Land of Marvels (9 page)

Such scattered moments did not make for conversation as this is generally understood, and Jehar had seen from the beginning that he must find one single topic, one that could be resumed at every opportunity, which would in effect, in spite of all interruptions, make an unending story. He found it in a vision of their future together. This, with all that it contained of happiness and fulfillment, was situated in the town of Deir ez-Zor, on the right bank of the Great River, which he had seen when working on the rafts that carried the pitch upstream and downstream from the black fields of Hit.

He described the town to Ninanna, the green islet in the midst of the stream, the permanent bridge that went from one bank to the other, the six white minarets that rose above the roofs of the houses, the great mass of gardens and palm groves and cultivated fields that extended along the river for many miles to the east. Memory and invention combined with love to make him eloquent. Their future at Deir ez-Zor was an amazing story, and no one had ever told her such a story before. She listened at first with her face turned from him; but gradually, as the story took on more and more wondrous detail, she would look directly at him, beguiled alike by the repetition of what was already familiar and the constant addition of what was new. She would sometimes ask questions, and when he answered Jehar would add something more to the story, some novelty that had not been there before. No less than twelve pillars supported the bridge, and these pillars were of stone. The town was lawful and orderly; no one went in fear of his property or his life. Not only was there a garrison of Turkish soldiers, but peace was also ensured by the Bejt Ftejjeh, a very powerful and numerous family long settled in this region, who had prospered under Ottoman rule.

Many members of this family worked in the government offices, he told her, and they gave a sympathetic hearing to Arabs. The Government House was situated on the river, and it was tall and white with many windows, and it had a wide courtyard. There were always two guards at the gate, in uniforms of blue and red. Deir ez-Zor had several primary schools and a high school and a polytechnic school—their sons would have good instruction. And there was land. To the north of the town were the gardens of as-Salhijjeh, the property of the Pasha, the Turkish overlord, but much of it neglected because the Pasha lived in Baghdad and came rarely.

This Pasha entered increasingly into the story, becoming always more corpulent. He sat there in Baghdad, eating halvah and pastries filled with honey and cream and kebabs of every description, getting fatter and fatter and making Jehar, who did not get enough to eat in these days, feel hungrier and hungrier as he invented the dishes. He puffed out his cheeks to make her laugh; he had no idea what the Pasha looked like, or whether he truly existed, but it was obvious that soon he would cease visiting his lands altogether. He would become totally immobile, and Jehar acted out with staring eyes and rigid head this stricken immobility of the overstuffed Pasha. Laughter came easily to Ninanna, widening her eyes, replacing the look of wonder that the story had brought to them.

A piece of land could be rented for the price of the tax on it; the flush wheels that brought the water from the river could be repaired, the irrigation channels dug out again . . . In these snatched moments, amid the dirt and din of the rail yards, these two, who had not once touched each other, who owned nothing, created together a land full of promise, an earthly paradise.

Jehar knew he was gaining ground with the girl; he could see it in her eyes. But the knowledge brought him no peace, rather the contrary, increasing his sense of what he stood to lose. It was a pattern familiar to his experience and his general sense of the nature of life, the crushing of human prospects, just when they seem auspicious, by some stroke of fate, something not envisaged, unpredictable. He had known it often enough in his gambling days, this dark game of fate. It troubled his sleep now; he dreamed of unmaskings, disguised enemies, trusted faces turning ugly.

Driven thus, he visited the uncle in the small shed he called his office, where, in addition to a table made of planks scavenged from the yards and a single chair, there was a low pallet against the wall, because this shed served also as the uncle’s sleeping place.

Standing before the seated man, taking care to speak respectfully and show no sign of the contempt and hatred in his heart, glancing around cautiously in the hope of seeing something in the nature of a strongbox where the takings from the café might be kept, Jehar offered his services in any capacity the uncle might choose, as watchman, caretaker, sweeper, handyman. He would ask for no payment, only board and lodging. However, they would agree on a nominal wage, and this would be regularly deducted from the hundred gold pounds, and so, week by week, the debt would be paid and in the end Ninanna would be his.

