Memory

Climbing the citadel, Hamad could barely make out the ancient trail of the Great Road leading inland, surrounded on all sides by blasted fields and scorched earth. It was in no danger of becoming overgrown in this land of dust and grit, at least in the near future. Not even thistles could survive this heat very far from the river. In the shimmering haze he could discern the shape of the northern hills, and the parched earth stretched in every other direction as far as he could see. The river, brown with silt, snaked a lonely path from the low, hazy hills to the distant seashore. From up here he could certainly get a good view of the city. Or of what remained.

The gaping holes of the granaries below the citadel stared up at him, giant yawning mouths screaming in silent, frozen death. The empty shells of houses and workshops smiled toothless grins at the sky. Drifts of hot sand slunk cautiously between the abandoned walls and cluttered the once-crowded streets. Dry irrigation channels, the famous arteries of the land, were clogged with brown, brittle plants. The old boundary of the city was visible, but the farms that had stretched to the horizon in Hamad's childhood were gone. In the distance far to the west, the forlorn remains of a village stabbed into the sky, the only landmark greeting the setting sun.

A long, low moan of wind echoed throughout the city, channeled through a thousand thousand groaning broken cups and pots over the Wailing Fields not far from the city's edge. The crumbling buildings added to the ghostly disharmony. Hamad thought, the voices of a thousand ancestors cried out to him, but unlike before whenhee was deaf to their words now the voices were indistinct and blurred together. Above the weeping wind there was no other sound but the scrabbling of sandal on earth under his feet.

Unsure of his own aged legs, he made his way down the citadel's steps to the street below. The city roads seemed more like cluttered spaces separating houses than the bright, cheerful avenues of his childhood. The dense mud-brick forest of walls and debris enclosed him on either side. With effort, scrambling over the crumbling bricks, he found his old house. His age-worn feet carried him as if remembering, following a map he himself had long ago forgotten.

Enough of the house remained for it to be identified. It was long abandoned, like every other empty ruin, and the roof had fallen in. The sun, rain and seasons were slowly devouring what little remained. The broken wooden beams crumbled in his hands when he touched them. The only trace of former inhabitants were some shattered vessels in the corner where the hearth had once been. Climbing over the silent rubble, he searched for some clue of their existence. If Hamad listened carefully, he could imagine the crumbling mud skeleton whispering to him over the sound of the wind. But after a momentary hopeful pause, he knew it was only his imagination.

The great Citadel itself was little more than a heap of bricks from this angle, viewed from far below, its windows staring vacantly to the horizon. The once-vibrant marketplace was utterly lifeless. The crumbling stalls were open sores at the crossroads, hinting at what had been but admitting no human identity. There weren't even any vermin. Rats and scorpions had abandoned the city along with their human hosts, and only a few scattered bones gave any indication that life had once existed here. The great canals, once the pride of the city, were dry and filling with sand. At the docks, now far from the muddy river, beached ships lay like rotted fish, their exposed wooden skeletons parched dry in the sun. The untended fields beside the river were now nothing more than long-dried swamps, and the few foetid things growing there were the city's last citizens. Except, of course, for Hamad, the son returned.

This section of town always had an overpowering smell of activity. Foodsellers, people, animals, fish. The stench of riverfish and the salted scent of fish from the sea. But the only scent Hamad could detect was the dryness of the dust clogging his lungs, and the ancient reek of his own blood in his nostrils.

There was no obvious sign of struggle, or at least none that Hamad could identify. No answers leaped out at him from the numberless collapsed stairways or empty reservoirs. There was no sign of looting, no broken spear-shafts, no indications of fire, no bodies. That was disturbing. No bodies, only the bones of wild animals and a few hapless birds. Any secrets the city concealed were well kept.

It was getting late in the day. Hamad decided to rest by the bleached docks. Looking down at the ancient riverbed, a dull glimmer caught his eye. Scrabbling in the sand, Hamad found a discarded counting chip, impressed with the sign of some long-vanished merchant, and a charm made from a dried starfish half-buried nearby. The woven cord that had held it around someone's neck fell to pieces when he lifted it, the reedy flax long decayed in everything but shape like the rest of the city and its people.

