The Genesis Secret: (20 page)

Cuneiform! As he ducked out of the temple again, Rob felt a thrill of privilege just to be here. It was a miraculous survival: the city, the faith, the people, the liturgy and ritual. And it was an admirable survival, too. The whole atmosphere of Lalesh, the festival, was lyrical, poetic, and preciously pastoral. The only menacing aspects were the lurid and sneering images of Melek Taus, the ubiquitous devil-god, who was pictured on walls and doors, even on posters. Yet the people themselves seemed friendly, happy to be out in the sun, happy to be practising their peculiar religion.

Rob wanted to talk to some Yezidi. He persuaded Karwan to interpret: on one patch of grass, they found a jocular, middle-aged woman pouring tea for her children.

Rob leaned in and said, ‘Tell me about the Black Book?

The woman smiled, jabbing a finger at Rob quite vigorously.

Karwan interpreted her words. ‘She says that the Black Book is the Bible of the Yezidi, and it is written in gold. She says you Christians have it! You English. She says you took our holy book. And that is why the westerners have science and education. Because you have the book, that came from the sky.’

The woman smiled warmly at Rob. And then she bit into a fat tomato, spilling vivid red seeds down her shirt, making her husband laugh very loudly.

The ceremony in the square was nearly over. Young girls and boys in white were in the central space, finishing their spiralling dances around the sacred flames. Rob regarded them. He took some discreet photos with his camera-phone. He scribbled some notes. And then, when he looked up, he noticed something else. Quite unremarked by the bystanders all the elite old men were ducking, one by one, into a low building at the far end of the square. Their action seemed somehow furtive, clandestine. Or at least significant. There was a guard at the door of this low building, though there were no guards on any of the other doors. Why was that? And the door they were using was itself marked out from the others. It had an odd black snake set beside it in stone. A long snake symbol right by the door.

Rob felt the tingle. This was it. Rob had to find out what was going on. He had to get in that mysterious door. But could he get away with it? He glanced around. Karwan was now lying back on the grass, dozing. The truck driver was nowhere. Probably asleep in his cabin. It had been a long day.

This was Rob’s chance. Right now. Sloping down the hill, he crossed the square briskly. One of the chanting boys had dropped his white headdress
by the well beneath the spring. Rob checked left and right, and snatched the garment up and put it over his head. Again he checked. No one was looking. He slunk towards the low building. The guard was on the door: he was about to close the door. Rob had just one chance. He muffled and concealed his lower face with the white cloth, then darted over the threshold into the temple.

The yawning guard stared vaguely at Rob. For a moment he seemed puzzled. Then he shrugged and shut the door behind them. Rob was inside the temple.

It was very dark. The acrid smoke of the oil lamps fugged the air. The Yezidi elders were lined up in rows, chanting, murmuring and singing very quietly. Reciting prayers. Others were on their knees, kowtowing and bending: touching the floor with their foreheads. A blaze of light filled the far end of the temple. Rob squinted to see through the smoke. A door had briefly opened. A whiterobed girl was bringing an object covered in a rough blanket. The chanting grew a little louder. The girl set the object down on an altar. Above the altar the gleaming image of the peacock angel stared down at them all, serene and superior, disdainful and cruel.

Rob moved forward to get as close as he could without drawing attention to himself, desperate to see what was hidden underneath the blanket. He edged closer and closer. The praying and chanting grew louder, yet darker. Lower in tone.
A hypnotic mantra. The lampsmoke was so thick it was making Rob’s eyes itch and weep. He rubbed at his face and strained to see.

And then girl whipped away the blanket, and the chanting stopped.

Sitting on the altar was a skull. But it was like no skull Rob had seen. It was human, yet not human. It had curved slanted eye sockets. High cheekbones. It looked like the skull of a monstrous bird, or a bizarre snake. Yet still it was human.

Then Rob felt a hard knife blade: pressed cold against his throat.

