1.0x

0:00/

When I spoke with Katy and Joshua I realized I was interviewing two very different people. One thought on a grand scale, the other on a personal scale. One sought to change the world, the other to raise wonderful children. I realized that I needed a story that brought both visions together. I needed a story that recognized that love is how you change the world – and that changing the world can unlock love.

Enjoy.

Sukkur

Jason Clay broke out into an overwhelming smile when his shovel clinked at just the right frequency. Finally! This wasn’t just another patch of silt; he’d hit something a whole lot harder. Tossing his shovel to the side, Jason got down on his hands and knees and started furiously pushing the sandy silt to the sides of the 6-foot-deep pit he’d created. He was sweating profusely as he dug. It was an afternoon in June and the temperature in Sukkur, Pakistan was normally over 43 degrees Celsius (109F). Today was no exception. At this point, though? Even the temperature wasn’t going to slow him down.

And then he saw it. A brick. Ancient, burnt dark at the moment of its creation, and of the perfect proportions.

He knew it! It was Harappan!

Jason wanted to shout with joy. But he was digging in the basement of a building. He didn’t exactly want to draw attention to what he was doing. He was smiling, though. Quietly. He knew he was on the edge of great things. Jason took a swig of his water and then grabbed his shovel and began digging with renewed ferocity. Within minutes, he’d uncovered a patch of brick 2 feet on a side. The bricks were lined up perfectly – just as they had been for 5,000 years.

With a brief nod of respect towards the sheer antiquity of the site, Jason did what he had come to do. He picked up the smallest of his tools – a chisel and rubber mallet. Then, patiently, he began working his way through the mortar connecting the bricks. He winced a bit with every whack, worried somebody might notice. But it wasn’t really that loud and the bricks were separated from the concrete of the building by a six-foot layer of sand.

An hour later, the bricks in front of him had been removed. A mere eight feet away from the hole Jason had created, he could see a brick-lined passageway.

He had found it. Now, he was sure.

Everything had begun with a crazy idea he’d had 10 years earlier. Jason had been surfing the Internet. He’d come across the very ancient Harappan civilization. It amazed Jason that they had completely standardized bricks. The civilization covered 900 miles on the Indus river, included thousands of sites and had a population of as many as five million people. No other civilization of that size in the ancient world had anywhere near that level of central administration. Jason couldn’t stop himself from thinking of the mythical Tower of Bavel. That tower had been built by people who had come together with an unprecedented oneness. Oddly, the biblical text placed particular emphasis on the bricks they used.

Perhaps they were Harrapan bricks?

Of course, everybody had always assumed the Tower of Bavel was an ancient Mesopotamian Ziggurat – long since run down by the elements. They assumed the name Bavel was applied after the fact, by people familiar with the old Babylonian empire that arose in the 17th century BCE. But Jason liked to take texts as they presented themselves. If the timeline and names of the Bible were taken seriously, then the Babylonian empire would have only come to exist after the Tower itself. Jason suspected that Babylon was a name that had been transported to a new place – like Boston, Massachusetts had borrowed its name from Boston, Lincolnshire.

Specifically, Jason suspected that Bavel (and the plains of Shinar referenced in the story) had originally come from the Harappan people. A town called Sanghar could have been Shinar and a city right across from Sukkur was named Babarlo. With a little leeway for 5,000 years of history and changing culture, he could just make the names fit those in the story.

Jason put up a few blog posts on the subject, but almost nobody read them – and nobody who did took them seriously. But the more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that there was something to his idea. That didn’t mean he would have done anything about it, though. Jason suffered from an overwhelming number of interests. He had a lot of ideas for how he wanted to improve the world. The only consistent reality was that nobody listened to him about anything.

In fact, that was precisely why had he decided to seek out the Tower. The biblical story referenced the mysterious Devarim Achadim. As he read it, it could be translated as ‘things of oneness.’ The plural forms of both words didn’t really make sense. That linguistic twist led Jason to believe that the remarkable unity of this early civilization was brought on by things. Things of oneness. Magical items that united people as they never had been united before (or since). Imagine what could be accomplished with such power.

Jason studied the topographical maps, looking for an elevated site that could have been hiding an ancient tower. The remarkable fort at Kot Diji appealed. But it was clear the fort was on a limestone outcropping, not one made of brick. He began to look further afield. Finally, he’d come here, to Sukkur. In this area, elevations rarely rose more than few meters above the river itself. But one neighborhood in this city of 1.5 million was unique. It rose almost 30 meters above its surroundings. Jason suspected that hill was what was left of the original tower.

Somehow, Jason had secured a student visa. He’d argued he was trying to save on tuition by studying in Pakistan. It was barely plausible, and only because he was far from a rich man. When he’d gotten to Sukkur, Jason had rented an entire basement of rooms in one of the buildings that covered the site. He brought down paper thin walls to join the space together. His makeshift apartment had no windows and very little in the way of airflow. It was perfect for his purposes – and it cost only pennies a day.

