The Angel of Eden

by D J Mcintosh

  At one point we spotted what looked like an ancient ruin, until I realized that the row of columns were posts for a dock whose platform had long ago disintegrated. Beside it, the hulk of an old ship tilted on its keel—a fishing boat perhaps, with a long chain still fastened to its anchor, and so corroded its original color could only be guessed at.

  I’d heard it was easy to drown in salt lakes, something Rosan confirmed when he spoke next. “Drinking too much of that water can poison—so salty. If too much is ingested it fails the organs.” He held his hands up wide and then moved them closer together. “Urmia, once a vast lake, now shrinking, shrinking. Getting even more salty. Too dry and hot everywhere. But not in winter so much.”

  This corner of Iran was such a beautiful, alien land. I wondered what mysteries it held for us.

  Less than an hour later we reached Tabriz, a sprawling industrial city, once a key location on the Silk Road. As Rosan promised, we arrived in time for dinner. Together at the hotel’s restaurant we ordered a hearty dish of koresht beh—lamb cooked with quince and split peas, accompanied by Persian white rice and stone-baked naan. After the plates had been cleared, Rosan held up his index finger. “Tomorrow we will see the bazaar, famous even in the Middle Age, then the Blue Mosque. Also a factory where they make legendary Tabriz rugs. If you wish to buy items, we make all arrangements to send over to your homes.”

  Bennet had been careful to order last, choosing a chicken dish instead of the lamb the rest of us had. When we’d drawn lots to see who’d come down with acute food poisoning, the short straw fell to her. Now, as we sipped our tea, right on cue she got up and pressed her hand to her stomach. “Please excuse me,” she said. “I may have eaten too much. I don’t feel well.”

  The Italian murmured sympathetically. I noticed he’d taken quite a shine to her. “Rest, dear,” Rosan said, scraping his chair back and rising politely. “You will feel much better in the morning.”

  I followed her out of the restaurant, explaining that I wanted to make sure she was okay. Nick stayed behind to talk. As he’d once told me, “You learn far more by socializing than at the point of a gun.”

  The next morning I told the group that Bennet still couldn’t keep anything down, adding that the hotel had summoned a doctor. Rosan put on a good show of worry. When the group returned in the afternoon, I reported she was in no shape to travel.

  “We are spending several days in Esfahan,” Rosan said. “You may take a bus to join us after the lady has rested and can travel.” I nodded solemnly and Nick said he’d stay with us.

  In a strange case of life mimicking lies, Bennet really did come down with some kind of bug; she got into bed early that evening and stayed there. While Nick ventured out to rent a vehicle and collect some provisions, I arranged to meet Rosan in his hotel room.

  He winked when I handed him a healthy wad of cash. “Discretion is the better velour,” he said, getting the expression wrong but somehow retaining its meaning. “I have contacted the Kandovan hotel. They have a place for you.”

  “Thank you—you’ve been great.”

  He took a drag off his cigarette and waved away the compliment. “May you have a safe journey.”

  That night Rosan’s words kept returning to me. The time spent in his company had been a pleasant interlude; the journey ahead, a troubling prospect. I thought about turning back but knew I wouldn’t. The mystery surrounding Helmstetter had me in its grip.

  While Bennet slept, I sat in our room’s most comfortable chair reading the photocopied paper by Reginald Arthur Walker, the man whose name my brother had noted in the margins of his journal. Walker’s startling theory about the Garden of Eden’s location made a lot of sense.

  According to the Bible, the Garden of Eden could be found at the heads of four rivers. The Tigris and Euphrates were known, of course; their headwaters lay in the region encompassing Lake Van and Lake Urmia. But what about the Gihon and Pison? Those names didn’t resemble any known watercourses today. Walker thought the former was the Araxes—which flowed southeast from the same region down to the Persian Gulf—because in the eighth century, large portions of the Araxes were called the “Gaihun.” As for the Pison, Walker noted that in the Hebrew of the early Genesis text, a P had migrated to a U. The name of the fourth river, then, should be Uizhon, not Pison. The Uizhon had its source in the same area, flowing east to the Caspian Sea. It was an amazing feat of investigation. And it placed Eden firmly in the territory near Lake Urmia, centered around Tabriz: the same land my brother thought might be the earliest home of the Sumerians.

