One side of the carpet was almost supernaturally black. The material was so dark it seemed to absorb light. The other side was navy blue, decorated with an assortment of stars, planets, and dozens of tiny figures—some human, others mythological.
"I want to take it back to the hotel," I said.
"If you're right and this is a relic, then it belongs to the government. We have to report it. Otherwise, it will be stealing."
I called his bluff. "Fine, call your boss. Hand it in."
He blinked. "What? I thought you said you had a plan."
"That was before you accused me of being a thief."
"I didn't accuse you of anything."
I snorted. "You just said I was trying to steal it."
"Tell me what your plan is."
"Not unless you apologize."
"For what?"
"For the mean thing you just said."
He simmered. "I'm sorry. Now what's your stupid plan?"
"Never mind. You're right; it is stupid. The carpet belongs to your government."
"The smart thing to do is hand it in," he said.
"Whatever. I'm too hot to argue. Go ahead and call your boss."
He took out his cell. "All right."
"But be very careful which boss you call," I added.
He stopped. "What do you mean?"
"If this is a relic, then it's worth a fortune. Whoever you give it to—they'll probably keep it for themselves, at least until they can sell it on your black market."
"What do you know about our black market?" he demanded.
"I know it exists and that many relics are sold there."
Amesh shook his head. "This is Turkey. We don't have the corruption you have in America."
"I was just going by how your taxi drivers behave."
"Huh?"
"You had to fight with the last one so he wouldn't rip us off. "
"If you think all Turks are liars and thieves, then you don't know us."
"You're right, what do I know?" I muttered.
"We're a Muslim nation. People have high morals here."
"Call Mr. Toval. He's your boss, right? Tell him about the carpet."
"That's true, but..." Amesh considered. "Maybe we should call your father."
"Why?" I did not want to call my dad. He would never let me study it. He would hand it in immediately.
"He's well respected. He'll know what to do," Amesh said.
I shrugged. "You can do that if you want, but I have to warn you, my father's an engineer. He doesn't like to get involved in administrative affairs. He'll probably give the carpet to Mrs. Steward, and she's not even a Muslim."
Amesh looked as if I had just punched him in the gut.
"I don't want some rich American stealing it," he swore.
I was sympathetic. "The carpet would probably make her super-rich."
Amesh stopped and studied me. "Do you really think it's worth a lot of money?"
"If it's been buried beneath this desert for thousands of years—then yes, it's worth a fortune. Look at it; it's in perfect shape."
Amesh looked puzzled. "How can it be so old and look so new?"
"The dry sand mummified it. That doesn't just happen to dead bodies. If it was buried deep enough to escape the rain, then I'm not surprised it kept its original colors."
"But you dug it up near the surface."
"I dug it up after tons of heavy machinery brought it to the surface. Amesh, for all we know, it was buried near the bottom of the pit."
"I see what you're saying." He frowned, worried. "But if we try to smuggle it out of here—that would be like stealing."
It would not be like stealing; it would be stealing, but I didn't bother to point that out to him. "I don't plan to keep it," I said, not sure if I was being 100 percent honest. "I just want to check it out, you know, back at the hotel."
"Why?"
I reached down and touched it. It was incredible. Already, in the short time we had talked, it had begun to dry. "There's something strange about it. It feels almost magnetic."
Amesh reached down and touched it. "I don't feel anything."
"That's because you're tired and you've been working all day."
He wiped his sweat away. "Okay, what's your plan?"
"I'll call another taxi and leave the site. I'll wait for you on the other side of that sand dune we saw when we drove up."
"So you want me to sneak it past the guards?"
"Yes."
"They're not going to let me take a carpet out of here."
"No. But they will let you take a nicely wrapped FedEx package out of here."
"Is that your secret plan?"
"Yes. And it's a good one."
"That's what you think. I don't know if we have a FedEx box that can hold something this big."
"It doesn't have to be an official FedEx box. Just put lots of FedEx stickers on it. Heck, you're their number one gofer. You're always running around with packages. Do you forget how we met?"
"I usually deliver smaller packages."
"Like the guards care. They see you every day. They'll take one look at you and wave you through. Also, remember, you're leaving the job site, not trying to enter. Security is tighter on the way in than on the way out."
"Who told you that?"
"No one! It just makes sense."
Amesh considered. "We can ride back to your hotel together?"
"As long as you can get out of work."
"I can make up some excuse." The logic of my plan was slowly changing his mind, but Amesh continued to stress. He began to pace back and forth. He was starting to make me nervous. "If I get caught, it'll be my life on the line, not yours," he said.
"I doubt they'll take you out and shoot you."
He glanced back toward the pit. A shadow crossed his face. When he spoke next, his voice was frightened. "They could. Arab countries are more strict than Western countries. You have no idea."
The change in him was dramatic. He looked scared.
It made me wonder, just a tiny bit, if I was being reckless.
"If you get caught, I'll tell them it was my idea," I said.
He shook his head. "You say that now..."
"I mean what I say. That's one thing you've got to learn about me."
"If I get it out of here, then I'll own a bigger piece."
