(full rewrite of the first draft. Let me know what you think.)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IdxTnrE3c-Kg6PcXMM1pppIhCNXgePp3dzgKXEXtSrQ/edit?tab=t.0

Part 1-

We drove to the east from Baghdad. The road was overtaken by the desert some 30 miles short of where Zaya said the village would be. We passed through open country, what the map showed as a basin, but in reality proved to be a constant upward slope in the direction of our destination. I drove the lead. Elias rode with me. The others were in the second truck following a few hundred meters behind. Progress was slow; the ground loose, rocky and littered with pits hiding in shadows. There was no reserve team to find us if something went wrong. 

Zaya plotted the course from memory. She hadn’t been back there in nearly twenty years, yet she said she remembered the way as clearly as the route to her own home. I had no idea how anyone could find their way in this barren land without a map, but she insisted.

The team, five of us outside of myself. Zaya, the reason we are making this trip. Elias, our infuriatingly extroverted folklorist. Daniel, a wide-eyed 23-year-old geologist from Utah. The blatant stress in his eyes told everyone exactly how many times he left his hometown. Mara, our surveyor. A quiet woman with sharp eyes, and the only person on this trip who isn’t insufferably opinionated. And one more, a graduate student under Elias whose name I kept nearly remembering. I’ll find it again eventually.

They were going out to document the area. That is the word Zaya used when I was hired and the word she insisted on using every day since. Just observe and document. I had heard the word so many times I had begun to wonder if she thought it was my name. 

I am the security for this expedition. Routes in and out, camp discipline, and making sure none of my resident intellectuals wander off into the sand and meet an untimely end. In country like this that means mostly watching and waiting for bad choices to be made. This far into the dust there is no one to fight. Only the land itself and the burning sun above.

-

We passed over a low ridge sometime after 16:00, the village coming into view below us in a shallow valley, framed by the largest hill I've seen in this half of the country. The village sat in shadow, yet the sun-bleached stone buildings held the sun in a way that gave it a definitive radiance. The basin that the village sat in was green and lush in a way that made little sense for the surrounding land, the hill rising behind being greener still at its crest. 

I signaled a halt and came to a stop just on the other side of the ridge, reaching for the radio and calling over to Zaya in the second vehicle. 

“This it?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“The top of the hill...”

“It’s the Old Garden, that’s where we’re going.”

Her voice was pitched, but oddly restrained. Like a person returning to a childhood haunt, who isn’t sure if they have permission to be there. I didn’t have the word for it then, and I don’t now.

We began to descend from the ridge, and the path, if it had ever been one, dissolved beneath us altogether. The second truck followed in my tracks. My eyes drifted to the crest of the hill as we approached, it was no less lush. A man can be convinced of many things at a distance, the garden did not deceive. 

The village sat unassuming at the foot of the hill. Low, blocky buildings of mudbrick, bleached by years in the sun. The desire paths between them hard packed by decades of constant use. Fields to the south and west were irrigated from some source I could not see. The hill sat behind, looming over it all, its crown vibrant and out of place in this wasteland. 

The villagers saw us coming. They were gathered, not crowding, but grouped in knots of gossip and anticipation. I pulled the truck up to the edge of what would be the path entering the village and killed the engine, the sudden silence was intrusive. After we dismounted, an older man came forward. Sun dark skin, a broad flat-rimmed hat tilted back on his head revealing bright brown eyes. He wore a plain cotton belted tunic. The hem at his ankles was a fading orange-red, not a dye, but a stain pressed into the fabric from long use. The ends of his sleeves were the same, but the color worked into the fabric there was a dull grassy green. He approached the near side of Zaya’s truck and they embraced in the unsure way that distant relatives often do. 

He spoke to her then. I am unsure about what language he was speaking. I heard the sounds of his words, and I did not know them. But I did hear the meaning of what he said. Which was something akin to “You took your time coming home.” 

I heard both. The sounds and the meaning. Conflicting intonation between what I understood and what he said. I chalked it up to my long years of working with the people of this country, and my subconscious familiarity with the language. I’m not sure if I believed that then. I’m sure I don’t now.

