Daniel peered hard at his brother. Joshua appeared momentarily too stunned to respond. Then he threw his head back and laughed—a bit too loudly and a bit too long.
“That’s absurd,” he finally replied. “Surely you don’t believe such stories?” His dark eyes searched Daniel’s face intently.
The Scion cultivated a blank expression. “I believe that you’re in charge of a spy organization just about as much as you believe I’m working on a confidential project for father.”
The two men stared unblinking at one another for a few moments.
“Here’s my destination.” Daniel opened the door to the study hall. “Time for me to work on that clandestine task of mine.”
‘Yes, I may as well be going too,” Joshua volunteered. “Time for me to write up a report on everyone’s suspicious behavior. What an amusing notion.”
Daniel cast a final look at his brother’s face. Joshua wasn’t smiling.
Chapter 22—The French Connection
Cassie absently watched the elevator’s illuminated panel mark their ascent. It was only five flights to their destination but the lift seemed in no hurry to get there. She and her teammates waited patiently as people filed in and out on the second floor. One of the men was wearing a hooded cloak, called a burnoose, with a skullcap on his head. One of the women wore a shapeless sack of a coat and hid her hair under a hijab scarf.
The Pythia inwardly mused about the paradoxical nature of this place. They were now in Rabat, Morocco. Rabat was a modern city complete with an expressway and taxi cabs but somebody forgot to tell the camels that their services were no longer needed. Urbanites dressed in jeans and tee shirts walked down the same streets as turbaned locals whose weather-beaten faces made Cassie think they’d just arrived in town via desert caravan. In this progressive metropolis, the twenty-first century rubbed elbows with the seventh.
The architecture seemed equally contradictory. White-washed fortress walls and ancient mosques existed side by side with steel and glass skyscrapers. When the Arkana team arrived the day before, they had wandered into the old section of the city called the medina. It looked like the market from Raiders Of The Lost Ark: narrow, winding streets cast perpetually in shadow; merchants draping their wares over every available doorway, awning and windowsill; shopkeepers haggling with patrons over the price of their merchandise; tourists with cameras and cell phones threading their way through flocks of black-shrouded Muslim women and nobody taking the least notice of the crashing anomalies everywhere. That was Rabat.
Cassie glanced up again at the elevator display. They’d made it all the way to the fourth floor. The doors opened once more to disgorge a few more passengers before the Arkana team got its turn to exit on five. They had come here to meet their contact—the Berber trove-keeper. By day, he was a semi-retired professor of Saharan Studies at the Université De Rabat. They walked down the hall in search of his office.
“Ah, here we are,” Griffin commented. They paused before a door with the inscription “Michel Khatabi.”
The Scrivener tapped gently.
The door swung open as if the room’s occupant had been waiting breathlessly on the other side. Instead of a solemn academic, they were greeted by a thirty-something glamazon with long auburn hair. She was dressed in Chanel and four-inch stiletto heels, causing her to tower over everyone except Griffin. Her blue eyes locked onto Erik in hungry anticipation the second she saw him.
Rushing through the door, she murmured, “Ah mon chéri, it has been too long!” Then she threw her arms around him and planted a long, slow kiss on his lips.
Cassie and Griffin exchanged startled looks.
It took a lot to embarrass Erik, but this lavish display of affection had obviously done it. Blushing furiously, he disentangled himself from the woman’s embrace. “Um, hi, Sophie, it’s good to see you too.” He cleared his throat.
Cassie narrowed her gaze. “Why don’t you introduce us to your friend, dude?”
Erik stepped out of the woman’s reach. “Guys, this is Sophie Khatabi. She’s Professor Khatabi’s daughter.”
“Please, Erik.” She had a strong French accent and pronounced his name “Ereek.” “You know everyone calls me Fifi.”
The Paladin nodded. “Fifi, this is Griffin, the Chief Scrivener.”
