Alex Mitchell: The 13th Tablet

December 5th, 2004. Mosul, Iraq

Mina stepped into her living room. It was completely dark. She always closed the shutters against the fierce Iraqi sun but she didn’t recall closing them this tightly. The air was stuffy and she couldn’t see a thing. She flipped the light switch but nothing happened. She was about to try again when she heard a slight shuffling sound to her right.

‘ Hal honaka ahad? Is anybody there?’ she asked hesitantly. A second or two passed but no answer came back. Suddenly someone yanked her arms backwards and bound her wrists with cable ties. She heard the zipping sound of the ties tightening around her wrists, before another person pulled a large plastic freezer bag over her head and held it tightly round the base of her neck.

Panicking, Mina gulped a breath which emptied the bag of the little oxygen it held and left her gasping for air. She started choking, sucking the plastic deep into her mouth. She fell to her knees.

As she felt her mind fogging, she heard the creaking sound of the shutters being opened slightly. In a blur she could make out three men in dark clothing, towering over her. One of the men bent down and yanked the bag from her head. She gasped for air, breathing so deeply she thought her lungs would explode. She burst into tears and shook violently, the body’s natural response when given another shot at life.

The men didn’t give her any time to think. They pulled her to her feet roughly and flung her on a chair. One man stepped up to her, bending low to stare into her tear-filled eyes and said in a cold voice, ‘Miss Osman?’

Mina didn’t reply.

‘Miss Osman, you don’t know us, but we know everything about you. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘Good,’ he replied slowly, ‘so where is it?’

‘Where is what?’

‘Wrong answer,’ he said and turned to one of the other men, ‘You, the bag!’

‘Please,’ Mina begged him frantically, ‘don’t torture me! What do you want? I don’t know anything…’ She stopped talking abruptly when she saw her interrogator bringing a sharp knife towards her throat. It glinted in the single beam of sunlight peeking through the shutters.

He held the sharp edge of the knife under her ear and said, ‘The tablet, Miss Osman, where is it?’

That’s what they were after, Hassan’s tablet? But how could they have known she had it? This was insane.

‘So?’ He asked, slowly pushing the blade against the skin below her ear until she felt it cut through. Pain flashed through her and she felt warm blood trickling down her neck. Instinctively she tried to bring a hand up to stem the bleeding but she was still tied up. She was utterly helpless. ‘Please, please don’t hurt me,’ she sobbed, ‘the tablet is in my rucksack.’

He pulled the knife away and turned to the other man, ‘Pass me the plastic bag.’ Taking the plastic bag, he turned back to Mina and with a sinister smile said, ‘We wouldn’t want to leave any traces, would we?’

Mina felt the clammy plastic being pulled over her head once more and her mind begin to darken. ‘This is madness,’ she thought, as she began to lose consciousness.

Four days earlier

December 1st, 2004. Mosul airport

Hassan had been pacing up and down the arrivals area for almost an hour. ‘The plane’s landed,’ he thought, ‘why isn’t anyone coming out?’ He approached one of the guards standing at the gate and asked him what was going on. The guard glanced down at the round-faced youth and replied, ‘Security checks.’

Hassan thanked him and sat down a little further away, ‘Security checks, more security checks. What do they think, Bin Laden’s on the plane? Will she ever come out of there?’ Suddenly, he caught sight of Mina Osman’s slender profile through the window and his face lit up.

Mina wore the tailored jacket and fitted jeans that Hassan and the other students knew so well from her classes. He had been wondering if she’d still be wearing a headscarf after spending time back home in America. At university she often wore a headscarf and made a point of always covering her hair on the streets of Mosul. He suspected Mina didn’t like covering her head, but knew better than to ignore local customs. Hassan remembered a discussion they had had months ago, after a class on the representation of foreigners in ancient Babylonian art. The conversation had veered to female dress codes in different countries and she had told him that she often let her hair hang loose in the US. But when she appeared at the arrivals gate, she was wearing a dark headscarf, dashing his hopes.

Mina was the most beautiful woman Hassan had ever been close to. She had almond-shaped eyes that seemed to look deep into your soul. She was slender, but not as tall as the top models he had seen in magazines. She had a natural elegance, as if she breathed a more refined air than those around her. Yet there wasn’t a hint of arrogance, other than a touch of academic pride. She was always polite and morally-speaking, irreproachable. Hassan was convinced that under her slightly stern scholarly persona, Mina hid a passionate nature. Half her students were hopelessly in love with her and the other half worshipped her as a goddess.

‘Welcome to Mosul, Madam!’ Hassan said with a large grin on his face.

‘Hassan! What a pleasure to see you. Thanks for meeting me. I was afraid you hadn’t received my text.’

‘I did. But I was worried. Your plane arrived more than an hour ago! The security checks are worse than ever. I’m really sorry, Madam.’

She laughed, ‘Don’t be. You weren’t the one rummaging through my belongings. It’s funny really. As an archaeologist, I’d expect to be searched on the way out, not the way in!’

Hassan laughed and said, ‘I thought you came to help us retrieve our looted artefacts, not rob them yourself.’

‘I’m so glad to be back,’ she said, speaking partly to herself. She added quickly, ‘But let’s get out of here. How are things, Hassan?’

‘What do you mean Madam?’

‘The news has been so distorted recently in the US, I have no idea what’s really been going on,’ she asked, looking concerned.

‘Frankly? It’s been awful, Madam,’ he answered, as they fought their way through the crowd, Hassan taking the lead and carrying Mina’s luggage. ‘Fighter planes, bombs,’ he went on, ‘Police stations were blown up, insurgents from Fallujah came into Mosul and while all this was happening, the US army fought alongside the Iraqi National Guard. At university, the lecturers were either on strike or in hiding. We were wondering if there’d still be a university after the fighting ended.’