Ishtar Read online

  “What sort of place do we live in? We are dry for most of the year, and our crops struggle. Then we get all our water in a downpour of three or four days and our crops are washed away. Those seedlings left behind cannot grow in the depleted soil and the sun beats down to cook them.”

  Her father would not discuss the weather with her. He was a harsh man, like my own father. They knew how much struggle was required to survive and that only the strong can bear it; they wanted their families to survive.

  Regardless of the lovers she took, and the boredom she sometimes felt, Ishtar returned to Tammuz. I’m sure she still loved him, and she certainly loved the position, the mortal power of being consort to the king.

  Then one of Ishtar’s former lovers came begging.

  He came, napištu, to present himself to the king. Tammuz knew about this man. Ishtar laughed at him. But he had been caught with a young girl, and the girl was not happy. Now he came to beg for his life.

  “Napištu. I give you all I have, Lord Tammuz.”

  “You should have been here last week. The time for napištu was then.”

  “I got sick and couldn’t ride my wagon until yesterday.”

  Ishtar and Tammuz laughed until they wept.

  “This is a man you lay down with?” Tammuz asked Ishtar. “Why? Look at him! You made poor choices before you found me.”

  She shrugged. “He was better looking when he was young. And it’s possible I damaged him.”

  Like the camel spider, Ishtar sometimes devoured her mate, or at least bit off his limbs, when she had finished.

  “I doubt there is anything you can tell us to save your life, but you are welcome to try,” Tammuz said.

  Ishtar rose and spoke into the accused man’s ear. I knew of what she spoke, since her lips swelled as they did when she thought of sex. The man’s erection was taken as proof of guilt.

  She crouched beside him, and rather than defend himself, he told far more than they had known. Far more than he had ever admitted to any living soul, more than just about the girl.

  “I had to kill those children,” he said. “They bewitched me into thinking they were grown, that I was worshipping the Goddess. When I discovered they were actually children who had seduced me into taking their innocence, I had to kill them to save other victims.”

  She bent over this man, put her lips over his eye socket and sucked. She spat out his eyeball and a cat batted it around the room. Then Ishtar sucked out the other eyeball. He was insensible. Some men lose all feeling when in contact with Ishtar’s skin. Ishtar said later, “A man like that, feeling nothing? He barely suffered.” She felt she had failed.

  ****

  I am dying now. Glad to have my sons and daughter to carry my blood into the future. Glad to have served the goddess as I did, to have witnessed all I did. This last thing I saw: a great secret. Ishtar would curse me through all possible futures should I tell anyone.

  This secret began when Ishtar took a mortal lover, one of those who desired to be immortal. Ishtar liked those men because they believed she would help them, and she liked to see men make fools of themselves.

  This man, Etana, had a chance to grab the plant of life and failed. Not only that, his wife gave birth to only stillborn babies. One after another after another. A dozen, maybe more. Ishtar felt sad for the wife; all those dead babies. So she went to her uncle, Ninurta, who, as the god of fertility and vegetation, could heal the sick.

  “I cannot bring back the dead, Ishtar. Only Gula can do that, and she has no reason to do so in this case.”

  Ishtar’s aunt, Gula, had always been a great friend to her. She had the ability to restore life, but to also kill on a whim. Ishtar understood too well the conflict between these impulses, and the passion both inspired. She knew the conflict of death and war, sacrifice and love.

  Ishtar said, “What if we brought those stillborn babies back to life? For that poor woman with no children.”

  “Those babies would not be like ordinary children. And what of the other babies born dead? Who is to say they do not deserve life as well?”

  Ishtar considered what Gula had said. “Let’s bring them all back to life.”

  Ishtar decided that these children, these stillborn children, would be her army. One day she might need them. But she didn’t understand the consequences and believed she would have power over them.

  This is my secret: Ishtar’s army of stillborn children, who grow stronger every day, yet never know more than the knowledge they are born with.