He picked up the chip, clasping it in his hand, and closed his eyes. He begged it for answers. But no matter how hard he squeezed, no ghosts spoke to him. Bending down, his old back creaking from the effort, he picked up the charm in his other hand and tried to imagine what these things meant to their owners. Images flitted through his mind, but they were his own, anbd the people who had left them here by the old riverside said nothing to him. This, then, was all that was left of his people.

He carefully put the starfish on the cord around his neck, where it dangled with the tokens of many foreign lands, and lcosing his eyes again for what seemed an eternity, dropped the counting chip. It rested in mid-air for a moment. When it slipped back onto the sand, it made no sound at all.

He stood frozen in the afternoon heat, watching the dust rise as it the chip settled back into the dirt. IThat dead chip would rest there all eternity, he knew with a sudden despair, and he was likely the last to see it slide back into the sand.

This charm and a counting token were all that was left to tell the story of this people. Despite himself, a lonely tear traced a line down his sand-encrusted cheek.

Hamad hated to admit his error. His shame was now complete. He should never have left. In the end, against all odds, he'd returned to try to make amends. To apologize. No other travellers had been able to help him. This place was now so remote that there were no guides to give directions. Traders had long since ceased coming here by sea, or by the river, and no-one plied the old caravan routes. Hamad had spent an entire life's fortune to find this place. He risked his life to return home.

He had to discover where they'd gone. Ninety years is a long time in the life of a people, but dust and sun couldn't have erased all trace.

He searched the silence for some evidence, a sign or an echo. Sand rose in little clouds, hinting at secrets and mumbling riddles, but of his people's last words there were no traces. And the great, shining citadel he'd angrily stormed away from so long ago was nothing but an mausoleum, empty even of corpses.

A dusty ghost, he wandered the uneven streets, solemnly contemplating his guilt. In all this time, throughout his long self-imposed exile, he hadn't thought of home. Had it thought of him? It thought nothing now.

It was hard to imagine a less welcoming homecoming for a native son. He always imagined that his return might be like a victorious warriors', heaped with the spoils of foreign adventures and tales of strange lands. A rebuke from his family, censure, surely-- even these things he'd expected. But this, this was beyond imagination. He began to mouth the words for the Prayer of Forgiveness in a language he barely remembered as his own, but no-one could hear him, and he knew it was meaningless. Even spirits had abandoned him here, in this dry, desolate, forsaken place.

A patient weariness taunted him. He couldn't rest until he at least had a chance to acknowledge his guilt and admit his error. In impetuous pride and youthful arrogance he'd forgotten, and his entire people had passed out of existence without trace. After tricking fate and living as long as he had, he wanted, no, he needed to pay for his selfish exile. But there was no one left to accept or reject his apology, or to seek retribution. And that was worse than the ghostly moaning of the wind, echoing through the broken streets under the setting sun.

After two seasons, they still knew next to nothing about the people who built this ancient town, so far from every other contemporary site. They were one of the region's great mysteries. The only memories of them were misty legends and half-remembered folk tales written on ancient clay tablets, themselves buried and forgotten thousands of years ago, and a few vague references in trade agreements recorded by other cultures. For her entire professional career, Elena had wanted to change that, and Jeremy knew she wouldn't give up easily. Or perhaps, more truly, now she couldn't. Her obsession was inspiring, but it was the sign of a slightly unbalanced mind.

The excavation wasn't going well. Poisoned water and a superstitious crew were nuisances, but Jeremy knew that the real problem was Elena. The work could be done by the end of the season if she lasted, but she looked more and more exhausted as the summer wore on. If they lost Elena, they'd have to abandon the project entirely. Funding wouldn't come through next year. For some reason or other, the museum would find an excuse to cancel the project, and the age of wealthy benefactors taking desperate archaeologists under their wings was long passed.

Jeremy sees Ahmad sorting through debris on a table, and walks into the tent. "Seen Elena?', he asks.

Ahmad squints at some piece of clay, trying to make out engraved designs of some kind. His glasses are badly scratched from wind-blown particles of sand. "Fascinating", he mutters in his perfectly polished Oxford tones, and puts down the sherd. "Sorry Jer, haven't seen her. She received a fax from the Board, then said she wanted to check out the new cross section. Over at B, I think." Jeremy nodded and left.

