Hallowed Ground

by Paul Twivy

  ‘There is one difference between this and the Enigma code,’ Hannah said quietly. ‘We knew it was German being coded. How do we know what these repeating words mean even if we find them?’

  ‘Surely, we could run them against every world language to look for patterns?’ Joe suggested.

  ‘You’re assuming the Circles were made by humans,’ Hannah said.

  12

  Revelation at Ui Ais

  ‘Will it eat me?’ Clara cried.

  ‘No, it’s a rock,’ Freddie replied.

  ‘That’s the famous Lion’s Mouth rock formation,’ Ilana said.

  ‘It guards the whole valley.’

  The rocks protruded like jaws over the landscape.

  The four families clambered over the rocks behind her. They had set off at sunrise, to avoid the heat, and to maximise the daylight hours for finding clues amongst the Aladdin’s cave of engravings.

  Soon they arrived at an overhang.

  ‘OK, this is it, folks,’ Ilana announced. ‘Although it is often called Twyfelfontein – the Afrikaans name – we prefer to call it by the original name “Ui Ais.”’

  Ilana was partly in tour-guide mode and part in family friend mode, hovering uncertainly between the two.

  The four families stood in front of a vast array of engravings. They were everywhere: on large sandstone slabs, on the walls and underneath cliff overhangs. They had this magical place entirely to themselves. The public wouldn’t be let in for another couple of hours. The tiredness already aching in their eyeballs was almost worth it.

  ‘What does it mean?’ Joe asked.

  ‘It means “jumping waterhole” in the Damara language. This site has been inhabited for six thousand years,’ Ilana explained.

  Clara put up her hand as if she were in class.

  ‘Yes, Clara,’ Ilana said responding in teacher mode.

  ‘Why? There’s nothing here!’

  The parents all smiled.

  ‘Now that’s a very good question, Clara. The answer is water…precious water on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. And the water attracted animals. So, what did the animals attract?’

  ‘Fleas?’ replied Clara.

  Everyone laughed and no-one more so than Ilana.

  ‘That is probably true. But what I meant was, hunters, bushmen to be precise, the ancient San. They carved into the rocks exposing a lighter layer underneath. Then, perhaps two thousand, five hundred years ago, we find a different kind of art, from the Khakhoi, who were herders.’

  ‘The hunters and the herders,’ Ben muttered.

  Anne found herself thinking that the world still basically divided into those two types.

  They gazed at the jumble of ochre, yellow and white drawings, protected by the arid heat and the patina of the rocks. They tried hard to imagine ancestors scraping, carving, daubing, transplanting forms from their eyes and heads, through the magic of their hands, to the rocks. You could almost hear the sounds, feel the concentration, six thousand years later.

  The animals were sometimes drawn realistically, but often not. Giraffes had necks that were even more exaggerated than in real life. Eland and antelopes had pregnant bodies unfeasibly supported by stick-thin legs. There was a dancing kudu, half-beast and half-man like the archer Sagittarius. Hannah, Joe and Freddie smiled in recognition of the lion man with his human feet.

  ‘Why are, so many of the animals, half-human?’ Hannah asked.

  Ben jumped in before Ilana could answer, keen to re-assert himself.

  ‘The San believe that all animals were once human,’ he explained. ‘It’s Darwin in reverse…their creation myth.’

  ‘Imagine how differently the world would be, if we thought of animals as evolved from humans, and not the other way round,’ Hannah said quietly.

  ‘What about these?’ Freddie asked, gesturing behind them.

  He was pointing at figures that stalked like shadow puppets across the face of the rocks. They were ochre-red, darker than the paler orange of the rocks on which they were daubed. Some figures hunted, some sat cross-legged as if in storytelling mode. Others were on their knees possibly in prayer. The figures that were simply walking, were graceful and slim, with the same straight-backed look as Egyptian pharaohs.

  Anne noted, with a doctor’s eye, that our posture has got worse and worse through time, by becoming desk-bound.

  ‘What about these three?’ Hannah asked.

