The 13th Tablet (8 page)

As the road twisted to the right, a group of men hard at work appeared in the afternoon sun. Digging like this would have been unthinkable during the summer but it was winter and the temperature was bearable, even in the early afternoon. The men were eager to find the water source and Mina thought that they would probably have braved the summer's dazzling heat with just the same dedication. Jack looked up and noticed two figures approaching. He stopped what he was doing and walked towards them.

Despite his jeans and shirt being coated in dirt, he had the same rugged and handsome air about him as he had at their first meeting in the more rarefied confines of the university. She couldn't help but notice his thick brown hair and his firm chest, shoulders and arms, all seemingly carved out of wood. His lack of pretension and unpretentious walk made him all the more attractive. He was definitely the strong, silent type. With every step he took towards them, Mina felt her heart beating faster.

‘Mina, I'm so happy you could make it,' he said, looking straight at her with his piercing blue eyes. ‘Why didn't you drive up here?'

‘My car broke down in the village,' she replied, slightly embarrassed.

‘Man, you must be exhausted!' He turned to his sidekick, ‘Muhad, where's the Prof? Did you leave him in the village so you could keep Mina to yourself?'

Muhad blushed and dropped his head. Mina struggled not to burst out laughing. ‘The professor couldn't make it, but I'm sure he's as anxious as me and young Muhad here to see the result of your work.'

Muhad looked up at Mina and gave her a large, toothy grin.

‘You drove to the village alone? That was really dangerous,' Jack said to Mina, trying not to seem too concerned.

‘I said I was coming,' she answered, ‘So I came'.

Mina wasn't quite sure, but she thought that Jack did not seem overly disappointed about Almeini's absence.

‘Right!' he replied quickly in an effort to change the subject. ‘Let's join the workers. We've almost cracked it!'

When they reached the elevated spot where the men had been digging, Mina could feel the expectation in the air. She stood among them for what seemed an eternity, with little Muhad jumping around the trench. The men seemed so hopeful and absolutely focused on what they were doing. Suddenly, in the settled stillness of the air, they heard a gurgling sound, then a trickle of muddy water appeared.

Great cries of ‘Allahuakbar!' went up and the workers yelled with joy. They had found the water pocket. Some were crying, others laughing madly. Jack was running left and right shouting orders to the various workers. He was smiling broadly, but had not lost his head: they needed to make sure that the water was channelled immediately, and he was already calculating the potential supply to the village from the flow of the water. The men got back to work with renewed vigour.

After a while, covered in mud, Jack waved to Mina and smiled. She smiled back. There was a feeling of elation in the air, a sense of easiness. Here in the middle of nowhere, in the most basic conditions, they had witnessed and shared undiluted joy. ‘Water gushing from the bowels of the desert …It's like a tale from the thousand and one nights,' thought Mina.

Hassan was on his way back to the small flat he shared with his mother, more light-hearted than he had been in months. Mina believed in him, valued his opinion and had confided in him. He would tell his mother to stop worrying about him, that he would make amends and resume his studies. He was in such a dreamy state he did not see the two men waiting in the side alley beside his mother's block of flats. They grabbed him as he passed by and flung him into the alley. A huge man punched Hassan hard behind the ear and he was knocked off balance. The man held him against the wall, while his skinny partner took out a flick knife.

‘You are two days late.'

‘I'm sorry! I was going to pay you two days ago, but I was not paid by my boss. I'll have it soon.'

The huge man punched him again, hard.

‘You were warned. Three weeks, not one day more,' he said, and brought the knife up to Hassan's throat.

‘Please!'

The skinny thug winked at the huge man and punched Hassan full in the face. His nose broke and blood gushed down his face.

‘I can get the money! In two days, I'll have the money,' begged Hassan.

‘How's that?' asked the thug.

‘My boss owes me money. I'll explain the situation to him. Two days. Please!' The man glared at him, hesitating over what to do next.

‘Right. You know what two extra days means?'

Hassan nodded.

‘We add ten percent to the total.'

Hassan nodded again.

‘You have two days. If you don't have the money then, we will be visiting your mother.'

They left him bleeding in the alley. Hassan shivered on the ground, curled up in pain. There was no other way out. He would have to contact Bibuni and tell him about Mina's tablet.

 

Chapter 7

 

December 4th, 2004. Evening

 

 

 

Mina sat on a flat rock, watching the villagers at work, taking photographs and writing in her diary. The sun had almost dipped below the horizon. She felt conflicted; she loved this beautiful country but her relationship with it was uneasy. ‘Probably like any second-generation immigrant returning to their country of origin,' she thought.

 

She felt angry when she observed dispossessed men and women walking by her in the bombed streets. There were so many people with makeshift houses, jobs and lives. Although she had not seen any bombings or gunfights, the bullet holes in every other building said it all. A sense of utter ruin was everywhere. It literally hung in the air, burnishing the whole country with an intense sadness.

On the other hand, she knew perfectly well that road-side bombings and kidnappings were carried out by terrorists. It was as if the US had stumbled into a hornet's nest, between the Kurdish separatists who used the war to further their own agenda against the Turkish government and the Christian Armenians who probably wondered how long they could survive in an increasing ‘Muslim versus the West' conflict. People of various denominations and sects fought each other constantly since the end of Saddam's reign.

Those who had been oppressed under Saddam's regime, longed to rise stronger after their lengthy ordeal. After Saddam, the power vacuum had been quickly filled by the US, but it could not last. America would have to leave soon, before the people's frustration and resentment turned to uncontrollable anger.

