The Matriarch Matrix

by Maxime Trencavel

  Pointing her finger in shame at Peter, Zara says, “Your remarks about the PKK are uninformed. Was your George Washington a patriot or terrorist? It depends on who is writing history. I do not condone the bombings and attacks the PKK did. In fact, in surveys, most Turkish Kurds did not advocate for a separate nation. Their issue is the right to be able to speak their language, to celebrate their culture. But you must understand, the PKK was created as a result of oppression, in the same way Washington’s armies were formed. Was it right for the Western world to list them as terrorists? I suppose if you were King George in London, you would have labeled the founders of your country as terrorists. Labels aside, what you do not see, what the rest of the world did not see, is the PKK came into the mountain villages and advocated for the equality of women, for they are equally essential for a strong Kurdistan. Where they came to visit, conditions got better for women.”

  Feeling humbled and regretting his terrorist accusations, Peter meekly asks, “What is the solution?”

  Zara smiles as she steps up on the soapbox. “Simple, but not so simple. It’s a matter of economics and education, which generally follows economics. Rural Kurds need access to top education, in a language they understand and that is accessible from their homes, farms, and villages. The country needs sources of income other than oil.”

  The banana slugger in Peter speaks. “Oil is the world’s evil.”

  If she had a collar, she would be hot under it now. “What do you think these conflicts are truly about? Religion, politics? Oil and energy. Kurdistan sits on some of the best oil fields in the world. The fight for Sanliurfa for Ibrahim’s birthplace? Iraq-Turkey crude oil pipelines runs from where I was born in Iraq all the way to Cerhan on the Mediterranean Sea right through this region. The Russians? They want the Iranian gas line and the former Iraqi gas line to be rerouted. The Americans? They see the threat to their gas and oil supplies. And the Chinese? Inscrutable, like your Mei. Can you figure them out? I can. They want the Arabic Confederation oil supplies for themselves.”

  “In this, we are kindred spirits. Like minds,” replies Peter, who begins to relax in her presence.

  Surprised by his reply, she glances at him, and her anger subsides a bit as a hint of smile peeks through. “Maybe we cannot change the world, but we can change what we can.”

  An upcoming security checkpoint appears on the horizon and, as before, Zara taps her MoxWrap. When they pull up to the checkpoint, the officer in charge wants to see documentation. Zara explains she transferred her authorizations by MoxWrap, showing them on her device. They look at her device, look all over the vehicle, ask what they are carrying, and peer into their packs. They look at the two rifles and pistols they are carrying and ask if they have any other weapons. With that, the officer waves them though. Jean-Paul watches them make a call on a smartphone.

  Looking very peeved, Zara says, “They were not normal Anatolian Kurdish military. In the Peshmerga, I worked with the Americans, and part of my job was to find and capture Jahsh, the Kurdish traitors who worked as spies and informants for the government. These checkpoint soldiers felt like Jahsh. There was something not right about how they behaved. Jean-Paul, your observation about Rohat was very astute. There is a mole. Who would have known we made an emergency landing in Siirt? The pilots? Anyone from the airport? I had only informed Alexander that we would be one to two days delayed getting to the target. Did either of you communicate with anyone?”

  Peter shakes his head no. Jean-Paul rapidly blinks and says no. Zara is suspicious, very suspicious.

  “This is a very serious situation,” says Zara. “Who could be after us? What did the Americans or Turks or Arabic Confederation have to gain by attacking our plane? Who is paying these new Jahsh?” She looks at Peter and says, “And I don’t trust Mei’s loyalties. The Chinese have a hand in this somewhere.”

  She turns back to glance at Jean-Paul and asks, “And, priest, what do you get out of this? You do not look like the type who is doing this for money, nor for any nation. Are you sure you are not here to steal Alexander’s object?”

  Peter jokes, “Yes, and he will have it stashed a thousand feet below the Vatican in their secret archives.” Jean-Paul is not amused with this conversation and keeps quiet.

