figure and picked up another object. 'Fragment glazed floor tile, Amarna (Akhetaten), Northern palace. Papyrus reed design in green, yellow and blue. 18th Dynasty, reign of Akhenaten (c.1353–1335 BC). Found 12th November 1963.' It was a beautiful piece, if broken, the colours rich and vibrant, the painted papyrus reeds leaning slightly as if blowing in a gentle wind. Again, it seemed to have been dug up by Jansen himself. Khalifa turned it over in his hand, shaking his head, then laid it down and wandered off around the rest of the cellar.
It was an extraordinary collection, mind-boggling, the result, judging from the accompanying tags, of over five decades' surreptitious – and illegal – scavenging. Some of the objects – a small faience hippopotamus; a beautifully decorated ostracon bearing the Theban triad of Amun, Mut and Khonsu – were extremely valuable. The majority, however, were either damaged or else so common as to be worth virtually nothing. The guiding principle seemed to be not so much the desire to amass rare or beautiful objects, but rather a simple joy in digging things up, recovering and labelling tiny shards of the past. It was, Khalifa thought to himself, the sort of collection he himself would have loved to own. A history lover's collection. An archaeologist's.
In the far corner he found a small iron safe, squat and chunky, with a dial and lever on the front. He tried turning the latter, but the door remained resolutely closed and after a minute or so he gave up and wandered off again.
Eventually he looked down at his watch.
'Dammit!'
He had promised his wife Zenab he would be home by nine p.m. so he could read the children a story, and it was now past ten. Tutting at himself, he took a final look around, then moved back to the stairs and raised his hand to switch off the light. As he did so he noticed that the door above, which opened inwards, had swung half closed again so that he could see the back of it. There, on a hook, hung a broad-brimmed green felt hat with a spray of long feathers protruding from its side. He paused, then climbed the stairs, slowly, as if reluctant to do so, and lifted it from the hook, holding it out in front of him.
'Like he had a bird on his head,' he mumbled, voice hoarse suddenly, as though something had been pushed deep down into his throat. 'A funny little bird.'
He gazed at the hat, then suddenly, angrily, smashed his hand against the back of the door, causing it to slam shut.
'Dammit!' he hissed. 'It has to be a coincidence! It has to be!'
J ERUSALEM
The Old City of Jerusalem, that bewildering labyrinth of streets and squares, shrines and holy places, spice markets and souvenir shops, is by night as silent and empty as a ghost town. The bustling crowds that during the day throng its thoroughfares and passages – especially those of the Muslim quarter, where you can hardly move for shoppers and fruit sellers and scuttling children – swiftly drain away with the setting of the sun, leaving forlorn vistas of shuttered shop-fronts, shadowy and echoing, like stone veins from which all the lifeblood has been drained. The few people who remain seem ill at ease, glancing around nervously, walking faster and more purposefully than they would by day, as if menaced by the dream-like emptiness of the place, and the corrosive orange glow of its street lamps.
It was almost three in the morning when Baruch Har-Zion and his two companions came through Jaffa Gate and made their way down into this dim twilight world, the most deserted hour of the night, when even the stray cats have gone to ground and the sharp quarterly clangs of the city's church bells seem blunted by the enshrouding silence. A short, thick-set man, almost as broad as he was tall, he had greying hair, a bearded, square-jawed face, and carried an Uzi submachine gun in one gloved hand and a leather holdall in the other. His companions were also armed with Uzis, one of them slight and milky-pale, the
It was an extraordinary collection, mind-boggling, the result, judging from the accompanying tags, of over five decades' surreptitious – and illegal – scavenging. Some of the objects – a small faience hippopotamus; a beautifully decorated ostracon bearing the Theban triad of Amun, Mut and Khonsu – were extremely valuable. The majority, however, were either damaged or else so common as to be worth virtually nothing. The guiding principle seemed to be not so much the desire to amass rare or beautiful objects, but rather a simple joy in digging things up, recovering and labelling tiny shards of the past. It was, Khalifa thought to himself, the sort of collection he himself would have loved to own. A history lover's collection. An archaeologist's.
In the far corner he found a small iron safe, squat and chunky, with a dial and lever on the front. He tried turning the latter, but the door remained resolutely closed and after a minute or so he gave up and wandered off again.
Eventually he looked down at his watch.
'Dammit!'
He had promised his wife Zenab he would be home by nine p.m. so he could read the children a story, and it was now past ten. Tutting at himself, he took a final look around, then moved back to the stairs and raised his hand to switch off the light. As he did so he noticed that the door above, which opened inwards, had swung half closed again so that he could see the back of it. There, on a hook, hung a broad-brimmed green felt hat with a spray of long feathers protruding from its side. He paused, then climbed the stairs, slowly, as if reluctant to do so, and lifted it from the hook, holding it out in front of him.
'Like he had a bird on his head,' he mumbled, voice hoarse suddenly, as though something had been pushed deep down into his throat. 'A funny little bird.'
He gazed at the hat, then suddenly, angrily, smashed his hand against the back of the door, causing it to slam shut.
'Dammit!' he hissed. 'It has to be a coincidence! It has to be!'
J ERUSALEM
The Old City of Jerusalem, that bewildering labyrinth of streets and squares, shrines and holy places, spice markets and souvenir shops, is by night as silent and empty as a ghost town. The bustling crowds that during the day throng its thoroughfares and passages – especially those of the Muslim quarter, where you can hardly move for shoppers and fruit sellers and scuttling children – swiftly drain away with the setting of the sun, leaving forlorn vistas of shuttered shop-fronts, shadowy and echoing, like stone veins from which all the lifeblood has been drained. The few people who remain seem ill at ease, glancing around nervously, walking faster and more purposefully than they would by day, as if menaced by the dream-like emptiness of the place, and the corrosive orange glow of its street lamps.
It was almost three in the morning when Baruch Har-Zion and his two companions came through Jaffa Gate and made their way down into this dim twilight world, the most deserted hour of the night, when even the stray cats have gone to ground and the sharp quarterly clangs of the city's church bells seem blunted by the enshrouding silence. A short, thick-set man, almost as broad as he was tall, he had greying hair, a bearded, square-jawed face, and carried an Uzi submachine gun in one gloved hand and a leather holdall in the other. His companions were also armed with Uzis, one of them slight and milky-pale, the
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