Elena was still in the new pit. The woman worked like a beast of burden. Ever since they'd arrived, she'd been a woman obsessed. She was the one who identified the site originally, and this was her last chance to do any real fieldwork. Her persistence alone was what had convinced the Board in the end that this project was worth the cost. Now she was perilously close to snapping.

Jeremy thought about it. It was way too hot to work at midday, and he wanted to know what she was up to. Staying outdoors for long in this heat was deadly. Ducking under the tarpaulin and descending to the bottom of the ladder, he called to the hunched-over figure in her ridiculous khaki shorts and sand-encrusted Tilley hat.

"Elena, look, let's get some lunch or something. This is ridiculous. You'll be able to finish the survey later. All this has been here for six thousand years, one hour won't matter either way."

She ignored him, trying to maintain the fiction that she was just being absent-minded. The woman was anything but absent-minded, Jeremy knew, and this trick could only work with someone who didn't know her as well as he did. But Elena was also stubborn.

Elena's battered notebook was on the ground next to her, her brush placed neatly on top. She was resting on her knees, crouched just inside the 2b-3F marker lines, holding something carefully in her hands. Her eyes were closed, and she seemed to be concentrating and mumbling words under her breath. Jeremy was unsure what to do. If Elena was having a breakdown now, which was not entirely unlikely, Jeremy couldn't deal with it. And most of the site staff had gone off to Islamabad for the weekend.

Bending down to look at what Elena held, Jeremy heard her muttering, over and over again, "tired, tired", interspersed with what seemed like random sounds. Jeremy gently put his hands around Elena's shoulders, but she didn't respond.

Lifting her to her feet, he led Elena to the sorting desk and sat her down in a chair. Like a crumpled piece of paper she slowly uncurled and relaxed. One of the crew, peering under the tarp, called out asking if everything was O.K., and Jeremy waved him off. The crew shouldn't see the head of the expedition in this state.

Elena eventually stopped mumbling and regained her composure. He took a good look. He'd never seen her like this before. She seemed so old, now, nothing like the spry, energetic woman he'd known for the better part of his life. They'd all been surviving on less than five hour's sleep a night for weeks. All everyone wanted to do was relax. If Jeremy had anything to say about it, Elena would be getting quite a bit in the near future.

"Tired. So tired. I need to rest, that's all."

"Elena, you look delirious. Let's get some water."

"You know, I've been looking for this site for thirty years. I finally find it, organize the expedition, harass the damned Board, and now we get our funding cut. The Board cancelled the project because of the election. Fucking politics. Cutbacks. Just heard today. It's over, Jeremy. We have one week, then we go home. And I'm so tired, I have so much work to do. It takes me an eternity to get this far, and these bastards tell me to stop."

Jeremy didn't know what to say. He'd been expecting this but not so soon. "I'm just so tired", she continued. "I've been doing this forever. This place, all this abandoned because of one damned election. It's a farce. We can't leave this work unfinished. People forget so easily, except me. I can't forget, I never forget."

Glancing up at Jeremy, her worn face under the brim of the hat showed pained resignation, but its tanned and sand-blasted features made it clear that this was a woman who would be back here, some day, to start all over again.

Grabbing Jeremy's hand, Elena stood up slowly. "O.K., let's get something to eat, and pack this place up. We have a lot of work to do." She sighed and gave him the exasperated look of a person who has dealt with faceless, mindless bureaucracies her entire life, but gets up every morning anyway.

Jeremy pointed to her hand and flashed her a quizzical expression.

"Oh, that. Hm. Suppose I should leave it here." She set the object down on the sorting table, dropping it carefully with the bits of charcoal and petrified wood. It was a little chip of eroded pottery, with a simple design, barely visible, embossed on the surface. Jeremy picked it up. "Wonder what this was. Can't be writing, this whole site's too early. This is the only one like this, eh?"

"It was a counting piece, used by a merchant or fisherman."

Jeremy looked at it. "How d'you know?"

"Trust me on that one." She lowered her head, closed her eyes, and without thinking, as was her habit when she was lost in thought, fingered the starfish charm she always wore around her neck.

"I'm pretty sure."

(Source unknown)