  Another half hour on dirt back roads to avoid detection, and they see lines of smoke on the horizon. The battle for Sanliurfa is near. Zara pulls her truck into Göbekli Tepe’s empty visitor center parking lot. The place has been closed for over a year. No guards. Only the fence securing the excavation areas.

  And down the hill, they see the enclosures surrounded by coarsely built stone walls surrounding the dry tan limestone monoliths, which appear as if they beg to speak their history, the story of their builders. The excavated areas are accessible by wooden walkways. The rest of the hill looks like any other—peaceful waves of grass around sporadic mulberry trees and clusters of little yellow wildflowers and grazing goats overlooking the Harran Plains, with scattered farms to the right and Sanliurfa on the right.

  Zara excuses herself as she pulls out a prayer mat from the truck’s cargo bed and performs a Qasr, a quick afternoon prayer. On the other side of the truck, Peter listens to the artillery fire past Sanliurfa and watches the smoke rise from the battered areas of conflict. His knees begin to quiver. This is too real, too lethal for him.

  As Jean-Paul unloads the EM detector packs from the cab, she proceeds to get security gear from her truck. After taking packs out of the cargo bed, she erects clear shields that protect the rear of the truck, with a slot for firing a rifle. Peter asks what this is, and she explains these are transparent aluminum armor that can stop a 12.7mm heavy machine-gun round. She laughs and says her whole truck is lined with this material, thanks to Alexander. Peter goes pale, quivering white, as he wonders what they need to be so heavily protected from.

  Zara makes a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree scan with her binoculars. She says to Jean-Paul she clearly does not like this situation. They are very exposed. The terrain is not very defensible. Jean-Paul methodically blinks and points out several ways they can set up an effective crossfire defense.

  “That is, if we have enough time to set up a defense,” Zara quips and gives Jean-Paul one of the AK-74MXs, taking the other for herself. “Expect the worst from your enemy so that you won’t be disappointed.”

  Peter quips at Jean-Paul, “Soldier of the Pope, eh?” which the good Father ignores.

  Zara pulls out Rohat’s gun. “Here, Peter, take this. He has ten-millimeter rounds that will stop an aurochs, the ancient bulls that wandered this area. Watch out, he used repacked rounds, not factory ones. They can be sticky. Slide back once, and only once.”

  Jean-Paul leads them to an entrance gate and opens the lock. Peter asks how he got the lock code. The good Father shrugs his shoulders, looks up into the sky, and says he has special sources. Zara rolls her eyes as she takes point to ensure the area is clear.

  “Peter, in my culture, women follow men. You Westerners say this is a sign of women’s submission to men. In my world, the men are merely making sure it was safe for their women. Snakes, scorpions, other nasty lethal animals who live in our wilderness.”

  And Peter shakes again, as Jean-Paul puts his hand on Zara’s shoulder, signaling he will take the lead, because he knows the way. He leads them down planks taking them to the main enclosure, now covered with elaborate tenting to protect the monoliths and stone reliefs. He explains that the enclosures were lettered in the order in which they were found. The biggest is Enclosure D, where he takes them first.

  Zara is simply stunned. She never imagined such wonders existed. Twelve thousand years ago, her ancestors erected these huge temples, six millennia before the Giza Pyramids were built. She stands in awe of the two T-shaped center monoliths towering over five and a half meters high. She sees one with a leaping fox, its teeth bared for attack. Another with what look like three flamingos on top. Did these lovely pink birds once live here? Or was this verificat
ion of the story of the Prophet Nuh and the animals of the Ark?

  And of course, Peter comes by and tests her faith, saying, “These flamingos, they’re proof that aliens were here. How else could these people know what a flamingo looks like?”

  Zara puts her hands up, mocks a face of fright at Peter, and says, “Fear an ignorant man more than a lion.”

  Jean-Paul, truly in his element, points to the animal relief carvings, and the fact each enclosure has different animals as its focus. This one concentrates on reptiles, with thirty-one reliefs, in addition to the seven ducks and geese, a vulture, an ibis, five foxes, and three bulls, actually their ancestors, aurochs. Zara walks among these animals, proud of her heritage.

