The whole way, all Aurya could think about was the house of dust. Could this really be it? And might someone there remember something about her mother? They rose up a slight hill, and the ropes tied to the sledges of stone creaked like tall trees in the wind. Men poured jugs of water over the ropes when they began to smoke. Aurya kept glancing up at the rooftops and their gardens, at the bright clothes laid out to dry. It didn’t smell so foul further from the river.
‘Nineveh,’ she kept muttering to herself, still unable to believe it. She looked at Sharo, and saw he was clutching his head again.
‘Close your eyes, Sharo,’ she said, touching his arm. ‘Hold on to my arm and close your eyes.’
As the rise flattened out, a strange kind of birdsong filled the air, a cheeping like the nest of fledglings Aurya had once found in the crook of a tamarisk tree. She didn’t have time to dwell on it: as the King’s men marched, thin children hurried from the alleys to beg from them. One girl came up to Aurya and spoke to her in a language she didn’t understand, gesturing at her mouth, making a sign for food. They were roughly the same age. A soldier pulled the girl away and sent her off with a kick.
Before long, an enormous pillared building came into view, fronted with cracked blue tiles and poplar trees sprouting nearby. A poorer house sat in its shadow, like an old man leaning on a son’s shoulder. When they got closer, Aurya saw that it wasn’t birdsong she’d heard. The noise was coming from the crumbling house’s courtyard, where half a dozen men with cloths wrapped around their heads worked beneath an awning of woven palm leaves. They were chipping at blocks of stone with tools and mallets, giving off that soft cheeping chorus. The dust from their work curled in the air. A skinny man hurried from the building and down the steps, tufts of beard growing at irregular angles from his chin and cheeks. His eyes were bloodshot, watery and red-rimmed.
‘My King!’ he shouted, and gave a hacking cough. ‘My sun! All the gods of the world bless you! I am the dust beneath your feet. What an honour, a great honour as always, to have you bring the stone in person …’
The King on his high seat waved the honours away.
‘How are the preparations for the garden scene coming?’ the King said. ‘No more problems I trust?’
‘Excellent, my lord. The apprentices can take their first impressions tomorrow, if my lord will allow it.’
The King nodded.
‘That’s what the signs demand. Come to the palace early, before the heat rises.’
‘Of course, my lord. You are the sun that warms us, the cedar that shades us. And I have reminded the apprentices how important it is to you, that the details are absolutely correct, that no …’
‘Very well!’ the King boomed. ‘Shamash and Ashur, I’ve been on the river for weeks! Mason, we have these two children here, from the hills. Their father was killed by this lion, and you are to look after them.’
‘My lord,’ the skinny master mason began, ‘we really have no need for –’
‘The King didn’t ask what you needed, mason!’ the peacock man snapped.
‘Keep them here for a week or two,’ the King said, waving his hand. ‘If they’re lazy or eat too much, send them to the streets.’
The master mason’s sore eyes washed bitterly over Aurya and Sharo. He gave another cough, and his shoulders sagged a little.
‘Yes, my lord. They can sweep for us. The dust here has a will of its own.’
The other masons gathered around the blocks of stone, smoothing hands over the surfaces, muttering in approval. Aurya looked over the crowd, her heart beating heavily in her chest, hoping to see a shock of curly hair just like her own among the apprentices. She didn’t see anyone, though. She noticed how their eyes were all that same reddish colour, how they rubbed them with the backs of their sleeves.
‘Come on, Bel-Ibni,’ the King announced with a sigh, ‘I believe we’re meeting a Hittite delegation this afternoon.’
‘That’s right, my lord,’ the peacock man said. The King’s entourage turned to leave, and the slaves went to pick up the slumped lion. As they lifted the cage off the ground, it let out a warning growl and tried to lash out at them with its paw.
‘Aurya,’ Sharo said, and tugged urgently on her sleeve. ‘Aurya, where are they taking him?’
‘It’s not our business, Sharo. It’s the King’s lion now.’
