EXCERPT FROM UNTIL THE VICTIM BECOMES OUR OWN
Trad. by Andrew Barrett. Mayday Magazine { UNTIL THE VICTIM BECOMES OUR OWN }
We don’t know how and under what circumstances they left from that place, whether they abandoned the city and at what time depth. Whether they left in stages, or they all left together, if they moved somewhere else, or if something happened to make them emigrate in a short span of time. We don’t even know whether a few of them had stayed there until the end, when the last of them left, nor were there any traces of resettlement within a reasonable distance. We found that the first phase’s population of about one hundred and fifty people was growing rapidly and in a short time had become one thousand, then three, five and finally about eight thousand. The original settlement on the plain started on the eastern mound while later they spread to the opposite side, to the place where the western mound is currently situated. The river crossed the double settlement as a natural border and meeting point. As one approached, walking parallel to the stream, one was able to see, from several miles away, the two mounds like a fork-shaped embankment, which contrasted with the almost perfectly flat plain that surrounded it, and also gave the impression of an inverted tooth. This impression may be more vivid now due to the almost complete lack of vegetation. With the exception of low bushes, one notices only a few remaining varieties of cedar, traces of forest that have been felled. The same as at that time, on the one side, the ground seems to have been more fertile, while on the other, a white surface can be discerned that is reflective like a mirror: a hyper-saline lake and, at a later time, salt marshes.
On the banks of the river, a slight incline begins and gradually the mounds gain in height. The eastern mound rises 70 feet from the level of the riverbed, the western mound is much lower. To the east, the residential area was denser, and started from almost the highest point of the canal level. The western settlement was more sparsely built and almost circular. Both had arisen from an unconventional vertical construction plan, as every new layer was built on top of the layer below it, and it was evident that either the houses had crumbled, or that they were demolished and built over, exactly on top of the earlier ones. After comparing the previous settlement to the subsequent one, we concluded that the one on top was exactly the same as the one below it, one would say it was a faithful copy, as if they wanted the story of the previous house to continue smoothly into the next. But again, we don’t know why they followed this practice, since some of those that were situated at a lower level appear to not have been demolished; they were well-preserved, only that they were simply filled in with dirt. It was evident that, for some unknown reason, they had covered them and then built exactly above them, as if the house had died and they buried it. On the eastern mound, on the other hand, as already mentioned, the construction was significantly denser, the houses were adjacent to one another and the walls of one house were integrated into the walls of the other. The ground plan evoked a curved honeycomb divided into square cells that covered the whole of the mound down to the foothills, a complex of open cubes slightly curved, and—more rarely—on the outskirts of the settlement, there were some houses that were perceptibly wider on one side, which kept getting narrower as the walls continued to form a wedge-like shape. Along the way, the new house would stand on the remains and rubble of the former ones and thus the settlement would grow in height. In the long run, the iteration of the vertical construction on the existing residential remains formed the two mound formations we observe today.
We were startled since the very beginning—and it still seems startling to us—of the lack of passage of any kind between the houses. No streets at all, not even narrow passageways for one to cross between them, and obviously, since there were no open spaces outside the houses, there were no doors or windows at all. Each house was glued to its neighbor, as can be evinced from what I have mentioned earlier, and the door, or rather a hatch that functioned as a door, opened and closed an aperture in the roofs of the buildings. From there they were able to go outside, this was the free public space, and the roofs, which were joined together, equally functioned as streets and as squares. Life happened on top of the city, not in it. On a summer night, one could imagine people sleeping up there, as they longed for some cool air. Or, on a quiet afternoon, crowds would gather, cooking in outdoor ovens, talking or eating, companies entertaining themselves, perhaps in a manner not unlike our own.
The houses, since they could not have windows, except for those on the perimeter, were only illuminated by this aperture, which also provided ventilation. A shaft of light that changed position during the day, until evening, at which point the only available light was the glow of the hearth and the flashes of the oven when they would open it. A rope ladder at the edge of the room extended diagonally above the oven to meet the roof from where the smoke came out when they were cooking and, in the summer, the heat. There was no other way out for the smoke and if the ceiling were a little too low or the weather wasn’t cooperative, the situation could become unbearable; without windows, or a chimney, it would be difficult to do something about that, and as long as the fire was lit the smoke would stay inside.
