by D. J. Niko
“Try to snag a table,” she said to the others. “I’ll go order.”
She spoke Amharic better than any of her crew. Since childhood she’d had a flair for language, and her ability to pick up foreign tongues in mere months had given her an advantage among archaeologists. She liked to practice on the locals while standing in the lines, engaging the farmers in conversations about the brutal rainless summer and the teenage boys about their foosball strategies. Truth be told, she enjoyed talking with the Africans more than with her own people, whose cannibalistic gossip about one another she found insufferably boring.
Over her shoulder, an Ethiopian man whispered in broken English, “You are the English lady, yes? From the dig in the valley.”
She turned to face the stranger. He was tall and lanky, wearing torn Levi’s that hit above the ankle, a chain with a silver Menelik coin pendant, and an old Yankees baseball cap. She sized him up as the typical profiteer from these parts who would trade counterfeit antiquities for anything foreign, preferably American. She forced a stiff-lipped smile but did not reply.
“I can help you. I know a place with old things.”
“Look, mister—”
“Ejigu.” He extended his hand. “Most nice to meet you.”
“Look, Ejigu, I mean no disrespect here, but I don’t need your help. Thanks all the same.”
“Look this.” He took two pottery fragments out of his pocket, looking furtively over his shoulder.
Sarah tried to appear indifferent as she examined the shards. One bore faded geometric patterns—diamond panels, stylized vertical lines, small circles with crosses through them—all rendered in ochre. The other was black and white with fluid scrollwork. She ran her finger down the exposed clay of the broken edge. It was smooth, as if it had shattered ages ago and had long since been cured by the earth. Fourth or fifth century, she estimated based on the symbolism. The cross, especially, hinted at the post-Christian Aksumite civilizations prevalent in these parts sometime after 320 CE. “Where did you get this?”
Ejigu was clearly satisfied with himself for piquing her interest. “Is secret,” he whispered in pseudoclandestine fashion. “But if English lady wants to know …” He rubbed his forefinger and thumb together in the universal sign for money.
Sarah shook her head and laughed. “No, thanks, my friend. I work for a university. That means I have no money to give you.”
Ejigu looked her up and down. “That is a fine watch,” he said, pointing to the beat-up Timex on her wrist. “You give me, I take you to find these things.”
“You have seen more like this?”
“Oh, yes, lady. Much, much more.” He widened his eyes.
Sarah smirked, showing him she believed he was exaggerating. She didn’t trust him, but the fragments intrigued her enough to take it a step further.
The big Ethiopian lady at the window bellowed to Sarah to cut the chitchat and place her order.
“Look, I’ve got to go. If you are serious, meet me here tomorrow. You take me to this site of yours, and if it is all you claim, I promise I will reward you.”
They shook on it, and she walked to the order window.
The next afternoon, Sarah waited at Tigrinya. Her proper English upbringing told her to never trust the locals, particularly in a place like Ethiopia, where anything can be bought or sold for the right price. But her American side carried equal weight. When her parents had divorced, she’d moved with her mother to New York and attended boarding school in Connecticut. In that ruthlessly competitive environment, she’d honed her instincts. She’d learned how to size up people and outsmart them at their own games. Those made-in-America street smarts served her well in the field. She certainly was not afraid of Ejigu. She saw him as a small-time operator, a guy out to make a quick buck and move on to the next deal.
Though she doubted this would amount to much, she’d come anyway. Most other archaeologists, certainly her Cambridge colleagues, would never consider pursuing leads from locals, whom they regarded as money-grubbing false prophets. She, on the other hand, had no such prejudices. Though she realized ninety-nine percent of these promises were empty, she had a hunch about the other one percent, and life had taught her to go with her hunches.
Ejigu was on time. Dressed for a trek in the same torn jeans and mud-encrusted Nikes with lime-green shoelaces he’d obviously traded some tourist for, he joined Sarah on a wooden picnic table under a tree, away from the lot of loitering locals.
