The Black Madonna

by Peter Millar

  And as she did, the blindfold on her eyes slackened almost imperceptibly, just enough for her to glimpse, on the pedestal in the centre of the exhibition room, an ancient serene expression of endless compassion. Christians called her Mater Misericordiae, Mother of Mercy, the Immaculate Virgin. Nazreem’s scream became a howl of bitter rage.

  2

  Oxford, England

  It was a late spring morning and pale sunbeams filtered through the golden stone Gothic window frames of the Senior Common Room along with the subtle scent of new mown grass from a quintessential English lawn. One of the older Fellows rose from his armchair muttering something about a draught and closed the window.

  Marcus Frey shook his head in wry resignation: that was All Souls for you. The place was an anomaly, an eccentric anachronism. Officially named the College of All Souls of the Faithful Departed, in commemoration of those who died in the Hundred Years War with France, it was a 500-year-old college that remained substantially true to its origins. Above all, it had never been tempted into the modern folly of lecturing to the young.

  All Souls had no students, only a body of worthy academics – some of who bore the title ‘Professor’ while others did not – elected to be Fellows, and whom the ancient founders’ munificence continued to allow to pursue their undistracted studies. Or not, as the case might be, he reflected, watching Dunkin, the elderly Fellow who had closed the window, sink back into his preprandial slumber.

  Now approaching his thirty-sixth summer, Frey was one of the younger inmates of this unusual institution. He had arrived at Oxford from his native South Africa as a postgraduate Rhodes Scholar with a bit of a reputation. His doctoral thesis, inspired by growing up under apartheid and then through the dramatic transition to today’s much-hyped ‘Rainbow Nation’ had been a study of how history had been rewritten over those decades, martyrs and terrorists redefined. He had experienced, and described, how the past – because records and memories of it existed only in the present – was actually perpetually in flux. The flux was called history, a shifting science of the subjective. It was controversial but hardly new. Marcus’s favourite quote came from the nineteenth-century satirist Samuel Butler who had written, ‘The only reason God tolerates historians is because they can do the one thing He cannot: alter the past.’ The study of those alterations was called Comparative Historiography, and it was people like Marcus who were making it fashionable.

  The thesis had been a success, not just academically, but repackaged for a more populist audience in book form as Nelson Mandela, Saint or Sinner and it had gone on to be a bestseller. He had won his fellowship on the strength of it. As a follow-up he had chosen another of the world’s most intractable subjects and the new book, Promised Land or Stolen Land: Palestine versus Israel, had done almost as well.

  That was why he so unexpectedly disturbed the somnolent peace of the All Souls Common Room when he picked up his copy of The Times, turned to the foreign pages and almost immediately spilt his tea. The loud clink of bone china cup against saucer and muted cry of pain as the hot liquid splashed onto his trouser leg earned sharply disapproving glances from the grey heads that surfaced momentarily from the leather armchairs. But he paid them no attention. He could not take his eyes from the page in front of him.

  The headline on the news story running along the bottom of the page, in a space normally reserved for more light-hearted or offbeat items read, rather archly: ‘Maybe Mary Goes Missing.’ It was not the report, however, but the photograph next to it that had seized Marcus’s attention: standing amidst rubble on the sun-drenched steps of some Mediterranean building, wearing a yellow headscarf which almost but not quite covered her raven-dark hair, was a striking young woman whom Marcus Frey knew for a fact was not called Mary.

  The caption beneath read: ‘Nazreem Hashrawi, curator of the Museum of Palestine in Gaza tells reporters of the theft of a recently discovered, possibly priceless and historically important early Christian artefact.’

  But Marcus could not concentrate on the words. His gaze continually drifted back to the photograph of Nazreem. It had been more than five years since he had last seen her and her familiar big dark eyes seemed unusually hard and focused. He was strangely unsurprised to find she had gone back to her childhood home, to Gaza City, even though it was one of the most dangerous places on earth. She had no real alternative. Except of course for the one he might have given her. Nor was he particularly surprised that she had risen to become curator of her own museum, a remarkable achievement for a woman in the male-dominated Muslim world. Nazreem Hashrawi was a formidable young woman.

  She had impressed him the first time he saw her, sitting at a café on the edge of Cairo’s bustling Khan el-Khalili market. Marcus had been immersed in on-the-ground research for his book about the Israeli-Palestianian conflict, and had been introduced to her by a professor at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University whom he had asked for assistance. He needed to learn more about what Arabs thought today about the history of the conflict, particularly the 1967 Six-Day War which had been so disastrous for their attempt to eliminate Isreal. But what he also wanted was someone who could act both as a guide and interpreter, preferably with some knowledge of the Palestinian territories. He could not ask for anybody better, the professor had assured him, than Nazreem Pascale Hashrawi. To be sure, she was not studying politics – Marcus reflected that that was not necessarily a bad thing in the circumstances – but a graduate student in the Department of Archaeology. She was bright, multilingual – half-French, though her mother had died in childbirth – with a good command of English, and had been brought up in Gaza City itself. Marcus could not have asked for more.