  Pointing to the main T pillars, Jean-Paul explains the line formed by the top of the T points to where Deneb, the tail of the bird star, would have been the polar star around 9,500 to 9,600 BCE. This is why Alexander and he are keen on investigating these temples.

  He brings them to a smaller pillar showing a bird holding a round object. Jean-Paul then traces the constellation Cygnus in the bird, saying this was also why they thought the traditions came from this place.

  Peter says this could be interpreted as an alien holding a human head, and the background is his spaceship. Jean-Paul counters this could be an Anunnaki god, the primordial Sumerian gods who often had bird heads. Peter recalls the Book of Enoch, the watchers. This relief shows they were here.

  While the two men play with their reliefs and archeology Trivial Pursuit, Zara keeps a constant eye on the satellite surveillance on her MoxWrap, very worried about their situation.

  And Peter, looking at one of the central pillars, yells, “I knew it. I knew it. The watchers were here. These pillars represent the giants. Even Professor Klaus said they were ‘beings from another world.’”

  He runs over the side of the western central pillar and points to the side, at a giant with a belt and fox pelt loincloth. On top, he wears a double V collar and a pendant below. Jean-Paul says that many think this is a bull’s head shape on the pendant, given the bull reliefs found elsewhere in the temple.

  Peter puts his fingers on his chin. Scratching his head, he says it looks like something else to him, more like a uterus. He’s seen this before. But for the life of him, he can’t think where.

  With Zara following, Jean-Paul leads him to the eastern central pillar to show him another giant with the same belt and fox loincloth standing on a base with seven birds. Peter is speechless. He tries to speak and nothing comes out as his hand points to the top.

  Mocking him, Zara says, “Too much alien here for you? Magical alien powers have ripped your tongue out?”

  Peter shakes his head and pulls the lambskin sac out of his pocket. He holds the pendant up high in the air, showing it is exactly the same as the pendant atop the giant.

  “Peter, where did you get this?” asks Jean-Paul.

  Peter looks at him, gagging, and then towards Zara. He mutters, “From her mother.”

  Chapter 30

  How easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We’d forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries …

  —Ronald Reagan

  At our meeting in Geneva, the U.S. President said that if the earth faced an invasion by extraterrestrials, the United States and the Soviet Union would join forces to repel such an invasion. I shall not dispute the hypothesis, though I think it’s early yet to worry about such an intrusion…

  —Mikhail Gorbachev

  2:00 p.m. GMT+3, May 17, 2021

  Göbekli Tepe, fifteen kilometers west of Sanliurfa, Turkey

  Everything is pardoned the brave, or so says the Kurdish proverb Zara reflects upon as she stares at the pendant Peter is holding up.

  She has suffered so much in her life. Suffering she thinks brought upon by herself through her past transgressions, by her straying from the faith of her family, from their traditions. She was bad. In the words of her Catholic classmates at Georgetown, she thought she had atoned for her sins through her suffering. She minored in theology, searching for a deeper sense of world connection, while she majored in economics, searching for a solution for her people.

  Her brief Erdil affair with Western clothing a touch too revealing was a trifle of a transgression compared to her following Zengo into the Peshmerga. She bent the lines of her faith, of her grandmother Roza’s words of wisdom, only a little, she thought. He did propose marriage. They were practically married.

  But as she was to learn more than once, practically is not the same as actually. She gave herself to Zengo, her virginity, her soul, her deepest love, which he enjoyed over and over again, promising they would marry after the next mission. And one mission turned into the next, and the next, and then into never. The passionate love turned into lowly sessions of physical relief on his part. And after the embarrassment, the dishonor, the shame she felt when she was told by the Peshmerga doctor she had a sexually transmitted disease, chlamydia, she beat Zengo silly when he came for his next round of filthy and disingenuous sex.

  What was she to do? She could never go home after having eloped, and now unmarried and shamed. She would dishonor her family, and she loved them too much to cause them this kind of pain. Worse, how could she in good faith return to practice the faith of her family? She had crossed a line that never could be uncrossed. And she wore that pain on her shoulder so that all would see. “Keep away, all,” her pain said to others, “for I am the dishonored. I am a bad girl.”

