Apart from the dust that had accumulated, everything was as she had left it a month before. There were piles of books in various parts of the flat, as the shelves could not handle any more volumes. She felt at home with the golden light streaming through the shutters and the unmistakable smell of old leather and wood. She dropped her suitcase and slumped on the couch, knowing that she’d have to get up soon or she would fall asleep. She had been invited for dinner by Professor Almeini, her departmental mentor. After a few moments spent staring at the ceiling, she mustered her strength and walked into the bathroom.
Chapter 2
December 1st, 2004
Mina threw a quick glance at her reflection in the side window to check her headscarf was properly adjusted before entering the department. Although she’d spent over a year in Mosul and had long forgotten the skirts and tight tops she used to wear in New York, she constantly felt self-conscious. After all, she was the only female lecturer in the department of Cuneiform Studies and had no female students. To add to her unease, Hassan had not accompanied her upstairs, saying that he had ‘things to do’. Now that she thought about it, during the drive from her flat, Hassan had been evasive every time she brought up his studies. Mina realised that she was standing in the department’s main corridor, lost in her thoughts, and quickly walked on through to her office.
An overweight and sour-looking man who was seated in the corridor, probably waiting to see one of the professors, threw her a disapproving glance. However demurely dressed, Mina guessed she was too voluptuous for this man’s conservative ideas on how a woman should be attired. She was about to tell him what she thought about his unwelcome gaze, when Professor Almeini appeared.
The elderly scholar took her hands in his, ‘Dear Mina. How are you?’
‘I’m fine,’ she answered, feeling suddenly at ease in his presence. He was a short, thin man who exuded confidence and affability. Professor Almeini had a wiry strength, which had kept him going well past retirement age. University officials needed him to keep the department from falling apart, and he was rather reluctant to relinquish his office.
‘Please wait for me in my office. I’ll be just a minute,’ he said in his calm voice.
Professor Almeini’s office was a mirror image of his simplicity and scholarly nature: oak shelves, with row upon row of neatly arranged and well-read books, dappled light bathing his desk and an ancient rug underfoot. Although many colleagues had described to Mina how well-kept the University of Mosul was compared to a few years back, she only half believed their stories. The set-up was still quite basic in her eyes. Moreover, after the 2003 lootings, most lecturers had taken the library and departmental books home for safe-keeping. She was delighted to see that Professor Almeini had returned all his books to the office; it was a sign that things were somehow on the mend. She sat down in a chair at the far end of the office.
The professor’s shiny Russian samovar was on its stand, the fire in its pipe smouldering. She smiled, thinking of the ‘thousand and one nights’ tales told by students about its origin. Her favourite story centred on the professor’s imaginary involvement with the mujahideen in Afghanistan, she had overheard a young student in the university cafeteria telling his friends in hushed tones, ‘he raided a Soviet stronghold and brought back the samovar. I swear, it belonged to a Russian officer.’ Knowing the professor, Mina thought it more likely he had bought it in a bazaar while searching for some rare books. She heard his firm step outside the office. The professor shut the door and walked towards his favourite assistant.
‘So, Mina, how was your trip to America?’ he asked as he sat down opposite her.
‘Refreshing. I attended a few seminars, I saw my parents… no bomb threats, no missing students or colleagues, you know, same old, same old.’
‘Now, now. Don’t be cynical, it’s unbecoming. I remember when you first arrived. You were so starry-eyed, let’s say.’
‘I’m sorry Professor. I didn’t mean any disrespect.’
‘I could be mistaken, but you seem almost disappointed that work can continue at the university in such appalling conditions.’
‘Yes and no. We teach students how to read ancient cuneiform, to understand their history but the recent past has caught up with us and I feel that there’s little hope for their future. How can you be so peaceful when the world’s tearing itself apart?’ Mina asked earnestly.
‘When you’ve known as many difficult times as I have my dear, you won’t speak lightly of the work we do,’ he said. ‘You are in Mosul, ancient Nineveh, the city where the library of King Sennacherib was found.’
