All Our Broken Idols

by Paul M. M. Cooper

  ‘The museum …’ Katya said. ‘That’s okay, I love museums. So long as the exhibits don’t come alive at night.’

  Salim didn’t laugh.

  ‘Everything comes alive at one time or another.’

  The museum was a sleek, modern building on an intersection of roads near a park, a bridge over the river and a heaving bus station. It had high ceilings, arched doorways, floors marked by scuffs and two guards with hennaed moustaches standing outside. It was closed to the public after the years of unrest that had followed the war, so the statues lining the walls were all wrapped in blue plastic sheeting, ringed with sandbags. Katya followed Salim into the echoing entrance hall, flanked by two large stone lamassu, the winged bulls with human heads that guarded the palaces of Assyrian kings. Scaffolding was up in places, the dust of recent building work.

  ‘Your room’s up here,’ Salim said, leading her up the stairs. She followed him past the concealed statues and exhibits to a disused office that smelled like varnish, a mattress on the floor beside a desk and an old filing cabinet. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling, with a single fly in orbit.

  ‘The Mosul Hilton,’ Salim said, checking his phone. He showed her the small staff kitchen lined with humming refrigerators, the toilets and showers. Then he took her back to her room and handed her a sheaf of papers joined with a staple. ‘Here, just some forms to fill out for tomorrow. Risk assessment, medical. I’ll come and pick you up in the morning.’

  ‘You’re leaving?’ The words came out in a higher pitch than she would have liked.

  ‘Yes, sorry. I wanted to show you around properly, but there’s been more looting at the Nineveh site. Have to check in with the others. I’ll be back here tomorrow and we can do a proper tour. You can meet the museum’s curator in the morning too, Dr Malik.’

  ‘Of course. He’s famous.’

  Salim shrugged.

  ‘As famous as an Assyriologist can get, I suppose. He’s a little strange, by the way. I apologise in advance.’

  ‘Strange how?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  Katya stuck out her jaw and nodded.

  ‘Sure. See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Just one more thing.’ He led her back to the main door and showed her the locking mechanism. ‘Don’t ever open this at night.’ He handed her a bicycle chain. ‘Put this through the handles too, just to make sure, and don’t unlock it till morning.’

  ‘There are guards outside.’

  ‘That’s what I’m talking about. Don’t ever open this door. I and Dr Malik have the only other keys.’

  Then he left, and Katya was alone in the museum. She turned the lock and slid the chain through the handles, but as she fumbled with the key, the lights went out all at once, and she dropped it.

  ‘Shit.’

  Salim had warned her about the power cuts. She fished around on the floor. There was a reddish gloam about the place, a kind of auxiliary lighting that kicked in slowly and cast strange shadows. Once the door was secured, Katya ran back to her room, her footsteps echoing. She wedged a chair up against the door, feeling silly. She found that her mattress springs were broken in one corner, so she used the book Salim had bought her to prop it up, making sure the lion’s sunken eyes weren’t showing.

  The Internet didn’t work, but Katya had some browser tabs open on her laptop already. She clicked over to one that had been open all week, there in the background of everything she did, as she’d packed her bags, handed in the notice on her flat, said goodbye to her mum. The news story, dated ten years ago. The picture was of her dad, the one the Home Office had asked for, that had flashed on TV screens for weeks afterwards. He was wearing a flak jacket that said ‘PRESS’ and a helmet, smiling mysteriously at the camera. The text, which she knew by heart, was infinitely detached: ‘British-Iraqi journalist missing in Nineveh Province … No trace … Presumed dead … No ransom.’

  Katya took one of her pills. She lay on her back and tried to stop her body from shaking. She listened to the city outside and thought of the dream she’d had in the car. She ran her fingers over her face and thought about her mum, and what she’d told Katya when she first brought up the offer to join the Iraqi dig. The way her hands shook as they sat in their kitchen with the empty third chair between them.

  ‘Kat … If you want to go there, that’s your decision. But don’t do it for him. God knows, he was hard enough to rely on when he was alive.’

