Part I: Zard Kuh story

The title is of course temporary. This is the first portion of a story I have been working on for the past month or so. I hope to add to it soon.

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April the 10th, 1915
This being the preface to this journal.

     My father, Declan Pierce, was a translator, and an explorer. He ranged wide over this world in his time, saw great sights, and discovered many a wonderful and terrible thing.

     He began his work in his youth, his own father insisting from an early age that he learn not only Latin but also ancient Greek, and later, Hebrew. As he progressed through school he showed a remarkable talent for language and geography. He was enroled at Oxford University in 1868, at the age of 17; by the time he was 22, he had completed his first doctorate.

     He was totally immersed in his studies. By now he was taking part in the thrilling new work available deciphering the clay tablets of such far-away sounding cultures as Assyria and Sumeria. His work obsessed him, so much so that it would be another four years before his marriage to my mother Christina, and yet another six before she bore him his first and only child, I who bear his name, Declan Pierce II.

     I knew him for but a short time, only long enough to form an impression of both the wonders and the dangers of the frantic life he led. While I knew him as a loving father, he was nonetheless very distant. I would sometimes go days without seeing him, despite the fact that he was just behind a door, in his study – where I was never to enter while he was at work. I have learned from my mother that it was not always so; before I was born, he was not so private, was more accessible to those who loved him. It was not my birth which changed this, but rather a deeply enchanting idea which had taken hold in him, an idea whose manifestations appeared as spindly roots which reached clear through the literature and religions of all the epochs of human life, from the present all the way to his own area of expertise, the very earliest human writings. He kept his work on this subject under lock and key, his notes and all his books, and it would be many years before my mother would tell me what was hidden behind the locked doors in my father's mind. Perhaps she did not herself know, when I was young.

     Yet while I could not pierce that particular mystery, my father's library was always open to me, as was his study when he was not at work. I found these places infinitely fascinating, and I fondly remember peering through his books and his curiosities. I could not read many of the books, and some were written in whole alphabets whose symbols I had never encountered, though by this point I could recognize the Roman, Greek, and Hebrew letters (though I could not read them, as yet). These mysterious books were written in a strange hand, bizarre collections of straight lines terminating in odd triangular shapes, arranged in perplexing grid-like formations – the writing I would one day know as cuneiform.

     Among the books were other relics of times long past. Greek pottery: black-figure soldiers, women at looms, contrasted beautifully and timelessly against the burnished red of Attic clay. There were Roman busts, ancient Christian mosaics, and, what fascinated me most, the sculptures of those same enigmatic peoples who had written in that bizarre style. These, my father told me, were temple statues – but they had not been idols to be worshiped, they were themselves the worshipers. They were set up around idols when human attendants were not present, that there would never be a second when the gods of this ancient race were not under adoration. These statues clasped their tiny hands across their chests and turned their wide, flat faces upwards, their noses and mouths shrunk to tiny holes, their eyes, alight with the wonder of the divine, enlarged to wholly unreal and slightly unsettling magnitude.

     My father left when I was eight years old, and I did not see him again. I asked my mother constantly; she told me simply that he was working on something very important, that he would be back eventually. Over the years I learned to stop asking the question. But it remained, ever in my mind, asking itself, over and over: “Where did he go?” It would be many years before I was given an answer.

     But the seed had taken root in me as well, and I followed happily in his footsteps. I myself enroled at Oxford in the year 1901, my eighteenth autumn, keen to delve into the mysteries of the ancient peoples. I was not the prodigy my father was, and I myself earned my doctorate after six years, still a respectable achievement. What I lacked of my father's speed in learning I made up for in other areas of my life; I met Edith, who would become my wife, in my last year at Oxford, and three years later we were married. My own son, obediently given the name Declan III, was born two years later, in 1909. He is now six years old, and to my great pride, he has mastered the basic grammar of the Latin language.

     It was not until just a fortnight past that my mother finally disclosed to me the truth of my father's obsession and the reason behind his sudden and continued disappearance. I had visited, alone, for dinner, while my wife was out of town with little Declan. We had eaten, and were sitting in the parlour, speaking little. There was a great storm outside, and it was dark in the house; I thought that my mother had actually fallen asleep over her knitting, and I was preparing to depart, when suddenly and without introduction she began to explain to me the things which I had never known about my father's journey.

