Ishtar Page 5

  Captains were always male.

  The poor lined the docks, waiting for the scraps. They cleaned ships for a handful of wheat. They were whipped away often, but still they came back. One of my ancestresses believed that the only way that humankind will ever have a future is if the starving masses are given a voice. Yet still they stood, unheard.

  With Ishtar’s help, Sargon was made king. She easily convinced the city’s rulers, saying, “We need one man to lead us through the emergencies of existence.”

  Sargon had no dream of immortality. He was king of the earth; his descendants were his immortality.

  Sargon was a very handsome man. He made whores stutter, so lovely was he. His eyes were always half-closed as if the lids were heavy with perfumed oil. If they widened you would need to beware; it meant some great fury rose in him, and whoever stood by would bear the brunt.

  Ishtar told me his eyes opened this way as he was about to release himself.

  “Wide open in surprise, as if such a wonder has never occurred to him before.” She sat on a smooth, flat rock by the Euphrates, watching me work. The stone was warm enough to dry her thin shawls in moments. The heat turned her bare buttocks a pleasant reddish colour, though sometimes her internal heat changed the colour of her skin, too.

  “And his lips, too, will part in surprise.” Sargon’s lips were thick and pouty. They often looked amused, but this was a terrible trick.

  I remember one young man who brought a message about a late sheep delivery. Pale-skinned, this was a sheltered boy unaware of the ways to read a face. He was angry at his father for sending him as messenger, so when Sargon said, “And is your father sorry for this?” and lifted the corners of his mouth, the boy was tricked.

  “Him? He is never sorry. We are not a sorry family, all in all.” The boy thought this was clever. He smiled.

  Ishtar entered the room then. She had been listening; she heard all, when she concentrated.

  The rainless sky made us all irritable. Sargon smiled back, and the boy said, “And you know he thinks he could be king? If only he had the chance?”

  Sargon drew back one arm and with a blow knocked the boy across the room, where his head crushed against a solid urn. Something shook loose; the boy would only smile from then on. Was only happy. Not such a bad punishment, really.

  But I had more clothes to wash.

  Ishtar talked to me a lot. She had no female friends and she did not trust her servants. She said, “Sargon is the most attractive man I have been with because of his lack of — his disdain for — humility.”

  “We Akkadians are proud. Never humble,” I said. “This is why we will live forever. There will be Akkadians on this ground till the end of time.”

  “This is true.” She was not like other women, the ones who were happy to share, to live in a harem and wait for the man to desire them. She needed to be with a man when she needed it.

  I think she played in her own harem once, but she found the deception too exhausting.

  “I only love the powerful men who come close to matching me,” she told me.

  I was with her always. Did she rely on my mother in that way? My grandmother? It was perhaps so, but Ishtar and I, we were friends, despite our age differences. I was not the youngest washerwoman; during the reign of Gilgamesh, one of my ancestresses was only eight when she began. She never married. Ishtar does not talk about it, but I know that she was raped by one of Gilgamesh’s guards and that she gave birth to a daughter. Perhaps Ishtar ordered this; certainly her desire was that each washerwoman was the daughter of the last.

  Ishtar and Sargon liked to tour the city and environs, incognito, dressed in drab. They come back covered with food, other stains.

  As they walked, Sargon talked of how difficult Akkad was to defend, without natural boundaries apart from the rivers and the mountains.

  “You should turn the river red and they will be too frightened to cross,” Ishtar told him. She had learned a lot in her many years. “Turn the water the colour of blood.”

  So thousands of animals and prisoners were slaughtered to keep the enemy away.

  In this way, they prepared themselves. I had been told about the travails of war; how dirty the men get and how much they liked to pull on clean trews. I would do my job well; boil those clothes so hard the black fat bugs roiled to the top.

  When Sargon built Akkad, he also built two walls around the city. Little did he know that between these two walls, resting, was the army of stillborns. Ishtar had moved them there, thinking she wanted them close. There they waited for their next war. Akkad was Ishtar’s city. As long as it was strong, so was she. She would do all she could to protect it.

