All Our Broken Idols

by Paul M. M. Cooper

  ‘It’s for the gods to decide, Sharo.’

  When they reached the boat, the people on board parted, and a tremor went through the crowd.

  ‘What a beast,’ someone said.

  ‘Ashur, bind that cage tight.’

  They heaved the lion up beside the slab of gypsum, near where Aurya and Sharo were to sit. The peacock man wafted away the smell: like an old fur coat, mixed with meat and dry hay.

  ‘Get ready to leave!’ someone shouted, and Aurya felt a thrill of fear. The boats dredged up their anchors, wearing beards of green weed. Wiry men put down poles into the mud with long, stretching motions, and the drums below deck began to beat like the heart of an enormous creature. This was the moment, then. The last moment that she could decide to stay. Aurya and Sharo sat together among the pots and bundles near the stones, watching the lion in its cage and feeling the shifting movements of the boat beneath them. Aurya had only ever been in the coracles the villagers used as ferries, which rocked and threatened to tip at any time. She thought it would be the same to ride a great ship, but this vessel moved slowly, steady as the earth. She looked around her at every joint and bolt holding the craft together, the ingenious interweaving of wood and the smell of bitumen rising off it all. Over the side, she watched her home, everything she’d ever known, begin to slip away. Their house’s sagging roof slid away over the stern, and then receded, further and further. Then it all disappeared around the river bend, and she breathed out.

  ‘What do you think it’s going to be like, Sharo? Nineveh …’

  Sharo didn’t answer. Aurya looked up and saw that he was busy watching the lion, not with fear or sadness, but with the hint of a smile as though the animal had told a joke that only he understood.

  Towards evening, the jagged ruin of a riverbank fort came into view, half-sunken in the mud and reeds. The boats moored in a line along the shore, and the King’s men gathered up thorn scrub to heap in a loose fence in the broken parts of the walls.

  ‘No use if a lion wants to get inside,’ one soldier said. ‘I’ve seen a big male jump right on to the roof of a house.’

  The King’s guard built his tent against the crumbling rampart, and set a palisade of sharpened stakes around it, looped with more thorn scrub. Aurya couldn’t help watching the King move around the camp. Something about the sight of him made her shiver. Men bowed like reeds around him, scared to touch him or even to get close. But there was something else in him too – a kind of fear that she saw he worked hard to conceal behind his eyes.

  ‘Just think,’ the King announced as he walked to his tent, ‘this was once the border of our empire. And now Assyria rules half the world, from Egypt to the mountains, from Babylon to the Sealands!’

  Some soldiers clapped or grunted. Soon fires squealed and popped around the clearing, and men laid their mats out on the brick mounds, the piles of shattered ancient pots, old green arrowheads. A bowl of porridge went around to each person, warmed this time, even a few dates that the soldiers had knocked down from the palms with stones. Afterwards, Aurya and Sharo sat on their haunches, soldiers and slaves all watching as the flames sent shadows dancing against the old walls. They didn’t talk much. The King sat beside the peacock man, and they spoke about the hill forts they had inspected in the north, the tribes of wild horse people that lived outside the empire’s bounds. Did they have the heads of horses or their feet, Aurya wondered? Which seemed more frightening? The King asked his servant the meaning of omens: the shape of a curl of oil he’d seen in his breakfast bowl, the movements of birds, the certain constellations covered by clouds that evening.

  ‘They are good omens, my lord, my sun,’ the peacock man kept saying. ‘Our gods are winning the war in heaven just as we are winning our wars on earth. But there are some rites we should perform when we return to the city.’

  The way he spoke scared Aurya somehow. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in his voice. In the distance, behind the hills, the storm god Adad was rumbling and flashing. Aurya sat in the fire’s warmth and tried to follow the conversation, but she couldn’t keep her thoughts straight. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw her father’s body slumping into the darkness, heard his tearing flesh. The smell of his breath in the darkness. On the moored boat, through the reeds, the sleeping lion’s shape cut a dark figure out of the stars.

