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Hanna got out of bed as soon as it started to dawn, even though she hadn't slept for four hours. She was filled with an intense anticipation that filled her like a drug. She wanted to be on the road already, wanted the kilometers and hours to pass as quickly as possible, but now it was not even half past five.
Through the hotel's open window, the crowing of hundreds of roosters and the barking of dogs could be heard. Somewhere very far away, a machine gun began to click as if to remind us that we were in a country at war with its neighbor.
Hanna showered and got herself ready, which this time didn't involve make-up, and by six o'clock she was in the hotel lobby with her suitcase.
She didn't know if they would stay overnight, but she was going to give up his hotel room anyway. She had to be frugal, as she didn't know if she would have to return her scholarship in this situation. And it was likely that they would stay overnight near Nineveh, for a journey of almost six hundred kilometers on bad roads in the scorching heat seemed almost unthinkable. And that would leave only a few hours to explore Nineveh.
That is, if this Mr. Sal Munroe would come and agree to take her with him.
Hanna couldn't help her doubts, the whole of yesterday and the evening now felt like some kind of mindless dream in the morning light. But the press card from Peter Santini and the sore calf muscles from the dance proved that it had all really happened. According to the card, she was employed by the United press news agency. That was the only false information on the card, apart from her title.
Hanna paid her hotel bill and then went to the restaurant for breakfast. She was just finishing her European coffee when Peter Santini turned up. He didn't look at all like he'd had a dozen vodkas the previous day and evening. He looked rested and smooth, though his eyes were a little red and the previous evening's pastimes were still evident in the steam on his breath, if nothing else.
Peter replaced his breakfast with a bottle of beer, the hand holding it shaking slightly as he poured the foamy liquid into the glass even before he had sat down.
-Good morning! Peter greeted Hanna cheerfully. -Well, we're ready to go. Good. Sal Munroe will be here in half an hour as I promised yesterday. He sounded very excited on the phone to know that he had a travelling companion, and a female and professional one at that. Although he says you can't tell him anything new about Nineveh, as that ruined city has been a hobby of his for many years. Still, this is his first trip there and he sounds like he's on his way to paradise when he talks about it. Peter Santini finished with a sneer. And shaking his head.
- So we are two of a kind," Hanna laughed. Do you know how long this journey is supposed to take?
-I didn't get the chance to ask, but I got the impression that it's not a one-day or two-day endeavor. Santini replied with a yawn. "But if you want to come back earlier, there is a regular bus service from Al Mawsil to Baghdad and it's much easier to get here than from here to there.
"I'm in no hurry in these circumstances," Hanna replied, "so I'll probably stay there as long as he does, if he puts up with me.
- If he's a normal man, there's no doubt about it," Santini said with a grin.
-"When I get back, we'll have a fun evening together," Hanna promised with a smile. "I owe you that much.
-You don't owe me anything, but I'll keep the promise in mind. This is where you're going back to the Hilton?
-If there are only available rooms.
-You can be sure of that," Santini said with a broad smile. Then he grew more serious as he continued, "According to the latest reports, Iran is stepping up military action, so I may not be there when you return. Feel free to contact any of our friends from yesterday if the hotel happens to be full. This house is never so full that the concierge doesn't have a room or two in his back pocket for special occasions.
-"Be careful if you have to go to the front," Hanna said seriously.
-I always survive," Santini said with a smile. I've been to Vietnam, the Middle East and San Salvador. You just take care of yourself and stay close to Munroe. The local male population tends to take a lone veil-less woman for granted, as a predator would.
-"It's not so different from the local male population in other countries," Hanna said with a smile.
-But it's less subtle in its means, Santini pointed out seriously -It's true. Don't take any unnecessary risks, and don't trust Muslim men. Especially don't think you understand them, you don't, and they don't understand you. With the exception of a few civilized people, the value of women is still being calculated by the people, as it has been for thousands of years. A woman is worth about half the price of a donkey, and just as you can take advantage of a donkey moving alone, you can do the same to a woman moving alone - all the more reason if she is of a different faith and moves without a veil. Surely you noticed that there are only men on secondment here? And it's not because there aren't almost as many equally qualified women as men in our profession. Women just don't go to Islamic countries. There would be absolutely nothing to be gained from that.