  I don’t know what will be written in the future. We write of our enemies in the past in the worst possible light. We talk about invaders as being so cruel. And we are spoken of in the worst possible terms. Some believe Sargon demonic in his cruelties.

  There are many different versions of the truth, but these things I saw myself. I saw children, women and men impaled alive on tall, sharp sticks in the ground. Impaled at the top, they slowly sank to the ground. One woman survived for three days, writhing on the ground, the tall stick through her belly. She was a strong woman. She begged to be released, but no one would risk the wrath of Sargon. Her family were all dead; not as strong as her.

  Ishtar watched, fascinated. “What makes one woman so strong? What gives her the desire to live when she is in agony?”

  Many others were skinned alive. Why did Sargon order such torture? To be powerful. To incite fear and obedience. To ensure loyalty, and to cause a smaller ruler to pause before considering an invasion of Akkad.

  Are we different from any other powerful race?

  Ishtar had her own secret weapon. They waited between the two walls of the city; unbreathing, unthinking, waiting. The stillborn army, depleted, but still living. She told me that when they needed further numbers, they sliced a limb off and grew it, but that these soldiers were...ugly. Small. Malformed. Ishtar learned to keep the numbers of her army down so that she could control them, and used them for night attacks. She sent them to enemy collaborators or to those who talked of treason, and they used small knives and their sharp teeth. Ishtar told them to leave the traitors alive because she wanted them to talk, to spread the word about the law.

  It was these creatures who first performed the cruelties, deaf to pleas for mercy and cries of pain. But Sargon did nothing to stop them, did he? And when he saw the fear, the instant capitulation amongst survivors, he took to the ways of the stillborn army without regret.

  And so war was done and won.

  In peacetime, people complained. Not one a day, but many. Ishtar became irritated to the point of fury.

  Sargon loved her angry. It inspired him.

  “It is so dry,” whined a woman.

  I couldn’t help myself. I whispered in Ishtar’s ear, “And yet I find the water to clean your clothes.”

  It was enough for Ishtar. She roared, “I will stir the waters of the Abyss for you,” and she lifted her arms. Tilted her head until the back of her skull touched her spine. Opened her mouth so wide I thought she could swallow the whole court. We watched as the woman choked on sand, and when one of the soldiers slit her throat to help her breathe, fine golden dust poured out. No one touched it; no one dared clean it. We watched over the days as small gusts of wind spread the grains through the city.

  Even Sargon was frightened by this. “She’s bored,” one of his childhood friends said. No one else would dare. “You need to find something for her to do or she will destroy you.” To keep her occupied, he asked her to visit the neighbourhoods in disguise, to see if there was any talk of war.

  “Who would dare war with you now, Sargon?” she said. “Unless I ask him to?”

  But she did go out. And in a tavern three towns away, she did hear conspirators in their talk. She laughed at them because they were weak, arrogant men. The worst sort.

  She took her tim
e getting back to Sargon and by then the men had run away. The wine seller was put to death in their place.

  “It is the law. The wine seller heard this and did nothing.” Did Ishtar feel guilt? I don’t think so. At most she regretted her lazy journey home because it allowed the men to run.

  Regret was the beginning of the loss of power.

  When people came to beg favours, Sargon said, “I am the King of Earth. I do not represent the gods.”

  Ishtar smiled at that. She knew what happened to arrogant men in the afterlife.

  One of the men who came begging slipped through, hoping for work in the kitchen. With all my listening, and with all Ishtar’s knowledge and Sargon’s power, still the poisoner got past us. Almost got past us. If it wasn’t for the food tasters, Sargon would have died.

