Leon Uris (52 page)

‘There are wealthy antiquities dealers. There is no such thing as a wealthy archaeologist, nor-has any Bedouin been able to retire from selling artifacts. In the Arab world, we have placed very little value on preserving our past. From Egypt to Iraq, our ancient sites have been looted down through the ages, mostly by our own people. There is a department of antiquities in Jordan, but neither a university nor museum. The department exists mainly to interest foreigners in coming to Jordan to dig. They take almost everything out. London is where you will discover ancient Egypt, usually in an unlighted basement or a vault. You see, Haj Ibrahim, the archaeologist works only for the joy of his profession, to have his name on a book of his discoveries, for the thrill of having solved the puzzles of the past. He keeps nothing from the digs for himself, no matter what the value. It all goes to the sponsoring expedition. If a dig yields an enormous treasure trove, the archaeologist may be given a few pieces to grace his home. The rest of a surplus is sold off to dealers.’

‘Do I hear you correctly, Professor Mudhil, when you infer that I could make much better business by going directly to a dealer?’

‘I would hate to see something of such importance end up on the black market or in the home of an unscrupulous private collector who robs an entire nation of its heritage.’

‘Are you truly telling me that no archaeologist pockets some of his finds?’

Mudhil laughed a wisdom. ‘It would be unheard of. Maybe that is why I am the only Arab archaeologist in Palestine. He would lose his standing in the academic world immediately. We do not want to lose this treasure trove. However, if the attempt to make a fortune is your object, I suggest you take your find to dealers in East Jerusalem. I will give you several names. Go play with them and may Allah protect you.’

Haj Ibrahim’s hand went up in a gesture to ‘halt.’ ‘Let me digest the wisdom of your words,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me what general area of compensation the buyers might have in mind?’

‘How many pieces do you have altogether?’

‘Nine more.’

‘Of the same quality?’

‘From what I have seen.’

Nuri Mudhil shrugged. ‘I am no expert on this, but I should think it would be worth several thousand dollars.’

Ibrahim’s heart pounding was well concealed beneath his robes. ‘But I am entitled to know who these buyers are, am I not? I would want to know that these go into the proper hands.’

‘Haj Ibrahim, one must come to a conclusion that your coming to me was not entirely an accident. The story of how you fled Nablus with half the Iraqi quartermaster’s supplies is a local coffeehouse legend. The reason you fled to Qumran is also the subject of much gossip. One would be given to believe you are not enormously enthralled with Abdullah and the Jordanians.’

‘Politics. What do I know of politics?’

‘Your modesty is far too great,’ the archaeologist answered. ‘Will you let me have the rest of the collection for examination or not?’

Ibrahim wiped a sudden burst of perspiration off his face. ‘You told me yourself that my protection was the fact that I was holding back the other nine pieces. Now you tell me to give them up. Who will guarantee me a fair price then? How do I know—and Allah forgive me for any doubts I might seem to have—but suppose everything is lost.’

‘Shall we get to the point?’ Nuri Mudhil said.

‘But of course. Directness is the greatest of virtues.’

‘Gideon Asch promises you a fair price.’

P
ROFESSOR
D
OCTOR
N
URI
M
UDHIL
was the greatest Arab I had ever met—besides my father. Ibrahim had warned me to answer all his questions honestly. It was a frightening prospect.

I lifted the sack holding the nine other artifacts onto one of his long benches and untied it, then laid the pieces out side by side. Professor Doctor Mudhil limped up to the bench weighing heavily on his crutch and with a magnifying glass in his free hand. He labored onto a stool and bent over so his face was almost touching the objects.

‘In Allah’s name, this is remarkable,’ he repeated.

In addition to the twin-headed ibex standard that he had already seen, there were two simple standards and a third with an eagle on it. There were two ivory pieces, carved in an arc shape like a new moon. They had many holes cut or drilled out. Professor Doctor Mudhil reckoned offhand that they might be ceremonial scythes. The seventh object looked like a copper ‘horn of plenty’ with a big bend in its stem. He described the eighth artifact as a mace head. It was the final object that brought him to the brink of tears, a large thick ring which looked like a crown and was adorned with many bird heads around the top rim. As he studied and made notes and measurements, I looked about his workroom filled with wonderments. From the photographs and certificates, he had lectured in many places of the highest importance outside of Palestine. His ordinary dress and modest ways were disarming for a man so renowned. After Professor Doctor Mudhil finished his initial examination, he invited us into his office.