-I'll keep that in mind, Hanna promised, although she thought Peter's attitude was a little exaggerated, as she was sure that Baghdad was a safer place for a woman to move around than, say, New York.
-Munroe has arrived, Peter Santini said, nodding towards the lobby and standing up. Hanna stood up and turned to look into the lobby, where a tall dark-haired man was just looking around searchingly. Santini waved his hand and the man started to enter the restaurant.
The man stopped and stared at Hanna with a strange, downright enraptured expression on his face. Hanna was staring too. Her ears were ringing, and it was as if a knife had been plunged in and through his heart. There was something inexpressibly familiar about the man, something that made Hanna feel a wistfulness she had never felt before and she felt her eyes moisten.
-"Hey what's up," Santini broke the silence, laughing a little tightly, and at the same time the enchantment faded, and Hanna found herself looking at an unfamiliar tall man with regular rather handsome features, but whom she had certainly never met before. The man started to move and came to her with his hand outstretched. I'm Sal Munroe and you must be Hanna Jääskeläinen. He pronounced the name awkwardly and then added, confused, as if by way of explanation. "You reminded me of someone I knew very vividly.
-I had the same feeling, Hanna muttered, -I think we've met somewhere.
That's possible if you've travelled a lot, Sal Munroe replied, and then added a compliment. "Although I'd certainly remember you once I met you. You don't seem familiar at all. It must have been the lighting or something.
-Well, sure, Hanna accepted the explanation enthusiastically, for that feeling still lingered somewhere deep inside her, and she found it awkward and a little frightening.
-My car is in front of the hotel. If you don't mind, we'll leave right away. It would be nice to get as far as possible before the hottest part of the day.
- I'm ready, Hanna said and took her handbag from the back of the chair. Sal Munroe and Peter Santini exchanged a few words.
-Bring our little beauty back unharmed, Santini told Munro, half-jokingly, or you will be attacked by the international press.
Hanna furrowed her eyebrows a little. She didn't like Santini's remark, even if it was a joke, and she didn't like his possessive attitude, even if she otherwise liked him and was grateful to him.
-To me, Ms. Jääskeläinen seems like a woman who is very capable of taking care of herself. Sal Munroe replied dryly and then looked at Hanna with a serious look. "You are aware that we are heading for an area that has been declared a war zone.
Hanna nodded.
-Al Mawsil has a few military targets and there is a theoretical possibility that Iranian fighter units will carry out bombing raids there, Sal Munroe explained -but the chance of being bombed has, at least so far, been much higher here in Baghdad than in Al Mawsil.
I am aware of the risks, and I am prepared to take them," Hanna said.
-"I would take much greater risks to get to Nineveh and I am grateful that you have agreed to take me with you. I hope this in no way interferes with your plans.
-Not at all. And I don't really have any special plans. I just want to see Nineveh and take some photos. I don't have a timetable, but I'm planning to stay there for 3-4 days. Let's go then. Those suitcases in the lobby must be yours?
Hanna nodded.
I'm afraid I'm not very well equipped. Or how do you think we will be living there?
-Al Mawlis does have a hotel of sorts, Sal Munroe said, grabbing Hanna's suitcases, but I wouldn't recommend that lice-and-slime soap even to my best enemy, if it's anything like the small-town hotels here usually are. I have a two-room tent and will pitch it on the beach at Tigris. You can fit in there if that's all right with you.
-Can't afford to be too subtle in these circumstances, can you? Hanna asked with a laugh.
-Well, I guess I'm going after all," Santini said with a twist of his face.
-"Sure thing," Sal Munroe grinned, lifting Hanna's suitcases into the back of the Land Rover, "but as you can see, there's only one seat available in this cart.
The Land Rover was loaded from floor to ceiling. Only the front seats were empty.
-What bloody arsenal are you carrying with you? Peter Santini wondered. For a three-day trip.
