The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir. Susan Daitch

There’s nothing here Zahedani. Zahedan is a city of dust.”

      “They could be filed under the city’s former name, Duzdab.” Duzdab meant the Watering Place of Thieves. When Reza Shah came to power he changed the name to Zahedan, which means place of noble people.

      “If you like, arrangements might be made for you to view some scrolls from Susa. This I could fix for you. Susa, the town where the Hammurabi Stele was kept until it was removed to Paris, as you know. These items are very old and can be viewed for only two hours on Monday afternoons.”

      I explained that as interesting as these might be, they were of no use to me for my current project. The Nieumacher Parchments, I asked again. Could they be filed as the Nieumacher Parchments? I could hear Bastani laughing.

      “Why would we call anything here by such a name? Our archive goes back to the time of Darius and beyond, but includes nothing Germanic. You haven’t told me why you want to see our archives. We aren’t a museum. We don’t ordinarily open to random passersby, even if they have a letter from the late Dr. Haronian.”

      “He’s dead?”

      “No, I meant the former Dr. Haronian is no longer working here, as I told you.”

      I explained my research, what I was looking for, but Bastani then asked me if I had a girlfriend or sisters? This he would like to know about, and had they accompanied me to Tehran? Even if I had sisters, why would I bring them with me?

      “You have girlfriends then?” He repeated. “Maybe several.” This was a statement, not a question.

      “No.”

      “That’s unfortunate.” He paused, inhaling and exhaling smoke. “You can’t just walk into the archives,” he said. “I don’t care who you think wrote to you saying this is possible.”

      I mentioned a sum of money. It wasn’t much, but it was all I could offer him. For a moment neither of us spoke. I walked over to the window of my hotel room and twirled the cord around my index finger. Finally the man on the other end of the phone told me that until such time as Dr. Haronian’s successor was chosen, it would be impossible to view any of the archives. To do so, for whatever stated urgency, would be considered a grave security risk. People, even foreigners, have disappeared for less. When I asked when the next director would be at his desk, Bastani had no idea, nor would he tell me if he did.

      The door to a shop across the street was locked. The shopkeeper vaguely looked up at the array of windows presented by my hotel, but he didn’t appear to be watching anyone in particular. I heard more shuffling noises from the phone receiver, then the line went dead. I dialed one more time. No one picked up.

      That was to be my last conversation with Mr. Bastani. In the morning I packed my bags. I was anxious to press on to Zahedan and the site of Suolucidir itself, if I could find it, leaving the study of the scroll for my return trip, despite the knowledge that reversing the order of reading, then excavating would be far less useful. During the excavation of Esther’s Tomb in Hamadan in 1971, in the hurry to build a new temple that would attract visitors, all kinds of ancient significant objects were tossed out. On the one hand I understand at a certain point the bathtub is full and overflowing, you can’t hold on to and read everything; on the other hand the lost museum is something to be mourned, no? It was possible I’d never see the Nieumacher relics. There was nothing I could do about it.

       “I yama sad dictapator. Me sheeps ain’t got no sense. I yam king of 10,000 fatheads.”

      E.C. Segar

      Popeye August 21, 1935

      JAHANSHAH ROSTAMI, SON OF THE mineralogist who gave my father the Nieumacher field notes, was very eager to help with the search. He had already collected old survey maps and interviewed tribal leaders and shepherds who traversed the area from the Burnt City in the north to Zahedan and farther south as well. On my way to his house I stopped to watch a man with an orange-hennaed beard sit on the floor of his shop hammering copper bowls into shallow lakes; other smaller vessels like jazvahs for making coffee were strung from the roof over his head. I walked on, the sound of hammer against copper following me down the lane. At a fruit stand a bare bulb swung above a pile of cherries and baskets full of branches of green dates. A pile of garnet-streaked pomegranates spilled into the road. Filling a bag with them, I bought some to bring to Rostami and his family. I knew they were well off and lived in a wealthier quarter of Zahedan. Like his father, Jahanshah worked for an oil company, determining the structure of oil fields hidden as deep below rocks and sand as a Suolucidir courtyard.

      Expecting me to call on the very evening of my arrival in Zahedan, he opened the door almost before I knocked. Jahanshah remembered my father’s visits from when he was a child and claimed he could see the resemblance, but since he was only a few years older than I, more likely his memory was helped by a photograph of a group of geologists taken at a meeting in Tehran at which our fathers were both present. I had a copy of the same picture at home. Rostami had curly black hair receding in a V shape, ’70s-era sideburns and a moustache. Actually it was he and I who looked similar, though people who look alike rarely recognize the similarity themselves; others usually point it out.

      I was not to spend much time in Rostami’s house, but in some ways it resembled the house I grew up in. Apart from turquoise tiles decorated with Kufic script, the Rostamis had the same feldspar bookends, probably from the same conference in Pikes Peak attended decades earlier, a relic, for both of us, of another age. Next to the bookends was a picture of Jahanshah’s brother, who had died in a car accident. Also on the shelf was a rocket-shaped mug from NASA and a statuette of Aladdin from Disneyworld as well as a small rubber Mickey Mouse. I was told that Rostami no longer studied rocks, now he taught math at a local school. Mrs. Rostami stood in an arched doorway tapping red fingernails against the jamb, waiting to be introduced. Her eyebrows met like a black tiara that had slipped down her crown, and she smiled in my direction, but also looked at me as if I were a large, new piece of furniture whose use was unclear, the kind of thing that would cause as many unforeseen problems as provide dubious entertainment, like a record player that arrives with no needles. Nice in theory but presenting complications before it can fulfill its promises.

      Rostami had two very young sons, one who pushed himself in a sitting position from one stair to the next, making a thumping sound as his butt hit one step after the next, accompanied by a humming at the back of his throat, while the other one hid, reluctant to meet me at all. I presented them with a box of Batman figures, which they swooped down upon. I had opted for several varieties of Batman (Batman the color of blue Jell-O, Batman with armaments, Batman with a long voluminous cape) but forgot the batteries that would make the superheroes light up at knee and elbow joints. Near the bookcase, displayed on a pedestal was a silver hookah, the red snake wound around its engraved body, ending in a silver nozzle. One of the blue plastic Batmans quickly made it his lair, riding the snake like a fiend.

      That first night we ate jeweled rice and chicken with pomegranate, and drank cardamom-scented tea. Rostami was gregarious. Holding the small glass of tea up to his eye he swirled the leaves and cardamom shells as if it was going to explain something to him. Finding Suolucidir would be like driving a stake into the ground, making a claim for a story that would be definitive and unalterable. His wife went to look for batteries for the Batmen. She didn’t like me very much; that was clear. It was as if she feared I was some kind of thief.

      Like many Zahedanis, Rostami had visited the Burnt City site to the north, the way Americans would tour an Iroquois village, but he confessed he’d had an odd feeling at the site, as if he were looking at the severed half of a Siamese twin. In the 1970s Maurizzio Tosi, an Italian archaeologist working in the Burnt City, had found the oldest known dice, caraway seeds, a backgammon set made of turquoise and agate, skulls that exhibited signs of brain surgery, and an artificial eye made of gold and bitumen paste, the iris engraved with sun-like rays. Rostami felt the Burnt City couldn’t have been an isolated prodigy city-state. There had to be others. Something was missing.

      “You must understand there have been major earthquakes in the region since the Nieumachers were here. Whole villages were flattened