She lit a cigarette and offered him one. “So,” she said with a suspicious tone, “where are we going?” She spoke in Amharic lest she be perceived as a clueless outsider.
Ejigu motioned toward the mountains, north of the valley where her expedition was stationed. “Up there. Not easy to find. You must climb.”
She unfolded her portable binoculars to get a closer look. The terrain was rocky and parched, easing up the foothills and culminating in steep cliff faces blown raw by the winds. On one of the distant cliffs stood a flat-roofed stone structure. Sarah couldn’t make it out. “What is that building?”
“Dabra Damo. The oldest church in Ethiopia.”
She knew the legend of the monastery. It was one of the churches built by the nine saints who spread Christianity in Ethiopia. Abuna Aregawi, one of the nine, had perched his monastery high on a cliff where no common man could reach it. Even the monks who lived there did not have easy access. Each time they left the monastery to fetch water or go on a walking meditation, they had to descend via a braided leather rope dangling down the cliff face and ascend again the same way.
Its exile-like conditions were not accidental; the place was meant to be isolated from the world. Dabra Damo was where important illuminated manuscripts and fantastic religious paintings were housed, and the Ethiopians viewed the place as sacred. Sarah had long wanted to see it but knew it was impossible, for to that day women were not allowed to penetrate its sanctified realm.
”These things I find inside caves on the road to Dabra Damo,” Ejigu continued. “It is very rich. Pottery, coins, glass …”
“Glass?” She was surprised. According to Aksumite history, glassware was not manufactured in Ethiopia but rather was imported from Egypt and Syria. It was difficult to ship and very expensive and, therefore, used only by the wealthy classes. Such objects could provide clues to the elusive burial site. She was tantalized.
“Yes, colored glass,” he said. “Blue, yellow … You will see.”
There might be something to this after all. “Let’s go then.” She extinguished her cigarette on the flimsy aluminum ashtray. “I don’t have all day.”
After a drive north to the foothills, they hiked steadily upward until they reached the high plateau. Sarah didn’t need a break, but she stopped to take in the view. Beneath her to the south was the valley of the stelae, where her colleagues were carrying on digging in her absence. In the distance lay the silent ruins of an ancient compound the locals liked to refer to as the palace of the Queen of Sheba even though archaeologists had dated it to the seventh century, long after Sheba’s time. The Ethiopians loved their legends, and science would not discourage their belief. A few hundred meters up from where they were standing were the infamous granite cliffs with their network of caves, some natural, some not. She was eager to explore them before the light diminished.
“The pottery, it is inside a cave at the top of that cliff.” Ejigu pointed toward their destination. “Come. This way.” He led her over a boulder field to a narrow path leading up the bare cliffside. The trail wound around the edge of the cliff and was barely wide enough for a person to stand on. A precipice on the other side plunged into more rocks.
Accustomed to thinking one move ahead, Sarah calculated in her mind: if she slipped, she could try to arrest her fall by holding on to the gnarled roots of the kosso trees that grew, impossibly, among the stones.
Ejigu negotiated the path with the ease of one who either knew no fear or held life in too little regard. Back against the
cliff face, he inched up sideways one foot at a time like a crab.
Sarah followed reluctantly, a new bead of perspiration forming on her brow every time the loose rock and gravel gave way.
“A few more meters,” Ejigu announced, flashing a gray-toothed smile. “Almost there.”
Sarah took a deep breath and concentrated on her steps. On the final stretch of the path were no handholds. The cliff had been polished smooth by the elements. She fixed her gaze on the horizon. If she looked down, she could lose her footing. She was sweating in earnest now, partly from the heat but mostly from anxiety. Her hands were clammy and slippery against the stone, but she could not wipe them on her bandana, which she’d wrapped around her wrist for exactly such a scenario.
