The Matriarch Matrix

by Maxime Trencavel

  Jean-Paul signals them over. “I think I have the answer. The cuneiform translates to: In honor of my great-grandmother Nanshe, we built a new monument. In respect for Ki’s sacrifice, we saved the object. Three days from the old monument. May the voice always be with us and we always faithful in return. May peace and tolerance return to our lands.”

  He adds, “Peter, this text and the sixty-degree angle on the parchment, they point to another pre-Neolithic temple, Karahan Tepe. I used the EM traces we got from Enclosure C and looked for any matching signatures in a zone around a sixty-degree line from the temple’s ancient true south alignment. I was first thrown by the three days’ walk, as Karahan Tepe is only forty kilometers south-southeast of Göbekli Tepe. But I realized for a group relocating, they might have taken three days to find this new location. This site is almost as old as Göbekli Tepe and features two hundred and sixty-six T pillars as well. But the grounds are mostly unexcavated, and it may be a much bigger site than Göbekli Tepe.”

  Zara studies the GPS location. “If God closes one door, He opens a thousand others. With only one chest EM detector left, we might as well build a house there so we can live on site,” Zara jests, shaking her head at the next fool’s errand that will get them killed. “I have a very bad feeling about this one, priest.”

  As she drives her battered red truck to the new target, Peter is very embarrassed about what Zara heard. He looks at her and says, “You must think I’m a sex fiend.”

  She looks at him and nods.

  “I’m not. Please believe me. I just have a lot of sympathy and compassion for women. My mother, you should meet her, you’d understand. She beat it into me, the innate desire to help women out, solve their pains, help them be who they want to be.”

  Zara finally smiles, admiring his newfound humility, and ruffles the hair on his head.

  They arrive at Jean-Paul’s derived GPS location in the Tektek Mountains. Not much of anything but sheep and grass. The hill overlooks the Harran Plain, the same as Göbekli Tepe did. Jean-Paul explains that Alexander had commissioned a preliminary excavation of this Tepe and a few others in the area, thinking they might uncover more clues about the object hidden on the pillars at different sites. He grabs the chest EM pack and his AK-74XM and limps to one of the few enclosures opened up.

  The editor from the City by the Bay takes shelter from the heat in the shade behind the truck. As he plays with his MoxWrap, he surprisingly finds he can access its communication functions. Not wanting to be heard, he texts someone very important. Someone who holds the key to what he needs to know to manage what concerns him most.

  And the good doctor texts him back. “So good to hear from you. I thought you disappeared. Here’s a link to a site that will help you with your friend with PTSD. Remember to be patient, don’t pressure them for past memories or push their triggers. And gain their trust as a friend and listen.”

  Now he regrets that he has already violated the don’t-push-their-triggers advice many times with Zara, with viperous results. Peter texts back his thanks.

  Nervous about how even more exposed this hillside is, Zara scans the flashes of artillery fire from the AC forces on the other side of the Harran Plains through her binoculars. She doesn’t want to die here either. Not until Alexander has delivered what he promised. Then she can die. And until then, she has to help these two find that object.

  Since last night, she has chastised herself, very hard and mercilessly, for her own silliness in refusing to rub that silly man days ago. If she had, they would not have been bombed. Maybe that important monument of Turkish and Kurdish history would still be standing today. She wrestles with herself about what she needed to overcome in herself at this new site. And then images come back. The horror of what they did to her. And she shakes her head, knowing she cannot do it. Cannot.

  Four more days pass with Jean-Paul and Peter taking turns sweeping the enormous acreage of possible temples. Zara passes time jamming the snooping drones. Who would be using drones in this area when Alexander’s tech makes them inoperable? Maybe that is what they are looking for. Dead zones for drones as a signal for where they must be. She hopes not, but their time is rapidly running out.

  When not scanning for drones, she watches Peter with an interest she cannot fathom. This boy, knowing he cannot lift that EM pack for extended times, insists on doing his fair share of the work as she watches him wobble around, groaning with one muscle cramp to the next. She heard his grandfather. Wise, as is hers. There is more to this silly man than what she gave him credit for. But what?

