Mina was curled tightly against Jack’s warm chest, their naked bodies still intertwined.
‘You know, after all we’ve been through, getting shot… I should be a total wreck, but there’s something about being around you Mina, I feel I could do something amazing now.’
‘You already have, Jack.’ She said with a mischievous grin.
He laughed softly.
‘So,’ she said, ‘are you ready to introduce me to your family?’
He held her in his strong arms and kissed the top of her head.
‘Sort of.’
‘What do you mean “sort of”?’ she said, tensing up.
‘My mum is quite sweet and so is my sister, but…’
‘Yes?’
‘They’ve never left their trailer.’
‘So what?’
‘Mina, they’re not very sophisticated.’
‘Please, don’t been embarrassed by your family, not on my behalf!’
‘Alright. What about your parents?’ he asked.
‘Oh. That’s another story. They were polite on the phone of course.’
‘But what?’
‘You’re a soldier you know, you’re not a doctor or a lawyer… It might not work out.’
‘You’re joking, right?’ said Jack, raising himself on his elbow.
She looked at the shocked look on his face, enjoying every second of it, and then kissed him hungrily as she climbed on top of him.
‘Of course I’m kidding! They’ll adore you, but not quite as much as I do.’
PART 4
THAILAND
Death carries off a person who is gathering flowers, like a flood carries away a sleeping village.
(Buddhist Saying)
Chapter 30
December 23rd, 2004. Thai Airways flight
The plane to Bangkok was packed with British tourists leaving behind their offices and heading for the beach. They were wearing shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops and were looking forward to a well-earned holiday in Thailand. Mina was amazed to see how lightly dressed they all were. In the shopping area of Abu Dhabi, where they had a short stopover, she was reminded of the variety of dress codes co-existing at airports all around the world. The contrast between her fellow travellers and the white-robed sheiks and their entourage was quite a vision to behold. Mina watched the queues of men of all ages and from all social classes waiting for a connecting flight to Mecca and felt quite moved. Was it their fervour? Or was it their anticipation of revealed mysteries, their communal faith? She clearly remembered her father’s serene smile when he returned from the Hajj, many years before. She must have been ten years old and had kept asking her mother where daddy was, until one day he walked through the door and swept her off her feet in a long-awaited hug.
December 24th, 2004. Don Mueang, Bangkok airport
Mina was trying to get her head around the time zone difference. The duration of their trip had been twelve hours, but because of the seven hour difference between Britain and Thailand, instead of arriving at ten p.m. it was actually five in the morning on Christmas Eve.
Having retrieved their luggage, Jack returned to the waiting room to find Mina, yawning on a bench.
‘Mina, I finally managed to reach my mother at the hotel,’ he said, his broad smile showing just how relieved he was. ‘I told her we’d be with her for dinner. We’ve got a flight to Phuket around eight tonight, how about a little sightseeing in the meantime? I propose leaving our bags in a locker and going exploring.’
‘That sounds lovely!’ she answered, shaking off her drowsiness and picking up her bag.
After a hair-raising taxi ride through Bangkok’s busy streets, Mina marvelled at the strangeness of her surroundings and the beauty of the various temples along the Chao Phraya River. The driver came to a screeching halt just outside the National Museum. Jack paid the man and then turned to Mina, ‘Believe it or not, even though I’ve been to Bangkok many times, and even to this park,’ pointing at the leafy Sanamluang park opposite, ‘I’ve never once visited the National Museum.’
‘A good thing too, we’ll discover it together. I always start a visit to a new city with a museum trip.’
‘It’s as good a place to start as any,’ said Jack. ‘I usually memorise the main streets and then go for a walk.’
‘Museums make me feel more grounded. They reassure me, you know, the fact that all human beings have a sense of their own history, their own roots.’
‘Well, you sure look like a fish in water the moment you enter a museum!’
She laughed and held his hand as they walked into the museum.
The collections were distributed in different buildings, some of which Mina found to be more refined than others. The Siwamokhaphiman Hall was an impressive ceremonial building made of traditional materials. In this case, she preferred the building itself to the prehistoric collection it contained. But what really impressed them was the Phra Buddhasihing, a famous sacred image of Buddha, held in the so-called Buddhaisawan Chapel, and a huge sculpture of Ganesh.