Everyone was shouting and jostling. The knife bit at Rob’s throat, pressing hard against his windpipe. Someone thrust a hood over his head: Rob blinked in the darkness.

Doors slammed and opened and he felt himself being jostled into another room: he sensed it because the noises were different, the echoes smaller. He was definitely in a more confined space. But the voices were still angry and shouting, babbling fiercely in Kurdish. Threatening and yelling.

A boot kicked him in the back of the knees. Rob crumpled to the floor. Images drove through his mind: victims on internet videos. Orange bodysuits.
Allahu Akhbar.
The sound of a knife slicing at a windpipe and the creamy froth of blood.
Allahu Akhbar.

No. Rob struggled. He writhed this way and that but there were hands all over him, holding him down. The hood was made of old sacking; it
smelled of stale breath. Rob could just perceive light through the weft of the cloth wrapped over his face. He could make out the shapes of shouting men.

A second door opened somewhere. The voices got louder and Rob could hear a woman calling a question and some men yelling back at her. It was all confusion. Rob tried to breathe slowly: to calm himself. He was pushed on his side now: lying down: and he could see Yezidi robes, dimly, through the cloth. Robes and sandals and men.

They were binding his wrists behind him. Rough twine was biting into his flesh. He winced at the pain. Then he heard a man growling at him-was that Arabic? Did he recognize these words? He twisted his body and strained his eyes to see through the rough cloth of the hood, and he gulped: what was that flash: was that the knife again? The big knife they had put to his throat?

The fear was searing. He thought of his daughter. Her lovely laugh. Her blonde hair on a sunny day: blonde as sunshine itself. Her blue eyes uplifted.
Daddy. Nanimals. Daddy.
And now he was probably going to die. He would never see her again. He would ruin her life by not seeing her again. He would be the father she never had.

The grief welled in him. He nearly wept. The cloth was hot and his heart was pounding, and he had to stop panicking. Because he wasn’t dead.
They hadn’t done anything more than manhandle him. And scare him.

But then as soon as Rob’s hopes arose he thought of Franz Breitner. They’d killed
him;
that hadn’t been a problem for the Yezidi workers at Gobekli. They had pushed him onto the spike, skewering him like a frog in a laboratory. Just like that. He remembered the gush of blood from Franz’s chest wound. Blood squirting onto the yellow Gobekli dust. And then he remembered the trembling goat being slaughtered in the Sanliurfa streets.

Rob screamed. His only hope was Karwan. His friend. His Yezidi friend. Maybe he would hear. His shouts echoed around the room. Then the Kurdish voices came back, cursing him. He was jostled and kicked. A hand gripped his neck, almost throttling him; he felt another hand tight on his arm. But Rob angrily thrashed out with his boots: he was angry now. He bit the hood. If they were going to kill him, he was going to fight, he was going to try, he was going to make it hard for them—

And then the hood was whipped off.

Rob gasped, blinking in the light. A face was staring down at him. It was Karwan.

But this wasn’t the Karwan of before: the friendly, round-faced guy. This was Karwan unsmiling, grimfaced, angry; and yet commanding.

Karwan was ordering the older men around him: snapping at them, in Kurdish. Telling them
what to do. And the older men in robes were evidently obeying him: they were practically kowtowing to him. One of the older men rubbed a wet cloth over Rob’s face. The smell of the dampness was vile. But the coolness was also refreshing. Another man was helping Rob to sit up straight; they had propped Rob against the rear wall.

Karwan barked another order. He seemed to be telling the robed men to go: they were obediently filing out of the room. One by one they left, and the door slammed shut, leaving Karwan and Rob alone in the little room. Rob looked around. It was a dingy space with bare painted walls and two high, slitted windows letting in a poor amount of light. It was some kind of store room maybe; an antechamber for the temple.

The cords around his wrist were still painful. They’d taken off the hood but he was still bound. Rob urgently rubbed his wrists together as best he could to restore some circulation. Then he gazed at Karwan. The young Yezidi man was squatting on a faded but richly embroidered rug. Staring back at Rob. He sighed. ‘I tried to help you, Mr Luttrell. We thought if we let you come here you would be satisfied. But you had to go looking for more. Always. Always you western people want more.’