-Food, water cans, extra fuel, tent, gas canister, film camera, 4 ordinary cameras, video equipment, clothes, fishing gear... Sal Munroe listed.
-Yes, one of them will be filled by a Land Rover. I've been on the move so much and for so long that I've learned that there's nothing you don't need.
-Do you have a gun? Santini asked.
-I don't believe in guns. Munroe replied.
-"Someone else might believe," Santini said, putting his hand in his breast pocket. When it came out, there was a small flat pistol. He handed it to Munroe -Baretta, there are six bullets in the magazine. Take it, if not for yourself, at least for Miss Jääskeläinen. You've got a lot of stuff that would be good for any band of marauding Kurds.
Sal Munroe hesitated but took the gun and shoved it into the glove compartment of the car.
-I don't think I'd have it in me to point people out anyway, he muttered, starting the car, but thanks anyway.
-Good luck! Santini wished him well and Munroe waved his hand and pressed the accelerator. The journey towards Nineveh had begun.
The road meandered along the bed of the Tigris River. The land lined the banks of the river, and here and there you could see farmers with their oxen ploughing their fields, doing the same chores that had been done here longer than anywhere else on earth. Even the methods of farming were largely unchanged and if changed. If there had been any change since the days of the Assyrian Empire, it was a change for the worse, for the ingenious canal systems had been choked by lack of care for hundreds of years, and the land today produced far less than it did a couple of thousand years earlier. The car soon began to resemble a baking oven, even though they had all the windows open and the fan on, and the heat of the day was not even at its worst yet.
Sal Munroe said he used to work for the Times but has been making a living for 5 years as a freelance journalist, doing stories and photographing unexplored parts of the world.
-It suits me, he said, I've always been a bit restless, and I like solitude. Nineveh has been something of an obsession for me for years. I'm afraid I'll be sorely disappointed, as it's probably no more of a pile of rocks than Babylon, which I visited a couple of weeks ago. For some reason, I am fascinated by the end of the Assyrian Empire, even to the extent that I have, as a hobby, learned to interpret some of the arrowhead inscriptions, but my skills are of a rather modest order. Still, my dream is to find a fragment of a clay tablet on this trip as a souvenir. Although even taking one of these is nowadays against the law on antiquities.
And the British Museum has a whole roomful of them, enough for archaeologists to collect for another generation, Sal Munroe said. "What a fascinating array of things there are in those paintings. Perhaps one day we will be able to read the Gilgamesh epic in its original form in its entirety. Today, all we have is an incomplete edition of clay tablets from different ages. Although what interests me most is what happened to King Assurbanipal and what the kingdom finally came to during the short reign of his sons.
They talked at length about the last days of the Assyrian Empire and Hanna found that Sal's knowledge was really excellent, considering that he was only an amateur. Hanna found she liked Sal the more she talked to him, and it wasn't just because they seemed to have so much in common. That strange sense of familiarity that had briefly overwhelmed her when she first saw Sal was still there, even if she put it in the background and they behaved towards each other rather formally, perhaps too formally.
About fifty kilometers from Baghdad, the road became so bad that fifty kilometers an hour became the maximum speed, and even at that speed, the bumps in the road would occasionally slam the car's shock absorbers to the ground. This road must not have been much improved since the days of the Assurbanipal," Sal said with a laugh, "and certainly nothing much has changed in this landscape.
"Tigris has changed his focus a bit," Hanna said. Back then it flowed right past Nineveh. Now it's several kilometers from the river to the city.
About 100 km from Baghdad, they were met by a few military vehicles, but no attention was paid to them. Otherwise, they only encountered donkeys carrying loads of brushwood or had to brake for flocks of sheep. There were a few fishing boats on the river, the design of which had not changed for thousands of years. Hanna watched everything as if in a dream, with a strange melancholy. The smell of the river was stronger and more authentic here than in Baghdad, and it only added to Hanna's dreamy mood. Soon she would be in Nineveh. Only now did she dare to admit it.
