by Susan Daitch
One group of goats and sheep clustered around a clump of bushes. That wasn’t unusual in this kind of heat, but there was something desperate about this tight huddle. I went to take a closer look. The reason the animals wouldn’t budge soon became obvious, but the cause was like nothing I’d ever seen before. They were crowded near a crack in the ground from which cold air blew out as if someone had left an enormous underground air conditioner on high, facing straight up into the desert. It was like when you walk past an abandoned building and cold air blasts out onto the sidewalk. I went closer to the edge of the crevice, feeling the cool breeze on my face, when the ground suddenly gave way. I fell maybe fifteen feet, landing on a pile of sand.
How I survived the fall with no broken bones remains a mystery to me to this day. I’d fallen through what must have been the roof of some kind of structure, and just missed crashing into a dozen massive clay jars. There were instances in the past of archaeologists stumbling, falling into sites entirely by accident, like cartoon characters, legs bicycling in air, but instead of turning into a peelable pancake upon landing, they find treasures of Incans or Chaldeans and live to be photographed with their arms around totem and taboo. Standing with difficulty, I gasped as I looked around. Friezes like sandstone filmstrips and very life-like statuary ran the length of the room. Areas where the sand hadn’t drifted over revealed a checkerboard marble floor littered with bits and pieces: small oil lamps, silver coins, flint tools, pieces of colored glass. Had Romans been here? There were even a couple of glazed vessels. Did Crusaders make it this far?
I took a brush from my backpack and whisked millennia of dust from an oil flask. Because of erosion and recent earthquake activity the earth had, after keeping its secrets for thousands of years, kindly shifted, and in the hours that followed, I dusted layers of dirt and sand from a variety of objects, writing notes, quickly cataloging while the sun was high and light fell into the chamber. But eventually the shadows grew longer and a problem presented itself. It would soon be night, the temperature would drop, and I would be stuck on an underground island with no way out, destined to die of hypothermia in the desert. If I couldn’t get back to the twentieth century, the waters would close over my tracks, as if I’d never existed. My flashlight hadn’t been smashed in the fall. I flipped it on and turned its beam down one corridor selected at random. There were passages leading every which way. How was I to get out? No one would survive long in this hole. There were hazards associated with staying in one place and dangers of getting lost in what might be miles of underground corridors that had once been streets.
A phantom Ruth, eager to be photographed with me when news crews arrived on site, who stood by my side at awards dinners, vanished, laughing in a haze of Rambug and snake parts. No, my remains would lie in a heap beside an ashlar to be found, if I was lucky, before the earth collides with the sun. I decided to keep moving.
Down a short stairway, around a corner: mosaics of rams, red calves, fish with golden scales, gilt frescoes worthy of Nero’s palace. High above me the beam of my flashlight illuminated a second bestiary, and among the winged serpents and central sphinx was a creature with the body of a bird, head of a lion, something in its talons that had been worn away.
I scraped dirt from a fresco with the edge of a small spade and then leaned against a lever or pipe of some kind that was flush against a wall. A low gurgling sound could be heard coming from somewhere behind the tile, and suddenly I was drenched by a rush of water, water that hadn’t been turned on in over two thousand years. It was fresh and cold and poured over my head, soaking my shirt and all my equipment. A shock at first, where had the water come from? I was in the middle of a desert. Then the ancient spigot made sense. Mesopotamians developed irrigation, using a series of underground quanat channels and kariz, a network of smaller canals that relied on gravity to transport water, the sources being higher than the water’s destination. The citizens of this place took it one step further by inventing plumbing.
The next hall I entered appeared to have been part of an arsenal. The implements resembled an armory of the comic book heroes my younger Flatbush Avenue self had collected and could have spent an eternity with these objects, making connections, inventing territories, superpowers, and battles. One object resembled the golden trident from Batman’s Blue Devil, a demonic-looking set of mace clubs rivaled those of Hawkman from Justice League, a set of large, formidable hammers reminiscent of Steel’s (from Superman) weapon of choice, and laid against a mottled wall were dozens of notched shields, similar to those used by the Mystery Man, Guardian of Metropolis.