“Enchanté.” Fifi held out her hand, palm downward, giving Cassie the impression that she meant for Griffin to kiss it. Instead, he limply shook her fingers.
Erik moved on. “And this is our new Pythia, Cassie.”
When Fifi transferred her attention to the third member of the Arkana team, her eyebrows shot halfway up her forehead in surprise. Sizing Cassie up from head to toe, she murmured, “This is the new Pythia? Ma déesse! She is so little and so young. A mere child.”
“Yeah, well, we can’t all be as old as you,” Cassie muttered under her breath.
“Pardon?” Fifi asked.
Griffin gave Cassie’s sleeve a warning tug though she caught a gleam of amusement in his eyes.
“Never mind.” Cassie stepped forward and shook hands. “It’s nice to meet you.” Barely pausing, she added, “So how do you know Erik?”
At the mention of his name, Fifi turned to gaze at the Paladin fondly. “Oh, Erik and I met a long time ago in Paris.”
“I was working on a recovery in France,” he explained. “Fifi was my contact. Back then, she was getting her doctorate in archaeology at the Sorbonne.”
“And we became good friends.”
The accent on the word “friends” made Cassie think they had been a lot more than that. “So if you’re French, what are you doing here?” she asked abruptly.
Fifi smiled condescendingly at her ignorance. “My family is of French and Berber descent. You must not be aware that Morocco was once a French Protectorate and still has a strong French influence. In fact, French is the unofficial language of the country.” She finally moved out of the doorway. “Please, you must all come in. My father will be here soon. He was delayed and asked me to make you welcome until he arrived.”
The office wasn’t very large but the floor to ceiling windows on the opposite wall gave a commanding view of the campus and the city beyond.
Fifi retrieved several folding chairs. She grouped them in sets of two on either end of the desk, making sure to seat herself next to Erik at the far side of the room away from the others.
While Cassie and Griffin were getting settled, Fifi leaned over confidentially and began whispering in Erik’s ear. The Paladin darted a swift look at Cassie who was shooting daggers in his direction. He quickly leaned away from Fifi. Undeterred, she lunged in farther and continued to whisper in French. Apparently, Erik knew the language because he replied rapidly in a low voice.
At that moment, the office door swung open and a burly middle-aged man entered. “I am so sorry to be late.” He walked over to shake hands with his visitors. Cassie noted that his accent was as heavily French as Fifi’s. He had bushy eyebrows over piercing blue eyes. His grizzled beard came to a neat point just above his shirt collar. His hair which had once been the same shade as Fifi’s was now streaked generously with grey. Exuding a sense of benevolent authority, he seemed to be the quintessential college professor except that his tweed jacket didn’t have leather elbow patches.
“I hope my daughter has made you feel at home.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Cassie assured him. “She gave us quite a welcome.”
Not sensing the irony in her comment, Michel nodded curtly. “Good, that’s very good.” He sat down behind his desk and regarded his guests. “It has been a long time since visitors from the Central Catalog have come to this region. We are honored by your visit.”
“I’m surprised the Arkana even has a trove here,” Cassie observed. “I mean, the Sahara is nothing but sand.”
Michel chuckled. “Ah, but it wasn’t always that way.”
“The Sahara didn’t dry out as quickly as other areas did,” Griffin interjected. “By curr
ent estimates, the Russian steppes dried out first around 5000 BCE. The Arabian Peninsula followed around 4000 BCE but portions of the Sahara remained verdant well into historic times.”
“That is true,” Michel agreed. “It seems unlikely that my ancestors would have evolved in a landscape as harsh as the Sahara has become.”
“Your ancestors originated here?” Cassie regarded him skeptically. “But you’re white.”
“Not all native Africans are dark-skinned,” the trove-keeper replied. “The most recent DNA studies indicate that the Berber peoples sprang up in east Africa thousands of years ago. Most of them migrated into Europe at some point and then returned via the Iberian Peninsula.”
“Why bother to come back at all?” Cassie persisted. “I mean the Sahara had to be drying out by the time they made the return trip.”