  Aurya realised with a flush of terror that she didn’t know the way home. She had never seen a city before. She had never seen a town bigger than her own village, which on market days had been frightening and busy and full of noise. She laid her head on Sharo’s broad, soft shoulder. He was idly sketching a lion’s paw into the mud with his finger.

  ‘Can you tell me the rest of the story now?’ she said, her voice small in the night.

  ‘Where did I get to?’ He knew, of course – he just wanted her to tell him.

  ‘The King and the wild man,’ Aurya said, and flicked a date stone into the embers, where it squealed. ‘They set out on the adventure to the cedar forest, to fight the demon.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Sharo said, and a thick tamarisk log in the fire popped.

  The King and the wild man travelled the whole length of the land, across plains and marshes, through deserts and foothills where lions roamed, to fight the demon Humbaba and cut down his cedars.

  They reached the high forest gate, and Gilgamesh the King felt a terrible dread creeping through the trees.

  He said, ‘Let’s camp on this hillside for the night.’

  When they finally slept, the King was tormented by dreams, but Enkidu the wild man knew of these things and told him: ‘These are good omens.’

  When the sun rose, the King strode through the forest with his axe, up to the tallest cedar. He raised his weapon and struck the tree.

  The tree sang in pain, snow fell from its leaves.

  The crows roosting in its branches took flight.

  And in the distance, the King and the wild man heard the sound of a thousand legs beginning to move.

  Sharo told the story quietly at first, under his breath. But before long Aurya saw that one of the soldiers close to them was listening. He nudged another soldier, and his friend turned and paid attention too, so Sharo spoke a little louder. She saw Abil prick up his ears as he wafted the peacock man with the fan. As snores rose, and men swatted at the insects that came whining from the marsh, Aurya realised that they were all listening. She looked over to the great tent where the King slept, and saw with a thrill of fear that he wasn’t sleeping, but standing in its entrance and watching Sharo, his eyes shimmering and wet in the firelight.

  Aurya hardly slept that night. All around her there was a chorus of snores, the crunching footsteps of sentries patrolling the bank, the sleepless servants and slaves bustling through the shadows with pots of steaming water, jugs and folding tables. Aurya ran her fingers over the scab of her head wound and thought about what Nebo-Pishtim had said, his cold voice crying out after her. If he had told everyone in the village, how fast would news travel downriver? Aurya could feel the riverbank gods moving overhead, the gods of the ruins, and the voice of the wind, all hissing ‘murderer’.

  When she did sleep, Aurya dreamed that the lion had escaped from its cage. In the dream, it was stalking through the night, looking for her. She dreamed that the creature had the spirit of her father. It was hunting her, looking for revenge.

  ‘Aurya,’ it said in a breathy voice, not quite human. ‘Aurya, I know you’re out there. Where are you, murderer?’

  She gasped awake, covered in sweat. Nearby, at the same moment, a man let out a high-pitched cry. Aurya’s blood froze. She shot up and looked around, trying to make out the dark shape of the beast slipping through the shadows. None of the soldiers moved from their mats. Some scratched, rolled over. Then from the King’s tent, there came another cry, and a deep, breathless voice.

  ‘Bel-Ibni!’ it said. In the darkness, she saw the silhouette of the peacock man emerge from his tent, and hurry to the King’s enclo
sure. After some moments, the light of a small lamp lit up the tent. Aurya tried to get back to sleep, but it was impossible. She lay awake, looking at the crumbling walls lit by that lamp, and stroked the bumps and grooves of her necklace.

  Unable to resist, she lifted herself up and crept through the sleeping bodies – the restless movements of fighting men in their sleep, the snores and twitches. On the wall above the King’s tent, she saw the outline of a group of archers sitting and playing a game they’d scratched into the stone, but they didn’t see her as she moved through the mass of sleeping bodies. Aurya stayed low and ducked close to the palisade. There were guards inside. The tent fabric wasn’t one piece: it had gaps and folds that widened and closed in the shifting breeze. If she put her head through the palisade, Aurya could just about see inside. With a shiver, she caught a flash of the King’s face. It was covered with blood. There was blood on his hands too, and his robe.

  ‘Bel-Ibni,’ the King said after a few moments, in that soft, deep voice. ‘I had that dream again.’