Another series of open passageways led out from the armory, and eventually I came to what must have been a bath house. A mosaic of a bull balanced on the back of a giant fish glittered at the bottom of a pool. The earth was balanced on the horns of the bull, a reference to the Persian myth that explained earthquakes. When the bull grows tired, or in another version when humans overburden the earth with atrocities, the bull shifts the earth from one horn to the other. You would think the result of this action would be that, pierced by the horn, some kind a giant sink hole would dimple the Pacific or Sahara, but the answer is no. Not only did the movement of the bull produce seismic activity, but there were augurers who were called on to predict tremors and seemed to know when the bull had had enough of man’s stupidity.
I passed through the nymphaeum, colonnaded porticos, elaborately carved stone structures, square water storage tanks, stucco houses, all populated by skeletons. While imperial powers engaged in skullduggery and building massive weapons, inconsequential citizens left behind readable footprints, just before they were trapped by some kind of Pompeian catastrophe, or a current of naturally occurring nerve gas floated over the city long before Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot in Sarajevo. Those who stayed behind succumbed: inhale and you sleep forever. This inner part of the metropolis seemed pretty much intact.
The path began to slant downhill, and I had a sense I was approaching the walls of the city, or at least one part of the outer battlements.
At the edge of the city guards posted in towers see the horizon blur and unravel: horsemen, not traders, they decide, traveling in hordes, not caravans. Those on the edge have time to flee. There are no skeletons here. With catastrophe looming, sentries who’d been captured from as far away as Baghdad and Amman escape through the maze and return to their native countries. A nervous jeweler puts emerald chips in his shoes, packs only his chisels and flees in the middle of the night. His neighbor, a perfumer, fills his pockets with vials of attar, saffron, lotus powder, bitter almond oil, and chunks of resin. These scents will always remind him of the city. Along with a mapmaker and his five children, an oil merchant carrying a sack of olive stones, a coppersmith who walks out empty handed, the residents of the outer ring of the city who see and hear more, all depart taking whatever they imagine they’ll need for their new lives. Even if the new lives are empty promises, sketchy at best, and the relics are only to be found scattered around the landscapes after their deaths, no one knows this yet. Those in the center go about their business as if the exodus from the periphery was carried out by delusionals only. They drink their coffee and believe the age of cataclysm is blissfully over. They had no language to fear a Pearl Harbor–like event, so they stayed.
Another path led me in a C-curve from the periphery to the center of the city. Increasingly narrow streets led to an airy piazza, water spewing from the mouths of marble lions and serpents, men and winged sphinxes. Running water, whether dripping from a cornice or gurgling from a fountain, was the only sound in the city; even my footfalls were muffled. I entered one house to find ancient bags of rice, spices, lumps of gum resin, a small ivory camel, and more human bones. As I walked deeper into the phantom city the semi-paved streets began to go uphill, turning into terraces. What would Ruth have done here? Hum the hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone, and not worry about what couldn’t be known for cer
tain.
Climbing up narrow earthen steps to rooftops, I found storage jars used for wine and oil, a long silver ewer with a spout in the shape of a cheetah. Though not really tamable and now practically extinct, Asiatic cheetahs were used like hunting dogs for chasing wild sheep. People ate on their rooftops, a practice continued by Iranians during Passover. I picked up a thin, battered, wheel-shaped object that crumbled in my hands. Hopping from roof to roof humming the old Mickey Katz song Pesach in Portugal, which turned into Pesach in Peshawar, I must have passed out in some kind of delirium. When I came to under the remains of an archway, I looked ahead to see the city growing more illuminated, as if someone had flipped a giant switch.
A coruscating light seemed to be coming from somewhere, and according to my watch it was now morning on the surface. Walking in the direction of what might have been the source of the sunlight, I turned a corner to find a gap in the earth overhead. The opening was similar to the one I’d fallen through, but it was too far overhead to reach. I was now in an oblong yard, perhaps what might have been some kind of zoo. Elephant, camel, peacock skeletons lay scattered around. I leaned against a small tree that received enough light to grow underground. An elephant rib cage arched overhead a few feet from the tree. If I could climb the bones I might be able to reach a series of roots that threaded the opening and, swinging from those like a subterranean Tarzan, pull myself back out to the earth’s surface.