  Night after night, Jean-Paul is not encouraged by his EM readings. The place is simply too large. Even if they had two chest EM packs operational, even if they had a dozen, the site is simply too large. After dinner, the last of their freeze-dried gunk, Jean-Paul asks Zara to come walk with him.

  “Zara, there are two hundred and sixty-six pillars here. Only eight of them have been unearthed. Everything tells me the object is here. But my EM technology is not going to find it.”

  Zara stares down and shakes her head. “I tried the other night, Jean-Paul. I really tried. I am not the gentle, loving mother-to-be. I am just not. He needs someone who is more compassionate. Someone who he feels could love him. I am just not.”

  Jean-Paul lifts her head and looks her in the eyes, blinks methodically, and serenely says, “Zara, you are one of the most compassionate of the many I have met. It seeps throughout your soul. Something in you, something that hurts so much, it locks up your compassion. I respect your need to keep your sanity by locking this part of yourself up. We all have our limits. I respect your limits and your privacy. Please let me share this one thing with you.”

  And with that, the good Father undoes the buttons of his tunic, exposing his chest. Zara wonders what this is about. He was nonresponsive to her advances on the plane. He pulls out a medallion hanging next to his crucifix and shows her the side with the Cygnus constellation.

  “Zara, someone I loved very much, and truth be told, I still do love very much, loaned this to me. It was in her family for generations, much like your pendant. This medallion is why I search for the object. No mysterious agenda from the Vatican. Merely this medallion.”

  He pauses while she looks at it, and then he says, “The writing is six to seven thousand years old. This is the tail of the bird constellation, Cygnus, same as the oral tradition states. The giant is Peter’s watcher or alien or merely a giant, as the oral tradition says. The text says, ‘Beware of the giants of the star.’”

  Taking it off over his head, he places the artifact in her hands. He clasps her hand and says, “Zara, what you are going to see will change your life. Forgive me if this change was not what you had wanted, but we are on the verge of losing the object if we do not address this moment in time urgently.”

  Zara braces herself, for she understands this priest does not talk idly about such things. He turns the medallion over, and she beholds the long rectangular object with a woman touching it. And she remembers what her grandmother Roza said: “We spouses have been like their other half, and between the pair, we are closer to Xwedê together. It takes both halves to make an apple.” The woman on the medallion had two halves of an apple. How did Roza know this?

  “Zara, the text says, ‘She hears the voice of God,’” the good priest states.

  She looks at the woman and she remembers the debate her maternal great-grandmother Sara, faithful wife of a Sufi imam, had with her paternal grandmother Amina, faithful wife of a mufti, expert in Islamic law, over whether there were female prophets. By strict definition there were none, argued Amina. Sara, on the other hand, asked why the definitions that described the male prophets could not be applied to Sarah, wife of Abraham, Miriam, sister to Moses, Chanah, mother of Samuel, Abigail, third wife of David, Esther, wife of Xerxes I of Persia, Maryam, mother of Jesus, and numerous others. And Grandmother Armina left the conversation less than pleased, suggesting Sara spent more time with the Torah than the Qu
r’an.

  As did her Jesuit professors at Georgetown, Jean-Paul is trying to enlighten her with inquisitive interactions. He points to the worm and asks, “Why do you think this creature is here? It seems so out of place.”

  She looks at it and agrees it does seem out of place. “It is just a worm, Jean-Paul. A simple worm.” She pauses to reflect more deeply, having previously experienced how Jesuits never accept simple answers. “The woman has purified her relationship with God by cleansing the apple of the worm.”

  Jean-Paul smiles, serenely, but maybe hiding a chuckle at her answer. “Look closely. It has spots.”

  She looks more closely. It does have spots! How?

  Jean-Paul pulls the logic string tighter, going for closure. “Remember Mei’s yellow earrings, the ones you wore but tossed at Peter on the plane? The yellow bugs with red spots. The mollusks, according to your Little Boy.”

