The Matriarch Matrix

by Maxime Trencavel

  And they dig and dig as the archeologist in Jean-Paul cringes with each of Zara’s rough shovel digs. Her shovel uncovers something, and she doubts her sanity as an image from her teens arises. She seeks a black stone. Peter comes and puts his arm around her, assuring her he saw the same stone in his dream. She is overwhelmed, and to the surprise of her apple half and the priest, she kneels and kisses it.

  Peter gently asks, “Should I kiss it too?”

  Very embarrassed, Zara says, “No. No. I was just overtaken by a memory. A very important spiritual memory.” She turns to Jean-Paul and makes the first religious joke of the mission. “Priest, come here with your cross. You may need to bless this stone.”

  The archeologist in Jean-Paul takes over as they carefully expose more of the stone. Black, with many round indentations. Peter stares at it. Not what he and Alexander had imagined. He says to Jean-Paul, “How do we know this is it? It isn’t a monolith. Is this just some weird stone?”

  He puts his hand on it and says, “Kirk to Spock. Come in. Bones misses you. Beam down here and we can have a family reunion.”

  Touching the stone with her palms, Zara asks, “What?”

  Peter, thinking she just isn’t a Trekkie, or they simply did not own a television in her village either, says, “I was calling Spock, the friendly pointy-eared Vulcan alien.”

  But Zara shushes him and repeats herself. “What? What did you say? Yes. Yes. Yes. I understand. How? I will.”

  She leans back in astonishment. Stares up into the heavens and breathes slowly. She looks over at Peter, then at Jean-Paul. She glances back up and says, slowly and serenely, “I heard a voice.”

  She turns to both of them and says, “And she was beautiful.”

  And the three of them go silent—Zara in deep reflection over what she has just heard, Peter rubbing the object to get it to talk to him as well, and Jean-Paul tapping away on his MoxPad+.

  Zara breaks the silence, turns to Jean-Paul, and says, “She is the same voice for all of us. There is only one voice. And she is sad. She did not say so, but I felt it—disheartened. She has attempted many times over many thousands of years to talk with us. Each time, her word is heard, and then distorted. Mankind takes her words for other uses. She asked if I understood. She asked if I would help her. I asked how, and she said I will know soon. She asked again if I would help.”

  An internally disheveled Zara looks at Peter and adds, “And then she told me I would not know how to help as long as I was only half.”

  Peter, missing his cue to truly bond with her in the way that would bring them both closer to the voice, lets the editor in him spoil the moment. “If that’s true, and God is She and not He, the copyeditors of the world will rejoice as there will be decades of revisions that need to be made.”

  Not amused at Peter’s insolence, Jean-Paul simply states, “God might present as different genders to different people. Just as He, well, as God may speak in the native language of different people.”

  Zara is indifferent to the two of them and says, “She is She and that is that.”

  She leans down and kisses the object again. She cannot leave the object, as she feels compelled to sit in its presence. Her MoxWrap gently taps on her wrist, signaling the time for Asr prayer. She turns to the object and kneels down. And at a spiritual dilemma, she debates for a minute. Moving to the side of the object that puts her in line with Mecca, she then performs her prayer while the two men set out to search for dinner.

  After a vegetarian dinner, they work on digging a ramp around the object so they can roll and lever it up to the level ground. Jean-Paul is fascinated with the geologic structure of the rocks around the object. He takes samples of the rocks as well as more EM readings of the area.

  The next day, Zara spends her time in meditation on the object, taking breaks for her routine of daily prayers. Peter tries to be her companion and sit on the object with her, but he is not getting any signals, vibes, or anything special from being near the object, other than his newfound contentment at simply being next to Zara.

  While Jean-Paul continues taking samples and obtaining readings, Peter decides to walk around the other excavated areas of this temple complex. He notes the number of goddess statues unearthed by Alexander’s excavation team, all unclothed, featuring their fertility parts. He brings back six of them to show Zara. He taps her shoulder, but she is not amused by his interruption over a bunch of statues.