The elephant’s bones snapped under me. He was old and brittle, not a ladder. I moved some stones to buttress the remaining ribs and tried again. This time I was able to jump from the topmost rib to one of the dangling roots but my hands slipped off it, and once again I landed on my butt. I shouted. Nothing. A beady-eyed goat peered over the edge of the hole, then looked away. I lay on the floor and balanced hunger versus thirst, which should I give in to? I had a handful of salty pistachio nuts in a pocket, but the fountains were nowhere near my present location. Sunlight cast shadows of ancient animal skeletons on the walls. Turning my head I saw the remains of a human body that had not been reduced to a skeleton. Anyone could have fallen into the hidden city. I took a closer look at him. The man was wearing the long shirt, narrow trousers, shawl and turban of a Baluchi tribesman, and glasses still remained hooked to shriveled slices of ear. Due to the dry underground air he hadn’t been reduced to bone, but it was difficult to say what color his skin had been. I took off his glasses and looked at the frames. The engraving on the ear piece was barely legible, but the lettering read Gunst-Optiker, Rosenthalerstrasse, Berlin. Clutched in his hand was what at first looked like a phoenix trampling an antelope. Its human-like head sprouted big ears and horns, sign of its divinity. The creature’s wings were tipped with human heads, mouths frozen mid-roar. I rummaged through his pockets and found, among other things, a visa for Ramin Kosari and a leather-covered metal cylinder, about the shape of a child’s kaleidoscope but larger. I put it in my bag, then pried the phoenix out of his fingers and took that, too. I had read the name Ramin Kosari before. He was the Nieumachers’ guide. His remains were well preserved. He had no broken bones and must have become trapped in the city. I had found Suolucidir.
Twilight approaching, I had about thirty minutes of sunlight left, and then I would be spending the night, if not all the nights that were left to me on earth, with the body and the remains of an unknown number of animals. I leaned against the wall, took a deep breath, then turned so my nose faced the cliff, and tried again. The rocky surface was cracked here and there, enough for tenuous footholds, but I was climbing blind. I felt with my feet as if they were hands and the face of the wall were Braille. Halfway up, I fell again, so I shifted to a section of the cliff I could still see, where more plants grew out of the stone. If desert plants had taken root, then there were cracks in the façade, enough for foot and hand holds — possibly. A stem or stalk meant a root system had been slowly working to crumble stone. As I made my way up I felt for green bits and pieces I could no longer see. Finally, breathing hard, mouth full of dust and pistachios, I managed to shimmy and haul myself out of the city. More than forty-eight hours after my initial fall, I found myself lying on the surface of the earth back in the twentieth century somewhere in the middle of another small herd of goats. They were huddled near another crack in the earth enjoying the cool air that blasted from it, oblivious to the city and its secrets that slept just under their hooves.
In Persia, as in Egypt, the distribution of water was precisely regulated; hourglasses were used to measure the length of time the farmers utilized the water and a system of sluices made it possible to gauge the volume of the water. Leo Africanus speaks of the measuring clocks that operated by water: “When they are empty the watering period is over.” Mention is also made of skilled personnel and even teams of divers.
A History of Technology and Invention, Islam and Byzantium
Gaston Wiet, 1962
THE ZAFAR INSTITUTE WIRED MORE money. Working feverishly with the help of a local crew, the excavation began. For months I’d walked this territory, shovel clanging, while only a few inches under my footsteps rested the capitals, two bulls set back to back, of slender Persian columns, thinner and more fluted than Greek, of the great city of Suolucidir. I was sure this was it. The supports of this vast honey-combed metropolis were buried all over the landscape, their bell-shaped bases hidden intact deep within the earth. The palace at its center with its colonnaded porticos was set on a high terrace approached by a double flight of stairs. The rest of the city spiraled out from this locus. During the excavation we learned my hypothesis was right: the Suolucidiris defended their city by constructing a series of labyrinths, switchbacks, and elbow turns more circuitous than even those imagined to exist in the Burnt City to the north. I tried to get my crew to map out as much of it as possible and as quickly as possible. I attempted to find the thread of the path that led me to the underground zoo and the body of Ramin Kosari, but in the time left to me, the route was never successfully retraced, and no twentieth-century remains were discovered.
