The Bedouin Necklace

They were not supposed to be anywhere near there. The war was many years ago, but the men who fought it were still around and just as paranoid as ever. They told the Masri customs officer they were archeologists looking for ancient copper trade just west of the canal zone. This was true, but they were only making a short stop there and proceeding far beyond there into what was once a warzone and was still a region where no journalists or foreigners were allowed. Likewise, no one was allowed to even ask why the area was taboo.

Juan and his girlfriend Nubia knew that to become distinguished archeologists they needed to find something no one else had, which could be difficult as this region had been heavily studied for many decades. And they probably needed to get as far away from the local Ministry of Antiquities as possible. Those guys were all oligarchs who didn't know a thing about archeology, they just forced everyone to let them do the press releases and take some artifacts for their museum so that people will think they are archeologists. However, they didn't know what they were doing and it was easy to get around them.

Travel of any sort was needlessly complicated in this area. There was plenty of crime and no one thought anything of the muggers around, but all businesses were cash-only and the nearest bank was by the canal, and the banks relied on expensive wire transfers because the bankers out here did not even trust each other. John and Nubia both had plenty of cash on them but the odds of getting marooned out there were pretty high.

Nubia had actually migrated from this country as a child and got an education that was actually worth something in Canada, and now was back and wanted to play politics as well as archeology. Juan didn't care in the slightest for politics, and they had argued because he didn't want politics to jeopardize either of their dissertations. But now he was driving them both onto a ferry in a small rental car with all their gear to cross the ferry. They were off to look for ancient mines of copper and turquoise because allegedly some of these mines were still being worked by the Bedouins the old-fashioned way.

Out into the rocky desert they drove. Juan could point to many of the craggy hills and recall what importance they had in ancient and modern history. The paved highway they were on was quite incongruous as there was little sign of human activity out here, let alone modern living, but the highway was part of the army's effort to solidify their hold on this area from both external and internal enemies. The few houses they passed had no power lines connecting them and they passed some people who had no house at all but a tent. The canal they crossed was a heavily developed area, but a few dozen miles away the land was nearly indistinguishable from the ancient world before technology. The reason, of course, was everything modern in this country depended on foreigners to help. Like Juan, who was the skilled archeologist.

They arrived in town to get gas. If you could call it a town, it was a collection of drab buildings of uncut stone in no particular order with no particular signs of what purpose most of them served. Asking questions was a bit complicated since Nubia spoke Masri, not Bedouin, and Juan’s accent would immediately mark him as not being local. But questions were necessary since none of the roads had names and none of the buildings had numbers, and they could spend hours looking for stuff even though they knew roughly where this mine was supposed to be. The clerk at the gas station was a Masri who knew there were miners in both copper and turquoise that came through there, but he directed them to the street market where many miners vend their goods and find work as day laborers.

The market was not the crowded street markets of the big city, as it appeared that either the market was dead today or the handful of booths and men sitting around gossiping was a market. They saw one man sitting on a street corner with vegetables and other possessions on a blanket, and Juan judged he was hocking goods and figured they might as well get lunch while they were there. On approach, both Nubia and Juan recognized the smell of hash and saw some on the blanket and everything appeared dusty.

When buying food they asked about miners near there.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ve worked down there from time to time.” In the conversation that followed, he didn’t see why they were interested in the mines as there was honestly very little money in it since these guys didn’t have any equipment. “People who work down there really want to be left alone. A guy I know comes into town to sell his goods but no one really knows anything about him.”

This sounded like a warning to Juan, but the vendor did provide directions to the place he worked. Juan noticed something hanging out of the vendor’s bag and asked to see it. The vendor awkwardly obliged, and now even Nubia wondered what Juan was up to but seemed afraid to ask. Juan examined the item with far more interest than he had pressed questions relevant to his dissertation.

It was a large elaborate necklace held together with a fine chain that was partially fairly new, partially extremely old, and patched in one place with a string. Dozens if not hundreds of dirty coins hung from them from holes knocked into them long ago, and the coins were of many shapes and sizes. This was a fairly common piece of jewelry in this part of the world. The Bedouin women wore these over their Niqabs to show off how rich they were and because there was nothing to spend money on out here anyway. Typically they were retained as family heirlooms.

“How much do you want for this?” Juan asked without looking up.

“Eh, that kind of belongs to my sister.”

“How much will she take for it???”

The vendor was positively taken aback. Juan simply pulled out his wallet and started counting out all the money he had on him. The vendor was still unsure if it was for sale, so Juan looked at Nubia and said to give him her purse.

Nubia could tell this was something very important but was befuddled by the request as the urgency grew in Juan’s voice. His tone said there was something involved he could not say aloud. Juan offered the vendor the equivalent of well over a thousand American dollars, which was the 6-12 months' wages in this part of the world. The vendor was in utter shock but said that while the necklace had been in the family for as long as anyone could remember they did need the money.

Juan and Nubia went back to the car, and when the car doors closed she looked at him in annoyance and expectation of an explanation. But Juan already got out his tablet and was writing down the markings on the coins.

“Well, what was that about?”

Juan looked at her and held up the necklace: “Do you even know what this is?”

“A… Brass necklace?” she replied in annoyance and confusion.

“These coins are GOLD.”

Now Nubia was in disbelief and took the necklace out of his hands and looked at each coin closely and under the dirt and wear of age she saw these were indeed minted coins and most of them were gold, some were silver, and some copper.

Juan leaned over and started pointing at the faces and titles of each coin, showing how there seemed to be a coin from every dynasty that ever came through this country. There was a British coin, Ottoman coins, Mamluk coins, Saracen coins, Greek coins, Roman coins, and at least one coin much older than the rest plus others Juan could not immediately identify. The necklace was abnormally large for Bedouin jewelry and weighed one or two pounds, meaning the price of the gold alone was in the tens of thousands of dollars and as artifacts they were literally priceless.

Juan drove them out of town to a desolate place and immediately set about finding a hiding place for their treasure. Eventually, they settled on putting it in a ziplock bag and leaving it inside a ripped cushion in the backseat. Afterward, they simply went about their business looking for a mine. What they found was nothing to speak of, a relatively shallow hole in the ground with no signs of whether it was the new mine the vendor spoke of or an ancient mine. Nor could they find anyone nearby that might shed light on the topic. This search continued for several hours because Juan was hoping for an exceptionally deep mine that would be a sign of continuous mining from ancient until modern times.

The night started falling and they had no money for a hotel room or gas and were starting to run out, so they drove back to the canal and had to wire transfer money to themselves. Over the weeks of their stay, they never had any trouble asking questions in the allegedly forbidden zones even though they did hear horror stories of militias, plainclothes police, and airstrikes. Nubia had the resist the urge to plaster these things on the internet immediately. While they found fairly recent mines taking turquoise out of the grounds, they did not find any ancient mines that were not already known, but they did explore these and find some ancient wall markings. Juan never did succeed in his original purpose but did become a legend at university over the matter of the necklace.

How did they get such a precious artifact through airport security without the government declaring it a national artifact? Simple, Juan had Nubia wear it over a burqa, politely took it off to pass through the metal detector, and no one ever said a thing. Years later, when the existence of the necklace was widely known, Juan spoke to a director from the Ministry of Antiquities and found that he was completely oblivious to how it was smuggled out under his nose. The director, however, did not seem surprised that a priceless artifact was being carried around by transient nomads for centuries and no one knew how valuable it was. Juan was equally unsurprised about any of this.