All Our Broken Idols

by Paul M. M. Cooper

  ‘Look at this new chair and table I had carved just for the occasion,’ the King announced. ‘Some of the finest work ever seen, don’t you think? Make sure to get all the details just right.’

  The legs of the table and the chair were carved to look like the feet of lions, etched with intricate designs and shimmering pieces of mother-of-pearl.

  ‘If the wood carvers can do it in wood, the masons can do in stone, my lord,’ the master mason scoffed, though Aurya could see the sweat darkening his robe at the back of his neck. She felt Sharo touch her arm and squeeze it in silent plea.

  ‘Keep hold of me, Sharo,’ she said. ‘Close your eyes and think of the lion.’

  ‘Aurya, I need to draw. Can I draw on the ground?’

  She looked at the beautifully cut lawn. She closed his hand around her wrist.

  ‘No, Sharo. Not here.’

  ‘This won’t take long, your majesty,’ the master mason said, and then turned to the apprentices. ‘Come on, take your impressions. Make sure the details are perfect – you heard the King!’

  They all hurried to unwrap their tablets and styluses, all looking as dazed as Aurya felt. She watched as they stood in the shade and etched their wax tablets. Each one sketched a different piece of the whole scene: the trees, the King, his chair and table, the servants with their trays and urns.

  ‘Why are they drawing it, Aurya?’ Sharo said. ‘Can’t they remember it?’

  ‘No, Sharo. Try to imagine what it would be like, not to remember everything.’

  His hand tightened around her wrist. The head servant Bel-Ibni walked around adjusting the servants’ poses. He raised the arms holding trays, smoothed back locks of hair, straightened folds in robes. Some of those holding uncomfortable positions began to shake.

  ‘Have they still not found it?’ Bel-Ibni shouted to a servant at the entrance, who fell to the ground.

  ‘No, my lord. It seems it’s been stored away in the hall of treasures all these years. I will tell the boys to hurry.’

  Aurya hung back with Sharo and watched as the sun passed overhead. The shadows in the garden shifted, and the preening birds followed them. After some time, a servant holding up a tray fainted, and there was a crash of falling cups and a pot of oil that made all the apprentices jump. Soldiers came and dragged him from the scene, and another servant hurried to take his place. Soon a group of servants arrived from down the corridor, carrying a lidded pot between them, ropes looped through its handles. Aurya saw that the boy Abil was among them, and felt a flutter that surprised her.

  ‘Finally!’ Bel-Ibni said. ‘Was it on the other side of the Bitter River?’

  ‘A million apologies, my lord,’ Abil said, out of breath. ‘It was beneath a pile of loot from Susa and Memphis.’

  Bel-Ibni waved his hand. He pointed to a tree hanging over the line of frozen servants.

  ‘Hang it up there.’

  They carried the pot over to the tree, and opened its lid. While Abil held the pot, one dipped his hand inside and oil welled up around his wrist. The man pulled out his hand, and Aurya saw what was in the pot. It was a severed head. It looked like it had been in the jar for a long time: it was yellowish-pale, its eyes pure white like marble. An iron hoop had been run through its severed throat, so it came out of its mouth and back in through the wound. The oil dripped along the curves of its upside-down face, bubbled from the nostrils and formed a long pendular line from the crown of its dark hair.

  ‘Teumman, the King of Elam!’ Ashurbanipal laughed. ‘How have you enjoyed your stay in that pot, my friend? Is it as good as your old palace?’

  Aurya felt the blood drain from her cheeks. The image flashed into her head of the dark palace she’d seen last night, the silent carvings and the wind howling in the halls. The hoarse voice calling out to her: ‘You’re a murderer.’ Her father’s arms flopping as he slumped into the darkness, and the tearing sound of the lion devouring his flesh. She felt weak, and a ringing began in her ears. She watched the servants get ready to hang the head in the low branches, barely concealing their disgust. Abil turned his face away, but his robes got covered in oil, which dripped down his legs and made his feet slippery. They slung the iron hoop over a branch. The white eyes stared down at the frozen congregation of servants.