Aurya caught Sharo’s intention too late. She tried to hold him back, but he was off, running at the King’s men and shouting.
‘Where are you taking him?’ he yelled. ‘Where are you taking Enkidu?’
The peacock man spun around, and soldiers lowered their spears, forcing Sharo to stop. Two grabbed him by the arms, and he struggled in their grip. Aurya shouted her brother’s name, but he didn’t listen. The servants carrying the King’s chair performed a complicated manoeuvre, and the King was turned slowly around to face the commotion.
‘What in Ashur’s name … What’s wrong with the boy?’
Aurya ran to Sharo and put both her hands on his cheeks. He felt hot, stained with tears. He had stopped struggling while the soldiers held him.
‘Sharo, you can’t be friends with this lion. Humans and lions can’t be friends.’
Sharo shook his head and shouted through clenched teeth. Up on his throne, the King scratched his chin.
‘All this for a wild beast,’ he said.
‘My brother loves animals,’ Aurya said, without taking her eyes away from Sharo’s. ‘He loves this lion especially. I don’t know why.’
‘Loves the lion that killed your father?’ The King stroked the plaits in his beard. ‘Well, this lion will be given a home in my palace for the next few months. Come visit him whenever you like, boy.’
‘Come and visit him?’ Sharo said. His eyes met Aurya’s.
‘Yes, Sharo,’ Aurya said. ‘You can go and see the lion when you want to.’
Sharo thought about it for a few moments. Then he seemed to relent. The guards’ grip on him loosened.
‘Can I visit every day if I want to?’
‘I’ll tell the lion keeper personally. Mason, bring these two along with you when you come to the palace tomorrow.’
‘My lord …’ the master mason protested, as if being told to carry a heavy stone.
‘You heard the King!’ the peacock man barked, and the mason shrunk. The soldiers let Sharo go. The King was turned around again, and the whole entourage filed out.
‘By the gods, I could eat a hundred of those little birds in brine, Bel-Ibni,’ the King yawned as they went.
The boy servant Abil gave Aurya a wave as he followed the King and Bel-Ibni, and she waved back. When the noise of the King’s passage had faded down the road, the master mason with the tufted beard handed them each a broom made of dried palm fronds.
‘Get sweeping,’ he said. ‘All the seven winds are coming in this evening.’
For the rest of that afternoon, Aurya and Sharo swept the steps of the mason’s workshop. They swept all around the yard. Swirls of dust rose every time the wind hit the hillside, and it seemed there was no end to it, that every time one area was swept, another was covered again. All the time she worked, Aurya kept muttering to herself, over and over, ‘I’m here. I’m in Nineveh.’
In moments of rest, she squeezed her necklace so hard that the stone turned warm and left its image printed on her palm. But if this was the house of dust, where was her mother? She said prayers to the new, strange gods that must now be watching over her:
To the god of sweepers
To the god of great cities
To the gods of language
When the apprentices called to them, Aurya and Sharo carried buckets full of debris from the stones they were working. One was carving an important-looking man holding a baton out in front of him, Aurya saw; another a miniature model of the great ziggurat, with its seven layers and long staircase to the top; another a kind of beast that looked like a fat river pig with an enormous nose.
‘That�
�s a strange-looking pig,’ Sharo said to the man as they swept at his feet.
‘Quiet, Sharo!’ Aurya said. The man sniffed. He had dark skin and kept his hair shaved close to his scalp.
‘It’s an animal from Egypt,’ he said. ‘Where I was born. They swim in the great Black River. And they’re much bigger than pigs.’
‘Egypt … How did you end up here?’ Aurya said. The man blew both of his nostrils on the ground, one after the other, and looked around.
‘My name’s Harkhuf. I was visiting Memphis to buy tools when the Assyrian army captured it. They were going to kill me, but I told them I was a stone mason, and I could make good relief carvings. That was one of the professions they were told to bring back with them.’
‘That’s lucky,’ Aurya said. The man shrugged and lined up his chisel and round-topped hammer.
