All Our Broken Idols

by Paul M. M. Cooper

  ‘Come, all of you,’ the King howled. ‘Follow me to the top, and we’ll see the ritual done together!’

  Hearing the King’s voice, a dog started barking nearby, then another, until a chorus of barks and howls filled the night. Aurya felt cold in the air. She tried to turn around and go back to the library, but a soldier put out his spear and shook his head, herding her back into the entourage.

  ‘You heard the King,’ he said. Aurya went to Abil and walked beside him. As they approached the ziggurat, servants came out of the palace, carrying statues. They were the gods she’d seen that night at the palace, the lost gods from the house of broken idols. Some were small enough to hold in their hands, but others were carried by two men, or six. Some were drawn on sledges by ropes. There were statues of copper and bronze, statues of iron, clay and stone, statues carved from gypsum and sandstone. There were statues of long, slender figures and of round, fat ones, statues of men and of women, statues with crowns and ones with the heads of baboons and birds and dogs and lions. They all gathered around the King, a silent procession of stone.

  ‘Abil, what are they doing with those gods?’ Aurya whispered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They’re the broken idols. Gods that rule over the ruined places.’

  Aurya remembered the spots of blood she’d found on the King’s new tablets, and the story Sin-Zababa had told her. The dark rind was still under her nail. She touched Abil’s arm, warm and soft in the dark.

  ‘Abil,’ she said. ‘Do you know where the library tablets come from?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The tablets. The ones the King’s always adding to the library. Do you know where he gets them?’

  Abil looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Oh … he buys them, usually. Sometimes people give them as tribute.’

  ‘And what about in the wars?’ Her voice was barely a whisper. ‘Did you know he gets them in the wars too?’

  ‘It stands to reason. Sometimes he must, just like he takes gold and precious woods.’

  ‘And what about the librarians? The people who keep the books. Did you know he slaughtered all the librarians of Elam?’

  Abil didn’t answer, but his eyes flickered. She felt her insides move. What would it take to convince him? They stumbled along with the King and his entourage, surrounded by the bobbing stone heads of the statues, and their wide, astonished eyes. At the palace, a group of musicians joined them. One carried a lyre decorated with a bull’s head, gilded and studded with blue lapis, while others carried a horn and a drum. Up ahead, the ziggurat’s enormous bulk cut out a severe form against the sky, the flame in its highest chamber flickering like a lantern, the priests’ chants drifting down to them. The slaves carrying the King mounted the first steep steps, slightly worn in the middle. The King raised his hands and shouted as they began to climb.

  ‘Abil, I have something to tell you,’ Aurya said, hearing her voice shake. ‘Things I’ve never told you before. Never told anyone.’

  The eyes of the gods all around washed still and impassive over her, eyes of ivory and lapis and mother-of-pearl. Abil eyed her too.

  ‘I have seen the houses on the riverside burn,’ King Ashurbanipal shouted. ‘I have watched the flames in the water. I have seen the lions come down from the hills, ravenous.’

  Aurya stayed close to Abil. He stared at a tall bird-headed statue strapped to a sledge, lying on its side as men hauled it up the ziggurat’s stairs to the beat of a drum. The tablet he carried seemed to weigh suddenly on his hands, but he went on climbing. The city below shimmered, and the servants raised the smaller idols above their heads as they climbed, the broken eyes eerie in the night, an unreal procession of haunted faces.

  ‘Abil, when you first met me, and our father was killed by the lion … it wasn’t the lion that killed him.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  As if responding to the King’s shrill cries, the chanting of the priests in the high tower deepened.

  ‘My father tried to hurt me, and Sharo hit him with a jar. He wanted to protect me. But the blow killed our father, and we threw him in the lion’s pit to hide our crime.’

  Abil stared at her, his eyes wide and showing all of their whites. The statues around him stared too.

  ‘Aurya, I can’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s true. And I have to tell you this because I know the gods will punish me one day. They’ve warned me before. And if I ever do evil again, they’ll punish me and everyone I love.’

