Twilight in Babylon

by Frank, Suzanne

  “Why can’t you let it be, and be apart from it?”

  “I’m an American. I believe in instant gratification and having all my questions answered.”

  He was still pondering this when she spoke again.

  “That’s an exaggeration, but it’s sort of true. I come from a world where our need for concrete answers is so consuming that we’ve developed an entire system to prove to ourselves that the way we feel is how the ancients felt. We’re not alone, we tell ourselves. We’ve been here before.”

  “A system?”

  “Archaeology. You’re responsible,” she said. “At least Napoleon is.”

  “From what you tell me of history, Napoleon is responsible for much,” Cheftu said disparagingly. “What satisfaction do you require, chérie? What answers will help you know again, which way is up?”

  “How can you not know? How can it not eat away at you. I don’t understand.”

  Cheftu sighed, sat up, and drew her to him. “We are similar, we know, but very different in some ways. I think, maybe, this is our upbringing. You fight, always.”

  “I do not.”

  He chuckled. “You do. Oppressors, institutions, ideologies, difficulties. You need to strive against something. I… I guess I accept.”

  “Fatalism,” she hissed. “I’ve resisted that my whole life. Inshallah. God wills it. Why does God get blamed when we’re too damn lazy to defend ourselves or pursue what is honorable?”

  “For one person to feel like you do is good, he inspires the rest and something can get done. But for every man to feel this way is chaos, chérie. Eventually, one must learn that there are opponents too big to fight. One will just wound oneself, dashing against the rocks.”

  “That reasoning is why France had an aristocracy for so long,” she snapped.

  “It is,” he said. “That is why Egypt was so amazing a place to me. A man could make anything of himself, regardless of where in the hierarchy he was born.”

  “This place reminds me of the States,” she said. “Do people, humans, always make the same mistakes? Will we never learn?”

  “What lesson do you want us to learn, Chloe? What is the thing eating you inside?”

  “Which way is up,” she said, then turned into his chest. His fingers played in her hair as she cried, sobbed, and railed against her unnamed tormentor. Cheftu held her and wondered.

  He looked out at the night sky; for him, that was proof enough of everything. The heavens revealed a benevolent Seigneur, an intricate, unfathomable plan, and a mind, artistic and otherwise, that reveled in beauty, organization, justice, and mercy. All of the best in male and female humans, granted by a Creator who was both male and female divinity, who was in fact, whole.

  Cheftu was startled and soothed at the thought. Have I become a pagan, he thought, living in these places and these times? Or have I finally turned to see what is there, instead of seeing only what I was told to see?

  Chloe slept finally. He cradled her head and blessed le bon Dieu until he saw dawn streak the sky with orange, bronze, and blossom red, melting away the navy. He looked at the sleeping woman in his arms and knew a moment of perfection. In this moment, Cheftu was complete: contented with his god, his world, and his wife.

  Shapir

  “He who possesses much silver may be happy; he who possesses much barley may be happy; but he who has nothing at all may sleep.”

  “It is grim, isn’t it,” Nimrod said to them.

  “He’s the reaper of the dead,” Nirg said. “Even in the mountains we know that.”

  Shapir, a harbor city on the Tigris, was dedicated lock, stock, and mashuf, to Nergal, the god of the dead.

  Their first indication had been the boundary stones, portraying Nergal, complete with scythe and hood, as a warning that invaders would die an eternal death. It was a small city, and Chloe could see why. Despite its great access to the rivers—from Shapir one took a boat straight to Kish, for here was where the rivers connected—it was a creepy place.

  “It smells like hell,” she muttered.

  “Sulfur,” Cheftu said. “Bitumen, too.”

  “Are we staying here?”

  “We have no choice if we want to get to Kish,” Nimrod said. “The plains north of Kish are the only available ones in Shinar.” This small band had struck out from the others, moving faster along the way, to prepare for the other fifty-something people.

  “So if we’re running away from home, we have to stop here,” Chloe finished the thought out loud.

