My Love Forever

By Eeva Raito

Long ago, in ancient Assyria, Sal and Hanina take a vow of eternal love, before the Babylonian invasion of their hometown of Nineveh. 

 

Young, newly graduated archaeologist Hanna Jääskeläinen has landed her dream job at the Nineveh excavations. She sets off on an adventure that will change her whole life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nora Mallat
• Release date: Nov 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223650478

Book preview

My Love forever

Morning of destruction

I woke up to nightingale singing and she was sleeping next to me. I gently moved her hand from my chest and she stirred and smiled at me in her sleep. I pulled a royal linen cloak to cover her nakedness, for the morning was cool. I did not cover my own nakedness, for I was happy, just so, with the cool morning breeze blowing on my body through the open window.

I was happy, even though I knew I had woken up to our last morning. I was happy even though I knew I was hearing the nightingale sing for the last time from the king's garden. If it had not been destroyed with my city, but sung again tomorrow morning, I would not have heard it again.

I got up and went to the window. I looked over the roofs of the city and over the city wall to the plain where the morning breeze drove away the mist of the Tigris River. I saw the armies of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon, unblinking, I saw the chariots and the siege towers and the smoke of the soldiers' fires, and I felt the hatred and bloodlust bred by decades of oppression and sacrilege that would not feel a mustard seed's worth of mercy or pity for the city of Nineveh, neither for its rich nor for its poor. And yet I was happy, for I had had my fill, and death could take nothing more from me, for I had quenched all my thirst, and had awakened to my last morning at the side of my beloved, Hanina. I Salmu, friend and confidant of the king of the four corners of the earth. Ornithomancer of the Sinsariskun, whom the king had, between the two of them, considered his equal.

The city flowers began to wilt, and the nightingale fell silent as the sun rose over the plain. The sky was grey with the smoke of burning cities and although the war had not yet really touched Nineveh, I could feel the pale stench of the morning wind in my nostrils. I remembered the traitorous skinned bodies of the slain hanging on the city walls, and could not help grinning contemptuously at my king, who had cowardly fled with his courtiers to the safety of Harrar, his father's timely ousted refuge, as soon as the first news of the destruction of the nearby towns reached him.  Hanina and I could have gone too, but we chose otherwise. We stayed because it was our only chance to be in each other's arms, as Hanina was one of the wives of Sinsariskun.

Yes, I had ploughed the king's field, I Salmu, the son of a lowly Phoenician shipbuilder. But I felt no remorse, no fear, for to me the king was no longer a shadow of a god, but a man like me, and Hanina he had not even seen, though she had spent the second year in his harem. For state cares and a nagging jealous favorite wife had made him visit her less and less in recent years to see her, and even on the rare occasions when he had visited her harem, he had done so in the dark of night and loved her drunkenly, so of course he had contented himself with the services of his more experienced and eager wives without even inquiring after the young and untouched.

I had not betrayed the trust of my king by bribing the harem guards and a few of my official friends so that Hanina had been left behind when the court had fled to Harran. For if you take something from a man that he does not even know he owns, it cannot be a great crime even in the eyes of the law, and love will always triumph over the letter of the law, if not in the courts, then in the hearts of men.

I looked at Nineveh, my city, on the last morning of my life and I was happy. I looked at the neighborhood of officials, once trodden on by my bare infant feet. I looked at the palace district where I had been elevated to the ranks of the mighty, but I no longer felt any pride in it, for I already knew that power was an illusion and that the dream of power was the darkest dream a man could fall asleep in. For in that dream the one who lived did not feel love or friendship, but only a thirst for power, which was not quenched by drinking, but grew with each sip, as a drunkard's thirst grows with each empty bottle of wine or mug of beer he empties.

The smoke still billowed from the bread ovens of my city, the people still flocked to the temples to sacrifice to the gods, the veiled women of the temple forecourts still smiled invitingly at the men. Still my beloved slept a deep, peaceful sleep.

- If I had had the power of the gods, I would have told the sun to stop and bring the dawn and freeze forever, but I had no power of the gods, for I was only human, and the sun continued to rise in the sky and the Nabopolassar camp awoke and my city awoke around me to prepare for its destruction.

I looked to Hanina for my beloved. She slept like an innocent child with a smile on her lips. I was happy in her dream, for she knew, as I knew, though she was only a woman, and from the peace of her dream I knew the depth of her love. She was