     His hidden and secret work, the work which so consumed him when I knew him, had, she said, led him to leave on a great journey, halfway around the world. She had spoken to him only a little about his obsession, but she knew that the journey was a part of it. He had told her only the name of the place to which he was going; a mountain, in the Zagros range bisecting Persia, a mountain with the magical name of Zard Kuh.

     She stood and handed me something then: a small, iron key. She told me that it opened the strongbox in my father's study, where he had kept all of his notes regarding the idea that had so enchanted him. She told me that though she had opened this chest, and had looked at the books and treasures hidden there, that she still knew nothing of substance of the idea that drew my father across the map to wind-blown Persia. Yet, she had gathered the basis of it, from hints, from suggestions, from telling and significant utterances my father made in his sleep. The idea that locked my father away from his family, that had consumed my father's mind as it had consumed countless minds before him, was simple, but massive; it was an idea that has never, through all time, lost its efficacious ability to stop men in their tracks and put an unholy lust in their hearts: the idea of neverending life.

     Taking the key, I raced to the cabinet and opened the door. It swung open easily and I was greeted with the smell of old leather and paper. There were several battered notebooks and old hide-bound manuscripts, little figurines and statues. My mother looked on from the doorway, her hands folded on her chest, a sad, weary smile on her aged features. Hungrily, I grabbed at the notebook on the top of the pile, pulled it open, and realized at once why my mother had not deciphered more of the story. On this matter, my father had written all of his notes in ancient Attic Greek.

     She allowed me to take them, everything, and I loaded them into my automobile that very night. I covered them with my coat as I brought them out of the house, allowing myself to be soaked to the bone, and when she saw that, she turned away, and I believe she may have been weeping.

     I have now had two weeks to review the material my father left behind, and I have spent nearly every waking moment doing so. Some of it is more helpful than the rest. My linguistic focus is in Greek; this has enabled me to read my father's notes with ease, however I have no experience with any Sumerian, Akkadian, or Assyrian language, so most of the primary materials from the strongbox have been of little use. There are gaps in the notes, pages cut out of the books as if with a razor, pages which I assume my father brought with him on his journey. Likewise, the entire collection speaks plainly to a missing volume; the notebooks cover specific issues in some detail, but there is no single, general volume – a text my father almost certainly brought with him when he left.

     Nonetheless, the material that remains and can be read speaks quite plainly about my father's plan. One of the notebooks, covering geography of the area in question, even includes a map, with a goal and even a tentative route which he planned to take. Others, which describe the thing itself for which he was searching, are more confusing. He refers often to texts which have no reliable English translation, and where he refers to specific legendary or mythical objects and personae from the Assyrian originals, he has painstakingly transcribed these Assyrian words directly into Greek instead of using a Greek substitution. This has meant that the most useful words are basically unintelligible to me.

     I have considered contacting my father's friends in his field to acquire translations of these texts, but I know that this project would take weeks, if not months. I feel a pressing urge to follow after my father now, to trace his footsteps to the mountain of Zard Kuh, and I believe it cannot wait. I have no hopes of finding my father alive; if he has not returned after twenty-four years of absence, he can only be dead. This fact only pushes me more toward my own departure. If he has died, I must learn why. I must find him, or find where his trail ended, and learn what it was that meant so much to him. I must follow this story through to its conclusion.

     England is now at war with the Ottomans, who rule Persia. This means that traveling in the area will be very dangerous. It also means that the borders will be lax, the country will be in turmoil, and the yards and miles of red tape which would otherwise prevent my entry into the country will be loosened by the chaos of war. Should the Ottomans win the war, an Englishman will not set foot in that country for a hundred years. To delay now is a risk I cannot take. I must go, and I must go now, or I may lose the only chance I have in this lifetime to know what it was that was worth my father's life.

     And so I will make my provisions, set my plans, and I will follow my father to Persia.


