Yule at Ur: Meditations on Abraham, Ishmael, Issac, & Letterman

As we leave Talill I see the lead truck take a left towards the ziggurat and my faith in serendipity swells.  I'd just heard a song my girlfriend sang 7,000 miles and seven days away.  Now, for Christmas Eve, I would get to site-see at Abraham's place of birth.

    
We park in a small lot at the base of the stepped temple.  Our convoy isn't the only presence here; there are three vehicles and a squad of soldiers, as well as a security vehicle in which contracted civilians have arrived.  Two Iraqis sell souvenirs in a thatch booth at the entrance of the parking lot, towards which a few soldiers stroll.  In front of our semi-tractors is an information board, written in faded English and Arabic script.

Excavation of this site began in 1919.  I take a mental picture of the map, then walk to the nearest ruin.  Bricks are crumbling in the high walls of a single-room rectangle, with doorways I can barely squeeze through, between the ziggurat and royal cemetery.  It once contained artifacts from different time periods; Archeologists theorize it may be one of the first ever museums.

"Take a picture," I ask Siebenhaler when I've crossed to the temple.  I turn an about-face, a few steps up the Aztec-like staircase.  I stand at the position of attention, slinging my rifle across my right shoulder, barrel skyward.  My groin protector hangs crooked.  Goofy's grin spreads across my face, my body resembling a tent-peg.

At the top of the ziggurat is sand as fine as silt.  I scoop handful after handful, cupping my palm so particles trickle into an emptied water bottle.  The grains slip out of my hand as slow as an hourglass, while I look across the desolate horizon, trying to realize the age of that which I'm caressing.  If I were younger, I would say a prayer.

At the end of the Christmas Eve service back home, the lights of our church will be turned off.  Small candles will have been distributed as parishioners entered the building.  Larger candles will be lit at the alter, carried down the aisle of our church by the ushers, who will pause at the inner edge of each pew.  There, the light will be passed through the congregation, standing and humming Silent Night.  The inner-most members will hold their candle upright as unlit candles tilt towards theirs, wicks catching radiance, points of light that pause, and then continue outward.  When the last of the electric lights die out, the candles of a packed sanctuary will remain aflame.

I walk down from the temple steps and across sand and rock, towards a buried necropolis.  The walls of the royal cemetery have tubes, fired and hardened like Spanish tile.  Sections of these tubes had been stacked and filled with a mixture of sand, perhaps some of the first cementation.  One column had been reinforced by small brick, a slight bulge seamlessly woven into a pivot of the wall.  A walkway along the outer entrance makes a U-turn and drops into stairwell, still full of dirt.  This maze climbs back to meet a corner that's beneath the sand, a trench dropping fifteen feet in two directions.  The stone is slick beneath my boots; each soldier has had to hop down, passing his unloaded rifle to others at the bottom.

A second stairway drops into the other side, two angles falling from a crease, over which is an apex. Near the bottom of each gradient are two more apexes.  Interlocking bricks span the gulf from sides of the stair's walls.  I glance up and notice the lowest brick is hanging, pressed out of its place by the weight it supports. This structure predates the invention of the arch.

"Stack up," a soldier in the group ahead of me calls.  Immediately the others press together against the right wall, their legs aligning, their torsos made to move as one.  The soldiers are goofing around, acting like a 4,000 year old royal tomb is just an ordinary room for them to practice clearing. 

The front rifle droops to knee level, at the threshold of the Queen's chamber.  The second soldier's weapon points away from the wall, covering their flank.  A third rifle is raised to scan the upper edge of the high walls.  A forth soldier covers the rear, back turned to his childish teammates.  "Set!  Sway!  Go!" the lead troop calls before they burst around the corner and into the darkness, yelling like children.  Two of them have forgotten to turn on their light.  One of them trips near the back wall, the clack of a dropped M-16 reverberating out from the chamber.

