So it's currently 932 BCE, and I am lost somewhere in the wilderness of what will eventually become Central Asia. Less than six hours ago it was half-past 9PM in 2018, and I knew exactly where I was on the University of Pennsylvania campus.
The more I see of this place the more I think I might have accidentally breached the fabric of space/time, which is… bad. I'm not a physics major, but I think I broke at least three of the universe's laws of How Reality Is Defined—and let's not even get started on the potential philosophical/theological implications; it's too much.
If I think about this for more than a few seconds at a time I feel like I'm on the edge of a nervous breakdown, so… I won't. I won't think about it. I'm just going to keep writing in this journal, and by the time I'm finished recounting everything that's happened today I will not want to curl into a fetal position and scream. There. Okay.
Where to begin?
I guess I should start by saying that this isn't my journal. It's the notebook I use for my Latin class notes. I'm an undergrad studying for a degree in history and hoping to specialize in the classical era, specifically Hellenic Greece—hence the Latin. I attend UPenn and live in a suite in Harnwell House with Summer, Rachel, and Fatima, who is an exchange student from Turkey.
Now that I think about it (carefully avoiding any breakdown-worthy material), it's all Summer's fault that I'm lost in medieval Central Asia. Really!
See, she's wiccan and raised by hippies, and people make fun of her. Not in a really bad way—nobody is (was? will be?) spray-painting slurs on our door and saying she deserves to be burned at the stake—but they said her beliefs were stupid and childish and that her spells don't actually work. Fatima, who is Muslim, is especially disapproving. I kept my mouth shut and tried to be a gentle, supportive suite-mate, but I agreed with the last bit of criticism: magic isn't real. Hogwarts doesn't exist. You can't lay out some crystals in a pretty pattern, wave a wand, and rearrange the matter of the physical world.
Hell, you're not supposed to be able to time-travel, either.
I found Summer crying in the kitchenette of our suite and tried to cheer her up. I made her a cup of peach tea (from my super-secret tea stash, no less) and we sat down at the table so that she could have some company while crying out her woes, which entailed patting her shoulder and agreeing when she said that life just wasn't being fair to her. Eventually, she got the idea to perform a spell to "improve Harnwell House's energy". I was trying to be a good person when I agreed to help her do it, honest; I didn't care about the "energy" of Harnwell House. I thought the spell was complete and utter bullshit.
I agreed to go out and get the materials from the crafts shops and ethnic grocery stores around Philadelphia. The candles and chalk were easy, but it took forever to find the frankincense. It was dark by the time I got back to campus, and I was pissed at myself for signing away so much of my evening. Awkwardly wedged into my bag with the "magical" supplies was a copy of Beowulf, which I needed to lug on over to the library and bury myself in overnight for the sake of a literature class, and Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in the original Classical Greek, which would be a much more enjoyable re-read for the sake of an essay about religious sentiment among Greek intellectuals.
Everyone else in the class was using translated copies; I was hoping to exploit my fluency in Classical Greek for a few extra points.
Eh, I'm rambling. The point is that, as I was crossing the road back to Harnwell, I had a backpack with frankincense, candles, chalk, a copy of Thucydides' History, Beowulf, and this notebook for my Latin class.
And then I was hit by a car.
…I can't remember much about the car. The only things that come back clearly are being blinded by the headlights and having a moment to think "oh SHIT" and then—nothing. Which is probably for the best; would anyone actually want to remember their bones shattering and their organs being crushed into jelly as a half-ton-and-a-bit of steel slams into them at 50 mph? They'd be traumatized.
So. I had the "magical" supplies in my backpack when I was hit. Their purpose was to be used in a spell that would change the "energy" in Harnwell House (presumably so that people would stop bullying Summer). I didn't know how to do the spell; I drew no pentagrams with the chalk before the car hit me, I lit no candles, I chanted no words.
And yet, when I opened my eyes, I was lying in the middle of a treeless steppe of rolling hills, without a road or building in sight. Standing over me was a bearded, scowling man wearing a robe and some kind of headdress. He was holding the reins of a horse that was cropping grass next to his feet, and speaking a language I didn't understand.
The man spoke. He was middle-aged, with dark skin, hair, and eyes. He wore no jewelry or ornamentation of any kind, and his robe was made of black and grey striped panels. Neither his tone nor the expression on his face were kind.
"I don't understand," I said.
