Rob wanted to talk to some Yezidi. He persuaded Karwan to interpret: on one patch of grass, they found a jocular, middle-aged woman pouring tea for her children.

Rob leaned in and said, ‘Tell me about the Black Book?

The woman smiled, jabbing a finger at Rob quite vigorously.

Karwan interpreted her words. ‘She says that the Black Book is the Bible of the Yezidi, and it is written in gold. She says you Christians have it! You English. She says you took our holy book. And that is why the westerners have science and education. Because you have the book, that came from the sky.’

The woman smiled warmly at Rob. And then she bit into a fat tomato, spilling vivid red seeds down her shirt, making her husband laugh very loudly.

The ceremony in the square was nearly over. Young girls and boys in white were in the central space, finishing their spiralling dances around the sacred flames. Rob regarded them. He took some discreet photos with his camera-phone. He scribbled some notes. And then, when he looked up, he noticed something else. Quite unremarked by the bystanders all the elite old men were ducking, one by one, into a low building at the far end of the square. Their action seemed somehow furtive, clandestine. Or at least significant. There was a guard at the door of this low building, though there were no guards on any of the other doors. Why was that? And the door they were using was itself marked out from the others. It had an odd black snake set beside it in stone. A long snake symbol right by the door.

Rob felt the tingle. This was it. Rob had to find out what was going on. He had to get in that mysterious door. But could he get away with it? He glanced around. Karwan was now lying back on the grass, dozing. The truck driver was nowhere. Probably asleep in his cabin. It had been a long day.

This was Rob’s chance. Right now. Sloping down the hill, he crossed the square briskly. One of the chanting boys had dropped his white headdress by the well beneath the spring. Rob checked left and right, and snatched the garment up and put it over his head. Again he checked. No one was looking. He slunk towards the low building. The guard was on the door: he was about to close the door. Rob had just one chance. He muffled and concealed his lower face with the white cloth, then darted over the threshold into the temple.

The yawning guard stared vaguely at Rob. For a moment he seemed puzzled. Then he shrugged and shut the door behind them. Rob was inside the temple.

It was very dark. The acrid smoke of the oil lamps fugged the air. The Yezidi elders were lined up in rows, chanting, murmuring and singing very quietly. Reciting prayers. Others were on their knees, kowtowing and bending: touching the floor with their foreheads. A blaze of light filled the far end of the temple. Rob squinted to see through the smoke. A door had briefly opened. A whiterobed girl was bringing an object covered in a rough blanket. The chanting grew a little louder. The girl set the object down on an altar. Above the altar the gleaming image of the peacock angel stared down at them all, serene and superior, disdainful and cruel.

Rob moved forward to get as close as he could without drawing attention to himself, desperate to see what was hidden underneath the blanket. He edged closer and closer. The praying and chanting grew louder, yet darker. Lower in tone. A hypnotic mantra. The lampsmoke was so thick it was making Rob’s eyes itch and weep. He rubbed at his face and strained to see.

And then girl whipped away the blanket, and the chanting stopped.

Sitting on the altar was a skull. But it was like no skull Rob had seen. It was human, yet not human. It had curved slanted eye sockets. High cheekbones. It looked like the skull of a monstrous bird, or a bizarre snake. Yet still it was human.

Then Rob felt a hard knife blade: pressed cold against his throat.

34

Everyone was shouting and jostling. The knife bit at Rob’s throat, pressing hard against his windpipe. Someone thrust a hood over his head: Rob blinked in the darkness.

Doors slammed and opened and he felt himself being jostled into another room: he sensed it because the noises were different, the echoes smaller. He was definitely in a more confined space. But the voices were still angry and shouting, babbling fiercely in Kurdish. Threatening and yelling.

A boot kicked him in the back of the knees. Rob crumpled to the floor. Images drove through his mind: victims on internet videos. Orange bodysuits. Allahu Akhbar. The sound of a knife slicing at a windpipe and the creamy froth of blood. Allahu Akhbar.

No. Rob struggled. He writhed this way and that but there were hands all over him, holding him down. The hood was made of old sacking; it smelled of stale breath. Rob could just perceive light through the weft of the cloth wrapped over his face. He could make out the shapes of shouting men.

A second door opened somewhere. The voices got louder and Rob could hear a woman calling a question and some men yelling back at her. It was all confusion. Rob tried to breathe slowly: to calm himself. He was pushed on his side now: lying down: and he could see Yezidi robes, dimly, through the cloth. Robes and sandals and men.

They were binding his wrists behind him. Rough twine was biting into his flesh. He winced at the pain. Then he heard a man growling at him-was that Arabic? Did he recognize these words? He twisted his body and strained his eyes to see through the rough cloth of the hood, and he gulped: what was that flash: was that the knife again? The big knife they had put to his throat?

The fear was searing. He thought of his daughter. Her lovely laugh. Her blonde hair on a sunny day: blonde as sunshine itself. Her blue eyes uplifted. Daddy. Nanimals. Daddy. And now he was probably going to die. He would never see her again. He would ruin her life by not seeing her again. He would be the father she never had.

The grief welled in him. He nearly wept. The cloth was hot and his heart was pounding, and he had to stop panicking. Because he wasn’t dead. They hadn’t done anything more than manhandle him. And scare him.

But then as soon as Rob’s hopes arose he thought of Franz Breitner. They’d killed him; that hadn’t been a problem for the Yezidi workers at Gobekli. They had pushed him onto the spike, skewering him like a frog in a laboratory. Just like that. He remembered the gush of blood from Franz’s chest wound. Blood squirting onto the yellow Gobekli dust. And then he remembered the trembling goat being slaughtered in the Sanliurfa streets.

Rob screamed. His only hope was Karwan. His friend. His Yezidi friend. Maybe he would hear. His shouts echoed around the room. Then the Kurdish voices came back, cursing him. He was jostled and kicked. A hand gripped his neck, almost throttling him; he felt another hand tight on his arm. But Rob angrily thrashed out with his boots: he was angry now. He bit the hood. If they were going to kill him, he was going to fight, he was going to try, he was going to make it hard for them-

And then the hood was whipped off.

Rob gasped, blinking in the light. A face was staring down at him. It was Karwan.

But this wasn’t the Karwan of before: the friendly, round-faced guy. This was Karwan unsmiling, grimfaced, angry; and yet commanding.

Karwan was ordering the older men around him: snapping at them, in Kurdish. Telling them what to do. And the older men in robes were evidently obeying him: they were practically kowtowing to him. One of the older men rubbed a wet cloth over Rob’s face. The smell of the dampness was vile. But the coolness was also refreshing. Another man was helping Rob to sit up straight; they had propped Rob against the rear wall.

Karwan barked another order. He seemed to be telling the robed men to go: they were obediently filing out of the room. One by one they left, and the door slammed shut, leaving Karwan and Rob alone in the little room. Rob looked around. It was a dingy space with bare painted walls and two high, slitted windows letting in a poor amount of light. It was some kind of store room maybe; an antechamber for the temple.