Jack knew this god well from his previous trips to South East Asia and had much affection for the elephant-headed god. He found this sculpture of the dancing deity particularly endearing.
All in all, Mina found the museum’s collection fascinating but the descriptions, when there were any, amounted to no more than one-line legends. The city was utterly turned towards tourism. It was colourful and noisy, with gift shops, travel agencies and hotels. At every street corner, touts invited visitors and tourists to enter their establishments right off the street, whether to massage parlours or restaurants. In comparison, the national museum, at least in its presentation, felt almost like a cultural understatement. They sat at a table in the museum’s inner courtyard and ordered a cool drink. Mina was finding it difficult to adapt to the weather, and felt more at ease indoors. It wasn’t so much the temperature that bothered her but the tropical climate, humidity mingled with heat and the lack of any breeze. Her clothes stuck to her body and she wasn’t used to sweating this much. One person’s discomfort, however, is another’s pleasure as it obviously appealed to Jack from the way he was checking out her glistening cleavage.
‘It’s a strange place, Jack. I know I haven’t been here for more than a few hours, and call me callous, but I don’t feel that people here are in touch with their past.’
‘I’m not sure anyone really is, but it’s funny you should say that. Most of Thailand has embraced capitalism and Western culture to such an extent that I’ve often had the same feeling. Someone once said to me that “the gods have left Thailand.”’
‘I know they’re Buddhist, but what does it represent here?’ asked Mina.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Jack in turn.
‘As far as I understand it, Buddhism came from India, and was a monastic order. In India, lay people weren’t Buddhists. How does it work in Thailand?
‘You must have seen the beads and necklaces some men wear around their necks.’
‘Yes, I noticed that the pendant was often the same, sort of triangular in shape.’
‘It’s a small image of a monk or a saintly man,’ said Jack, ‘while Buddhism is still monastic in its general form, it has little to do with what went on in India centuries before. A large section of the population is made up of monks. Many young men go to a monastery for a few years and eventually leave to get jobs.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Mina.
‘Well, it’s the best way for young people who can’t afford to attend proper schools to get an education, free of charge. Some enter the orders for a year or two mainly to learn English.’
‘So what’s the main religion?’
‘Well, apart from those who are Christian and Muslim, especially in the South of the country, you could say they worship their ancestors and I think that Buddhist monks sometimes officiate at weddings, but that’s a recent change. You often find them at funerals.’
‘You seem to know a lot about Thai
land.’
‘I had a good friend here. He taught me a lot about the country.’
‘Had?’ Mina asked, not believing her luck as Jack unveiled another layer of his mysterious past.
‘Hon died five years ago.’
‘I’m very sorry Jack.’
‘It’s OK. It’s been a long time.’
‘How did he die?’ she asked.
‘Quite tragic really. He was a doctor in Chiang-Mai. He went to a remote village to train local nurses and was bitten by a very poisonous snake.’
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking you about this?’
‘Of course not Mina,’ he said, kissing her tenderly. ‘So, have you seen enough of the museum?’
‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, jokingly.
‘Hungry?’
‘Famished.’
‘Good,’ he replied, ‘I know just the place to go.’
Jack and Mina were sipping their double espressos after a sophisticated meal at the Oriental Hotel. The exquisite outdoor terrace restaurant overlooked the Chao Phraya River. They both gazed for a while at the boats sailing past and tried not to laugh too much at the wealthy wives of western expats sitting at nearby tables, pouting disdainfully at everyone. They walked through the older parts of the Hotel, admiring the sepia photographs of the Hotel’s rich and famous guests since Queen Victoria’s time, and then into the foyer where they left the hotel and hailed a taxi.
‘So where are we going next, Monsieur Jack?’
‘My favourite,’ he glanced at her mischievously, ‘a massage.’
‘I thought massages were kind of seedy in these parts?’ she said, somewhat taken aback.
Jack laughed, ‘They can be… but not where I’m taking you.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Surprise,’ he said, and stopped any further questions with a kiss.