‘I know Pr…’
‘You do and you don’t,’ he said, cutting her short. ‘Do I need to remind you of the importance of our mission here? I have a duty to safeguard what is left of the earliest writings in the history of the world.’ Then, with much kindness in his eyes, he added ‘Ah, Mina, with the meagre financial means I have at my disposal and with the war, all I can do is use my knowledge to further scholarship here and now. Look at all the academics who fled Baghdad and whom we’ve had to accommodate here in Mosul. They left everything behind.’
He seemed lost in his thoughts for a moment but Mina knew he was thinking the same thing as her; ‘God knows when they’ll be able to return.’
The professor collected himself and said, ‘With last month’s escalation in violence, I have no idea what will happen in the coming months. But as for you, you came here to help and you’ve achieved much Mina.’
‘I don’t feel I have, Professor. I promised myself I’d regain some of the stolen tablets, and return them to the museum, but I’ve only authenticated a few. Of all the shady people who’ve come my way, not one of their tablets came from the looted museums. They were either fakes that they tried to fob me off with, or artefacts looted from other sites.’
He looked at Mina’s earnest face, amused by her youthful disappointment.
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself Mina. You’ve been a wonderful teacher for our students. You’ve done so much for this department. If anyone should be disillusioned it’s me, with Hassan. He was such a good student.’
‘What do you mean was?’ Mina was surprised, ‘He just drove me here. What’s he done?’
‘That’s the problem. He hasn’t done anything; he dropped out. Learned just enough to start working for those shady art dealers you were referring to.’
Mina was disappointed. She now understood why the boy had been so cagey when she’d asked him about his studies. ‘I’m so sorry Professor. It must be very disappointing,’ she said.
‘Yes. But let’s talk about other things,’ he answered with a twinkle in his eye, ‘I owe you a welcome dinner, don’t I? My wife’s prepared a delicious meal for your arrival. Let’s go.’
Hassan was sipping tea in his favourite haunt. The establishment was renowned for surviving two Gulf wars and serving Mosul’s finest coffee. Hassan didn’t care much about the coffee but loved the café’s atmosphere. He often conducted his business in the small backroom with its medieval windows framed by old marble slabs, which had probably been looted from some long-forgotten Roman building.
Life was a strange commodity these days. The war-torn country was on the brink of collapse, but Hassan seemed to breeze through all the horror. He had been brought up by a tough father and a doting mother and had quickly learned how to survive in a place that could be a war zone on Monday, a Green zone on Tuesday, and a survival zone the rest of the week. The constant sense of urgency made men either crumble or survive. War and its corollaries could bring out the brightest light or the darkest night in every person, but Hassan, like most people in the city, was focused on getting on with his day-to-day business.
The café owner gave Hassan a wink and nodded to a dishevelled man standing at the door. Hassan looked him over and waved him to approach. A year ago, he used to feel pity for the poor labourers who seemed out of their depth in the city. But in the last few months he had met so many of t
hese poor souls, fumbling in their pockets, watching over their back, waiting for him to take a look at some ancient object that – without losing his kind nature entirely – he felt he had become more selfish and indifferent.
‘Are you Hassan?’ asked the hesitant man, whose weary eyes seemed older than the rest of him.
‘Yes I am.’
The man sat down.
‘Don’t worry so much,’ said Hassan affably. ‘I work for the university, not for the police.’
The old man looked up at Hassan with a crooked smile. ‘It’s so difficult to know who to trust. I used to work my own land, now I try to survive in the city. They took everything from me, except my wife and children whom I need to feed.’ He lingered on his last words to give them more meaning, but Hassan pretended not to notice.
‘I know. Believe me when I say I’ve got nothing to gain from our meeting, except the pleasure of doing my work, which is to collect and catalogue all these objects.’
