could have constructed one of this size. How far do you think it is from here?’
‘Seventy years on the back of a horse,’ I said, remembering my conversation with Ibrahim at the Bihishti Tea Corner.
‘Seventy years! How do you know that?’
‘I just do. I also know that the Paradise you’re talking about exists behind that great wall.’
‘Really?’
‘That’s all I can tell you.’
She then turned to look at me and said, ‘Ismael, it’s time for you to explain how we got here.’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Try me.’ She stared at me with her eyes wide, unblinking and demanding.
I considered her request for a moment. She looked too innocent and clueless to be a trap. And the truth itself was so wild that it would only make her laugh. I decided to spill the beans and held the book up for her to see.
‘See this? It contains the tickets to Paradise. Literally.’
‘Tickets to Paradise?’ she asked with a hint of amusement in her voice. ‘You mean those little coupons?’
‘Yeah, coupons. They’re good for a free ride,’ I said, shaking my head and starting down the slope and away from the cluster of trees where I had spotted suspicious animal activity. ‘I’ll explain everything, I promise. First let’s find someplace comfortable to sit down.’
She followed me silently.
Hoping Laila wouldn’t notice, I tapped my headband repeatedly, visualized an ‘SOS’ in big bold letters and beamed the image at Pir, but no luck.
After having walked a couple of hundred steps, absorbing the surreal vista of a bowl-shaped landscape of staggering dimensions, we came upon another cluster of gigantic trees, each a hundred or so metres tall. Their roots rose off the ground like ledges and provided us with a natural seating area. We sat face-to-face and drew a few deep breaths.
‘Are you ready for my story?’ I asked, leaning toward her, drawn by a strong magnetic current. She radiated some kind of intoxicating warmth and my loins rippled with desire.
She bit her glistening lip and brought her face closer to mine. Our lips met and hers parted for a hot intake of breath.
Putting the book down, I stood up with her wrist in my hand and pulled her up. In the next moment we fell over and were rolling on the ground, wresting like wild animals, the leaves tumbling away from our heaving bodies. Without a warning she pulled out of my arms and sat upright. She stared at me, her eyes huge and pensive, her knees drawn up to hide her breasts.
‘Ismael, do you accept me as your wife?’
‘What kind of question is that?’ I was completely taken aback.
‘You’ll have to say yes if you want to have me. Let’s not risk our chance to enter Paradise.’
‘For heaven’s sake, last night you were all over me in that goddamn bathroom! Now all of a sudden you need to marry me before we can make love?’ Ravishing as she was, I was in no mood for tying the knot with a strange, possessive woman I didn’t really know, especially under such bizarre circumstances. Deep down I knew I had failed Pir, thanks to my unbridled sexual urges. Lust, women. My greatest weakness. For such a refractory case as I, death would be the only cure for such an affliction.
‘Circumstances alter cases.’ She smiled mischievously. ‘So, what’s your answer?’
I looked at her in utter disbelief and then a thought occurred. Why should I care when I had an option that would be perfectly halal according to the precepts of Sharia? I saw no reason why it wouldn’t be acceptable to this newly minted Muslimmah.
‘Okay, fine. Let’s do the Mut’ah, the temporary marriage.’
‘Although I’m not a Shia, that’ll do for now.’ She smiled. ‘We can always convert it to a permanent one later.’
‘Our contract will hold until we get back to our previous lives, or as long as we’re stuck here.’
‘It’s a deal.’
So she asked me three times: ‘Do you accept me as your lawful wife?’ And I answered her each time: ‘I do.’
‘We are now married. Promise you’ll never cheat on me.’
‘For God’s sake, Laila!’
She climbed on top of me, her knees on either side of my body, resting on the ground. Her nipples touched my chest as she bent over and played with my hair. Her breath on my face was hot, a fevered and rhythmic chant of desire.
‘Ismael, I don’t ever want to wake up from this lovely dream. Do you really love me?’