  I die leaving my daughter in charge. She will help Ishtar make the transition between life and death. Help her to rest with her army until it is time to rise again and be at the forefront of affairs.

  Ishtar does not age. Her skin glows and she makes young men cry.

  She likes to rest, though, even if just for a short while.

  At the same time, she is restless, seeking her place.

  Seeking her next lover.

  GILGAMESH: 2510 BC

  THE WASHERWOMAN ATUR

  One of my ancestresses was known for saying that humankind will only have a future if the starving masses are given a voice. We have no voice today, yet still we exist. With all the terrible wars, the killing of men young and old, still we exist.

  ****

  If only Gilgamesh, the great flood king, had loved her when and how he should, many thousands of families would have been saved. If only Enkidu, his dear friend, had not caused such jealousy in Ishtar. My brothers, my uncles, they all would not have died in war; the only male left in my family a cousin, who was crippled and weak and vicious in the brain.

  When Ishtar first heard of Gilgamesh, she had been living quietly for almost 400 years. The lovers she destroyed were unimportant men; unremembered, unremarkable. I had been with her for twenty years, taking the role as washerwoman when my mother died. She was a lazy washerwoman, my mother, with no pride in her work. Nor in her cooking, nor in us, her children. For me, this job was one of freedom. I could be myself: washerwoman to a goddess.

  It was known amongst us, the washerwomen, that she would have five great loves. This one, this Gilgamesh, was to be the second. When she heard of him, she had me wash her most desirable clothes in a mixture of rose water and the glands of a cat. She bathed in honey so her skin was soft and sweet. The Ishtar I know was never clean, no matter how hard I washed. I cleaned her clothes and yet she came home soaked in blood again. Blood and gore, with things in the seams, crusts on the hems. She didn’t care for her appearance when war was in the air.

  But Gilgamesh resisted her. He was a smart man; he knew what happened to her lovers. He looked out onto the street. There were bats in the massive date grove which filled the square. “One of your lovers, Ishtar?” he asked.

  She peered out. “I wouldn’t recognise him.”

  Gilgamesh laughed, but Ishtar didn’t joke. He said, “You think I want to become an animal? A wolf like that poor fellow, hunted last week?”

  “That will only happen when I tire of you. Perhaps I never will tire of you.”

  “I do not want to be a sad man. You enjoy eternal life as if it is a glass of beer. You sip and swallow and barely notice the taste at all. You simply enjoy being drunk. Why do you and your kind have this and not me?”

  “You will taste the beer if you lie with me. Come out now, to the desert. Come with me.”

  She led him out, away. I followed, carrying a bedroll.

  Ishtar stood in the cold, desert night air. Her great inner heat kept her warm, and around her feet small fires formed.

  Standing there that way, with fire at her fingertips and her toes, who could refuse her? Gilgamesh watched her and she thought she had him. But he said, “If you can withstand my father’s demonic sangarliness, I will make love to you.”

  He wanted to test her, he said. I think he wanted to weaken her. His friend, Enkidu, tried to pull him away from Ishtar and he was the one who devised the test. I think that man knew how much power she would h
ave over Gilgamesh and he didn’t like it. Some men do not like to share their friends.

  Gilgamesh lived in fear of his father and thought perhaps this would appease him. His father was a priest of terrific reputation. Unforgiving, he took the slightest blink in temple to be against his gods, and his punishments were legendary. Gilgamesh himself was scarred across the back and the tops of his thighs. He said sometimes that if a week went by without his father damaging him, he felt as if the world was asleep and that he was dreaming along with them.

  It was to this priest — Gilgamesh’s cruel father — that Ishtar presented herself. I had washed out her drabbest robes, ones that my mother had washed many times and perhaps even my grandmother. They were threadbare in places and here we draped more drab cloth, until she was swathed like a baby. She went this way to the temple of Gilgamesh’s father. She kept her eyes downcast so he could not see their fiery light, and kept her hands under her robes so he could not see their sensual length.

