But I cannot stay with you. You already know that, I am sure. Our child cannot stay here, he will always be in danger. We cannot go to your country, for you have told me there are no gompas there. I think you know who the child is, who he is destined to be. I will tell him about you. Every night when the sun goes down and the monks leave us alone, I shall talk to him about you. I will never forget you. Please remember me.
He remembered the last evening at Gharoling, when she had gone out to the terrace to gaze at the darkness. Don’t think I can be yours forever, she had said. You must not think that. But he had thought it and he had wanted it.
He left the monastery two days later. He knew where she had gone, of course. In his mind, he could see the little lake on the borders of Tibet and the rocky island in the centre, with the tiny temple. And he heard her voice, speaking into the wind: I have been here before. And I shall come here again. More than anything, he wanted to go there, to see her just once more. But of all the places in the world, he knew it was the one place he could not go.
He headed for Urga. For the first time that year, there were no clouds in the sky. England was a long way away.
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Thanks to everyone who helped with this book, especially my agent, Jeffrey Simmons, John Boothe and Patricia Parkin at Grafton, Patrick Filley and Jennifer Brehl at Doubleday; Frs. John Breene and Tony Battle for their patience; Dr. Dermot Killingley for his rendering of the Bengali song on pages 44 and 96; and Beth, for everything.
Daniel Easterman was born in Ireland in 1949. He studied English, Persian and Arabic at the universities of Dublin, Edinburgh and Cambridge, and is a specialist in several aspects of Iranian Islam. He has lived in Iran and Morocco, but in 1981 returned with his wife to England to teach Arabic and Iranian studies at Newcastle University. In 1986, he gave up teaching to concentrate on writing full-time.
When not researching or writing, he devotes much of his time to the study and promotion of alternative medicine. He is currently working on a new novel.