  There was no doubt who the poisoner was. There were witnesses (and these, too, were punished. Certainly it was not obvious until all the pieces were put together; but still, they should have stopped the man). The poisoner was caught resting in the shade of a thorn tree and terrible illness struck him. He no longer had spit on his tongue. It was like all the water was sucked out of his body. His insides dried up and curled in on themselves like a dead worm. His weapon released white dust, not the cream of babies. His life’s blood dried to a thick paste inside his body. He died in a most uncomfortable state.

  Strange that he should be so dry at neap-tide.

  “You should answer the questions, King Sargon,” the poisoner croaked as he died. “Was it a reed boat you were found in? Were you really rescued by a carpenter, a nagar, and brought up that way? What was your name before you overcame the King of Uruk and built Akkad? ‘King is Steadfast’ is not the name you were born with.”

  Sargon didn’t like to be questioned about his past. All life began when Ishtar blessed him, he said.

  After that, Sargon never trusted his cup-bearer. He changed them every couple of days, never telling them beforehand. When he had been cup-bearer to the King of Kish, not a day had passed without plotting, so Sargon knew how little these people could be trusted. His counterpart, King Lugalands of Lagash had been poisoned, and survived, but with his skin turned blue and each breath a pain. Lugalands’ washerwoman told me it was his wife, Queen Baranamtarra, who poisoned him. She said he was a dull husband who did not appreciate a good woman. Even Sargon, who did not criticise other kings in case he needed them as allies in the future, had no time for the man.

  I told Ishtar all, and before long the two Queens were friends.

  Were they lovers? Some would say so. Some said that Ishtar placed her favoured women in ruling positions, and some said that she transformed them into men and placed them in many positions of power.

  The Queen had three daughters and five sons, and Ishtar, watching the children around their mother, came to wish she could inspire such unequivocal love herself.

  Ishtar said, “In all my years I have had no desire for a child. But now, this Sargon, this powerful man. If I had a child with him, imagine where the line would go.”

  I didn’t speak of the dangers of a goddess and man having children together. That the child may be born a monster, because he should not have been born at all. If we washerwomen have learned anything, it’s that our mistress only wants to hear what she wants to hear. But I knew what this would mean for Ishtar, allowing herself the role of mother: once she cared for another human being, her power would be diminished.

  She did not discuss the idea with Sargon, but merely told him it was time to make an heir. He was so nervous he could not speak for three days. What if he couldn’t perform under such pressure?

  “This is how it must be,” Ishtar said. She devised rituals to calm him, keep his focus.

  Ishtar hid away for her pregnancy. She didn’t like the way she looked, she didn’t like the way she felt. She stayed in her home and shouted orders. She was restless, angry and I know that more than once she regretted her decision. She made Sargon suffer for it, though he showered her with gifts and love. He told her she was beautiful more times than any man should. We were all greatly relieved when the time for confinement came. She had me wait outside.

  I spoke with midwives as I readied the sheets. “I would not need to do this if so many newborns didn’t die.” The sheet she birthed on would be stitched into a baby pillow, a mattress, to keep the baby safe through its first three months, the most dangerous time after childbirth.

  “It is not our fault,” one midwife said. I think she was more witch than midwife.

  “You think it is the fault of the gods?”

  Nervous laughter. “Of course not. Maybe it’s the rituals. Our rituals are wrong.” They spoke in husky voices.

  I told them they needed to drink, to ensure they were strong for the ordeal ahead.

  As her pains begin, Ishtar, impetuous as ever, moved from room to room, dwelling to dwelling. “I don’t want the baby now,” she said quietly to one of the midwives. “I really don’t want it. Take it away as soon as it is born.”

  The midwives looked at her attendant, who was frozen with horror and indecision.

  “Many women feel this way as the baby begins its journey. It will be different when you see your child,” one midwife said.

  Ishtar roared at her, wide open face, skull showing. The midwife’s eyes teared up in terror. They would never stop tearing as long as she lived.

  The midwife calmed her by telling her stories of the calf or pregnant cow and the powerful, king-like bull. The circle of life shown with the calf suckling from the mother, the mother licking her calf clean.

