The Witch of Babylon

by Dorothy J. Mcintosh

  I saw Tomas only occasionally after that first meeting. When I asked why he didn’t just help me to get out of the country he deflected my question with a joke, saying, “Why? Aren’t you being well looked after here?” And when I demanded to see Nahum’s engraving or tried to find out what progress he’d made in deciphering it, he gave me vague and unsatisfactory answers. Otherwise he behaved courteously enough, was even solicitous at times, but kept his distance. He opened up to me only on one occasion. Very late one evening I heard his footsteps climbing the stairs to the terrace. He’d brought glasses and a carafe of sweet wine with him. He sat down and poured us our drinks. He seemed in a very collegial mood. I couldn’t imagine what had caused this change of heart.

  “You’ve been through a difficult time, Madison,” he said. “I can’t see how I could have done things any differently, but I owe you some thanks for the role you’ve played.”

  I almost dropped my wineglass. Next thing you knew he’d be asking to be best man at my wedding. I’d gotten so used to his prickly, resentful attitude that I wasn’t sure how to react.

  “I hope you understand what it’s been like trying to survive over here,” he continued. “Over the last months, there’ve been many times I’ve wondered if I’d make it this far. When the invasion began I was convinced we’d all be killed.”

  I remembered what Ari had told me about his fiancée. “It must have been hell just trying to get out of Baghdad.”

  “I don’t recall a great deal about fleeing the city. It was chaotic, I remember that much. People panicking, piling into vehicles, boxes and mattresses stacked on car roofs, traffic strangling all the major roads, looters going mad over the stuff they were grabbing. I spotted one man, by himself, dragging a fridge he’d stolen. When it tilted the door swung open. You could see the food and things still inside. People took anything they could get their hands on—plastic piping, hoses, even cables they’d strip to gouge out the copper. Looters sailed right through checkpoints. No one tried to stop them.

  “On our last day we went to a friend’s place to borrow some petrol. I waited with the van while the others saw to getting the tank filled. I noticed a woman on the street who looked to be in her late forties, wearing traditional dress, but the hijab was missing. Her hair hung loose, falling in a jumble down her back. In one hand she held a running shoe.

  “She behaved very strangely, bending down and rooting through a pile of litter, then turning in the opposite direction, she’d take a few steps and kick through a mound of dirt. A younger couple came up to her, grabbed her arm, and tried to haul her away, but she screamed at them and shook them off.

  “Our friend told us she’d been hanging around for over a day like that. Apparently her three sons had been on their way home when a missile struck, killing them all instantly. Her youngest had his leg blown off. The woman had convinced herself that if she found his other running shoe, his leg would be restored and he’d come back to life. She’d simply turned mad with grief.”

  I felt a stab of guilt, listening to him, even though I’d never supported the invasion. “That sounds like one of Ari’s stories.”

  “He caught some of it on film, but I think it ended up on the proverbial cutting-room floor.”

  “Laurel told me he’s won a lot of awards. So he doesn’t have to prove anything anymore. He could easily get a safer post somewhere else in the Middle East. Why does he want to stay here?”

  Tomas leaned back in his chair, swilling the wine in his glass absentmindedly. “I wish I could answer that. For a long time I thought he was attracted to the action, like a soldier getting high on danger. I don’t think that anymore. Now I believe he just started in the business too young. When he was too impressionable.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In his first year of university, a news outlet hired him to cover events inside Iraq during the Gulf War.” Tomas gave me a sardonic grin. “You can imagine there weren’t a lot of volunteers for that with Hussein in power. Ari had wanted to be a portrait photographer; he wasn’t even thinking about journalism. But he accepted. I wish he hadn’t. He saw things that broke his heart. Hospitals where entire floors were slick with blood, people burned so badly pieces of their skin slid off where you touched them. That changed him forever.”

  He drained his glass and stood up. “Ari’s a survivor though. He doesn’t take stupid risks.” He glanced at his watch. “I have to go now. Let’s talk again over lunch tomorrow.”

  “Fine,” I said. “What’s happened to put you in such a good mood?”