-I find it hard to believe that I'm actually finally here, Sal Munroe said as if sharing his thoughts. And even today my feet are treading on the ruins of Nineveh Sal laughed and continued as if to himself. -It's amazing how an ancient, ruined city can become a lifelong obsession for people.
-"Actually, it's even stranger that the two of us who share the same obsession happened to be there at the same time," Hanna said with a chuckle.
- Maybe there are more of us than we think," Sal remarked with a laugh. Babylon, at least, was a tourist hellhole. With all its beggars and trinket dealers. Nineveh will probably be like that again one day, once the restoration is completed and accessibility improved. Have you ever been to Babylon, Miss Jääskeläinen?
-Say Hanna it's simpler. No, I'm not. It's my first time in Iraq and without you I would have missed Nineveh for sure. We haven't even discussed cost-sharing yet. It all happened so fast.
Sal glanced at Hanna.
-I hadn't thought about it either, but apparently, it's easier for you if I agree to share the cost of petrol and food with you. They don't do much. We'll see when we get back to Baghdad, he said, -I've only got canned food with me and I'm trying to fish from the Tigris. I hear the carp in Tigris is delicious when fried on the coals.
-Tigris fish, onions and wheat bread cooked in ashes...an old Assyrian meal.
-Beer again, Sal pointed out with a laugh - with a straw from a big pot. That's a skill these current residents have forgotten. I do have a few pints of canned beer, but it hardly tastes the same as the beer of the old Assyrians.
-This is the archaeologists' eternal conundrum, Hanna laughed. -We know roughly what everything felt, tasted, smelled and sounded like. We can only guess and imagine.
The fish in Tigris are probably still the same as they were 2 or 3000 years ago and the fire is the same and the bulbs haven't changed much, Sal said, dodging potholes dug by the spring rains on the road. And man has probably changed the least of all. Even today there is war here, as there has been for thousands of years. Weapons have only evolved. This land is saturated with the blood of the Sumerian Babylonians, the Elamites, the Jews, the Persians, the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Hittite Arabs... and yet nothing has been learned here. In a way, this is a cursed land, the cradle of human civilization. It was here that man first erected the boundary walls and said, this is mine and perhaps humanity will continue to learn from it.
-Then Hanna said quietly, here a man probably also for the first time, marked another man with a branding iron and said, you are my slave. It was here that the concept of a ruler as a substitute for a god on earth was born, but the same thing happened without precedent in many other places on earth, so it is in vain that we blame the Sumerians or Assyrians for it. Perhaps it is in the basic nature of man the need to subjugate and be subjugated. After all, we are supposed to be so scientific, democratic, and wise nowadays as we Westerners, but in the same way that the ancient Sumerians or Babylonians or Egyptians or Assyrians elevated their rulers to the status of gods, we too have given a few men in the world the status of gods, which is a thousand times more real god status. As it once was for the ancient, civilized peoples. When our gods have the power, at the touch of a button, to order the destruction of all mankind. The ancient substitutes for the gods had no such power. After all, their power was limited to a relatively small area, and even if they had wanted to, they could not have destroyed it completely. The German people in our time elevated Hitler to the status of a substitute god, but he could not destroy the whole world either, even though he tried very hard, but he paved the way and then the sky flashed white for a few seconds over Hiroshima and in that flash the true substitutes for the gods on earth were born. The worst part of it is exactly what you said, man has not changed from the days when he first set up the border wall and said, this is mine, The great masses are still like cattle that the shepherds lead to pasture or to the river bank to drink or to the butcher and those who start to whine when they are taken to the butcher are slaughtered on the way so as not to cause unrest in the rest of the herd. Hanna looked at Sal and laughed, "You're right. This must be cursed ground because I don't usually think so gloomily.
The road made a small bend and approached the shore of Tigris. Swallows were fluttering like black arrows above the spring-green reeds, the greenish-brown water lapping at the low bank of the meadow, which extended to the edge of the road. On the other side of the road, the plain rippled with scarlet from the wild owls. The air was filled with the intoxicating sound of birdsong and the scent of flowers. Sal pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine, watching the view as if mesmerized. Hanna fumbled with the door lock with her hand. She kicked off her shoes and stepped barefoot into the floodwater, looking around like a sleepwalker.