  I’d brought David Rohl’s book with me and consulted it now, running my finger down a passage I’d noted before.

  Genesis 2:13 describes the River Gihon as winding “all through the land of Cush.” Are there any classical or modern topographical clues in the general vicinity of the River Aras (formerly Gaihun) which suggest that this region may once have been called the land of Cush?

  … to the north of the modern city of Tabriz there is a high mountain pass through which the modern road winds its way up to the towns of Ahar and Meshginshahr. Several of the Aras tributaries have their headwaters near these Azeri towns. The modern Iranian name of Ahar is Kusheh Dagh—the Mountain of Kush.

  Mesopotamian histories called the region Aratta, or Edin. That territory held abundant stores of gold and precious stones similar to the biblical description of “the land of Havilah.” And Abraham was identified as having come from Ur, a Mesopotamian city. So the picture of Eden drawn by the authors of the Bible described what they believed to be the land of their ancestors. The ancient Persian word for enclosed garden was pairi daza—the stem word for paradise. Lush, walled gardens were a prominent feature of the Persian landscape even today.

  And right at the heart of that Mesopotamian Eden lay Kandovan.

  Part Three

  THE SECRET GARDEN

  Food of death they will set before thee, Eat not. Water of death they will set before thee, Drink not … The counsel that I have given thee, forget not.

  The words which I have spoken, hold fast.

  —FROM THE MESOPOTAMIAN MYTH ADAPA AND THE SOUTH WIND, PRECURSOR TO THE TEMPTATION IN GENESIS

  Thirty-Three

  March 8, 2005

  Kandovan, Iran

  The next morning, after eluding our tour group, we drove south out of Tabriz through a smoggy industrial corridor in the Chai River valley. Nick was at the wheel; he’d rented an older model Jeep Cherokee for the trip.

  As we neared Kandovan, the towering silhouette of the long-extinct volcano Mount Sahand reared up in the distance. The cave city itself was a cluster of what resembled pink stone beehives, just like the photo I’d found in Evelyn’s apartment. In the oldest part of the village the conical homes had been hollowed out from soft volcanic stone and fitted artfully with windows and wooden doors. High, wooden-slatted bridges connected walkways; in some houses, balconies jutted out from windows. Stone steps, cut in the center to provide rain sluices, rose steeply between dwellings. Power lines stretched between homes. Even Bennet, still feeling under the weather, brightened at the prospect of actually staying in one of these fairy-tale structures.

  After leaving the Jeep in the lower town we made our way up to the stone hotel—and entered a surprisingly comfortable, even luxurious, interior. Whitewashed stucco walls and ceilings, mortared stone floors, beautiful wooden furniture with Persian motifs, and red-patterned carpets gave the place a rich, sensuous feel. Brass and copper wall sconces, along with the sunlight filtering in from the deep-welled windows, cast a gentle light.

  When we reached our room, Bennet and I were greeted by more rich colors and Persian-inflected designs, including a desk and a banquette inlaid with delicate enamel tiles. The bed looked plump and inviting. Bennet flopped down on it. “This is heaven. There’s even a Jacuzzi in the bathroom. I thought we’d be roughing it—nothing like this. Guess you could consider it our honeymoon suite.” She laughed.

  “Well
, in that case, Mrs. Madison, don’t you think we should follow tradition?” I pressed her down playfully on the bed and gave her a long kiss and one thing led to another.

  Lazing in bed together afterward, I proposed that the three of us go on a recon mission. If there were any traces of Helmstetter left in this fantastical place, I was determined to find them. Nearer to the present, there was Yersan: he came from here; surely there was information to be gleaned. Most important to me, I wanted to waste no time in finding Evelyn’s family. I had only one real lead— Nemat, Evelyn’s family name. Rosan had told me of someone who might be able to help trace her relatives.