Rob was nonplussed: what was he talking about? Karwan was rubbing his eyes with finger and thumb. The Yezidi man seemed tired. Through
the slitted windows Rob could hear the faint noises of Lalesh: children laughing and giggling, and the gurgle of the fountain.

Karwan sat forward. ‘What is it with you people? Why do you want to know everything? Breitner was the same. The German. Just the same.’ Rob’s eyes widened. Karwan nodded. ‘Yes. Breitner. At Gobekli Tepe…’

The young Yezidi man moodily traced the pattern of the rug in front of him. His forefinger followed the scarlet maze of the embroidery. He seemed to be meditating: deciding something important. Rob waited. His throat was very dry; his wrists were throbbing from the ropes. Then he asked, ‘Can I have a drink, Karwan?’

The Yezidi man reached over, to grab a small plastic bottle of mineral water. Then he put the bottle to Rob’s mouth and Rob drank, shuddering and gasping and gulping. The bottle was set on the concrete floor between them, and Karwan sighed for a second time.

‘I am going to tell you the truth. There is no point in hiding it any more. Maybe the truth can help the Yezidi. Because the lies and deceptions, they are hurting us. I am the son of a Yezidi sheikh. A chief. But I am also someone who has studied our faith from the outside. So I am in a special position, Mr Luttrell. Maybe that allows me a certain…discretion.’ His eyes avoided Rob’s. A guilt reflex? He went on: ‘What I am about to tell you has never been revealed to a
non-Yezidi, not for thousands of years. Maybe not ever.’

Rob listened intently. Karwan’s voice was level, almost monotonous. As if this was a prepared monologue, or something he had been thinking about for many years: a rehearsed speech.

‘The Yezidi believe that Gobekli Tepe is the site of the Garden of Eden. I think maybe you know this. And I think our beliefs have…informed other religions.’ He shrugged and exhaled profoundly. ‘As I told you, we believe we are direct descendants of Adam. We are the Sons of the Jar. Gobekli Tepe is, therefore, the home of our ancestors. Every Yezidi in the priestly caste, the upper class, like myself, is told that we must protect Gobekli Tepe. Protect and defend the temple of our ancestors. For the same reason, we are taught by our fathers, and our fathers’ fathers, that we must keep the secrets of Gobekli safe. Anything taken from there we must conceal or destroy. Like those…remains…in the Sanliurfa Museum. This is our task, as Yezidi. Because our forefathers buried Gobekli Tepe under all that earth…for a reason.’ Karwan took up the bottle and sipped some water; he gazed directly at Rob, his dark brown Kurdish eyes burning in the gloom of the little storeroom. ‘Of course I see your question, Mr Luttrell. Why? Why did my Yezidi ancestors bury Gobekli Tepe? Why must we protect it? What happened there?’ Karwan smiled, but the smile was pained, even agonized. ‘That is something we
are not taught. No one tells us. We do not have a written religion. Everything is handed down orally, from mouth to mouth, from ear to ear, from father to son. When I was very young I would ask my father, why do we have these traditions? He would say, because they are traditions, that is all.’

Rob made to speak but Karwan raised an impatient hand to silence him. ‘None of this mattered, of course. Not for many centuries. No one threatened Gobekli Tepe. No one even knew it was there, apart from the Yezidi. It remained buried in its ancient earth. But then the German came along, the archaeologists with their shovels and their diggers and their machines, testing and digging, digging and exposing. For the Yezidi, uncovering Gobekli is a terrible thing. Like exposing a terrible wound. It pains us. What our ancestors buried has to be kept buried, what was exposed to the air has to be concealed and protected. So we, the Yezidi, we had ourselves hired by him, we became his workmen so we could delay the digging, stop the endless digging. But still, he carried on. Carried on exposing the wound—’

‘So you killed Franz and then you—’

Karwan growled, ‘No! We are not devils. We are not killers. We tried to frighten him. To scare him off, to scare you all away. But he must have fallen. That is all.’