The rooms were not large, each house usually had three, one that was larger and two that were smaller. The smaller ones were mainly warehouses, with an entrance that was an opening in a side wall, oval or square, not more than 30 inches in height. The main room—on average 80 square feet including the oven, and the hearth we mentioned above—had a slightly raised floor, clean and hard from repeated plastering. It looked like the room was divided into three parts, on one side the oven, the cooking utensils, and the ladder above them leading to the hatch, then a vacant space in the middle like an empty strip, and on the other side the low platforms, where they probably slept. The burials were found just below them.
Looking from a higher vantage point, one could discern, like clearings in a forest, the courtyards, and a cluster of houses opened out on them. Let’s say they were like small neighborhoods overlooking these courtyards, with the use of a toilet and a garbage dump, the remains of which we found in all of them. Remnants of burnt food, reeds, shells, and small clay animals that looked like toys. Here, too, the smell, especially on warmer days, would probably be unbearable, but perhaps slightly bearable, as it would be mixed with smoke from the main room.
In the main room, platforms and benches were built up to the wall, and the graves we found were below them. Low platforms, beds, and an entrance to the underworld coexisted. How often did they have someone buried and then another one slept on the door of their grave? Rather often, as often as they died, and they died more often than we do. Under some platforms we discovered more of them, in one case I remember fifty-two. The skeletons had to be separated for us to distinguish the customs of burial. Many were found sleeping on one side, with their knees bent next to what were once plants, probably flowers. Or they were wrapped in a carpet of reeds. The children were placed in baskets.
Imagine a child, a little girl, asleep in this bed. The wall next to the bed would be painted, mainly a red that is faded, as we currently see it. And abstract shapes, we do not understand them now, a geometry that, for us, is without meaning. And handprints. And animals. You can imagine the child waking up and staring at this animal, enormous in scale; it is much larger than the people standing around it in a circle. The head is missing from some. The little girl looks at the animal that has someone behind it pulling its tail. In front, she sees someone else who pulls its tongue. Maybe they are playing with him, maybe he gave him something to eat and when he stuck out his tongue, he grabbed it and pulled it.
On the other wall, protruding figures, cones, perhaps a woman’s breasts, but mainly plaster animal heads and horns and in the corner in between them, a small doll in the shape of a human without a head again, and another four-legged animal that we cannot say for sure what it is. The same as the ones we singled out in the trash, mixed in with a pile of shells. A toy, or maybe something else, but you can imagine this little girl taking it in her hand and using it as seal on the fresh clay on the opposite wall, imprinting various shapes. A little further away from the point where she had noticed her mother, the other day, pouring water and pushing the jaw of an animal into the wall, and then she went to ask her why she would do that. Her mother, or some other woman who was living in that place with them.
Over the years, the mound would grow, and the houses would crumble, or they demolished them and kept building upon them; one could say that by stepping on, or rather lying down with the dead, the living continued to climb ever higher. One could say that they all traveled upwards together.
At 42, there was this woman who was holding a head in her arms; it was for us a clear picture – nothing else was in there. At first, I thought it was definitely the head of a loved one, her dead husband maybe, the skin covered over with clay and painted red, we had found plenty of that. Then we determined it was a woman’s head—as she was turned to the side, she held it in the angular cavity formed by the bones above the knees.
Again, on the wall, in a recess, two more heads. Two heads, plus one of the girl, who approaches them, the girl, now a young lady, now an old woman. One more afternoon and the evening that falls, she takes one head in her hands, looks him in the eyes for a while and puts it back in its place. Maybe it was the one they put in her arms when they buried her. Or in the process of evacuating the city, they may have taken her along with them while she was still a child, she may have grown up elsewhere, or, she may have lived among the last ones there, this might have been her only world, as well as this house. Or she may never have lived in this house. This is an image that does not stay long in the mind, many details are missing, nothing here really speaks or tells personal stories. Our emotions are rough directions on a simplified script. Which is a way, nevertheless, to connect and to understand, some shadows of moments from the life of a child whose eyes we borrow, a way to organize the data. The hypothetical story helps us reconstruct the scenery a little better. Since we are now the ones that reopened this city, we must write this book. Just as tomorrow, someone else will open the city to which we will go back tonight, before we come again here tomorrow to the holes we dug today, the ones being filled, and the others about to open, as we keep searching, dusting in the dirt and drawing a map of the injury and the orbit of the projectile, nudging the edge of the weapon the nearest we can to the wound.
maydaymagazine.comUNTIL THE VICTIM BECOMES OUR OWN