It was a fixed dialogue, rehearsed a thousand times and Hassan knew how to keep the upper hand. This was pretty easy when the seller was desperate and the buyer picky about what to purchase.
‘Let’s go to the backroom for privacy,’ said Hassan, as if all he cared for was the labourer’s reputation. They walked through to the backroom and sat down side by side on a bench. The man reached into his tattered satchel and brought out a rectangular object, tightly wrapped in a rag. He opened it carefully and Hassan, who had identified the object straight away, rolled his eyes. Yet another clay tablet. He took it slowly, pretended to read the cuneiform writing and nodded appreciatively.
‘This is a very interesting tablet you’ve got here. I will take it to the university today. Thank you very much. You’ve done the right thing.’
The man looked embarrassed but was not leaving, so Hassan dug his hand in his pocket and gave him 30 US dollars. The man thanked him warmly and hurried away. Hassan turned over the object in his hands, he thought it was a little heavy for a clay tablet but did not make much more of it. He decided to call Bibuni right away.
‘Yes?’ asked a smooth, deep male voice.
‘Salam Aleikum Mr Bibuni. How are you?’ asked Hassan.
‘Aleikum Salam my boy. I’m well. I’ve been told someone came to see you.’
‘News travel fast,’ said Hassan, thinking back to the café owner who had been fiddling with a phone while he was sitting with the old labourer.
‘So, my boy?’ asked Bibuni, unwavering.
‘It’s a beautiful tablet, with cuneiform writing. I’m sure it’s an important text.’
‘Scoundrel! Only a few months in the business and already trying to hustle me. Look here Hassan, find me sculptures, gold or silverware, even bronze amulets, but keep your wretched clay tablets. No-one wants to buy this stuff and those who do are more trouble than they’re worth; before you know it, they show you an official UNESCO list of looted objects and refuse to pay up, or demand to see other tablets. You never hear the end of it.’
‘So what should I do with it then?’ asked Hassan.
‘What do I care!?’ Bibuni yelled down the phone. ‘Use it as a chopping block, a wall decoration, whatever you want but don’t try to pull that one on me again.’
‘Alright Mr Bibuni, I’m sorry.’
‘Have you got anything else?’
‘Nothing for a couple of days, but I’m sure something will crop up. Any chance of a small advance?’
‘Advance on what? Clay tablets? You must be joking. Call me when you’ve got something decent and I will give you all the advances you could want.’
The line went dead. Hassan took a deep breath, put the tablet in his bag and left the café.
Mina and the professor walked briskly through the University campus, both tightly wrapped in traditional woollen shawls. Soon enough, they arrived at a block of flats. Mosul was a strange city: it had seen 8000 years of history and yet today, much of it was a concrete sprawl. The old city kept its charm of course, with its old Abbasid houses and romantic, meandering streets but many academics tended to live just off the campus. It was close to their workplace, cheaper and more secure than other parts of Mosul.
As soon as they entered the professor’s flat, Mina recognised the mouth-watering smells of Mrs Almeini’s cooking. The old scholar was almost toppled over by his grandchildren, who rushed up to the door to greet him. Their son’s children often stayed with them during the day while their parents were at work. Both parents were interpreters for the US army and had a heavy workload. Mina always felt a pang in her heart when visiting the professor’s home; there was so much warmth. It was very different from her own home, where her parents were busy trying to be ‘American’ and her mother rarely prepared Mosuli food. Despite the run-down location, the Almeini’s flat was tastefully decorated. Mina knew that most of the silverware, rugs and paintings had come from another house, which the family had been forced to flee in an emergency. No-one ever talked about it. Mina suspected that the couple had had another daughter who died there but she had never found the courage to enquire about it.
The professor’s wife, a delightfully warm and feisty brunette, was always impeccably dressed and constantly tried to fatten her up, ‘You must eat more Mina,’ she said, ‘you seem so unhealthy.’ To this, Mina ritually answered, ‘I assure you, Mrs Almeini, I never felt better.’