‘And…the Pulsa Dinura?’

‘Yes. Yes of course. And the troubles at the temple. We tried to…what is the word…we tried to hamper the dig, to stop it. But the German was so determined. He kept on digging. Digging up the Garden of Eden, the garden of jars. He even dug it up at night. So there was an argument. And he fell. It was an accident I think.’

Rob made to protest. Karwan shrugged. ‘You can believe this, or you can choose not to believe it. As you wish. I am tired of lies.’

‘So what is the skull?’

Karwan exhaled, slowly. ‘I do not know. When I went to Texas, I studied my own religion. I saw the…structure of its myths. From a different perspective. And I do not know. I do not know who Melek Taus is and I don’t know what the skull is. All I know is that we must worship the skull and the peacock. And that we must never reveal these secrets. And that we must never ever breed with non-Yezidi, we must never marry outside the faith. Because you-the non Yezidi-are polluted.’

‘Is it an animal? The skull?’

‘I do not know! Believe me. I think…’ Karwan was struggling with the words. ‘I think something happened at Gobekli Tepe. To our temple in Eden. Something terrible, ten thousand years ago. Otherwise why did we bury it? Why bury that beautiful place unless it was a place of shame or of suffering? There had to be a reason. To bury it.’

‘Why are you telling me this now? Why now? Why me?’

‘Because you kept on coming. You would not give up. So now I am telling you everything. You found the jars. With those terrible remains. What is that for? Why were those babies put there? It scares me. There is too much I do not know. All we have is myth and traditions. We do not have a book to tell us. Not any more.’

Outside, voices were calling again. It sounded like farewells. The voices were joined by car engines starting up. It seemed as if people were leaving Lalesh. Rob wanted to write down Karwan’s words: he felt a physical hunger to get this down; but the cords were still tight around his wrist. All he could do was ask, ‘So where does the Black Book fit in?’

Karwan shook his head. ‘Ah yes. The Black Book. What is that? I am not so sure it is a book. I think it was some proof, some key, something that explained the great mystery. But it has gone. It was taken from us. And now we are left with…with our fairy tales. And our peacock angel. Enough. I have told you things that I should never tell anyone. But I had no choice. The world despises the Yezidi. We are abused and persecuted. Called devil-worshippers. How can it get any worse? Maybe if the world knows more of the truth, they will treat us better.’ He took another deliberate sip of mineral water. ‘We are keepers of a secret, Mr Luttrell, a terrible secret we do not
understand. Yet we must cleave to our silence. And protect the buried past. It is our burden. Through the ages. We are the Sons of the Jar.’

‘And now—’

‘And now I am going to take you back to Turkey. We are going to drive you back to the border and you can fly home and then you can tell everyone about us. Tell them we are not Satanists. Tell them of our sadness. Tell them what you like. But do not lie.’

The Yezidi man stood and shouted through the window. The door swung open and more men came in. Rob was jostled again, but this time it was with a purpose and a calm determination. He was shunted outside through the temple. He glanced at the altar as he was pushed along: the skull was gone. Then he was out in the sun. Kids were pointing at him. Rob saw women staring, hands over their mouths. He was being led to the Ford pickup truck.

The driver was ready. Rob’s bag was on the passenger seat, waiting. Rob was still tied by the wrists. Two men helped him up into the cabin. He stared out of the window as another man got into the cab: a dark, bearded man, younger than Karwan. Strong and muscular, and silent. He was going to sit between Rob and the truck door; Rob was in the middle seat.

The Ford pulled out, wheels spinning in the dust. Rob’s last glimpse of Lalesh was of Karwan, standing amongst the staring children, beside one
of the conical towers. His expression was enormously sad.

Then Lalesh disappeared behind a slope as the truck tore down the hillside, heading for the Turkish border.