  “But, Zara, there are literally dozens and dozens of these in the excavation trenches,” exclaims Peter. He looks to check if Jean-Paul is nearby, and then shows her two, the leaner two. “Look at these two. Don’t they look familiar?”

  “No. What was wrong with my ancestors here? This is only Neolithic porn. Did they not understand what modesty was back then?” says Zara dismissively.

  Peter backs away out of hitting range, gulps, and then says his piece. “Zara, you have their body.”

  That “Zara glare” comes back. She winces at him. Not only has he interrupted her meditation on the voice, but he is fantasizing about her naked body. “Little Boy, what makes you think you know what my body looks like?”

  Very embarrassed, Peter timidly says, “Well, they match your calves, and their breasts show the same proportion to the rest of the body as yours.”

  Zara is outraged and lets him have it. “I let you touch my bra and suddenly you are an expert on my breasts.” She crosses her arms across her chest. “I don’t care if World War Three is starting. You are not going to touch me there again.”

  Peter leaves the six statues on the ground in front of her and finds more friendly grounds to ponder his existence. Zara at first is dismissive of these embodiments of Neolithic porn. But then she sees what he saw. One statue in particular is anatomically close to her proportions. Not exaggerated as four of them are.

  Thankful he was not physically harmed by his other apple half, Peter searches around the excavation trenches for something other than that which would offend her highness. Thinking he has sunstroke, he rubs his eyes to look again. Isn’t that the same kind of stone as the object? And Peter brushes dirt off a two-and-a-half-inch black stone fragment protruding from the side of a trench. He finds another rock to dig the fragment out. It is eight by three by one inches and looks the same on the surface as the object.

  He runs back to Jean-Paul, yelling, “I found something. It’s part of the object.”

  Jean-Paul looks at the fragment with Peter. Finds where it might have fit on the object, and remarks, “This may mean that the object could have split over time. There may be more fragments or even more sizeable pieces of the object here, or anywhere along the path of the descendants of the originators.” Incredibly excited inside, but his serene self on the outside, Jean-Paul takes his MoxPad+ and EM detector back to the truck to chase his idea.

  Peter makes a belt by ripping up his undershirt, fastens the object fragment securely around his belly, and puts his tunic back on. He has what he has come for. A fragment of the object to bring back to Pappy. His mission is done here. He looks back to the northern knoll and spies Zara sitting on the object. He bites his lower lip, for he has another mission here to fulfill.

  Zara opens her eyes again to see her Little Boy has come back, hopefully not with more statues. She recognizes the apology in his face and she signals for him to sit next to her. He cautiously does so watching her carefully.

  “Stay here with me,” she implores. “I know you mean well. You must understand I am fearful of a man who is that close to me. Who might know me. It has never gone well in the past.”

  She closes her eyes again. Minutes later, she opens them and says, “What I am sensing becomes stronger as you are near.” She takes his hand into hers and closes her eyes again to commune with the object.

  Another vegetarian dinner later, Jean-Paul explains how he has confirmed his theory that another object piece might exist. He noted the magnetic and structural changes created by the multiple lightning strikes wher
e the object lies. Now understanding this, he confirmed that the grounds at Göbekli Tepe Enclosure C showed the same. Much to Zara’s alarm, Jean-Paul has tasked Alexander’s satellites with looking at the lands and shallow seabeds around the Black Sea. There are a number of places where this object and potential other ones could have existed. On his MoxPad+, he shows the dots, which look like a road map of the originators’ migration from the northernmost dot in the Crimea.

  He points to the ones near the Turkish-Georgian border. He says these are the most suggestive of an object resting between the ports of Rize and Çayeli. He shows Mount Kaçkar Dağı, the highest mountain in the region, where the signature lightning and EM convergence appears as well. This could be consistent with the oral tradition of another group of originators trying to find “the mountains past the hill of obsidian rocks.”

