Billion dollar baby bargain.txt

by Неизвестный

  the sky paled. The air was deliciously fresh and crisp. Beneath her feet the sand was cool. When she dug

  at it with her toes, the layer underneath proved to be still warm, as if the earth were a living creature and

  she had burrowed under its fur. She stood, shivering a little, her feet warm in the sand, savouring the

  lonely sound of the muezzin’s voice against the utter peace of the desert, until it fell silent.

  Then she took the spade and went into the dunes. When she returned, the camp was beginning to stir.

  It was her first desert dawn, and Desi was moved by its perfection. She went back into the tent to

  discover Salah up and gone, and the pitchers filled with fresh water. She hurried with her washing and

  dressing, not to miss a minute of the morning.

  When she got outside again, dressed in khaki shorts and a t-shirt but still barefoot, the sky was the colour

  of smoke, with a straggle of cloud and a swathe of rich, deep pink at the horizon. She set off running.

  Overhead slowly the sky revealed itself as blue, while above the horizon the pink expanded into red,

  gold and yellow, setting the cloud alight, and a tiny burning arc of fire appeared behind the dunes.

  She jogged out towards the camel corral, where the beasts regarded her with placid condescension as she

  passed, and up the steep side of a nearby dune, her feet sinking deep into the sand, which brought her to

  the top breathless.

  She stood looking out over the vista as the newborn sun painted the tops of the dunes in bright gold. The

  camp was revealed as a few broad, low tents pitched around a small central area where a pit had been

  dug to form a brazier. A man was stirring the coals into life.

  Not far away from the camp, women were drawing water from the concrete housing of a well. In the

  light wind of morning their brightly patterned robes and scarves fanned out against a backdrop of

  endless pale sand. A herd of white and black goats clustered around, eagerly pushing towards the broad

  troughs that the women were filling. Their bleating was the only sound on the morning air, a dozen

  different pitches and rhythms like strange music.

  The women were covertly watching her. From her vantage point on the dune she waved, and two of the

  older women smiled, one of them shyly waggling her hand at chest height. The younger ones drew their

  scarves up to cover their mouths and dropped their eyes.

  Back in the tent, she found Salah, looking handsome and intimidating in desert robes, seated lotusposition

  on the ground, consulting a map. When she came in, fresh-faced with her exercise and the

  morning chill, he looked up and smiled. Her breath caught with surprise. It was the first time she had

  seen him so relaxed. The frown was gone from his eyes.

  “Ready for breakfast?” he asked.

  “Ravenous! Is it going to be local fare again, or do they provide the usual tourist stuff?” she asked as he

  led her outside to where someone had placed a carpet for them with cushions side by side in the sun. A

  man in flowing robes and turban was setting down plates.

  “They aren’t so changed yet. The few travellers they see are still the sort who want to experience what

  the world has to offer, not impose their own lifestyle on it. We will be offered the best of their own

  food.”

  “Can’t wait!”

  As last night, the only utensils were spoons, and again she washed her hands under the stream of water

  poured for her from a ewer.

  Little bowls of yoghurt and a curious mud-coloured paste were set before them and Desi was negotiating

  with the yoghurt when the piece de résistance arrived: a huge, deliciously sizzling, buttery, puffy

  pancake that had been grilled over charcoal. Something that looked suspiciously like honey was drizzled

  all over it.

  On the pure desert air the scent of it was tantalizing.

  “Oh, totally too fattening! I must remember to ask before I go around demanding the local food,” Desi

  exclaimed helplessly.

  “You can eat all the yoghurt.” Salah grinned and tore off a large chunk of the pancake, expertly rolling it

  up in one hand before taking a bite. Honey dripped onto his lower lip and he licked it off, his eyes

  closing with enjoyment.

  He turned his head and looked at her from under lowered eyelids. “Hot. Sweet.” Like you.

  The thought of what those long, strong fingers, his tongue and mouth had done to her last night stormed

  through her. Her neck was suddenly too weak to hold up her head.

  She took a hasty mouthful of the yoghurt and shivered as a blast of sourness reached her nerves. “I give

  in!” she cried, reaching to tear off a bit of the pancake and dipping the end in a little pool of honey that

  had collected in the lower levels of its bubbly terrain.

  “Delicious! That’s so yummy it should be classed as a dangerous weapon! Is every meal over the next

  few days going to be diet sabotage?”

  “Boiled camel feet sometimes lack that certain something,” he advised. “Eat while you can.”

  “Between the suntan and the fat, my agent will kill me.”

  “Start a fashion for voluptuous,” he suggested.

  “You don’t understand. I am voluptuous. I abandoned the waif figure years ago. Do you think this body

  is Size Zero? Think again.”

  “What is Size Zero?”

  “That’s the size models try to be. I’d have to lose ten or twelve pounds to get there. As a model I’m

  considered borderline fat, as my agent keeps warning me.”

