The cords around his wrist were still painful. They’d taken off the hood but he was still bound. Rob urgently rubbed his wrists together as best he could to restore some circulation. Then he gazed at Karwan. The young Yezidi man was squatting on a faded but richly embroidered rug. Staring back at Rob. He sighed. ‘I tried to help you, Mr Luttrell. We thought if we let you come here you would be satisfied. But you had to go looking for more. Always. Always you western people want more.’

Rob was nonplussed: what was he talking about? Karwan was rubbing his eyes with finger and thumb. The Yezidi man seemed tired. Through the slitted windows Rob could hear the faint noises of Lalesh: children laughing and giggling, and the gurgle of the fountain.

Karwan sat forward. ‘What is it with you people? Why do you want to know everything? Breitner was the same. The German. Just the same.’ Rob’s eyes widened. Karwan nodded. ‘Yes. Breitner. At Gobekli Tepe…’

The young Yezidi man moodily traced the pattern of the rug in front of him. His forefinger followed the scarlet maze of the embroidery. He seemed to be meditating: deciding something important. Rob waited. His throat was very dry; his wrists were throbbing from the ropes. Then he asked, ‘Can I have a drink, Karwan?’

The Yezidi man reached over, to grab a small plastic bottle of mineral water. Then he put the bottle to Rob’s mouth and Rob drank, shuddering and gasping and gulping. The bottle was set on the concrete floor between them, and Karwan sighed for a second time.

‘I am going to tell you the truth. There is no point in hiding it any more. Maybe the truth can help the Yezidi. Because the lies and deceptions, they are hurting us. I am the son of a Yezidi sheikh. A chief. But I am also someone who has studied our faith from the outside. So I am in a special position, Mr Luttrell. Maybe that allows me a certain…discretion.’ His eyes avoided Rob’s. A guilt reflex? He went on: ‘What I am about to tell you has never been revealed to a non-Yezidi, not for thousands of years. Maybe not ever.’

Rob listened intently. Karwan’s voice was level, almost monotonous. As if this was a prepared monologue, or something he had been thinking about for many years: a rehearsed speech.

‘The Yezidi believe that Gobekli Tepe is the site of the Garden of Eden. I think maybe you know this. And I think our beliefs have…informed other religions.’ He shrugged and exhaled profoundly. ‘As I told you, we believe we are direct descendants of Adam. We are the Sons of the Jar. Gobekli Tepe is, therefore, the home of our ancestors. Every Yezidi in the priestly caste, the upper class, like myself, is told that we must protect Gobekli Tepe. Protect and defend the temple of our ancestors. For the same reason, we are taught by our fathers, and our fathers’ fathers, that we must keep the secrets of Gobekli safe. Anything taken from there we must conceal or destroy. Like those…remains…in the Sanliurfa Museum. This is our task, as Yezidi. Because our forefathers buried Gobekli Tepe under all that earth…for a reason.’ Karwan took up the bottle and sipped some water; he gazed directly at Rob, his dark brown Kurdish eyes burning in the gloom of the little storeroom. ‘Of course I see your question, Mr Luttrell. Why? Why did my Yezidi ancestors bury Gobekli Tepe? Why must we protect it? What happened there?’ Karwan smiled, but the smile was pained, even agonized. ‘That is something we are not taught. No one tells us. We do not have a written religion. Everything is handed down orally, from mouth to mouth, from ear to ear, from father to son. When I was very young I would ask my father, why do we have these traditions? He would say, because they are traditions, that is all.’

Rob made to speak but Karwan raised an impatient hand to silence him. ‘None of this mattered, of course. Not for many centuries. No one threatened Gobekli Tepe. No one even knew it was there, apart from the Yezidi. It remained buried in its ancient earth. But then the German came along, the archaeologists with their shovels and their diggers and their machines, testing and digging, digging and exposing. For the Yezidi, uncovering Gobekli is a terrible thing. Like exposing a terrible wound. It pains us. What our ancestors buried has to be kept buried, what was exposed to the air has to be concealed and protected. So we, the Yezidi, we had ourselves hired by him, we became his workmen so we could delay the digging, stop the endless digging. But still, he carried on. Carried on exposing the wound-’

‘So you killed Franz and then you-’

Karwan growled, ‘No! We are not devils. We are not killers. We tried to frighten him. To scare him off, to scare you all away. But he must have fallen. That is all.’

‘And…the Pulsa Dinura?’

‘Yes. Yes of course. And the troubles at the temple. We tried to…what is the word…we tried to hamper the dig, to stop it. But the German was so determined. He kept on digging. Digging up the Garden of Eden, the garden of jars. He even dug it up at night. So there was an argument. And he fell. It was an accident I think.’

Rob made to protest. Karwan shrugged. ‘You can believe this, or you can choose not to believe it. As you wish. I am tired of lies.’

‘So what is the skull?’

Karwan exhaled, slowly. ‘I do not know. When I went to Texas, I studied my own religion. I saw the…structure of its myths. From a different perspective. And I do not know. I do not know who Melek Taus is and I don’t know what the skull is. All I know is that we must worship the skull and the peacock. And that we must never reveal these secrets. And that we must never ever breed with non-Yezidi, we must never marry outside the faith. Because you-the non Yezidi-are polluted.’

‘Is it an animal? The skull?’

‘I do not know! Believe me. I think…’ Karwan was struggling with the words. ‘I think something happened at Gobekli Tepe. To our temple in Eden. Something terrible, ten thousand years ago. Otherwise why did we bury it? Why bury that beautiful place unless it was a place of shame or of suffering? There had to be a reason. To bury it.’

‘Why are you telling me this now? Why now? Why me?’

‘Because you kept on coming. You would not give up. So now I am telling you everything. You found the jars. With those terrible remains. What is that for? Why were those babies put there? It scares me. There is too much I do not know. All we have is myth and traditions. We do not have a book to tell us. Not any more.’

Outside, voices were calling again. It sounded like farewells. The voices were joined by car engines starting up. It seemed as if people were leaving Lalesh. Rob wanted to write down Karwan’s words: he felt a physical hunger to get this down; but the cords were still tight around his wrist. All he could do was ask, ‘So where does the Black Book fit in?’

Karwan shook his head. ‘Ah yes. The Black Book. What is that? I am not so sure it is a book. I think it was some proof, some key, something that explained the great mystery. But it has gone. It was taken from us. And now we are left with…with our fairy tales. And our peacock angel. Enough. I have told you things that I should never tell anyone. But I had no choice. The world despises the Yezidi. We are abused and persecuted. Called devil-worshippers. How can it get any worse? Maybe if the world knows more of the truth, they will treat us better.’ He took another deliberate sip of mineral water. ‘We are keepers of a secret, Mr Luttrell, a terrible secret we do not understand. Yet we must cleave to our silence. And protect the buried past. It is our burden. Through the ages. We are the Sons of the Jar.’

‘And now-’

‘And now I am going to take you back to Turkey. We are going to drive you back to the border and you can fly home and then you can tell everyone about us. Tell them we are not Satanists. Tell them of our sadness. Tell them what you like. But do not lie.’