He leaves the world he knows. He leaves Africa and keeps his head down, hiding his face to weep in his tiny cabin on-board the Enterprise, which sails under the British flag and is taking him to Jerusalem. Haile Selassie has left his country and does not know if he will ever see it again. He has lost the war, but far more than that: he has been humiliated before the community of nations. No one came to help him. He is the first king of kings to leave his country rather than die on the battlefield, and he does not know whether this means that as a sovereign he is braver or more cowardly than his predecessors. His head is spinning. His stomach is in a knot. The coast is receding behind him and with it his authority and his hopes. From now on he will be a deposed king, a king in exile. Italy is celebrating her victory. At this very moment the streets of Addis Ababa are probably being ransacked. He knows there must be chaos, and fear. There will be shooting, and bodies dragged along the ground. Pillaging, killing, settling scores in the cowardice of night. Ethiopia no longer has an emperor. Ethiopia is going mad. And so he too seems to be engulfed by night, the night of exile, and cold, and evenings of despondency where not a single word can bring comfort. The world has suddenly closed all around him, and he is nothing but a little man, anxious to know when it will be given to him to see his country again, and whether that day he will still have the strength to stand on his legs.
She returns to her desk, sits down, and weeps. She thinks about all the artifacts: the ones that will be rescued, the ones that have already been destroyed, the ones that will disappear for years then show up at an auction in London or Singapore. She thinks again of Paul-Émile Botta, and how he discovered Dur-Sharrukin. Of everything that was unearthed, catalogued, packed in crates. First by Botta himself, then by his successor, Victor Place. Entire shipments removed from oblivion, from the guts of the earth, that were meant to be sent to the galleries at the Louvre. She thinks in particular of the shipment in 1855. Two hundred and thirty-five crates floating down the Tigris on their way to Baghdad. But the convoy was attacked, and the crates sank to the bottom of the river. Only twenty-six were recovered. Two hundred and nine are still there in the gray waters of the Tigris, unearthed from oblivion for a short while, only to return to it almost at once . . . She thinks about all of this. A struggle that seems so pointless, to save works of art while all around her the world is going up in flames, tearing itself apart; her struggle is bound to fail, because all she is trying to do is snatch something from the void that is doomed to return to it. Then her thoughts turn to Assem, and the Bes statue she gave him. Where is he now? Dare she imagine that when he found the statue on leaving Zurich, he carefully took it out and caressed it as if he were caressing the sacred dimension of time? Dare she imagine he has left for Lebanon swearing to himself he’ll go back to the statue once he’s accomplished his mission? Dare she imagine that he is in a car in Beirut, being driven toward danger? That he might be thinking about her the way she is thinking about him? She looks at the Sumerian earrings, touches them, tries to picture the woman who first wore them, the long dizzying thread that joins her, today, in this city in chaos, to the faraway inhabitant of Dur-Sharrukin, and she knows that these items are looking at them the way Bes, the dwarf god, is now looking at the man she has loved, wherever he might be, and is traveling with him into that danger.
He gets into the car. From the time of his meeting in Zurich with Auguste and Dan Kovac, everything has been leading here: to this moment when he gets into the back of this car, voluntarily placing his life in the hands of these men and women he does not know and who are now looking at him warily. One of them, with Latin American features, searches him, brusquely lifting his shirttail to check he has nothing in his belt. It all happens very quickly. The words have gone. No one speaks. In the front, next to the driver, a young Arab woman sometimes turns around to make sure he is really there. The car pulls away. He is not frightened. He has done this so many times. But he feels as if he is leaving a known world, the world of missions, targeted killings, and secret operations, to immerse himself in another realm. He feels as if he is going deep into a barbarian territory, leaving the torches of the last camp to flicker behind him, while the thick silence of an animal world surrounds him altogether.
3Air-to-surface missile.
