Rob made to speak but Karwan raised an impatient hand to silence him. ‘None of this mattered, of course. Not for many centuries. No one threatened Gobekli Tepe. No one even knew it was there, apart from the Yezidi. It remained buried in its ancient earth. But then the German came along, the archaeologists with their shovels and their diggers and their machines, testing and digging, digging and exposing. For the Yezidi, uncovering Gobekli is a terrible thing. Like exposing a terrible wound. It pains us. What our ancestors buried has to be kept buried, what was exposed to the air has to be concealed and protected. So we, the Yezidi, we had ourselves hired by him, we became his workmen so we could delay the digging, stop the endless digging. But still, he carried on. Carried on exposing the wound-’
‘So you killed Franz and then you-’
Karwan growled, ‘No! We are not devils. We are not killers. We tried to frighten him. To scare him off, to scare you all away. But he must have fallen. That is all.’
‘And…the Pulsa Dinura?’
‘Yes. Yes of course. And the troubles at the temple. We tried to…what is the word…we tried to hamper the dig, to stop it. But the German was so determined. He kept on digging. Digging up the Garden of Eden, the garden of jars. He even dug it up at night. So there was an argument. And he fell. It was an accident I think.’
Rob made to protest. Karwan shrugged. ‘You can believe this, or you can choose not to believe it. As you wish. I am tired of lies.’
‘So what is the skull?’
Karwan exhaled, slowly. ‘I do not know. When I went to Texas, I studied my own religion. I saw the…structure of its myths. From a different perspective. And I do not know. I do not know who Melek Taus is and I don’t know what the skull is. All I know is that we must worship the skull and the peacock. And that we must never reveal these secrets. And that we must never ever breed with non-Yezidi, we must never marry outside the faith. Because you-the non Yezidi-are polluted.’
‘Is it an animal? The skull?’
‘I do not know! Believe me. I think…’ Karwan was struggling with the words. ‘I think something happened at Gobekli Tepe. To our temple in Eden. Something terrible, ten thousand years ago. Otherwise why did we bury it? Why bury that beautiful place unless it was a place of shame or of suffering? There had to be a reason. To bury it.’
‘Why are you telling me this now? Why now? Why me?’
‘Because you kept on coming. You would not give up. So now I am telling you everything. You found the jars. With those terrible remains. What is that for? Why were those babies put there? It scares me. There is too much I do not know. All we have is myth and traditions. We do not have a book to tell us. Not any more.’
Outside, voices were calling again. It sounded like farewells. The voices were joined by car engines starting up. It seemed as if people were leaving Lalesh. Rob wanted to write down Karwan’s words: he felt a physical hunger to get this down; but the cords were still tight around his wrist. All he could do was ask, ‘So where does the Black Book fit in?’
Karwan shook his head. ‘Ah yes. The Black Book. What is that? I am not so sure it is a book. I think it was some proof, some key, something that explained the great mystery. But it has gone. It was taken from us. And now we are left with…with our fairy tales. And our peacock angel. Enough. I have told you things that I should never tell anyone. But I had no choice. The world despises the Yezidi. We are abused and persecuted. Called devil-worshippers. How can it get any worse? Maybe if the world knows more of the truth, they will treat us better.’ He took another deliberate sip of mineral water. ‘We are keepers of a secret, Mr Luttrell, a terrible secret we do not understand. Yet we must cleave to our silence. And protect the buried past. It is our burden. Through the ages. We are the Sons of the Jar.’
‘And now-’
‘And now I am going to take you back to Turkey. We are going to drive you back to the border and you can fly home and then you can tell everyone about us. Tell them we are not Satanists. Tell them of our sadness. Tell them what you like. But do not lie.’
The Yezidi man stood and shouted through the window. The door swung open and more men came in. Rob was jostled again, but this time it was with a purpose and a calm determination. He was shunted outside through the temple. He glanced at the altar as he was pushed along: the skull was gone. Then he was out in the sun. Kids were pointing at him. Rob saw women staring, hands over their mouths. He was being led to the Ford pickup truck.
The driver was ready. Rob’s bag was on the passenger seat, waiting. Rob was still tied by the wrists. Two men helped him up into the cabin. He stared out of the window as another man got into the cab: a dark, bearded man, younger than Karwan. Strong and muscular, and silent. He was going to sit between Rob and the truck door; Rob was in the middle seat.
The Ford pulled out, wheels spinning in the dust. Rob’s last glimpse of Lalesh was of Karwan, standing amongst the staring children, beside one of the conical towers. His expression was enormously sad.
Then Lalesh disappeared behind a slope as the truck tore down the hillside, heading for the Turkish border.
35
As soon as Rob was shoved across the Turkish border at Habur he phoned Christine, then jumped in a taxi for the nearest city. Mardin. Seven arduous hours later he booked into a hotel room, phoned Christine again, phoned his daughter; then he fell asleep with the phone in his hand, he was so tired.
The next morning he sat down at his laptop and wrote-immediately, passionately, and in one session-his story.
Kidnapped by the Cults of Kurdistan.
He felt that writing the piece quickly and unthinkingly was the only way. There were so many disparate elements that, if he sat down and cogitated, if he tried to form a coherent narrative, there was a risk he would get lost in the many details and the endless byways. Also, the article might seem contrived if he toiled over it: the story was so bizarre it had to sound simple and heartfelt for it to work. Very immediate. Very honest. As if he was telling someone a long and astonishing anecdote over a coffee. So Rob just banged it down in one go. Gobekli Tepe and the jars in the museum, the Yezidi and the Cult of Angels and the worship of Melek Taus. The ceremonies in Lalesh and the skull on the altar and the mystery of the Black Book. All of it, the whole story, spiced with violence and murder. And it now had a good ending: it concluded with him lying on his side, a hood over his head, in a filthy little room in the mountains of Kurdistan: thinking he was going to die.
The article took five hours to write. Five hours in which he barely looked up from his laptop, he was so focused. In the zone.
After six minutes of spellchecking, Rob copied the piece on to a data stick, walked out of the hotel and went straight to an internet café. Then he plugged in the data stick and emailed the piece to Steve, in London, who was impatiently awaiting his copy.
He sat nervously in the quiet internet café by the computer, hoping that Steve would phone back soon with his response. The hot Mardin sun was bright in the streets outside, but in here it was almost sepulchral. Only one other guy was in the internet café, drinking an obscure Turkish soda, playing some computer game. The boy had big fat headphones on. He was eviscerating an onscreen monster with a virtual AK47. The monster had purple claws and sad eyes. Its intestines spilled out, vivid and green.