searching for…for what? I don’t know. Can’t remember. The nerve impulses in my brain won’t connect, but I can’t stop…can’t stop—
Two years earlier Syria
I put the unfortunate incident with Dr. Omar out of my mind and get to work. I got my dig permit, and following my hunch and the photos I found in Aleppo, and uninfluenced by the prejudices of others in my field, I set out with my small entourage of local desert wanderers eager for decent pay and a hot meal.
We head toward the dead cities, crumbling in the desert-like landscape, cruising along in a four-wheel drive with questionable brakes and a rickety old minibus that needs new tires. It’s the best I can afford after the pat down I got from Dr. Omar, a man who enjoyed eating big green olives while he played with my mind. I’ve heard some men find more stimulation in wielding a mental power over a woman than in taking her to bed. Seems the museum curator is such a man. When Dr. Omar realized he couldn’t intimidate me, he backed down and unlocked the door, though not without berating me and assuring me he’ll be paying me a visit at the site. No doubt I haven’t seen the last of him.
I put all of that behind me. I’m filled with hope and exuberance driving down the bumpy side road past fields of yellow wildf lowers. I travel without thought for comfort, though mindful of danger. Bandits as well as blood feuds between tribes are not unknown in these parts. I carry a gun in my backpack for protection, though I’ve never been awakened by bullets slicing through the canvas of my tent. Using the photos as a guide, I chart a course into the Syrian Desert away from the Euphrates River, following an ancient caravan route past the old Crusader fortress. Luckily, we don’t share the road with anyone except a few cows and a shepherd herding his flock.
About three hours out of the city, we reach an area where old beehive huts bake in the hot desert heat, unchanged for centuries. Are they the same ones I saw in the photos? I don’t know for sure, but we stop, fill our stomachs with tea and bread, then lift up our souls with a spiritual nod to the blazing noon sun beating down on the parched desert.
While my crew set up camp, I go to work. I grab my digital camera and start taking pictures of the site, then compare them to the heavy cardboard sepia-colored photos from so long ago. Disappointment etches its weary lines on my face. Nothing looks the same except the huts. The to-pography has changed in seven decades. It’s flatter, as if the desert winds are also searching for the treasure and have scratched away at the sand in a slow, tedious crawl. Worse yet, I don’t hear the voices, only the whisper of sand gently blowing up from the south.
I pull a map out of my khaki pants pocket, check it, see nothing that indicates I’m anywhere near the now-vanished road where the knightly Crusaders trekked centuries ago, then stuff it into my back pocket and wonder if what I need is strong Arabic coffee, not tea, to rev up my senses.
I head back to camp, pull off my wide-brimmed camel-colored hat and toss it down on my backpack, then lie down on the cot inside my tent, my hair wet from sweat, my mouth dry and wanting. Damn, what if I’m wrong? What if the whole thing is a hoax? The pictures fake? No, I can’t believe that. My gut twists inside me, telling me otherwise. Heinrich Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans followed their guts, struck out on their own paths and discovered lost cities, tombs and artifacts not touched by human hands for thousands of years.
The pull inside me to know the thrill of discovery doesn’t let up, that sublime moment when the spark of recognition of knowing you’re in the presence of something thousands of years old, unchanged, hits you. It’s as if you’ve done what people have tried to do since that first moment when they realized they had a past. You’ve traveled back through time.
That pull is as strong in me as the sexual urge and just as orgiastic. Or so I want to believe. Thinking about it, a pleasant sensation rolls through me before I can stop it, as I remember the first time I uncovered a skeleton more than two thousand years old, her remains well preserved, her jewelry still intact. I reveled in the feeling.
My yen for romance and adventure led me to study archaeology, but the science keeps me coming back, knowing my work supplies material for a social history of peoples’ lives not experienced through the written word, but transmitted through touch. When I run my fingers up and down the neck of a piece of pottery a thousand years old and rub its belly, I can feel the pulse of the woman carrying it on her shoulder as if it’s my own. I see her swaying her hips on her walk through the village, caressing the long neck of the jar when she fills it with water from the well, then flirting with a passing traveler. Does she offer him a cool drink and invite him into her tent? Pull up her robe so he can mount her? His hard chest crushing her breasts, his hot breath whispering in her ear as his cock finds the sweet pinkness between her legs eager for his thrusts.
Another pubic contraction rudely reminds me I haven’t been with a man for months, while a sudden dizziness tells me I’ve been out in the sun too long. Can I cure both at the same time?
Grabbing cold water to cool off more than my thirst, I guzzle down the icy liquid then slowly begin rubbing my crotch, my mind overflowing with pictures, like the old stereoscopic daguerreotypes with the same photo sitting side by side. I study the photos in the album alongside the ones I took with my digital camera, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t make the images merge into a living, breathing moment. Frustration takes over and my hand moves faster and faster over my throbbing clit until I cry out, letting go of my pent-up emotions before I fall into a dreamless sleep.
I awake to the smell of sweet honey and hot tea left by Ahmed’s wife. I look down. Wetness stains my crotch. A different scent, musky and familiar, rolls over me. My calm has returned. I’m ready to go on.
The desert sun rounds the earth on its daily course, changing color from pale yellow to burnt orange, far too quickly for me. Day after day, my team of diggers set hoe to ground every morning at 5:00 a. m., making a test pit, digging a small hole into the ground with a pick and scooping up samples of earth, but finding nothing more than broken pottery vessels, a few copper and bronze objects and a flint core. It’s impossible to date these objects without setting up an on-site lab, which I have no resources to do, so I sit under the pale green awning on my tent and catalog each object for transportation back to Aleppo. I refuse to show my disappointment to my team, especially Ahmed. I’ve formed strong bonds with these locals in a short time, living and working alongside the desert dwellers. To ease the tension, I compliment his wife on her excellent hummus, a tasty dish consisting of crushed chickpeas, cumin, parsley and olive oil, then I give the children key chains I carry with me to give out as souvenirs and promise to pay the men extra cash if they’ll stay on a few more days. Where I’ll get the money, I don’t know. Call my mother, I guess. Tell her it’s an emergency, but make no mention of the dig. Mom won’t question me, but my sister, Peyton, will. She’s never approved of my traveling around the Near East by myself, asking me if I have to wear a black robe and veil over my head all the time, if they have indoor plumbing in the hotels, and does it smell as bad as she’s heard?
I roll my eyes at her questions, but I try not to blame her. In her world, women play bridge and do lunch at the country club. They don’t trek halfway around the world in search of ancient artifacts, mummies, embalming salts and broken ceramics. They definitely don’t spend their days analyzing small pieces of dried flesh thousands of years old.
Adding to my problem this morning, the Jeep has a flat tire. Who knew no one put air in the tires at the rental agency? I don’t dare take a chance driving it. Worse yet, I have only two days left on my dig permit. Ahmed offers to drive me into town later in the minibus to call home since there’s no cell phone reception out here in the desert. I agree. I have no time to lose. We get started early on the digging, but by the noon meal, we’ve still found nothing but the usual potsherds. After lunch, I wander around the excavation site by myself, making notes, noting that one section in particular keeps drawing me back to it. It’s a mound without a blade of vegetation and occasional camel-thorn, but unlike other tels, we’ve found nothing there, as if the sands of time have formed the hunchback shape, not man building on top of old foundations.