Mina was always amazed by the old couple’s ways. Although Almeini was a modern academic, aware of the latest theoretical twists in scholarship, he still lived traditionally at home. Mina had tried a few times to ask Mrs Almeini about her own thoughts on a variety of subjects but the old woman never engaged in intellectual discussion. Mina could not figure out if it was because she could not, or if she considered it inappropriate to do so in her husband’s house.
After dinner, while they sipped tea and nibbled on small crunchy biscuits, the professor turned to Mina. ‘Tell me about your research, Mina. Have you made any progress?’
‘I have and I haven’t. I applied for a travel grant from Columbia, to pursue my PhD investigations in Israel.’
‘I guess it will be easier to get this grant than a visa for Israel.’
‘Ah Professor, you forget I’m American!’
‘True,’ he answered. ‘So, have you had any luck?’
‘I don’t know. Nigel hasn’t given me much hope on this front. I think he feels that I’ve dropped out of ‘his’ programme since I’ve come here.’
‘Would you like me to write to him?’
‘No, thank you Professor. I’m sure things will straighten themselves out when I send him some substantial chapters to read. Until then…’
‘Until then you’re on probation!’
They both laughed.
In his office at Columbia University, Professor Nigel Hawthorn was pondering the letter of recommendation he had promised Mina he would write to the travel grant committee on her behalf. He was one of that peculiar brand of scholars who never left their office, certainly not to travel to the country they worked on. He deciphered cuneiform tablets from Nineveh but felt no need to know what Mosul looked like, or engage in joint projects with Iraqi scholars. He did not feel much of anything. In more ways than one, he was a sort of Victorian scholar stuck in the wrong century. He didn’t understand Mina’s need to travel, which he interpreted as an unscholarly pursuit. He remembered an email she had sent him when she had just moved to Iraq. It was full of descriptions of Mosul, its monuments destroyed by the war, the flavours and fragrances of the food. Her writing was more intoxicating than persuasive. She recorded the romantic beauty of ruined Abbasid homes in the old city and wrote at length about the piled-up houses that overhang the banks of the River Tigris. They seemed to her as though they had tried, at some point in time, to race for the riverbank and to have been stopped – just in time – by a magician’s wand.
Nigel was tired of what he saw as Mina’s inadequacies as a scholar. She had been a good student whilst in his care but he felt
she had now strayed completely off rails and needed to face up to reality. He knew how damning his letter would be to Mina’s application, but he did not care that much. Picking up his fountain pen, he wrote quickly, and subtly in her disfavour. Without the support of her own PhD supervisor, any chance Mina had of getting this grant faded away.
Chapter 3
December 2nd, 2004
In the arid landscape of the Mosuli countryside, a young boy was running as fast as he could down a dirt track. The twelveyear- old was as scrawny as they came but quite resilient. He slowed down as he approached a group of workers, where he spotted his hero, the tallest, strongest, coolest guy he’d ever met. ‘Jack, Jack!’ he shouted.
The ruggedly handsome 35-year-old American turned around to greet the boy with a smile. Jack had a square jaw, thick dark hair and piercing blue eyes that always seemed to see and know everything. But what Muhad liked best about Jack was the crescent-shaped scar above his left eyebrow.
‘Muhad? Catch your breath and tell me what all this excitement is about.’
‘Jack,’ said the excited boy, breathing heavily, ‘we found the qatan.’
Jack laughed. ‘The qanat. You found the qanat. Now that’s great news. Take me there.’ He turned to the villagers, ‘Guys, take a break.’
Jack was relieved. He’d worked in this village and been around Muhad long enough to know that the young boy was not only very resourceful but usually spot on. At last, his small irrigation project might just take off. He had almost run out of funding and had he not met that old scholar at the university, he’d never have thought of looking for a qanat, one of the numerous ancient underground irrigation canals that crisscrossed entire regions of Iraq.
The 13th Tablet Page 2