  Salah stared at her for a moment, then began to laugh. It started as a chuckle, but quickly descended to

  his belly, where it took on a deeply contagious quality that drew her irresistibly into laughter too. With

  great gusts and hoops, they were caught so helplessly that finally Salah fell backwards into the sand.

  She turned to look down at him, at the black curls dusted with sand, sun-crinkled eyes, white teeth and

  laughing mouth. A new expression came into his eyes, and the laughter died on her lips.

  He lifted his hand up her back and clenched it in her hair.

  “You are perfectly beautiful,” he said, and for an uncharted time they were still, gazing at each other

  through ten long, wasted years.

  Then Salah’s eyes widened in something like alarm. His face became shuttered and he sat up.

  “It is time to leave,” he said flatly. And only then did Desi breathe again.

  As he had predicted, several of the older women were sitting near the camel corral as they left, with their

  crafts and other wares spread out for examination.

  Desi crouched down in front of the spread. Dolls made of bits of cloth and coloured thread, stones with

  fossils embedded in them, some pottery bowls with a curious design, and, best of all, some beautifully

  etched and painted bits of camel bone.

  Desi oohed and aahed over everything, miming her admiration, and, unable to disappoint such dignified,

  open people, who clearly were very poor, carefully chose several items.

  The camel bone work was exquisite: carved and engraved rings and pendants, and little etched scenes on

  flat strips of bone that looked for all the world like ivory.

  Desi picked up an oval medallion bearing a delicately etched camel. Brown paint had been rubbed into

  the etched lines, so the outlines were dark against a smudged paler background blending into the creamy

  white of the bone.

  “This stuff is gorgeous!” she said over her shoulder to Salah. “W
here did she learn to carve like this?”

  Salah briefly spoke with the artist, a middle-aged and weather-beaten woman with a thin face and

  calloused, graceful hands.

  “She learned it from her father. He learned it from his own father, and as none of her brothers survived

  childhood, he taught her. Her father used to colour such etchings in many colours, but she can no longer

  find the substances to make the paints, so she paints mostly in monochrome. She misses having the

  colours and apologizes because the work is not very pretty.”

  “It’s lovely. Can you find out her name for me, please?”

  As Desi drew out her wallet, one of the women signalled to her, then opened a bit of cloth to show her

  something.

  A small clay statue of a woman with a large tiara and hair exquisitely moulded in tumbling curls down

  her back and over her shoulder. She had prominent breasts, and her pubic hair was clearly marked, but

  her body had been given a dress of paler clay that flaked easily when she picked it up.

  Desi examined it curiously.

  “How old is this?” she asked.

  “‘Very, very old’,” Salah translated for the women.

  “Do you think that’s true? I mean, if so, wouldn’t it be in a museum?”

  “It is unlikely that anyone in this tribe would make a forgery of that kind. They would consider it

  blasphemous. That is why they have given her a modest cover-up before selling her.”

  Forgery or not, Desi was taken by the little figure.

  “How much is it?”

  Again a short colloquy. “Twenty dirhams.”

  Desi blinked. “But it must—it has to be a forgery. If it were genuine they’d be asking a lot more,

  wouldn’t they?”

  “They find such things in the sand as they travel. They used to destroy them, thinking them some sort of

  witchcraft. Then they learned that foreigners liked them. For them, twenty dirhams is a lot of money,

  especially for a found item. They don’t understand why tourists like things that are old and broken like

  this.”

  “Well, I certainly like her.”

  When she had paid and everything had been wrapped in rags or bits of old newspaper and put in a very

  distressed plastic bag, she thanked the women and got to her feet. With many goodbyes they were on

  their way.

  “Where do they spend the money?” she asked later, as they headed out over the desert.

  “Taxis sometimes come and take them to town.”

  “What, such a distance?”

  He flicked her a look. “They are not always camped so far from civilisation. But mostly they buy from

  the travelling shops—trucks loaded with every kind of merchandise, which service the nomad

  communities.”

  “But no chance for that artist to buy manufactured paints?”

  “Probably not.”

  “If I found her some paints, would there be a way to send them to her?”

  After a short silence, Salah asked, “Why do you bother with this?”

  “Because she’s an artist, and art this good has a right to the proper materials. Are you going to answer

  my question?”

  “If you sent her something, eventually it would find its way to her. Tell me, when did you develop an

  interest in the indigenous art and antiquities of Barakat?”

  “I do a lot of travelling in my job, Salah. Half the time I don’t get to see anything more than the inside of

  my five star hotel and the shoot site. It’s not the art so much as the people. I rarely get to meet real

  people in a real environment. Those women are lovely people, so friendly, and they look as though they

  can use the money.”

  “But the goddess is a collectors’ item. Are you a collector?”

  “The goddess? Is that who she is? How do you know?” Her interest sparked, Desi dug into the bag of

  goodies and unwrapped the little clay statuette. She held it cupped in her hand.

