Chapter 13 - Dreams of Sufis and 1001 Nights. France 1968

Terry sits dissatisfied on a couch in the middle of the party, glass of red wine in his hand and a cigarette languishing in the ashtray. All the people and their conversations are just meaningless blurs and he doesn't need to hear the words to know what's being said. Everything just goes in circles of confused decadence and self-deceit that doesn't lead anywhere. At least, it's not taking him anywhere these days.

His face is set in a grouchy pout and the occasional flicker of his eyes betrays his boredom and ennui for all that's going on. His money is running out from his severance pay, blown on wine, girls and entire cheesecakes from the supermarket. He can't imagine sitting down to any kind of a job only to maintain this insipid lifestyle. The poetry of the moment has left him behind without very clear directions as to how he should catch up. He can't find anybody who can identify with how he feels and no one wants to listen to him complain. Grey clouds of the future are pissing down upon his head, soaking his long hair and archaic felt waistcoat.

"You look like you've been pouring wine over yourself - I thought you might be a Sufi!" Drawls an intelligent female voice to his left. Slightly perturbed that he hasn't succeeded in entirely withdrawing from the buzz of social interaction, Terry turns to see what intruder has penetrated his defences.

His sourness evaporates in an instant as he beholds the girl who's joined him upon the sofa. Her features are half-Asian, the angular cheekbones couching dark, unmoved eyes cool and still as a jungle lake at night. Her face is small and surely not past thirty but there seems to be an unwrinkled ancient demeanour about her as if she's personally seen the last three generations of her family born, raised and laid to rest I their graves. Not to say she looks weary or jaded - If anything she seems ready for the next play of life and wants to waste no more time.

Terry decides to make an impression by raising his glass to his mouth, missing deliberately and splashing red wine over his face. It runs down his nose and neck and he soaks it up with a flamboyant handkerchief.

"I have a drinking problem!" He jokes but she does not smile or if she did then it was withdrawn before a camera could have borne witness. Her eyes focus a little harder as she studies this American buffoon. To cover the failure of his gag, Terry says: "Tell me about Sufis."

She speaks about isolated groups of mystics chanting all day in desolate desert places. Of wandering seekers discovering their lessons in bizarre encounters upon the road. Of wine drinkers who searched for God through the grape and Heaven in the thick of their morning hangover. Of dancers who whirled until only a State of Grace maintained their balance. Of poets who pined for God like heart-sick lovers, singing their desperate serenades at the moon and deaf to the laughter of onlookers.

As she speaks her voice hardly lifts or falls a tone but her eyes flash with enthusiasm as her subject overtakes her. Terry melts into her soul and realises that he'd like to hear her voice every day and for his name to be mentioned in it. They could ride together on these soft murmurs like flying carpets across sandstone dunes and savannah brush, toward smoking horizons of the evening and through starry nets, swooping every now and then to tease sleeping camels and to scoop up handfuls of dates and sherbet. When he opens his eyes she is staring straight at him, having finished speaking some time ago.

"Did I put you to sleep?" She asks dryly.

"No, but the sound of your voice makes me feel like I'm dreaming!" He grins broadly, making no secret of his instant attraction. Her flame is not so easily excited but she does not withdraw. Terry learns her name is Lucette and that she's half Burmese and spent her early childhood there. Her adolescence was in America with the other side of the family but to the alarm of the school authorities she obstinately refused to succumb to a healthy hysteria and did not once attend therapy.

There was clearly something very wrong with her but at least it was a quiet, studious-in-the-corner kind of abnormality that didn't directly challenge the American Way. All that could be hoped was that she might develop a bad case of acne and embrace neurosis through the back door. She too, was not content to settle down to an existence of semi-detached house, life insurance, Tupperware and a 12 month build-up to the next Super Bowl.

Terry sees that she moves in deeper, unseen currents than the people he's used to and surface turbulence doesn't seem to affect her. Her social expression reveals no more than is polite and the pigs go hungry for her pearls. So what is she doing talking to him? He wonders, as he becomes aware that they're holding hands. Her palms burn hot, hinting of a passion that she reserves for select occasions. Her breath wraps around him like a woollen shawl. He has to blink twice to be sure that they still have their clothes on.

"If you're interested" She says in the same level tone "I have a book for you." She reaches into a black handbag and withdraws "One Thousand and One Arabian Nights" translated by Richard Burton. "You probably know some of the stories in their plagiarised form - Al'a'din, Ali Baba - But this translator is unbelievable: He could speak about 25 languages fluently, including classical and colloquial Arabic. He used to mingle with the street fakirs, adjusting his dress so that they never suspected he came from further away than the next city. He even went on Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca disguised as a Muslim and he was never found out!" A smile of mischief curls upon her lips at the notion. "And this was in the 19th century, Terry, when there was no alternative scene or interest in the East - Except for its cinnamon and silk."

She places the book in his hand and presses the other safely on top. She tears a piece of paper from a notebook in Terry's breast pocket. "So here's my phone number. Happy reading. I'm tired and I'm going home."

Terry can't hide the look of disappointment in his eyes.

"You're going?" he asks, not understanding why. She returns a look of mild rebuke.