Before long, they stood in front of the Grand Palace, in Bangkok’s historic centre. Here was the beating heart of the city. Most monks lived nearby, within walking distance of this, the greatest of all the shrines and glittering temples in the City of Angels. Mina gazed with awe at the temples, or wats as the Thai called them, constructed with millions of small pieces of coloured glass and ceramic, and spectacular gilt roofs. There were many temples but the one that struck her the most was Wat Pho, or the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. It was the largest temple in the city and was famed for its gigantic gilt Buddha, which was over forty metres long. Even the statue’s feet were more than three meters in size and its soles were covered with intricate decorations in mother-of-pearl. What surprised Mina most was the sound of money tinkling as pilgrims and tourists donated coins to the priests so as to gain merit from the Buddha.
‘So where’s the spa? I thought we were going to have a massage?’ asked Mina, jokingly.
‘Ah. Women, you lose all patience from the moment you hear of a good pampering.’
‘I don’t see you complaining,’ said Mina.
‘True. Follow me.’
After a short walk through the temple complex, Jack suddenly stopped in his tracks, ‘Voilà.’
Obviously a great many visitors to the Wat Pho complex came for an invigorating massage rather than for religious zeal. Jack paid out two hundred bahts for each of them and they entered the real world of Thai massage, an odd mixture of yogic postures, deep muscle massage and body pressure points which the practitioners pressed on painfully hard with flat wooden sticks. Relaxing into the massage, Mina let her thoughts roam freely and through a curious association of ideas, started thinking about time-travel. They had lost a day, travelling to Thailand, although the actual journey had not lasted much more than half that time. She had the strange sensation of being a thought away from something important that she should remember. It was just out of her grasp. Trying to chase it down would never work, so she let go of her thoughts and focussed on enjoying the massage fully.
Mina and Jack walked hand in hand on the river bank until they reached a pier, where a tiny booth offered boat tours exploring Bangkok’s backwaters. Jack bought a two-hour tour. The boat moored and Mina and Jack boarded, waiting in line behind other tourists to show their ticket. Only one traveller got on without paying his fare, a chubby monk in saffron-coloured robes. No-one seemed to mind, Mina guessed that in Thailand monks probably didn’t pay for public transport. He sat there, near the helm, his plump face looking out at the watery furrows on the boat’s flanks, as it sliced through the river. Mina was mesmerised by this overweight monk, holding his begging bowl tightly against his chest. Most monks woke up early in the morning and left their monasteries to beg for food from passers-by on the streets of Bangkok. This one had obviously been collecting money, as his begging bowl tinkled every time the boat swayed in the wash.
The riverside landscape was fascinating, with many of the houses perched on stilts. Families were going about their daily lives, far away from the bustle of the city’s tourist trade and big business skyscrapers. Stroking Mina’s hair distractedly, Jack couldn’t help thinking about the tablet and its meaning.
‘Mina?’ Jack said.
‘Yes?’ she answered, dreamily.
‘How sure are we that it will happen?’
‘Oh,’ she said, a little disappointed that Jack had not opted for a more romantic sentiment. ‘We can’t know for sure, but Daniel’s calculations have confirmed that past disasters were predicted by the authors of the tablet.’
‘So what are we really talking about?’ asked Jack, matter-of-factly.
‘I hope nothing will happen, but if something does it will probably be an earthquake.’
‘Can’t you give me a more educated guess?’
‘OK. The tablets describe events to come, as well as how to forecast them. Unfortunately the Mosul tablet was only partly preserved and the Jerusalem one… basically we don’t know how they forecasted the events, but my personal feeling…’ she broke off.
‘Yes?’
‘… The events described are incremental in magnitude and destructive power.’
‘You mean they get worse over time?’
‘Yes, they make me think of warnings.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of worse things to come.’
‘And I thought you weren’t religious.’
‘I don’t feel like joking, Jack. What time is it?’
‘Almost time to get back to the airport to catch our flight. We’re getting off at the next pier.’
Jack’s mind drifted back to his time in Iraq. He wondered how the qanat work had progressed, if the villagers had followed his notes conscientiously and been successful in channelling the water. Since the fateful day he had met Mina, he had pursued an ancient tablet in four countries and come up against Wheatley and Shobai, possibly the deadliest foes he had ever faced. ‘Some month,’ he thought to himself.