  “I can imagine another circle,” Ishtar roared at us. She wanted to be lover, not birth-giver, to use her opening for pleasure, not pain. She wept, then.

  “Many women do this. Like them, you will never be the same,” the midwife told Ishtar with some glee. Ishtar struck out, twisted the woman’s nose until it broke.

  “Evil gossip,” she said.

  Her body was changed. But what did that matter? A woman is as sexual after as she was before.

  “I just want a healthy child,” Ishtar said through her tears.

  “Woman have said that forever. We are all terrified at this time, Goddess. You are not alone. You are a sister to all of us.”

  As Ishtar wailed, the midwife said, “This is good pain.” These words have annoyed birthing women since the beginning of human life, and it will continue to do so forever.

  “Come on, heavenly cow,” another said to her.

  This made Ishtar laugh.

  Ishtar had never suffered like she did in childbirth. “Is this what death feels like? I should not be feeling this. Sargon wants to destroy me.” One side of her mouth went slack and she stopped speaking.

  “Don’t let yourself be distracted,” the midwives said.

  Her fingers went cold and she felt as if she couldn’t move them, as if her heart stopped beating.

  Sargon’s attendants called at the door for entry. “He wants to know what is happening.”

  “Get out!” shouted the midwives. Men in the birthing room could lead to disaster. They could attract Lamastrum, the she-demon who killed babies. Sometimes a male exorcist could be used, if the Lamastrum would not leave.

  Ishtar later told me all she saw and felt. She was in a fever, and there is truth in fever. “I thought my baby would die and that I would be left deformed for all my eternal life.”

  There was a smell in the room. It was a quiet smell, the smell of burning dust.

  “You heard me scream at the cleaning woman, didn’t you? How could she leave this room dusty?”

  But then the smell grew stronger and there stood Nergal of the Underworld. The forgotten god, Ishtar called him.

  The god of fertility, fever and death. Though Ishtar still found him unattractive, Ereshkigal remained jealous. So Nergal disliked Ishtar both for rejecting him and causing him trouble.

  Still, she hoped he would not let this make his decision. She had said to me on more than o
ne occasion, “Why would they let a man like him be in charge of those three things? No wonder women die in childbirth.”

  Beside him stood the female demon Lamastrum. The demoness had a hairy body, the head of a lioness, donkey’s teeth and ears, long fingernails and fingers, bird’s feet and sharp talons.

  “You are consorting with this one now?” Ishtar hissed.

  The midwives pressed oil to her forehead. They took the waters of labour and sprinkled them over her torso.

  Ishtar threatened the demon, “I will cover you in death’s dust. Fill your mouth, cover your face.” Her great internal heat filled the room, so we all sweated.

  They called for Lamassus: the protective spirits, the doorkeepers. Lamassu have an intelligent man’s head, a strong lion’s body and a brave eagle’s wings.

  They exist as the opposite to Lamastrum. At that moment, as I gathered bloody rags from her bed, Ishtar seemed as vulnerable as any woman. Not the goddess of war, feared by all.

  The law books carried admonitions to those who hit a mother and caused the child to die. People who committed this crime were led on by the cruelty of Lamastrum. That was how she worked. She liked others to do terrible things in her name. As Ishtar shouted and thrashed and cursed us all, the Lamassus and Lamastrum did battle in the skies. Nergal, a weak man, allowed these others to do the fighting, while he watched Ishtar with a mixture of love, hatred and desire.

  Finally, Ishtar’s father called halt.

  “This is my grandchild!” he roared, and the whole earth was silent for a moment or more.

  Finally, the baby emerged, with the cord across her mouth. They cleaned the face before all else; a face covered with the muck of birth brings trauma to a new life.

  “She will be good with words. That will ease her life,” the midwife said, lifting the cord gently away from the baby’s mouth.

  “She already will have a good life,” Ishtar said. Sensitive goddess.

  “What will you call her?

  Ishtar closed her eyes. “I have not decided.”

  “You must name her soon. She has no identity without a name.”