  The work had thrown them together, literally in the end: during an overflight of Sinai their Soviet-made Egyptian Army helicopter had gone out of control and crash-landed. The pilot and co-pilot had died and Hamzi, a photographer along for the ride, had been trapped in the wreckage and had to have a leg amputated. Nazreem and Marcus had been thrown clear but even so he had metal fragments embedded in his leg and was forced to spend several weeks in Cairo’s Ahmed Maher hospital. Nazreem had visited him daily and their relationship developed beyond work so that when he was released he had moved into her apartment, and a few days later, almost to his own surprise, into her bed.

  The fact that they had become lovers did not impinge on their working relationship; she continued to be his guide when his research took him to Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank, proving not only remarkably knowledgeable but also singularly open-minded about the evolution of a conflict in which the two sides often seemed implacably opposed. He had discussed offering her co-authorship but she had declined, refusing even a dedication, telling him the book would do better under his name alone – she was offering nothing more than context and background, the interpretation was all his – and in any case, she had a career of her own to make.

  When he left, as eventually he had to, there were regrets on both sides, promises – sincere but unspecific – to keep in touch. But no tears. Yet to see her now, standing in a Middle Eastern street that even in a still photograph suggested noise, colour, vibrancy, danger, Marcus realised how far their worlds had drifted apart.

  Frey lifted his eyes for a moment from the photograph and looked around him at the worn leather armchairs, the stone gargoyles visible through the great Gothic windows, and the human gargoyles dozing beneath their newspapers. Somehow this had become the setting for his career, his world, while she had made her own, just as she had promised she would, in her own, very different world. Marcus had never heard of the Museum of Palestine – it seemed more like an aspiration than an institution given the irredeemably fraught situation in that part of the world – but that only made him think all the more of her.

  She had achieved success on her own terms, in her community. Except that now, it seemed, fate had struck her a terrible blow. Marcus knew the world of museum curators: losing an exhibit was a disaster. Losing a m
ajor exhibit, and a new find at that, was a catastrophe.

  There was no photograph of the find. Marcus wondered if that was because there was none available or because some sub-editor had preferred a photograph of a pretty young woman. Nazreem was undoubtedly as striking as she had ever been even though it was not a particularly flattering picture: there was a hard set to her jaw and her eyes appeared to lack their usual spark. It could have been just the angle, but it gave the impression she had taken the theft badly, personally almost.

  According to The Times reporter, the circumstances of the stolen artefact’s discovery indicated it as being of ‘no later than the first century AD’: it had only recently been unearthed, hidden in the foundations of an ancient Christian church, itself only recently discovered after the demolition following an air raid of later buildings erected on the site. It seemed to Marcus as if the reporter was deliberately hedging around the subject of exactly what it was that had been stolen and why it might be so important. It was only towards the end when he reached the line that stated ‘Dr Hashrawi refused to confirm or deny the persistent rumours that have caused such extreme controversy in local religious and archeological circles’ that he let a long, low whistle escape from between his teeth. Ignoring the frowns that greeted it, Marcus drained the remains of his now cold tea and stood up: what the report clearly implied was that Nazreem had found – and lost – one of the most important, semi-legendary items in Christian lore: the only depiction of the Virgin Mary created in her own lifetime.

  3

  Rafah, southern end of the Gaza Strip

  The room was dark, hot, stifling. Unless the door was opened, which it rarely was, no air entered, with the result that after a while it became hard to breathe. Not that that mattered much; no one who had spent much time there had ever left the room alive.

  Then the light came on. A harsh white artificial light that flickered a second or two before exploding into sharp white merciless and all-revealing fluorescence. The man by the door, with his hand still on the pull cord that triggered the light, spat on the floor. What air there was in the room was thick, heavy with the smell of bleach and cheap antiseptic which did little to mask the stench of sweat, blood and urine.

  The room was lined with concrete breeze blocks and empty save for a metal locker in one corner, an enamel sink with a bucket in it and a small metal table with a plate of surgical instruments. The only other furniture was a single chair, set not next to the table, but about a metre and a half out from the far wall, facing away from it. When occupied, it was normally straddled, backwards, to allow close-up examination of the poor soul suspended, spreadeagled and naked from the manacles fixed to the wall.

  The figure had flinched when the light came on, but more out of instinct than awareness. Mercifully he was aware of almost nothing any more. He would in any case not have rejoiced at the company. The man who had entered the room crossed to the bucket, took a wet sponge from it and moistened the face and lips of the prisoner. He did not do so out of kindness, merely to keep the man alive. For the moment. The moisture on the sponge was vinegar. His captors had thought it wryly appropriate.

  The figure hanging from the wall grunted and rolled his head away, the vinegar stinging his cracked, torn lips. He would dearly have loved to spit in the face of his tormentor, but even with the acid liquid rubbed across his mouth he had insufficient saliva. His bruised eyelids opened just wide enough for him to perceive the blurred image of a single figure in front of him. Just the routine tormentor. So it was not yet the end. Then, dimly, he made out the sound of a second voice. And changed his mind.

  The man with the sponge moved away. Through his injured eyes and a mist of dull persistent pain the prisoner could only make out a blurred figure, dressed head to foot in black, but the voice alone told him the identity of the newcomer: Death himself.