More words, again in that same language.
"I'm sorry, but I don't understand."
More words, and he seemed to be getting impatient.
"Do you speak English?"
He didn't attempt to speak this time, and just regarded me with a stony expression. I sat up slowly, blinking in the bright sunshine. I flexed my fingers and looked down at my hands, which were whole and undamaged. I looked at my legs, which were the same, and wiggled my toes in my sneakers—fine, just fine. Everything was fine.
In my mind's eye, the glare of headlights overwhelmed me, and I heard the blare of a horn and someone screaming—maybe me, maybe the driver, maybe someone else entirely.
I shivered.
The man said something for the fourth time, this time in a slightly gentler tone.
"¿Hablas español?" I asked. I'd taken the bare minimum of Spanish in high school. I wouldn't be able to say much, but I could establish that I was an American citizen, and he could help me find an English-speaker or, better yet, an embassy or consulate.
The man made no reaction, however. I sighed.
"Do you speak Greek?" I asked haltingly, in that language. I was better at reading than speaking. But even so, I wasn't speaking modern Greek—this was the Greek of Thucydides and Herodotus, who had lived and died 400-some years before the birth of Christ. A modern speaker would at best be able to pick out individual words here and there; the syntax was too archaic for real communication.
Plus, my accent was shit.
But this, oh this made the man react. He exclaimed in the same language as before and began speaking rapidly. I stood up, and he began gesturing with his hands. The horse raised its head from its grazing, its ears twitching as it took in the excitement in its master's voice. I looked beyond it, down the slope of a hill, and saw in the distance a dark blot of people and animals coming towards us.
I shaded my eyes with my hand. I could see horses and camels and people atop them, but no vehicles—not even wagons.
"What is this?" I asked.
The man gestured towards the group of people and animals, and spoke some, but of course I didn't understand him.
"Is this a—a ritual procession of some kind? A funeral?" I couldn't think of a better guess as to why the people had no vehicles. The man's lack of comprehension or even recognition of English said that I was somewhere very far away from the UPenn campus, and the camels made me doubt it was anywhere in North America, South America, or Europe.
The man gestured towards the procession and took a few steps down the hill towards it. He looked at me and made something similar to a beckoning gesture. When I took a step towards him, he took another step towards the procession. I took a step, and that seemed to satisfy him that I was indeed going to follow. He turned to his horse, swung himself into the saddle, and then set off at a walking pace down the hill. I followed.
I had no idea what kind of people were in the procession, or what their goal was or where they were going. Looking back, I'm appalled by how naïve and trusting I was; they could have been slavers, bandits, or even just dishonorable people who weren't above raping and robbing a lone, defenseless woman they found in the wilderness, and I just followed the first person I saw right up to them. Disgusting. My train of thought as I followed the man was little more than annoyance at the fact that he hadn't offered to let me ride behind him on his horse, and was instead making me walk beside the animal.
We approached the procession. Several people called out in the same language that the man had used to speak to me. He called back. A person on camelback lashed the flank of their mount with a riding crop, making the animal turn around and engage in the most awkward run I had ever seen towards the back of the group. By the time I was close enough to smell the sweat and general bodily stink of perhaps a hundred people and beasts traveling under the hot sun, the person on the camel returned with two others in tow: one was a man wearing a black robe and headdress riding a white horse, and the other was an older man with a white robe and orange headdress mounted on a dark brown horse.
These people called out to my escort, who called back to them, who left the general body of the procession and came towards us. The man in the white robe dismounted and approached me. He stopped a little more than an arm's length away, put a hand over his heart, and then said a phrase I recognized: "As-salāmu 'alaykum."
I knew the proper reply, but didn't trust myself to pronounce it correctly. In Greek, I said: "And peace be upon you as well."
Had I really been unable to recognize Arabic this entire time?
"Who are you?" the man asked, "And what are you doing in this place?" His Greek was much more fluid than mine, and (wonder of wonders) the same style. I guess classical scholars weren't as uncommon as I'd thought back in UPenn.
"My name is Ashley Briggs. I was attacked in the night—" I had no idea how to say 'hit by a car' in 2400-year-old Greek, "—and awoke only when this man found me on the hillside over there. Could you please tell me where I am, sir?"
"You are in the territory of the Oghuz Turks. I am saddened to hear that you were attacked. Do you require medical aid?"
"No, but I thank you."