It had seemed, as he sketched it out in his mind beforehand, a reasonable proposal. It would require patience and self-control, but he would be able to see the girl every day; he would be able to watch out for possible rivals; he might succeed, before the debt was paid, in persuading her to run away with him to Deir ez-Zor. In any event, he would be well placed to kill the uncle if he went back on the agreement or tried to make a whore of the girl or sell her to someone else. Yes, it had seemed eminently reasonable. But the fabulist is not always the best judge of his own fables, and the more hope he has in them, the more he is likely to deceive himself. Well before the uncle’s ugly smiling, Jehar had realized that the story would fail to convince.

The uncle chuckled in a way that seemed evil to Jehar. He was a heavy man and would remain quite still for long periods with his small eyes almost closed below the fringe of his headcloth. In fact it was he who had served as Jehar’s model for the palsied Pasha of Baghdad. He opened his eyes now, however, to look at the man before him. “Do you take me for a fool?” he said. “I am to give you free board and lodging for months on end and as a result of this generosity lose the bride-price? What work is there here for a watchman or a sweeper except to watch for coins that he can sweep into his pockets?”

He said nothing more, and indeed there was nothing more to be said. Jehar turned and left, confirmed in his antipathy, nursing murder in his heart. The uncle had as good as called him a thief, a gross insult, not to be borne. And what kind of man was it who would sell his own niece to someone whose honesty he doubted?

He thought of crossing the yard and looking in at the doorway of the kitchen in the hope of seeing Ninanna. But as he passed the company drawing office he saw one of the Germans emerge bareheaded and go around the side of the building. He did not lock the door; it was obvious that he was not intending to be away long. Gone around to the privy at the back, Jehar thought. He drew nearer. There was no one else in the office and no one nearby. The work of a moment to mount the wooden steps, enter, sweep together the several papers on the desk, clutch them in one quick handful, and leave as he had come.

For the work on the eastern side of the mound Somerville had decided on a method first used by Flinders Petrie at Lachish in Palestine twenty-five years before. Petrie’s mound had been steeper sided than this one of his, but that made no difference as far as he could see. A line was marked from the summit, and a shallow trench was begun, following this line of descent. Groups of six, each consisting of a pickman, a spademan, and four basketmen, were set one below the other three yards apart and, working from within the trench, told to cut a horizontal step. The objects found by each gang were to be kept separate and recorded separately. In this way, working in narrow shafts, he hoped to establish an exact chronological sequence.

On the seventh day, working at about twenty-three feet from the summit, one of the pickmen came upon the traces of a wall six or seven inches high. Somerville was called for and crouched for two hours, first with a small trowel and then with a narrow-bladed pocketknife, carefully scraping at the accretion of clay that obscured the base. At the end of this time he sat back on his heels. The habit of restraint in the presence of the workpeople, assumed for the sake of authority, kept his face impassive, gave no hint of the elation that filled him. The base was of stone, cut and shaped; the layer of bricks that surmounted it had kept their form, even under the weight of masonry piled upon them to make new foundations for building. They were not like the disintegrated remains they had found so far, made of compacted mud and dried in the sun: These bricks had been fired in a kiln. Only the rich and powerful had such walls built for their dwellings—and for those of their gods.

The import of this flooded his mind. He felt the need to be alone, apart from others, so as to be able to think calmly. He told the group they would all be remembered when the time for baksheesh came, instructed the pickman to follow the line of the wall with due care, and called for Elias to come and keep an eye on things. Then he made his way a little higher up, beyond the line of the new trench. From here he could look down at the railway buildings and beyond them at a vast and barren expanse marked by long rises of rock and gravel and the ridges of ancient canal embankments and silted irrigation ditches. In the days when that wall was built this land had been well watered, fertile, and prosperous. Always precarious, of course, for the people who worked on the land, because the season of floods was unpredictable and capricious. But for the rulers a green and pleasant land. He knew it as he stood there; this had been more than a stop on a trade route, more than a frontier post on borders contested by warring imperial powers. Higher than the delta lands to the south, cooler in summer, probably well timbered once, freshened by the streams between the two tributaries of the Euphrates. In their great days of empire the Assyrians held undisputed sway over all this ground. Could Tell Erdek once have been a summer resort for their kings, a place of rest and repose after the campaigning, after the washing away of the blood? If so, what more natural than they should have brought here things that they treasured or that held some particular meaning? That would explain the ivory plaque, perhaps even the guardian spirit . . .