V
AL-JNAH STREET
They did not blindfold him. No one is speaking. He looks at them, furtively: the young woman in front of him must be Maria Casales, the Colombian. She has a tattoo on her forearm: a black five-branched cross. The man on his left, the one who searched him, must be Hassan Bahan. He remembers a photograph Dan Kovac showed him in the café in Zurich. He doesn’t recognize the others. “Where are we going?” he asks, in Arabic. The driver looks at him through the rearview mirror. A long moment goes by before anyone answers, then finally the driver says, “Job is waiting for you.” The car heads south, driving through Chiyah. He knows that the further south they go, the greater the danger for him. The Shi’ite neighborhood of Haret Hreik is not far from here. Is that where they’re taking him? The car keeps going, and evening falls over Beirut. He can smell the sweat of the man who is on his right. Their arms are touching. Do they know who he is? Did Job himself figure it out? And if so, did he tell them? They don’t seem tense. Suddenly the Colombian woman turns around and says in English with a strong Latino accent: “When he talks . . . You’ll see . . . ” and her eyes are shining. She says this with a childlike delight, as if she is eager for his sake, envious that he is about to meet Job for the first time. What unites them, these men and women with such different backgrounds? Former members of the FARC, Palestinian militants. Egyptian revolutionaries, Syrians who have fled the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Is it the lure of money? Their own little trafficking? The pleasure of ruling, like this, in a city where their Kalashnikovs serve as both deed of title and passport? The car slows down, leaves the major artery they were on. To the left he can see a billboard. “Welcome to Haret Hreik.” Is the fact it is written in English meant to be ironic? What a strange city . . . He is about to plunge into the heart of the Shi’ite neighborhood, “Hezbollah-land” as they call it. How has an American with a little troop of mercenaries from all over the planet managed to gain a foothold in the preserve of Hezbollah?
Kalafgan is far away. This is a new mission. He has reintegrated SEAL Team Six and once again he is Sullivan Sicoh, squeezed into a helicopter as it flies through the night toward danger. Like so often in his life up to now. The wounds have been erased. He is among his own kind, and nothing else matters. There is no fear, in the helicopter. Concentration, yes. Every man in the unit is focused on himself, automatically checking his equipment, tightening the helmet strap one more time or making sure the infrared sight is working, all gestures that allow him to empty his mind, to take some distance from the outside world. They were given one final briefing just before they took off, to be informed of their target. Then they were divided into two helicopters and now they are headed straight for Abbottabad. They are nothing but bodies, the juddering of the aircraft, on their way to Pakistan. Once they reach the scene of the action, they will seize a house whose layout they know by heart. They’ll have to be quick. There will be women and children. Bodyguards, and the probability of gunfights. Anything is possible. They have been prepared for every eventuality. And Sullivan Sicoh rehearses these automatic gestures, impatient, like all the men around him, to jump out into the night.
The streets are poorly lit. A tangle of electric wires forms an arbor of black lianas across the main roads. “Have you known him for long?” Assem asks the woman.
“You don’t need to have met him often to have known him for a long time,” she replies, with a strange smile.
There is admiration in her voice. Does she know that Job is a former member of SEAL Team Six? Does she know that when she belonged to the FARC, if anyone had asked Sullivan Sicoh to plant a bullet in her brain, he would have done it without flinching, because that was his jo
b: to eliminate the enemies of the United States of America? She cannot not know it. What is it that unites them, then, this woman and all the others in the car? He looks at them. These people here are bound to paint a particular portrait of the man he is about to meet. How has Job managed to bring together such a disparate group of people?
They drive through Haret Hreik. More slowly, now. The man on the left, the Palestinian, has taken out a 9mm and is holding it squeezed between his knees. They are not in home territory here. They are tolerated. But they know very well that the neighborhood can close over them, like concrete jaws, depending on political arrangements, alliances, and collapses of alliances.
Hannibal knows—despite the Romans’ huge numerical advantage, despite his own soldiers’ fatigue—that he is about to live through one of those moments that constitute History. Beneath the helmets and the leather armor they are sweating profusely. The sun pounds down on the colors and seems to cause the trees to tremble. In the distance the sea is motionless. Not a breath of air. The ground itself is hot, and the lizards, probably sensing the unusual drumming of tens of thousands of footsteps, have slipped beneath the rocks and stopped moving. He looks at the enemy lines: the Romans must be at least twice as numerous. Every day they alternate command. Today it is Varro who is holding the standard. That changes nothing. They still fight in the same manner: putting the young recruits in front so they will not be tempted to run away, and the veterans to the rear. Today everything will be different. He knows that if he wants to beat Rome he will have to reverse the normal order of things, the way Alexander did with Darius, at Issus or Gaugamela. He has to be crazy. Otherwise, he will be fighting one battle after the other—some he will win, others he will lose—and in the end, the forces will counterbalance each other. He has to risk more than that. So he orders for the front line to be extended. The Romans must be watching his maneuver. “More,” he says. And his own lieutenants begin to worry: if they stretch it too far, the front line could break, and that would lead to defeat. Indeed. It’s a risk he has to take. But he orders to stretch it still further. And the line where the Carthaginians are positioned is now much longer than the Romans’, but it is also thinner and more fragile. Varro smiles. He must be thinking that Hannibal is trying to make up for the fact he is outnumbered. “The heavy cavalry will charge the center, first,” he says. “We have to break up their line.” And he never doubts that this is what will happen. He knows the Romans are more numerous. He assumes that it is to offset this disadvantage that Hannibal is stretching his line out as far as he can. He cannot see the genius behind the maneuver because he cannot see the madness. He is lending his own thoughts to Hannibal, the calculations he would have made, had he been in his place. Reason dictates the Carthaginians should not envisage any other plan than to try to confront the enemy and pray they will not be swept away by the cavalry charge. Break through the front. It all boils down to that. And Varro sets his shoulder to the task. He is glad the battle is taking place on a day when he has been entrusted with the supreme command, because this means his name will be on everyone’s lips at the Senate.
