But even if Rose had covered her hair, even if her hair wasn’t a distinct shade of reddish brown, he would have known where she was by some interior compass that was slowly realigning itself to her as true north.
The mausoleum’s ornate interior held sarcophagi for Rumi and his immediate family, with Rumi’s resting underneath the green dome. The room wasn’t overly crowded yet. He still didn’t feel at ease in tight spaces full of people, but he stayed behind Rose and the Babes while they examined the contents of the glass cases, clothing attributed to Rumi or his family, locks of hair, and beautifully illuminated Korans. When they were in the last small room, he walked back outside and stood by the fountain in the courtyard to wait for them, watching pilgrims lean over the low white-painted fence to fill bottles from the fountain or wash their hands and feet at one of the spigots extending from marble blocks at regular intervals in the wrought iron fence.
The Babes and the Babes’ Road Manager emerged from the museum. There was a brief moment of conference as they took off their booties, then they split up, going in a different directions, Florence and Marian toward the gift shop, probably in search of tea and souvenirs, Grannie covering her head as she walked into the small mosque at the far end of the courtyard, and Rose studying the pilgrims and the architecture in the courtyard.
“What did you think?” he asked.
She paused for a second, arms crossed over her torso as she looked around. “This is going to sound really stupid, but it’s so foreign. The architecture, the writing, the language, the culture. Every sense is bombarded with something new. The food is spiced differently, the air doesn’t smell like Lancaster, or an office building. Different music, different language, different horns,” she added when someone honked from the parking lot. “The sirens are different from emergency sirens back home. The calls to prayer. Look at this,” she said, walking toward the small cells lining the fourth wall of the courtyard. She peered inside, taking in every element of the small rooms where a Sufi dervish would have studied and trained for his vocation. “Carpets, furniture, pictures. They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I want to touch everything, simply because it doesn’t feel like my desk, or my steering wheel, or my clothes.”
Lips parted, she trailed her fingers over the hewn blocks that comprised the courtyard’s walls, and for a split second he wondered if she wanted to touch him like that—soft, exploratory, slow and curious, and so focused that nothing else existed.
“Home feels really far away right now,” she finished. “That’s what I think.”
He gave a low chuckle, then turned his back to the wall and waited while she took a closer look.
“What did you think?” she asked.
“It’s not as foreign to me,” he said. “I’ve spent years in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
“Does this feel like home now?” she asked, genuine curiosity in her voice.
Mentally he came up short. Yes. No. He could survive most places with nothing but his hands, and with the right equipment, anywhere on earth. But where he lived, where he called home, was a completely different thing. “I’ve only been here a few months,” he hedged.
She made that noncommittal humming noise again, then looked at her watch. “You’ve got time,” he said.
“How’s the gift shop look?”
“Packed,” Marian said from a few steps away. “There’s barely enough room to move, and only one clerk working.”
She and Florence held open their bags to show Rose their souvenirs. “We’re going to get some tea,” Florence said. “Want to join us?”
“I was going to get a copy of Rumi’s poems, but I think I’ll have a look in the mosque instead,” Rose said.
Grannie was coming out as she went in. Rose paused to point Grannie in Florence and Marian’s direction, then shook out a bright scarf to cover her hair and went inside. Keenan declined the offer of tea and shifted his position so he could keep an eye on the Babes having tea just outside the gift shop. He had to give the older ladies credit. The wind was gusting hard enough to send chairs skittering along the big granite slabs paving the tea shop, but they just sat on their purses and packages, zipped up their fleeces, and drank their tea.
When the gift shop cleared out momentarily, he ducked inside, made a beeline for the books, and snagged an anthology of Coleman Barks’ translation of Rumi’s poems, a couple of bookmarks, and a magnet. He paid, and was hunkered down on his heels by Florence’s chair when Rose walked out of the courtyard.
“Three minutes to spare,” she said, looking at her watch.
He felt his cheek crease with a smile. They walked back to the Land Rover through crowds streaming toward the entrance, the Babes in a huddle in front of them. Rose fell in beside him, and he handed her the brown paper sack from the gift shop.
“What’s this?” she asked, as she opened the bag, then, “Oh! Thank you.”