The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir. Susan Daitch

Dost grammar and lexicon in Columbia’s Butler Library, which I was able to access. Though it wasn’t supposed to leave the rare book room, and couldn’t be photocopied, the grammar had already been vandalized. Despite missing bits and pieces, I needed it. Lessons in deviousness acquired years ago from a college roommate expert in shoplifting (among other things), those remembered conversations came in handy. Over a period of several days when alone in the library examining room I cut the pages of the book with the blade of an X-acto knife and replaced them with pieces of ordinary paper; in this way the theft might not be detected for years, perhaps never. No one was interested in the analysis of this long dead language by two linguists tortured by Reza Shah. Presto: the only section of the Rashidian bin Dost grammar and lexicon known in the United States found its way to Brooklyn. What I studied on my kitchen table wasn’t even the entire work. Others with an unknown agenda had desecrated the book, though why they would bother with something so arcane and, for most people so inconsequential, is unknown. Perhaps it was a lark while high, perhaps they were agents of Savak masquerading as Columbia students. I can only hope somewhere in the world the book remains intact. If Ruth didn’t want to go with me, I’d travel on my own.

      Two days after the letter arrived announcing my small research grant from the Zafar Institute, Ruth was on her way to the airport back to the land of Quetzalcoatl, and I now think she had her ticket from the moment our conversation turned to shrews that had visited the taxidermist. In four thousand years the sun explodes, and we’re not here anymore anyway. There’s no human life remaining to dig up the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Camden or the Yuba City 7-11. Ruth left with Larry Saltzman, an anthropologist who called at all hours and whose speech was sprinkled with what he claimed were Mayan truisms like your festivals fill me with terror. Ruth thought he was hilarious. When she took his calls behind closed doors I could hear her laughing. Ruth, wedging the phone between her ear and her shoulder as she doodled chacmools dancing the fandango, playing drums, fucking their stone brains out, was the kind of person who never needed to say I’ll get back to you on that, she always had the answers at hand. You would be glad she was on your side of a debate until one day it turned out she wasn’t anymore.

      Sometimes I did have the sense that every square meter of the earth and sea had been excavated, and there were no unknown clusters of people who’d built cities, created systems of government, mythologies, established rituals of birth, marriage, death, harvesting and eating, still to be found. All past human habitations have been mapped and inventoried. To go any deeper was to hit magma or deep ocean volcanoes inhabited by translucent shrimp and hairy white crabs. What remained? Had I hit a brick wall? I would find out.

      I packed my topographical maps, compass, measuring tape, bundle of flag pins, trowels, short hoes, and camera and flew out to Tehran, stopping only to change planes in Istanbul. Ruth would be sorry. She might be lounging poolside in Cuernavaca with the king of Aztec one-liners, but I was confident that treasure lay under my feet if only I could find the right map. Once it was located and verified, she’d read, entirely by accident, about my triumph and would leap up, kicking sand in the king’s face. Why are you wasting time on that beach? I said to the chair next to me. She’d dash off a letter from the nearest hotel desk, begging to help me catalogue relics and translate the surviving scrolls and tablets of Suolucidir. It will take years, but I’ll agree, yes, she can return and act as my assistant, my Alice Le Plongeon, camera in hand, ready to chase Mayan queens to Cairo and beyond.

       “History my foot, it’s money!”

      Shirley Pemberton

      Passport to Pimlico, 1949

      A MAN ON A MOTORBIKE, rolls of carpeting stacked behind him, cut off another biker who toppled over, hitting the curb. Cylinders wrapped in brown paper spilled from the back of the bike rolling into traffic, some, tied with twine, came undone and streamed red, gray, and blue into the road. The injured cyclist managed to stand, and a fight ensued. I watched along with a group of men leaning against the glass window of a kebab joint, listening to them argue in Farsi with a smattering of Arabic words. Whose fault was it really? The carpet man has a knife. Look out. Was that other fellow in the proper lane? Perhaps he turned a bit to the right when he shouldn’t have. I could have been anywhere, maybe, but I had arrived in Tehran. Shouting insults, one of the two combatants, limping, managed to get back on his bike and drive off. The other sat on the curb and waited for help. Fight over, the men discussed a public hanging that was to take place later in the day. A convicted murderer would be suspended via crane. I listened to their conversation a bit longer, then made my way back to the hotel.

      The university archive was on the outskirts, some distance from my hotel. Flattening the letter I’d received on archive stationery I memorized the number and made my first call in order to make an appointment to view the scroll the Nieumachers had found on the site on the outskirts of Zahedan, the document that, according to Sidonie’s field notes, was the remains of detailed records of daily life in the city of Suolucidir. I’d written to the director of the archive, and our correspondence was part of the basis on which I was able to obtain funding for the trip. In his letter Dr. Haronian assured me the Zahedan scroll was accessible and available for inspection.

      I hoped my Farsi didn’t betray an American accent. It was something I’d worked very hard on, and though I was often told my accent was undetectable, you never know how you really sound with any consistency or when in a difficult situation. I practiced a few lines before I picked up the telephone, then dialed. It was with a great deal of anticipation I listened to the clicks of the Tehrani dial tone. Soon I would finally be able to see the only physical proof I knew of that confirmed the existence of Suolucidir. After many rings a man picked up, saying only hello, not stating the name of the archive as businesses usually do in the west. For an instant I wondered if I had the wrong number.

      “I’d like to speak to Dr. Haronian.”

      Some shuffling that sounded like boxes being moved came through the line, the scratching sound of cardboard pushed across a gritty, unswept floor. I looked out at the street while I waited, half expecting to see a person leaning against a wall looking up at me, but the street was empty except for a woman carrying a bag with branches of dates poking out the top of it. Across the narrow street I could make out a room filled with blue TV light. A man came to the window, looked up, noticed me, and pulled the curtains shut. Finally a man got on the line.

      “This is Mr. Bastani, at your service. I’m sorry to tell you Dr. Haronian is no longer at the institute. He’s retired.” As far as I knew, Haronian was not very old, so I was surprised to hear he was no longer at the archive.

      “I have letters from him.” I immediately regretted blurting this out. If Haronian was gone, there was nothing I could do about it, and so I tried to take a more conciliatory tone. “Are you his replacement?”

      “No. I’m just answering the telephone in the interim.” Bastiani didn’t know where the former archivist had gone, so it was impossible for him to give me a forwarding address.

      “Can I speak to Dr. Haronian’s replacement?”

      “No one has yet been appointed.”

      Pacing the carpet, one foot after the next, I tried to pull something out of my brain to prolong the interrogation before the line was cut off. One foot covered the border pattern of linked diamond shapes, the other was planted solidly in the middle of a quatrefoil design. I asked Bastani if he could help me, then, in viewing the Suolucidir Scroll. Dr. Haronian, with whom I’d been corresponding for nearly a year had assured me it would be possible to spend some time studying them, as much time as I wanted, in fact. This accessibility was critical to my funding from the Zafar Institute. Without access to the Suolucidir relics, I felt like a fraud.

      “The Suolucidir Scroll? We have no such documents. I’m familiar with our entire collection.” He paused, and I heard the sounds of a match striking, then Bastani inhaling. He was smoking a cigarette. In an archive? The idea that I had misdialed again occurred to me. It was the wrong number, and some knucklehead was playing along as a kind of impromptu prank. I hung up and carefully redialed the number, but the same affectless voice of Mr. Bastani answered. I mumbled about a lost connection, sorry.

      “The