‘That’s lucky, she says …’ he muttered, and gave the chisel the lightest tap, only enough to kill a wasp. ‘Many were not lucky.’
‘What was your home like?’ Aurya said.
‘Beautiful. At the edge of the Roaring Sea.’
‘I’d like to see that one day.’
‘Perhaps you will. And if you think the ziggurats here are impressive, you should see what we have.’
‘Have you ever seen a woman around here?’ she asked. ‘With curly hair like mine.’
The Egyptian shook his head.
‘No. No one like that.’
He looked too young to have been there for very long, Aurya thought: his palms still had some of their patterns. She would try someone else.
The evening smelled of damp earth and basil. The apprentices sat in a circle to eat, coughs sounding periodically, men spitting the dust from their mouths. They all ate a rough meal porridge, and Aurya felt its strength flowing into her as she ate. Sharo didn’t eat much. He drew with his finger in the dust: a lion pouncing, a lion sleeping, a lion in a cage.
‘What’s in that building?’ Aurya asked one apprentice, pointing up at the dark pillars that loomed over the workshop, now in shadow.
The man cast an eye upwards.
‘That’s the palace of the King’s father, and the house of weapons. No one goes inside any more. Not since the war in Babylon.’
‘Why? What’s in there?’
‘Ghosts, probably.’
Aurya looked up at the building and felt her stomach turn. This man looked older, as if he’d been in the workshop for many years; his hands were worn completely smooth and pink, like her father’s had been.
‘Do you remember a woman here?’ she asked him. ‘She had curly hair, like mine, but more of it, so it hung out in bunches.’
The man shook his head.
‘We don’t have any women around here,’ he said. ‘Usually.’
Aurya felt the sting of that. When the meal was done, the apprentices slouched to their beds. They brought Aurya and Sharo into a low wooden building where a cow also lived. Everyone rolled out their mats and camel-hair blankets, lying in rows like dried fish. Nobody lit a lamp. Aurya and Sharo lay together near the curtained door. The breeze blew in periodically; the mat was hard, and their blankets thin. Aurya touched her necklace and wondered where in all that huge city her mother could be. She thought about what the King had said to the mason, about throwing them out into the street after two weeks, and she wondered what it would be like to beg for scraps with the other hungry children, in this city where everything seemed so huge, full of languages she didn’t know and the strange ways of its people. She drew close to Sharo for warmth. Without her asking, he started whispering the story to her.
The monster Humbaba begged the King to spare him.
‘I will be your servant,’ the demon said. ‘I will cut down my beautiful cedars with my own hands and give them to you. Please spare me.’
‘Don’t listen to him,’ Enkidu told the King. ‘He’s a trickster. Kill the monster before he poisons your thoughts.’
King Gilgamesh hesitated. But he raised his axe and brought it down on Humbaba’s neck, and the monster’s head fell to the forest floor.
They set fire to the monster’s house, and laid waste to the forest. They tied the cedar beams into a raft. And then they set sail for home.
Enlil, god of the mountains, came down and walked among the ashes and stumps of his forest. He wept with rage, and vowed his revenge on the King and the wild man.
‘Be quiet,’ an apprentice hissed in the dark. ‘It’s going to be a long day tomorrow. We don’t have time for your stories.’
Sharo hushed. Aurya tried to sleep, but she couldn’t. She still felt the boat’s movement beneath her, the river’s gentle pull. Once she could hear the long breaths of everyone around her, she lifted herself, wrapped her blanket around her like a cloak and wandered out into the night. The city was a restless creature; she could still hear it all around, a soft murmur like water. She remembered the King’s dream she’d overheard the night before, and thought that the city did look like a sea at night: a carpet of shimmering lights.
Aurya wandered through the workshop gate to where the old palace sat empty and dark. She wound in and out of its pillars, and crept close to its entrance, with the bull-men guardians on either side. She edged a little closer, peered into the black corridor at its main gate and reached out to touch one of the stone bulls’ hooves. As she did so, a low moan came from within, and a gust of warm wind blew over her face. She felt a presence there, moving inside the palace at night. Something dark and fierce, waiting for her to turn her back. And then a voice came from within, hoarse and dripping with malice.