  The late evening arrives. Jean-Paul leaves the two of them to their privacy with the object as he takes his post at the truck. Peter pulls out a surprise for Zara. He brought her prayer mat from the truck when they were searching for things to eat. She is so pleasantly surprised. She holds her hands around his cheeks, kisses him, and invites him to sit with her as she performs her Isha prayers.

  They sit on the object, looking into the north to find the tail of the bird star. She leans over and softly says, “I apologize for my doubt about you. My family was once again wise in their assessment of you.”

  With that, they touch each other. Not only the skin-to-skin touch, but truly and deeply touch each other in the way the tradition said. Peter repeats for her the tradition prescribed twelve thousand years ago for them to hear. Only with the two together can you find peace. The Object. You might see in sleep, might hear. But only as man and woman.

  She takes his hand into hers. “It is so very difficult for me to express this part of my being, this part of my life that has long overshadowed what you have touched in me. What I have done, no person should have done. Because I strayed, I was made to pay the price. And I pay the price today, for I can never be a woman to a man anymore. My bad deeds led to my body being destroyed in ways that no man would want.” And she puts her hands over her face to muffle her cries.

  Peter remembers the words of warning from Roza. Perhaps her grandmother was using their faith as a graceful way to save her granddaughter from facing humiliating requests of her sexuality. He so wants to let her know how beautiful she is. He has seen her from within. He remembers what Maryam said to him, and he whispers in her ear the poem little Zara recited to her mother after the gas attack so long ago.

  A moment of happiness,

  You and I sitting on the verandah,

  Apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.

  Taken by surprise by what he has said, Zara lifts her head out from her hands, rivers streaming down her cheeks. She murmurs through her tears, “Where did you learn that?”

  Peter puts his hands on her waterlogged cheeks. “Your mother told me you said that to her at the moment when she needed to hear you the most. She said I should memorize it, for someday I would need to say this to you too.”

  She puts her head against his chest and cries. He strokes her head. She whispers for him to remove her headscarf, for her grandmothers were right. He is blood family somehow. Once her tears subside, she kisses him open-mouthed. As their moistures mix, that chemistry, that magic boils over into the rest of their beings. That sense of peace spreads. He brings her head to his chest again and tells her to smell him, opens his shirt and tells her to taste him, and puts her ear to his heart and says to hear him.

  She is swept up by the moment. Her mind is at peace. Her fears dismissed. Her angst subsided. She so wants him to be in her, with her, around her. Overcoming her fears, her apprehensions, the dark visions of her tormentors, she reaches to open up his pants. Not because Alexander said she needed to. Not because her family said she was destined to. But because she wants to. Because she has fallen for him, wanting his love, his warmth.

  But he takes her hand in his and puts it onto his heart. She takes his hand and puts onto to her heart too, as she says she wants him to know who she is. She whispers for him to close his eyes as she opens up her shirt, taking his hand onto her heart over her bra cup as his palm gently rubs. He touches part of a deep gouge on the side of her breast and pauses. She flinches and says she understands if he will be repulsed, for what she lost here is only symbolic of what has happened within.

  He continues rubbing her on her outer wound in gentle circles as he whispers in her ear, “What I touch is not the definition of your beauty. It is what I touch deep inside that makes you so beautiful. Beautiful in the eyes of God. Beautiful in my eyes.” And she trusts him and guides his hand under her bra cup and truly close over her heart as she lets him in, for better or worse.

  As they kiss, they see the peace. They are overwhelmed by the peace. The peace that Nanshe saw. The peace that Sarpani and Zirbani saw. The peace that Illyana saw. And in this peace, they fall asleep in the bliss of each other’s arms.

  Drifting in a wondrous state, free from the pains of her life, free to love again, free to be herself again, Zara is awakened by the hand. That rough hand that haunted her nightmares. How can this be after she had been freed?

  She is dreaming and must open her eyes to stop the horror. As her eyes open, she sees his face with the cheek scar her brother carved. The face attached to the hands taking her bra off. She is retrained by another as she sees Peter also restrained by a dark figure.