  He gave me a sly smile and turned away. “Tomorrow. You’ll know then.”

  The room where we had lunch the next day was spotlessly clean and bare, holding only a large rectangular table covered with a cheap plastic tablecloth, patio chairs, and a canvas stool with a Bible lying on it. A crucifix hung on one wall, along with pictures—inexpensive prints in faux gold frames, all with Christian themes: Jesus turning water into wine, a scene from the Garden of Gethsemane, the Last Supper. He said grace before we started and seemed agitated throughout the meal. Not in a bad way, but as though he was trying to keep the lid on some kind of suppressed excitement. I tried several times to get him to tell me his news, but he put me off.

  After we finished and were sitting with our coffee he dropped his bombshell. “I’ve found the Assyrian treasure cache,” he said.

  Thirty-four

  Istumbled out of my chair. “What?”

  “I’ve found it. King Ashurbanipal’s treasure.”

  Given my experience in Turkey, for an instant I wondered whether he was being truthful, but he looked like a kid getting ready to dive into a mountain of Christmas gifts. I’d been totally caught off guard.

  “That’s incredible. Where?”

  He held up his hand. “Sit, sit. I’ll tell you everything. But first let me show you how I worked it out. You’ll recall one of Nahum’s verses, ‘And the queen is uncovered, she is carried away, and her handmaids moan as with the voice of doves; tabering upon their breasts.’

  “Nahum’s writing is extremely clever; these lines have more than one meaning. Does this refer to the historical Assyrian queen, or is he playing with the metaphor of Nineveh as a woman? The reference to being ‘uncovered’ is a device. In ancient Assyria prostitutes were forbidden to wear head coverings on pain of death. That form of dress was permitted only for chaste and married women. And the worship of Ishtar was associated with prostitution. So the uncovered queen is a reference to the Assyrian goddess Ishtar. Nahum uses it to condemn the goddess.”

  “You’re saying those lines are about Ishtar?”

  He was too excited to sit for long so he got up and began pacing the room. “The first signal in the verses points to the queen as Ishtar, who’s been revealed and carried away to a secret spot. Doves are also commonly associated with her. Nahum was directing his collaborators to look for Ishtar’s resting place. That could only mean her temple.”

  “That’s what you’ve found—a temple?”

  His expression was jubilant. “A spectacular one.”

  “That’s amazing. But it can’t be intact.” I thought of the Mayan temples still being discovered under the heavy shrouds of jungle in Mexico. That would be impossible here. All the historical buildings were known.

  Tomas walked over and lifted up the Bible. “You’re right, if the temple was above ground.”

  “How did you find it? What does it contain?”

  He fanned through some pages. “That’s what I’m about to tell you. Ah! Here it is. Read Nahum’s text again. In chapter two he describes the actual battle, and then suddenly we’re sideswiped by verse 2:10. It’s totally out of place. ‘Take ye the spoil of silver, take the spoil of gold; for there is no end of the store, rich with all precious vessels.’”

  “You’re saying Nahum wanted the verse about plunder to stand out,” I replied.

  “That’s right. Where is the temple? Let’s turn to another passage: ‘Where is the
den of lions, which was the feeding-place of the young lions, where the lion and the lioness walked, and the lion’s whelp, and none made them afraid? / The lion did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his caves with prey, and his dens with ravin.’”

  He checked to make sure I was taking all this in, boyish enthusiasm written all over his face. “The lion’s a key with a double meaning. It represents the King of Assyria but was also closely associated with the goddess. Hence the lioness. Nahum is reinforcing his message to seek out Ishtar’s temple.

  “This is a place where the lions walk unafraid. So it’s concealed. And a few lines further down, he mentions a cave. Nahum is telling us the temple location is unusual. We’re looking for a secret spot near or within a cave.”

  The prospect of a find like this cracked my permanently black mood. “That’s phenomenal. Are you sure you know what you have? I’ve never heard of Mesopotamians putting temples underground.”