“Lady, do not move.” Ejigu spoke softly but was clearly alarmed. “A scorpion. At your feet. Stay still and it will not harm you.”
The scorpion climbed on Sarah’s boot and made its way up her leg.
She was motionless and calm. She’d spent enough time in remote places to know that if a scorpion sensed motion it would feel threatened and strike. Holding still might fool it into thinking she was actually part of the landscape.
With its tail curled and dangling like a lariat above its head, the wretched black armored creature inched upward, crossing Sarah’s abdomen and reaching her bare neck. Her hair stood on end as she felt its pincers brush her skin, then its eight hairy legs tread, one at a time, across her Adam’s apple. A strike to the carotid would be fatal.
She weighed her options. She could fling it off with a swift move that would surely throw her off balance and send her down the precipice, or she could do nothing and hope it reciprocated.
Though she was terrified at the prospect of being needled with a deadly dose of neurotoxic poison, she kept her cool. What she could not control was the perspiration trickling down her hairline, following the contours of her face to her jaw. Her heart pumped double time even as the scene unfolded in slow motion. A single drop fell from her chin onto the scorpion’s head.
It raised its stinger.
In the split second before it could attack, she jettisoned it from her body with a backhanded snap. She had no time to see where it landed, for the ground crumbled and she slid down the rocky hillside. She grasped at the rock for even a tenuous handhold, but the cliff was too steep and she was falling too fast. A jagged piece of granite gashed the inside of her left arm from bicep to palm, but she was too pumped with adrenaline to feel any pain.
She looked over her shoulder to check the terrain between her and the rocky escarpment coming toward her with unnerving speed. She spotted the blackened, hole-riddled branch of an ancient kosso tree, reached toward it, and managed to grab a patch of leaves. Gravity did not allow her to keep hold, but the motion slowed her and threw her center just enough to put her on a collision course with the tree’s elaborate branch structure.
It worked. Her fall was broken, at least enough for her to regain control. Now she could negotiate the rocks and make it down to the escarpment in one piece.
Ejigu yelled from the top of the cliff. “Lady, stay there. I’m coming down.”
“No. It’s too dangerous.”
It was of no use. Ejigu scrambled down with all the agility of a mountain goat.
In the meantime, she edged down the rock face until she was within safe jumping distance. She let go of the roots and jumped to the ledge, landing on her side like a sack of stones. The final fall knocked the wind from her lungs. For a moment, she thought she was dying.
Slowly air was restored to her lungs, and she surveyed the damage. Her ripped clothes were stained with fresh blood, her ribs ached from the impact, and her left arm was dripping blood onto the stones. She needed stitches. Worse yet, the pain had dug in. Her forearm throbbed so violently she could feel it in the tips of her fingers.
She tried to move, but it hurt too much. She thought it wiser to lean against the rocks and wait for Ejigu. She feared her injuries would keep her from going forward with the dig. Bloody fool, her inner voice scolded, you know better than this.
Ejigu reached the escarpment with astonishing speed. His competence on the hostile terrain eased Sarah’s mind a little, and she allowed herself the faint hope of making it out of there before nightfall.
”Are you okay, lady?” He winced. “You look very bad.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she said, letting him help her to her feet. “You might have told me we would need climbing equipment.”
“Sorry, sorry.”
Sarah untied the bandana from her wrist and held it tightly against the wound. When the bleeding was under control, she leaned into a pile of rocks to steady herself and summon the strength for the downhill trek. Even in her rattled state, she could not help but admire the symmetry of the structure. The stones before her were neatly stacked, as if they had been wedged into the cliffside by nature’s stonemasons. But there was something odd about the orderly pattern. She looked closer but could not wrap her mind around it. She didn’t know if she was delirious with pain and seeing things, but behind a jumble of roots was what looked like an etching in the stone, a rough outline of the Coptic cross, perhaps, or some variation.
