drink, too. The cold water tasted of rocks and herbs; I thought it was the finest drink of my life. I raised Simut’s head to help him drink. He looked feverish. I washed his head wound and his face, carefully. The air was fresh and scented. The evening shadows lay long across the valley floor. Inanna shouted an order, and a farmer and his wife, bowing low, hurriedly brought a straw basket full of glorious black grapes, just cut from a vine that grew in front of their hut. She threw a bunch to us, and we shared the luscious fruits hungrily. I suddenly felt a surge of gratitude and hope; we were not yet dead. I might see my family again.
‘Where are we?’ whispered Prince Zannanza.
‘We’ve been taken to these people’s heartland,’ said Nakht, quietly. ‘Somehow they know who we are. They must know we’re more valuable alive than dead. I imagine they intend to ransom us-for gold, no doubt.’
‘But who will buy us?’ he asked.
Nakht pretended he did not know; but I did. Aziru must have commissioned our kidnapping. I took Nakht aside.
‘Have you noticed the crop being grown here?’ I said.
He looked at me as if he did not understand the question.
‘I see flowers, that is all…’
‘It’s all opium!’ I said.
He gazed around him. ‘But this much opium would be worth more than all the gold in Nubia!’ he said, amazed.
But then a command was called; the guards retied our hands and threw us back into the cart. We travelled on into the darkness, through the endless shadowy poppy fields, now silvered in the moonlight and alive with activity. Hundreds of farmers, young men and boys in simple, rough woollen robes, working backwards, moved down the rows of plants, among the millions of seed-heads, slitting them open to release white opium sap. They shouted and called to each other from field to field, farm to farm, and from one side of the valley to the other in the dark.
The moon was high in the starry night sky, and we were shivering in our light robes when we finally arrived at our destination, a fortified stronghold of low, flat-roofed mud-brick buildings gathered together within a large walled compound. The place was a mixture of opulent booty and filthy chaos. Several old decapitated heads, disfigured from the hungry attentions of birds, were stuck on poles on either side of the entrance gate. Crudely butchered goats and ducks were roasting over open fires, attended by hunched women, their faces hidden inside their headscarves. Dark figures moved malevolently around the campfires, gnawing on the bones of roasted animals, drinking deeply from wine vessels, and laughing at dirty jokes or picking fights with each other. Captured men, women and children served them, and were kicked, beaten and abused for their pains. Animals and naked infants wandered freely about the compound, chewing on discarded bones or howling hopelessly. Cats and dogs stole whatever they could find. There was also an intense, bitter stink in the air, which came from a pair of mangy, apathetic desert lions captured in a cage.
Inanna strode ahead, and everyone bowed to her. We were pushed and kicked behind her, stumbling in the dark. Inside, smoky bowls of oil gave off a poor light. Richly inlaid furniture and statues, lapis lazuli and turquoise amulets and jewellery were heaped up casually, as if their variety, huge value and rarity were meaningless. In the side rooms, I saw men and girls lying on couches, obviously in opium trances. The place was dismal, and the air itself seemed corrupted.
We were dragged into a large interior courtyard lit by torches. The ropes binding our wrists were kept tied. We were forced down on to our knees, amid much shouting from Inanna’s men, who crowded around, cursing and spitting on us. Now that the attention of our kidnappers was elsewhere, I began to try to loosen the inept knots that bound my hands.
Inanna shouted, and her men were silenced. I wondered how she could exercise such unquestioned authority over these men. They cringed under her command. Without her, I had no doubt they would have torn us to pieces. I worked one finger gradually inside the knot of the binding.
Inanna had Prince Zannanza brought forward. She gripped his head, turning it from side to side, and watching how the fear played across his features.
‘What will she do to him?’ whispered Nakht.
‘She won’t harm him, he’s the prize,’ I replied.
‘Are you afraid of a woman, pretty boy?’ Inanna asked the Prince. He didn’t know whether to nod or disagree. But when she produced a small knife with three blades-exactly like those I had seen the opium farmers using as they cut the seed-heads of the poppy plants-he began to howl, a high-pitched cry of pure fear that provoked delight in her men, who laughed, pointing and yelling obscenities. Inanna held the blade right next to Zannanza’s face, and encouraged her men to start to chant. He was terrified. Her face was lit red and gold by the flickering light of the fires. Suddenly she brought the blade quickly upwards, expertly slashing the Prince across his perfect cheek. The men roared. Three lines of bright red instantly appeared, and blood began to drip down his chin, and on to the ground. He wailed in distress. Inanna leaned forward and licked the blood off the Prince’s jaw. He recoiled in disgust, and spat in her face. She stared at him, her eyes as cold as a snake’s, wiped the spittle from her cheek, and then punched him hard in the face. He collapsed to the floor, and several of the men began kicking him as he coiled into himself.
Finally, the knot binding my hands loosened. I worked my wrists against each other, enough to open up a length of rope. I ran forward, tearing it off. Prince Zannanza’s attackers weren’t expecting me. I grabbed the sword of one of them, kicked the others away, and found myself standing over the beaten body of the Prince, screaming at them like a Theban street fighter. The courtyard was silenced. Several of Inanna’s men surrounded me, drawing out their swords, moving around me, closing in, ready to go for the kill. It was better to attack than defend. I clashed swords with the two in front, while trying to defend my back from the others. Prince Zannanza cowered next to me, trying to keep clear of the slicing blades. I managed to score a cut on the arm of one of the attackers, and with a renewed roar of rage he went for me, while the others backed off to watch and enjoy the spectacle. We fought across the courtyard, and the crowd made way for us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Prince Zannanza being bound and tied again. I was for a moment off-guard; my opponent’s sword suddenly sliced towards me sideways. I jumped back, and then, as his sword carried on through its arc, I saw my chance and plunged mine into his undefended chest. The roar of the crowd faded. The man retched up blood. My sword came reluctantly out of his chest. The man still was not dead. He stared up at me with contempt, choking and muttering, struggling to breathe.
Inanna was suddenly standing beside me.
‘You must finish what you began,’ she said.
I had no choice. I raised my sword once more, and thrust it down into the man’s chest again. He scrabbled on the ground, muttering, as if trying to claw back the last moments of his life, until finally he let go, and died.
Inanna appraised me with new interest. Several of her men ran forward to apprehend me, but she shook her head. I thought I saw a touch of amusement in her wild eyes. She raised her three-bladed knife and held it close to my face, as if daring me to attack her. Her expression was enigmatic. The men started to chant again. But suddenly she began to dance and chant, whirling in circles, clapping her hands, and crying out, invoking a Goddess or a spirit of darkness. The men shouted encouragement. And then just as suddenly she stopped, right in front of me, and shouted something in a language I could not understand. And then she kissed me full on the lips.
29
Sunlight broke in splinters through the slats of the battered wooden door. We slept or dozed on piles of filthy straw, and were thrown only gnawed bones and dirty cooking pots from which to eat the burned scraps; there was a jar of stale water in the corner, and a cracked chamber-pot. We had not washed for several days now, and already the chamber-pot in the corner was overflowing.
Nevertheless, my stomach rumbled incongruously. Hunger is no respecter of disaster. Prince Zannanza still lay turned to the wall, hiding his disfigured face. The ruin of his beauty seemed to cause him more distress than the fear of losing his own life. Nakht had been unable to console him. Simut stirred, and groaned quietly, and raised himself slowly to sit next to me. I passed him a dish of the stale water and he drank slowly.
