Free Journal of a UFO Investigator by David Halperin Page A

turned to me, smiling. “We’ve been having some trouble with the vacuum tubes,” she said. “Last Wednesday one of them just went and shattered . There wasn’t any danger from the force field radiation, not at the levels we’ve been using so far. But the glass was everywhere . We were up till three in the morning cleaning it up, can you imagine?”
    â€œSounds pretty awful,” I said.
    â€œOh, it was . Where do you go to school, Danny?”
    â€œAbraham Lincoln Junior High, out in Kellerfield. I’m in eighth grade.”
    â€œEighth grade? Really? I would have thought you were at least in ninth, to look at you. I’m in the eleventh grade at Dag Hammarskjold High, in Bala Cynwyd. Don’t look so scared ,” she said, laughing. “I’m not that much older than you. I skipped a grade at the beginning of junior high.”
    â€œShe would have skipped two or three,” said Julian, “except her family kept moving her all over the world.”
    â€œYes, and aren’t we glad of that?” said Rochelle. “If I’d skipped two grades, I’d be off to college next fall.”
    â€œAnd then what would the SSS do?” said Julian.
    â€œI imagine Julian’s already told you,” Rochelle said. “He’s in tenth grade in the Philadelphia schools. So is Tom. You’ll meet Tom in a minute.”
    Julian said, “Danny saw that Miraj-Nameh picture in the Rare Book Room and was quite taken with it. I told him you were the expert.”
    â€œ Really , Julian. I can’t even read the text. It’s all Persian, except for a few quotations from the Quran in Arabic. Danny, I hope you didn’t come all the way out here for that. I’m bound to disappoint you.”
    â€œHe also was interested in Joseph and Zuleikha,” said Julian.
    â€œOh, yes, Joseph and Zuleikha.” A frown passed across her face. “The virgin boy; the seductress. The older woman. Oh , yes.”
    â€œOld enough to be his mother, wasn’t she?” Julian smirked.
    â€œ Jool- yan!” She glared at him. He put his finger to his lips, made a zipping gesture. The smirk remained. “Come, Danny,” she said, turning to me. “Let’s see what we can make of the miraj .”
    She took my hand and led me back into the hall, to the picture of the winged horse hanging at the foot of the stairs. For a moment she examined it. Then she pointed to a few squiggly words, indistinguishable to me from all the rest of the squiggles. She read them aloud, with some relish I thought, moving her finger from word to word.
    â€œArabic?” I said.
    She nodded.
    â€œIt’s written from right to left?”
    â€œUh-huh. Like Hebrew.”
    She looked at me, and we both grinned, as if we’d shared a secret, a hidden link between enemies or at least aliens. My heart began to beat faster. She turned back to the text. “ ‘Praise be to the One,’ ” she translated, “ ‘who carried His slave by night from the Sacred Mosque’—that’s in Mecca—‘to the Most Distant Mosque’—that’s the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem—‘whose neighborhood We have blessed, in order that We might show him some of Our signs.’ That’s from the Quran,” she said. “The only place in the Quran that mentions Jerusalem.”
    I must have looked confused, because she said: “Oh, don’t you know the story of the miraj ?”
    â€œThe mirage?”
    â€œNo, no.” She laughed. “The miraj .” The word still sounded to me like mirage , although there was something she did with it at the back of her throat that made it a little bit different. “That’s the ‘night journey.’ When God carried Muhammad to Jerusalem in the middle of the night, on the back of a winged horse. Or maybe it was a winged donkey. You see it’s a sort of hybrid, a winged