  ‘The lion dream, my lord?’

  That was the peacock man.

  ‘That fucking lion,’ the King said, and used both bloody hands to comb back his hair, bristle the sweat from his beard. The peacock man passed the King a ladle of some liquid, which he drank from, and held a cloth to his nose.

  ‘Not like that, my lord. You remember what I said? Don’t apply the dressing on the side. Try to plug up the airflow, so the blood can clot.’

  ‘That’s what I’m …’

  The cloth over the King’s nostrils stained with a spreading rose. His weary eyes rolled back in their sockets.

  ‘Shall I have a servant fetch some beer, my lord?’

  ‘No, no, I’ll be up all night. I just need sleep. But these dreams!’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about it, my lord?’ the peacock man said. ‘I know I can never forget a nightmare until I tell it.’

  Aurya watched the King, entranced: this man, who the gods lived and spoke through.

  ‘It was just like before,’ the King said, his voice swollen through his blocked nose. ‘I’m sitting there in my library. I’m reading, and suddenly I know something’s wrong. I hear water outside. Thumping and hissing. The sound of waves. And seabirds.’

  ‘Seabirds,’ the peacock man repeated. One of the guards stepped in front Aurya’s view, and she started in fright. But the man’s back was to her, and the King’s voice went on. She couldn’t tear herself away.

  ‘I start to feel more afraid as the sounds get louder,’ the King continued, ‘and I get up and walk through the library to the entrance hall. It feels so real. I can feel the cool of the floor, and there’s even that part by the door where the tile’s coming away and no one’s fixed it yet. I think to myself, “I must tell Bel-Ibni to have someone fix that tile!” And then I step out on to the terrace, and where I should see the city, where Nineveh should be, all I can see is an ocean. The waves, Bel-Ibni. They’re taller than any building. They’re taller than the mountains. There are people drowning down there, and ships and houses smashed to splinters, and the whole detritus of everything twisting and swirling.’

  The guard stepped out of the way, and Aurya’s view through the crack returned. In the dim light, the beads in the King’s plaited beard made him look like some strange water creature with a multitude of eyes.

  ‘And then what, my lord?’

  ‘And then I hear a footstep down on the path to the palace.’

  ‘Like a man’s footstep, my lord?’ the peacock man said, though he seemed to know the answer.

  ‘Not like a man. It’s a pad on the stone. And I look around, and I see a lion.’

  ‘A lion.’

  ‘A huge male. Ancient and ravenous, from the high hills. It’s walking towards me, towards the library. Loping, tongue hanging. I want to scream and scream, but when I open my mouth, I find it full of dust. I try to claw out the dust, but more keeps coming, and the lion is coming up the steps, and I turn to run back into the library.’

  The King lifted the cloth from his nose and sighed, massaging both his temples with one hand.

  ‘That’s when the water comes. The waves crash through the halls, and all the books and tablets are torn from the shelves and crushed together, and everything starts collapsing. Everything I’ve spent my life trying to build. And when the water hits me, that’s when I wake up.’

  The peacock man shook his head.

  ‘Do the gods appear at any point? Maybe if they did …’

  ‘No,’ the King said, and waved a hand. ‘No, it’s just as I said. Just the library, and the ocean, and the lion. Ashur and Nabu and all the rest don’t even poke their heads in the door. Bel-Ibni,’ the King said, his eyes wide like the eyes of a child. ‘I think the lion was my brother. I think it was the spirit of Shamash-shum-ukin, come to torment me. And the water. That was the great flood. The one in the stories.’

  ‘What do you think it means, my lord?’

  The King raised his eyes to the tent’s ceiling. He let out a long breath so his lips fluttered.

  ‘Bel-Ibni … do you know, when I became king, I thought we might do things differently. Not like our ancestors, I mean. Those bloodthirsty kings …’

  ‘The old ways always come back in the end, my lord. They’re always there, only buried beneath our feet.’

  ‘Bel-Ibni, how many cities has it been now?’

  ‘Difficult to count, my lord, without the records in front of me.’

  ‘And when we bring the statues of their gods home with us … what happens to the gods?’

