"There's some water in that jug." "Here," I said. "Take some." "Is it safe?”Owen was gravitationally bound to the cult, as an object to a neutron star, pulled toward its collapsed mass, its density. The image is both trivial and necessary. What could he say about the attraction? Nothing that did not take the form of an example from the physical world, preferably a remote and not easily observed part of it, to suggest the edge of perception.The dead sun was not an image. It hung over the cactus and scrub, the sand hills of this desolate western reach of the Thar, the Great Indian Desert, not far from the Pakistan border. He followed camel trails and ate a thick bread made with coarse barley. The well water was brackish, the camels wore bells, people made frequent reference to snakebite. He came across two villages in four days on foot and in buses. The villagers lived in beehive huts with thatched roofs, walls of mud and dry grass.His mother used to tell him, "Try to be more impressive.”He stood on a broken asphalt road in a white silence, waiting for a bus. The people he'd seen some miles back had worn a type of cotton robe and the women had gathered branches from small thorny trees to use in making fires. He would have to learn the names of things.He watched a man come hobbling toward him out of the hills. He led a goat on a rope and wore a ragged turban and the cleft white beard of the old Rajput warriors. He began talking on the other side of the road and in what appeared to be the middle of a sentence, as though continuing a conversation the two men had started some years earlier, and he told Owen about the nomadic tribes in the area, about snake charmers and wandering minstrels. The English he spoke sounded like a minor dialect of Rajasthani. He said he was a teacher and guide and he called Owen sir."Guide to what? There's nothing here.”He said a number of things Owen could not understand. Then he showed him a filthy length of cloth embossed with some kind of symbol. This seemed to give him official government status as a guide."But what is there to see that requires a guide?”"For a feesir.”"How much?”"As you wish.”"All I want to do is get a bus going that way, to Hawa Mandir.”No buses on this road. "You will be going to Hawa Mandir, you will need to see a lorry.”"When?”"After certain days.”"How many days are certain days?”The man thought about this."I am interested in knowing what you will guide me to if I pay your guide fee.”"Pay as you wishsir.”"But what will you show me? We're somewhere between Jaisalmer and the Pakistan border.”"Jaisalmer, Jaisalmer." He made a happy chant of it."And the Pakistan border," Owen said.The man looked at him. The word for yesterday was the same as the word for tomorrow. The hawks turned in the empty sky."If there is no bus and if I have to wait indefinitely for another vehicle, I'll walk to Hawa Mandir.”"You will be walking into the Thar but you will never walk outsir.”"You said you were a teacher. What do you teach?”The man tried to remember. He began a monologue that seemed to be about his early days as an acrobat and juggler, wandering between the fortress cities. The two men hunkered in the dust, the Indian talking endlessly, his right hand floating in a mesmeric gesture, his left hand clutching the rope that was fastened around the goat's neck. Owen was barely aware of his departure. He remained squatting close to the ground, leaning slightly forward, body weight supported by his calves. When the sun was white and rippling he took a dried vegetable preparation out of his pack and ate it. He wanted water but allowed himself only a token amount, trying to preserve most of what was left until the next day, midmorning, when he would look for rest and shade after five hours on foot. It was suddenly dark. He reclined on his side like the gypsy in the Rousseau painting, safe in a mystical sleep.He was barely awake, thinking of the morning's long haul, when a small caravan of brass-studded iron carts approached, bullock-drawn, heading the same way he was. Blacksmiths and their families, the women wearing bright veils and silver trinkets. They took him to Hawa Mandir.It was a fifteenth-century town slowly being assimilated by the desert, so much the color of the desert that Owen did not see it until they were nearly at the gates. It was being received and combined, sinking into the land, crumbling, worn away in stages. Even the dogs that sulked along the outskirts were yellowish brown and passive and barely visible. He walked through the streets and alleys. The houses were sandstone, with carved facades and flat roofs, auspicious signs on many walls. There was one long building embellished with domes and kiosks and lacy stonework balconies. There was little activity, most of it involving water. A man washed down a camel, another fastened water containers to a two-wheeled wooden cart. In minutes Owen had made his way to the edge of town. Sand began to blow.The stone houses gave way to huts of mud and brick. Many of these were ruined, lapped in sand. Children watched him drink from his canteen. Goats moved in and out of inhabited huts. He stood on a ruined wall and scanned the horizon. There were earthen bins out there, sand-colored, conical, one or two with thatched roofs. He'd seen these elsewhere, receptacles for food and grain, the taller ones seven or eight feet high, usually set on the immediate edge of a village, men with tools, livestock tethered nearby. These bins were stark, a half dozen of them, about three hundred yards from the last of the huts. He set out in that direction.Sand was blowing across the tawny ruins. A rough path led through gorse and thorn to the cluster of small buildings. Sandstone hills rose in regulated layers in the distance. He passed a woman and child with a gaunt cow. The child followed close to the animal, gathering dung as it fell to the ground, folding it, patting it briskly. The woman screamed something at her, lashing the air with a stick. This sound carried briefly on the wind.History. The man who stands outside it.He could barely see by the time he approached the bins. The sand stung his face and he walked with his arm crooked in front of him, opening his eyes only long enough to glimpse the way. Something startled him, a man standing at the head of the path, dark-skinned, his hair ringleted and wild, his face uncovered despite the blowing sand. Shadows around the flat eyes, a danger in his bearing. But he was also oddly calm, waiting, wrapped in garments from neck to ankles, hands hidden, head and feet bare, and he was saying something to Owen. Was it a question? They looked right at each other. When the man repeated the words, Owen realized the language was Sanskrit and he knew at once what the man had said, although he made no conscious attempt to translate.The man had said, "How many languages do you speak?”

Half the room was filled with light. He sat up, a little unsteady in his movements. I don't think I'd fully realized how exhausted and ill he was. The only strength was in his voice."That's a question I always dread being asked," I said. "It's a question that seems to be waiting for me wherever I go in the Mideast. I don't know why it carries such force.”"It's a terrible question in a way, isn't it?”"But why?”"I don't know," he said."Why do I think it exposes some terrible weakness or failing?”"I don't know.”"You can answer it. Five, six.”"Counting Sanskrit. Which comes pretty close to outright cheating. In my own defense I'd have to say there was never anyone I could speak it with, except that boy on the embankment. They're teaching it again in the schools.”"Did you speak it with them?”"On and off.”"How did you know they were there? From the group in the Mani?”"They said there was a cell in India. They'd gone there from somewhere in Iran. I was to look for a place called Hawa Mandir.”"You took your time looking.”"It was my view, my sentiment that India would cure me of the fascination. Is there more water?”"The jug is empty.”"You have to fill it in the street. There's a tap two houses down.”When I returned he was asleep, sitting up, his arm dangling over the side of the bench. I woke him without hesitation.