  “What’s her name?”

  “It depends on where she was found. It’s almost impossible to say with certainty. My father would say, a

  love or fertility goddess.”

  Desi frowned, accessing recent memories. “Inanna! Wasn’t she the Goddess of Love?”

  Salah flicked her a look and said gravely, “In Sumer. Yes.”

  “Could it be her?”

  “You would have to ask my father.”

  “Oh, but it’s impossible. It would mean this was five thousand years old!”

  “It probably is.”

  Desi gasped. A feeling of wonder flooded her, and a strange energy, as if the little goddess’s locked-up

  power had suddenly been released into her palm.

  “That’s amazing,” she whispered. “But—why…I mean, how is it I can buy something so valuable just

  like that?”

  “She might be taken away from you at the airport.”

  “Really?”

  “It is illegal to take antiquities out of the Barakat Emirates. It is part of our cultural heritage. We have

  museums where such pieces belong.”

  “Seems a pretty poor way to manage resources. Wouldn’t it be better to stop the sale in the first place?”

  “We can’t police the entire desert. Instead tourists are searched before they leave, and such valuable

  items as your little goddess are confiscated. This discourages tourists from making such purchases in

  future.”

  She laughed. “So I’ll have to give up my little talisman?”

  “Not everything is found, of course. Perhaps less than forty percent. If you pack it carefully, you might

  get away with it.”

  She looked at him quizzically. “What makes you think I would want to ‘get away with’ taking

  something that belongs in the country’s museums?”

  “You seem to like it.”

  “You think I steal everything I like? Have you noticed me wearing any of the Crown Jewels?”

  “You paid for it. Most people would not consider it theft.”

  “Oh, give me a break! We make love at night, and in the morning you salve your conscience by

  suggesting I’m dishonourable, is that it? We’ve been there before, Salah, and I got enough of it last time.

  Can’t you just enjoy the sex for what it is and leave your condemnation in your pocket?”

  His jaw tightened. “No, that is not it. I apologize. In my work I see many people who consider

  themselves honest but who are without any conscience at all in this area.”

  “In your work?”

  “One of my areas as Cup Companion is antiquities security.”

  “Say what?”

  “My task is to prevent the smuggling of antiquities to foreign markets. Both West and East have many

  wealthy men who are interested in the ancient cultures of the Barakat Emirates. Organizers pay what to

  poor nomads and farmers seems a good price for any artefact they can steal or dig up, then sell them on

  to unscrupulous dealers for many times more. They in turn sell it on. By the time it reaches the collector,

  he is paying thousands of times the sum the finder got. Our heritage is in danger of being destroyed by

  this practice.”

  “Are you saying your personal mission is to stop it? How do you go about it?”

  “In various ways, none of them satisfactory. People mostly rob the sites of ancient cities and settlements

  which have not yet been studied, near the villages where they live. It is a big problem for archaeologists

  like my father. As you know, once something is dug up and removed, its provenance can never be

  discovered. So even if we recover th
at piece, its historic value is lost.”

  “Of course.” Archaeologists must know exactly where something is found before it can shed light on

  history: Desi had learned that in her researches. A jug was just a jug unless you knew what else it was

  found with, its period, of what civilisation it had formed a part.

  “But theft is not my father’s biggest worry.”

  There was something in his tone that caught her attention.

  “Really? What is, then?”

  “The answer is in your hand.”

  She thought it was a covert challenge, that he wanted to know if she had any real archaeological interest

  or understanding. She held up the little statue.

  Goddess of love. What did she know about the goddess of love? Worshipped as the one who made

  animals and land, as well as humans, fertile. Her sexual characteristics painted over by whoever had

  found it, because now her blatant sexuality was seen not as powerful, but immodest.

  “Oh my God!” Desi whispered.

  Found in a land where to worship the divine in any form but as Allah was blasphemy.

  “Tell me I’m wrong!” she begged. “Is your father afraid that religious fanatics might…oh, no!”

  “There is a significant risk. My father thinks the site is a city devoted to a love goddess. It could rewrite

  history. But if the Kaljuks and their supporters here in the Barakat Emirates hear of this find, and learn

  where it is located, the risk is worse than ordinary theft—they may try to sabotage the site itself. They

  would want to destroy it completely.”

  Desi’s strongest emotion after dismay was exasperation. “For God’s sake! Four thousand years before

  Islam even happened!”

  “They do not care about that.” Salah slowed the vehicle and turned his head, and his black eyes found

  hers. “That is why, Desi, I ask you if you have any other reason for wanting to visit this dig.”

  “What?” she asked blankly.

  “If someone has asked you to try to find out what you can about the site my father is digging, you must

  understand that it is unlikely to be for genuine academic purposes.”

  “What are you trying to say?” She blinked at him.

  His voice was rough now, his eyes probing.