  ‘We can’t know for sure. But I suppose they stay behind, my lord. Gods without stones, wandering the ruin mounds.’

  The King let out a long breath.

  ‘Bel-Ibni … sometimes I fear we have awoken some terrible will against us.’

  Aurya leaned closer, but just then a hand grabbed her shoulder from behind. She jumped, and let out a stifled squeak. Another hand shot up to cover her mouth.

  ‘What was that?’ the peacock man said. Aurya kicked out, and the person behind her spun her around. It was the boy Abil, his urgent eyes looking directly into hers. He dragged her away by one hand, leaping over the bodies scattered around, and just as the two guards burst from the King’s tent, he pulled her to the ground on to an empty mat. She lay there beside him, her chest heaving, her heart beating, her whole skin alive with fear. One guard took a torch from the entrance, and its light washed over all the sleeping men. Through her lashes, Aurya saw drips of burning oil fall to the ground as the soldier lifted it high. Very slowly, Abil raised a finger to his lips.

  The guards looked all around the outside of the King’s tent, peered between the gaps in the palisade, and then walked a little into the reeds. Then one shouted up at the archers on the wall, scolded them for playing their game. After what seemed like a lifetime, they sidled back into the tent.

  ‘Just a bird,’ Aurya heard one mutter. ‘Or a passing god paying his respects.’

  On the ground beside her, Abil let out a long breath.

  ‘They would kill you if they caught you,’ he whispered, his eyes wide and urgent. ‘You don’t know enough to be afraid of them, river girl.’

  When she thought it was safe, when the murmuring in the tent had subsided, and the light faded, she left Abil, crept back to her mat and lay there in the dark beside Sharo, listening to the chorus of snores. When she slept, Aurya dreamed of a dark room. Her father and Sharo sat opposite her, cross-legged, and water hushed nearby. They both held up round pieces of stone in their hands, so that their faces were perfectly covered. She couldn’t see Sharo’s expression, but she could tell that behind the stone, her father was smiling.

  Katya

  Katya and Salim stood outside and watched as the men from the archaeological department took the body away, sealed in its airtight container.

  ‘Like saying goodbye to an old friend,’ Katya said. Salim nodded.

  ‘Look after him,’ he c
alled after the men. ‘And be gentle. He’s been resting a long time.’

  In the car going to the dig, they sat in silence for much of the journey, watching the city slip by amid the morning traffic.

  ‘Funny thought, isn’t it?’ Katya said as they crossed the river. ‘That we never get to know how many times our bones will be buried.’

  Out in the city, the greenery of spring had made way for summer heat, globe thistles and yellow chamomile sprouting in the verges. The morning sky was the impossible blue of Indian ink, the ground the colour of lion fur. Katya watched from the car window as they crossed the bridge, taking in the cattle cooling off in the shallows and grazing on the watercress that grew there, the birds roosting in the white houses that climbed the riverbank, the long queues for the petrol stations. Today was her six-month anniversary in Iraq. It had begun to feel familiar. Not like home exactly, but now her image of home was becoming blurred. She could hardly imagine the dig coming to an end, going back to the cold of her windy Atlantic island, leaving her work unfinished. She imagined what it would be like for everyone she met to understand her when she spoke.

  She climbed up to her site alone, and found that looters had struck again. The ground was pocked and cratered like the surface of the moon, an attack more audacious than anything they’d seen. The tracks of many bikes and spiralling footprints were pressed into the dust, the tamarisk bushes uprooted along the path of a large vehicle, and the whole place was given over to wind-blown litter. The guard was nowhere to be seen. Katya didn’t feel the same devastation as before. Just a kind of weariness as she realised that she would probably spend her last days in Iraq trying to sort out this mess. Salim reacted differently. She called him, and he swore loudly down the line. Half an hour later, he arrived with Dr Malik, who came in a long, loose dishdasha, and they both helped her examine the damage, a dark cloud hanging over them all.

  ‘Shit,’ Salim said when he saw it. ‘This is the worst yet.’

  ‘What happened?’ Katya asked. ‘How did they get away with this?’