Kamila Shamsie: A God in Every Stone

— So that’s what a rosy-fingered dawn looks like.

— You must write and tell your father that. He’ll be pleased.

— Oh, I’m going to write and tell him everything!

Her father, a man without sons, had turned his regret at that lack into a determination to make his daughter rise above all others of her sex; a compact early agreed on between them that she would be son and daughter both — female in manners but male in intellect. Taking upon himself the training of her mind he had read Homer with her in her childhood, took vast pleasure in her endless questioning of Tahsin Bey about the life of an archaeologist every time the Turk came to visit, and championed her right to study history and Egyptology at UCL despite his wife’s objections — even so, Viv had barely allowed herself to believe he was being serious when he’d asked her one morning, as if enquiring if she’d like a drive through the park, if she’d be interested in joining Tahsin Bey at a dig in Labraunda. Outrageous! Mrs Spencer had said, slapping a napkin onto the polished wood of the breakfast table. Did he want his daughter running up the pyramids in her bloomers like Mrs Flinders Petrie? Did he have no thought for her marital prospects?

Father and daughter had shared the smile of conspirators across the breakfast table before Viv rose from her chair to throw her arms around Dr Spencer’s neck. She had been more disappointed than she’d ever revealed during her just-concluded university years when he’d said no, she would not be among the students who Flinders Petrie took to Egypt over the summer — and assumed that meant all future digs were out of the question, too, as long as she was unmarried and under his roof. But there he was, pushing aside his plate, showing her the letter from Tahsin Bey and saying of course she mustn’t miss such an opportunity, and his old friend could be trusted to ensure all proprieties were observed which was more than could be said for Flinders Petrie with that madcap wife of his, and how he wished he could set aside the responsibilities of his life and join them.

— He’s very proud of you, the Turk said, turning his body slightly towards her on the rock.

— I know, but I haven’t given him any reason to be proud. Not yet.

— No? You don’t think he should be proud of your courage?

— Courage? That’s something I certainly don’t have. You remember my friend, Mary? She’s become one of those militant suffragettes, I regret to say. But even though she’s completely wrong, I see her facing prison and force-feeding, and I recognise courage. But it isn’t there when I look in the mirror.

— It takes considerable courage to come to an unknown part of the world, away from everything you’ve ever known.

— This isn’t courage. You’re here.

She felt herself blush as she said the words, which had more heat in them spoken aloud than she had anticipated. All she meant was that she wasn’t away from everything she’d ever known when in his familiar company — he and her father had tumbled into an unexpected friendship as young men who met on a train in France, and there had scarcely been a year she could remember when Tahsin Bey hadn’t come to London and walked with her through the British Museum, talking about his hopes for one day convincing the Ottoman authorities to grant him a firman to excavate at Labraunda. And I’ll come along! she had always said. Oh of course, he’d replied when she was a child and, if your father approves, once she’d started to approach adulthood.

But his company wasn’t familiar in the old way, she saw as he blushed too. She was twenty-two now, and though she’d always thought of him as old the muscles of his bare forearm and the thickness of his dark hair which she’d never noticed in the muffled light of London made her sharply aware that a twenty-five-year gap grows narrower over time. She had friends from school who’d married men in their forties, and had children.

She swivelled away from Tahsin Bey, and opened her sketchbook so she could pretend the change in angle was necessary only to allow her to draw the ruins of the building which she’d been sketching up close the previous day. Of course, she’d often thought that marrying an archaeologist was the only way she might ensure her place in the thrilling excavations of the age — as opposed to the irrelevant digs at the edges of knowledge to which the recent fad for women-led excavations was relegated. But to think of Tahsin Bey in that manner was absurd. He was her father’s friend; she couldn’t begin to imagine. . not that she’d ever really known what she was supposed to imagine about men in that way; she’d seen enough fertility totems to understand the mechanics of it, but that wasn’t really the point. The point was, she would die of embarrassment if he even knew what she was thinking.

— You have a fine hand.

She looked up, startled, but his attention was entirely on the page which she had filled with a quick, precise sketch of the stumps of columns — Ionic on two sides — which formed the rectangular outline of the building. He held out his hand, she gave him the sketchbook, and watched as he turned the pages.

— Not a fine hand, an exceptional one. When you show these to your father, he will be proud.

She returned his smile — a child again, in the presence of an adult whose assurances made the world better.

That night there were ten at dinner around a long wooden table under the night sky. Three Germans, six Turks, and Viv. They started the meal in near-silence, all attention on the stew which Nergiz the cook had prepared, but when it was over they pushed their plates away, and everyone other than Viv — even the two German women — lit up cigarettes and fell into rapid chatter about their day in a mix of languages in which French dominated. Viv was seated next to the blond German man, Wilhelm, who was particularly interested in the necropolis surrounding the Temple complex and talked to her in painstaking detail about the coins and inscriptions he’d already found in one of the rock tombs. She nodded and listened, which was clearly all he expected of her, while her ears caught wisps of the conversations she’d rather be in — an increasingly heated discussion about whether the largest building within the complex was the Temple of Zeus particularly intrigued her. At some point she caught Tahsin Bey’s eye, and he winked — she could never imagine him doing such a thing in her parents’ home, but it didn’t feel as though he were taking a liberty.

— Bored? he mouthed, and she nodded.

The next thing she knew he was standing on his wooden chair, Alice tucked under one arm, the stars clustered around his head like a band of silver.

— Ladies and Gentlemen, if we lower our voices we might be able to hear them.

He placed one finger on his lips, and pointed down the mountainside. They all turned to look but there was nothing to see except white columns cut out of the darkness.

— The remnants of the Carian army. Listen — you can hear their weary footsteps as they drag themselves and their wounded brothers up the Sacred Way to the Temple of Labraunda. It isn’t the physical wounds that make their steps falter — it is failure. This morning they were men of hope and courage, a brave people at the edge of a vast empire, ready to cut through the chains that bind them to their Persian overlords. Now they are a tattered, spent force — not one of them hasn’t lost someone he loves to a Persian sword. There they go now, limping past us, towards the Temple of Zeus. . no, Mehmet, not that one. . their hearts filled with either sorrow or rage towards the god who has deserted them.

Since her childhood, this had been his role. The Storyteller of the Ancients. In her first clear memory of talking to him he had told her he was from Anatolia — ancient Caria — like Herodotus the Father of History and Scylax the Great Explorer.