She looked behind her at Ejigu, who was throwing pebbles into the void. She turned to the etching, slipping her hand behind the roots to access the surface of the stone. She ran her fingers inside the grooves of the symbol. It was ragged, worn by time and the elements. Her heartbeat quickened.
Ejigu clapped to get her attention. “Hello? We have to go soon. The sun will disappear.”
He was right. The sun was starting its descent behind the mountain. It would be dark before long, and they still had a good two hours’ hike ahead.
She followed him down, cursing her curiosity every agonizing step of the way.
That night, after paying an after-hours visit to the town doctor and returning to camp with a host of painkillers, Sarah sat at her laptop and sketched the symbol from memory. Now she wasn’t so sure it was a Coptic cross. Unlike the crux ansata, the symbolic cross of the Coptic Christian church, this had two circles, one inside the other, with a cross dissecting the inner circle in four equal parts. The staff of power, the vertical line extending down from the center of the circle, was broken. Sarah wasn’t sure if that was intentional or due to the erosion of what could have been hundreds of years. She referred to her online encyclopedia of symbols but found nothing exactly like it.
As much as she enjoyed figuring things out on her own, she had no choice but to consult the sym-bologists at Cambridge. She scanned her sketch and e-mailed it to Stanley Simon, the head of the archaeology department at the university.
Professor:
Found this symbol etched into a cliff face en route to Dabra Damo. Variation of the Coptic cross—or is it? In the same vicinity: a pile of rocks a little too perfectly arranged. My instinct says it’s man-made. Plan to explore more tomorrow. Your thoughts.
S. W.
Under the influence of painkillers, Sarah slept soundly until 5:30 the next morning. When her phone rang, she was disoriented and had no clue where she was. Instinctively she picked up and regarded her phone as if it were an extraterrestrial object. Regaining her faculties, she focused on the caller ID: Stanley Simon. With a start, she realized she was still in Aksum and had slept an hour later than normal. “Professor,” she croaked. “I assume you got my e-mail.”
“You sound dreadful.” The voice on the other end was gruff and curmudgeonly, the professor’s usual tone when he was displeased. “Have you only now woken up?”
“It’s a long story. Had a bit of trouble yesterday.”
“I’m not sure I want to know. What were you doing on the high cliffs anyway? The funerary chamber is in the valley. Or have you forgotten?”
“No, sir. I mean … This was a bit of a detour. I was looking into a lead.”
“A detour? A lead?” His voice cracked. “Sarah, need I remind you what you have been sent to Aksum to
do? Do you realize you have been at it five months and already spent a half million sterling of UNESCO grant money? A lot of people are getting anxious over this expedition. They want to see results. I cannot continue to make excuses for you, particularly whilst you amble along, pursuing random leads from dubious sources.”
“It isn’t like that. I saw the artifacts. They were authentic. I thought it was worth a couple of hours of my time to go check it out.”
“Young lady, you may not realize this, but we are in hot water with our funder right now. UNESCO are getting very impatient. They want to send a consultant.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. They have dispatched Daniel Madigan to Aksum. He should be arriving in a week’s time.”
Daniel Madigan—she knew that name. “Do you mean the preening American? Isn’t he busy starring in some documentary or other?”
“Whether you approve or not, Dr. Madigan is one of the leading scholars of the Saudi Arabian region. In fact, he’s at the Empty Quarter now with a group from King Saud University, and they are making excellent progress … unlike some.”
She recalled reading reports about the cultural anthropologist’s work at Qaryat al-Fau, the ancient city hidden beneath the Arabian sands. The project had earned him worldwide renown, not least of all because he had produced and starred in an IMAX film about his research. “Fine. I’ll play along. But if he shows up with a film crew, I’m out of here.”
“Sarah, I beg of you, don’t embarrass the university. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but there is rather a lot at stake here.”
Simon’s condescending tone grated on Sarah’s nerves. She tried her best to ignore it. “Professor? I don’t suppose you checked into that symbol I sent you.”