Hanna turned as she felt rather than heard Sal coming up behind her. Sal had picked up a scarlet poppy from a bench across the road and was staring as if mesmerized by the flower in his hand. And as if a giddiness came over Hanna and time seemed to curl like burning paper around her as the sunbeams glittered on the silver and gold embroidered linen courtyard fan of the man standing before her, and his confused smile stabbed straight into her heart like a knife, but the pain it caused was sweet pain. Hanina Sal whispered hoarsely, and with trembling hands fastened the red poppy to Hanna's hair.
-Salmu Hanna whispered and then they pressed against each other, and their mouths pressed together and the tears flowing from their eyes mingled.
Hanna woke up first to the reality of kissing an almost unknown English man with a tear-stained face and up to her ankles in muddy floodwater. She crawled away from him, cheeks glowing and heart pounding, and immense shame and embarrassment mingled with a strange passion that still burned in her blood.
-I apologize. I don't understand what got into me, she heard Sal mutter, and from his tone she could tell he was as confused as she was.
"As far as I'm concerned, it's all right," she replied in as matter of fact and cool a tone as possible, even though nothing was, in his opinion, all right at the time. I think we had better go on,
So, Sal said quietly, we'd better keep going but...
Sal left his sentence unfinished and that but hung between them all the way to Al Mawsil. Neither said a word until the town. Hanna could barely see the scenery they were driving through. She was thinking too intensely about what had just happened. She did not try to find an explanation, for the fact that they had kissed seemed so obvious that it required no explanation. But she kept asking herself over and over again why it had seemed so obvious, and every now and then when she glanced at Sal, who seemed to be thinking as intensely as she was, Sal seemed very familiar to her, much more familiar than their short time together would have required, much more familiar than any man she had ever met before, much more familiar than Seppo, for example.
And, why, for a moment, she had seen Sal with a beard and a caftan decorated with gold and silver threads, like an ancient Assyrian courtier. Had Sal also perhaps seen her as somehow different, and why Sal had called her Hanima and he Sal Salmu. All this she would have liked to ask Sal, but she didn't dare, because she wasn't even sure of her own state of mind or what had really happened. If Sal said that she had attacked his neck and kissed him by force, she would have to believe that too. She wasn't sure of anything anymore. Perhaps Sal's clear evident confusion and withdrawn behavior was just a sign that he was frightened out of her wits and didn't know what to do.
At Al Mawlis, at the end of a poor bridge over the Tigris, there was an inspection. A small military detachment examined their papers and searched the car from top to bottom. Sal had spotted the check in time to take the pistol Santini had given him from the glove compartment and put it in his breast pocket. It might as well have stayed in the glove compartment since no one bothered to look. Nor did anyone point out that the pass to Nineveh was for one person only.
-"They were probably illiterate," Sal said with a chuckle when they had come out of the inspection. At least it looked to me like the officer was holding the badge upside down, but I could be wrong. Because I'm not particularly good at interpreting anything written here...
Hanna laughed, relieved that Sal usually said something.
-"Everything has turned out easier than I would have thought," she said, "considering that we are, after all, a country at war. In principle, I could very well be an agent of Tehran.
-You're not, are you? here? Sal asked and looked at Hanna searchingly.
-Do they have women in those jobs? And what business would Khomeini's agents have in Nineveh, Hanna asked, not offended by Sal's question, because she felt that after what he had just said, Sal had the right to suspect anything about her.
-"To both questions, I don't know," Sal replied with a sneer.
-I know very little about such things. I suppose it's because of the profound disgust I feel for all organizations that serve war and distrust between nations, although of course you have to know your enemy to fight them. But I feel an aversion, even to such a struggle. I was wholeheartedly in favor of the flower people in the sixties and it saddens me that that cause bore so little fruit even though you probably don't remember the whole hippy movement you were so young then.
-It was not a new idea, and it is still not dead. Hanna said lightly, -And you're probably no more than five years older than me.
