‘What is it?’ he said. He’d been running.
She just looked at him and pointed down into the hole. He came up behind her and looked down.
‘Oh, my god. Is that what I think it is?’
She nodded.
‘It’s a fucking lion.’
Katya and Salim worked with a kind of frantic thoroughness. They exposed the edge of carved stone as the hot winds came in from the west and battered them, snatched their hats and scarves, blowing litter. Piece by piece, the full image of a lion’s head and outstretched claws came into view at the bottom of the pit. All the elements were there: the whirling mane, the wrinkles on the muzzle, the distinctive claws. When they got out of breath and had to stop to wipe the sweat from their faces, they would each stand back and stare.
‘It looks like a copy of one of the lion hunt reliefs,’ Salim breathed.
‘No, look. It’s not like any of the others.’
‘It’s holding something in its mouth … what is that?’
‘We’ll have to excavate it all before it’s clear,’ Katya said. She photographed their find from multiple angles, with close-ups on the details. Salim clapped her on the back.
‘Wow. I mean … we’ve done it. This will make our careers.’
Katya’s head was spinning.
‘We have to tell everyone!’ she said. ‘The museum, the news, the police …’
Salim bit lightly on his bottom lip and looked down into the trench. He shook his head slowly.
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘Katya, we can’t tell anyone.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This is too big. We don’t know who to trust. If we tell anyone about this – and I mean anyone – whispers will get around. Then looters will be out here the same night, cracking this lion into a hundred pieces. We need time. Time to contact everyone, get a government team down here, proper equipment, military protection …’
Katya stared down into the hole, at the lion’s deep, sad eyes, and whatever that was in its mouth.
‘What can we do?’
Salim glanced around him.
‘We have to cover it up.’
‘Salim, we can’t –’
‘Katya,’ he said, a hard edge to his voice. ‘Do you want to save this lion or not?’
‘I want to uncover it. I don’t want to leave it behind …’
‘We’ll come back for it. I promise.’
She thought of her dad suddenly, the thought unwelcome, unasked for.
‘You don’t always get to decide if you come back.’
Salim paid no attention. He picked up the spade and shovelled earth back into the trench with care. Katya took a deep breath and scrunched her eyes closed. Despite everything she felt, he was right. She picked up her own spade and joined in, the lion disappearing again beneath the sand and loam. Afterwards, they smoothed the earth over, covered it in dust and wind-blown rubbish. They found a decaying tyre nearby, and worked together to drag it over the recently disturbed earth, marking the spot. They walked back to the car in a daze, and sat there for a few moments, both breathing out. Then Salim struck his hands on the wheel and let out a whoop, a triumphant Apache yell that made Katya jump and then burst out laughing.
‘We did it,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe what we just found.’
They stayed together for the rest of the afternoon. They went up to one of the museum’s back rooms and sat with their faces close together, lit up in the strobing glow of an old monitor, poring over the photos they’d uploaded. They spoke hurriedly and under their breaths.
‘It’s unmistakable,’ Salim said.
‘Part of Ashurbanipal’s collection,’ Katya murmured, hardly able to believe her own words.
‘I’d bet anything. It’s the same artist, I know it.’
‘But it wasn’t put on the palace wall like the rest.’
‘Or painted.’
‘A missing piece …’ Katya murmured again. ‘What do you think it means?’
‘It’s hard to say with so little uncovered,’ Salim said, zooming in and out with mouse clicks. ‘It’s the same depth as the ones in London, the same stone. But the composition’s strange. All we have is a lion’s head …’
‘And its jaws, clamped down on something … a deer maybe, some kind of prey. A classic hunting scene.’
‘This decorated piece here. Doesn’t it look like the same design as the King’s chariot? But it seems completely the wrong way around. Was this a practice run for the other carvings? A mistake? Maybe some kind of fatal crack in the stone that made it impossible to move …’
‘No. It stayed there on the workshop floor,’ Katya murmured yet again. ‘Those carvings were made around 640 bc, at best estimates. And the city was destroyed in 612 bc. And for all those twenty-eight years, this carving sat in the workshop.’