  And then she met him. Blue eyes, blond hair, amazing body, just like the magazines she and her “sisters” Rona and Diyar used to ogle. He was an American military advisor, Dan, a civilian working for the military, who romanced her with notions that she could become a Kurdish hero, working for him and hunting down the traitorous Kurds, the Jahsh, who informed on her people to Saddam Hussein’s evil Ba’ath monsters, the ones who had killed her father, taken her uncles and grandfather. And she agreed to be trained, to become the invisible assassin in the cause of righting the wrongs done to her family and her people. And in time, she agreed to live in his bed, for unlike Zengo, Dan’s passions never ended. She knew love. Finally.

  But paradise was never meant to last, at least here on Earth. She cried and cried and cried the day he told her of his transfer to Washington, D.C., to take an assignment at Georgetown University while also working at the State Department. She begged him to take her with him, but he said the conditions with the war limited the number of Iraqis who could immigrate to the US.

  She suffered alone in the Peshmerga and took it out on the evil men she hunted. She killed and she killed and she killed. Until one day, the distant relative who had sent her for her high school semester abroad to the UK and France offered her a student visa, airline ticket, tuition, and most importantly, an acceptance to enter Georgetown. Xwedê did hear her prayers.

  No more than four hours after checking into her dorm, she set out on her search for Dan. And their affair blossomed to new depths of passion, of intimacy not possible in a war field bed. But no matter how much she hinted, no matter how much she directly asked, the time was not right to be married. She did favors for him, being sent on missions for his job, ones he would not want anyone to know about. She did it for love, hoping that one day he would father her children.

  Being so terribly blind in love, it took her three years before she put the tracking skills his people had taught her to use for herself. She tracked him. And the love and trust in her soul evaporated, forever. He had a wife and beautiful children. Little Zara with beauty inside became forever the ugly bad Zara as she went into a dark place and thought about telling this woman about her unfaithful husband. But as she watched the other woman’s children, she saw her own childhood, the one she so loved. She could not do that to children, ruin their innocence.

  And like the generations of Kurd
s before her, she learned she had no friends. Only men who had used her. Used her body, not her. She made Dan forever in debt to her, forever afraid of her. For he worked for the State Department. He owed her, and she intended on collecting.

  After graduating summa cum laude, she found her people once again embroiled in civil war, this time in Syria. Twice burned, she would not fall in love again, would not let a man touch her again, not her body and for sure not her heart. And a year later, she joined the YPJ, the all-women’s fighting arm of the Syrian Kurds, sister unit of the YPG, the men’s fighting arm in which her brother Soran now served. Her friends would be women, the faithful mountains, and her weapons.

  Seven years ago, she thought God had finally punished her for her misdeeds, her killings, her monumental straying from submission, from modesty, from the words of the Prophet. Although she put those unspeakable months out of her mind, she knew her punishment meant she could never be loved by a man ever again, even if she so wished. God had made sure of that.

  And now God is punishing her again. This little boy, this idolizer of yellow mollusks, has been given their family ancestry, their heirloom, their connection to the original Kurds, her legacy. Why did her family do this? Why do they want to punish her? She has been faithful, in submission to Xwedê, ever since her return home three years ago. She is the perfect daughter, other than not marrying and having children. Is this why they told him about her family’s legacy of that accursed affliction? Is this why he now holds what is rightfully hers? Because she has no children?

  And faster than Jean-Paul can stop her, Zara puts Peter’s hand into a wristlock, throws him to the ground, taking the pendant away from him, and plants her foot on the side of his head as he begs for mercy.

  “This is mine. And do not ever, ever talk with my family. Ever again. What is theirs is rightfully mine,” she asserts as he writhes in complete fear of her. She glares at the priest, whom she increasingly distrusts, and says, “What is their secret is rightfully mine to be told. It is not for you or Alexander to hide from me.”