The English traveler Laurence Oliphant measured what he claimed were the ruins of an ancient synagogue at Deir Aziz in Go-lan in 1885. Oliphant was said to have been an unstable mystic, and his claim was all but forgotten. Nearly one hundred years later a contemporary archaeologist found the site again, and his measurements were identical within a few inches. Mad Oliphant was right all along. Some people anticipate what they’ll find, and so are blind to certain kinds of discoveries that contradict their expectations, but I believed the Nieumachers, and I was only following the measurements they’d laid out when no one had believed them either.
The city proved to be enormous. Around every turn lay some other spectacle; the friezes and statuary I saw before me the day I fell through the earth were only the beginning. Unfortunately, it was also the end.
Only the pen of a Macauley or the brush of a Vereschagin could adequately portray the rapidly shifting scenes attending the downfall of this ancient nation — scenes in which two powerful and presumably enlightened Christian countries played fast and loose with truth, honor, decency and law, one at least, hesitating not even the most barbarous cruelties to accomplish its political designs and to put Persia beyond hope of self-regeneration.
W. Morgan Shuster, The Strangling of Persia
Washington, D.C., April 30, 1912
ON NOVEMBER 4, 1979, HOSTAGES were taken in the American embassy in Tehran. They demanded that the Shah, who was in Egypt receiving treatment for cancer, be returned to Iran to stand trial. American flags and effigies of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (though the exact physical template used by his Savile Row tailors remained untouched) were set on fire, and since the United States had supported the Shah, this shouldn’t have really come as a surprise to anyone. Why were my co-nationalists so shocked and so angry? Even children wrote anti-American messages on the embassy walls and elsewhere. By July 1980 diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States had deteriorated. The Ayatollah Khomeini, who re
turned from exile in Paris to take over once the Shah was deposed, turned out to be, in his own way, just as brutal as his predecessor. Even in my remote corner of the country, individuals weren’t invisible to the long arm of whoever was in power in the capital, and further excavation was becoming increasingly difficult, as people lived in fear of the army, the Revolutionary Guard, Khomeini’s Basiji, and others I couldn’t identify. Just as the door to Suolucidir creaked open after being locked and bolted for thousands of years, it was swinging shut again.
In Zahedan, where every market stall had had to post a picture of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, suddenly all those portraits, big and small, were reduced to ashes and smoke. Late at night, during an insomniac’s ramble, I saw a lone orange fire, a solitary kebab man at the end of my street, enveloped by the smell of grilled lamb and advieh, a spice mixture of cumin, cardamom, ginger, and rose petals. A Kurd, perhaps, he wore a black-and-white-checkered jamdani around his head. Leaning against a high wall of sun-dried brick, a second man laid out branches of dates, oranges, and bundles of henna leaves, and beside him another merchant polished his array of samovars, fluted and pinch-waisted; elongated passersby were reflected many times over in the silver and brass surfaces. Another man set up a line of narghile, coppery, engraved, silver and glass-bowled. The kebabwala threw a scrap to a dog.
I was working deep in the Suolucidir site when I heard someone yelling for me to hurry back to the entrance. We had to leave quickly. Soldiers were coming. The yelling got louder, more frantic. No militia of any kind had visited the city before, or at least not for thousands of years, and it was safe to assume these men weren’t here for a friendly field trip. The shouting grew louder, I heard the sound of jeeps pulling up to the edge of the site, and running through the labyrinth as best I remembered it, I emerged to see soldiers herding some of the excavators into trucks while others were being questioned. I was the only American, but I no longer had my passport.