"Do you know where your husband might be?"
"I am not married, sir."
"What of your father?"
"He is… far away. I left home to study the classics—with his permission, of course." I'd been introduced to Fatima's parents over Skype and had a decent grasp of how to talk to Muslim men.
"So that is how you speak the classical tongue! It is rare beyond measure to find a woman so educated. Do you have an escort?"
"No, sir."
His eyebrows rose. His younger companion interjected with something impatient and Arabic. The man responded calmly in the same language before turning back to me.
"Forgive me. My name is Melchisidek, son of Abimelech, son of Chileab. My young friend is Ahmed, son of Fahdlan, son of Rashid. We are diplomats sent by al-Muqtadir bi-llāh, the great caliph of Baghdad, to the king of the Volga Bulgars. We travel there now."
Baghdad—so, Iraq. I had barely any interest in modern politics and wasn't sure who the current ruler there was, but I was pretty damn sure that Bulgaria was nowhere near the Volga river, which was in the middle of Russia(1).
These people were either insane or part of some scheme I was in no way prepared to take on. Had I stumbled across a cult? Unfortunately, they were the only people within sight, and I wasn't keen on wandering through Turkey or wherever this place was until I found someone more sane.
I felt my stomach knotting in anxiety, but managed to take a deep breath and ask: "If it is agreeable to you, sir, I would like to stay with you for a time—just until I have the means to return home. Please. I—I do not want to lost here."
Melchisidek did not answer right away, but instead asked: "What faith do you keep?"
"I am a Christian, sir." Technically. I was baptized and confirmed under St. Jerome(2) per my grandmother's wishes, but as soon as she'd passed away during my adolescence I'd stopped attending church and devolved into a disinterested agnostic—but a possibly-crazy Muslim wouldn't be interested in hearing all that.
"Then it would gladden our hearts to provide you with aught that you need," Melchisidek said. He must have seen the surprised look on my face, because he smiled and continued: "Though it was through Ismail's line that the prophet Muhammad was born, and through Isaac's Iesus Christ, were they not both the sons of Abraham? In the land of the godless barbarian Oghuz, it is proper for us to provide aid to one another."
Well, that was… religious. And bigoted. But it meant that Melchisidek was willing to help me, so I wasn't going to complain. He turned and said something to Ahmed, who called out to two men riding double on a mule waiting some distance away. They approached and spoke to him, and seemed to be disagreeing with him. Ahmed's tone become more insistent, and with scowls and grumbling they both dismounted.
"Can you ride?" Melchisidek asked.
"Uh… no," I answered.
"Then today is the day you shall learn," Melchisidek said far too serenely. The mule must have easily weighed more than 1000 lbs—and it was supposed to obey me just because I was tugging on some ropes attached to its head? Ridiculous. Give me a car or even a bicycle any day.
One of the men riding the mule led it over, now wearing a glare that was directed straight at me. His companion, still standing where they had dismounted, had kept his scowl with his arms folded across his chest. Melchisidek saw me looking at them and spoke loudly and sharply in Arabic. Instantly, their faces smoothed into masks of disinterested neutrality, and the one not holding the mule's reins jogged back to the body of the caravan and disappeared into the mass of people and animals.
"I apologize for the discourtesy of our slaves," Melchisidek said.
Slaves? This man was keeping people enslaved? What if he tried to enslave me? (The fear was illogical: Melchisidek had just accepted my request to allow me to travel with him, and had treated me with nothing but generosity and courtesy. But I'm African-American; my skin is as dark as the coffee beans my ancestors had been forced to plant and harvest on plantations in the Caribbean. Hatred/terror of being held in bondage might as well be imprinted in my DNA).
While I was caught in that internal spiral of shock/revulsion/fear, the slave not attending to the mule had returned with a folded pile of cloth. He presented it to Melchisidek, who nodded, and then brought it to me.
"Please accept this burqha, to guard your modesty from the gaze of dishonorable men and the wanton Oghuz," Melchisidek said. His tone and wording made it sound like I was being given a gift, but from the expectant look on his face and those of the slaves it felt like an order.
I took the burqha and unfolded it. It was a plain black robe with long sleeves whose hem reached a little past my ankles, with both a hood and a covering for the lower face. Over the portion where my eyes were supposed to be there was a fine, loose mesh.