  ‘Make sure to get that expression into the carving,’ the King wheezed. Some of the mason’s apprentices had turned pale. ‘Make sure to get it exactly right! That’s exactly the expression he died with.’

  Aurya looked up at the head, at the frozen servants all around and at the apprentices furiously sketching the scene on their wax and clay tablets. She felt the turn in her stomach.

  ‘It’s just a head,’ she told herself. ‘You’re tougher than this. You’ve skinned rabbits and gutted fish. Are you so scared by an old severed head now?’

  There was no time to dash away. The surge of vomit rose up in her before she could do anything about it, and she only just managed to turn and vomit into one of the flowering bushes that lined that garden. She tried to stand, but the world went black at the edges. She thought she saw Sharo beside her, but the voices around her sounded like the echoes of another world lying beneath the surface of the one she knew. She felt hands lifting her, and then the dark rose around her like oil and swallowed her up.

  Katya

  Katya woke early in the morning, and for a few seconds she didn’t remember where she was. Those were beautiful seconds. Then the terror stuffed into her mouth like cotton wool. There was the distant sound of artillery, further away now, grumbling like thunder. Other than that, there was silence. She rolled over painfully, and thought of home. She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t help it: she thought of the lemon tree on the windowsill, of her mother, of their cat Hugo. She thought of grand words like The United Kingdom, The United States, words meant to describe the old powers of the world that sailed far above her now, blind and impenetrable as the hulls of ocean liners.

  Salim was awake. She found him in his room, hunched over the dim light of his phone. By the look of his eyes, he hadn’t slept at all.

  ‘Did you get a signal?’ she said. He shook his head.

  ‘Just for a second. Enough to receive some texts. The other members of the team are safe. They got out just in time. My nephew Athir’s still here, but he’s safe – he’s sending me news when he can.’

  His voice sounded thin and starched, a shirt washed too many times. Katya stood leaning against the door frame, watching him.

  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘That the army isn’t coming back.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘That we’re on our own.’

  Down below, thumps sounded on the museum door. Katya jumped at the sound. She saw fear in Salim’s eyes, and he fumbled to tape the phone back under the desk.

  ‘Sounds like my date’s here,’ she said.

  ‘Katya, I meant what I said yesterday. Be careful with these guys. And don’t trust anything they say.’

  Katya walked down to meet the man, and saw Lola crouched on the mezzanine.

  ‘Be safe,’ she said. Katya nodded, and felt the girl’s eyes on her as she descended the stairs to the entrance hall. The English man with the beard and glasses was standing there in the doorway, casting a shadow into the museum. He looked tired but flushed, colour lining his cheeks. He stepped further inside when he saw her.

  ‘Time to show me some treasure,’ he called out. Katya’s hands shook, so she held them behind her back. Don’t show weakness: number three.

  ‘We don’t have any treasure,’ she said. ‘All we have is historical artefacts.’

  He only laughed, and looked up at the smooth faces of the lamassu.

  ‘Devils, more like.’

  She noticed that he didn’t have a gun with him this time, but the rubber handle of a knife jutted from a sheath at his belt. It looked big, the kind a hunter would carry.

  ‘After you,’ he said when they reached the stairs down into the baseme
nt. She could tell he was mocking her with this show of politeness, but she did as she was told. She felt his presence behind her in the dark as they headed down, the scuff of his boots on the steps. At the bottom, she felt the storeroom’s cavernous space, the smell of damp and dust. She fumbled for the light switch, and then the strip bulbs flickered on, illuminating the lines of shelves that stretched off into the dark, strung with cobweb architectures.

  ‘Most of the things down here are too ugly or broken to display upstairs,’ Katya said. ‘Mostly worthless, forgotten things.’

  This wasn’t true. Some of the best finds from their dig were down here, awaiting cataloguing. Many of the museum’s most important artefacts were down here for safekeeping, too. But she knew she had to play down their importance if she was going to save anything. The English man peered around in distaste. In the gloom, he didn’t feel quite so threatening. They were about the same height. Befriend your captors, Katya thought.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

  ‘You don’t need to know that.’

