The Bible of Clay

  "The Bible says nothing about that, and it's pretty explicit about the life of Abraham. So . . . well, I'm skeptical; I'm not positive the Bible of Clay exists. But if those tablets appear, it will be the Church's responsibility to authenticate them."

  "But weren't you sent by the Vatican?" Miranda asked.

  "Heavens, no! The Vatican has nothing to do with my presence here," Gian Maria answered quickly.

  "So what are you doing here?" Miranda insisted.

  "Well, it's a long story," he demurred.

  "I've got all day," the reporter said, ignoring the priest's obvious uneasiness.

  "Can't you just let him alone?" Lion Doyle had remained silent through the exchange so far, but spoke up now.

  "Ah, a white knight! You always ride in just when somebody needs you, don't you, Lion, whether it's a damsel caught in a cross fire or a priest under interrogation?"

  "Piss off, Miranda!" replied Lion ill-humoredly.

  "I have no problem answering," Gian Maria said, his voice barely a whisper. "I was in Baghdad working with an NGO called Aid to Children, but I'd met Professor Picot and couldn't resist coming out here to see the work they were doing. Especially given that my knowledge of the ancient languages would help, so . . . well, I stayed."

  "And as a priest, you can just do anything you feel like?" Miranda insisted.

  "I have permission to be here," Gian Maria answered, though he turned red again.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Miranda and Daniel filmed the archaeologists at work, who by then were tired of repeating the same story to other reporters who'd arrived.

  "God, they're exhausting, especially Miranda—although I do like her," said Fabian.

  "They're just doing their job," Marta noted.

  "You're always so sympathetic to other people—but we've wasted the whole day with them."

  Fabian lit a cigarette and stared into the rising smoke. As always, Marta was right. And it wasn't a total waste, especially if their predictions were accurate about the war starting in March, or April at the latest. That was vital information.

  He squatted down and began to brush away the sand and dirt from the side of what appeared to be a terrace—a sort of square patio littered with shards of fired clay and ceramics.

  There was almost no sunlight remaining when they decided to return to the camp. The laborers were muttering among themselves about their long hours and especially about the news the reporters had brought, that the war was inevitable and about to begin.

  Clara had made arrangements for a meal under the stars. Cloths were laid near bonfires on which half a dozen lambs, seasoned with aromatic herbs, were slowly being spitted. A Dutch reporter was enthusiastically filming the scene, while one of her colleagues from the BBC complained about the satellite connection.

  Yves Picot spoke with several of the reporters, showing infinite patience, trying to address their complaints.

  "You seem very happy."

  Picot turned when he heard Clara's voice.

  "I have no reason not to be."

  "But tonight you seem happier than usual."

  "Well, it's been a while since we've had any contact with the outside world, and these people reminded me that there's more to life than just digging in the sand."

  "Ah, so you're homesick!"

  "That's quite a leap! No, I'm not, exactly, but we've done nothing but work over the past months. I'd almost forgotten that there's a world beyond Safran."

  "Are you thinking about leaving?"

  "Not because I miss Europe, but honestly, Clara, I am worried about our safety. I'm going to call Ahmed tomorrow. I want him to lay out the details of our evacuation plan. He promised to have everything ready to get us out of here when the bombs started falling."

  "And if we haven't yet found the Bible of Clay?"

  "We'll have to go, no matter what." He studied Clara's ever-hopeful face. "You can't be suggesting that we stay while the Americans invade? Do you think they'd make an exception for Safran because a group of crazy archaeologists is here excavating? Clara, I'm responsible for these people; most of them are here because of me, some are my own students, some my personal friends. No one's life is worth risking here, even for the Bible of Clay."

  "When will you be leaving, then?"

  "I just don't know yet. But I want to be prepared. I think the time has come to face this. I want to talk to my people—we'll make the decision as a group. But I don't think we should delude ourselves; you heard what the reporters had to say."

  "Things are no worse than they were a few months ago—nothing has changed."

  "They say things have."

  "Reporters exaggerate, sensationalize—it's what they do."

  "You're mistaken. Some of them may, but when they're all in unison . . . Clara, we have Dutch reporters, Greeks, Brits, Frenchmen, Spaniards. . . . They're all saying the same thing."

  "All right, I get the idea. You can leave whenever you want; I'm staying on."

  Yves Picot looked into Clara's eyes. He couldn't force her to go, but it irritated him that she would continue without him. "You'll be working in a hail of bombs." "Your friends may not win." "My friends? Who are 'my friends'?" "The people who are going to bomb us."

  "Have you had an attack of nationalism all of a sudden? If you're trying to get me to stay by playing on some sort of guilt you think I have, you're wasting your time. I'll say this once: I believe Saddam is a cruel and murderous dictator who ought to be in jail. I wouldn't cross the street to save him; I couldn't care less what happens to him. But I'm terribly sorry that innocent Iraqis are going to pay for his crimes."

  "For Saddam's crimes, or because the Americans want to steal our oil?"

  "Well, both. Saddam is the excuse, of course, though. But I'm not a political man—I got off that train a long time ago." "You don't believe in anything."

