House of Cabal Volume One: Eden (3 page)

His religious faith told him these excuses
were half-hearted justifications for immorality. But he was out of
options.

He passed over the correct box more than
once, thinking, “That can’t be it.” The box was big, far too big to
fit in his satchel. He moved a stack of newspapers off the top. He
ran his hand over the carved infinity symbol and got a chill.
Carrying the box in his arms would draw unwanted attention out on
the streets.

He trudged up the stairs. He had a loving
wife and three children to consider. He left the box behind. It was
the heavy cuneiform tablet inside that mattered. Thankfully, the
tablet fit snugly in his satchel without issue.

Looters smashed in the museum’s front door,
and almost simultaneously, windows shattered in the back. He turned
off his flashlight and silently prayed to Allah for protection. He
heard men coming from both north and south. They rummaged through
the back offices. Glass shattered in the front hall, probably a
display case getting smashed in.

He needed an alternate escape route.

The west hall led to the closest exit. It
opened to the main street. But there was a vast room between him
and the exit where he could be spotted. If they discovered him
trying to sneak the cuneiform out, the looters would assume it was
valuable and take it from him, and maybe cave his skull in in the
process.

Down the hall, light reflected off marble. He
heard the men joking amongst themselves as they approached.

He sprinted east, trying not to trip over
anything in the dark. He had patrolled these halls a million times.
He pictured the floorplan in his mind and ran his hand along a
wall, past the restrooms and the entrance to the east exhibit. He
was careful not to knock down any picture frames as he made his way
forward. He turned a corner and rushed down another hall. He groped
for the emergency fire exit. It wasn’t where he thought it would
be. He refused to use his flashlight. If he turned it on, the
looters might see the light and chase him down.

There! He felt it!

The door was further to the right than he
remembered. He pushed the bar. Compared to the darkness inside the
museum, outside was relatively bright.

He traversed the back streets, sticking to
the shadows, all the while second guessing his hasty decision to
leave the box behind. What if it ruined the deal? How would his
family survive?

Smoke from the ravaged city shrouded the
half-moon like a veil.

The next day, he handed the tablet across a
counter to the owner of a small cafe near Zawara Park. The tablet,
wrapped in a white cloth, now resembled a loaf of bread. Men were
sipping Turkish coffee at various mismatched tables around the open
space. It felt like all the men were watching, but he didn’t look
to see if it was true. The cafe owner gave Omar an envelope in
exchange, smiled and nodded, and didn’t ask questions.

Even though his instincts told him to bolt,
Omar walked as casually as possible out of the cafe, through the
park, down the sidewalk, and over the Sinak Bridge, crossing Tigris
River. His heart pounded the whole way.

A week later, Dana and her husband picked up
the tablet a safe distance outside the city. They heard gunfire as
they made the pickup and sped away soon after. It would be a month
before they had the whole thing translated and another two weeks
before their expedition took them out into the middle of the
desert.

The money in the envelope provided Omar’s
family with necessities for over two years. Omar personally only
used the money the first year. In 2004, in a night raid, shortly
after Isha prayer, the Americans arrested him and imprisoned him
without charge in Abu Ghraib. “Omar al-Jamadi” was on a list. His
wife petitioned for his release, alongside all the other
petitioning wives and mothers, but she never saw him again.

A group of prison guards tortured Omar. He
died from infection while repeatedly mumbling his wife’s name.

Years later, US law enforcement tracked down,
seized, and returned many of the artifacts that were taken and sold
off by the Iraqi government before the war.

Omar’s eldest son became a security guard at
the museum once it reopened in 2009. Omar’s only daughter founded a
school for girls in Syria and never married. His youngest son was
killed in a drone strike.

When a destiny thread ended, it only signaled
for me to find another beginning.