"We only just met!" She says simply, "Throw paper on a fire and it will blaze but it's all gone in a few moments. The good that lasts takes a while to be kindled to see if the flame is strong enough." She hesitates and then leans forwards to place a light kiss on his lips. "Good night, Terry." She rises and then pauses for a moment. "Your name doesn't suit you." She says matter-of-factly and then picks her way out through a room of milling students.

Terry doesn't sleep that night. He sits up on his sofa bed in a friend's front living room reading the Nights. He discovers a cultural mythology as psychedelic as anything else he's ever come across and is consumed by a curiosity to know the people who dream of hundred foot jinns rising in furious black smoke from malfunctioning lamps.

He reads of an arrogant king who doubted the prowess of a visiting dervish, who then yanked the monarch's head into a bucket of water. The king suddenly found himself in a distant land, poor as a peasant. Naturally, no one recognises his rank and he's forced to restart life as a dogs body for a merchant. After a lifetime of this, he's pulled at once back out of the bucket in what has been just a moment for those in attendance and his conceit is cured by this lesson in relativity.

The pages are full of lyrical descriptions of lavish banquets with stomachs of sheep fried in pistachio oil and stuffed with minced figs. Of discovered treasures with figurines carved out of diamond and rubies larger than eyes that light up whole palaces with their radiance. Of women who are more lovely and curvaceous than the crescent moon and who carry breasts like the melon bushes in harvest. At this last description Terry is obliged to put the book down and dream for a while about Lucette, his lips still tingling from her kiss.

Over the next couple of weeks she continues to ply him with literature and, though they spend long, intimate evenings together under shady trees in the parks, he's obliged to sate his passion with the books she gives him. It's as if with each classic he reads from her library, he becomes worthy to enter another chapter of her heart. As he educates himself, so too does she release her trust in him and Terry feels privileged and proud to receive her confidence as he becomes more eligible by the day.

Being American, he is not used to anything more than immediate gratification of desire. There's the chocolate cake in the window - Go ahead and buy it(if only on credit)! Now he understands that he's been missing out on the exquisite stages of a gradual consummation of the instinctive pull. Sure he got his kicks in the past diving straight in but he was ignorant of how much subtle nuance there is to be found in sensation and anticipation: The raw ingredients for transcendental experiences of the kind he reads about in the poetry of the Sufis.

He flicks through the pages of Rumi and recognises the sentiments in each verse, marvelling that for the first time the words seem to be directly addressed to him.

'Come, Come, whoever you are!' This is religion as he could never have imagined to exist, tailor-made for his appreciation of the world. The Sufis seem to say that life should be lived as a series of love affairs, the birth and death of each ardour holding all the clues as to the meaning of our strange existence. This Way is not for most, he learns and is certainly not suitable for those meant for the world of material ambition. But for those who would sign away their souls for a sunset and whisper sweet nothings into the ears of rose bushes then refuge may be found in the verses of Rumi: ' Even if you have broken your vows a thousand times!'

Theirs is a caravan of sinners, drunkards, freaks and fools; a melange of the pious, obsessive, forgetful and Romantic who swoon at the unbearable perfection of Creation as incarnated in the visage of a passing woman on the street. They seduce, accuse and bawl out God in the early hours, keeping the whole street awake - Followed by humble reconciliations with the Almighty in hung over mornings.

They embody the Divine in roses, nightingales, the moon and the passage of night and day. They work themselves up to an ecstasy of love from which heights their grudges and bitterness in daily life seem shameful - Yet they rejoice in the knowledge that Allah is all-forgiving and all-merciful. When Terry reads this he sits straight up to attention. He forgives everything? This has instant appeal as he letter explains to Lucette, holding up an imaginary phone to his ear ' Hey dad? I'm borrowing the car!' he holds the receiver away at the angry response, 'He's mad now' he explains 'but he'll be cool about it later!'

More than anything, he finds himself surfing a wave that has just picked him up while he was just innocently paddling along. But he sees no reason to get off. He guesses that it can only get better and that he's just entered the lobby that precedes the great palace. He doesn't know anything about the detail of what is to be but circumstances would seem to be the least important thing right now. Accountants aren't invited to the party.

Determination evolves into conviction as he comes across Rumi's condemnation for the 'spiritual window-shoppers' who point out items on display but never commit themselves to anything. Get involved with life, Rumi insists, commit yourself to huge, foolish projects: Be like Noah, who built a huge wooden boat on arid land that hadn't seen rain for decades - It doesn't matter how absurd you seem for the thing that matters least is the opinions of other people.

So, true to this spirit, Terry and Lucette are married six weeks later and set off on their way to Morocco with $50 in their pockets. They've thrown some big logs onto their fire and their world of two is expanding exponentially with each day of their deepening love. Both are more than ready to leap into the awaiting boat of their new life together: An existence that awaits them somewhere over the Andalucian moutains and across another stretch of water, albeit a little shorter than the Atlantic. There, on the north-west corner of Africa, many happy years lie in store for them, though it seems more like a journey into their ancient past than their future.

It's 1968 and Hendrix is transforming the world of sound. Free festivals erupt across Europe and America with a new generation questing for peace, love and good dope. Flowers in hair, CND badges and protests against the draft. But whilst a counter-culture erupts from a colourful flowerbed, our love-struck couple are hitching a ride in the back of a friend's pick-up truck, rolling their way south through the Pyrenees, in search of something indefinably older.