‘Twenty-eight years,’ Salim repeated. Their eyes met. ‘Someone kept it there. They didn’t destroy it. This mattered to someone.’
‘Who? And why?’
Salim shrugged.
‘I wish we could uncover it all right now. Maybe if we knew what the whole image looked like …’
Katya peered closer.
‘Do you think we hid it well enough?’
‘God, I hope so. The looters are lazy. They won’t dig so deep if they can help it. But if they see the disturbed earth …’
Katya ran her fingers over the screen, felt the prickle of static on the glass. The lion’s eyes were deep and recessed, full of a sadness that looked eerily human. She was going to say something to Salim, but she glanced up and saw that tears were glazing his cheeks.
‘It’s just so beautiful,’ he said. ‘Through all of this, through everything that’s happened, this is going to make people proud of Iraq again. For one more moment, Mosul is going to be the centre of the world.’
She put a hand on his back and they stood there for some time, staring into the sunken eyes of the lion on the screen.
Katya could hardly sleep the whole night. The excitement kept washing over her in waves, and a restless fear that the looters might be out there right at that moment, moving the old tyre, attracted by the recently disturbed earth, crunching through the earth with their spades. More than once, she got up and crept through the halls, up to the roof, trying to spot the flicker of a phosphorous flare in the ruins. She didn’t see anything, and what would she do if she did? She stood for some time and watched the city lights shimmer as the day’s heat left the earth, and felt the tug of an unusual wind beginning to blow. She sat crouched with her back against the balustrade and rocked there for a few moments listening to the wind pick up over the city, full of heat and grit. She had a flash of a memory, without knowing why it came to her: coming downstairs once as a child and seeing her dad squatting just like that, his back up against the oven. He looked like he’d been crying, the constellation of little round scars visible on his hand. She knew he had trouble sleeping sometimes.
‘Dad, what are you doing?’ she’d asked. He’d glanced at her, a quick, frightened movement like a cat. Then he’d laughed.
‘Oh. Nothing, dear. Come back to bed.’ And then he’d taken her upstairs and she’d felt the rough carpet on her feet, and he’d put her into bed and tucked her in. ‘Make sure, Kat,’ he’d said, in just a whisper. ‘Promise me. When you’re older. Never hide when you should have run.’
Katya pressed her back against the wall and ran her fingers through her hair. What had he meant? She stayed there a little longer, then went downstairs. She took out the printed photos she’d taken of the new lion carving, took them to the room with the Assyrian lion hunt. She followed the scene around the room, trying to spot a gap in the story where another panel might go. There was the King in his chariot, the soldiers with their dogs and spears, the commoners flocking to watch. There were the lions, frozen for ever in their sorrow. There was a deathly silence in the halls. Then she went back to her room and lay down fully clothed. She
dreamed of white towers hanging upside down in the air, their bells ringing.
She rocked awake at one point in the early morning and heard gunfire far-off in the city, a sound like bubble wrap popping. She drifted back to sleep, and when she woke up to her alarm, the gunfire was still going. That wasn’t unusual. What was strange were the running feet and the trucks on the street outside the museum. Katya messaged Salim saying she was heading to the site, but didn’t get any reply.
Outside, the guards weren’t in their usual spot. Katya got into her car. There was the smell of burning petrol nearby, and the crackling of gunfire, more severe than usual. There was a column of black smoke in the distance. Still, nothing too unusual. But as she drove she noticed that something had changed. There were no queues at the petrol stations. The bus station where the crowds usually gathered for the bus to Erbil was almost empty, with only a few impatient drivers searching for passengers. An army truck drove past her on the other side of the road, with men hanging out the back, rifles out. It was driving just a little too fast.
Then her phone buzzed, in the tray beside the gearstick. She glanced down at it. Salim again.