  Twilight was falling; it would be best to be inside the gates, regardless of who was painted on them, than outside this close to the desert, mountains, and all their dangers.

  Chloe kept reminding herself of that, as they drew closer and closer to the city. The walls were painted red, so it looked as though they were soaked in blood.

  “You’re just in time for the lunar festival!” the already-intoxicated gatekeeper cried. “Nergal’s date of death is tonight!”

  “You celebrate his death?”

  “He’s the god of the dead, it wouldn’t make any sense to celebrate his birth, would it?” The gatekeeper laughed. “Beer and bread are free tonight, as are the temple prostitutes.” He winked at them. “Sleep anywhere, the residents will!” Off he went, laughing and staggering.

  Nirg, whose only concern was food, made an announcement. “This place is evil. Look, it sticks to your skin.” She held up her bare foot, blotched with black. “This happened as I was walking on the road.”

  Nimrod put his arm around her. Lea stepped to his other side. “I agree, there is something wrong with this city,” she said.

  Cheftu was reading the wall, a frown between his brows—where Chloe had tweezed an actual demarcation line. “Nergal rules the black lake. What is that?” he asked.

  Chloe sniffed the air; she didn’t grow up in Saudi for nothing. “Black gold.” That’s what Nirg had stepped into. Texas tea.

  They stared at her—with her strange knowledge of refining, processing, and the almighty price at the pump, they didn’t know any of those details—but at moments like this they knew she was different. “Oil,” she said. “It’s everywhere around here.”

  The streets were filled with half-naked, wholly drunk citizens. The music seemed a little off-key, the people a little odd, the food suspicious, and the conversations confusing. Nevertheless, they found a park to sleep in, some nourishment that was recognizable as bread and fruit, and opened sealed beer jars.

  Dancing, laughing, congressing. “This is a serious orgy,” Chloe said to Cheftu. “I think I’m kind of repulsed.”

  He looked at her with surprise.

  “No, I don’t care what they do… I just feel… unclean. Like I need a bath or something. The intentions are wrong. Weird stuff is going on here. I know it.”

  Nirg and Lea huddled together. Nirg had eaten nothing, she just watched, with the torches of the residents flickering in her eyes.

  “You are correct,” Cheftu whispered in her ear. “This is the celebration when Nergal kidnaps his daughter and takes her to the underworld as… his bride.”

  “I thought it was his death day?”

  “It is, chérie. L’automne is upon the land. Nergal seems to die—”

  “And his daughter is the rebirth of spring.”

  “Yes. Expectant of his offspring, by the time she returns.”

  “We’re celebrating incest?”

  “More than that: rape, kidnapping—”

  “Don’t tell me any more.”

  “Sleep if you can,” he said. “I will watch over us tonight. We’ll be well.”

  * * *

  “Join us!” the loud shout woke Chloe. She opened her eyes and saw a group of men, blind drunk, talking to Nimrod and Cheftu. “It’s uncivil not to celebrate.”

  She blinked and realized the men were naked, and looking for companions. Cheftu blocked her almost completely, they couldn’t see behind his broad back.

  “Leave them alone!�
�� a man shouted back. “They’re tourists, not residents!”

  “They’re here,” one of the naked men said—he was spotted with tar, like a Holstein or Dalmatian. “They want it, why else would they be sitting in the park.”

  “They’re my guests,” the man said, then turned to Cheftu. “Brother, I am so sorry to keep you waiting. Please, please, come in.”

  The naked men were undecided, but eventually convinced as the man—a total stranger—kissed everyone in the group from Ur, acted like a long-lost relative, and got them inside his house. He bolted the door. “They won’t forget you’re here,” he said. “Now, at least, you will have more of a chance.”

  “Thank you,” Nimrod said. “We are from Ur and—”

  “If you aren’t a native of Shapir, you can’t hope to understand us,” the man said. “As soon as the sky is bright, we’ll get you down to the wharf and on a ship. Kish?” he said.