  The weather was still temperate, apparently unusual at this elevation in March. We got away with our windbreakers instead of the heavier coats we’d bought in Tabriz. As we strode down the narrow laneways people would look at us with friendly interest; since the advent of the tourist trade, though, the novelty of Western visitors had faded.

  A helpful shopkeeper directed us to where Rosan’s contact lived. A grizzled fellow with brown, wind-roughened skin and a thick mustache greeted us. Nick spoke to him in Farsi and introduced us; the man grinned when he mentioned Rosan. After a bit more friendly-sounding talk, Nick turned to us to explain that the man ran mule rides for sightseeing excursions. Six mules munched hay in a large stall behind the man. They were quartered on the first floor of his house; the family lived upstairs. The reek of old hay and manure permeated the room.

  Nick turned back to the man and began his questions. I tried to make out what he was asking. A few sentences on, I distinctly heard Nick say “George Helmstetter,” and later, “Yersan.” After more talk, Nick gestured toward me as he pronounced the name “Nemat.”

  At this, the donkey man, as I’d begun to think of him, spoke rapidly, gesturing with his hands. Finally, it seemed, we’d scored. Nick chatted with him a little longer and then bade the man goodbye. I smiled my thanks.

  “He said the Nemats still live here,” Nick told us once we’d gone a little way down the street.

  “That’s fantastic.” Elated, my mind started spinning—I might learn something of Evelyn’s mysterious past after all.

  “Never heard of Helmstetter,” Nick continued in a rush. “So he claims.”

  “Do you have any reason to doubt him?” Bennet asked.

  “He hesitated before he told me that. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I sensed he was hiding something.”

  “And you asked about Yersan?” she prompted.

  Nick turned to me. “I told him you were an antiquities dealer and that you’d done some business with him.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “Apparently he’s considered quite a success. Not many people venture far from the village, let alone immigrate to America and become rich enough to send money home. The guy was reluctant to say anything more, which suggests Yersan’s still pretty influential around here.”

  Following the donkey man’s directions to the Nemat home resulted in nearly an hour of wrong turns, with Nick continually checking in with locals and then redirecting our steps. Finally we found ourselves in front of one of the last conical cave houses to the east. We climbed yet another set of steeply angled stone stairs—a few more days here and I’d be in top physical form. I knocked on the stout, weathered wooden door. It opened a crack right away, as if someone had been waiting for us. Had the donkey man sent word? Through the open gap came a male voice. “Yes?”

  I was surprised to hear him speak English. “My name’s John Madison,” I began. “I’ve traveled here to see Mr. Nemat about a relative of his who lives in America. May we come in? Do you know who Yeva Nemat is?”

  At this the door swung open. A well-groomed man in a white shirt and dark trousers stood before me. I guessed him to be in his late forties. “Please come in,” he said and stood aside. As we were about to enter, he glanced at Bennet and then at our feet. Nick tapped me on the arm and removed his shoes. Bennet and I followed suit.

  Two other people looked up when we entered a hot, stuffy front room smelling of wood smoke. An elderly man with a snow-white beard and a white turban, his face a mass of wrinkles, had a blanket thrown around his shoulders. He sat on floor pillows next to an iron stove. A woman sat beside him. Her age was hard to guess— only her face, neck, and hands were visible—but she was perhaps in her early fifties. She wore a scarf around her head patterned in bright greens and pale yellow. Scars disfigured one side of her face.

  An old wooden cabinet, a small green-tiled table with low legs, more floor cushions, and two large Persian rugs were the only other furnishings. Oil lamps had been placed in wall niches in addition to an electric light overhead.

  The man who’d opened the door spoke first. “I’m Alaz Nemat.” He tipped his hand toward the old man. “My father, Mernoush Nemat. Please take a seat.” He didn’t introduce the woman.

  “This is Margaux Bennet and Nick Voss,” I said. Nick dipped his head, first toward the old man and then toward Alaz, before the three of us sat on floor cushions. Alaz walked over and stood next to his father.

  “May we offer you tea?”