  Katya rolled on to her side and felt the museum dark press around her, full of hidden movement, the car horns outside, the breeze picking up and buffeting the windows. She thought about one of the other Katyas stepping off their plane on to her Greek island, visiting hillside monasteries and white pebble beaches at weekends, drinking ouzo and retsina. A sensation passed over her like the restless motion of leaves in the wind.

  ‘You idiot,’ she said, tucking her hands back into her sleeves and curling into a ball. ‘You fucking, fucking idiot.’

  Aurya

  Aurya and Sharo sat on the old kiln and watched the ships on the river. The seven cold winds of the month of Shebat ruffled their clothes, buffed their hair. They watched the men with headwraps and hammers and adzes slouch along the quarry road in groups, and Aurya wondered from which one they’d stolen the onion. She chewed a ball of grass to fool her stomach. Later, a peddler came by with baskets of salt fish, but he didn’t stop at their house. Aurya thought of how they would taste, and her mouth watered.

  ‘Aurya, do you think he has olives?’

  Sharo loved olives.

  ‘Even if he does, how will you pay for them?’

  Sharo sniffed. Towards evening a grain ship forged upstream filled with huge clay urns, lined with soldiers and thirty oars on each side, going to feed the men in the hill forts who kept the creatures of the mountains at bay. It always surprised Aurya when she thought about it: the endless river, this great vein of the empire, its lifeblood, flowing right beside their poor house with its broken roof. That in only a day or so, this same water would flow past the walls of Nineveh. Aurya ran her fingers along the bumps in her necklace, trying to feel the memory of her mother’s touch in the stone.

  ‘Sharo. You remember the time before I was born, don’t you? Before the lion …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you remember her? Mother, I mean?’

  ‘I remember everything, Aurya,’ he said, his voice faraway. ‘I remember every word she ever said. Every old story she told. Everything except the night she died.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  He closed his eyes.

  ‘She looked a bit like you. With brown eyes and hair in curls.’

  ‘Like mine,’ Aurya said, and Sharo nodded.

  ‘Yes, but not short like yours. It was so long that when you looked up, it filled your sight. She had freckles here, and here.’ He touched points on Aurya’s face, dappling his fingertips over her nose and chin, and she brushed him off.

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘When I was ill, she dipped a cloth in honey for me to suck on. And she always bought olives when the peddlers came through.’

  Aurya breathed in, savouring every word like drips from that honey-soaked cloth. The grain ship slipped around the river bend and out of sight.

  ‘Aurya,’ Sharo said. ‘Do you think the lion will be okay? The one in the well?’

  Aurya hugged her knees. The sun was going down, turning white through the haze. Smells of charcoal and burnt onions blowing from another house made her irritable. She spat out her wad of grass.

  ‘Don’t think about it, Sharo. Why don’t you tell me one of mother’s stories now?’

  ‘One of the ones from before the flood? The one with the lions?’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’

  So Sharo began.

  ‘This is the tale of Gilgamesh the King,’ he said.

  This is the tale of Gilgamesh the King.

  It began in a time before anyone can remember, in a city between the rivers. The
King of that city was called Gilgamesh. He was strong and cruel, and took the city’s women for himself. He angered the gods. And the gods went to the river, and made a man from mud, and breathed life into him.

  ‘We will name you Enkidu,’ they told him. ‘Go live with the deer and the lions.’

  When the King heard about the man of the wilds, he was afraid, and sent a woman from the temple to seduce him. And it worked. The wild man fell in love with her.

  ‘I must follow her,’ he told the animals. They smelled the human on him, and ran away when he approached.

  The wild man and the woman went to the city to be married. And there the story might have ended. But one day, the King saw the woman in the market, and he too fell in love. Soon after, a messenger arrived from the palace.

  ‘It is the right of King Gilgamesh to take your wife to bed before your wedding,’ he told the wild man. ‘Give her up or die!’

  Somewhere in the reed bank, they heard a high-pitched, sniggering laugh, followed by a chorus of shushing. Sharo broke off his story.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Aurya called out, though she had some idea already. From the tangled brush came Nebo-Pishtim, son of Nilmaher the village headman, wearing his fine tasselled clothes. Whenever she saw him, she thought of the faces of voles. Behind him came two friends, older boys with rough red knuckles, ones she hadn’t seen before. Nebo-Pishtim’s narrow eyes flitted to where Aurya and Sharo sat on the kiln.