Yet, the presence of American troops in Iraq did not deserve to be compared to the tyranny of living decades under Saddam Hussein. Mina's parents had left Iraq long before the first Gulf War in 1989 but she remembered her father saying at the time, ‘Bush is calling for the Iraqi people to rebel against Saddam, but he won't step in to get rid of him. Bush is no idiot, he won't get involved in internal Iraqi politics because he's got no-one up his sleeve to replace a tyrant. Iraq is not ready for democracy, not as we experience it here. Tribalism, corruption and internal wars cannot be dealt with through formal debate.'

‘Not yet', thought Mina, ‘Not yet'. She really hoped that things would improve sometime soon.

 

The heat had gone, and there was a slight chill in the air. It was time to return to the village. Jack gathered his maps and various calculation sheets and then started rounding up the villagers. They all looked tired but happy after a rewarding day's work. Jack joined Mina and walked by her side, silent but contented.

‘Are you satisfied with the amount of water at the village's disposal? Will it be enough to supply everyone?' she asked him.

‘Hopefully. I still have to make further calculations when I return to the village. I'm so pleased we found this water pocket, but I'm slightly worried about the distance from the village and its altitude: as you know, in a
qanat
the water flows under its own gravity. I really hope it works. I told you how we couldn't set up a water system all the way to the Tigrus, but what's worse is that there is no point connecting our water pipes to the Mosul water system'.

‘Why is that?' she asked, genuinely interested.

‘Two reasons. The first is that during the summer, there is hardly any water in the water network anyway, so people tend to use water-pumps.'

‘And the second?'

‘Purifying and sterilizing the water would cost too much.'

‘I hadn't realised the situation was that bad in Mosul.'

‘God yeah. The pipes are at a lower level than the groundwater. The pipelines are fractured and lots of stuff has got into them that shouldn't be there. You can't imagine the amount of germs and infectious diseases that have appeared in Mosul in recent years.'

‘That's a bleak image of Mosul,' she replied.

‘Yeah. Listen, as you are staying overnight in the village—'

‘Am I?' she asked with a raised eyebrow.

‘Well… yeah. Your car's broken. I've lent my jeep to a friend in the next village and no taxis will drive outside Mosul at this time of night. It's too dangerous.'

‘It's just that I didn't plan…' she started.

‘Oh I'm sure Muhad's mother will lend you everything you need. You can stay with them.'

He stuck his hands in his pockets and mumbled ‘I'd invite you to stay at my place, but everything is very traditional out here and unmarried men and women simply don't sleep under the same roof.'

‘I know. It's much better like that,' she replied.

They walked on in silence. After a while Jack cleared his throat, ‘As I was saying earlier, I won't be working tonight as you are here, and I think we should join the villagers for a small feast they've organised to commemorate this special day'.

‘That would be wonderful.'

They continued to walk side by side, slightly self conscious and all too aware of their proximity. When they finally arrived at the village, the women were crying out the joyful and guttural sound which one hears all across the Middle East, at weddings or occasions of great mirth. A magnificent fire, set up near the biggest house, was blazing up to the stars. The men and children sat down on thick woollen blankets, while the women cooked and brought food. There was laughter, chattering and loud calls for more food. All of it was almost drowned by the sound of traditional Arabic music. Someone had brought a stereo cassette tape player. Jack and Mina were guests of honour and were seated on cushions laid out on the richly-patterned rugs. Mina was beaming with pleasure.

The music was turned down a little as an old woman walked towards the fire, holding something wet wrapped in a white cotton cloth. She opened the cloth ceremoniously and brought out a fish. She then sliced off the fish's head and tossed it into the fire all the time muttering words in some long forgotten language. The men clapped and the women cried out. The old woman walked back slowly, and vanished into one of the neighbouring houses. The music came back on again, as though the scene had never taken place.

‘I've never seen anything like it,' said Mina.

‘Neither have I. I was hoping you might be able to tell me more about it,' replied Jack, looking quite surprised.

‘Not really. Maybe it's an old ritual which has passed down through the ages. The old name of the capital of this region is Nineveh, the city of the goddess Nina.'

‘And?'

‘She's the goddess of fish. The cuneiform symbol for Nineveh is a fish pictogram.' Jack seemed at a loss, so Mina added, ‘cuneiform, you know, the most ancient and common writing form in this part of the world'.

‘I've heard of cuneiform. Tell me more,' he said, leaning back on one elbow to look at her.

‘The word comes from the Latin
cunei
for wedges, as the writing takes the shape of permutations of wedges or nails in soft clay tablets or inscribed on stone.'

‘Wow. That was a pretty clear and concise explanation. Do you speak like that to your students?'

She laughed and thought of friends back home, anthropologists who would have killed to witness the fish sacrifice scene. She imagined how they'd be writing theories on the ‘anthropology of fish', fighting epic scholarly battles over the bones of an ephemeral custom.

She looked up at the stars and sighed, ‘I'd love some wine right now.'

‘Yup. So would I, but you won't get any of it here!' She knew as much, but it was still disappointing.

‘Wait a second, you Christian heathen. I've got an idea. Stay put. I think I have a bottle in my house. You pinch two glasses, and meet me at your car in ten minutes'.

He walked off, chatting with a few villagers on the way, thanking them for their hard labour all day. She waited a few more minutes before casually picking up two glasses and then sauntering off in the direction of her car. Jack was already there, hiding a bottle of wine under his jacket and carrying a shawl. ‘You don't propose we sit in my car and hope no-one notices us?' she asked.