  ‘I’m Katya.’

  He didn’t react, just took a blister pack of pills from a pocket in his vest and swallowed two without water, then scuffed the floor with his boot.

  ‘No small talk then,’ Katya said. ‘You said you had a list of things you wanted. Show me something on it and I’ll find it for you.’

  She could tell he didn’t like being spoken to like this, being ordered around – and by a woman. A flash of anger flared in him, but he just ran his tongue over his teeth and handed over his notebook. There was a printed page inside, a professional catalogue. Katya was surprised at the detail of the entries. She could tell at a glance that they were written by experts, art dealers. All the museum’s most valuable artefacts were there, and she realised with a tug what it would mean to hand these over. She looked up and saw the man standing by one of the shelves, an object in his hands.

  ‘These,’ the man said, and picked up a cylinder seal from the shelf. ‘These are worth a lot. We’ll take all of these right away.’

  Katya coughed. The seal in his hand was the one she’d excavated, pried from the hand of the dead man in the workshop. It hadn’t been catalogued or studied yet, since she’d taken it to the site so many times. She knew that if he took it, it would disappear for ever, and its secrets with it.

  ‘Your dealer will laugh at you if you show him that,’ she said, as if its worthlessness was obvious. She reached out and took it from him, and she saw that flash of anger again in his eyes. It surprised her that he let her take it. ‘Look. This is a reproduction made before the collection was moved down to Baghdad. For safekeeping. It’s a fake.’

  The man breathed out through his nose and looked down the lines of shelves. Katya felt her heart thudding in her head.

  ‘Is anything here real?’ he muttered. Katya slipped the cylinder seal into her pocket while he wasn’t looking, and let out a breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding.

  ‘Yes.’ She ran her finger down the page of his notebook until she saw it: a clay tablet, a fragment of the Gilgamesh Epic. It was famous. It had been exhibited and written about in journals, featured in a documentary on the BBC. It would be worth a lot of money. And more importantly, it had already been documented, photographed and studied. The lump of clay felt cold when she picked it up. It startled her. The man reached out hungrily with both hands.

  ‘It’s a piece from an ancient story, about a king called Gilgamesh,’ she said. ‘It describes the great flood, a story that gets repeated in the Bible and the Quran. It’s one of the most valuable things here. And it’s on your list.’

  He brought the baked tablet up to his nose and breathed in. She knew how it would smell: earthy, with a hint of burnt hair.

  ‘It’s from King Ashurbanipal’s library,’ Katya said. ‘He was a king who gathered clay tablets from all over the world. The library burned along with the rest of the city in 612 bc, but the texts were written on clay. They baked in the fire, hardened, set to last for ever.’

  He fixed her with a long look.

  ‘Our dealer will look at this, and make sure it’s the right one.’ He closed his fist around it. ‘You know, the others think I’m wasting my time here. With you.’

  ‘The skull man,’ she said. He nodded.

  ‘And the rest. They want to just pack this stuff up and sell it, fakes and all. But I know it’s worth a lot more to the right buyers. So the dealers give me lists of objects, and I deliver them. If you help me, I’ll keep you safe. And your friends up there too. How does that sound?’

  ‘Good,’ Katya said, unable to look away from his eyes.

  ‘Good. And you know what will happen if you ever lie to me, don’t you?’

  Katya nodded.

  ‘Our lives for the stones.’ He gave a slow nod, and her hand in her pocket ran over the bumps of the cylinder seal inside.

  ‘That’s right. I’ll be back when we hear from the dealer about this.’

  Once the man had left, Katya went to find the others. Lola wasn’t there, but she found Salim sitting on the mat in his unlit room, inspecting a lurid purple bruise across his ribs. He breathed with a little grimace in the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Katya. What happened?’

  She didn’t say anything. She sat beside him and wrapped her arms around his neck, felt the warmth in his skin. Slowly he moved his arms around her and they lay down together.