  "When I was twenty, I was a leftist, a militant, passionate about changing the world, but I soon abandoned my party in disgust. No one was what they appeared to be or claimed to be. I realized that politics and imposture go hand in hand, so I got out before I was corrupted. I defend the bourgeois democracy that allows us the illusion of believing that we enjoy freedom—that's all."

  "But what about the others? What happens to all of us who weren't born in your first world? What should we do, what should we expect?"

  "All I know is that you're the victims of the big interests you so despise, but also victims of your own rulers, and victims of yourselves. I'm French, and I defend the French Revolution; I think that all countries should have a revolution like ours and that it should lead to enlightenment and reason. But in this part of the world, enlightened men and women like you and your grandfather hoard your nation's wealth and power, protect it against all newcomers, and refuse to share it with your compatriots. So don't ask me what you can do. Figure it out for yourself. I don't feel guilty about anything."

  "You think your culture is superior to ours."

  "You want me to tell you the truth? Yes, then, I do. The rule of Islam prevents you from ushering in the bourgeois revolution. Until you separate religion and politics, you won't progress. I'm disgusted to see Iraqis swathed from head to toe in black, like that woman Fatima, who follows you around everywhere you go. I'm indignant when I see them walk five steps behind their husbands, unable even to talk to a man."

  Fabian came over to them with a glass of wine in each hand.

  "We're lucky this country isn't strictly observant. It's not France, but at least we can drink."

  As he handed them each a glass, he picked up on the tension in the air. "What's going on between you two?" he asked.

  "I told Clara that we have to start thinking about leaving."

  "From what they told us," Fabian said, gesturing with his head toward the reporters, "we shouldn't wait much longer."

  "I'm calling Ahmed tomorrow," Picot said, "so we can coordinate the evacuation. We'll stay as long as it's safe, but not a second longer."


  His tone of voice left no room for argument.

  From the little window of her room, Clara could see hardly anything. There was no moon.

  For a long time, the camp had been silent. Everyone else was asleep, but her conversation with Picot kept running through her mind as she tossed and turned. And she'd also spoken with Dr. Najeb, who was not one for sugaring the pill. Alfred was drifting in and out of consciousness, and the results of his lab tests were troubling. In the doctor's opinion, he needed to be transferred to a real hospital.

  Clara had gone in to see her grandfather and was shocked by how much he had aged in one day. His eyes were sunken and his breathing labored. When she told him that they needed to transfer him to Baghdad and from there to Cairo, he shook his head violently. No, he wouldn't leave until they'd found the Bible of Clay. She didn't have the heart to tell him that Picot was ready to close the site.

  Clara's watch read three a.m., and the desert night had turned cold. She pulled on a sweatshirt and, without turning on the light, left her room and walked toward Fatima's. The old woman was dead to the

  world and didn't wake up even when Clara opened the window and crawled over the low sill outside.

  The guards in her escort were stationed at the main entrance and just inside the door, but they seemed not to have taken any measures to protect the back of the house.

  She waited a few seconds, until her heart stopped thumping, and then, crouching in the shadows, she began to put distance between herself and the camp. She was going out to the ziggurat. She needed to touch the ancient clay bricks, and to feel the night breeze—she needed a balm for her spirit.

  The guards were sleeping the sleep of the just, apparently. Ayed Sahadi would have them killed if he learned that someone could have penetrated the perimeter of the camp without being detected.

  Once at the site, Clara found a place to sit down and think. She had an odd feeling, a feeling that her life was about to change completely. Where once there had been only security and certainty, she now foresaw solitude and pain, and for the first time she realized that she had never stopped to think—she had just lived, without worrying about anything, without wanting to know or see anything that didn't suit her selfish comfort.

  She was no better than Ahmed, who was being paid a small fortune to protect her—except that she was no hypocrite. She may have been willfully blind, but her conscience was clear.

  She fell asleep, curled up on the ground, and dreamed of Shamas.

  34

  the special morning dawned bright and clear. the

  dub-sar Shamas was to be invested with the title ses-gal, great brother.

  Ili, who was now chief priest, would conduct the ceremony, which would take place in the small but glorious ziggurat erected by men sent by the king of Ur. There, the people of Safran paid tribute to the provincial government, presided over by the lord of Safran. And there, too, wise men stored writings concerning the wider kingdom's knowledge of the gods and of more worldly things—flowers, plants, and the sky—whose mysteries the priests alone could decipher. The king's motives in building the ziggurat had been clear: He desired to extend his power beyond Ur.

  Jadin's eyes had been blinded by time; his teeth were gone and he was shrunken and stooped. But he would nonetheless follow his son's ceremony of ascension with delight. For many years now, Shamas' mother had been Jadin's eyes, and she described to her husband all that happened around him. Today she would raise her head proudly, celebrating the venerable rank to which her unruly son had risen.

