Through Darkest Europe by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

X

A few Italians were part of the archaeological team excavating east of Naples. Most members came either from the Maghrib or from a madrasa in Arkansistan. The leader of the Maghribi contingent was an eager young fellow named Lisarh ibn Yahsub. “I wish we had more locals with us,” he told Khalid and Dawud. “I especially wish we did because of the language issues. We slog through Latin, but for them it comes naturally. Their language is descended from it, and they even use it in their religious services.”

“Yes, I know about that,” Khalid agreed. “But why don’t you? It’s their country and their history, after all. Some of them know a good deal about it.” He told how Major Badoglio had quoted Caligula.

“Did he? Isn’t that interesting?” Lisarh said. “Well, he must be a secular man, and there aren’t enough of them here. For too many Italians, anything that happened when the pagans ruled isn’t worth remembering.”

“Kind of like the idea of the Jahiliyah,” Dawud put in.

“Well, yes, but we don’t think of the days before the Prophet—peace be unto him—as the Time of Ignorance any more. Not all those days, I should say.” The archaeologist eyed the investigator. “The Jahiliyah isn’t exactly your people’s idea, is it?”

“You mean because I’m a Jew? I’m part of the wider world, too, or I am whenever the wider world feels like letting me be one, anyhow,” Dawud answered.

“That’s a commendable attitude. I wish more of the Italians had it,” Lisarh ibn Yahsub said. “Some of the Italians who were here have packed up and gone home because of the political situation.”

“The political situation. Yes. That’s one way to put it,” Khalid said. The archaeological dig had a barbed-wire perimeter strengthened with sandbagged machine-gun nests that would have done credit to a Ministry of Information building. The men serving the machine guns and walking the perimeter were among the Grand Duke’s most trusted troops. If they weren’t, they might have turned on the archaeologists themselves.

“It’s so frustrating!” Lisarh burst out. “We’ve known for almost two thousand years that there were two Roman towns buried under the lava here. One Roman writer, Pliny the Elder, came to the eruption site and died near here trying to get people away by boat. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, wrote about what he saw from farther away.”

“Why didn’t he go with his uncle?” Khalid asked.

“Nobody knows for sure. The best guess is, he didn’t have the nerve,” Lisarh answered. “And so he lived for another forty or fifty years, and had a fine career of his own. Not brave, maybe, but very sensible. His account has been available for centuries, but the Italians never did any digging of their own. The people from the madrasa at Tuskalusa deserve the credit. They started the project twenty-odd years ago, and we’ve found incredible things since.”

“Arkansistan has even more oil than the Maghrib does,” Dawud said. “More than it knows what to do with, almost.”

“Not like the Faisalis who rule the holy cities and the Rub‘al-Khali,” Khalid said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.