  ‘Where’s Lola?’ she said.

  ‘She went up to the roof. Those guys scare her. She doesn’t want to be inside with them.’

  Katya buried her face in his shoulder, which smelled of tobacco smoke and sweat, soap and cologne. She listened to Salim’s heartbeat, and the clicking of obscure joints in his sternum as he breathed. She took out the cylinder seal, turned it so the lion design was visible.

  ‘I saved this.’

  ‘Is that the one we excavated? From the body?’

  ‘Yeah. It hadn’t been documented. It would have disappeared for ever if they took it.’

  ‘What did you have to give them?’

  ‘The Gilgamesh fragment.’

  He took a sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Not much of a trade.’

  ‘They’ll take it all if we do nothing. That’s what he told me. This way we can at least save something. The smaller objects, the ones that haven’t been recorded. Otherwise all our work has been for nothing.’

  Salim rubbed his face with his palm.

  ‘Talk to me about something else,’ he said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anything.’

  She thought for a moment.

  ‘Do you know I could be in Greece right now? Or Peru? I got job offers in both. And I took this one instead.’

  ‘Why?’

  She held him tighter, and pressed her head into his chest. She felt his grip on her tighten too.

  ‘My dad was a journalist,’ she said.

  ‘I remember.’

  Katya felt that blockage again in her throat, that hard cold feeling like a slice of apple lodged there. The more she tried to push through it, the tighter it felt.

  ‘He kept coming back here, to Iraq. A bit like you. My mum hated it. He always said he wanted to report on normal people, the people trying to get on with their lives with all the violence going on around them.’

  Something about Salim, about the way he held her there, made the tight feeling in her throat lessen, and the words came easier.

  ‘When I was sixteen, he came out here to report on the war. And then he never came back. Some men with guns threw him into a car, and that’s the last anyone ever saw of him. There was never a ransom, never a video. He just disappeared. It was like he turned to dust and blew away. The first we heard about it was a phone call. It was in the news for weeks. And then the news moved on, and everyone just forgot about him.’

  She felt Salim’s breath deepen.

  ‘What was his name?’

  �
��Idris Hammadi.’

  ‘Oh, god. I remember that case. I’m sorry. I had no idea.’

  Katya took in a deep breath. The hard, dry feeling tightened in her throat.

  ‘I used to play a game. When I was lying in bed, in the dark. I’d try to remember his face. Try to picture it. I’d think of running my hand over his nose and cheeks. The dots of silver in his beard. It got harder every year. Now I don’t know if I passed him on the street … if he just walked past me one day, would I even recognise him?’

  ‘He would recognise you.’

  In the dim light, Katya reached up and kissed Salim. Their lips were dry, their bodies were shaking. They kissed each other and Katya felt fear washing over both of them in waves. As they lay there, Katya imagined that they were two skeletons lying in a deep hole, one on their back and the other curled on its side. She imagined the hundred bones in their feet falling together and mingling like game pieces, the dust falling helical through their ribs.

  The gunmen came back later that evening. The man with the skull on his balaclava was leading them. They didn’t say anything. They just rounded up Katya, Salim and Lola, and tied their hands in front of them with plastic ties. Katya felt a new protectiveness from Salim, the way he positioned his body in front of hers as the men approached. It didn’t help: the men took them upstairs and pushed them into a storage cupboard along with mops and buckets and the smell of cleaning fluid. Then the men closed the door and locked it, and the three of them were plunged into darkness.

  Katya sat against the wall beside Salim, while Lola lay on her side in front of them. Katya tried to block out the pain from the ties around her wrists, and how much she needed the loo. She reached out her little finger as far as she could and touched the skin of Salim’s wrist. She felt his touch back, and let it calm the growing terror in her body. Lola murmured something to herself, some kind of incantation or prayer, and they all listened to the thuds and the cracking of glass as the men went around the museum, kicking in doors and breaking windows. They jumped at each sudden bang.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Katya whispered to Salim. ‘Do you think it wasn’t enough? That tablet I gave them …’