“The desiccation was a gradual process that took thousands of years to accomplish,” Michel countered. “There was plenty of time to grow crops and establish cities in North Africa. In fact, a civilization called the Garamantes once flourished in what is now one of the most forbidding parts of the Libyan Desert. They were the ancestors of the Tuareg tribe. Their capital, Garama, was excavated several decades ago revealing subterranean water extraction systems and large-scale agriculture. The great desert is not the lifeless expanse of sand which most people think it is. Quite recently a Berber city purported to be fifteen thousand years old was discovered near Aoussard.”
“Fifteen thousand years old?” Cassie repeated in disbelief.
Michel shrugged. “The dating of the ruin is still hotly debated but the fact that an ancient town exists where none was expected calls into question what we assume we know about this part of the world. No, no, there is a rich mine of artifacts to be found here. The Arkana considers much of it valuable since Berber culture is strongly matristic.”
Cassie peeked furtively at Erik and Fifi who were paying no attention at all to the conversation. To be fair, Fifi was doing most of the whispering. Erik merely listened and nodded. But then again, Cassie was in no mood to be fair. She transferred her attention back to Michel.
He was still speaking. “The Berber people are a loosely-affiliated group of clans. In ancient times, there was no overarching ideology which connected them together. They owed their loyalty to the members of their individual tribes and no one else. They jealously guarded their independence from one another and from the invaders who repeatedly plagued this part of the world.
The most fiercely independent of all the Berber tribes were the Tuareg. They fought with one another as much as they did with everybody else until a remarkable woman united them. Her name was Tin Hinan which means ‘the mother of us all’. Around 500 CE, this extraordinary queen was able to inspire the various Tuareg clans with a sense of tribal identity. She led them south into the Sahel where they settled and have remained to this day.”
“What’s the Sahel?” Cassie asked. “I’ve never heard that term before.”
“It’s the area just to the south of the desert proper,” Griffin explained. “There’s still a minimal amount of rainfall which can support life so it’s possible to graze flocks and engage in agriculture there.”
“Yes, that is where Tin Hinan led the Tuareg,” Michel agreed. “The tribe remembers her with gratitude. She was considered a myth until her monumental tomb was found in Algeria. The remains inside were of an unusually tall woman whose bones showed the spinal deformity which had always been attributed to the queen. So we are sure she existed. Her legacy to the Tuareg has been their strongly matristic social order. Descent is still traced through the mother’s line. Women maintain their own property. The tribe was nominally converted to Islam during the onslaught of the Ottoman Empire but, strangely enough, it is the men who wear the veil and not the women.”
Cassie laughed. “That’s something I’d like to see.”
“I have a picture right here,” the professor offered. He quickly thumbed through a volume on his desk and slid it forward. “Here is an example. The men wear a blue turban and cover the lower half of their faces. They never take the turban off in public. Because of the distinctive indigo dye of the garment, the Tuareg are sometimes known as the ‘Blue people’.”
Cassie leaned forward to study the photo, trying to block out the sound of Fifi and Erik laughing together over some private joke. She wasn’t the only one nettled by their behavior.
Michel turned to his daughter and said, “Perhaps, Fifi, you would like to catch up with your old friend out in the hall while we discuss business.”
Not at all fazed by the veiled rebuke, Fifi grabbed Erik by the hand and sprang up out of her chair. “That is a very good idea, Papa. Come, Erik. Allons-y.” Without waiting for a reply, she dragged the surprised Paladin to his feet and out of the room.
Cassie could hear the click of her heels as the couple retreated down the hall. Griffin darted a worried glance in her direction. Suppressing her annoyance, she turned her full attention back to the professor. “You were saying?”
