earlier on his way to the museum.
There were no taxis on the street; there never were when it rained, a phenomenon he heard others complain about but that he never understood. Where did the taxis all disappear to?
The street he walked on was dark and quiet. A car had just turned on the same street and was moving slowly, almost as if it was looking for something or someone.
Adrenaline kicked in. There were bad people everywhere, even in nice neighborhoods. Maybe the people in the car were going to rob him and beat him. Maybe kill him.
He suddenly heard the car speed up. Abdullah started to run. It was a gut impulse. He almost knocked down a person as he rounded the corner.
The car was almost beside him. He tried not to look at it, keeping his feet in motion and his focus in front of him, planning his next move.
A familiar voice shouted out from the passenger side window, “Father! Stop! We’ve been trying to find you!”
Chapter 16
As soon as the last guests left, I rushed to review the provenance for the mask. Neal had already split earlier, which was fine with me, after I told him I was too bummed out to have sex with him. I’m sure he found somebody else to satisfy him. From looks I saw pass between him and Angela before, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had something going.
I took another look at the man’s handout as I made my way to the museum’s executive suite. Just as he had told me, it stated he was a former curator for the Iraqi museum. The title had different meanings in different places, from someone in charge of the collections, as I was at the Piedmont, down to someone who swept the floors.
Studying the fuzzy, grainy picture again, I didn’t see anything that clearly identified the location of the mask when it was photographed. It sat on a workbench, for sure. But I didn’t see anything that identified where the bench was.
The fact the picture didn’t clearly infer that the location was the Iraqi museum was critical. Worse than artifacts that were freshly dug up by tomb robbers—pieces with actual dirt on them—were ones stolen from other museums and collectors. Those weren’t dirty metaphorically; they had stripes on them—
prison stripes
—because they usually could be identified and traced back to the rightful owner.
Everyone in the art world was familiar with the looting of Iraqi antiquities following the American invasion in 2003. Many thousands of museum pieces had been stolen. No one knew the exact amount, although I’ve seen a figure of 15,000 or more mentioned. In addition, when the police restraints came off and the country turned to chaos as sectarian violence erupted and law and order broke down, thousands of antiquity sites had been invaded by tomb robbers who often inadvertently destroyed as much as they stole.
At the same time the museum was being looted, priceless and irreplaceable books and manuscripts were being destroyed at the Iraqi National Library as flames devoured thousands of rare pieces.
The devastation of knowledge and the cultural heritage of both the museum and the library had been compared to the burning of the great Library of Alexandria that came about as a result of the intrigues of Caesar and Cleopatra. By today’s standards, it would be like the destruction of both the Louvre and the Vatican Library.
As would be expected, the availability of Middle Eastern artifacts shot up after the debacle.
Certainly I bought some pieces; in fact, the best pieces in the Piedmont collection were acquired by me during the past year, but I always made sure to check the Art Loss Register first. Not that that act alone would fly about missing Iraqi museum pieces. Like everyone else in the business, because of the nature of the losses and the inadequacy of the record keeping at the museum I was well aware that not all of the losses were actually listed in the Register.
But I wouldn’t have bought a piece that I definitely knew was contraband. I wasn’t that
There were no taxis on the street; there never were when it rained, a phenomenon he heard others complain about but that he never understood. Where did the taxis all disappear to?
The street he walked on was dark and quiet. A car had just turned on the same street and was moving slowly, almost as if it was looking for something or someone.
Adrenaline kicked in. There were bad people everywhere, even in nice neighborhoods. Maybe the people in the car were going to rob him and beat him. Maybe kill him.
He suddenly heard the car speed up. Abdullah started to run. It was a gut impulse. He almost knocked down a person as he rounded the corner.
The car was almost beside him. He tried not to look at it, keeping his feet in motion and his focus in front of him, planning his next move.
A familiar voice shouted out from the passenger side window, “Father! Stop! We’ve been trying to find you!”
Chapter 16
As soon as the last guests left, I rushed to review the provenance for the mask. Neal had already split earlier, which was fine with me, after I told him I was too bummed out to have sex with him. I’m sure he found somebody else to satisfy him. From looks I saw pass between him and Angela before, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had something going.
I took another look at the man’s handout as I made my way to the museum’s executive suite. Just as he had told me, it stated he was a former curator for the Iraqi museum. The title had different meanings in different places, from someone in charge of the collections, as I was at the Piedmont, down to someone who swept the floors.
Studying the fuzzy, grainy picture again, I didn’t see anything that clearly identified the location of the mask when it was photographed. It sat on a workbench, for sure. But I didn’t see anything that identified where the bench was.
The fact the picture didn’t clearly infer that the location was the Iraqi museum was critical. Worse than artifacts that were freshly dug up by tomb robbers—pieces with actual dirt on them—were ones stolen from other museums and collectors. Those weren’t dirty metaphorically; they had stripes on them—
prison stripes
—because they usually could be identified and traced back to the rightful owner.
Everyone in the art world was familiar with the looting of Iraqi antiquities following the American invasion in 2003. Many thousands of museum pieces had been stolen. No one knew the exact amount, although I’ve seen a figure of 15,000 or more mentioned. In addition, when the police restraints came off and the country turned to chaos as sectarian violence erupted and law and order broke down, thousands of antiquity sites had been invaded by tomb robbers who often inadvertently destroyed as much as they stole.
At the same time the museum was being looted, priceless and irreplaceable books and manuscripts were being destroyed at the Iraqi National Library as flames devoured thousands of rare pieces.
The devastation of knowledge and the cultural heritage of both the museum and the library had been compared to the burning of the great Library of Alexandria that came about as a result of the intrigues of Caesar and Cleopatra. By today’s standards, it would be like the destruction of both the Louvre and the Vatican Library.
As would be expected, the availability of Middle Eastern artifacts shot up after the debacle.
Certainly I bought some pieces; in fact, the best pieces in the Piedmont collection were acquired by me during the past year, but I always made sure to check the Art Loss Register first. Not that that act alone would fly about missing Iraqi museum pieces. Like everyone else in the business, because of the nature of the losses and the inadequacy of the record keeping at the museum I was well aware that not all of the losses were actually listed in the Register.
But I wouldn’t have bought a piece that I definitely knew was contraband. I wasn’t that
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