Dill of the Nile

1 BABYLON MORNING TOUR “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.” The word ladies was meant to get their attention; only gents with facial hair took tours; that one or more among them might be a woman or, worse, womanish was alarming to most of the tourists but promising to some. “My name is Dill, Dill of the Nile. I’ll be your tour guide this morning. The Royal City awaits.” Earlier that morning Dill had used Bab-El 3000, a hand-held, palm-sized unit capturing solar and lunar rays to energize Damson, a power card, small, wafer-thin, rectangular, rigid with rounded corners. Fully charged, he pinned the card on his attire but out of sight. Alas, whenever he addressed the gents, he had to raise his arm and speak into his sleeve. Allergies, bad allergies, that was the consensus among the tourists; either that, or their tour guide was mad. The group that just arrived at the Visitors’ Bureau had embarked from Magna Græcia. They were on a package tour smartly labeled “36 Hours in Babylon,”as advertised in the newspaper of record throughout the Roman Empire, Tempora Moresque. It’s motto: “All the News That’s Fit to Draw”; it was the cuneiform edition. “Welcome to Babylon! Oldest city of the world! Godliest city in the world! Pagan capital of the world! We have more divinities than we know what to do with! Once the best fortified city in the most powerful country of the world! Once and indeed still, the most beautiful city in the world!” Babylon had fallen on hard times, as the historians would put it. There was no national economy to speak of; the local fathers tried to make the most of what little they had. Hence, they advertised what was essentially a disaster tour. Rubble was referred to as “quaint reminders of our glorious past.” The once teeming population had been reduced to a mosh of improbables; artists, explorers, traders, philosophers; that was to say, no one you’d marry your daughter to. “As we head off on our tour today,” Dill rattled on, “we should hasten to point out that we come by our ruins honestly. We’ve been invaded by everybody who’s been anybody. The Ur-ites were first; they were followed by the Amor-ites, who were followed by the Hitt-ites, who were followed by the Kass-ites, who were followed by the Elam-ites, who were followed by the Dent-ites, who were followed by the Term-ites.” The tour guide waited for a laugh, but none was forthcoming. It was a truly bad joke, but it had been written by the Department of Tourism after lengthy and pricey consultation with a public relations firm in Corinth (“where the leather comes from”). It had to be recited word for word under pain of death. “I don’t believe I’ve heard of the Term-ites before,” remarked an Athenian. “I’d like to know more.” “Well, sir,” said Dill, “it’s just your luck. We’ll be passing by the termitorium later today. It’s not one of our regular stops, but I’ll see what I can do.” The tour itself was conducted in a luxury conveyance known only by its Babylonian name, jitanee. Its picture-alphabet representation was somewhere between a chariot and a cart, a rickety vehicle holding a dozen or so tourists, with a courtesy toilet hanging from the rear. “Where are we all from this morning?” Most were from Athens, the intellectual and cultural center of the empire; there was a Spartan, two Marathoners, a Mycenæan, and an Olympian. The rest was a small contingent from Samarkand, gem of the east, at the juncture of trade routes from China and India; they were wraithlike remnants of Alexander’s legions, probably some of the old lads on holiday; mostly on crutches and moving chairs on rollers. Whenever they were bored, which was often, they whipped out a soccer ball and went at it on the nearest lawn. “Do we all have our Map of the Stars?” Alas, the map wasn’t an astronomical one; rather it was a map of posh streets on which the rich and famous lived centuries before. “Hang on to your helmets,” shouted Dill, as he pulled the jitanee out into the morning traffic. Much to the amazement of the tourists, drivers in Babylon signaled their desire to turn by extending, not their hand, but their foot. “Our first stop today will be the Tower of Babel, one of the Wonders of the Ancient World. In the time it takes to get there, I’ll tell you what the Hebrew Scriptures have to say about it.” Dill went on to explain that once there had been an Eden in which all the peoples of the world shared the same tent and spoke the same tongue. Eventually, as building techniques grew more sophisticated, they abandoned canvas held down by pegs for bricks held in place by mortar. Upon that good idea they laid another. “Why don’t we build a city and top it off with a tower, a tower so high that it punctures the heavens?” The coach stopped, and the tourists got out. The guide led them into the park where there was a reproduction of the Tower of Babel, made with colorful snap-on bricks and rising eighteen feet in the air; no danger of its scaling the heavens. As Dill explained, the one g-d, or the many g-ds acting as the one g-d, felt that the people of Babylon were crowding his territory. As a protective measure he felt that he had to disperse them, and this he did by flattening their tenting and closing down their communications; that was to say, he took their language away. Once everyone understood each other; now no one understood anyone else. Husband became stranger to wife; child became orphan to parent; neither dog nor cat knew which kibble to accept.