  The three figures were dancing, their right arms raised, their left legs extended. They teetered on a knife-edge between being sacred and comical, knowing and naïve. They could almost be dancers from the Moulin Rouge.

  ‘Hey, what’s happening to this poor antelope?’ asked Clara, spotting its plight as if it were her own.

  ‘They often led an eland to a hilltop and sacrificed it to bring on the rains,’ Ben explained. ‘That’s where the Israelites got it from,’ he added.

  ‘Freddie, Hannah, Selima, Clara! Come here!’ Joe’s voice rang out like metal.

  He was above them, directly under a large overhang of rock. They scrambled up to him, their minds already a muddle of myths and symbols. The caves were often painted in a trance and looking at them made you feel the same, as if you were hallucinating.

  ‘Look at these. I’ve read about them,’ Joe said.

  Next to his jabbing fingers they saw engravings of circles, many of them double circles, one inside the other.

  ‘They look like breasts!’

  Selima merely voiced what they were all thinking. Clara giggled. Hannah nodded, smiling.

  In between the circles were stick-like figures. Some were walking. Others appeared to be squatting next to the circles.

  ‘These must be fairy circles surely,’ Joe said feverishly, taking more photos with his i-phone than he could ever possibly use.

  ‘I think you’ll need to increase your data allowance, Joe,’ Freddie jibed.

  ‘Already done it,’ Joe replied grinning. ‘I’ve downloaded more data in the last month than I have done in the previous year. Dad will go ballistic when he sees the bill.’

  ‘All in a good cause!’ Selima soothed.

  ‘Look, tell me I’m wrong,’ Joe started.

  ‘You’re wrong!’ Freddie proffered.

  Joe continued unabated…

  ‘These drawings suggest the circles were around a long time ago. The rock painters were as intrigued by them as we are.’

  ‘They could be fake,’ Selima pointed out. ‘Mum?’ she called.

  Ilana left the parents and joined the others on the upper ledge.

  ‘What are you lot up to now?’ she asked affectionately, touched by their excited huddle.

  ‘How old are these engravings, Mum? Do you know?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Joe, your dad is much more likely to know than I am.’

  A minute later, Ben was poring over the drawings, using a fine brush to remove any dust and gazing through a magnifying glass like a restorer at a canvas.

  ‘These are Victorian drawings of the Fairy Circles.’

  Ralph approached them, holding the face of his watch towards them as he did so.

  ‘I hate to be the voice of focus,’ he said, ‘but we only have a few hours before the site opens to the public. Shouldn’t we be trying to decode the map?’

  ‘Absolutely, we should,’ Ben said.

  Minutes later, they had gathered around the Victorian explorer’s map. It was laid out on a picnic table that Sarah, with her usual forward planning, had brought with her, along with enough folding chairs to seat the adults. The younger ones stood around the wise council of their parents.

  It was impossible to know what scale the map was drawn to. Or even if it was drawn in proportion to distance, as opposed to imagination. The most striking elements of the map were symbols, drawn in a similarly cr
ude style to the cave engravings.

  In the middle of the map were the beautifully etched words ‘Ui Ais.’ So, they were sitting at its epicentre. In the bottom right there were three seals with fat bellies and exaggerated whiskers. Diagonally above them were two or three huge craters in the ground, one with two concentric circles around it. They were drawn in crude cross-section with chambers underneath the ground.

  ‘One of these must be the burial chamber surely,’ said Joe, pointing at them.

  ‘They certainly look that way. But, why two of them?’ quizzed Ben.

  ‘Perhaps he found two,’ Hannah suggested.

  ‘Perhaps there are two different entrances to the same chamber,’ Freddie proffered.

  On the bottom right-hand side of the map was a harbour. Directly above that was a boy standing on a mountain.

  ‘The mountain is clear enough. That must be Spitzkoppe surely,’ Ilana said,

  ‘But why the boy? Is he symbolic?’ Anne asked.

  Ben was keen to shine a light in the fog, if only for himself. He did this, as so often, by talking out loud and following the trail of his own thoughts like breadcrumbs.