  Zara, the woman who is fully coherent and functional during a rainstorm of thousand-pound bombs, freezes with this thought. It could not be. It simply could not be. The silly Peter’s banana slug. How could someone seven thousand years ago envision a banana slug would be next to a woman who speaks with Xwedê? Is this idolatry that she should ignore, burn, destroy? Or is this truly the sign from Xwedê?

  Jean-Paul pulls his arms around her to comfort her as the very foundations of her faith are being challenged. “I cannot tell you what you should do knowing this. You asked me what Alexander and I are hiding from you. You should know your Alexander gave me strict instructions not to tell you, for he fears that knowledge will change you. I believe he values his private and intimate relationship with you. He does not want that to change. At risk of my life, and you know this is a true statement, I confirm your notion you are as afflicted, as is Peter. You, Peter, and Alexander are the most afflicted of all I have studied.”

  He stops short of saying what Peter and she are. He gives her credit for her intelligence, intuitiveness, and closeness to God to come to this understanding herself.

  And he is right. She begins to piece the puzzle together. Alexander asked her four years ago to do what he demanded of Mei—unabashed sex with a stranger on her plane and again in front of everyone. He begged her, insisted that she was the best person in the world for the task at hand. For all the reasons she has held since her escape six years ago, she turned him down repeatedly. And then he found the priest and Mei, who completed his task and found Peter. Why was she the best person in the whole world in his mind? And where did love fit in his scheme? Of all the males in the universe, how could her other half of the apple be this bespectacled man-boy who cowers when bravery is needed?

  She nods back at Jean-Paul. He understands and leaves to give her privacy.

  Peter wonders where Jean-Paul is going and then freezes in apprehension as Zara sits down next to him. What body part is going to be crushed now?

  “Peter,” she says, “I am not Mei. I cannot do what she does. I simply cannot.” She takes his hand in hers. “I have come to understand you are a very special person. Someone who is beyond my comprehension, but unique in this universe, nonetheless.”

  And she closes her eyes and searches for the strength to confront her demons, test her limits, and still believe she has been faithful. She touches his cheek and says, “I cannot do what Alexander expects a woman to do with you. It is more than an issue with my faith. It is about my choice. With what I have lived through, I must follow the path I have chosen.”

  She closes her eyes again, still unsuccessful in finding that courage. She killed dozens and dozens, in cold blood, face-to-face, and watched their eyes as they died. And yet she cannot find the courage for this. She breathes deeply, licks her palm, and takes his hand into hers. She feels it. That same feeling on the plane when they first touched. That same sensation little Zara had as she twirled with her Sufi great-grandfather.

  And the clutter in her mind begins to empty. Peace and bliss begin to come in. Peter touches her neck affectionately, and the peace evacuates. She freezes in horror as the image of that monster invades her empty mind. The grotesque hands that touched her, forced her to touch him, and that ripped her apart, bit by bit.

  She pulls back from Peter and cries, “I cannot. I just cannot.”

  Chapter 33

  The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.

  —Henry Home,

  Scottish judge and philosopher

  Late July, 2014

  Sinopli, Turkey

  “Mama, remember this?” Zara asks playfully, holding up a garment half her size.

  Her mother beams as she runs her hand along its fabric. “Your ninth birthday. I remember this dress, the one you picked out with Roza.” She laughs. “That is, after the dozen others she told you were not appropriate.”

  Grinning right back, Zara reaches into her closet pulling out another dress. “And remember what Roza said about this one I bought with my aunt Birca in Erdil?”

  Hand in front of her mouth, Maryam says, “Oh my. You nearly gave my mother a stroke when she saw you wearing that one.”

  Holding the lithe dress in front of her, Zara grimaces, seeing the hemline more north than south of midthigh. “What was I thinking?”

  Taking the frock from her daughter, Maryam holds it front of her and shivers even though it would cover more of her than Zara. “You were being a normal young girl looking to explore her world,” she says as she hands the dress back. “Zara, exploring and trying are part of who we are. And so are mistakes. We need only to forgive ourselves and move on.”