‘Stay in the museum,’ it said. ‘Not safe.’
Glancing up at the road and down at her phone while she drove, she tapped out: ‘wts happening?’
Another army truck thundered past, flicking pieces of grit into her windscreen. Its tarp was only half-attached, flapping in the wind. Katya drummed her fingers on the wheel. Litter in the breeze. A child ran across the road. When the phone buzzed again, she snatched it up.
‘An attack on the city. I don’t know who.’
She became suddenly conscious of her breath. There were choruses of car horns, and she pressed down on the accelerator. She had to cross the bridge to turn around: the blue water stretched out on either side, and she could see more smoke, coming from the western districts. A strong river wind battered the car windows. In the near distance, a detonation like a heavy stone hitting the earth. And hadn’t it all happened like this before? Hadn’t she passed over this river already, with the smoke in the air, and the streets empty, the litter and dust in the air?
BOOK II
The Garden
Katya
When she woke up, Katya smelled smoke and petrol. Her pillow felt strange. It hurt her face. There was a hissing nearby: gunshots. She opened her eyes, but they kept blurring in and out of focus. Something was running down her cheek, and when she put her hand up to touch it, the tips of her fingers came away red. They were shaking. She wasn’t lying on her pillow. Her head was resting against the steering wheel of her car. She lifted it on an aching neck, and saw the windscreen above her, smashed to a cobweb pattern.
There was a thump on the passenger-side glass. The shape of someone outside swam through the dusty glass. They were shouting something, but Katya’s ears rang and she couldn’t hear what they were saying. They were trying to get in. They came around to her side, and she panicked, tried to free herself from her seatbelt. The car door opened, and the face rearranged into the shape of Salim. He looked frantic, his hair wild.
‘Shit!’ he shouted. ‘Katya, what happened?’
A seizure. How stupid could she be?
‘I don’t know. I must have skidded,’ she said. She sounded drunk. Some gunshots popped nearby, and Salim looked up in fright. The pupils in his eyes were huge.
‘I saw you from up on the site. You drove right into the wall. Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, I think so.’ She stretched her neck and it twinged painfully. One ankle was alight with pain.
‘We have to get out of here,’ Salim said.
‘The car …’
‘It’s fucked. Front end looks like a crushed can.’
She slid herself out, and her legs buckled. Salim caught her, and she smelled the sweat and old smoke on his clothes. She looked back at the car, crushed up against the old city wall of Nineveh. Her senses returned, bringing with them a pounding headache.
‘The bus station to Erbil,’ she murmured. ‘There were some drivers there when I drove past. I don’t know how long ago.’
‘Let’s try it,’ Salim said, and helped her take a few steps. Her right ankle twinged painfully every time she put weight on it. She felt a slight tremor in the muscles of Salim’s shoulder as they went.
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I can walk on my own.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, it’s fine.’
They stumbled together through the litter and debris between the road and the Nineveh ruins. Two army trucks sped past full of men, and Salim tried to wave them down, but they ignored him. They were heading east, away from the city. Salim screamed something at them.
‘They’re leaving,’ he said. His face was pale. Further down the road, Katya covered her mouth as they saw an army Humvee burning, the air above it trembling. A man was hanging lifeless out of its driver’s seat. She felt all her senses buzzing.
When they crossed the bridge back to the museum, there was an enormous boom, and a huge pillow of fire and black smoke rose over the western districts. Birds burst off in panicked flocks, heading east after the army trucks.
When they got to the bus station, they found it empty. The few drivers she’d seen earlier had left, and now desperate families were hurrying around, asking each other what was going on. A dog with an injured back leg was loping around in the rubbish and rubble beside the ticket kiosk. The wind whipped first one way and then the other, and little dust devils of litter were picked up on the road.
‘Shit shit shit,’ Salim was saying.
‘We have to go back to the museum,’ Katya said, trying to pop her ears with her jaw. ‘We can lock the door – there’s a gun there. In an umbrella stand.’