Christmas Eve at my Uncle's house, kids will make tunnels of the chairs, mazes of the tables.  They will yell and scream, push and snack, scolded by fathers when they've broken the boundaries of polite or bumped a sore knee.  I remember when, like them, gathering with the extended family was just a chance to play war with our cousins before the important part of the night:  presents.

I follow the men from my convoy into the tomb at an amble so that I'll remain, for the most part, unnoticed.  The other soldiers leave to play in another part of the royal tombs.  When their flashlights have gone, it takes a minute for my eyes to adjust.  Silence seems to seal my ears.  I am, at last, alone with my thoughts.

Little light comes into the room.  Along the back wall of the tomb is a two foot platform covered in dirt, where a sarcophagus once rested.  I step up on top of it, placing my right hand along the back wall, feeling the bricks.  My eyes close, half-expecting a vision of spiritual significance.  I sit, cross my boots, and begin a twenty-breath meditation as instructed by the book I've been reading.  When I've gotten through seventeen deep breaths, a voice pries my eyes open.  Two silhouettes stand in the light of the tomb's entrance.  I doubt they can see me clearly, if at all.

"You still in here, Willits?" Kennicutt asks, our tent mate Tuna in tow.  "What the hell are you doing?"

"Nothing," I reply, embarrassed, standing and brushing soil from my desert camo pant legs.  "You two live with me.  Shouldn't you be used to my strange shit by now?"

"Dude," Kennicutt replies, "I dunno if I'll ever get used to your strange shit.  Come on...there's another room at the other end of those other stairs."  A good soldier never leaves his brother behind.

The breeching team had moved heel-to-toe up and back down thrity feet of stairs, this time assaulting a smaller double chamber.  Once inside I can stand, but I get timid reaching up with my bare hand, thinking of bats and spiders.  The ceiling is too high to touch.

The first room of this double chamber must have been built as a fake, the King's treasures hidden behind a walled entry at the back.  To get through a second hole, soldiers have to crawl on hands and knees.  Someone with a camera takes pictures of the sunken ceiling.  I make out red brick a moment before the flash blinds everyone.  We have to feel our way out among yells of pain, negative rectangles left lingering in our eyelids.

A group of soldiers help each other climb out from the primary pinnacle of the double stairwell.  I walk back to the corner of the Queen's tomb and consider disappearing inside until everyone else has gone, but it won't work.  I would be trapped, unable to vault from these stairs without a battle buddy's help.  Soldiers who have been hoisted out of the tombs hover over the edge of the stair's entrance, pulling the arms of others.

I overhear two of them claim Abraham's house was rebuilt by Saddam, to the northeast side of the ruins.

"How do you know it was Abraham's?"

"I don't.  Hajj over there, the guide...he says archeologists found the name Abraham written on the wall."

"Oh, don't listen to that shit," Kennicutt says.  "Probably just some kid writing graffiti on the wall, friggin Arknar trying to make a buck."

"I guess Saddam rebuilt the house when he heard the Pope was going to visit," the soldier continues.  "But he refused to guarantee the Pope's safety, so the visit didn't happen."

"Probably worried he'd be kidnapped, held for ransom."  The descendants of Abraham are still vying for their inheritance.  Oil or ransom, this land can produce a lot of wealth with the right exploitation.

I leave the royal cemetery and walk alone to the reconstructed wall.  A half-moon floor has a hole in its center; smashed pots ring the fire-pit.  Along the crescent-edge is a dozen-or-so rooms, joined together at the top by the beginnings of a second floor, from which descend stairs.  I slowly step up and glance down into the few complete rooms, getting a better view of the layout which uncompleted walls form.  New brick and plaster appears like a tourist-attraction compared to the bricks of the ziggurat.  This structure belongs in Disneyland, I think, or the deserts of Nevada.