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell us the rest of the story?’

  ‘Smash your head, Nebo,’ Aurya said. ‘Can’t you go torture a mouse or something?’

  He turned to the others.

  ‘Her brother’s simple. And she’s always lying about how her mother was from Nineveh.’

  Aurya felt her face flush.

  ‘At least my mother doesn’t sell herself outside the temple, you son of a carp!’

  She didn’t think that was true. She saw Nebo-Pishtim’s mother at market sometimes, and she always wore the best coloured veils. But something about it touched Nebo-Pishtim, and his face went as dark as a crushed reed. He picked up a stone from the ground and hurled it in their direction. It was a bad throw, but Sharo squealed and ducked. The bigger boys hooted, delighted at the reaction, and fished around for more stones. Another one whooshed over Aurya’s head.

  ‘Let’s go, Sharo, come on.’ Sharo gripped her arm tightly, whimpering a little, but he didn’t move. She tugged, but he wouldn’t budge. ‘Come on, Sharo!’ She pushed him as a small stone struck her shoulder painfully and another slapped into the mud behind them. ‘Be brave, Sharo.’

  A stone bounced against the kiln just to Sharo’s side. Aurya pushed him again, harder this time, but Sharo stayed frozen where he was as stones struck him on the back and shoulder. Aurya felt a puff of fire in her throat. She jumped off the kiln and ran at the boys, leapt at the closest one. He was bigger than her, with hair on his face, but the attack took him by surprise. He tripped over his own leg, and Aurya went with him, landed on top of him and struck him as many times as she could, in the eye, on the nose. Nebo-Pishtim and his other friend leapt back, laughing and whooping. Aurya stood up, shaking, feeling her hair come untethered from its bunch. She clenched her muddy fists.

  ‘Who will fight the wild Elamite?’ Nebo-Pishtim taunted, and pushed his other friend towards her. Aurya felt the weight of her blade fragment tucked in her wool.

  ‘Run home, Sharo!’ Aurya shouted. He was still crouching on the kiln, staring down at her with glazed eyes. When she looked back, she saw too late the egg-sized stone in Nebo-Pishtim’s hand. She didn’t have time to duck. He whipped it at her, and there was a burst of purple. The sky and mud swapped places; the taste of iron. She felt hands on her. The world rocked back into focus and she could see the two remaining boys leaning over her, the sky washed grey overhead.

  ‘Nice trinket,’ Nebo-Pishtim was saying, and Aurya saw her mother’s necklace stretched on its thong above her, the image on its greenish stone just showing as it dangled there. Nebo-Pishtim pulled once on the thread, and it bit into the back of her neck. He pulled again, and it snapped. Aurya tried to reach for her blade to cut him, but her arms flopped around on either side like dying fish.

  ‘Don’t. It’s my mother’s …’

  Nebo-Pishtim straightened, shaking his head.

  ‘Your mother wasn’t from Nineveh. She was probably just a wild Elamite like you. The sooner you accept that, the better.’

  The boys turned and disappeared into the reeds, the two kicking and jibing their bleeding friend. Sharo was still there, still peering over the kiln, tears wetting his cheeks. Aurya struggled to her feet and back towards the house. The rain began to fall. It felt cool on the lump that rose on her head, throbbing with every heartbeat. The lack of her necklace was like a severed limb.

  ‘Aurya, Aurya,’ Sharo said, sniffing, climbing down from the kiln and following her. She didn’t look at him. ‘Aurya, are you all right?’

  She spun around, blood running in two warm branches down the side of her cheek.

  ‘You just sat there,’ she said, each word an axe blow.

  ‘Aurya …’

  ‘Look at the size of you! And you just stood there while they split my head with a rock and took our mother’s necklace. You didn’t even try to fight.’

  ‘I was scared. I can’t fight them, Aurya. They’d hurt me …’ He trailed off, sniffing, and began to cry again. ‘Aurya, can I tell you the rest of the story now?’

