Spies, Lies & Naked Thighs. Jina Bacarr

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      On approaching it closer, I see no trace of a ruin, only the wooden stakes the diggers use to mark the yellow and parched earth. I notice the tattooed Arab woman cleaning up the lunch leftovers of mahshi, baked stuffed eggplant, and baba ghanoush, eggplant dip, while her sons gorge on watermelon and gather dry twigs, teasing each other with adolescent banter before tossing the sticks into the linen bag the older one carries. Ahmed and the other diggers sit around playing cards while loud Arabic pop music blasts on his boom box. The noon breeze has gone into hiding, the air hot and still as if it hangs suspended between the dry earth and the bleached white sky.

      Fanning myself with a map, I no longer believe I’ll find anything here but broken pottery, but nevertheless, out of habit, I keep my eye on everything happening around me. I should give the order to dig in another spot, but I tend to remain in one place, especially when the pull is strong in my gut to stay here. I get emotionally attached to my excavation area, foolish perhaps, but it’s my style. Sometimes the whispers trick me, sending me in the wrong direction, but they never fail me.

      I stand on the mound with my feet planted firmly, my shoulders straight back, my khaki shirt and pants beginning to show wear and stained with brown dirt, making me blend in with the earth tones surrounding me. Still, it’s a defiant gesture to the spirits to show them I’m not leaving, yet I swear the sun ignores my bland figure, preferring instead to cast its rays on the young boys chasing after each other. I blink as the bright flame of their red scarves flying around their necks in the sparkly glare bounces off my sunglasses.

      Smiling, I watch the boys race over the wadi, ravine, toward where the men were digging this morning. As they jump and dodge each other as boys do, their mother is busy at her chore, not realizing they’re playing near the spot where the diggers set up the pointy stakes. I blink, realizing they shouldn’t be playing there. What if they slip and cut themselves on the sharp edges? I’ll never forgive myself.

      I’m about to call out to them to be careful when the words catch in my throat. Frantic cries pierce the stillness as I watch the younger boy stumble, his brother grabbing on to his red scarf, pulling on it, but it comes loose and he disappears feet first into the bowels of the earth.

      6

       Present day

      “She looks good enough to eat.”

      No sooner did he speak the words did Caine regret them, knowing the Russian would take that as a challenge, using the girl as a receptacle, dispassionate and unfeeling.

      He СКАЧАТЬ