  Ishtar hoped her disguise was so good that he would not know her, and that she could pray for a day and leave without being noticed. But Gilgamesh had warned the men to watch out for her, and so they did; one tendril of her hair, the sway of her bottom, and it was enough for her to be known.

  Gilgamesh’s father, whose robes were reeking and unwashed for many years, stood behind her and pressed his groin into her back. She did not know how to react to this, nor to the blows he felled on her, using a stick he always carried. “Whore!” he called her, and she knew then she could withstand his cruelty. Whore was no insult to her; whoring was a profession she supported and loved. And so Ishtar allowed this man to beat her and abuse her. She was in control because she allowed it, and although she believed nothing was proven by the pain she suffered, she knew that Gilgamesh would relent, and that his guilt would work in her favour for the entirety of their time together.

  Here, history will say that Gilgamesh withstood her to the last, but this was not true. He was weak, like any man, and they took to bed like two mating lizards, hot from the sun and lazy and slow with it.

  Gilgamesh said to Ishtar, “You can’t tell anyone. Not a soul. If you speak of this, I will do all I can to destroy you.”

  “Are you ashamed?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You are too busy to waste time destroying me.”

  And he laughed in her face like an insane child. But it was too late for him. He was caught.

  He was a different man than others she had been with. He was fickle and bored easily, and he was distracted by the next idea, the next thing.

  I could not wait to tell Ishtar news of Gilgamesh and his conquests. Was it bad of me to enjoy her crest-fallen face? I took such sweet-smelling clean clothes to her, and as she enjoyed them I told her the news. She paid, in this way, for all the times she hit me, for all her harsh words. She should know that even a goddess can suffer, and that even a washerwoman knows more than a goddess does. Even my eight year old daughter knew more.

  THE WASHERWOMAN NINLIL

  A man who dies suddenly spends his afterlife lying on a couch, drinking water. A man who falls in battle will be comforted by his parents while his wife cries. A man with no family or friends will eat only scraps and crumbs and rubbish from the gutter.

  ~ Proverb

  I was eight years old when my mother disappeared. Ishtar said I was to wash the blood from her tunic sleeves. My mother told me one day I would do this, but I thought I would be grown. A woman. Ishtar laughed when I told her I was eight.

  “Your mother should have thought of that, shouldn’t she?”

  Ishtar said my mother ran away to find a god for a lover, because she was desperate for fame and excitement. I wished Mother had said goodbye. It made father very angry. Father came to me and touched me in that way, which I didn’t like. Gilgamesh had Father banished when this was discovered. I, too, would have been banished, but Ishtar, my goddess, saved me. She told Gilgamesh, “Who else will wash my clothes?”

  I was happy to serve Ishtar, though. Perhaps I would not have to marry in her service. I was not keen on marriage.

  “I do not like children,” Ishtar said, and while I did not become an adult the moment she spoke, it seems to me, looking back, as if I had no childhood.

  Drought struck us, and by the time I was eighteen, the ground was so dry and for such a depth, that even the thorn bush was dying. The seed pods, which kept many animals alive during drought, did not renew themselves, and the bushes were all thorns.

  Yet still men fought, dying for a strip of land so easy to cross, so vulnerable to invasion. Gilgamesh was not a man to give an inch and Ishtar was bored. They went to war with no thought for the consequences.

  Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, summoned his troops. Morale was low; they saw the city crumbling, no gains made. He told them that conscription would be rewarded with state land; that they would assure their children’s future by pledging loyalty. Most men were loyal. They understood the importance of protecting their city. Even the mercenaries, men who killed only for the money, felt devotion to the city, to Gilgamesh.

  They rode with chariots and mounted troops. They marched with axes, adzes and piercing spears. Bows and maces were so worshipped they were given names.

  The men would consider themselves divinely blessed if they won. They did not contemplate losing.