Boy, did my blood boil then, in two seconds flat.
"Gimme a break! I'm the one who found it!" I yelled.
"You found it by chance. It doesn't belong to you. You're not even from this country. You're..."
"Go ahead and say it: I'm just a girl. An American girl."
"That's not what I was going to say."
"Liar."
Amesh frowned. "If we do end up selling it, then we'll have to be clear about who owns what."
"Fine. If I decide to sell it, I'll pay you a ten percent commission for helping me get it out of here."
"That's crazy!"
"Why?"
"Because I'm taking all the risk! I should pay you ten percent!"
I reached over and squeezed his good arm. "Amesh?"
He shook me off, he was so heated. "What?"
"If we get it out of here, we'll both own it equally. And if we decide to sell it, we'll split the money."
He began to cool down. "That's fair."
"But I have one condition. In the end, I get to decide what we do with the carpet."
"No way!"
"For the last time—I found it! Now we've talked enough. Do we have a deal? Yes or no?" I stuck out my hand.
He shook it. "All right. But you have to promise not to do anything with it without first talking to me."
"Agreed." I handed him my cell. "Find a taxi that will come out here, then go wrap up the carpet."
"For someone I just met, you're asking me to trust you an awful lot."
"It works both ways," I told him.
To lure a taxi to the work site, we had to promise to pay a stag
gering eighty lira. I was being exploited but there was no helping it. We had to keep moving forward.
The carpet took only fifteen minutes to dry in the boiling sun. But a minor miracle occurred when I went to roll it up. The carpet practically shrank. I folded it in two and it lay down perfectly flat. Then, I rolled it up, and it was like handling a deflated air mattress. The more I folded it, the smaller it got. By the time I handed it to Amesh, it was two feet by one foot. Plus it was so light—five pounds max!
Amesh didn't notice the miracle. He just nodded. "Good work."
"Thanks," I mumbled, staring at it with awe.
While Amesh went off to wrap it, my taxi arrived. The guards had it wait outside the gate. Before leaving the job site, I decided to give Amesh a quick call. I was worried about his nerves. Turned out, I was right to be worried. He sounded scared. I warned him to stay cool.
"That's easy for you to say," he complained.
"I'd take the risk if I could," I said, but I wondered if that was true. Swiping something this important in a foreign country was no laughing matter.
"You can," he said. "I can give you the package. Then you can have your taxi pick you up inside the compound and leave with the carpet already hidden inside the taxi's trunk."
"It won't work. My taxi's already here. The guards know I'm leaving. They have no reason to let my cab through the gate." I paused. "Look, if you can't do it, I understand. Hide it in the building you're in and I'll find another way to sneak it out."
"Yeah. Then you'll own it a hundred percent."
"Well, yeah."
Amesh sighed. "Wait for me. If I'm not there in fifteen minutes, then it means I got caught."
He hung up. Getting in the cab, I smiled and waved goodbye to the guards. They waved back. This particular taxi driver did not have his radio on, nor did he complain when I stopped him a mile from the job site. I held up a ten lira note and repeated the Turkish sentence Amesh had taught me: "A friend's coming on a moped." The guy did not complain. He turned off the engine and quickly pocketed the cash.
Amesh did not show for twenty minutes—the longest twenty minutes of my life. When he finally did appear, he acted nonchalant. He let the driver stick his moped and the package in the trunk, and soon we were on our way to Istanbul.
"You're as cool as James Bond," I teased when we were both seated in the back.
"This had better be worth it."
I saw he was serious. "Did the guards give you a hard time?"
"For the first time ever, they wanted to know what was in the box. I told them I didn't know, just that my boss told me to deliver it to FedEx. I said I wasn't allowed to open it."
I patted his leg. "You did good. I'm proud of you."
"Just remember our deal."
The ride back to Istanbul proved uneventful. We were so weary from the heat and stress, we both passed out. In fact, I did not wake up until we reached the hotel. I must have been growing accustomed to the traffic noise. The taxi driver got out to help Amesh unload his moped, but I was up fast to grab the box. He had done an excellent job wrapping it.
The driver took his fee and left. A security guard at the hotel parking lot let Amesh lock his moped beside an assortment of bikes. When we were finally alone, I told him to wait downstairs for ten minutes before coming up to my room.
"Why?" he asked, suspicious.
"We might draw attention to ourselves, being seen together."
"More like you're ashamed to be seen with me."
"I would say the reverse is closer to the truth."
"Or else you plan on stealing it the moment I turn my back."
That hurt. I threw the carpet at him. He barely had a chance to raise his good arm and catch it. "Hold it if you don't trust me!" I yelled.
He was ashamed. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. It's just..."
"What? All Americans are thieves?"
"No, no," he said quickly. "It has nothing to do with that."
"Then what is it?"
"Last summer..." he began, but stopped, his expression pained.
"What about last summer?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Forget about that; it's not important."
"Amesh. Come on, what are you saying?"