  The King’s bier made slow progress up the stairs, and the slaves beneath it strained on knotted muscles. As Aurya spoke, men on the steps above fixed ropes to the chair and helped haul it up as though the King were a piece of heavy stone. All the time, Ashurbanipal’s wailing went on.

  ‘The bricks of Nineveh will blacken,’ he moaned. ‘The graves will spill and the creatures of the deep earth will claw their way up. To ash and crumbs, we will burn the cities of our enemies, and scatter the bones of their kings; all their people in chains, all our broken idols and all our gods in ruin.’

  Aurya’s legs grew heavier with each stair as they climbed. Cicadas hissed in the gardens that lined the ziggurat’s terraces, the leaves susurrating in the winds moving over its walls. She looked up ahead at the orange glow in the top tower, listened to the chanting drawing the King up to its high chamber, and his cries, which were getting higher as he went. Terror overcame her. She didn’t know what waited at the top of the ziggurat, but that gradually approaching flame, those soft and haunting voices, filled her with dread. She thought of the blood staining the tablets in the library, and then she thought of Sharo’s carving: the lion leaping up to seize the chariot’s wheel.

  ‘Abil, that’s why I can’t be in this city one more day.’

  Several of the slaves carrying the King stumbled and cried out for help, and the soldiers on either side hurried to shore up the bier from underneath, so he looked like a spider with dozens of legs clambering up the side of the tower. The lot of them shouted to each other, backs heaving on the steps, ropes creaking like trees in a storm. Some of the men carrying the statues put them down, a silent and watchful crowd. Even the musicians stopped their playing to strain beneath the King’s weight. He went on chanting, oblivious. Aurya found herself alone with Abil, high on the stairs of that great tower, surrounded by the ruined gods.

  ‘Abil,’ she said, ‘we have to leave as soon as we can.’

  ‘Aurya, I’m glad you told me.’ She could hear the uncertainty in his voice, his eyes on the scene of madness unfolding halfway up the ziggurat. He walked up several more steps and lifted the tablet he was holding. ‘It makes sense of things for me. The look you get in your eyes sometimes, all far-off and scared. And the whole business with your brother and that lion. But it’s in the past. You can’t throw our lives here away, just for …’

  ‘Abil,’ she said, and put her hand on one of his arms that held the tablet. ‘I’m going to have a child.’

  His foot caught on the stair. Expressions moved across his face like the shadows of clouds.

  ‘I thought I could make a life in the library,’ Aurya said. ‘I thought I could escape there, among the stories. I thought I could do no harm. But this city … No one who stays here is clean. Nowhere is safe from it. And when the gods come for their vengeance, it will fall on everyone who stayed, on everyone who knew what was happening and went on as if it was normal. If you want to stay, then you’re going to do it without me and our child.’

  ‘Aurya,’ he croaked, and then he turned and looked up at the ziggurat’s high chamber. His eyes wandered over the King, and the slaves and soldiers propping him up, heaving him up the great tower, step by step, their arms raised and quivering. And then he looked down at the tablet in his hands. He placed it down and turned to face Aurya.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said. A cage full of birds burst open in Aurya’s chest. She leaned in and kissed him. She took his hand, and they ran together down t
he stairs, the city a shimmering liquid beneath them.

  ‘Aurya, where will we go?’

  ‘Anywhere. Let’s follow the river. South. To Egypt. They have great libraries there too.’

  ‘Egypt. I always wanted to go there, when I was young.’

  ‘We can start a new life there. Away from all this.’

  They both looked up at the tower, the King’s now-distant cries as he was carried to the top. She felt Abil’s hand tremble.

  ‘What about your brother?’ he said.

  ‘Sharo …’

  ‘Would he come with us?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  As they reached the bottom, Abil squeezed her hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I should have listened.’ Then he laughed, his eye wide with disbelief. ‘We’re going to have a child.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Aurya held herself close to him and listened to his heart thudding beneath his ribs, the sound of the King’s chanting still washing down from above as the night thickened around them.

  In the morning, the city didn’t seem to be any different from the day before. A breath of smoke rose from the ziggurat in the distance, the only sign that anything had taken place there the night before. Did Aurya imagine a slightly different quality to the light? A strange, shimmering silver that fell over everything, quite separate from the hanging morning mists.