Hannibal gives his final orders. He is calm. He asks for the name of the river that flows a bit further on: “The Olfanto,” he is told. Good. He informs his men that Maharbal will lead the light cavalry, Hasdrubal the heavy cavalry, and that he himself will stay in the center with the Celtic and Spanish foot soldiers. That is where everything will be determined. When the moment comes to give the order to engage, while the Roman consuls Varro and Paullus are smiling because they are eager to get it over with, Hannibal can sense that today is one of those days when the chain of events will be a question of grace. Is it History taking hold of that outcome and writing the world for a few instants, upsetting plans and surprising the living? Or is it luck? The Romans charge. With all their might. They want to avenge the defeats at Ticinus and Trasimene. They want to obliterate the fear which for months has been gnawing away at the city. The Romans charge and Hannibal stays where he is, waiting for the cut and thrust. He has to receive the charge and not break the line. He looks one last time at the four thousand Celtic and Iberian mercenaries with their thick faces, their light eyes, feet firmly planted on the ground, and they watch with fear as the horsemen draw closer. Today they are the ones who will determine History, these men who are not even from Carthage. The impact is terrifying. The horses crash headlong into the wall of defense. There are so many of them . . . Hannibal screams at his troops to withdraw slightly. They have to absorb the shock and let the Romans advance. It all depends on this: make Varro believe that the line is retreating under the shock and is about to break, so that he will advance even further, sending in all his men in the hopes of fracturing the wall at last. The Gauls seem to be holding, they brace themselves against the horses, their shields crack from the force of the galloping horses, they have to hold, and withdraw ever so slightly, in order for the trap to work. And that is what happens. Hannibal feels it coming. This is a smile from the sky. In this oppressive heat that is making the helmets unbearable and causing the men to squint, everything falls into place, as if he himself were showing fate which path to take. The Gauls stand firm, even as they withdraw. The Romans advance, blinded by their strength. They do not see that the defense has not given way. They do not see that they have gone too far in and that now, with one fatal blow, because Hannibal has ordered it, the Carthaginian wings will close around them. This long line, that stretched too far, that only minutes ago seemed to be too fragile, is encircling them. And Hasdrubal’s heavy cavalry smashes straight into them, driving holes in their flanks. Varro turns pale. He sees the trap but it is too late. He stammers, wants to react, still cannot believe it, still thinks it’s a mere setback, that he’ll be able to redress the situation. But the battle is lost. They come to inform him that Paullus is dead. Then he realizes that everything has changed, that this is an eclipse, he has just been swept away and it is not his name that will be spoken all through the Senate tomorrow, but Hannibal’s, and with terror.
