you, Dr. al Khouri.’
‘Leave it with me. I’ll take it to Hormuz later.’
As the young worker slipped through the door beside them, her eyes fell on Desi and she turned around to gasp in disbelief before continuing on her way. At the sound, the doctor lifted his head.
‘Yes?’ he said, and then, ‘Salah!’
‘Desi, meet my father,’ said Salah. ‘Father, this is Desirée Drummond—Desi.’
‘Desi! Hello!’ Dr. al Khouri exclaimed, getting to his feet. He put out his hand, giving her the same focussed attention he had bestowed on the found object. The clasp of his hand was firm, reminding her of Salah’s. The black eyes were friendly, but uncomfortably piercing.
‘I am very happy to meet you at last. We have heard so much about you! It is kind of you to come to visit us.’
He did not sound in the least like a man who suspected her of conspiring to steal priceless objects, and Desi flicked a glance at Salah.
‘It’s very kind of you to let me come,’ she said, and under the warm intensity of his gaze, she managed to find a smile.
Her hand had collected a certain amount of dirt during the handshake, and she absently dusted it down on her khaki shorts. Dr. al Khouri frowned, looking at his own hand.
‘Too much dirt in this job!’ he said, dusting his hands. ‘I must go out now and make my round before they down tools for the night. Perhaps you will like to come with me, Desi. You have come a long way, and I know you will be eager to see the site as soon as possible.’
She nodded agreement. It was long past time to get away from Salah. Salah seemed to agree.
‘I will check on the sleeping arrangements,’ he said. Their eyes caught for a moment, and she sent him a cold warning with her eyes. Then she saw that he did not need it: he had no more interest in their continuing to share a bed than she did. Well, he’d had his closure, of course, she reminded herself bitterly.
If only she could feel closure. But for Desi it was all still boiling up inside her, rage and heartbreak and a deep, abiding sense of betrayal.
A moment later she was out in the late sunshine, listening as Dr. al Khouri began to explain the site. He spoke as if she were the student she was pretending to be, and in spite of everything Desi began to be intrigued.
‘Look at this,’ Khaled al Khouri told her, as they paused by a worker who was carefully excavating a massive slab embedded in the hardened soil, on which she could make out, faintly, an etched image. ‘This piece is our pride and joy.’
Desi peered at it. ‘Is that a woman?’
‘Not a woman,’ he said, with the air of a man used to correcting students. ‘All we can say with certainty at the moment is that this is a female figure. In fact, she is probably our goddess. We believe this lady might have been the tutelary deity of the whole civilisation.’
She bent down to see more clearly. The figure showed the hint of a tiara in the intricately curled hair that fell down over her shoulders above wide-spaced breasts, a curving waist encircled by some kind of string or thong, broad hips and a prominent nest of pubic hair. One hand was at her side, the other held up in what might be a gesture of greeting, palm towards the viewer. She was standing on an animal that Desi could not distinguish.
Excitement bubbled up as she recognized her little goddess.
‘Who is she?’ she demanded.
‘We think, the deity of this temple.’ The archaeologist waved his hand at the long shape marked out in the earth with stakes and string. ‘We don’t know her name yet.’
‘Is she a fertility goddess? A love goddess?’
‘We think so.’
‘Inanna?’
He lifted an eyebrow at her, in a gesture so like Salah her heart kicked a protest. ‘Possibly, but if so it’s an unusual depiction of her that would be specific to this people, and she might have had another name. What made you think of her?’
Desi laughed. ‘She’s the only ancient love goddess I know!’ she confessed. ‘I bought a little statue from some nomads a couple of days ago. I think it’s the same woman…female figure!’
Dr. al Khouri shook his head, sighing. ‘You bought her from nomads?’
‘Yes, for twenty dirhams. She’s in the truck.’
‘Then tomorrow you will show her to me. This, we suspect—’ he waved his arm to take in the entire site ‘—was her particular city. Perhaps the people came here on pilgrimages.’
‘The goddess of love was the chief god?’ Desi asked, amazed.
‘Yes, and such worship left its mark on later generations. In antiquity, Barakat has had many ruling women, and even after Islam, we often allowed queens to rule us. You have heard of the great Queen Halimah?’
‘Yes.’
‘Her path was of course paved by the goddesses and queens of antiquity, who still exist in the psyche of Barakat.’
‘Oh!’ Desi said in surprise.
‘Your own little goddess probably came from this area, but not this particular site. The flooding brought many things to the surface all along the valley. We have seen evidence for at least two more large settlements not far away.
‘That is why it is so critical to keep this secret for as long as possible. We can never hope to police every potential site in the valley, and if we lose too many of them…but we start with the largest, hoping that it is also the most important.’
‘Salah says looters aren’t the worst threat, though,’ she said, remembering. He had said it only a day or two ago, Desi realized in distant surprise. She seemed to have lived a lifetime since then. Then she had felt alive, that was why it seemed so long ago.
‘That is true.’
The archaeologist guided her over a narrow bridge of land between two square holes, smiling and nodding at the diggers below, who were starting to call to each other about the happy prospect of downing tools and cold beer.
‘Looters take what they find for their own enrichment. But the others, the fools who cannot bear to know that once the feminine was worshipped as fervently as the masculine is today, the idiots who must force the past to match their ideals as well as the present—they are a different kind of danger. They want to destroy the evidence.
‘Whatever we find here, Desi, it is the heritage of the whole world. It is our collective history. These madmen—they want to forget that all of Mohammad’s line comes through a woman. Fatima. Without his daughter, there would be no sharifs at all, no descendants of the prophet. But still they want to wipe the feminine out of the world.’
‘And you thought I might be helping these people?’ she asked in quiet bitterness.
He stared at her. ‘Help them? What intelligent person would help such lunatics?’
‘Salah