  His carer, jailer and torturer – for the man with the sponge performed all three functions as required – could see perfectly well and it did not stop him from being every bit as intimidated by the other presence in the room. He stood back respectfully as the tall, bearded man in his sombre attire came over to inspect the prisoner.

  The tall man looked up and down the battered body hanging on the wall, at the array of purple bruises on his arms and legs, where bones had been broken, at the traces of blood that ran down his chest from the razor cuts on his nipples. The sight evoked no pity, only disgust.

  The man holding the vinegar sponge said, ‘You have more questions for this dog?’ in a tone that he hoped implied total readiness to do whatever was asked of him. But the tall man shook his head:

  ‘No. He has told us everything we wanted to know. And more. Far more.’

  ‘Then it is time to put him out of his misery? I can finish him?’

  The tall man turned and regarded his underling with a look that made the man tremble, fearing he had shown even a hint of compassion. That would not have gone down well. He reached for the pistol on the table to show willing.

  The tall man raised a hand and hesitated a second, which to the other two living beings in the room seemed like an eternity, and then said simply, ‘Yes.’

  The figure hanging from the wall slumped visibly, but in reality it was more out of relief than despair. He knew his body had taken all it could endure.

  He was wrong.

  ‘But not like that,’ the tall man said softly, his hand reaching back to the open box on the table. From it he took a blood-streaked surgical scalpel and handing it to his accomplice, pointed and said: ‘There.’

  4

  Frey was almost running across the quadrangle, even though he knew it would provoke not only stern looks from his fellow dons but possibly even a rebuke from the Warden. Even so he mounted the stairs two at a time, shooting past the descending portly figure of Nicholas Butterworth, an individual whose only day-to-day relationship with rapid motion involved the operability of quantum mechanics at near-light speed.

  Once inside his comfortable if spartanly furnished set of rooms, Frey switched on the small flat-panel television which despite their acquaintance with cutting-edge scientific theory most of his colleagues regarded with little short of wonder, and flicked through the Freeview channels to BBC News 24. It was only when he read the last few words of The Times story that it had occurred to him it might have made the television news at well, if only as a tail piece. But it was not so much the facts that interested Marcus, as the possibility of seeing more of Nazreem.

  The featured item when he turned on was a long dreary report on yet another funding crisis in the National Health Service, but using the red interactive button on his remote, Marcus found there was indeed an item on the theft from the Gaza museum. His suspicion that it might have been given the ‘light news’ treatment was confirmed when he hit the button and heard the anchorman’s opening words:

  ‘And finally, controversy raging amongst clergymen and archaeologists today amid reports that what is believed to be the oldest known image of the Virgin Mary has been found in Gaza City, and then stolen all within the space of a few days.’

  The report gave details of how the find was made when contractors clearing debris had come upon remains of an ancient, previously unrecorded Christian church and called in local archaeologists.

  And then, all of a sudden, there she was, standing on the steps of a nondescript concrete building amid all the noise and chaos of a typical Middle Eastern street. For a moment Marcus sat spellbound, staring at the face and listening to the voice of the woman that had once meant more to him than anything else: that familiar soft but slightly husky accent that bore indecipherable traces of both French and Arabic, as she told a gaggle of reporters that although the missing artefact had yet to be authenticated its loss was a devastating blow, not just to a new museum struggling to restore a sense of identity to the people of Palestine, but to the whole world of archaeology. Passionate, proud, just the same as ever. But no, not the same. Different: the figure on the television screen
was simultaneously harder and more vulnerable than the Nazreem he knew. As if there was somehow unfathomable hurt and repressed fury lurking beneath her tone. And then she was gone again.

  Marcus was almost tempted to jiggle with the red button to go back to the beginning of the piece, but he found himself instead listening to a Roman Catholic archbishop described as a ‘senior antiquities expert’: ‘The discovery of an image of Our Lady created in her own lifetime would of course have been a huge blessing for the faithful, presuming of course that it was proved to be authentic,’ this last phrase with a slightly sceptical upward curl of the lips.

  ‘It has long been believed by many that the first image was created by St Luke himself, painting on the Holy Virgin’s own kitchen table. However, we have unfortunately had no information yet as to the precise nature of this archaeological discovery, which it would seem has almost immediately been tragically lost. Needless to say we must pray for the miracle of its recovery.’

  Marcus wasn’t sure but somehow the expression on the face of the man in purple did not exactly suggest a belief in miracles.

  5

  Nazreem Hashrawi felt like shit. She felt sullied, violated, as if all of a sudden the foundations of her life had collapsed under her, and there was nothing or nobody she could rely on.

  Amidst the chaos of the air raid, it had taken six hours from the time the alarms at the museum had started ringing before anyone else had even thought to investigate. By then Nazreem herself was no longer there. When she had come to, bloody and defiled, she had felt sick to her core. She knew what had happened and took what little comfort she could in the knowledge that it could have been worse, much worse. Apart from anything else, she was still alive. She had made her way home, grateful for once for the darkness, and had showered as well as she could with the meagre water supply in her tiny flat.