The reconstruction has twelve rooms.  Isaac and Ishmael each had twelve sons.  Was I standing above grounds that'd witnessed a rivalry of inheritance now four thousand years old?  Mount Zion in Jerusalem, on which Solomon built his temple, is the same mount on which Abraham placed Isaac to be bled dry.  God blesses Ishmael then demands Abraham sacrifice Isaac, like a father who can't decide which boy to favor.  Had Abraham's faith proven madness, Ishmael would regain the silver spoon endowment of Abraham 's murdered son.  Ishmael was first cheated out of a prosperous future by Mesopotamian law, then by a ram caught by the horns in a bush.

I light a cigarette and keep wandering the site, looking for a good hill on which to meditate before the light fades.  My directionless half-circle takes me around a depression thirty feet deep and one hundred and fifty across.  I notice that I'm now facing the flat wall of Ur's exposed graveyard.

Before me is a four-by-four foot outcropping, sunk a foot and a half down from the surrounding soil, a platform awaiting a wanderer.  I lean my rifle along the back ridge and take a seated position.  As well as I can, I cross my boots and pause, then take slow, deliberate breaths.  My index and middle fingers slip into the nook below my jaw; I count time with the rhythm of my pulse, getting a cadence.  I then curl my hands into circles, one of them around my cigarette, palms facing the sky.  I take a drag and consider eternity.

Members of these Sumerian city-states, buried here and discovered four thousand years after dynasties have been extinguished, come as close to legacy as I can fathom without looking into the stars.  The land is thought to have once been as fertile as Eden, but even paradise has passed.  There will never be an eternal endowment here, I think, not even the memory I'll leave in the hearts of loved-ones.

I close my eyes and inhale through my nose while counting to ten, to the metronome of my heart.  Breathing in, I picture my body as a tree, rooted in the earth, drawing my negative feelings up through the sand.  I try not to think the image but feel it. 
Exhaling, I picture all my negativity slipping up and out, a mist of self-conscious criticism from branches of energy extruding from my shoulders.  I repeat these breaths five times, occasionally giving in to a distracting mental question:  am I doing this right?

My eyes slip open.  The sun has thrown the moon temple's shadow across me.  The walls of the royal cemetery glow, each brick a sepulture's ember.  I take another drag from my cigarette and close my eyes.

I inhale the deep breath of ten heartbeats through my nose, mentally forming a ball of wisdom above my Kevlar.  I exhale through my mouth, letting sensations of serenity trickle down my shoulders, through my ballistic vest, around my crossed boots - a puddle of peace soaking into the sand.  I do this, again, five times, trying not to let the cooling desert air make my body shiver.

My mouth opens, drawing oxygen within to ten beats of my heart.  I have great power, to choose a positive outlook. I exhale out my nose, imagining the same willpower bursting from my squared shoulders like a halo of holy fire.  For four more slow breaths, I appreciate the vigor of my youth, the possibilities before me, and my cigarette.

Lastly, my mouth draws oxygen deep into lungs.  I try to feel it seep into my capillaries, carried through each cell in the body.  Oxygen is neither me nor mine, but permeates each cell within and without.  My mouth exhales as hair follicles along my skin react to compression.  I'm wrapped in a uniform, cotton and air.  I'm wrapped in the same molecules that permeate my breath, the same exhaled by Abraham.  I repeat this stage for five repetitions as well.

The afternoon light is beginning to fade on the ruins of Ur.  I want an offering, to show my gratitude for this experience, but there is no ram caught in a nearby bush.  There isn't even a bush.

I stand and roll the remainder of my cigarette between my fingers, sprinkling fire.  I shake the few drops left from a second water bottle onto the dry ground, then toss dust to capture the breeze.  Fire, water, earth and air.  I've not gained liberation, but I will keep practicing.

Nearly 7,000 miles away, Mom and Dad are probably hearing their alarm clocks right about now, waking to start Christmas Eve.  I wonder what work awaits them and hope they know, in a way only parents know their children, that I am doing fine for now.