by James Barney
Sargon stood silently by, still in shock and unable to mourn.
Once the initial chaos subsided, it was decided that Nisreen and Farhana should be buried before sunset, in accordance with Muslim tradition. Nisreen’s brother-in-law, Lutfi, left to take care of the funeral and burial arrangements while Aaliya and several other female relatives carefully washed the bodies with scented water and shrouded each with a kafan—a clean, white linen cloth.
An hour later, Lutfi and several men from the village returned and transported the shrouded bodies on crudely constructed stretchers to an open courtyard near the town mosque. There, the local imam led the mourners—more than two hundred men and women—in a traditional funeral prayer.
Following the prayers and a long period of silent reflection, the crude stretchers bearing the shrouded bodies of Nisreen and Farhana were carried by hand to the village cemetery for burial. By Muslim tradition, only the men of the community accompanied the bodies to the gravesites.
Just before sunset, Sargon watched stoically as the shrouded bodies of Nisreen and Farhana were lowered together into a single grave, each lying on her right side, facing Mecca. By tradition, no tombstones, markers, or mementos were left at the gravesite, signifying that all ties to this physical world were now broken. The souls of Nisreen and Farhana were thus humbly submitted to Allah.
It was later that night, as Sargon lay awake on the floor of Lutfi’s house, that despair descended upon him like a deluge. He wept and convulsed for several hours in the dark until, finally, he saw that the sky outside had changed from black to gray.
He left Mishkab at dawn, having not slept at all. Although tradition dictated that he should remain near the burial site for at least three days of mourning and prayer, he simply could not stay in Mishkhab any longer. They were after him, and they knew he was heading south.
He gave his wife’s family ten thousand British pounds, nearly half the money he’d planned to use for his family’s escape. In exchange, they gave him their rusty Datsun pickup truck. The military van was accepted in return, destined to be stripped, repainted, and converted into a farm utility vehicle.
Sargon drove south out of Mishkhab with no real plan. He was reasonably certain that Hussein’s goons would be waiting for him at the Kuwaiti border. He’d changed into simple clothes, which Lutfi had provided, and had shaved his moustache, but he lacked the proper paperwork to cross into Kuwait.
His original plan had been to bribe a border guard, usually not a difficult task. But if the border guards had already been contacted and intimidated by Husseins’s men, Sargon knew that no amount of money would get him through safely. He’d killed two soldiers, and, as he well knew, the only price that could be paid for that crime was public execution.
He considered his other options. West to Jordan? North to Turkey? He doubted the old Datsun would make it that far. So he continued driving south, nearly certain he was driving toward his own execution.
Then he remembered the Talbots.
Immediately, he pulled over and retrieved a tattered road map from the glove compartment and spread it across the steering wheel. Al Hilla, the town nearest to Tell-Fara, was less than fifty kilometers away. For the first time since the attack outside of Baghdad, Sargon allowed a tiny glimmer of hope to enter his heart as he turned the rickety Datsun around and veered east off of Highway 8 onto the narrow dirt road to al Hilla.
Chapter Eleven
September 5, 1979. Tell-Fara, Iraq.
The first thing Sargon noticed when he arrived at the excavation site was the Talbots’ dusty Land Cruiser parked on the side of the road. He pulled his pickup truck alongside and got out to investigate.
The Land Cruiser was empty but running at idle.
“Strange,” he whispered to himself.
From where he stood, Sargon could not see the temple ruins, which were obscured behind a large, rocky berm a few hundred feet away, covered with scraggly vegetation and squat palm trees. A narrow path led through the vegetation up and over the hill, toward the temple ruins on the other side.
Sargon made his way along the path and was nearly at the top of the hill when he suddenly heard gunfire. Instinctively, he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way to where the path crested the berm. From there, he had a clear view of the temple site below.
He saw two gunmen dressed in fatigues, weapons raised, running toward the excavation pit. One wore a black and white headscarf, the other a black ski mask. He watched as they fired their weapons and then tossed a small object into the pit.
