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“When do you plan on becoming married?” the woman asked. Susan and I looked at each other. We had been maintaining a distance and were not holding hands, surprised, but not really that others could see through the sham, our feelings for each other were so intense. “We are business acquaintances, and we are married to different people,” Susan announced, explaining to all she was accompanying me on these trips to increase her knowledge of ostrich medicine. The woman across the table remained unconvinced of our public declarations of abstinence. “I want to know what I could say to my husband to let me go on an extended trip with my veterinarian,” the woman wondered aloud.

Closing her eyes, Katie took a breath thinking back weeks earlier to the day she and René were forced into Lalish’s modern-day temple. A grenade’s explosion inexplicably shifted her timeframe. Katie was just now realizing she was recovering in ancient times. Katie and René were flown overseas to study an infectious disease of sheep that was spreading to the people of Lalish, a mountain village sixty miles north of Mosul, Iraq. The study was going well; the group was collecting valuable information during the modern Yezidi fall festival in Lalish’s temple. Until ISIS invaded.