I don’t know what any of these people are thinking.

Mark didn’t want to be in Kashgar at all. “I’m done with the travelogue. Let’s go ask about the bus. Goodbye Holiday Inn, hello toilet paper from your backpack.”

THE DJINN BY JAN ALEXANDER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 39

The sky glowed desert orange, and at ten in the morning the merchants of Kashgar were just beginning to waken. Men in embroidered caps banged out pots from sheets of copper. Women in brown mohair headscarves arranged bins of rock candy, coriander, dried apricots, and cinnamon sticks. A shepherd whipped two sheep on the rump while four ambled ahead, three pairs in all. The symmetry of six sheep. Ricki Samson liked that. She was still making big decisions about what she liked and didn’t like.

Mark panned his video camera along the stretch of market stalls, missing the sheep.

She sidled up to him. “I don’t know what any of these people are thinking,” she said.

“They’re not out to get you, don’t worry.”

He could treat her words like a foreign language; did he never think abou…