‘Ishmael is ready to answer everything truthfully,’ Haj Ibrahim said. This boy is wiser than his thirteen years would indicate. He is my confidant and rarely lies. He knows everything, including my search for Gideon Asch. It was Ishmael who figured out that you, as an archaeologist, might have access to the Jewish side.’

‘You realize the importance of our secret, Ishmael?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

‘You are right. The Jews are the most prodigious explorers of the past. They have an insatiable devotion to their roots.’

He laid out aerial maps and photographs of the wadis and cliffs behind Qumran. ‘We must study these closely and see if we can locate both the cave you lived in and the one where you found the treasure.’

I felt extremely important but deflated as I looked at the maps and photographs. I was completely puzzled. As Professor Doctor Mudhil explained their meaning, I became less confused.

‘Here,’ I pointed tentatively.

My father looked but could not understand and nodded cautiously in agreement.

‘So you saw an opening above your cave and were taunted into climbing up to it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You went up alone?’

‘He went with a boy named Sabri, whom we took into our family at Nablus. Sabri is working in Jericho, but I can arrange a meeting with him,’ Ibrahim said.

‘Well, answer the professor. You went up together,’ my father insisted.

‘Sabri did not go all the way with me. He became frightened of the height and quit.’

‘You went the rest of the way alone?’ Professor Mudhil asked.

‘No, sir. I did not tell you, Father, because I was afraid you would be displeased, but I went up with Nada. It was Nada who found the objects.’ I tried to look at Haj Ibrahim and knew the only reason he did not beat me on the spot was because we were in Professor Doctor Mudhil’s presence, but the rage in his eyes told me it would be very bad later. Of course I said nothing about Nada taking her skirt off.

‘Then bring her here,’ the archaeologist said.

‘It cannot be arranged,’ my father said sharply.

I should have lied. Sabri would have supported my story. I was crazy to tell Father about Nada.

Professor Doctor Mudhil looked from me to my father knowingly. ‘Well, let us go on,’ he said.

Under his questioning, I drew a crude map of the cave of the treasure showing its three rooms and the secret crevice of the discovery. He took notes of my every word.

‘Were there skeletons?’

‘Yes, they were the first things we saw. They frightened us.’ The fact that we found children’s bones inside a large jar indicated to Professor Doctor Mudhil that the ones who had buried the child believed in a god or gods. The child was ensconced in the jar for a journey to heaven—of sorts. Other children’s bones near a burned-out stone altar indicated that some had been sacrificed.

He asked me many questions about the cloth wrappings, grain, evidence of fire, and other objects.

‘There were many pots, broken and unbroken. We did not take them because the trip down the cliff was very difficult and we feared they would be dropped and smashed.’

Professor Doctor Mudhil mumbled that the Bedouin had probably looted the cave by now. He made a note to contact the sheik of the Ta’amira Bedouin who scavenged for antiquities in the area. They knew to bring evidence of weaving and potsherds. He explained to me about layers and strata.

‘We have proof that the caves between here and the Masada were used by Bar Kochba, a Hebrew revolutionary after the time of Christ. His rebellion against Rome signaled the end of the Jews in Israel for the first time. No doubt some of the strata were from Bar Kochba and maybe even the Essenes, who were involved with Jesus and John the Baptist in that area.’

The reason he explained strata to me was to try to establish that the Bar Kochba warriors and their families could have lived in the cave without being aware of the treasure trove.

‘Yes, it is very possible,’ I reckoned. ‘The objects were extremely well hidden in a crevice deep into the smallest of the rooms. The room itself was not fit for people to live in because it was only three or four feet high. The only way the treasure could have been found was by digging for it. Nada found it because a wrapping had disintegrated and the rocks around it had slipped away.’

He questioned me about wooden sticks in the vicinity. I remembered them. It indicated to Professor Doctor Mudhil that the treasure had been deliberately hidden from view by these unknown people. Sticks were used as digging tools in the prehistoric times. A wooden stick or grain, he explained, would often not disintegrate because of a lack of humidity in some of the deeper caves.

