The Genesis Plague

18

To avoid reported mortar fire in northern Kurdistan the Blackhawk maintained a westerly flight path high above the Iraqi plain. On approach to Mosul it curled right, keeping the city comfortably to the west, then headed for its next destination, which lay thirty-five kilometres northeast.

As he gazed out towards the distant city, a great sadness came over Hazo. It had been over thirty years since Saddam Hussein’s regime had forced hundreds of thousands of Kurds — Hazo’s family among them — to relocate from Mosul to camps in the desolate southern deserts. Those who hadn’t cooperated were attacked with Sarin nerve gas. Following the first major waves of ethnic cleansing, the fascist Ba’ath Party then seized the tribal lands in a bold attempt to ‘Arabicize’ the region.

While in the resettlement camp, Hazo’s asthmatic mother had been denied access to critical medicine. She subsequently died from the desert’s oppressive dry heat. His father, once a robust, jovial man, and, prior to the displacement, Mosul’s most industrious carpet retailer, had been executed by a firing squad and tossed into a mass grave. Hazo’s two older brothers had been killed by a suicide bomber while travelling by car together to seek work in Baghdad, shortly after the US invasion. Their wives and children moved in with Hazo’s oldest sibling, his sister Anyah.

Now Mosul’s streets were once again filled with Kurds. The tide of discontentment, however, had merely reversed with resettled Kurds staging violent reprisals — restaurant bombings, car bombings, shootings — against resident Arabs. After all that Hazo’s family had endured, how could Karsaz question the fight for a new Iraq? Otherwise how would the cycle of violence ever end? Could it ever end? Hazo wondered. The grim truth, he feared, was that Iraq’s history would continue to be written in blood.

His sombre gaze traced the wide curves of the Tigris to the outskirts of Mosul where mounds and ruins scattered over 1,800 acres marked the site of ancient Nineveh. The Bible said that the prophet Jonah had come here after being spat out from the great fish’s belly to proclaim God’s word to the wicked Ninevites. But long before Jonah’s mission, the city was a religious centre for the goddess Ishtar. Hazo pulled out the pictures from the cave, studied the woman who’d been depicted on the wall. Had she been a living being? Or might this be a tribute to the Assyrio-Babylonian goddess Ishtar, as Karsaz had suggested?

An eight-pointed star was Ishtar’s mythological symbol, and the woman depicted on the cave wall wore a wristband bearing an eight-petalled rosette. Close. But close enough? He tried to remember if Ishtar was ever portrayed carrying a radiating object in her hands. Nothing came to mind.

Like most Iraqis, he could recall bits and pieces of the goddess’s lore: how the cunning seductress would cruelly annihilate her countless lovers; how after failing to bed the Babylonian hero Gilgamesh, she’d persuaded the supreme god Anu to release the Great Bull of Heaven to deliver apocalyptic vengeance upon the Babylonians; how the Queen of the Underworld, Ereshkigal, had been so infuriated by Ishtar’s antics that she’d imprisoned the harlot and inflicted sixty diseases upon her.

Could this really be Ishtar? he thought

Nineveh faded in the distance and the chopper began tracing a white pipeline that ran north towards the Tawke oil fields. Crude was once again flowing out from Iraq, and making Hazo think that it wasn’t only Ishtar who’d been a prostitute.

Back to the pictures, he flipped to an image that showed a warrior presenting the female’s disembodied head to an elder. He couldn’t recall anything about Ishtar being executed so cruelly. Too many inconsistencies. Though if this wasn’t Ishtar, then who could she be?

The fact that these images came from inside a cave raised even more questions. It was assumed that beneath every earthen mound in Iraq lay remnants of a civilization come and gone. To find such evidence tucked away beneath a mountain, however, seemed highly unusual. Ancient cults were known to practise secret rituals in caves, so maybe the cave was linked to those who worshipped Ishtar.

The chopper dipped and began its descent.

Ahead Hazo spotted Mount Maqloub jutting skywards along the fringe of the Nineveh plain. Only as the chopper closed in over the craggy sandstone mountain did the angular lines of the multi-storey Mar Mattai monastery seem to materialize from the cliff face. Its only architecturally significant features were an Arabian-style loggia running along its top level and an onion dome marking the main entrance. Nestled behind the modern facade, however, was one of the world’s oldest Christian chapels, founded in AD 363.

The Chaldean monks who resided within the monastery’s walls proclaimed to be direct descendants of the Babylonians. They were the earliest Arab Christian converts; the preservers of Aramaic, ‘Christ’s language’. Here they safeguarded the world’s most impressive collection of Syriac Christian manuscripts and ancient codices chronicling Mesopotamia’s lesser-known past.

None knew ancient Iraq better.

And like the Kurds, the Chaldeans had suffered their share of persecution in northern Iraq. The Chaldean community was still reeling from the execution of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, who’d vehemently dissented against the proposed inclusion of Islamic law into the Iraqi constitution. On February 29, 2008, he’d been kidnapped at gunpoint by Islamic militants. The body turned up two weeks later in a shallow grave outside Mosul.