“Noble lord, I have a paper for you to see.”

Engrossed in his thoughts, with the sound of voices and of metal striking on stone not far away, Somerville had heard no steps approach behind him. Turning, he saw Jehar standing at a respectful distance, holding a square sheet of grayish paper in his hand. “What is it?” he said. “What have you got there?”

Taking the question for encouragement, Jehar advanced and handed him the sheet. After a moment he saw that it was a map, carefully drawn by hand on graph paper. There was a dotted red line that crossed diagonally to the northwest, dipping slightly as it crossed the Khabur River, then rising again northward. There were contour lines indicating the steepness of the gradients, and at certain points a small black triangle had been drawn, with the altitude in meters beside it. He saw Zeharat al-Bada, 423, el-Muelehat, 411. These were the rises he had just been looking at. Following the red line to the edge of the paper, he saw that before reaching this edge it passed through the town of Ras el-Ain, a three-hour ride away. It was here that Fahir had his quarters. It took him a moment or two longer to realize that if the red line touched this town, approaching as it would between the hills and the eastern branch of the river, it must come very close indeed to the mound on which they were standing.

“It is the railway,” Jehar said softly, choosing the moment to speak when he saw comprehension come to the other’s face. “I did not want to show Your Excellency this very important document at a time when others were close by. I have traveled dangerously, without the men who should have accompanied me. The cowards deserted me, left me alone. Now, if they saw us, they would try to claim some credit for the obtaining of this map. They are liars from infancy. They would even ask Your Excellency for a reward, whereas it was I alone and unaided that obtained it.”

Even in the stress of the moment Somerville found himself struck once again by the ornately phrased, unfaltering speech. Jehar had probably never attended any sort of school in his life and almost certainly could not read or write and would not be capable of fabricating such a map, though Somerville had been briefly prey to this suspicion. It was as if some angel of eloquence had befriended him. Or demon, he thought suddenly—Jehar was the perpetual bearer of bad news. He felt a sudden throb of pain at his temples. Between the hills and the marshes, through his mound, through his prospects, through five thousand years of human life and death . . .

He was aware of Jehar’s gaze upon him with its usual blend, which he had always found unsettling, of intensity and simplicity. The gaze of a savage. He strove to let nothing show on his face; from obduracy, from the long habit of restraint; the other would know he had dealt a blow, but he would see no evidence of it, gain no advantage. “This is a survey map, drawn to scale,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

Jehar had been expecting this question and had prepared an answer that he thought would produce the best result. At first he had been inclined to tell the truth and describe how he had stolen it from the survey office. It was an exploit of which he felt proud and would have made a gripping and dramatic story, the adroitness and boldness of it, a miracle of timing. But in the end, not being sure the
khwaja
would appreciate how brilliant he had been, the risk of detection and punishment that the theft had involved, he had decided on a different answer.

“It cost me much time and money,” he said. “It was far from easy. There is always someone who can be approached, but it takes time and patience to find him. There is one there, one of those that make the maps, but he is too fond of the liquor they call eau-de-vie that they make from grain, he is often drunk and always in need of money, the more so now as he has lost his post, yes, he has been discharged. His name is Herr Franke. He was one of those that make the drawings, but then he is shaky, his hands he cannot keep still, his eyes are blurred, he cannot see to do the maps, he makes mistakes, so they dismiss him from the work and so he loses the stipend, but he does not lose the desire for schnapps, in fact it is increased by his misfortune. It was he who sold me the map. He has no hair on his head, and he has a way of opening and closing his mouth. Like this, like a fish.”