His questions went on for half the morning. At last he dropped his pencil and rubbed his eyes. ‘The mystery widens,’ he said. ‘Here, let me show you.’ He deftly whipped his crutch under his arm, limped into the workshop, and picked up the first artifact, the twin-headed ibex standard.

‘Samples of the copper from this piece reveal to us an arsenic content to indicate it came from mines in Armenia. Armenia has tracings of civilization as old as those in Jericho and the Fertile Crescent. It was the very first Christian nation. Standards like this one have been found in nearby Iran, so Armenia can’t be ruled out.

‘However, look at this crown. The naked eye can see that the copper is much purer and similar to that from mines not far from Palestine.’ He lifted the two pieces—the crown and standard. This and this did not come from the same mine or even the same region. Yet all eight of the copper pieces will undoubtedly prove to be from the Chalcolithic Period.

‘And now the plot really thickens,’ he said, holding up the two curved ivory pieces with the holes in them. These are hippopotamus ivory. The closest to Palestine one could find those animals would be in the Upper Nile Valley in mid-Africa. The people of that era did not travel great distances. They settled in fertile valleys and built small agricultural communities. They did not have ships. The camel was not domesticated, nor was the horse. How did three objects from distinctly different areas manage to converge on that cave six to seven thousand years ago?’

‘I know! I know!’ I cried. ‘Allah sent his angels down and flew everything to the cave!’

‘That is about as good an explanation as we now have,’ Professor Doctor Mudhil said, ‘but it may not be accepted by the scientific community.’

Oh, how I was eager to learn from this great man. ‘I will take you to the cave,’ I said.

‘If I sell the treasure trove to the Jews, do you think Abdullah would let me take an expedition into Qumran? Besides, the King has no such priorities. But! The Jews still control half the cave area and they will certainly be spurred to explore them.’

His gnarled arm reached out and he patted my head. ‘I see that you want to go out on a dig.’

‘Oh, yes, sir!’

‘I started as a boy on digs,’ he said. ‘Another little secret, Ishmael. I think I know of a Neolithic wall in the Jericho ruins. It may just be the oldest wall in civilized history. I have been in correspondence with Dr. Kathleen Kenyon, may Allah bless her ways. She is in London and has shown interest. Alas, it may take her two or three years to raise enough funds to organize an expedition.’

‘Kathleen? A Christian woman’s name?’ my father said sharply.

‘Indeed, a woman,’ Nuri Mudhil answered looking hard at my father. ‘She is the greatest archaeologist of Palestine and the Bible who is not a Jew.’

The awkward silence that followed left us very uneasy. My father was getting up his anger. Jews. Women. He wanted contact with the Jews on one hand. One the other hand, he disliked the reality that no Arab country would buy the treasure trove. And as for women archaeologists ... well, that was never a part of Haj Ibrahim’s beliefs.

‘Where will these end up?’ my father asked abruptly.

‘At the Hebrew University, where they should be.’

‘Is there no Arab museum or Arab philanthropist who will buy them? These are Arab finds. What of the Rockefeller Museum of East Jerusalem?’

‘Arab philanthropists, such as they are, make minor contributions to small orphanages and invest in large diamonds. The Islamic museums from Cairo to Baghdad are a shambles. I have seen priceless thousand-year-old Korans crumbling to dust from the bookworms in the Rockefeller Museum. The fact is that one of the finest collections of Islamic antiquities is in a Jewish museum in West Jerusalem.’

‘They are only trying to humiliate us,’ Haj Ibrahim answered.

‘You do not like this whole business of dealing with the Jews,’ Professor Doctor Nuri Mudhil said. ‘And you like me even less because I cooperate with them.’

The silence had gone from awkward to terrible as Haj Ibrahim wrestled with his guilt and fear of being branded a traitor.

‘It is very difficult to deal with the Jews in this atmosphere of perfect hatred we have created,’ Nuri Mudhil said. Then the crippled man held his arms apart and stood as straight as his wasted body was able. ‘Let me tell you about this creature before you, Haj Ibrahim, so you will wonder no more.’