  ‘Look, the most prominent writing on the map is “Ui Ais” which is here. That surely suggests that he meant people seeing the map to come here. He must have either taken these symbols from these caves. Or he has carved his own symbols as clues to be discovered here. Let’s fan out and try to find them.’

  They split into pairs and began to search the caves for clues. All except Joe who couldn’t be wrested away from the circles and patterns, amongst which he was determined to find a code.

  After twenty minutes a cry went up from one corner of the cave, finding a faint echo in the Hueb valley below.

  Everyone rushed to the spot.

  ‘We’ve found the seals,’ Hannah yelled, eyes ablaze.

  ‘So, let’s think about this,’ Selima said. ‘The sea is a hundred kilometres from here. So, it’s very unlikely the San would draw a creature so far away. Perhaps, Alexander did.’

  ‘Are any of his other symbols nearby? The boy on the mountain? The craters?’ Ben asked as he scoured the walls. There were none to be found.

  ‘The sea might have been a lot closer when these were drawn,’ Darius observed. ‘The coastline has moved as the dunes have built up.’

  ‘And anyway, the nomads could easily have wandered here from the coast,’ Ben said.

  Half an hour later, the puzzle was no closer to being solved. No symbols had been found and an air of despondency had fallen over the group like a cloud. What had been a hive of worker bees in the honeycomb of the rocks was now like a pack of drones drugged on smoke.

  Ralph called over to Ilana, pointing half-heartedly at an engraving.

  ‘Could this be the boy or girl on the mountain, Ilana?’

  ‘Say that again’ Ilana replied.

  ‘What? Boy or girl on the mountain?’

  Ilana struck her own forehead in frustration.

  ‘Oh my God, I’ve been so stupid. The “White Lady of Brandberg” of course.’

  Ralph looked at her stupefied.

  ‘It sounds like a Gothic novel!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Have you got a map with you?’ she asked.

  ‘Always,’ he replied, ‘It’s in my rucksack.’

  ‘Is it, large scale?’

  ‘Reasonably, I think.’

  ‘Great, can you fetch it…quickly. Ben, I think I’m on to something.’

  Although only Ralph had been asked to bring the map, and only Ben called as fellow detective, the news of a breakthrough spread like a virus of optimism. Everyone hastened to the picnic table, gathered like a pack of conspirators about to hatch a plot.

  The two maps were laid out side-by-side on the table: the tattered and symbol-strewn, Victorian map next to the clean, thin, colour coded lines and topography of the Ordnance Survey map that Ralph had retrieved.

  Ilana was almost dancing with excitement. It took all her energy to stay rooted to the spot and explain.

  ‘The boy on the mountain - here - is actually know as a lady. And this mountain is not the Spitzkoppe, it’s the Brandberg.’

  ‘Of course,’ chimed Ben. ‘There is a famous rock painting called “The White Lady of Brandberg.” She is walking in a procession, surrounded by people and animals. In her right hand is a flower or an ostrich egg cup. In her left is a bow and arrow.’

  ‘I thought you said a boy,’ Sarah intervened.

  ‘Scholars now think that it is a boy undergoing an initiation ceremony of some sort. He is painted in white from the chest downwards, giving the impression of a dress. Hence the confusion.’

  ‘But what about the other symbols?’ Anne asked.

  Ilana danced around the two maps, pointing out the modern-day names that corresponded to the Victorian symbols.

  ‘Look at the map here, on the left-hand side. Seals.’

  ‘The Cape Cross Seal Colony,’ Freddie yelled out, remembering the smell of their adventure.

  ‘Exactly,’ Ilana responded. ‘And if we follow the line up here, we come to the two craters. You can see here on the modern map, they are called Messum and Doros - the remnants of two vast volcanoes.’

  ‘So, if those are volcanic chambers, they probably aren’t the burial chamber,’ Hannah surmised.

  Ben leapt up.

  ‘If you take a straight line up from the seals and through the craters, you get to where we are now,’ he said, drawing the line with his index finger.