  The master was already savoring the ceremony dedicated to his most beloved—and difficult—disciple and apprentice. For indeed,

  Shamas—however intelligent, however promising—had caused Ili countless headaches. Shamas had never been content with simple answers. He needed to dissect everything he was told, to find its logic. He would not accept what others told him unless the reasoning was clear and evident. Still, no disciple had brought Ili as much satisfaction.

  Long ago, Abram had persuaded the young man that there was but one God and that all things had been created by Him, by an act of will. Ili, in turn, explained that indeed, the order of creation had come down from Elohim, but that there were other gods. Shamas would not hear of it.

  But time does not pass in vain, and Shamas' contentious spirit had grown quieter; he was now the best of the temple's many scribes. And today he was to assume a new place, a new distinction, ses-gal, and someday he would also be an um-mi-a above all others, for his wisdom and skill were unquestionable. They were the fruit of his unflagging observation and study.

  Shamas' wife, a young woman named Lia, had straightened his tunic and smiled as they walked to the temple.

  But as the ceremony began, Shamas' mind was distant. He was thinking of Abraham. He imagined him in the land of Canaan, where Abraham had indeed become the father of multitudes, for news of his patronage had spread all the way to Ur. God had promised him that, and He had seen that it came to pass.

  God, though, still seemed to Shamas an inscrutable and capricious being. Though Shamas believed in Him with all his heart, he could not understand Him; sometimes when he tried to discover the logic behind the Creation, he thought his head was going to explode. There were moments when he felt he was on the verge of understanding, but that illusion vanished as quickly as it appeared, and his mind lapsed once again into darkness. After long thought, he concluded at last that he was but a mortal man—he had to be content to acknowledge God's will and trust what he felt in the very core of his being to be true.

  The sound of Ili clearing his throat brought Shamas back to reality. He had not heard his master's words, had hardly been aware of the scribes and priests praying beside him to the goddess Nidaba.

  He was eager to be alone with Ili, so that he might at last present to him the gift he had been preparing for several years. It was the finest of Shamas' labor: a series of tablets written in clear and elegant signs that told a story of the first days, just as Abraham had dictated it to him. The creation of the world, God's anger with men's evil and the flood with which He punished it, the destruction of Babel and the confusion of tongues—three beautiful legends written on the clay, which Shamas hoped would find a home in one of the rooms in which other histories, other epic tales, were safeguarded.

  Later, as night was falling, master and disciple finally had the opportunity to enjoy a few moments of solitude together in Shamas' home, when they could speak to each other privately.

  There was not a hair on Ill's head, and his slow feet and white eyebrows attested to his advanced age. But his eyes sparkled as he smiled at his protege. "You will make a fine um-mi-a someday," he told Shamas.

  "I am happy to be what I am. It is a privilege to work here beside you, master, where each day I am able to learn new things."

  "Though it is never enough for you. We teach you the wealth of knowledge our culture has to offer, yet still you ask questions. You wish to know the reason for the world and our existence in it, and not even God gives you the answers you seek."

  Shamas was silent. Hi was right: Every answer his master offered only elicited more questions.

  "For many years you have been a man," Ili went on, "and you must content yourself with knowing that there are some questions for which there are no answers, no matter which god one invokes. Although you have learned at least to respect the gods, you've kept me awake many a long night, fearing that your reckless questions may reach the ears of our lord. That no one has betrayed you, not even those who do not understand you, is testament to the respect you command."

  "But, Ili, you know as I do that the gods in our temple are merely clay."

  "They are, but it is not the clay we pray to. It is the spirit of the god that the clay represents, and that is what you will not accept. It is difficult for most to pray to nothing, to emptiness, to a god who has no face or form and who cannot be seen."

  "Abraham said that God created man in His own image."

 
"So He looks like us? Do you think He resembles you? Or me? Or your father? If He created us in His image, that means that we can make a figure of Him in clay so that we may speak with Him."

  "God is not in the clay."

  "I have heard you say that God is everywhere. So why can He not be in that clay that men mold in His image?"

  They had been carrying on this argument for so many years now that the passage of time had polished away all acrimony in their words. They no longer became irate with one another, they simply conversed as two grown men, as equals.

  "I have brought you a gift," Shamas said, smiling at the surprise on his master's face.

  "Thank you, Shamas. But the best gift has been teaching you. You have given me reason to better myself every day, knowing that your hard questions awaited me."

  The two men laughed. They had come to love and admire each other sincerely and to accept each other as they were.

  Shamas led Ili into his small workroom, and there he presented him with several tablets wrapped in fine cloth. Ili unwrapped them carefully, and his eyes lit up in wonder at the signs made by Shamas' fine bone stylus. They were the work of a master and bore little resemblance to the signs once made by an eager boy, which at times had seemed to defy legibility itself.

  "It is the story of the creation of the world, just as Abraham told it to me. I wanted you to have it," Shamas said, his eyes glistening.

  Ili's eyes, too, brimmed with tears as he held the package of precious tablets.

  "You have spoken to me so much of the legends of Abraham."

  "And now you have them, in the very words in which he told them to me. I still have the tablets I made in Haran all those years ago, but my hand was not as firm as it has become now, for I was but a child. These, I hope, may meet with your approval."