  Aurya and Abil spent the morning writing their letters on hand-sized lumps of clay, in their most careful script and formal language. They were not slaves, but they were not quite free either – Aurya had never asked for the details of this arrangement, but Abil assured her that requests were often granted. It took two days to get their reply. It came in the form of two fat lumps of clay sitting like a pair of toads on their doorstep. Aurya found them in the morning. She picked them up and read first one, then the other, then checked their backs for more. She tipped the clay in the sunlight to make sure she hadn’t made a mistake. And then she ran indoors to find Abil.

  ‘The King in his great wisdom and with the advice of the gods has decided to refuse your request,’ she read to him.

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it. And they say we’re to be summoned to the palace tomorrow to explain ourselves.’

  ‘We must be able to plead against it,’ Abil said, as they paced the room together. It looked bare, now. They had already sold their furniture: the lacquered table by the window, and the cutting stone on the shelf.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Aurya said. ‘Why won’t they let us leave?’

  ‘I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow,’ Abil said, his face ghostly pale. ‘They’ll probably send us to some ration-keeper who wants to tax us double for leaving.’

  They read over the tablets again, trying to gain some clue. They held each other well into the night and whispered their fears in the dark and their plans if they ever reached the land of Egypt.

  ‘We’ll build a house near the great salt sea,’ Abil said, running his hand through Aurya’s long hair.

  ‘We’ll learn to fish,’ Aurya said. ‘We’ll find a place for Sharo, where he can carve his stones in peace.’

  When the next day dawned, it was with a clear, cold sun bursting through the leaves of the pomegranate tree. Aurya and Abil walked to the palace together, in the city morning. At the palace gate, Aurya and Abil were received by the servant Bel-Ibni. He had accumulated more beads in his hair, more bangles and rings, so he now jangled a little when he walked. He had clearly been waiting for them.

  ‘Ah, our two young scribes,’ he began, one eyebrow slightly raised. ‘Follow me. The King wants to see you.’

  ‘The King?’ Abil stammered. ‘What does the King want with us?’

  The servant only turned and motioned for them to follow. Although it was a bright and hot morning, the palace was cool and dim. Aurya could see Abil shaking a little. They followed the King’s servant through the quiet palace halls, taking in the carvings. Aurya noticed the most violent ones this time: the Assyrian soldiers in their boats hunting down the marsh people as they crouched terrified in the reeds, the siege engines shattering the walls of Judean cities and the soldiers cutting off heads and displaying them on spikes. A creeping cold gathered in her body as she saw these things, and her desire to leave Nineveh rose up in her even stronger than before. Aurya prayed:

  May my mother Ishtar forgive me, for I knew not what I did.

  The fruit forbidden by Ishtar, I ate without knowing.

  Bel-Ibni led them to the throne-room door.

  ‘Whatever happens, I’m here,’ Abil whispered, and drew closer to Aurya. She felt for his hand and squeezed it.

  ‘So am I.’

  Bel-Ibni reached out and pushed open the door. Inside, the King was sitting on his bier, not on the throne but beside it. He looked tired, as if the ritual he’d performed had cost some essential part of him. Aurya and Abil entered and dropped to their knees.

  ‘My lord, my sun, the great king of all the heavens and the lands of the earth, we are your servants …’ Abil began, but the King waved all the blessings away with a hand, and gave a wet cough.

  ‘Yes, yes. Enough of that. Enough, enough. Why did you come here?’

  Aurya and Abil looked at each other.

  ‘My lord, because you summoned us. You sent tablets …’

  ‘No,’ the King cried out, and hacked out another cough before continuing. ‘Why did you come here? You, the river girl. Why did you come to Nineveh?’

  Aurya thought for a moment.

  ‘I came because I’d always dreamed of seeing this city. And because I thought my mother might be here. I wanted to find my mother.’

  ‘And did you find her?’ the King asked, his voice high and wheezy.

  ‘No,’ Aurya said. ‘I found out the truth instead. I found out that she died to give me life.’