‘You’re a murderer,’ it said. ‘Aurya the murderer. You killed your father and fed him to a lion.’
Aurya felt her legs go limp. She turned and ran with the wind wailing in the halls behind her, back to the sleeping quarter, and dived under her blanket.
In the morning, the smoke of fires came drifting over the hill. The apprentices ate in the shadow of their half-completed stones. Aurya glanced warily up at the old palace, less frightening in the blue light of morning. Storks nested on its roof and streaked its sides with their droppings.
‘Eat faster,’ the master mason barked, although his cough was troubling him, and he didn’t seem to have eaten anything. ‘Which of you wants to explain to the King why we’re late? Hmm?’
The apprentices put on their travelling sandals and wrapped up their tools, wooden tablets covered in a thin layer of clay or wax, and styluses, thin sticks with sharpened ends. Aurya and Sharo followed them all down the hill, the apprentices chattering gossip and rumour, shooing away the beggar children without really noticing them.
As they walked through the city, Aurya’s heart swelled at every new sight: the stalls overflowing with dusty vegetables and shining implements, feathered charms, ostriches and men carrying deer with tied feet, a child playing with a clay cart. Even the smells wafting from the river and the alleys, the flies that gathered in clouds, the streets turned to mud with churning feet, didn’t dull her sense of being in a strange and wonderful place. Sharo gave little whimpers as each bustling street passed them by: another thousand memories to lock away inside his head.
They climbed the hill on the other side of the river, and a palace came into view – brighter and newer than the one beside the workshop, its coloured tiles gleaming in the sun.
‘The palace without rival,’ the apprentices muttered to one another. As they got closer, the smells of incense and petals filled the air, and the city’s foul odours faded. More of those huge stone bull creatures flanked the palace’s main entrance, with wings and human heads, brilliantly painted. They made Aurya think of the monster Humbaba. Inside, men in fine robes and sandals hurried past with arms full of tablets. Slaves with spotless head-wrappings lugged urns full of water and armfuls of fans from place to place. Lords and priests swept past with an air of dignity, and Aurya noticed that all of them, every last one, was moving so as not to make the slightest sound. Even the whisper of Aurya’s breathing s
eemed to echo faintly in the high eaves.
Aurya felt Sharo move closer to her as the noise of the world’s details once again swept in on him. She saw the pain building behind his eyes, but he kept quiet. Aurya tried not to stare at everything, but as they got further into the palace, she noticed all the apprentices staring too, craning their necks down shaded passages lined with painted friezes. Even the master’s eyes darted from side to side as they went, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. He named the stones he saw in the statues and lintels and pillars, as if they were the names of gods.
‘Gypsum. Basalt. White limestone …’
At the top of some stairs, the King’s servant Bel-Ibni was standing to greet them. He had changed his robes to bright red with shimmering gold stitching, but he still had the bearing of a peacock.
‘Hurry along now,’ he said. ‘The King is waiting.’
They followed him through the halls, and Aurya swallowed a growing sense of dread. Along every wall, huge, strange creatures in human clothes were carved: a man with the head of a hawk, the head of a dog, carvings of cities burning, armies fleeing before chariot charges. A stringed instrument sounded somewhere down the halls, the sound getting louder as they walked. At the end of the corridor, they stepped out into a walled garden. Peacocks and an ostrich walked in the shade, around the lyre player. King Ashurbanipal was reclining on a lounge chair covered in cushions. Around him, men held up fans and trays of drinks, sweetcakes and oils. They looked like statues, all frozen as if turned to stone, their eyes staring straight ahead.
‘Ah, my devoted carvers,’ the King said as the apprentices arrived in the garden. He raised a shining cup in one of his hands. ‘We’ve been practising our positions!’
The servants didn’t move. Flies crowded over the exposed food and liquids they held, over their faces and eyes. Sweat ran down their faces.
All Our Broken Idols Page 17