  “We do know of some, even though the actual temple structures have long since deteriorated. One site in particular, devoted to the moon god Sîn, is located in a cave called the Shwetha D’Ganowe, the sleeping bed of the robbers.”

  I thought about what he’d said. Aššurbanipal knew his empire was failing. If the king had something he regarded as excessively valuable, it made sense that he’d choose a location next to impossible to find.

  Tomas held up a finger. “One more consideration. After the tirade against Ishtar, Nahum compares Nineveh to No-Amon. That is the Egyptian Thebes, also sacked by King Aššurbanipal and plundered for its treasure.”

  “That’s what you found then? The lost treasures of Thebes?” Sensational headlines would result from something of that magnitude. “But I thought it came from Anatolia.”

  “I meant only that Nahum says Nineveh has been destroyed just like Thebes. But again there’s a double meaning. The Dead Sea Scroll fragment for the Book of Nahum actually drops the ‘No’ and simply refers to ‘Amon.’ Amon is Amun, a chief Egyptian god. His name means to conceal. He’s associated with hidden things.

  “It’s clear that Nahum or his trusted friends among the community of deportees in Nineveh successfully smuggled his work to Judah, or we wouldn’t have the Old Testament book. There was likely a secondary copy on a papyrus scroll or parchment that could have been transported with relative ease.

  “In the dying days of the Assyrian empire, the entire area was very unstable and dangerous. The Hebrew king Josiah was murdered at Megiddo by the Egyptians. Not long after that Judah plunged into chaos and was eventually conquered by the Babylonians. Under those circumstances, mounting a caravan with an armed escort to travel hundreds of miles to Assyria would have been impossible. So the Judeans may well have correctly interpreted the location of Ishtar’s temple but historical events interceded, preventing them from reaching their quarry.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Near a village not far away.” Tomas allowed himself a broad smile. “So. Would you like to see Nahum’s secret?”

  Thirty-five

  “Why are you willing to share it with me?”

  “Your curiosity is dangerous and you have a tenacious side. Eventually you’d find it hard to accept you’d never seen it and might try to seek us out again. I don’t want that to happen.”

  “That’s still a startling change of heart.”

  “It’s safe from you now.” He reached for a plastic bag. My credit card, passport, and Ward’s roll of bills tumbled onto the table.

  “How did you get these?”

  “We have contacts. They gave Ward’s room a sweep.” His next words were an almost equal surprise. “I’m arranging to get you out of Iraq. You’ll be taken to the Palestine Hotel, where someone will meet you and make sure you leave the city unharmed.”

  And why, I wondered again, when the man had betrayed me, was he even bothering to help me? I grabbed the card, passport, and money, stuffing them into my pants pockets. “Where’s the Victory sculpture?”

  “It will be returned to the museum.” “Ward would never have left it in his room.”

  “We have good networks here. That should be obvious by now.”

  Glad though I was at the prospect of returning home, I’d developed an attachment to the city. “I’ll miss Baghdad. I understand now why Samuel loved it so much.”

  “You’re not in Baghdad. You’re in Mosul, in northern Iraq, not far from the site of Nineveh. This is our home. You were unconscious for a whole day—the time it took us to bring you here. If you’d been in Baghdad, the military presence, aircraft overhead, gunfire, and explosions would have been much greater. Come now, if you want to see what we’ve found.”

  Mazare, his face still a rash of cuts, drove; Tomas sat beside him and a third man got in the back with me.

  “Before we go to the temple, we’re taking a short detour,” Tomas said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “When we first met, you questioned whether the prophet Nahum lived in Assyria. I’ll prove it to you.”

  He could read the skepticism in my voice. “And how are you going to pull that off?”

  In answer, he gave a self-satisfied smile. “You’ll see.”

  Half an hour later we entered a town nestled against a small mountain. “The village of Alqosh,” Tomas said.

  “I thought we’d be going somewhere near the Nineveh site.”

  “A thriving Jewish community existed here for thousands of years. Originally, Hebrew people the Assyrian kings had forced into exile. It was Nahum’s community, among them his confidants, the ones he hoped would lead the caravan from Judah to Ashurbanipal’s treasure.”