Seconds later, a powerful explosion rocked the entire area. Sargon flinched and dropped flat against the ground, his heart pounding furiously.
What in Allah’s name was going on here?
When he looked up again, the gunmen were on the move, walking quickly around the site and periodically looking into the pit, which was now belching thick black smoke. A few moments later—to Sargon’s horror—they began walking quickly up the path. Toward him.
Sargon scampered away and crouched low behind a small stand of date palms, his gaze fixed on the path. A minute later, the two gunmen crested the hill and passed less than three feet away from where he hid.
They were conversing in low tones, and Sargon distinctly heard one of them say “vehicle” in Arabic. Sargon gasped audibly.
Instantly, the man in the ski mask halted and motioned for the other to be quiet.
Sargon held his breath.
“What is it?” the second gunman asked.
“I thought I heard something,” replied the first, squinting and scanning both sides of the path.
Seconds passed in agonizing silence. Sargon was sure the man in the ski mask would logically retrace his steps and, if he did, would quickly find Sargon’s absurd hiding place, just a few feet off the path.
Several more seconds passed in silence, and Sargon became acutely aware of his own breathing. Had it always been this loud?
“I didn’t hear anything,” the second gunman said finally. “Come on, let’s get the vehicle.”
Those words struck Sargon like a jolt of electricity. His pickup truck was parked right next to the Land Cruiser. As he watched helplessly, the two gunmen turned and started back down the path.
Moments later, there was shouting and the sound of shuffling feet near the road. They’d spotted his truck. He could hear them returning, their footsteps growing louder by the second.
Sargon saw the head and shoulders of the first gunman just cresting the hill. He pulled his Tariq pistol from his pocket, unlocked the safety, and took aim. Without a second thought, he pulled the trigger and fired a single 9 mm round into the man’s chest, causing him to stumble backward and downhill.
The second gunman, now visible, immediately dove off the path and disappeared into the vegetation.
Sargon’s left shoulder ached with pain, and the rest of his body was weak with fatigue and stress. He knew he’d be no match for the second gunman in a hand-to-hand struggle. As he considered his options, he became acutely aware of the silence. For a full minute, there was no sound at all, save for the soft whooshing of the shamal through the dry brush and palm trees. Somewhere in that thicket, however, the second gunman was lurking. What was he doing?
Another minute passed in silence, and Sargon began to think maybe—just maybe—the second gunman had fled.
Suddenly he heard rustling nearby. He peered into the brush but saw nothing. Off to one side, a palm frond moved. Was that the wind? A tense moment passed as he strained to hear any sound.
Then, without warning, an explosion of automatic gunfire erupted to Sargon’s left, and the tree he was leaning against shook violently as several rounds slammed into its trunk. Splinters and bits of plant material flew all around. Crunching footsteps were now coming toward him.
Sargon had only one option. He rolled left onto his wounded shoulder, raised his pistol in his right hand, and fired two quick shots in the direction of the rustling noise. His
bullets whizzed into the palm forest and disappeared.
A split second later, more automatic gunfire erupted from the brush. One of the rounds whizzed so close to Sargon’s ear that he could feel the heat and disrupted air. But he didn’t flinch. Instead, he remained in his firing position, raised the pistol firmly, and fired repeatedly in the direction of the automatic gunfire. He kept firing until his clip of 9 mm rounds was empty. This would be his last stand.
When the chaos ended, the only sound left was the whooshing of the shamal. Sargon did not hesitate before venturing into the brush. If he was going to die today, there was no reason to delay the inevitable. Twenty yards into the thicket, he found the second gunman lying awkwardly on his back, his black-and-white headscarf soaked red with blood. One of Sargon’s shots had slammed into the man’s head.
Sargon’s next thought was about his friends, the Talbots. He rushed down the path and approached the edge of the archeological pit adjacent to the temple ruins. Thick plumes of black smoke were still billowing from the pit. He couldn’t see much through the smoke, but he could tell the scaffolding was completely demolished, and some of it was still on fire at the bottom of the pit.
