by Boston Teran
“He says . . . you’re a liar.”
“I’m a liar?”
“That is what he says . . . not I, efendi. Though it seems to me you have the qualities of a pitiful liar.”
“You’d be surprised.”
The guide took the glasses now, and John Lourdes asked, “The other night before we left. The priest did a lot of talking. And he said something to you.”
“It was nothing, efendi.”
“It didn’t seem that way to me.”
The priest asked, “What is he saying?”
“He wants to know about our conversation at the stone wall.”
The priest angered.
“I have not broken honor. I swear it.”
John Lourdes picked up on the gaze, the tone.
“Well?”
“Nothing, efendi.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re the liar.”
“Of course, efendi. But that is a known fact.”
“I’m a liar, you’re a liar, and he’s a liar,” said John Lourdes. “We’re a matched set.”
The priest demanded a translation. He then began to laugh. He called the guide over and whispered in his ear and the guide, at first somewhat shocked, began to laugh. This caused John Lourdes some degree of concern.
“Well?”
“He says we are a family of liars, efendi. He being the husband . . . you, efendi, the wife . . . and I, the illegitimate and idiot child.”
The men’s laughter was cut short. The guide had picked up something on the horizon and was quick to the glasses.
There was a dark image in the shallows between the sky and the endless timeworn steppes. When the shape rose on the thermals, the guide said simply, “It’s back, efendi.”
It did not take long, less than a minute, before they picked up the faintest drone of the propeller. The aeroplane was coming straight out of the distance, but at an angle that would take it well to their flank. About two kilometers out, the wings began to bank and the propeller noise grew louder as it headed directly for the plateau.
“Efendi?”
“Let’s gather up the horses.”
The men quickly went toward their mounts as the plane began to dive and its engine strained and as it swept over them, something was thrown from the cockpit.
t w e n t y - t w o
HE STICK GRENADE hit about thirty meters from the men. The concussion was enough to throw the guide’s mount onto its flanks. It came up shocked and whinnying with the priest grabbing hold of the reins to secure it.
As the pilot banked to make another pass the horseman raced across the plateau like harried game. They spread out to make the killing more difficult. The pilot was only about a dozen meters above them and as that rattling framework passed overhead the pilot leaned from the cockpit and flung another grenade.
John Lourdes saw the tumbling shadow of the thing cross his own just before it exploded somewhere behind him. They made for the slope cradled against the horses’ necks and they launched over the side. Their mounts leaned downward and they descended that sandy crag. The aeroplane sped past them overhead in a long whoosh as they made for an island of tall pines.
Once in the timber they dismounted. They looked up through the sheltering light and waited. The flickering image of the enemy passed on overhead, and soon there was another explosion high up in the trees. Shards of timber and stakes with branches and pine needles and flecks of bark rained down on the men. Not long after, the pilot shot off a flare. Sparklers of phosphorous fell through that shadowland of trees.
They held still, breathing hard and listening for what might well come next, when the sound of the engine began to taper off and was soon no more.
That evening, from hills above the Tigris, they saw the lights of their destination.
“Hasankeyf,” said the guide.
Before descending the trail to the valley floor they studied the broken terrain they’d come through. Flares had been sent up every few hours, the last answered by a second along a jagged ridgeline that framed the Euphrates Valley.
They were being flanked.
Hasankeyf was a poor town that lay on both sides of the river. It was an ancient settlement that had known the Roman, the Byzantine, and the Arab; it had been sacked by Mongols. Smoke from cooking fires drifted lazily in the windless air above squat, shabby buildings. The moon was clear, and the spire of a minaret on the opposite shore stood before it.
They rode through town on a dirt street muddy from dragged fishnets and pitted by droves of sheep. Across the river where people lived in caves along the cliff face came the shrilly pitch of tin and reeds. John Lourdes could see raven silhouettes around fires at the cavern entry where the musicians played. Their fires, reflecting upon the current, made the Tigris look to be burning.
Hasankeyf was mostly Kurdish so it was left to the guide to barter with an aging beggar to bring them to the home of the missionary known as Zacharias.
He was a small, sickly young man who lived in a pitiful room. He sat at a table holding the letter from Mrs. Ulster close to a kerosene lamp. Upon reading it he said, “Sheepherders have been telling me they’ve seen troops coming down the Euphrates Valley. And a Turkish aeroplane also to the north.”
“It’s the priest they’re looking for,” said John Lourdes.
Zacharias turned to Malek. “Father, it’s best then, we leave tonight for Mosul.”
“Our horses are pretty ragged,” said John Lourdes.
Zacharias stood, “It’s all right, John. You see, we’ll be traveling by goat bellies.”
The missionary was having a little fun at John Lourdes’ expense. He led the three men to an abandoned farmhouse along the river a few kilometers north of town where two Turkish boys were preparing a raft by lamplight on a sandy inlet. Zacharias assured them that, the fact the boys were Turkish should be of no concern. He explained they were devout Muslims whose beliefs were not in accord with the actions of the present regime, and were without rancor toward either the Jew, the Kurd, or the Armenian. They were just the poor, struggling to make their way as honest citizens in the world. Then, for John Lourdes, Zacharias went and lifted a goat belly skin from a stack lying beside a kerosene lamp.