  We entered the town and negotiated successively smaller streets, eventually bumping down a narrow lane enclosed on either side by buildings. We pulled up near an ancient building constructed of masonry and small boulders similar to the honey-colored stone in the rest of the town. The structure looked so old you’d almost think it had grown out of the underlying rock. Deep arches along one side formed a sort of rough cloister; rectangular holes in the walls had once been windows. One side had caved in. “When our country is stable again our State Board of Antiquities will protect this site and restore it,” Tomas stated with a clear note of pride.

  Tomas went next door and knocked. A man greeted him and handed him something. When he returned he held up a ring of keys. “This is an ancient synagogue,” he said. “The last Jewish people left in 1948, and their rabbi entrusted the keys to their next-door neighbor. The family has acted as caretakers ever since.”

  He took us to a wooden doorway banded by corroded metal with a green patina. Carved stone reliefs framed the door, but they had been so eroded that I couldn’t make out the designs. Inside, daylight filtered through the window openings, allowing us to see a large worship space. Tomas showed us various inscriptions, plaques, and Judaic symbols on the walls. He translated one of them: “He who has not witnessed the celebration of pilgrimage to Nahum’s tomb has not seen real joy.”

  “Nahum’s actual tomb is here? I can’t believe that.”

  “Ever the skeptic, Madison. Look a little further.”

  In the center of a small room leading off the main worship area sat a simple plaster sarcophagus draped with a pleated green silk cover. “The prophet’s tomb,” Tomas said. “The Book of Nahum refers to him as Nahum the Elkoshite. That’s a variation of the name of this place. You could just as easily say, ‘Nahum of Alqosh.’”

  One thing Samuel had always impressed upon me was the value of local narratives. Science had allowed for great advances in archaeology, but that was only one tool. The historic memory of village people carried its own kernel of truth. Nahum may well have found his final resting place here, and it seemed a fitting end in this peaceful old synagogue.

  Back on the road we climbed hills, making sharp turns and stopping abruptly to negotiate steep drops. At one point we turned off the smoother surface of asphalt and slowed to enter a b
umpy road. Mazare brought the car to a halt. The light had dimmed. Evening was fast approaching.

  We’d stopped on a rough track cut into the side of a small mountain. Huge outcroppings of rock broken up by sage-hued swaths of vegetation had turned rosy in the sunset.

  “We’ll walk from here,” Tomas said. “Not so long ago, you couldn’t even reach this destination by road. It’s dry here now. In the spring when the rains come it’s beautiful; wildflowers grow everywhere.”

  He pulled out a heavy gold chain with a pendant in the shape of a cross, its horizontal and vertical bars ending in three-pointed flutes. “Put this on. It’s the Salib-Siryani, the Assyrian cross, like the ones we wear.” He undid the top buttons of his shirt. “Do likewise, so if we come across anyone, they’ll see it dangling. I’ll explain that we’re pilgrims. Don’t under any circumstances speak yourself.”

  “Wouldn’t people know you anyway?”

  “Farther south, not around here.”

  The steep, uneven path would have challenged a nimble goat.

  In places it had crumbled away and we had to use our hands and feet to scramble up. After about half an hour we rounded a high rock face. The vision greeting us stopped me in my tracks.

  Close to its crown, an ancient citadel clung to the mountain’s face. It looked like a crusader’s fort or one of those age-old Tibetan monasteries. Masonry walls at least sixty feet high formed the base. Above, Moorish-arched stone buildings soared, pink in the last glimmers of sunset. High in the sky a pair of vultures wheeled, their outstretched wings black shapes against pale violet.

  “Dair Rabban Hurmiz,” Tomas said, sweeping his arm toward it, “the most famous monastery in Iraq. It dates to A.D. 640, built on the ruins of an ancient pagan cult center by two princes who witnessed the miracles of our legendary healer and spiritual leader Rabban Hurmiz. Over the ages the monastery has changed hands between the Syriac Church of the East and we Catholic Chaldeans.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It looked like a phantom castle, like something out of One Thousand and One Nights.