I'm forty-two Sal smiled, so thank you for the compliment even though I'm not a worshipper of youth and wouldn't mind being a day younger than I am. Otherwise Sal hesitated for a moment before continuing. "If you do want to stay in a hotel in town, I'm sure that can be arranged, and I have some insecticide to make you reasonably comfortable.
-"Did you suddenly get scared of living in the same tent with me," Hanna asked quietly.
-"No," Sal replied just as muffled, "I was just wondering if you got a bit of a cramp.
They turned to look at each other and Sal braked and stopped the car.
-I don't know what happened to me...what is happening to me? Sal said quietly, very seriously, -But I do know that you don't have to be afraid when you're with me, if you know what I mean.
-I know that Hanna nodded and meant it, because whatever she felt after that strange experience, it was certainly not fear or distrust of Sal. She wanted to say it even more clearly, -Sal, I'm not afraid of you, but I'm glad you put it that way. I was already scared myself that I was somehow going crazy, but obviously something is happening to both of us... something unexplainable. Maybe it's because of this country because we share a dream. I don't know, but either way it's just one kiss, and I guess one kiss doesn't change the world in this day and age. Isn't it?
Sal smiled, a little embarrassed.
-No, he muttered, but I still wouldn't say it was just one kiss. Don't be scared. I feel perfectly fine mentally, but did you call me Salmu?
-"I did," Hanna said, relieved that it wasn't just her imagination, "and you called me Hanina.
Sal nodded.
-Yes, I did. I don't understand why. Is it a title?
-It is an ancient Assyrian woman's name, just as Salmu is an ancient Assyrian man's name. Hanna said and laughed a little embarrassed as she continued. I'm not the least bit mystical, but I still feel I experienced something mystical, maybe there was something supernatural about the place and the moment.
-"And that's the whole point of our trip," Sal said seriously, looking Hanna in the eye. "I don't consider myself superstitious either, but when I saw you there in the hotel, I can't explain it, and I don't even want to talk about it, because it makes me uneasy too, and I can well imagine how such talk makes you feel.
-I certainly didn't feel any more anxious than I did. Hanna answered, and only then dared to say, "On the beach I did not see you as you are, but you had a curled beard and a caftan embroidered with gold and silver threads. You looked like a figure out of some ancient Assyrian relief, and yet it was you.
I saw you too, dressed like an ancient Assyrian princess or noblewoman, Sal said, shaking his head in disbelief. And it seemed obvious to me, and it still does, that all the rest of this journey I've been wondering if I've gone mad.
-"Two people can hardly go mad at the same time," Hanna said, and immediately tried to give some kind of explanation for everything. Maybe we both have really been too involved in Nineveh and its late culture. Maybe we're both oversensitive to some extent and...
Hanna was silent, not knowing what she had actually wanted to say.
-"Yes," Sal said hastily, when Hanna had given a valid and reasonable explanation for everything. Shall we still go on to Nineveh or do you want to turn back.
-Of course, we're going on to Nineveh, Hanna said, downright annoyed, although for some reason, Nineveh no longer fascinated her as it used to. Now that she was so close to her destination, she suddenly felt like she was running after a shadow. She already knew she would find only a desolate mud-brick ruin. Just like all the other ancient city excavations. She had already seen it all in hundreds of thousands of photographs. Now, for the first time since her dream was born, she suddenly questioned it. Now, on the contrary, she felt a little anxious and sad even before he thought of walking through the ruins of ancient Nineveh, and somehow, she sensed that Sal was overcome by the same feeling.
-Of course, we will continue, Sal laughed a little sadly, but for some reason it suddenly doesn't seem very important. I know exactly what I'm up against; desolate clay ruins from which everything of value and scientific interest has long since been shipped to the world's metropolises, but I should have known that when my dream was born, so at the moment I don't really understand myself.
-You must be a mind reader, Hanna smiled, -Or maybe you and I are just exactly as crazy as each other.
I would guess the latter, Sal said with a laugh and started to drive on down a poor road, which still had signs at short intervals, perhaps for future tourist crowds, with the word NINIVEH written in three languages, which had become magical for the two of them.