The raft being constructed was a kalek. These, he told John Lourdes, had been in existence since before the great historian of antiquity, Herodotus, had visited Babylon. A kalek was designed for carrying heavy cargo down the dangerous flues and channels of the Tigris.
This raft was to be forty feet long and twenty wide.
Great lengths of pole were set in place with enough space between them for a handful of inflated goat bellies lined up side by side. These were inflated by blowing air through a willow reed, then the skins were sealed shut. They made the kalek utterly buoyant. Once rigged in place, a deck was laid over them with smaller poles lashed down by withies.
The raft had been intended for cargo set to be carried downstream. Zacharias explained the situation to the young men, and it was agreed they would leave the cargo, and work through the night to be ready to start downriver with the priest well before dawn.
All pitched in toward that labor. John Lourdes was taught how to inflate the goat bellies then, to sew the openings shut, or bind them closed with cord. He was shown he must wet the skins to keep them from shrinking, or else they would leak.
A gunwale was constructed around the deck to support posts to frame stalls near the bow, for the horses. Their weight would be countered by the men and timbers set in the stern.
When ready, they edged the kalek to the shore, easing the bow into the streamy waters. They boarded the horses, who were tentative and shied, and it took patience to get them stabled and tethered in their stalls. John Lourdes was ordered to bring extra skins and tarps to make a tent at the stern.
A kalek was guided by two oarsmen, and a stout sweep at the stern for a helmsman to steer. The boys took the oars, Zacharias the helm. And
with that, the six set off by lamplight.
They made their way downriver. Beyond a turn, the town appeared. Early fires against the last of night. The first yappings of a dog. Sheep moving through the high grass above the beach.
In the river were two huge columns. The remains of a once great Roman bridge that spanned the Tigris and connected the town. They floated past the footings that were easily greater than the boat and two times as high as a man. The supports rose from there. The inlaid stone ascending stories.
They floated on. The water echoed softly as it slapped the footings. On the shore fisherman prepared their nets to be cast upon the waters.
John Lourdes stood at the edge of their craft and doffed his hat. The fisherman looked at this strange man, their expressions unsure.
A feeling came over him, it came like a quiet tide. He was on the Tigris. In that place known as the origin of man. A spiritual homeland for much of the known world. He looked up at the austere remains of that bridge. At the spans that still stood on the opposing shores. At the minaret with the blue light of coming day to shape it. He looked to the fishermen along the beach casting their nets upon the water as had the Apostles.
It was a feeling he had never experienced at home, for America was too young and too far away. The feeling was one of eternality. What Alev Temple had said, quoting her father—each man carries the history of the world in his soul—seemed utterly true. Profoundly and mysteriously so.
And of all things, he could suddenly feel his father’s voice, and his mother standing quietly beside him. He was still holding his hat, and looking at it, realized he doffed it as had his father endless times. The pull of his parents became so strong at that moment, it seemed as if they were reaching out from the headwaters of time, touching his every thought, his every word, every deed.
“Efendi . . . there is trouble.”
John Lourdes turned.
Soldiers were walking the streets with lanterns. Cavalry were heading up and downstream in the cool dawn light. Others were searching a bluff above the Tigris. Hain pointed towards a sheep path through the high grass just back from the embankment. The three had ridden there to the house where Zacharias lived. On that path scouts were squatting over what could only be their horse tracks and talking among themselves.
John Lourdes addressed Zacharias at the helm. “They will eventually go to where you live. And then upriver to the place the boat was launched.”
“If that is God’s will.”
“Can they catch us by keeping to the shore?”
“There are cliffs . . . jungles of reeds . . . gorges . . . and the current is very strong.” He paused. “Their horses will tire, their men will tire. But the Hiddekel, the Great River, never tires.”
John Lourdes quietly accepted that, but he looked to the sky.
t w e n t y - t h r e e
HEY WERE TRAVELING at five kilometers an hour, and they had come many hours. The country they passed through was untouched, silent, and vast. Miles of marsh reeds gave way to cratered chasms, which gave way to runs of white desert.
The men talked, the men laughed. The priest learned to work the helm. Hain put in time at the oars, singing when not complaining. By unanimous agreement, he was wretched at both. John Lourdes was left to watch.
He watched the sky through his field glasses, he watched the country behind him. He traced every distant marking, each abstract and unsure sign, and no blemish, no aberration, nothing upon the physical architecture of that world escaped his hunting eye. For he understood—the present is uncertain, and the future too far away.
He had been sitting all the while on a crate in the stern, Malek squatting near him at the helm. John Lourdes saw the priest rise and cup a hand over his eyes. The expression on his face changed, and what it changed to foretold the worst. The boys began talking excitedly. There was no misunderstanding their tone, as it matched the priest’s stare. John Lourdes came about and stood. He was the last to see.