  It is happening to her again.

  Chapter 36

  Strive to discover the mystery before life is taken from you.

  If while living you fail to find yourself, to know yourself,

  How will you be able to understand

  The secret of your existence when you die?

  —Farīd ud-Dīn Attar,

  twelfth-century Persian Muslim poet

  3:00 a.m. GMT+3, May 27, 2021

  Karahan Tepe, former Turkey, now Anatolian Kurdish State

  This can’t be happening again.

  The object gone. Her weapons gone. Has she failed herself again? Has she failed another person she cares about again?

  She knows this man. Aymen. And she knows him in all the wrong ways. And he is here again, about to do what he did repeatedly each and every day for nearly a year, he and his brother.

  Aymen, with the scar carved by Zara’s dead brother, a full head taller than her, with those dark piercing eyes, long ears, and those huge, imposing, violating hands, screams at his victim, “You thought you could hide from me, but I have finally found you, the disobedient property of mine and my dead brother Skander. You are my rightful property, rightful wife, rightful slave, and I have come to collect what I am owed.”

  He grabs at her pants. “Dêlik. You donkey slut whore. You are not a good woman of faith. You never were. We stopped you from having sex with this kafir.” He rips opens the belt to her pants. “I will enjoy my rights to you in front of your boyfriend like I did in front of your brother.”

  Zara breaks a leg loose from his grip and lands a solid kick into him, missing his groin. Aymen takes his gun, shoots between Peter’s feet, and says, “He will suffer the worst death a man can have if you do not cooperate as the obedient wife should.” He looks at her with those dark eyes. “I know you. You will cooperate the same as you did to save your two Ezidi devil women from the torture they deserved.”

  Shaking more than a heroin addict in withdrawal, Peter looks to the heavens and begs to anyone who will hear. Please take me and spare her. Let me have Sam’s abs, pecs, and gun. I could save her. But his physical struggles lead to nothing. Nothing but the biggest F of his life etching itself on his forehead.

  Zara relents, for she knows he would not kill Peter quickly, but would make Peter die slowly over days while he rapes her in front of him, over and over again. As she glances quickly at Peter, that micro-moment in time arrives where everyone else slows to a crawl. A voice speaks with her, but not the o
ne she heard before. A steady, firm woman’s voice that says, “My daughter, Ki, in the brief moment when the giants grab you or your sisters, you must not hesitate. You must not heed their demands. Someone will die and you must decide who. You must be strong.”

  And in this moment, Zara is touched by an ancient inner strength. And she will not fail this time. For she is a different Zara than the victim he once terrorized. For she is willing to die today.

  With a renewed venom, she spits back at this monster, goading this giant. “You are not even Iraqi or Syrian. You had no right to fight in our lands. You and your brother were desperate poor men from North Africa who could not afford to have a woman of your own. So you had to join the Daesh to steal women for your sadistic needs.”

  That did it. She has gotten under his skin, and he slams his fists into her stomach. In sheer anger, he unbelts his pants and rips hers down enough so he can finger her with his giant rough digits. But looking at what is smeared upon his fingers, he yells in disgust, “You are unclean. Not even a donkey should enter you.”

  Peter, still pleading inside for some superpower to be granted to him, suddenly recalls Roza’s words. And he rallies his inner superpower. With the voice of the incensed editor, he yells out the vilest words he knows. “Die, you plagiarizing, adverb-abusing, sentence-inflating, monotonal, repetitive cliché-flinging prima donna! Eat my pencil!”

  Aymen’s total revulsion that his slave is in the middle of her period turns to rage, and he takes his anger out on Peter and shoots him in the gut.

  Bad move on his part, for in that brief microsecond in time, Zara decisively kicks him, knocking him down. She rolls backwards, wrapping her leg around the neck of the brute holding her arms down, and rolls him backwards, grabbing his pistol as she goes over the top of him.