“Daniel!” he screamed into the pit. “Rebecca!” There was no answer. He had to get down there!
He ran back to the vehicles, carefully stepping over the body of the dead gunman in the path. He reached the rusty Datsun and searched in the back for something useful. But all he found were old oil cans and greasy automotive parts.
He then searched the Talbots’ Land Cruiser, which was still idling on the side of the road.
“Aha!” he exclaimed as he spotted a large coil of high-quality nylon rope in the back compartment. Grabbing the rope and a large flashlight, he rushed back up the path toward the temple.
Sargon worked quickly, believing his friends might still be alive. It had been more than fifteen years since he’d done any actual fieldwork, but his archeological training came back to him quickly. He tied a series of square knots in the nylon rope at intervals of approximately three feet, doing his best to ignore the pain in his left shoulder.
Using a sturdy half-hitch knot, he secured one end of the rope to a nearby palm tree. Then, peering over the edge of the pit, he tossed the other end of the rope into the hole and watched with considerable concern as it disappeared into the swirling cauldron of black smoke. Near the bottom, he noted a few areas of flickering flames where the remains of the wooden scaffolding were still burning. He had to keep the nylon rope away from those flames. Carefully, he swung the rope to the far side of the pit, away from the charred and burning remains of the scaffolding. Would that be far enough to avoid the heat of the flames? There was only one way to find out.
The climb down was excruciating and terrifying. Sargon slid down the rope with one hand, using the knots to brace his feet as he did. As he descended, the smoke and dust became almost unbearable. He coughed and winced as he dropped, knot by knot, deeper into the pit. Near the bottom, the heavy smoke and dust stung his eyes so badly that he was forced to close them completely. He descended the last fifteen feet with his eyes shut, barely able to breathe.
Finally, his feet touched rubble. With his eyes still shut, he felt his way toward the wall of the temple, stumbling several times over loose stones, broken wood, and twisted metal. After some moments of struggling forward, his hands touched the smooth, glazed bricks of the temple wall. Then, with some effort, he pressed his back flat against the wall and opened his eyes, for the first time assessing the situation around him.
A small amount of sunlight filtered through the smoke and dust, dimly illuminating his surroundings. He could see that part of the temple’s north wall had collapsed, creating a huge pile of loose bricks and rubble, upon which he was now standing. With a sinking feeling, he realized that his friends, Daniel and Becky Talbot, were trapped somewhere below.
He fumbled with the flashlight for several seconds before managing to turn it on. Surveying the damage around him, he spotted a tiny opening near his feet. He might be able to reach the Talbots through that space! Dropping to his hands and knees, he began removing bricks and debris, widening the hole. When it was big enough to fit his hand through, he shoved the flashlight into it and pressed his face close to take a look. He saw what seemed to be a small cavern beneath him. Encouraged, he quickly removed more debris until the opening was about two feet wide.
“Daniel! Becky!” he screamed into the space below. No reply.
Carefully, and with considerable pain, Sargon inched, feet-first, into the cavity until his entire body was crouched inside. “Daniel!” he screamed. “Becky!” He swept the flashlight beam around the small cavern and gasped at what he saw. Instead of being surrounded by loose rubble as he’d expected, he was instead surrounded by structural mud-brick walls. This was not an accidental space formed by the crumbling wall; this was a man-made internal chamber of the temple!
Sargon, at five foot eight, was just barely able to stand up inside the low-ceilinged chamber, which measured about six by eight feet. It appeared to be an anteroom of some sort, with a passageway at the interior end that led farther into the temple. He was just making his way toward that passageway when he heard a noise behind him. He turned with a start and trained his flashlight on a pile of bricks and rubble. In the beam of the flashlight, he saw the head and torso of a man, whom he recognized immediately.
“Daniel!” Sargon shouted incredulously, recognizing his friend Daniel Talbot lying helpless beneath a pile of bricks and debris.
