a mythical avian creature until the bats leave me alone.
Am I alone?
Hush…sssh, I hear as an unnerving susurration pounces upon my ears, unsettling yet wanting, needing, crying out. They’re here. Calling to me. I see no creature stirring save for scavenger scorpions busy feeding their hungry bellies on insects so tiny they escape my eye, but I know they’re here. Waiting for me. I can’t leave without seeing them one final time to contemplate the beautiful with the strange.
With more excitement making my pulse race than I would have thought possible, I sweep the beam of my flashlight on the emptiness below me. Cool air and moist shredded spiderwebs tickle my face. I wiggle my nose and a musky smell similar to the odor of sex makes me take in my breath. I place my boot on the crumbling step, then a second, a third, slowly, methodically, as if I’m in a hypnotic trance, unable to blink, my senses numb to all emotion except what I glean from the voices.
Voices.
They call me the bone whisperer. A fanciful term for an archaeologist, considering what I do falls somewhere between science and imagination, but it fits me. In my travels to numerous digs, I’ve listened to a mummy shyly whisper about having her pubic hair shaved before they wrapped her body in linen; to a young woman dreaming of her lover’s kiss before a lion knocked her down with its great paw and crushed her skull; to a queen’s haughty attendant boast about seducing a high-ranking court official before she jumped into the death pit.
I spend my days in other times in a fascinating world, where a kaleidoscope of images, sounds and smells all converge in a strange language that allows me to slip into the skin of these women and record their lives.
You have to see how the bones come out of the ground, I always say, to hear their stories. I whisper back to them before removing the bones from their final resting place, assure them I mean them no harm, then listen to their precious answers before I make my conclusions.
In my work, I’ve danced on wildf lower carpets throughout the Middle East, from preserved Roman cities with paved and colonnaded streets, plazas and amphitheaters to the vast desert with its burnt red moonscape valleys and towering sandstone mountains and cliffs. Hot desert winds at my back are my companions. Cold, damp crypts are my workplace.
I live to find the dead and tell their stories. Not easy to do when my grant money is about to run out. I’m a student in search of a Ph.D., following every lead that comes my way to complete my doctoral dissertation on the role of women in premodern Syria. I’ve spent my entire career trying to convince the academic world that archaeology is an important sexual science, that women played a major part in ancient civilizations, participating in sacred rituals, meeting secretly to explore pleasure, whether it was with male members of the tribe or with sex tools. Consequently, I often experience anxious moments at airport security when I forget I’ve stuffed broken bones or a stone phallic symbol from the Ice Age in my carry-on bag.
I’ve been kicking around the Near East for more than a year, working on various digs, but it’s rare to make any major discovery in the field these days. Archaeology is menial work, sifting dirt oozing with invading termites or scratching at hard rock, breaking off my nails, scrutinizing each bagful of potsherds, but rewarding for me when I see a small piece of bone, a faded remnant of cloth, a broken glass earring. Then I hear the whispers. This time they led me here to a forgotten vault in the middle of the desert.
It all started two weeks ago with a walk through the souk in Aleppo in northern Syria. I’d hoped to join a dig in Jableh but that fell through, so I decided to see the centuries-old bazaar before trying my luck in Damascus. No sooner had I found my way to the souk than a pleasant young man approached me, introduced himself as Ahmed and offered in broken English to act as my tour guide. Dubious at first, I shook my head no, but he followed me until I gave in, insisting he had excellent-quality copies of a popular guidebook special today to lady tourists. His boundless enthusiasm and toothy smile won over my incertitude. I couldn’t help but like the slight young man wearing baggy brown trousers and a dark gray shirt two sizes too big for him, wiping the sweat off his face with his twin russet-colored scarves twisted around his neck. He chatted with ease about the abundance of food overf lowing from each stall and his stomach being not big enough to hold it all.
If I’d been more observant, I’d have seen someone else also watching me. A man dressed in a camel’s-hair robe as white as the hot sands, his muscular body brown and hard, his raw masculinity so seductive his spirit would pervade my hunger for him until he became an obsession.
The game was on.
Two weeks earlier
I need a dig. Need it badly.
Sipping a mint-and-lime juice in the hot summer heat, I cruise down the long, dark alleys of the bazaar in Aleppo, Syria, the intense scent of spices seducing me, the curious crowds of people watching me, not knowing where the next turn will take me, Ahmed warning me not to pick up anything I don’t intend to buy since stallkeepers take that as a sale, when I hear the voices.
Not loud. Faint, subtle sounds in my head, telling me something stirs in the old stones under my feet, the shops with the faded wooden doors closing in on either side of me, the hidden corners where I hear but don’t see an old man chanting and keeping time with a small drum, unnerving me. The souk is filled with shops selling vibrant textiles, sweet dates, aromatic coffee beans and natural olive oil soaps. Not ancient bones, I tell myself, but it’s a feeling I can’t shake. Perhaps it’s the vibrant red-and-black scarves that Bedouin women wear hanging in the shop window and calling out to me. The floral motif and gold thread woven down the edge of the silk please my feminine instincts, a part of me that hasn’t been nurtured with a soft caress upon my skin since I left home.
Since then, I’ve slept on makeshift cots, watched the dawn break over the desert sky with its rosy hue; sweltered in the blazing noon heat on a dig while keeping my guard up for poisonous caterpillars; and spent days putting together the shards of the pelvic bone of a young woman, only to discover she’d never known the joy of holding a baby in her arms. At the end of the day, I’ve sat in the ruins under moonlight and listened to the bucolic sounds of a local digger playing the flute, its mesmerizing melody climbing up to the heavens and bringing me closer to the stars with each note.
I’ve also kicked off my boots and played with Bedouin children in the sand, delighting in the desert as a playground with all its colors and lights. The contrast between the orange glow hitting a blue-and-white-striped nomad tent in an oasis against the golden, hot sand is a sublime experience that awakens all my senses. Like now.
The air is hot and the shop somehow seductive.
Located on a tiny cobblestoned street crisscrossing under a domed alley, I ignore the stench of the slaughtered animals hanging in the doorway and wander inside the shop crammed with antiques. Ahmed runs after me, his backless running shoes making a scruffy sound on the cobbles.
“This shop no good,” he insists, holding his russet-colored neck scarf to his nose. “Cheat tourists.”
“Something I’m sure you’d never do, right, Ahmed?” I smile and indicate the photocopied popular travel guide he sold me since importing the real deal is illegal.
Ahmed rolls his eyes, shakes his head, then follows me inside the shop. “I come with you, Missy Breezy, but not Ahmed’s fault if you lose shirt.”
I laugh at his use of American slang, then my smile fades. I can’t explain it, but something pulls at me to wander up the winding black-iron stairway. Chattering behind me in the local patois about how his brother-in-law runs a stall down the road with