  Our side fought alongside Ishtar’s private army. She would not say where they came from, but no man could go near them without illness, without thinking of or longing for death. Her army was dead behind the eyes, like no man you have seen before. I say man, but they could be woman. They had no sexual features, as if none had ever grown. They were all the same, they marched as one, single minded. They ate rubbish. Stones. They ate whatever lay in their path and did not need water. They rode on horses, their flesh hanging in shreds off their yellow-boned legs.

  This was how Ishtar’s army marched. She told me they were the stillborn babies of a thousand women, brought to life by Gula and reared by barren nursemaids. Ishtar kept them in the desert, in tents, and she did not visit them.

  The recruitment of the other soldiers, the living ones, was torture to watch. They had to be purified before they become soldiers. They were beaten with a switch, starved for five days, and made stand for three. After that, they could march with pride alongside the stillborn army. Who would tell them, after all that, that they still looked weak beside Ishtar’s troop?

  Such a great deal of dust was raised by the warriors. Gilgamesh asked Ishtar, “Is this how it is in the Underworld?”

  I would never speak to Ishtar at such a time. At war, especially one she instigated, she is at her cruellest and most determined. But Gilgamesh was filled with pride and strength; he could say anything.

  I tried to work in the shade, but the sun moved quickly. My washing dried as soon as I draped it over the wall, but it dried stiffly, as if frozen into position. Using rocks helped, but still I had to knead the clothes to soften them or Ishtar would be angry. She said I could be the best washerwoman she ever had. She told me that already I was far better than my mother had been, and certainly better than my grandmother.

  We marched too, we washerwomen, carrying our buckets and our soap, while it lasted. The men didn’t bother us unless they wanted release, and then they would notice we were women. There was no love in these encounters. They barely looked us in the eye. But we considered ourselves to be in Ishtar’s service, so it was worthy work.

  We were paid to mourn as well as to wash. We were happy to do it, bringing on tears by rubbing our eyes hard with our calloused hands.

  “There is no place for feeling in battle,” Ishtar told me as I washed blood from her leggings. “You cannot balk. The one who balks loses.”

  The flies were thick like a blanket, and the bushes had no fruit, so that the soldiers took the few remaining leaves and sucked them for flavour.

  We came across a well which had been cursed. All who drank from it died of black throat. Aro
und the well there were skeletons, men so thirsty they ignored the warning. The stillborn army drank, though they needed no water. Why did they do it? Ishtar said they liked to drink poison. I thought they saw what the men had done and they copied. Gula once again saved stillborn babies every day and they were trained from rebirth to fight. Their numbers grew.

  The peasants fought too, with farm tools as weapons. Ruthless. Terrible. And so very loyal to the king. There are always spies, though. One was caught while Ishtar and I were in camp, and we watched as he was tortured, stripped of skin and flesh, until all that remained were his spy senses; his eyes, his ears and his tongue.

  “It doesn’t matter if he warns the enemy of the stillborn army. They will never be able to withstand my babies,” Ishtar said.

  The stillborn troops reached the broadest part of the Euphrates River. They stopped, bumping and falling because they feared a body of water this size; crossing such a body of water could transform you. And these soldiers did not want to transform. Or perhaps they feared the water itself; the rush of it, the wetness. I have crossed water many times. Perhaps I am subtly transformed. Perhaps with each crossing, I changed my future and that of my descendants for many generations.

  Behind them, Gilgamesh’s men pushed and agitated. “Weakness at last,” they muttered to each other, “Let’s leave them behind. Better that and risk losing the war.”

  Gilgamesh ordered his men forward, saying to Ishtar, “Move your ghouls.”

  She tried. Ishtar saw the sense in his order, and she really tried to move the stillborn army. Instead, they turned on Gilgamesh’s men, tearing out living throats with yellow teeth, breaking necks with a single twist, running swords through three men at a time.

  Gilgamesh called a retreat.

  “Control these creatures, Ishtar, or I will have you killed and killed again for all eternity.”