Phuket airport.
Mina watched over their luggage as Jack bought two Thai SIM cards for their mobile phones. She looked around her, welcoming the warm and windy weather. ‘A good thing Jack didn’t send his mother on a skiing holiday,’ she thought. Jack returned half an hour later.
‘Let’s get to Patong beach as soon as possible. We should make it for Christmas dinner as planned.’
As they walked out of the small airport to the taxi rank Jack noticed two men who seemed to be scrutinising the arrivals. The men’s faces lit up when an old woman appeared at the gate. They were evidently greeting their mother. ‘I’m becoming totally paranoid,’ Jack sighed inwardly.
‘Here’s a tuktuk,’ Jack said, hailing one of the strange looking motorised versions of traditional rickshaws. Their young driver greeted them, with the ubiquitous wai gesture, bringing both hands to his chest and bending his head slightly towards his hands. He then picked up their bags and stowed them behind their seats. He jump-started his engine and with a loud popping noise, the tuktuk was on the road.
‘They’re funny things aren’t they?’ Jack said, ‘Tuktuks aren’t as manoeuvrable
as motorbikes, but they’re really useful in areas where traffic congestion is a problem, like Bangkok. Here it’s a bit for show, as it’s a holiday destination and in fact there’s hardly any traffic.’
Mina rolled her eyes. ‘Boys and their toys,’ she thought to herself.
‘It may be tacky, but it’s a lot of fun to feel the wind in your hair!’ she retorted.
‘I thought you’d enjoy it. Still, the journey will take roughly half an hour, just enough time to be covered from head to toe with dust. You’ll definitely want to freshen up at the hotel after it.’
‘I’m sure you will too, Jack. You seem to forget I don’t spend all my time in libraries. You don’t want to know what I look like after a three week excavation campaign.’
He smiled at her. The sun was radiant and the sea breeze cool and pleasant. He loved seeing Mina’s evident excitement at being in Thailand. This was her first trip to South East Asia and Jack promised himself he would return with her another time, just the two of them. He knew some remote and majestic islands on the other side of the peninsula that would be perfect. He could not tear his eyes away from her striking profile, as she gazed at the landscape unfolding on either side of the open-air vehicle.
Twenty minutes into their trip and the driver turned around briefly. ‘Here Hat Surin,’ he yelled over the buzz of the tuktuk, pointing to a beach on his right, ‘then we go Laem Sing, Hat Kamala and Hat Patong.’
Mina did not register any of the strange sounding names the driver had called out. She was just enjoying the ride.
Patong beach. Hotel
Jack spoke with the hotel manager who confirmed that his relatives had received his message, but that they were off on a boat tour. They would be back in an hour. The contrast between the hotel’s lobby and Patong beach’s rowdy atmosphere was stark. Mina was overwhelmed by a tourist industry brought to its paroxysm. It was as bad as the infamous Pat-Pong quarter in Bangkok: noisy mopeds, techno and pop music blaring out from all sides, billboards sprouting in every language under the sky – advertising everything from go-go girls to smoothies and Singha beer. She was glad to have escaped to the relative peace of this hotel. After a while a porter came by to pick up their luggage. She followed him out of the hotel to a row of discrete bungalows. She savoured the warmth of the air on her skin, and was looking forward to swimming in the sea, only fifty metres away from the bungalows, which were built right on the beach. They reached their bungalow, hidden from prying eyes by wild tufts of bamboo and large, overhanging palm trees. It had a large porch and a beautiful view of the seafront. As soon as the porter left the room, she undressed and walked into the bathroom. It was a large room with stone flooring and tiled walls. With great relish, she lathered her entire body with soap and stood still under the powerful flow of the shower. Then, she sat on a flat rock, still under the shower and felt so relaxed she almost fell asleep. Jack entered the bathroom, got undressed and filled two wooden buckets with warm water. He turned off Mina’s shower and told her to remain seated on the rock and close her eyes. He then poured the warm water from the buckets gently over her. He refilled the buckets and repeated this a few times.
The 13th Tablet Page 25