  Laying the garment of lessons learned on her single bed along with the other clothes of her childhood she is packing, Zara stares down, shaking her head. “There is so much I need to move on from.”

  Eleven years ago, she left her mother, soon to be followed by her little boy brother, to join the Peshmerga. Four years ago, her “mama” moved out of Iraq to be with her mother in the home where she had grown up in Sinopli, Turkey, only an hour and half across the border away from where Zara grew up.

  Four weeks ago, Mama called Zara, very ruffled. Her brother-in-law, Uncle Talan, the senior officer in the Peshmerga who had looked after Zara and her brother, told her their intelligence suggested that a major northern attack by the Daesh could occur in the next couple months. Thus he suggested that, if at all possible, they should move even farther north for fear the Daesh would not stop at the Iraqi border and would go into Turkey.

  But Zara lamented that she could not come help her and Roza move any earlier than two days ago, as her YPJ unit was heavily engaged fighting the Daesh in the villages surrounding the city of Kobanî, five hundred kilometers away, having just repelled a major Daesh offensive. She had been fighting the Daesh nonstop for over two years: in the defense of Kurdish villages around Aleppo in 2012; in the battle for and ultimate capture of Ras al-Ayn on the border of Turkey and Syria in 2013; and in the offensive against Daesh bases around Tell Abyad, another Turkish-Syrian border town, earlier this year. And at the moment her mother called, Zara had spent weeks defending Kobanî.

  Many of the Daesh feared the YPJ’s female fighters, like my command, for they believed if a woman killed them, they would not go to heaven. And as Zara could not tell her mother, she had ensured many, very many, did not go to heaven.

  But after six years of fighting, of faithfully and obediently championing Kurdish independence, half with the Peshmerga, the other half with the YPJ, Zara’s mother’s call gave an honorable way to pack away my uniforms and resign my commission. Even though Zara had saved many more lives than she had taken, she became increasingly irritated that the political powers who directed our forces had more than Kurdish independence in mind.

  Maryam picks up some of her daughter’s textbooks to pack. Some in English; others in Russian. “You spent so much time studying economics. After we move you can look for a job in business in Turkey,” she says as she packs Zara’s masters in international business diploma fr
om the National Research University, Moscow.

  But Zara envisions something very different as she stares at that diploma. Anatoly. The Spetsnav officer, who wooed her for her love and other things. The latter fell into the same state secret category as what she did for Dan. But with Anatoly, she was much the wiser and protected her heart. For no man would touch that part of her anatomy again.

  Zara relives her own childhood memories, sorting through her boxes. She finds the other crazy provocative dresses, tops, and short shorts she bought with her “sisters,” Rona and Diyar, that summer in Erdil—the ones that got the Sunni orthodox side of her family, Grandmother Amina and her cousin Rohat, all bent out of shape. Now having lived abroad, she sees that these clothes are hardly provocative compared to what she saw in Washington, D.C.

  She finds her photo album with memories of the many years of visits and outings with Rona and Diyar, her best friends, always and forever. Up until she left for the Peshmerga, they saw each other at least every week since they were toddlers, shared each and every family event, and were the keepers of each other’s girl secrets.

  Their father, Avan, Maryam’s older brother and Roza’s oldest child, had also been abducted by Saddam’s police, never to be heard from again. After a number of years, their Ezidi mother, Ezna, moved with them back to her family’s home in Sinjar province, home for most of the Ezidis in Iraq. Zara had made it a point to make the three-hour trip to visit them there at least twice a year each time she came home.

  Her silly little boy brother, Soran, interrupts her virtual bonding with her sisters, barging into her room and showing pictures of them with Grandfather Baho, Roza’s husband, learning to do the Sufi dervish whirling, the spinning meditation dance. She probably forgot her Sufi roots with all those Americans she partied with or those Russians she downed vodka with, he says, challenging her. And so they spin and spin, knocking down everything in the room as they lose balance.