April the 21st, 1915

     The past few days have been a weary endeavor both to finalize my plans and to attempt to explain to my family why it is I must do this thing, which I will do. The one has been much easier than the other.

     Through my father's contacts, I have arranged a number of important documents, the most crucial being a falsified passport and letters of reference signifying my identity as a Swedish antiquities scholar. I speak no Swedish. However, the English are hated enemies of the Ottomans, and I would be lucky to return with my head were I to travel on my authentic passport. The Americans, as well, while not in outright war with the Ottomans, are nonetheless looked upon as a treacherous Western power, and I would be unlikely to gain entry with American papers either. Sweden is a small country which plays no part and has no alliances in the war between England and the Ottoman Empire.

     I have also secured a traveling companion, a Moslem man by the name of Ibrahim al-Fawaz. He is Egyptian, not Persian, however he speaks the Arabic and Persian tongues and knows the land; he will be an invaluable assistance. He was, I am told, a student of my father's. He has warned me in the strictest terms to never speak when in the presence of authorities or soldiers. I cannot speak the language of the country to which I pretend, and the English language will only cause problems in that part of the world. He has also counseled me, in sober and serious tones, that I must acquire a rifle. I have done so.

     Transportation is another problem. England of course trades not with the Ottomans, and a Swedish scholar disembarking from an English patrol ship would look quite odd indeed. To this problem an ingenious solution has been devised. We will sail to Italy, and there charter passage on a Greek trade ship to take us as far East as possible upon the Mediterranean. We will disembark, show our papers, and, God willing, begin our voyage inland toward the Zagros mountains. We must hope that neither the Greeks nor the Turks (or Egyptians, provided we reach the Levant) will be overly suspicious. It is, however, our most viable option, the others being to travel overland through Russia and arrive from the North (a voyage of many months), or to sail direct to the more British-friendly Egypt and attempt to cross into Persia from the South, a border much more secure and patrolled than the Mediterranean coast.

     I have also learned, again through my father's contacts, of a scholar of cuneiform who works in Damascus. His name is Faisal Abdul Hadi. He knew my father and will be a most welcome assistance, provided he can be found. Contacting him via post is not an option; there is no time, nor any assurance that the letter will reach him. Leave it be; we will find him if we can.

     Discussing this journey with my family has been more difficult. My son, who is too young to know for certain where it is I am going, or to fathom its incredible distance even when shown on a map, knows only that his father is leaving for an indeterminate amount of time in order to further his studies – a feeling I know all too well. My wife Edith, on the other hand, is keenly aware of the danger of this voyage, and the possibility, more likely than I would care to admit, that my son also shall grow to his adulthood knowing only a few fleeting years of his father's presence.

     I have myself worried about this fact. However, the excitement I now feel to follow my father in his footsteps is more exhilarating than my academic work has ever been. That is why I have begun work on a smaller project, one to be completed before my departure, one which my wife has begged me not to complete, and which I myself feel no small reluctance toward given the portentous implications of the act. Yet I feel it needs to be done.

     I will not bring my father's notes to Persia. I am now working at copying all the relevant notes and diagrams into new notebooks – I have four large notebooks which should easily contain everything necessary – and my fathers notebooks shall be left in the strongbox at my mother's house, along with the scrolls of cuneiform copied from tablets (they are too bulky, and will be entirely useless unless I happen to catch upon Faisal Abdul Hadi in Damascus). This time, the key goes not to my mother, but to my own wife. She accepted it with bitterness, with tears in her eyes. I explained to her, calmly but firmly, that it was my wish that should I not return, the key should be given to my son, when he was ready. She was reluctant to agree, but I persisted. It is the only time in our married life when I have insisted upon the privilege of my status as head of household. She eventually acquiesced, in doing so her eyes flashing with a moment of hatred which stunned and bewildered me. We have not spoken of it since.

     Aside from these things, our last task remains the tedious supply of the expedition; matches, clothing, dried food (certain to run out before we even reach Egypt), currency and other tradeable goods, tents, blankets, books, pens, maps, and all number of other small items. As we are a party of two, we have held ourselves strictly to the principle that we shall leave England with only what we two can carry; when we reach the mideast we will surely attempt to barter for a pack animal, and if this is successful, we will purchase more equipment. Much of the specifics of this voyage are being left up to circumstance, a situation unavoidable in transcontinental travel. Be it as it may; the Lord will watch over us.