I took off my backpack and put it on. As soon as I had everything adjusted into the proper position and was peering out at the world through the mesh, I noticed that Melchisdek, Ahmed, and the slaves were actually looking at me now. Previously, they had stared past me and refused to make eye contact. Now, covered with the burqha, I was apparently safe to look at.
"Thank you, sir," I said, and Melchisidek dipped his head in acknowledgement.
I shrugged my backpack's straps back over my shoulders, and the slave leading the mule walked up to me. I had to hike up the burqha's hem to be able to set my foot in the stirrup (which made the men all pointedly look elsewhere) but the mule didn't seem alarmed when I swung myself up to sit on its back.
Melchisidek, however, tsked in disapproval.
"You cannot sit that way, daughter of Briggs," he chided. "It is more modest to sit sideways in the saddle, and will also preserve you from the soreness of riding."
Because God forbid a man see me with spread legs, since they're animals with no sense of self-control. First the burqha, and now this. My inner feminist was seething. But both the mule and the burqha itself were gifts given to me out of nothing more than Melchisidek's own altruism; I couldn't refuse this request without disgracing both him and myself.
Very, very, very carefully I stood up in the saddle, swaying dangerously for a moment as the mule shifted its footing, and then turned so that I could sit sideways. I smoothed down the burqha's skirt so that it covered my legs down to the ankles, and became safe to look at once more.
Melchisidek walked his horse over to me and took the mule's reins, then kept hold of them as he spurred his mount into first a trot, and then a canter as we hurried to rejoin the stragglers of the procession. The mule didn't have handlebars or even a seatbelt; the most I could do was cling to the edge of the saddle with my fingers and keep my teeth gritted tight to stop from whimpering. I could feel the animal's muscles moving underneath me and hear its labored breathing. It had four legs that moved and interacted with each other rather than four wheels that remained solidly apart in their separate corners. What if the animal stumbled or tripped? What if it fell with me on top of it? What if it fell on top of me?
I felt nauseous—and damn all propriety, but sidesaddle was the most insecure position ever dreamed of for sitting on a equine's back. I was going to fall. I was going to fall. I was going to f—
We reached the main body of the procession and slowed down, which let me remember how to breathe and reminded me to loosen my death-grip on the saddle's edge before my hands started to cramp.
"Are you well, daughter of Briggs?" Melchisidek asked.
"Y-Yes, sir," I said. "I have never gone so fast before on an animal's back." We likely hadn't broken, what, 20 mph? But it was so different than going in a vehicle, even though I was used to doing 60 mph on the highway back home, that it had seemed frightening. I also hadn't had an ounce of control through the entire experience.
Melchisidek smiled, though it didn't seem mocking. The front of the procession had halted, and the rest of it was slowly following suit like a line of cars piling up bumper to bumper at a red light.
"May I ask why we have stopped?"
Melchisidek shaded his eyes with his hand and peered ahead. "Our leader, Sousan al-Rasi, is speaking to Kudarkin."
"Who is Kudarkin?"
"He is the subordinate of the chief of this tribe of the Oghuz. We must ask his permission to travel through their land."
Eventually, permission was given, and the procession carried on at a walking place. Donkeys brayed, camels groaned, and men cursed both in loud Arabic. The sun beat down and made me sweat under the burqha as it slid down towards the west.
There was nothing to do except sit on the mule's back and watch the scenery go by, of which there was little: the steppe was hilly, but had no trees, settlements, rivers, or even rock formations. The only interesting things that occurred were when some of the Arab travelers took the hoods off the raptors they traveled with (aside from servants/slaves, it must have been a party largely made up of noblemen) and let the birds loose to hunt rabbits in the long grass. Occasionally one flew back with a kill.
The two slaves who had given up the mule for me had no choice but to follow behind our mounts, mostly walking but jogging a few paces once in a while in order to keep up. Sweat gleamed on their faces and darkened the underarms of their undyed robes. They did not look happy. I felt guilty, but neither wanted to walk myself nor knew how to approach Melchisidek in regards to changing the situation.
At last, I could stand the boredom no longer and began pestering Melchisidek with questions—largely about the Oghuz, but I also tried to be sneaky and ask a few broader ones about the rest of the world. He answered patiently and with the appearance of honesty, but his responses were… troubling. He talked of how the Byzantine Empire had recently made war upon the caliphate ruling Baghdad, of the Holy Roman Empire that had risen from the ashes of Charlemagne's rule of Frankia/Germania, and of how the Iberian peninsula was flourishing under Muslim rule.