Michel seemed relieved to be rid of the distraction. “Yes, we were discussing the strong matristic current in Berber culture. Though the Tuareg are the most obviously matristic tribe, the Berber group as a whole has a long history of female leadership. Take, for instance, Dihya. She was known as Al Kahina by the Arabs. It is a term which means something like ‘priestess-soothsayer’. She was a Berber prophet and queen who briefly succeeded in driving the Arabs out of Northwest Africa. Unfortunately, she believed that the only way to keep the invaders from returning was to deprive them of the resources they sought.”
Griffin picked up the narrative. “I’ve read that she ordered all the coastal cities to be burned to the ground and the orchards and fields to be despoiled so that nothing would grow there again. Sadly, her actions may have hastened the desiccation of this part of the world. Also, she managed to alienate the town-dwellers whose property she destroyed. In the end, her plan failed to deter the Muslim hordes from returning and her territory was recaptured around 700 CE.”
“So what happened to her?” Cassie asked.
“There are various stories,” Michel replied. “Some say she took poison. Others say she was executed after her capture. Still others say she died fighting the enemy with a sword in her hand. No one knows.”
“I don’t get it.” Cassie said abruptly.
Her two listeners regarded her with curiosity.
“If the Kurgans and Semites turned into male-dominated overlords because their homelands dried up, then why didn’t the same thing happen to the Berbers? The Sahara was drying up too. From everything you’ve told me it sounds like Berber women still have a lot of clout in spite of that.”
Michel nodded approvingly. “That’s a very good question.”
“I think it has to do with migration,” Griffin speculated.
Cassie turned slightly in her chair to look at him. “How do you mean?”
“Well, in the case of the Kurgans and the Semites, they migrated outside of their homelands in search of more habitable regions. Or at least the males did.”
“And the Berbers didn’t.” Cassie completed his thought.
“If I’m not mistaken, Berber DNA of both the female and male parent is quite homogenous.” Griffin glanced at Michel for confirmation.
“This is quite true,” the professor averred. “Berbers have historically interbred only with other Berbers.”
“But how’s that possible?” Cassie persisted. “North Africa was invaded by everybody from the Romans to the Turks. There should be Semitic and Indo-European DNA all over the place.”
The two men paused to consider the notion.
Griffin replied first. “I suspect the Berbers were unlike the typical matristic cultures which overlords usually preyed upon.”
“So you’re saying all this desiccation started to work on them the same way it had on the Kurgans and the Semites,” Cassie theorized. “They must have learned how to fight because of the compe
tition over resources.”
“There is a strong militant streak in North African culture,” Michel added. “Much inter-tribal rivalry. After the Sahara began to dry out, the social order became increasingly stratified. The Tuareg in particular started preying on their weaker neighbors to the south and instituted a thriving slave trade.”
“That sounds a lot like overlords to me,” Cassie said.
“With one essential difference,” Griffin countered. “The Berber tribes never left their homelands. The men never separated off to conquer new territories and steal brides from the ranks of the conquered. That may explain why Berber women retained some semblance of authority.”
Cassie heard a burst of laughter coming from down the hall. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to concentrate on the conversation instead. “So the Berbers were better at defending themselves against invaders than your average matristic culture because they’d had it tough for centuries.”
“Yes, and something more,” Griffin said. “Do you remember why the Basques retained their cultural identity?”
The Pythia thought back to the trio’s time in Spain. “Probably because they lived in the mountains and the terrain gave them a natural defense against invasion.”
“Precisely.” Griffin smiled approvingly. “In a similar way, the Berbers knew the desert in a way the invaders never could. If pressed too hard, they would simply retreat where no one would follow them.”
“And quite frankly, the parched overlords were more interested in controlling dependable water supplies,” Michel said. “That meant they focused most of their energy on subduing towns along the coast. Chasing rebels over sand dunes wasn’t a good use of their time.”
Cassie nodded, satisfied with the explanation. “Well, that all makes sense. Thanks for letting me badger you with questions. I’m still kind of new at this job so I need a lot of backstory.”
Riddle Of The Diamond Dove (The Arkana Archaeology Mystery Series Book 4) Page 12