     We leave on a trade ship on the ninth of May. It is the day, so history recalls, that the Canaanites fought Pharaoh Thutmose III in 1457 BC, on the plains of Megiddo, where battle shall again be joined on the Last Day.


May the 10th, 1915

     The past few days have been a whirlwind of activity. Ibrahim and I have shipped on a steamer bound for Italy; there is a flat, empty expanse of water ahead of us, which will take us some month and a half to cross before landing in Syracuse. From there we shall journey overland to Taranto, the main shipping port of Southern Italy, from where we hope to gain transport on a Greek ship. Sailing the Mediterranean to our destination will take almost another month. I will not record much in this my travelogue during this period; I am not comfortable on ships and do not expect to be in a writing mood. We are already but one day out and already Ibrahim laughs at me and tells me my skin is green.

     Yesterday we departed. My son bravely held back his tears and shook my hand steadily, like a man. I told him that it was of utmost importance that he continue his studies and be a support to his mother. I was unable to tell him how long I'd be gone, as I do not know myself. The most conservative estimate is something on the order of six months; it may be closer to a year. I held my wife and told her to be strong, but before I left I made her confirm her promise regarding the key, and my father's notebooks. She nodded icily. I hope for my safety, primarily that she not have to hand over that key, as my own mother did.

     As the ship left the port, I saw my son pull at his mother's hand. She raised him onto her shoulders and he shouted to me, in superb Latin, “Celeres ventes, pater!”, 'Fast winds, father!'

     I have a long voyage before me, and I will feel much better about it when my feet are on solid ground.


May the 28th, 1915

     A few general notes regarding my progress.

     My project of copying my father's relevant notes was completed several days prior to my departure, but the translation of the peripheral material as well as the compilation of all of this information into a workable plan was to be completed during my voyage. I feel compelled to admit that I am finding this latter portion of the work to be somewhat more difficult than I was expecting. I mentioned earlier my father's bothersome insistence upon providing transliterations instead of simple substitutions for important words; without a cuneiform scholar, my translations of such words are highly speculative, derived mainly from context references in the surrounding Greek. There is no linguistic relationship between Assyrian and Greek, so even when I see something that hints at a cognate, I must consider this a simple coincidence and move on; there are no words, so far as I know, which 'migrated' from Assyrian to Greek.

     I still do not know what it was for which my father was searching, though it appears to have been some sort of physical object, and not a person, or something less tangible, such as a state of mind or a mystical revelation. The Greek adjectives which seem connected to it in the notes are simple designations of physical qualities: in one instance it is referred to as 'thorny' or 'prickly', and in another, tellingly, it is said to be 'growing'. I can only surmise thus that it was some sort of plant. There are only a handful of these adjectives, these two being by far the most helpful.

     Ibrahim has been a fine traveling companion; he is very optimistic and jolly, and he takes to the sea with a natural affinity, despite the fact that his people traditionally wander an ocean of sand, not of water. He tells me that he knew my father up until his disappearance, and indeed I have fleeting recollections of his visiting on occasion. His assurances have convinced me, however, that if anyone but my father worked on this enigmatic project, Ibrahim was not one of them. Nor do I have any reason to doubt him on this point; he is an academic, but an Egyptian archaeologist, and he does not know cuneiform any more than I. Besides which, though he is older than myself, he is much younger than my father, and was not so much a colleague to him as a favoured student. We are, the two of us, risking a great deal for a very nebulous cause, sharing in common only that we trust my father, the great figurehead and benefactor of this expedition, urging us on now from decades in the past.