  Banging on the door. “Send those men out!”

  “They’re here, and we want them!”

  Nimrod and Cheftu comprehended it—the demand—at the same time.

  “Send them out, or we’ll break down your door!”

  “He’s big enough, he could do it with his rod!”

  The comments became cruder and cruder. Their rescuer motioned for help, and the five adults barricaded the door on both sides—in case the hinges were popped or the dead bolt lifted.

  Chloe looked at the roof. If those guys wanted in, they could just scale the walls and drop into the courtyard.

  The mob outside was growing. “What else do you suggest?” Nimrod asked the man.

  It was a long time before dawn; the crowd was getting rowdier, rougher. “It is the policy,” their host said. “Law is on their side.”

  “What law?” Cheftu asked.

  The man groaned. “It was a mistake to settle here, but they needed instructors and Kish had no need for attorneys so I moved. The laws are… perverse.”

  “What law?” Chloe asked. “How is it perverse?”

  “Hospitality,” Nirg answered. “The laws of hospitality usually require that a guest be protected even more than the family members themselves. But in the city of the dead, in the world of Nergal, the laws of hospitality favor the crowd. If you have a guest, it is your honor to share him with the populace.”

  “How do you know that?” the host asked her.

  “I am named Nirg, for Nergal. After I was born, my mother died. My father hated me.”

  Chloe grabbed Cheftu’s hand. “Do you smell burning?”

  “They’re setting the front door afire!” Lea called.

  “Do you have anything to barter with?” Cheftu asked the man. “Or should we—”

  “Absolutely not,” Chloe said. “Get those ladders over there. We’ll go over the roof to the next house, and so on and so on, until we reach the harbor.” She looked at the man. “Is that possible? Are there houses the whole distance?”

  He nodded. “I must stay though, this is my home. The fires are common, the sign of disapproval from Nergal.”

  “They will destroy you,” Cheftu said. “They are no longer responsible men; they are beasts who roam the night in a pack.”

  He shrugged. “It’s my destiny. Some must die so there is space for the rest to live.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Chloe said. “Come with us.”

  * * *

  They were three houses down from their host’s, who had chosen to stay and face the mob: those men he knew in the council, at the temple, and in the administration. They were all lawyers together. And as he said, his legal greed had brought him here. Chloe and crew had thanked him, then taken the ladders and left the sheep.

  Cheftu had blood on his hands; Chloe was pretty sure why, though she wasn’t going to ask. To leave them alive would have been cruelty to animals, she was sure. She laid the ladder between two more houses and scampered across. Cheftu was always the last, being the heaviest, with Nirg his close second.

  How horrible to be named after such a god, Chloe thought.

  She was in the middle of the ladder when the populace set off the fireworks. They had fireworks? Wasn’t that China? Chloe turned to look, astonished

  The host’s house was on fire. As she watched, the spark that had begun at his door vanished for a second, then the middle of the street exploded in flames. A moment of darkness, then a flare in another part of the street. The park; the door opposite their host’s. A courtyard.

  The fires the host mentioned. Not set fires, natural fires.

  “Ohmigosh,” Chloe whispered. “Oil fire!” she shouted to Cheftu. “Oil!”

  * * *

  There was no longer time for a ladder. Chloe ran and jumped at the next house. Beneath her, behind her, the streets became an inferno. The roar of flames nipped at her heels. Her nose was clogged with the smells of burning fire, burned hair, and baked brick. She prayed she was heading in the correct direction. Lea and Nimrod followed her, she turned every few steps to check they were there, and to confirm a blond giant brought up the rear.

  The houses were getting smaller, just one story now, with flimsy rush roofs. The streets were lethal, so they had to stay on the buildings. All the pools of tar, all the sticky remains of bitumen or drops of oil on the road, caught, flared, and moved in zips. Fire jumped to fire jumped to fire, unextinguished.

  What had happened?

  She looked back; they were still behind her.