Talbot responded in a series of shallow, wheezy spurts. “How . . . did . . . you . . . get . . . in here?”
“I . . . I climbed down on a rope I found in your truck,” Sargon sputtered. “Where’s Becky? Who were those men? What happened?” He asked these questions in a bewildered staccato.
Talbot, however, did not respond.
Frantically, Sargon began removing the debris that was piled high on Talbot’s body. As he did, he repeatedly asked, “Daniel, can you hear me? Are you okay? Daniel?”
But there was no longer any response.
Sargon could not budge the largest of the boulders that lay across Talbot’s legs, pinning him tightly to the floor. At this point, however, he was quite sure Talbot was dead.
Exhausted, frustrated, and deeply saddened, he dropped to his knees and said a silent prayer for his friend Daniel Talbot from Harvard University. As he did, he recalled that the Talbots’ young daughter, Kathleen, had recently returned to the United States to visit her grandparents and to start first grade. He thanked Allah that at least she was safe.
Then, looking up, Sargon turned his attention to the passageway at the far end of the anteroom . . . and the interior chambers of the temple that lay beyond.
He moved cautiously across the anteroom toward the passageway on the other side, concentrating intensely on his surroundings, willfully pushing everything else out of his mind. At this moment, he was simply an archeologist, seeing something incredible and wondrous for the first time—something that had likely not been seen by human eyes for more than five thousand years.
His thoughts were everywhere at once. A chamber inside the Tell-Fara temple? It was utterly inconceivable and contrary to all conventional wisdom. Tell-Fara, after all, was a ziggurat, not a tomb. Or so most Assyriologists believed.
Everyone, that is, except the Talbots.
Sargon inched forward, awestruck by his surroundings. The walls of the anteroom were bare and formed of flat, baked bricks like those on the exterior of the temple. The room was entirely empty, but for the rubble and debris that had been pushed in by the explosion. Sargon tried not to think about the body of his friend, Daniel Talbot, lying just a few feet behind him under a massive boulder.
Having crossed the anteroom, he now stood at the entrance to a narrow passageway, which led to what appeared to be another, larger chamber. He trained the flashlight on the corridor and stared in wonder. It, too, was constructed of baked brick, stretc
hing straight before him a length of some twenty or thirty feet.
He focused for a moment on the contours of the passageway’s entrance, marveling at its intricate brickwork. The entryway had a horseshoe shape, often seen in later Moorish architecture but hitherto unknown before about the fourth century BC.
Sargon regretted that Daniel and Becky Talbot were not there with him to share in this amazing discovery. After all, it was their dogged persistence and intuition that had made this revelation possible.
He continued farther into the temple, the white beam of his flashlight providing the only source of illumination. The air was stale and musty. The floor was packed earth—firm beneath his feet.
The passage led into a larger chamber. As his flashlight washed over the contours of this room, he gasped aloud. For a long while, he simply stood motionless, awestruck.
The chamber was astonishingly large, its floor measuring at least thirty by forty feet, with a high, arched ceiling. He first surveyed the ceiling with his flashlight. The brickwork was tight and superbly arranged in six adjacent archways, each measuring approximately twelve by twelve feet. Such technology was not known to exist in Mesopotamia for another three thousand years after Tell-Fara was built. Yet, here it was, holding up the roof of a five-thousand-year-old temple. Sargon shook his head in disbelief.
He trained the flashlight lower, washing the beam over the room’s mud-brick walls. He counted at least thirty small niches arranged at uneven intervals and heights around the room, most containing small figurines or other carved objects.
He approached the nearest niche and shone his flashlight into it. His heart leapt as he found himself gazing upon the stone likeness of a bearded man, approximately life-sized, with translucent opals embedded in its eyes. The alabaster face stared back at him intensely, as stern and commanding a presence today as it had been five thousand years ago.
“My God,” Sargon whispered, utterly astonished. He now knew that he was standing inside a tomb, not a ziggurat at all. Tell-Fara was a massive tomb—a concept absolutely unique in Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC.