     We have been at sea now for two weeks, or so I am told. This brings me to a very curious occurrence, for which I am unable to fully account. On two separate occasions during this sea-voyage, I have found myself stymied by an incorrect calculation of the date. It sounds a small thing, but only consider for a moment that I have a calendar upon which I have carefully recorded the days as they pass; that the navigator of the ship has his own calendar, and that twice in two weeks, my own calendar has not matched his. I am almost certain that it cannot be attributed to error on either of our parts. Marking the day is my first order of business upon turning out each morning, and the navigators of ships of course must take very accurate notice of time and date in order to avoid going off their course. Neither can it be a matter of simple neglect when, as has happened, the first error was in recording the subsequent day as the present day (would I not have had to mark the calendar twice in one day?) and the second error was in, somehow, inexplicably, coming up one day short.

     I have, in both cases, relied upon the judgment of the navigator, and assumed that I have been in error – after all, it is hardly possible that both of us, keeping accurate records, should record different dates – but I know, I am sure, that my record-keeping has been accurate. But then perhaps it is possible that the sea has induced in me some delirium. I have come to find it hateful and hideous, near-painful, the constant and vast expanse of empty gray-blue, terminating nowhere, extending infinitely on all sides, and ourselves occupying the single tiny feature of this endless waste. I am thrilled to see the occasional whale or dolphin, not because of some naturalist's love of wildlife, but because it enables me to say to myself, there, there is another object, Jove has not drowned the world in a second deluge and left only us in our wooden prison. The sea carries not for me, as it does for so many others, the promise of freedom and adventure. For me, it's the featureless white walls of Bedlam.

     But on we go. Our journey over sea, they say, nears its halfway point. Soon enough, we will be back on land, if only briefly, and then after another, shorter voyage, my journey begins in earnest. Winds be swift, indeed; I would happily face ten-score of the Sultan's bayonets, would that I could only dispatch with this damnable waiting.


June the 18th, 1915

     Brief personal notes regarding a few odd events.

     We are now reaching the end of our major sea-voyage; we have rounded the coast of Spain, passed the straits of Gibraltar, and are now cruising at a good pace through the Mediterranean Sea. It is lovelier than I had allowed myself to hope. I am told we will reach Southern Italy in five or six days.

     While the scenery has vastly improved, I feel I should comment on a few strange occurrences which have taken place over the past two weeks. I mentioned in my last entry that I had first gained and then lost a day on my calendar; this has not happened again, but there are nonetheless some nagging thoughts and bizarre fears that have been preoccupying my mind. I have been having strange dreams, dreams of my father and the mountain that lies at the end of this journey. Often these dreams have no narrative or form, but consist solely of single visions, often of dead, white expanses of snow. In one of these, I saw Christ crucified amidst a terrifying, blinding blizzard. The blood that fell from His cross froze in midair, and was buried before it could stain the snow. I was awoken from that ream by Ibrahim, who was shaking me – he tells me I was screaming.

     In other dreams, I am confronted by masses and walls of text of various languages and alphabets; languages I know, alphabets such as cuneiform which I can recognize but not read, and always lines and pages and endless, eternal lengths of a bizarre script which I have never seen, its characters intricate and precise, like hieroglyphics, but entirely alien. Always in these dreams there is the sense that if the words would simply slow down, I could begin to pull them apart, to draw out their meaning, but they batter against my mind, ceaselessly, if anything seeming only to gain speed, until I find myself amidst a numbing cataclysm of text, each line and every letter diverting my attention but none working with others, until my concentration is shattered into a hundred points at once. Sometimes, at the height of my confusion, the letters turn to snowflakes, and I am left alone, helplessly, desperately alone, in the deadening white of words and winter which has no end.

     Once, having dozed off over a notebook, pen in hand, my dreams led me to this place. My mind reeling, I fell to my knees in the snow and waited to die. There was a dull pain in my arm which I took to be frostbite, but it gradually became more severe, more acute, and soon I woke with a start. I had drawn one of the foreign figures on my own arm, pressed so hard with the pen that the nib had actually cut my flesh. A mixture of blood and ink had pooled into a small puddle on the ship's deck between my feet. The mark may well be permanent. It is highly stylized, but it is clearly a pictogram, like the hieroglyphs of Egypt, though Ibrahim assures me it is not a hieroglyph. It depicts a kneeling sycophant, his arms raised in worship beside a small, thorned flower.