The pilot manoeuvred over the empty visitors’ parking lot and expertly set the Blackhawk down.

Hazo removed his flight helmet, unbuckled his harness, and hopped out from the fuselage. The copilot, already outside, motioned for him to stay low while scrambling under the slowing rotor blades.

Climbing the monastery’s precipitous front steps, Hazo pulled the olive wood crucifix out from beneath his galabiya to display it prominently on his chest. Beneath the onion dome he tried opening the main door, but it was locked.

Before he could knock on the door, a bespectacled young monk with a long black beard and opaline eyes appeared on the other side of the glass and turned the deadbolt. The monk was wearing a traditional black robe with white priest collar, an elaborate Inuit hood and msone ceremonial sandals.

‘Shlama illakh,’ the monk said, peering over at the unorthodox sight of the Blackhawk plunked down in the parking lot. He turned and glanced at Hazo’s crucifix. Switching to English, he said, ‘How may I help you, brother?’

Hazo introduced himself, apologized for his late arrival. Then he explained, ‘I was hoping that one of your brothers might help me. You see, I have these pictures …’ He held out the photos.

The monk kept his hands folded behind his back as he examined only the top photo.

‘And I’ve been asked to determine what these images mean … who this female might be, here,’ he said, pointing.

‘And this is of interest to them?’ He motioned to the Blackhawk.

‘That’s right.’

The monk hesitated, weighing the facts. His lips drew tight. ‘You must talk to Monsignor Ibrahim about these things. I will bring you to him. Please, come,’ he said, and set off in a steady shuffle.

The monk remained silent as he led Hazo through the modern corridors of the main building and out a rear door that fed into a spacious courtyard boxed in by two storeys of arcades.

The humble stone building they entered next was much, much older. They passed through a barrel vaulted corridor, redolent with incense and age, into an ancient stone nave with Arabian design elements — pointed archways, spiral columns, mosaic tile work.

The original monastery.

Hazo noticed that the inscriptions glazed into its intricate friezes and mosaics were not Arabic; they were from a language that the world outside these walls considered dead — Aramaic. There were plenty of carved rosettes adorning the archways too.

The monk ducked beneath a low archway and continued to a staircase that cut deep beneath the nave. Here Hazo noticed that the stone blocks had given way to hewn, chisel-marred stone worn smooth by passing centuries. To one side, electrical conduit had been installed along the wall to run power to sconces that lit the passage. The subterranean atmosphere was disorienting. It seemed as if the monk was leading him into the mountain itself.

Hazo’s anxiety eased when up ahead he saw bright light coming out from a formidable glass doorway fitted with steel bars.

The monk stopped at the door and entered a code on the handle’s integrated keypad. A lock snapped open. He turned the handle, pushed the door inward, and held it as Hazo stepped into a small empty foyer. The air immediately became warmer, dryer. Hazo could hear a filtration system humming overhead.

Without a word the monk shut the first door and made his way to a second door that was nothing but metal and rivets. Another code was entered and he led Hazo into a vast, window-less space divided into neat aisles by sturdy floor-to-ceiling cabinets. The air was sterile and dry. Trailing the monk past the long study tables that lined the room’s centre, he glimpsed countless spines of the ancient manuscripts lined neatly behind glass panels.

Deep in the library, they found the elderly monsignor. Wearing a black robe and hood, he was stooped over a drafting table equipped with a gooseneck LED lamp, sweeping a saucer-sized magnifying loupe horizontally across the open pages of a thick codex.

Well before they reached him, the monk turned to Hazo and motioned for him to go no further. ‘A moment, please.’

‘Of course,’ Hazo replied.

The monk quietly circled the table and bent to whisper in the monsignor’s ear. The monsignor inclined his head so that his suspicious eyes shifted over his bifocals to appraise Hazo. He dismissed the monk with a curt nod. Then he summoned Hazo with a hand gesture.

Hands crossed behind his back, Hazo approached the table and bowed slightly. ‘Thank you, Monsignor Ibrahim. I was asked to—’

‘Let me see your pictures,’ the dour monk demanded. He held out his hand, the severely arthritic fingers quivering.

Clearly the man disliked formalities, thought Hazo, as he handed Monsignor Ibrahim the photos.

The moment the monsignor laid eyes on the first picture, Hazo noticed the creases in his brow deepen.

The monsignor cleared his throat then said, ‘Where did you find these?’

‘A cave … to the east, in the Zagros Mountains. Those images were carved into a wall. There was writing too and—’

The monsignor’s hand went up to stop him. ‘I suppose you want to know who this is?’ he said, almost as an accusation. ‘Yes?’

‘Well, yes.’

The monsignor stood from the table. He eyed Hazo’s crucifix again. ‘As you wish. Come. I will show you.’ He rounded the table and set off down the aisle.