Then he remembered Radevan’s reaction to the mention of the place, and the worker’s angry glare. And Breitner’s slight change of mood when they talked about Rob’s article. And the tension about the trench. Christine was over by the samovar, filling their glasses with more hot sweet black tea. He wondered whether to say anything. As she returned, he said, ‘Funny thing is, though, Christine, I know this dig is amazing and all that. But does everyone feel the same way?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well…I just…got some vibe from the locals…some real attitude. Not so good. This place upsets some people. My driver for instance.’
Christine perceptibly stiffened. ‘Go on?
‘My cab driver.’ Rob tapped his chin with his pen. ‘Radevan. He got really angry about Gobekli when I mentioned it last night. And it’s not just him. There’s an atmosphere. And Breitner seems…ambivalent. Once or twice when I discussed my piece with him this morning he seemed less than keen on me being here…Even if he does laugh a lot.’ He paused. ‘You’d think he’d want the world to know, wouldn’t you? What he’s doing here? Yet he doesn’t seem comfortable.’
Christine said nothing, so Rob stayed silent. An old journalistic trick.
It worked. Eventually, embarrassed by the silence, Christine leaned forward. ‘OK. You are right. There is…there are…’ She stopped, as if debating with herself. The breeze off the desert was even hotter, if anything. Rob waited and sipped his tea.
At last she sighed. ‘You’re here a week, yes? You’re doing a serious story?’
‘Yes.’
Christine nodded. ‘OK. Let me drive you back to Sanliurfa. The dig stops at one o’clock because it’s so hot, many people go home. I usually go home then. We can talk in my car. Privately.’
6
In the dusty square of car park that led to the dig, Rob gave Radevan a healthy tip, and told him he’d make his own way home. Radevan looked at Rob, then at the folding money in his hand, then at Christine, standing just behind Rob. He gave Rob a big knowing grin, and turned the car around. As the driver revved the engine he called out of the car window, ‘Maybe tomorrow, Mr Rob?’
‘Maybe tomorrow.’
Radevan sped off.
Christine’s car was a rusty Land Rover. She opened the passenger door from the inside and hastily cleared lots of documents from the passenger seat-textbooks and academic magazines-chucking them haphazardly in the back. Then she gunned the engine and they set off at serious pace, for the main road-careering down the rubbly hillsides, out onto the burnt yellow plains.
‘So…what’s up?’ Rob had to shout his question above the noise of the car tyres, popping over rocks.
‘The main problem is politics. You have to remember this is Kurdistan. The Kurds think the Turks are stealing their heritage. Taking all the best stuff to museums in Ankara and Istanbul…I’m not sure it’s totally untrue.’
Rob watched a flash of sunlight on an irrigation canal. He’d read that this area was the subject of a massive agricultural campaign: the Great Anatolia Project, using the waters of the Euphrates to bring the desert back to life. The project was controversial because it was flooding, and drowning, dozens of ancient and unique archaeological sites. Though luckily not Gobekli. He looked back at Christine, changing gear viciously.
‘What is true is that the government won’t allow the locals to make money out of Gobekli Tepe.’
‘Because?’
‘Because of perfectly valid archaeological reasons. The last thing Gobekli needs is thousands of tourists crawling all over. So the government don’t build signs, they keep the roads like this. And that means we can work in peace.’ She turned the steering wheel sharply, and accelerated. ‘But I can also see the Kurdish point of view. You must have seen some of the villages on the way up here.’
Rob nodded. ‘A couple.’
‘They don’t even have running water. Sanitation. They barely have schools. They are dirt poor. And Gobekli Tepe, if it were properly marketed, could be a huge money-spinner. Bringing a lot of money to the region.’
‘And Franz is in the middle of this argument?’
‘Smack bang. He has pressure from all sides. Pressure to do the dig properly, pressure to hurry up, pressure to employ lots of local people. Pressure to stay in charge even.’
‘So that’s why he is ambivalent about publicity?’
‘Naturally he’s proud of what he’s discovered. He’d love the world to know. He’s been working here since 1994.’ Christine slowed to let a goat cross the road, then sped on again. ‘Many archaeologists move around a lot. I’ve worked in Mexico, Israel, France since I left Cambridge six years back. But Franz has been here more than half his career. So yes he’d like to tell the world! But if he does that, and Gobekli becomes truly famous, as famous as it should be, well then some big chief in Ankara might decide that a Turk should be in charge. And get all the glory.’
Rob understood the situation better. But it still didn’t quite explain the strange atmosphere at the dig. The workers’ resentment. Or maybe he was imagining it?
They reached the main road, spun onto the level tarmac, and headed faster, through increasing traffic, for Sanliurfa. As they overtook fruit lorries and army trucks they talked about Christine’s interest: human remains. How she used to work on human sacrifices at Teotihuacan. Her stint in Tel Gezer and Megiddo in Israel. The Neanderthal sites of France.
‘Ancient hominids lived in southern France for hundreds of thousands of years, people like us, but not quite like us.’
‘Neanderthals, you mean?’
‘Yes, but also maybe Homo erectus and Homo antecessor. Even Homo heidelbergensis.’
‘Er…OK…’
Christine laughed. ‘Am I losing you again? Fair enough-let me show you something really cool. If this doesn’t grab you nothing will.’
The car was headed for the centre of Sanliurfa. Concrete houses were jumbled on hills; big shops and offices stretched down dusty, sunlit boulevards. Other streets were more shaded and antique: as they clawed their way through the traffic Rob saw a section of Ottoman arcading, the entrance to a bustling, dark souk, mosques hidden behind crumbling stone walls. Sanliurfa was obviously divided into an old-very old-district, and new quarters sprawling out into the semi-desert.
Looking left, he saw a large park-like area, with glittering pools and canals, and bijou teahouses, a charming oasis in the grime and hubbub of the big Kurdish town.
‘The Golbasi Gardens,’ said Christine. ‘And those are the fish pools of Abraham. Locals think the Prophet Abraham put the carp in himself. This city is amazing-if you like history. I love it here…’
The car had made it through the narrower streets of the old town. Jerking the wheel left, Christine took a wide road up a hill and veered between the gates of a tree-shaded building. The sign said Sanliurfa Museum.
Just inside the museum were three unshaven men sipping black tea: they stood and greeted Christine warmly. In return she joshed with them in a familiar way, in Turkish, or Kurdish. It was certainly some language Rob didn’t understand.
The pleasantries done, they passed through the inner doors into the small museum, where Christine led Rob to a statue. It was two metres high: a cream-coloured stone effigy of a man with black stone eyes.
‘This was dug up in Sanliurfa ten years ago when they were laying foundations for a bank near the fishponds. It was found amid the remains of a Neolithic temple, maybe eleven thousand years old. So this is probably the oldest statue of a man ever found. Anywhere. It’s the oldest selfportrait in stone in the history of the world. And it just sits here, by the fire extinguisher.’