Zaya introduced us by role. Security. Geology, folklore, and surveyor, and the student whose name I still can't remember. The villager, whose name I caught as Ishak and who I later learned was Zaya’s uncle, nodded to each of us in turn, an honest brightness behind his eyes, and gestured toward the houses. His hand, when he raised it, had an ivy cord wrapped twice around the wrist, green and new.

I noticed their clothing then. I had seen it from the beginning, but had not yet processed what I was seeing. The people of the village, those gathered at the intersections of paths and observing our welcome, those who waited in doorways and those who whispered around corners, were all dressed as Ishak was. Plain cotton belted tunics. The women lacked the belts and hats, but were not without adornment. And by that I mean that their clothing was consumed with natural color. Children wove between the adults and in every child's hand was a flash of color. Be it a flower, a twisted vine, a petal pressed flat, or fistfuls of vibrant fruits. The children gifted these things to their mothers as they passed. Weaving them into their hair, around their arms, or draping woven garlands of green across their shoulders. They received these gifts with smiles and laughs, and continued their work or conversation as the children turned and jogged back toward the village, back toward the base of the hill. 

The men stood off a bit in the way that men do. Their hats holding bands of woven ivy, older and yellowing in places. At one man's wrist was a band of corded grass that was still green, but obviously not new. They all wore these things as if they belonged there.  

-

The sun had dipped below the horizon by the time the trucks were stationed and the gear unloaded into the two small rooms Ishak had given us for our stay. Ishak's wife fed us. I did not catch her name and I am ashamed of that. Her kindness was worth more than I gave. She served us flatbread and a colorful stew that I couldn’t identify, a side of greens in oil and a slightly sweet clear drink that tasted like flowers. It was a clean and delicious meal. Zaya spoke with them in that strange language that I could understand the meaning of more than the words. The rest of us ate and listened and spoke when spoken to by our hosts. Daniel, seemingly unable to hold himself back, stuttered out a question about the source of the water keeping the hill and fields so lush. What he said was difficult to put together, but sounded something like, “The water comes from the old garden, it always has.”

His wife added, “It is good water, clean. My grandmother said it was a gift.”

Our hosts then decided to change the subject. I noticed the look they shared and the sudden change in the direction of the conversation. Daniel did not notice. Elias did. He caught my eye across the table and held it for a moment longer than what is natural, before looking back to his food. I realized then that not all of my academic charges were equally as helpless. 

Zaya walked us out and began leading us back to the rooms. She walked next to me as we approached, gaining my attention. Looking up to the hill and the stars that silhouetted its borders, she said, “Thank you for getting us here safely.” Her smile was soft and her eyes distant as the stars she gazed at. 

“You’re welcome.”

“You will have a lot of nothing to do while we study here. I’m sorry.”

“That’s alright. A week of peace in a quiet place like this is basically a vacation.”

Her smile turned to me at that comment. Smaller than before, but still a smile.  She said goodnight, and turned back to the separate room her uncle cleared for her in their home.

I don’t know why she thanked me for driving safely, the road was empty and anyone could have made the trip, and I think she knew that. I think she was saying thank you for something else, and just used the drive as an excuse. Though, I'm not sure what. I hoped things would become clear in the days to come.

-

Sometime after 22:00 while I was recording the events of the day I found my mind drifting. The village was quiet, but far from silent. The wind blew a faint static against the walls, and the nocturnal birds called into the night. Somewhere in the distance a female voice sang a lullaby to a restless child, and I could hear every bit of it. I could also hear what I could only describe as water, a thin roiling sound, soft but distinct. I could only imagine that it was the spring. The spring on the hill, a click out and up. A sound that should not be audible from this distance. Far from it. 

-

I awoke late in the night. An odd tightness in my gut jarring me awake. I dressed and stepped outside for air and my eyes were drawn up to the hill. It was dark. The sun had been gone for hours, and there was no moon yet to speak of. The village had a paltry few lamps giving off only the faintest glow. The hill should have been a black shape blotting out the stars. It was not. I could see it. I could see the green at its crown. Not well. I could not see it in great detail. But I could see it. I could see its color and its shape. I didn’t understand, so I pushed it from my thoughts. I was tired, it was nothing.

-

I caught myself rubbing my old crucifix again. My father gave it to me when I was a kid, before he passed. I wasn’t sure why, but I caught myself holding it more and more often. The smooth worn gold is comforting somehow. Old habits are hard to escape.