Salim frowned at her, and put his hand to her forehead.
‘No, we have to get out of the city. If we get stuck in the museum …’
There was a chorus of gunfire close by, and they ducked. Katya felt sweat on her palms.
‘Okay, okay,’ Salim said. ‘Let’s go to the museum and try to get help from there.’
She took his hand and they set off back down the street. Salim saw that she was limping painfully, and he slung her arm over his shoulder before she could protest. They hobbled down the street together, and she could feel the sweat on the back of his neck, and the closeness of their cheeks. Soon the palms and the blank arched façade of the museum came into view. They ducked inside, bolted the door and secured it with the bicycle chain. Katya put her back against the wall, her chest heaving, her whole body numb. Salim put a cool hand against her forehead, testing her temperature, and she closed her eyes at the touch without meaning to.
‘Do you feel okay?’ he said. ‘That’s a nasty cut.’
She nodded and tried to look elsewhere.
‘Mm, yeah, I feel a bit drunk.’
‘You might have concussion. I’ll need to stay with you, make sure you’re okay. Let’s find something cool to put on your head. Then we can go to the roof.’
Katya followed him through the museum, where the wrapped statues loured down at them. When they passed the lion carvings, Katya looked up at them and the dying cries of the lions became the thuds of bombs going off in the distance, the King’s chariot wheels crackling like gunfire on the ground. Salim might have a point about that concussion. He took her to the kitchen and helped her wash the blood from her face and hair in the deep steel sink. She felt the water and his fingers in her hair, and hoped he wouldn’t notice the way her arms burst out in goosebumps. He chipped off a block of ice from the cool box, and wrapped it in a towel.
‘Here. Hold this against your head.’
‘Thanks.’
They went to the roof. Mosul stretched out before them, looking like the set of a disaster film. Dozens of black plumes rose in a forest over the west, and helicopters flew low, fat dragonflies over the rooftops. Katya’s head throbbed. She reached out and put her balled hand in Salim’s palm, which close
d a little around it. She thought of the man she’d seen hanging out of the door of his car, his arms limp over his head like a doll.
‘I’ve never seen a dead person before,’ she said, and then realised that of course that wasn’t true. Not even close.
They stayed up there for a long time, watching chaos unfold in the city. Salim made many phone calls, his voice wavering between degrees of urgency. In the evening, the lights went out all over the city, district by district, until the whole of Mosul was dark and only the purple glow of the sun was visible. Katya’s head was agony, her ears still ringing, her lip the size of a gooseberry. Salim had an unlit cigarette in his mouth, and kept striking a broken lighter, shaking it in rising frustration. Occasional flickers of tracer fire arced over the rooftops, unearthly as fireflies.
‘Where are you staying tonight?’ she said.
‘There’s an office next to yours. I’ll go in there.’
‘Okay.’
When night fell, with flashes continuing in the west and the rattle of Kalashnikovs, Katya said goodnight to Salim and melted into her mattress, fully clothed. She lay in a Z, feeling like a piece of architecture crumbling into the earth. She reached out into the space in front of her and imagined for a moment that Salim was lying there.
As promised, he slept on his coat in the room next door. She listened to his snores, warm and human in the dark. Exhausted as she was, sleep felt impossible. Her body jumped at every sound. She tried to calm herself by thinking about the meticulous processes of residue analysis, gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. When she finally drifted off, she dreamed of human skulls in alcohol jars.
In the morning, Salim got his hands on a SIM card that was Internet enabled. They took it in turn to use the dusty computer in one of the museum’s back offices, and read about what was happening on different news sites around the world. Only vague terms were used. Insurgents. Attacks. Phrases like ‘extremely serious’, ‘state of emergency’ and ‘maximum alert’ appeared with frequency.
‘My god,’ Salim muttered. ‘The roads must look like rivers …’
All Our Broken Idols Page 13