  “Thank you—no,” Nick said quickly. “It’s not necessary.”

  “But I insist. Have you just arrived in Kandovan?” He turned to the woman and muttered a few words. She scurried through a curtained doorway.

  We told him this was our first day visiting the village and chatted about our trip from Van. I complimented his English.

  “I live in Tabriz,” he said. “I own a tourist shop there. My father is not well, so I visit often.”

  We exchanged more pleasantries. The woman bustled back in carrying a tray with five red and gold glasses of steaming mint tea and a bowl heaped with sugar cubes. She served them, we thanked her, and she resumed her seat. Her silent gaze kept flitting to me. She was evidently following our conversation with intense interest.

  I introduced the reason for our visit, pulling the copy of Evelyn’s birth certificate out of my inner jacket pocket and handing it to Alaz. “I’m wondering if you might know this woman—Yeva Nemat?”

  He took one look at the birth certificate and his face went white. He raised his eyes to mine. The look was not friendly. “Where did you get this?”

  I decided not to reveal too much. “It belongs to an acquaintance of mine in New York. Do you know her?”

  The old man had so far said nothing. Now he spat out some words. Nick gave a very slight shake of his head as if to caution me not to speak. Alaz crouched down and showed the birth certificate to his father, who took it with a gnarled, trembling hand. The paper shook as he read it. The woman glanced over the old man’s shoulder, peered at the paper, and let out a cry, covering her mouth with her hands. The old man’s eyes were bleary and reddened but there was no mistaking the alarm in them. He blurted out more words.

  Alaz gave the paper back to me. “I’m afraid I must ask you to leave. My father is upset, as you can see. He does not wish to speak of this person.”

  “But we’ve come all this way to talk to you,” Bennet protested.

  Nick darted a warning glance toward her and then addressed Alaz. “It’s okay. We’ll go now. Please accept our apologies. It wasn’t our intention to upset anyone.”

  We took our leave quickly. I couldn’t conceal my deep regret that this first meeting with the Nemats had turned sour so fast.

  “Clearly they knew Evelyn,” I said as we walked away, “and pretty well, too. What the hell do we do now?”

  “We’ll have to try to talk to Alaz another time,” Nick said. “Maybe find a way to see him on his own. If I can learn where his shop is in Tabriz, we might have more luck when he’s not on home ground with his father listening to every word he says.”

  Bennet pursed her lips. “He’ll probably just clam up again.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Nick said.

  The sun was waning now and we hurried back along darkening pathways. With the cold night air and strange shadows
cast by the conical structures, the village no longer felt quaint, but sinister. Nick stayed close and kept alert. This was Yersan’s hometown. Another threat seemed almost inevitable. And it did come. Just not the way I expected.

  Thirty-Four

  The bright lights of our hotel were a welcome sight, and as we entered the lobby I began to relax. Then I stopped in my tracks. Yersan, slouched on a divan, stood up. He walked toward us, halted a few feet away, looked Nick and Bennet up and down. Finally he trained his gaze on me, the hatred in his small, intense eyes unmistakable. “What are you doing here? In my town? If you want artifacts to buy, you’ll find it barren ground.”

  He’d just handed me an excuse for being in Iran. “Why? Because you’ve siphoned off anything worth having? I’ve already sourced some very nice pieces in Tabriz.”

  Yersan moved closer. Nick stepped in and blocked his way. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the hotel attendant throw a worried glance at us. Nick put his hand out, stopping just short of touching Yersan. “Give us some space,” he said with quiet menace.

  Yersan stepped back but his voice grew harsher. “You are after more of the treasures stolen from my family. There are none left.” He pulled his trench coat closer around him. “I will go now.” He shot a pointed look at Nick. “I tell you politely to leave Kandovan. Or you will never leave at all.”

  “I’ll go when my business here is finished,” I said. “And be assured: I’ll pay you back for Tricia Ross.”

  He seemed about to respond, thought better of it, swept past us like a malicious whirlwind and blew out the door.

  Bennet folded her arms around her as if to ward off a chill. “He’s afraid of you, Nick. That was plain.”