He shrugged. "This is a rich hotel. I don't know how much Becktar's paying for you and your dad to stay here, but it's a lot. I don't know how much money you have—and it's none of my business—but whatever it is, compared to what I have, it's a fortune."
"What does this have to do with the carpet?"
For one of the few times, he looked me directly in the eye, and I was struck by how beautiful his eyes were. He spoke in a soft voice.
"We live in different worlds. This carpet fascinates you. You find it beautiful. You might think one day of hanging it on the wall of your house. But to me it's something that could change my life and the life of my family."
"If we establish that it's old and worth a lot of money," I said.
He nodded. "And if we can sell it on the black market."
I considered his words carefully. Up until now, I had wanted time alone with the carpet so I could study it. He was right—it intrigued me, but in ways I could not explain to him because I could not explain them to myself.
I simply felt drawn to it.
But I was not a thief. I had not truly considered selling it in Turkey or trying to smuggle it back to America. In the end, after I had fun playing the archaeologist, I figured I would tell my father about it and we would turn it over to a museum.
Yet now I saw how the idea worried Amesh. He was trying to say he was not a crook either, but the carpet might be an unexpected windfall that could help his family. I could appreciate that. Money was good, especially when you didn't have any.
Unfortunately, it was too early to make any promises concerning the carpet. We did not know enough about it. I tried telling Amesh as much—I thought I was reassuring him—but the more I talked, the more unhappy he looked.
He handed it back to me. "You carry it. I'll knock in ten minutes."
"Give me fifteen. I want to take a quick shower and change."
He glanced uneasily around. "I'll wait across the street."
"You can't wait in the lobby?"
"They'll ask what I'm doing here. They'll probably throw me out."
His remark was so simple, and so true, it made me sad.
In my room, I did not bother to unwrap the box, but jumped in the shower. I wanted to wash and blow-dry my hair before Amesh arrived. Like I needed a dryer in this climate. I could stand on the balcony in the breeze that blew off the sea and my hair would dry in the same length of time. Yet I was hoping to give it bounce. Yes, I admit it, I was still hoping to get this cute Turkish guy to like me.
It was half an hour before he knocked. Perhaps he had given me extra time, afraid he might catch me in the shower. It would have been just like him; he was so shy. But all I had on when I answered the door was a tank top and shorts. It's what I wore most of the time since I had arrived in Istanbul, but somehow, right now, it felt kind of mischievous. I mean, he noticed how little I was wearing. It was like he was afraid to look.
I think it was my belly button that got him.
He looked hot from the sun so I offered him another Coke, which he took gratefully. I gestured to the bathroom.
"You can take a shower if you want, cool off, I don't mind."
He quickly shook his head. "I'm fine," he said.
I smiled as I picked up scissors and moved toward the package, which was sitting on a table not far from the flat-screen TV "I feel guilty opening it after you did such a nice job wrapping it up," I said.
"Be careful you don't cut it," he said.
"I hear ya." I sliced off the tape without penetrating the cardboard. In minutes I had the carpet in hand and was about to unroll it on the floor. Then I ran into the bathroom and returned with four giant towels. The floor was clean but not clean enough for me.
The first thing
I noticed was that we had done a great job hosing it down. There was not a spot of dirt on it. Amesh made a similar observation.
"It was this clean when I wrapped it," he said.
"Did anyone see you wrap it?"
"No. I was alone."
"Good," I muttered, because my eyes were growing larger with each passing minute. Again I was amazed at how black the bottom of the carpet was; it looked like a rectangular window into deep space. It was made up of an incredibly dense forest of one-inch fibers—that stood up so straight, but which bent so easily—I could not for the life of me figure out what they were made of.
"It almost feels like hair," Amesh said.
"Very stiff hair, and at the same time, very soft."
"Can something be stiff and soft at the same time?"
"No, not really. But this is unlike anything I've felt before."
"Turn it over," Amesh said.
We flipped it, and our puzzlement deepened. There were no individual fibers that we could see, but the reverse side was extremely soft and smooth.
"It's silk," Amesh said.
"It's not silk."
"What is it?"
"I don't know."
"How can you be sure it's not silk?" he asked.
"Because it's like it's all ... one."
"One what?" he asked.
"I don't know, one piece. Let's study the design."
The predominant dark blue color was rimmed on all four sides with an inch of bright gold. In the center was an ill-defined black circle, two feet across and filled with stars.
Around the star field flowed a group of characters set against a series of exotic backgrounds. The carpet seemed to tell a story.
At the top, there was a garden filled with two types of beings—humans and what might have been angels. The latter walked with the people, but were taller and brighter. Most wore silver gowns, while the humans wore simple animal skins.
The scene flowed by a dragon, or some kind of monster. It glowed a sober red and as it pressed upon the soft green of the garden, the monster transformed it into a desert.
On the lower half of the carpet were the humans; the angels, who had lost height as well as luster; and a third species, who were taller than the other two. They were an unpleasant brownish gray and had flat, almost featureless, faces. The bottom showed these three groups at war with each other. But then the dragon reappeared and crushed the life out of the angels and the other mysterious creatures. In the end only the humans remained.