  She could see the harbor through the smoke; and boats, many setting sail in the middle of this insanity. Day-Glo orange and neon red and screaming yellow reflected off the river, off the whitewashed buildings, and within the slick pools of fuel in the lanes.

  It would never go out, Chloe thought. This fire was going to burn until the fuel was gone. CNN and the oil fires in Kuwait would be a campfire compared to this. If we thought the crops were bad before…

  She jumped to the ground, sprang up, and dashed across the pier to a boat. Any boat. Nimrod ran behind her, hacking at lines with his knife. Rats raced screeching into the water; Lea beat them off the ship’s prow. Cheftu kicked the boat away from the dock while Nirg grappled with the anchor. Everyone grabbed an oar and heaved, pushing the vessel toward the mouth of the harbor, beyond the boats filled with people who watched, slack-jawed. Once outside the arms of the breakwater, Cheftu called a halt.

  Shapir was a pyre.

  “The gods are destroying them,” Nirg said. “Even in the water.”

  A flicker of flame caught on the surface of the river, follow the stain of oil to a boat that caught fire. They saw another fire follow the track of the oil to a different boat.

  “None shall escape,” Nirg said.

  “Row!” Cheftu called.

  Kish

  “If you take the field of an enemy, the enemy will come and take your field.”

  The aide saluted, but the lugal paid him no mind. “Fire came from the heavens?” he said.

  “Yes, sir, lugal sir!”

  “Destroyed everyone?”

  “No survivors reported, sir!”

  “I guess we don’t have to concern ourselves with that enemy,” he said. “The men will be disappointed.”

  “Yes they will, sir, lugal sir!”

  “Our courts will certainly be freer without their multiples of attorneys descending upon us every time a dike bursts.”

  “Freer courts, sir, lugal sir!”

  “Who was next on our battle plan to attack?”

  “I’m at a loss, sir, lugal sir!”

  “Yes,” the lugal said, glancing at the aide, who stood so straight and tall in his flocked skirt and newly shaven head. The lugal had a whole city full of new recruits. He’d raised taxes and the awareness of the enemy who was, according to him, poised to invade. Now what?

  “Damned inconvenient,” he muttered. Fires came from the heavens on Shapir, as well they should. He just wished the gods had warned him. Now he was going to have to change his plan. Shapir had been such a con
venient, local enemy. The next closest city was Nippur—bad choice for invasion, or Agade. It was too small to be worthy of his army. And he’d have to trek past Bab-ili’s haunted environs to get there. Not a desirable situation, not desirable at all. “Go find my sergeant,” he told the waiting aide. Perhaps the man would have a suggestion.

  * * *

  Five horrified people stared at each other while the boat they were on bobbed in the water. Black smoke stained the sky. Chloe knew they would see that smoke and its consequences for years to come. Years.

  “It happened so fast,” Lea said.

  “Thank the gods the others took the slow route through the fields,” Nimrod said. “If Roo—” He shook his head. “Thank the gods.”

  “How many humans lived there?” Chloe asked in a soft, slow voice.

  “It was small.” Nimrod said. “Five thousand, no more.”

  “Five thousand humans,” she said.

  Nirg put her arm around Chloe. “We need more salt, do not worry.”

  “Salt?”

  Cheftu leaned forward and took her hand. “The mountain people, where Nirg and I come from, believe that evil souls don’t enter an afterlife. They are so bad that the gods can use only the divine part of them. The salt in their bodies. Salt is the only good found in a bad person.”

  “There will be piles of salt,” Nirg said. “I challenge that by our children’s time, it will not be called the Plain of Sipur, but rather the Plain of Salt.”

  Salt. Fire. Brimstone.

  No way.

  “Five thousand souls,” Chloe said. “Five thousand humans.”

  “Five thousand minae of salt.”

  * * *

  “Just five thousand?” the lugal asked the sergeant.

  “It’s the biggest village, unless you want to attack Nippur—”

  “No, no. I guess it will do.” He looked up at the sky. “Is that plume of smoke going to ruin my view all day?”