III

A fringe group of Egyptian gnostics
discovered the cuneiform tablet in 1898 in a cave near the Valley
of the Kings. Napoleon Bonaparte’s men, during his Egyptian
Campaign, and Egyptologist Henry Salt, during his 1815 expedition,
excavated the cave, but somehow each time the tablet had been
overlooked. The gnostics kept their find to themselves, slowly
translating the pictographs and hiding the stone from the British,
until after the Egyptian parliamentary election in 1924, when the
gnostics handed it over to the state.

Over the course of the 19th century, the
gnostics had adopted many traditional Muslim practices and divided
themselves by gender, yet they still maintained their evolving
mysticism. The men focused on Jewish occult practices and God’s
darker qualities, while the women translated Sumerian texts and
practiced nature worship. Separately they both tracked the
cuneiform tablet as it changed hands over the decades.

The women lost track of it in 1999 and
reached out to the American Sumerian Society for help, of which
Dana and her husband were members.

In early 2001 in Cairo, after two years of
handwritten correspondence, Dana Parr met with the gnostic women in
a makeshift structure on top of an apartment building, while her
husband met with the gnostic men on a rooftop across the
street.

The women gave Dana mint tea and were very
welcoming. They explained that the tablet was in the Middle East,
most likely in the Iraqi capital. The exact location was unknown,
despite the considerable effort the women had put into locating it
remotely. They hoped Dana could go to Baghdad on their behalf and
continue the search.

Finding it was obviously very important to
the women. Dana prodded for further explanation. They poured her
more tea and brought out pita bread and a fava bean dip. Dana took
some to be polite.

The matriarch believed only Eve ate from the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil and only a woman should know
the secret location of Eden’s Garden. The tablet revealed the
garden’s location for those worthy. The female elder prophesied
that knowledge from Eden would once again remake the world. The
gnostic men feared this feminine knowledge, thinking it would incur
God’s wrath. If Dana found the tablet first, maybe she could thwart
the men’s plan to destroy it.

Across the street, Dana’s husband was treated
just as warmly and served a licorice root tea. The men knew the
tablet was in the Iraqi National Museum, but without translating
every cuneiform tablet the museum had in storage, the correct
tablet would be impossible to distinguish from the rest. The
patriarch believed that the cuneiform contained forbidden knowledge
no human should see, man or woman, and that the tablet must be
destroyed for the good of humanity.

“You must use your wealth and your
influence,” the gnostic male elder told Dana’s husband in Sa'idi
Arabic. “You must destroy every cuneiform tablet in the museum. It
is the only way. Even gazing upon the tablet may endanger your
soul.”

Meanwhile, the gnostic female elder told Dana
in Egyptian Arabic, “God is knowledge. Knowledge is trapped in
Mother Earth. We only need to help her open up so that she can let
that knowledge free. The cuneiform tablet is kept in a wooden box.
The box is carved with a symbol of the Eternal Flame of the
Godhood. Find that box and you will know Mother Earth. You will
know God.”

Dana and her husband reunited after their
clandestine meetings with the gnostic men and women.

“Did your rooftop have chickens?”

“No, but I saw some in the hallways of the
building. It was a nightmare for my wheelchair.”

“I’m sorry. You okay?”

“And I think someone was using one of the
rooms to raise livestock.”

She laughed. “The smell of this place takes
some getting used to.”

“A man was kind enough to carry me. He
practically ran up the stairs. I guess there are a lot of people in
the building that are old or don’t have legs, and he often carries
them around.” He held up his mini tape recorder. “Come on. Let’s
get this translated. I’m curious what the old guy said.”

Dana and her husband crossed the great gender
divide and compared recordings.

America was gearing up for war with Iraq. It
was too dangerous to go into Baghdad. Their contact at the Iraqi
National Museum wasn’t willing to smuggle out the tablet, but she
knew someone else who needed the cash.

Their intermediary convinced Omar al-Jamadi
to smuggle out the tablet for them.

These destiny threads, converging from all
over the world, led to a single moment when Dana and her husband
could slip through the garden gate undetected, after Boris, with
his infected hand, temporarily anchored the nebulous Garden of Eden
to a specific time and place, dooming his family.