  The King nodded, but he looked far-off, through the walls.

  ‘I never wanted to be myself,’ he said, and rapped his fingers on his bier. ‘I never wanted to be myself.’

  Aurya and Abil stayed kneeling there on the ground, not knowing where to look. The King didn’t seem embarrassed.

  ‘My lord,’ Aurya said, eyeing him carefully. ‘I am going to have a child within the year. I’ve always dreamed of going to Egypt, to see the Black River and the Green Sea, to see the animals they have there.’

  The King ran some fingers through his beard and tugged hard at one of its braids.

  ‘You dreamed of Nineveh, and now you dream of Egypt. What do you think you’ll find there?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘Peace, maybe.’

  The King took a long breath in through his nose.

  ‘I once dreamed of the same thing.’

  ‘Please, my lord …’ Aurya began. The King put out a hand.

  ‘I will let you go,’ he said. ‘I will let you go anywhere in the world. But I have a condition.’

  ‘Anything,’ Aurya said, and beside her Abil bowed his head down to the floor.

  ‘Anything,’ he echoed.

  ‘Your brother,’ the King said, ‘your brother must carve what I ask of him. He must obey me. If he promises me this, on pain of death, then I will let you leave Nineveh.’

  Aurya felt numb. She remembered the determination in Sharo’s voice the last time they’d spoken. She bowed her head and tried to hide the desperation.

  ‘I will try. My lord, I will speak to him one more time.’

  The King nodded and looked down at her with his smile of cold command, his wistful and faraway eyes.

  ‘The river is always flowing, river girl,’ he said. ‘Even while everything else dies. It will always draw you onwards.’

  Aurya thought about this as she backed from the room with Abil. She kept thinking about it as Bel-Ibni escorted them back through the palace’s painted halls, out into the sun and the city’s noise rolling around them. She remembered the way she’d once felt on the riverbank, like she was one of the ri
ver weeds, rooted in place but always reaching downstream.

  Katya

  Abu Ammar was drunk. Katya saw it immediately when he staggered closer. His pupils were wide too, the size of buttons. He had his handgun drawn, hanging slack by his side.

  ‘Katya,’ he said, ‘I didn’t want any of this to happen.’

  She looked to where the heavy bolt cutters were lying on the ground, and thought about dashing to them. If she was fast enough, she could swing them and knock the gun from his hand. But Abu Ammar drew close to her, the weapon shaking in his grip. In the dark, he looked even younger than he was, a boy. It would take just a twitch of his finger.

  ‘Abu Ammar,’ she said, hoping she was speaking loud enough for Salim to hear her through the garage door behind her. ‘Abu Ammar, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to hurt anyone.’

  He sniffed, and then gave a bitter laugh.

  ‘That’s all I ever do. I used to be good, you know. Good in school.’

  ‘You can still go back. Abu Ammar, I can take you away from here …’

  He lifted the gun to point it directly at her, and she raised her hands instinctively at the black full stop of the barrel.

  ‘You can’t take me anywhere. The boss wants you. And the boss … the boss is so cruel when people disobey him. He learned things, in the American prison.’

  Katya gambled, and took a step closer. His face was gleaming with tears.

  ‘Abu Ammar, put the gun down. Please, do it for me. I thought you weren’t meant to drink?’

  He burst out laughing, and snatched her by the wrist. His grip was iron.

  ‘Those regulations don’t apply to me. Come with me. I want to show you something.’

  ‘No, Abu Ammar … please …’

  ‘Come, I have to show you something.’

  ‘No, it’s late. What do you have to show me?’

  ‘The end of the world,’ he said, and pressed the barrel of his gun into her neck, an O of cool metal. He dragged her down a side street where his car was waiting and pushed her into the passenger seat. She took one last look back at the garage door, which screeched open one inch, then two, on its rusted mechanism. As it opened slowly, she just caught sight of the frightened faces of Salim and Lola looking out at her from underneath. Abu Ammar jumped into the driver’s seat, gunned the engine and pulled away at great speed. Katya shook with terror as the dark city peeled away on either side. Could she grab the steering wheel, crash the car?