I remembered enough from high school to know that the Byzantine Empire was conquered by Muslim forces at the beginning of the Renaissance and became the Ottoman Empire, but couldn't pin even a broad handful of centuries on the other details he mentioned.
"What is the year?" I asked.
"310," Melchisidek answered.
That didn't make sense. It was true that post-Classical history wasn't one of my strong points, but I knew that the final collapse of the Roman Empire was roughly 450—which didn't leave a lot of room for all these other political powers.
"In Islam," Melchisidek said, "We count our years starting after the Prophet's journey from Mecca to Medina, called the hijri. That would be the 622nd year after the death of Iesus."
"So that would put the date at… 932 AD(3), smack in the middle of the Dark Ages. That made more sense than the year being 310 AD, but it was still wrong by more than a millennia. What kind of fantasy world were Melchisidek and the rest of these travelers living in? Finding myself stranded in Turkey I could (reluctantly) accept, but time travel? Ludicrous.
Still. Melchisidek's knowledge of "contemporary" politics was expansive and detailed. Maybe this was a troop of reenactors who were just really dedicated to staying in-character. I could play along to avoid offending him, and we would eventually reach a city or town and there part ways. That seemed good.
I wasn't ready to face the truth.
The conversation turned to geography, since I wanted to know where exactly in the Anatolian peninsula we were located (as it turned out, not at all: the Oghuz Turks claimed the land between the Caspian and Aral seas, which corresponds with modern Kazakhstan, and Turkey as I knew it was inhabited by the Khazar Khaganate). We moved on to Strabo and Pytheas, two Greek writers/geographers whose texts I happened to be familiar with. Melchisidek had been polite and informative when discussing what he was pretending to view as the present, but he truly came alive when our discussion focused on the ancient writers. He grew animated and gestured with his hands, explaining the parallels between the Muslim and Hellenic world in ways that I found fascinating, from language to clothing to art.
Here is a fact that is especially pertinent, which I hadn't concluded on my own: both the Hellenic and Muslim worlds hold women to similar same standards of modesty—married or unmarried, respectable women do not leave their father's/husband's house if they can help it, and go veiled in public if they are required to do so. In my mind, the burqha transformed from a misogynistic burden into more of a learning experience: to see the world as a Hellenic woman would!
"But do Muslim women have the Heraia Olympia?" I asked, referring to the women-only section of the Ancient Greek Olympics. It was held prior to the men's competition, which women could not even attend as spectators; the penalty for attempting to so much as watch the games was death, traditionally via being thrown off a cliff.
"No," Melchisidek answered. "But we have no Olympic games, either. The Greeks were a vain people, and showed their nakedness in the gymnasiums of their cities as they sought physical perfection. Perhaps they would not have fallen from power if they had devoted themselves to prayer instead."
Then, however, he smiled. "Truly, I have enjoyed our conversation today, daughter of Briggs. By Allah's grace you have overcome the weakness of mind common to your sex and made yourself into a respectable scholar. I feel fortunate to have met you."
I was grateful for the way the burqha hid my face. Weakness of mind? It was one thing to keep yourself in-character for a performance, but quite another to outright insult—I can feel myself getting angry again, even hours later as I write down the occurrence.
"You are very kind, sir," I gritted out.
We carried on for the rest of the day, and came upon the encampment of Etrek ibn-al-Qatagan, the headman of the tribe of the Oghuz who had agreed to be our host.
CHAPTER NOTES:
(1) Bulgars (the ethnic group that would eventually found modern Bulgaria) created their own state along the banks of the Volga river, which existed between the 7th and 13th centuries before being destroyed by the rising Mongol Empire c. 1241. In the year that this story is taking place, their leader, Almış, had recently converted to Islam. Melchisidek and Ahmed are traveling to his court to provide religious guidance as well as strengthen the political ties between Volga Bulgaria and Baghdad.
(2) St. Jerome is the patron of librarians, archivists, and translators, and his feast day is September 30th.
(3) Ashley's reckoning of the date is inaccurate, since the Islamic lunar year doesn't correspond exactly to the Gregorian (Christian) calendar. The year of Ahmed ibn Fahdlan's journey to the Volga Bulgars is actually 922 CE, but the difference is minute enough that I only mention it here for posterity's sake.