She asked the director of the Institute if it would be possible to visit the citadel in Erbil. He seemed surprised. And yet he was the one who had suggested it, upon her arrival: “Please don’t hesitate . . . Dara knows the site well, and we have a few privileges . . . ”, but that had been something of a formality, as if he were already sure she wouldn’t have time, and now it is late and the request seems somewhat incongruous to him. He tries suggesting going to the restaurant, rather, but she insists, and her face, while remaining polite, turns impenetrable. So he agrees, makes a few phone calls to summon the man called Dara to the Institute. She waits patiently. She can feel the fatigue taking over. She has spent the day collecting testimonies and they all said the same thing: fear, the deep face of terror with regard to these men whose sudden appearance signifies the eclipse of our world. Everything will be burned. They have come to rule, to seize towns, bodies, minds. She got very little information about the museum, because they spoke mainly about everything else: the parade through the streets of Mosul, the black flags flying, the loudspeakers announcing the new life they would have to lead. Her country is going to pieces: invaded from the north, and ravaged by chaos in the south. She is in a city, Erbil, that does not want to be Iraqi anymore. Iraq will soon be another Yugoslavia: a vanishing country. And she, the woman from Baghdad, will have to find another nationality. Her country is being torn apart like a rag pulled at from all four corners. But did this country ever really exist? The one that was thought up and outlined and drawn by Churchill, Lawrence, and Gertrude Bell? Has it ever been anything but the dream of a country, imposed by authority in a region rife with other tensions, other movements? She is in Mesopotamia. Which did exist. And perhaps that is why she wants so urgently to visit the citadel of Erbil tonight. And when Dara parks his car at the foot of the site and they begin to climb this mound that overlooks the souks, she feels as if she has wrenched herself away from the chaos and tears. She has left behind the
traffic, the stories of panic, everything burning around her, and it is doing her good. Evening falls and it is not as hot as during the day. They approach the entrance and Dara begins to talk, probably wanting to act as a guide, thinking that is what is expected of him: to explain, provide a commentary, tell her everything he knows. She looks one last time at the city at their feet—alive, teeming, vibrant with the evening stroll, and then she motions with her hand to Dara, as if to say, “No, thank you,” or something like that, and in a hushed voice she says, “I’d like to spend a little time on my own,” so that he will understand that she doesn’t want anything from him, doesn’t expect anything, and she loses herself in the streets of this deserted little town, which is in the process of being restored, like a ghost town. Relieved, she immerses herself in the silence. Once she is in the labyrinth of little streets she can no longer see the city of Erbil or hear a single sound. It is as if suddenly she were elsewhere. The night seems thicker. She walks, and feels a certain weakness progressively taking over her limbs. Something in her calves, her fingertips, her thighs, seems to be giving way. It’s not fatigue, it comes from further away. It’s her illness, she can tell, taking possession of her, slowly, inexorably. She doesn’t want to stop. She continues on her way, through the little streets of this empty town that resembles a dead body, a mud-brick town that seems to be awaiting the return of armies that set out centuries ago. Everything is calm. Is she sinking into death? If so, it is serenely. She thinks again of Darius. Why him? Perhaps because at the entrance to the citadel she left a man who had the same name, a name which, like the objects she tries to save, has come down through the ages. Darius, defeated at Gaugamela, pale before the vigor, genius, and beauty of Alexander, fleeing the battlefield, abandoning his wife and children to come and seek refuge here, in Erbil, before continuing his flight to Samarkand. This ground, here, has known so many vanquished men. Those who watch as their world disappears and then discover to their astonishment that there is nowhere to hide. She thinks of all the excavations that have tried to unearth the past—what for, in the end? Do the living have time to learn about the past? Are they not wholly engrossed in the intense, daily struggle to live? And yet, at the risk of his own life, the old Kurdish man she saw this afternoon rescued a pair of earrings . . . She does not know if she will have the strength to go back. She thinks that she ought to sit down and call out for help, but she doesn’t. Her head is spinning. Her ears are buzzing. Her field of vision narrows. She puts one hand on the façade of an empty house and tries to breathe calmly. She knows she must be turning pale. But she stands firm. Doesn’t sit down, for fear of not being able to move again. Who will hold this town a few months from now? Kurdistan seems to be sufficiently well-armed to resist the advance of Islamic State, but who could have predicted the fall of Mosul? And who knows whether Erbil might not fall one day, too? Perhaps the men in black will plant their flags on the roof of the very house she is leaning against right now? Empires overlap, prosper and fall. The ones you thought had been built to last forever crumble, and in the space of only a few hours Darius no longer knows where to run. Is she about to die? Her body has gotten away from her, this weakness gives her the impression she no longer has any control over her own muscles: is this a message, that she is about to fall? What has she accomplished, then? All her life she has fought for the sake of things that are centuries old, to rescue them from the void, things that should be passed down from hand to hand like the burning objects every generation preserves. And why shouldn’t they have the right to the sand, to the earth, to burial? Is that not the fate that awaits all the women and men who are rushing about at her feet right now in the souks of Erbil, whether they are refugees or not, whether they are Iraqi or Syrian? Is this not what she herself will experience: burial, oblivion? She falters. She still has time to think about the Bes statue that Marwan gave her and which she slipped into Assem’s suitcase: she is glad she did. It is like placing one of those objects back into the circle of life. Not in the way she has been doing for the last twenty years: preserving, protecting, studying. No: placing an object back into Chance. Will the Bes statue be destroyed? Will Assem sell it to an antiques dealer? Or lose it during one of his trips? It hardly matters; the Bes statue is once again subject to the whims of fate, like an object floating along a raging river, and that is good. She can hear a voice calling behind her, a voice she does not recognize. “Madame Mariam? Madame Mariam?” As if the town itself were calling to her. No. It’s Dara. She understands. Dara must have seen her falter. Dara is running toward her, and he cries out as she slips in a faint to the ground.
Hear Our Defeats Page 8