It seemed straightforward enough, just
another human story, this one exceptional only because it led to
me. Yet, nothing felt resolved, like a melody with a discordant
last note.

IV

I snatched Dana’s husband from the remnants
of his wheelchair, shooed away the millipede, and encompassed the
husband and wife with my arms and cloak.

Uriel’s shadow remained at his post. He would
return.

“You can’t be seen here,” I said in
English.

The couple was in too much shock to
understand. Dana whimpered and clutched the straps around my
midsection. Her silent husband leaned his head against the side of
my chest.

“I’ll protect you.” I swept them up.

I darted across the grass, between the marble
columns that gave the garden’s entrance its order and majesty, and
plunged into my hiding place: an octagonal chamber under the banjo
tree. The walls were dirt and stone and borrowed bricks from the
catacombs of the northern glen. Above us, protective symbols,
carved into the banjo tree’s exposed roots, glowed from swelling
indigo-colored sap. Worms, each a foot in diameter, emerged from
the rocky floor and formed a soft place for the humans to rest.

Dana tried to scramble off the wriggling
annelids, thinking them dangerous. Her husband passed out. I held
her down, my hand the width of her upper torso.

“No creature in the garden will harm you, but
the angels will cast you out.” With my three free hands, I gathered
moss that grew near the hollow’s entrance. “You need to stay here.
Calm yourself.”

Under my palm, she heaved from her elevated
breathing. At least her screams had stopped. Once certain she
wouldn’t flee, I released her and covered her and her husband with
the moss I had collected. Hundreds of furry caterpillars made the
moss blanket orange and plush. The temperature of the chamber, of
the whole garden in fact, was comfortable for naked humans. The
blanket was only to make them feel less vulnerable.

Dana studied the ceiling, her eyes bloodshot
from tears. A variety of insects fed off the glowing sap. None were
as intimidating as the millipede or as numerous as the beetles, but
they still disconcerted her. Humans on Earth had evolved to fear
insects, not to befriend them.

“I’ll be back. Wait for me here. We’ll talk
when you’re ready.”

She watched me. The worms beneath her shifted
and bunched up, sensing her wants, and she rose to a seated
position as they created a living throne. She no longer seemed
afraid. For a brief moment she looked regal and composed and
reminded me of Eve, only with blond hair and white skin.

She clutched the moss to her bosom, ignoring
(or not noticing) the caterpillars, and glanced at the opening to
the surface. “Out there… is it real?”

“Yes, it’s real. Don’t try to take it all in
at once. You don’t want to end up like your husband here.”

She looked down at him, lying there beside
her. “Is he still alive?” She was ready to accept anything, no
matter how horrific.

“Yes, of course he’s alive! He just passed
out.”

She nodded.

“This is Eden’s Garden, your true origin.
You’re not in danger here. Not from me. Not from any creature.
You’ll be okay. Your husband will be okay. The creatures want to
please you. That’s why the worms made you a throne.”

She studied me in the semidarkness, surprised
something so alien could act human. I cleared away bugs from the
roots to reveal more glowing writing to illuminate the room. I
moved and flexed for her.

“What are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m showing you what I
am.”

“What are you? Some kind of machine?”

“No more than you.” I took a step toward her.
She glanced at the exit. Her impulse was to run. “You’re safe. But
you shouldn’t go outside. Not yet.”

“Why? What would happen?”

“Honestly I don’t know. Eve and Adam brought
their humanity with them wherever they went. It ruffled some
feathers. No pun intended. See? No wings.” She didn’t get the joke.
I balanced on my four hands and rocked like a porch swing. I wished
I could show her the endless wonders of this place. She needed time
to acclimate though, or she would start screaming again.

She didn’t understand my excitement.

“We would play, the humans and me. We would
change the course of the river. We would alter the migratory
patterns of the birds. We would play pranks. We taught animals
obscene dances. We had fun. But that was a different time. I’m not
sure anyone else remembers.”