Trail of Feathers by Tahir Shah Page B

spine of a child, and skulls - thousands of them, many with their hair still attached. Dozens had been deformed; others were trepanned.
    As well as bones there were baskets made from cotton and fibre. For each mummy there had been a basket, in which it had sat cupped upright in the foetal position on a wad of cloth. Leading mummy experts say the burial position, the layers of cloth, and the baskets, are all for a reason. They were, they say, part of an elaborate drainage system. Liquids exuded in the years after death would naturally drain through the body, seeping down, and out through lower orifices, into the basket’s pad.
    Juan led me across the immense burial ground. I watched my step, fearful of falling into one of the pits, or of treading on the mummified remains. Every few feet the farmer would stop to tug a fragment of cloth from the dust, waggling it to shake off the sand. He handed the scraps to Tia, who had caught up with us.
    Juan stopped at a deep crater.
    ‘This was a big tomb,’ he said. ‘An important one was buried here.’
    Tia and he helped me into the hole. They swished away the sand. First they dug out the resident mummy. He looked rudely awakened, ripped from his cocoon. His hair was long and soft, his skin the colour of honey, the individual pores quite distinct. The line of his ribs was clearly visible. The stench was rank as the smell of a Masai encampment. But it was nothing like the vile, chaotic smell of rotting human flesh.
    The body was bound in textiles. Juan peeled a grand mantle away from the mummy’s back. He shook off the sand. Along the border of the blanket was a row of images. I looked at them closely. They were Birdmen.
    Tia was still digging. She excavated a second figure.
    ‘It’s a woman,’ said Juan. ‘See sus pechos, her breasts.’
    As he fumbled about, showing me the mummified bust, the woman’s right leg fell off.
    ‘They’re very fragile,’ he muttered, handing me a head.
    ‘This is for you,’ he said. ‘It’s just like the one in the house. It will bring you good luck.’
    Thanking the farmer, I rejected his offer. ‘It belongs here,’ I said. ‘I won’t be taking anything away with me.’
    Juan couldn’t understand why anyone would turn down a fine trophy head.
    ‘¿Està seguro? Are you sure?’ he trilled. ‘It’s got a very nice face.’
    The business of human remains is an unpleasant one. Our society dislikes the subject of corpses and death. Much has changed since ancient times. The Incas would bring out their mummified leaders during festivals. One 17th-century etching in Guaman Poma’s chronicle shows the grinning cadaver of an Inca being paraded through the streets. The practice appalled the Spanish. But, as I squatted in the burial crater, surrounded by mummies and trophy heads, I felt none of the fear which so often accompanies death in our own world. The mummies were not skeletons but people, with faces, fingernails and hair.
    I couldn’t blame Juan and his family for robbing graves. The drought had killed their pigs and their meagre crops had shrivelled. How else were they to support themselves? Juan played down the extent of his part in what is a massive local operation. But, as I went back to the car, he asked respectfully if I’d like to buy some blankets, ornaments, pottery or beads. The burial ground on their doorstep was like a blessing from God. It must have contained more than 30,000 graves, only a fraction of which had been touched.
    Ninety-five per cent of the antiquities in Peruvian museums are said to have been dug up by huaquews. They have little or no scientific provenance as a result. Nazca’s street corners are loaded with an army of agents, eager to sell the robbers’ bounty. But the best loot bypasses Nazca, heading straight for the auction houses in the West.
    José-Luis threw the hatchback into gear and aimed it at the embankment, as if it were a tank out on manoeuvres.
    ‘Tonight’s a full moon,’ he said, as we