  Aurya lunged at her brother and struck him on the chest with both her palms. He hardly moved, but his eyes widened in shock and hurt.

  ‘I’m done with your stories,’ she said, and looked him right in his wide brown eyes. ‘You can defend yourself from now on, and tell your stories to the animals.’

  Then she turned and ran back to the house. The spring rain came down in sheets. A brown river already ran from their door when she got there, rain pouring through the broken roof, and their father nowhere to be seen. Aurya’s stomach snarled, and she felt dizzy. Some days she would crack open one of the beer jars and scrape out the leftover grain husks, but now the thought made her sick.

  She went into the room beside their father’s, where she and Sharo slept when the season was too cold to sleep on the roof. She pulled her mat into the dry corner and curled up on it. Outside, the rain spoke its hissing language to the earth, and a slow quarry cart rolled by on the road. The ruin-mound foxes barked in the old village, and a ukuku-bird made its mournful sound. Night came, and she cried herself into a restless sleep as the lump in her head beat like a tiny heart.

  Aurya dreamed about lions. Not the usual nightmares where they chased her through the brush and the old village ruins, or the dreams where she saw her mother dragged away by those jaws. She dreamed she was a lion. She was trapped at the bottom of the pit, starving and scared. Sleep came and went and came again. She felt the pit rising on either side, earthy and dark, the stink of the dead and the rot all around her. More than once, she kicked herself awake and found that she was scratching the mat with her nails. She lay back, chest heaving, and listened to the night rain come down like the judgement of Shamash outside.

  Katya

  In the morning, Katya lay on her mattress in her office room, feeling heavy as a sack of rubble. She’d always felt like this in the mornings: weak, hopeless, limp, as though the act of dreaming had drained her in some way. When she was young, her dad would breeze into her room before school and flood the room with sun and a screech of curtain rails.

  Katya, get up, he’d say. You have to get up. For years now, she’d begun each morning by saying it to herself.

  ‘Get up, Katya,’ she breathed, and stretched up off the mattress, bones clicking. It was late already, and she’d forgotten to fill out the forms before falling asleep. She rushed through them with bleary eyes, printing her full name in block capitals: Katya Hammadi Macaulay, her dad’s surname, her middle name, looking like it belonged to someone else. The risk assessme
nt forms read like a carnival of terrors.

  ‘“In case of kidnapping”,’ she read aloud, ‘“follow these four rules. One: Befriend your captors. Two: Be prepared for a long stay. Three: Don’t show weakness. Four: Look for a chance to escape and take it if you can.”’

  Good advice in general. She paused only once, over the question, ‘Have you ever suffered from seizures?’ She ran her tongue over her teeth for a moment, and then ticked ‘no’. Suffering was a strong word anyway. You couldn’t suffer if all you felt was blankness. She went to her desk and took one of her pills.

  After a little while, she heard people moving about outside her door, the sound of voices. A minute later, a knock sounded, and she jumped. She’d forgotten about the chair she’d wedged against it the night before, and she shot up to move it away, embarrassed. She opened the door to Salim standing outside, smartly dressed as before, smile lines around his eyes.

  ‘Oh, you’re awake. How did you sleep?’

  ‘Great. Like a stone.’

  The museum had come alive: women in black abayas were moving from place to place with buckets and brushes. In the staff kitchen, one of them had already boiled some eggs, which they ate with fluffy diamond-shaped flatbreads and apricot jam. The women talked with each other over their food, and Katya could tell they were pretending not to talk about her. In the main hall, she and Salim met the curator, the Assyriologist Dr Taha Malik. Katya had been set his books at university, and recognised him from his photo. He was a giant of a man, with a full beard, curling hair and round belly. He clapped his huge hands together when he laughed, which was often and with a frightening volume.

  ‘So you’re our guest, the plant expert,’ he said. ‘Welcome, welcome, welcome.’

  ‘There’s a story about Dr Malik,’ Salim said. ‘They say that during the embargos he carried a washing machine on his back from Iran, through the mountains. He’s also an encyclopaedia when it comes to the history of Iraq.’

  The older man waved him away.