I lay hypnotized, staring at her ecstatic face as she took all of me inside her. She winced, then swung her head and threw her hair back as she started to grind against me. I took my headband off and put it around her forehead. She licked her lips and my fingers, and I shut my eyes. Mid stride she screamed, then collapsed on top of me, her pelvis filled with my throbbing cock still moving.
I heard a rustle over my head. Looking up, I saw the huge ass of a monkey retreating nimbly into the branches of the tree. And in his hand, the creature tightly gripped the black book.
‘Hey!’ I yelled, writhing under Laila’s body in the throes of my orgasm and hers. ‘Come back! Hey, you little shit, come back here. Fuck!’ I screamed. But the monkey just kept climbing hand over hand and soon disappeared into the dense green covering overhead.
Laila kissed my cheeks, her breath still hot with desire. Her body twitched as I lay spent beneath her. I lamented the loss of our tickets to get out of this place, not to mention the chance of entering Paradise. Most importantly, what would Pir say? He seemed pretty adamant about a lot of things, but chief among them was his desire for that book.
I finally disentangled myself from Laila and jumped to my feet. Berating myself, I climbed up the tree trunk through the heavy branches as far as I could, but there was no sign of the mischievous thief.
Later, as we lay side by side on the grass staring up at the vault of space overhead, dusk crept over the hillside and bathed everything in radiant light. The air felt exquisite against our skin. The heavens were dotted with tiny lights, as if dangling from the hand of some celestial being as he watched from above. We made love again, gently this time, and then fell asleep; each surrendering to our private dreams.
When we awoke, the sky was a pale golden and the trees were full of birds in song. And we were starving.
After making love so wildly that our bodies were covered in bruises, we set off down the interminable slope toward the valley. Along the way, we gathered more leaves and fashioned new garments for ourselves. There was fresh water for us to drink and the air was sweet, warm and fragrant.
The trees were heavy and drooping with varieties of un-familiar but delicious fruits and we eat our fill of many of them. Still there was no appearance of the sun, that is if there even was one in this peculiar land, and daylight lasted only a short while. Dusk returned rather quickly, and to our amazement it turned to dawn without any intervening night. It was disorienting initially, but after a few of these sunless cycles we got used to it.
If this was how the punishment for my cardinal sins was going to look, then I wasn’t complaining. However, the realization that my chances of getting out of here alive was pretty slim made me increasingly anxious.
We slept whenever we pleased, ate whenever we felt hungry, made love at each rest spot and continued our descent toward the valley. Along the way, we spotted several black monkeys squatting among the branches of the trees but there was no sign of the book among this troop. Eyeing us curiously and emitting low-pitched screams, they stood their ground without abandoning their perches and made no attempt to approach us.
It didn’t take us long to realize we had lost all sense of time. Our descent continued for what felt like a lifetime. Laila’s hair began to show streaks of white as did my beard which now reached my navel. The soles of our feet, after repeated blistering, had become thickly callused and our knees were swollen and throbbing with pain from the exertion of our perpetual downward march. To ease our discomfort, we made walking sticks out of fallen tree branches.
When we finally reached the floor of the valley, we followed a winding creek and at dusk came to a broad trailhead. Too exhausted and in pain to go any further, we made our bed in the tall, soft grass and went to sleep.
We woke up to the excited chatter of a gang of twenty or so wild-haired, topless women with white skin, extraordinarily beautiful faces and long legs. They spoke in a monosyllabic tongue, which sounded surprisingly musical and pleasing. Before we knew it, they had us surrounded and each woman carried a wooden spear pointed to our throats. Each of them wore a palm-sized green leaf over her pubic area.
Rubbing our eyes, we bolted upright and stared at these newcomers. Laila looked distraught seeing so many strange women around us. They had radiant skin, translucent over their ankles, through which the marrow could be seen within the core of their bones. It was the strangest thing to see, but in no way did it diminish the otherwise beautifully shaped legs.
Hoor! That was the only logical thought that came to my mind for the women’s ankles fit the description of a hoor, a woman of Paradise, as stated in Islamic theology. Had we in fact landed in some forlorn corner of Paradise that happened to exist just outside its boundary wall?