‘It’s Nathan,’ said Iman, when they looked through the window. ‘I thought at first he was Mullin, but it’s Nathan. He is the one reading the prayer. He is the one grateful that he had lost his chains. He came back home and had been forgiven. It is he who built the monastery.’ She recognised him from the Hoopoe’s description, from spending story time on him and his journey to Jerusalem. She recognised him from that time she had glimpsed his image through the window and thought he was, like her, dressed up in costume.

There he was now, through this window, no longer in chains, understanding what he was reading: every word. They recognised him as one of them, a believer, though he had not lived long enough to know the Last Prophet, nor to hear the final revelation. They had in common with him the knowledge of their Creator, the desire to seek forgiveness, the trajectory of slip and rise, the journeying to come close. They understood him, and he would have understood them too, if he had lived in their own time. The similarity between them was more than the difference. Through the window, the medieval scene was as exotic as a European painting, the rituals alien but acceptable. They had an affinity to it, an understanding that existed despite the barriers of time and race.

The scene could not last long. Just long enough for Iman to make her guess and for the three of them to bear witness. Then it flickered and was gone. The refectory was empty, the monastery in a further period of time. It could even be the future, as the furniture was different from how they had seen it, the tartan chair no longer tartan, the billiards table replaced, the design more minimal. But the pulpit was still as it was, the wooden panelling, the door and the large window. ‘The room is waiting for you,’ said the Hoopoe. ‘It is your turn now.’ That was the last thing he ever said to them, the last they saw of the shimmer of his crown and the black stripes of his feathers. ‘It is your turn now.’ For the final steps of the journey, the guide does not need to be there. It is the traveller’s private time, the traveller’s specific destiny and not that of the guide.