At that time of the year, melting snow from the mountains caused the river to run high. They had just come through a narrow gorge, where the current funneled and picked up force. But once beyond, the Tigris widened and flattened out, and would flood up the low shoreline before it rushed on. It was not unusual, during those spring months, to find debris strewn along the muddy embankments. But what had been cast there, was not debris.
There were bodies. As far as one could see. On both shores. But these were not just bodies. These were mummified corpses bathed in mud that had dried and caked.
They were not real somehow. Not people, not human beings. These were sculptures. Pieces created by some mad phenomena. Posed masks of sedentated earth. They had to be.
The kalek drifted down through this causeway past corpses skewered by tree limbs, corpses that had been roped and gagged, that had been bound together in pairs. Others were frozen in alien or unimaginable positions and the numbers were beyond the possibility of comprehension. There were pyres of dead washed up on the embankment and along white spots of sand, and where the wind blew through the high reeds far back from the shoreline more dead lay in heaps.
Yet it was the silence. The silence there bore a horrific gravity. For this was a cemetery of barbaric measures, a graveyard to vengeance and hatred. These dead had been cast into the unknown, beyond grief and mourning.
On the raft, none dared speak. They just worked the oars and the helm and they looked. And looked.
The priest went and sat on the crate. The current pulled them steadily downriver. There were gulls along the shore. White and beautiful. The dead to them were nothing. Just a momentary place to roost, an obstacle to get around. The priest began to speak. To no one, to anyone, to himself:
“How often does one hear or say . . . They are dangerous people . . . They are tribal and cannot be trusted . . . Their food and ways are foul . . . They are ignorant . . . They mean to steal our world . . . They mean to have us gone from the earth . . . They cheat and lie . . . They are criminal . . . They will defile that which is dear . . . The true god does not reside within their souls . . . They are violent . . .” He paused, “Did such beliefs cause all of this? No . . . they did not. All men are consumed with finding someone else culpable for their own pathetic state of affairs. All men look for someone to blame for their own despair. Someone they can rain down hate and violence on, to exorcise that which has them chained. I know. In the church I killed the soldier . . . revealing how I, too, am capable of all this we see. And the man most vulnerable creating all this, is the man who believes he is not capable of this at all. Who only sees his cause as always right and just.” He paused again. “I was taught . . . the path of logic, is the path of folly. Life cannot be reconciled, only recognized. I did not believe it, till I became it.”
They coursed down through a wild valley. The river there narrow, the current quick. The shore was marsh with silty water and tall reeds that bent like surrey whips in an unceasing wind. Down the length of that passage those reeds made a bristly and undulating music that covered the sound of a propeller, till it swept forth from a pass in the scrubby foothills the river wound through.
They barely had time to arm themselves. John Lourdes passed his shotgun to the priest as he commanded the guide, “Tell him. At all costs. The plane must be brought down.”
They managed to get off a first volley. There were tiny bursts of smoke along the fuselage as the plane made a run overhead. The strains on the struts and tension wires along the wings from the wind caused it to shudder and roll and the first grenade the pilot flung exploded on the embankment and sent up an umbrella of silt and shorn reeds. The aeroplane swooped in for another pass, but this time at a sharp angle to the river to minimize the effect of the wind. It was late noon, the sun shone brightly off the river. John Lourdes had taken from his satchel the flare gun and loaded it.
The plane rattled violently as it rushed over. This time the grenade flung must have been a tin with a rope timer because it
blew in the air above the raft, raining down metal screws and nails that raked the deck.
The horses had begun to kick at their paltry stalls. One of the boys took to praying out loud; the other abandoned his oar. The raft started to pull hard to port, and the helmsman got to his knees to hold tight to the rudder as best he could.
The pilot proceeded to come in so low the reeds beneath flattened out. On board the men were putting up a wall of gunfire. Shells caromed off the deck. John Lourdes rested the flare gun on the stall to keep it steady it as the kalek pitched and turned.
The flare he fired off, whistled through the wings and hit the fuselage then the tailplane, and burst. There were sparks around the cockpit and the tail shimmied. The plane swerved forcing the pilot to work the lifts to keep from crashing. But even as the shadow of the warplane reeled away the pilot managed another grenade. It came toward the raft with deadly accuracy and detonated just above the waterline beside the boy still at the oar.
Bits of tin and metal tore into his body; the concussion threw him across the deck. Part of the oar impaled itself in the gunwale. The boy lay on the lashings as the priest kneeled over him. Grenade fragments had gone through his robe and flesh like hot irons, and there came from him one soundless breath as he died.
John Lourdes grabbed the other boy and tried to get him back to the one oar left. He shook and pleaded with him as Zacharias could not brace against the current alone.
“Efendi . . .” the guide was wrapping a cloth around his badly burned and wounded arm. “Fire!”
There was a trailing of gray streamer upon the sky. The tailplane was smoking. The pilot was in a long bank sighting up for another run.
The boy was held to the oar till he calmed enough to understand his fate at that moment. The pilot was turning toward the river. John Lourdes reloaded his flare gun. The priest had run out of ammunition. The guide rested his rifle in the crease of his bandaged arm as he chambered more rounds.