  ‘What about the right-hand side of the map?’ Joe called out having finally prised himself away from the patterns on the upper ledge. ‘The harbour? Wait, wait…’

  He pushed to the front and grabbed the modern map examining it close up.

  ‘Of course, it’s Walvis Bay. Does anyone have a tape measure or a ruler? Anything with a sharp edge?’

  Pockets and rucksacks were rummaged, but nothing found.

  ‘Use Alexander’s notebook,’ Freddie suggested.

  It seemed singularly appropriate and so Joe placed the explorer’s notebook on the map. He pulled a pencil from behind his ear, where he’d kept it whilst making notes. He drew a straight line from Walvis Bay on the coast, through the Brandberg mountain and up to Ui Ais.

  Then he drew a second line, already traced roughly by his finger, from Cape Cross seal colony through the craters and up.

  ‘Where these two lines meet, is probably the site of the chamber,’ he said. And they don’t meet here. They go up further.’

  He finished the two lines until they intersected. Everyone leaned forward.

  ‘OK, let’s just check the co-ordinates,’ Ben said, ‘and I’ll look on Google Maps.’

  A moment later he’d pinpointed it on his tablet screen and showed it round.

  ‘Anyone recognise it?’

  ‘I do,’ said Darius ‘it’s just north of my father’s old farm.’

  ‘My hotel site,’ Barbara added, feeling the triviality of it as she did so. She couldn’t quite determine whether her sites were cursed or blessed.

  There was a moment of silence as they all absorbed the discovery.

  ‘So Ui Ais is only written on the map as a point near the intersection?’ Ralph asked of himself but out loud.

  ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s so prominent, it has to hold some other significance.’

  Sarah had felt largely inadequate for the last few hours. She had found herself an expert in words, in an environment in which only images were relevant. Ben had thought she might be invaluable in decoding symbols. Yet this rock art contained nothing like hieroglyphics. It wasn’t logical, but she felt she’d let everyone down. She continued…

  ‘He must have wanted to direct whoever found the map to come here. There has to be a clue here… we just haven’
t found it.’

  ‘That’s because you’ve been looking in the wrong place.’

  The familiar voice boomed form behind them, causing them to turn as one.

  Jacob Ubuntu was almost unrecognisable in khaki, complete with shorts, belt with a bowie knife and a rucksack. Perched on his head was an unlit head-torch. He looked ten years younger as he stood between them and the valley. The lion’s mouth rock was visible in the distance and seemed to match his spirit.

  ‘Headmaster, you came,’ Hannah cried, feeling the emotion in her voice.

  Li felt momentarily displaced as her father.

  Joe, Freddie and Hannah all rushed to Ubuntu. They would have hugged him at this point, but he signalled a high five, and they returned it with vigour in quick succession. Selima joined them, clasping Hannah’s hand in hers.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ Joe said half plaintively and half accusingly.

  ‘I was determined not to, but then realised the error of my ways,’ Ubuntu replied. ‘I must apologise. I got into a ridiculous state and wanted to get out of it but couldn’t. I just didn’t want you to treat my culture as some sort of giant crossword puzzle, there to be solved for your sport.’

  Ralph stepped towards Ubuntu, ever the diplomat.

  ‘Headmaster, I can totally understand your concerns. We as parents…’

  He gazed round at the others to check their camaraderie and found it.

  ‘We have also been worried about their obsession with the Fairy Circles,’ he continued.

  The five of them shifted uneasily recognising this portrait of themselves.

  ‘But we also love their curiosity. And their obsession is not disrespectful of your culture. Quite the opposite in fact. Namibia has triggered something magical in all of them… a kind of love.’

  Ubuntu was silent, choked with hearing his country spoken of in this way.

  ‘Might I also add,’ said Ben ‘that the study of the tribes in southern Africa has been a significant part of my life’s work. Not to win some sort of academic glory, but to find the truth, to unearth the nobility of your past, Headmaster, which is, of course our common past. I am just as passionate as you to rid the world of its outdated, Western views of Africa.’