The place was stifling, though. Even the upper floors of the building were almost intolerable. There had been a shanty town here once, with tin-rooved shacks jammed up against each other and impossibly narrow alleyways cutting between them. As the population of Sukkur rose and rose, the shacks were replaced by actual buildings. But those buildings were jammed as closely together as the shacks had once been. Even closer, actually. Often, the buildings leaned over the narrow passageways, blocking out the sun itself. Jason knew it was an odd place for an expat to rent an apartment, but there was nothing he could do about that.

For cover, Jason enrolled in a computer science course at Shukkur IBA university. Thankfully, it was conducted in English. Jason already had a degree in computer science. The familiar material enabled him to spend his time digging while still managing to pass his classes. For stealth, Jason used heavy acids to cut through the thin concrete foundation of his building. Once that was complete, and it took quite a while considering the problems with ventilation, he began manually digging through the underlying sand.

And now he was here, staring into the evidence for the most outlandish of all his ideas.

Jason anchored a rope to the wall of his apartment. He was just hoping it would hold. Then he strapped his shovel to his back and clipped his chisel and hammer to his belt. Finally, he lowered himself into the hole.

Whether or not there were any Devarim Achadim, Jason was excited. He alone had suspected there was a tower here. He alone was going to make one of the greatest archeological finds of the 21st century. Even without the power of the Devarim Achadim, the world would soon be handing him new opportunities. Maybe he could leverage them into a real chance to change how things worked.

Jason tentatively stepped onto the bricks of the passageway. They were firm and stable. Jason let go of the rope and then glanced up the corridor. He saw a light shining on the passageway floor – about 50 feet away. That was extraordinarily odd. He lifted his own flashlight to point it down the corridor. As he did so, the other light pointed upwards and straight at him.

Was he looking at an ancient mirror?!?

“Hello?” he called out. He heard another ‘Hello’ simultaneously echo back at him. It was a little higher pitched. A little softer.

With a shock, he realized it was the voice of a woman.

Elizabath Mumford had no idea what to make of the man in the passageway she had uncovered. Like Jason, Elizabeth had come to Sukkur to explore the mysterious Harrapan civilization. The Harrapan name was only applied to them in the 20th century. The Harappan had a written language, but nobody could understand it. In all the excavations only one carving of a human figure had been found. So little was known about the Harappan people that arguments persisted to this day as to whether he represented a king, a god or just an ordinary shmo.

Unlike Jason, Elizabeth was an expert in the field of archeology. She knew all of this, and it all interested her, mildly. The reality was, her interest in archeology was primarily as a means, not an end. She desperately wanted to get away from her real life. Her father was an incredibly wealthy software entrepreneur. Her mother had passed away when she was only three. As Elizabeth was their only child, she could lay claim to an inheritance of more than 100 billion dollars. That money came with a lot of unwanted attention. Smooth-talking (and perfectly not so smooth-talking) suitors hung around her by the hundreds. Sycophants weren’t a dime a dozen, but at a few grand a pop they may as well have been – considering her fortune. It had always been that way for her. She had fame, fortune, and a personal reality built entirely on artifice.

Archeology offered two escapes. First, the long-gone civilizations would have no understanding or mention of a Mumford fortune. To them, she was anonymous. Second, if she chose her expeditions carefully, her thousands of suitors would be very unlikely to follow her. Sindh was a region of Pakistan that was wracked by poverty and violence. It wasn’t exactly the normal stomping ground of San Francisco gold diggers. Of course, Elizabeth took precautions. She travelled with a small, but highly trained and well-equipped, security team. She also did things under the radar. In Pakistan, she dressed in a chador so nobody would recognize her as a Westerner. And on site? Nobody but her security knew who she was. She acted as if she were working menial jobs, like cleaning and food prep. Others at the work sites chalked up a chador clad woman working outside the home to extreme poverty or widowhood.

In reality, Elizabeth observed everything (and, yes, it was incredibly hot in a chador in 43-degree heat) and then gave her instructions by chat – as if she were still overseas.

While Elizabeth’s team was working one of a number of well-known Harappan sites, Elizabeth found herself taken by another idea. She thought a city called Sukkur, which used to be called Sharkar might once have been Shinar. So, she bought an entire building in the same slum Jason had chosen, for the same reasons as Jason had.

Just like Jason, Elizabeth’s goal was the Devarim Achadim. Except, instead of seeking vast power, her sights were set on something even greater: love. She wanted something that could bring just two people together, completely. She wanted some way to trust and to love another. She wanted to be one with someone else.

This was a mission she had to carry out all by herself. After all, she had the power to do anything she wanted. Anything, that is, but acquire the one thing she wanted the most.

That was why she left her security detail outside her building. She worked, completely alone, to excavate under the pathetically thin foundation of her miniature apartment block. It was also why she was shocked to see a light pointing at the floor of the corridor, some 50 feet away.

Moments later, she called out, in English, ‘Hello.’

An echoing hello came back to her, deeper and just a touch harsher.

It was the voice of a man.

Bit by bit, Jason and Elizabeth drew closer to one another. Their competing flashlights hid them behind bright beams. Jason was gripping his chisel tightly, uncertain who he was about to meet. Beyond that, he really had no kind of plan. Elizabeth wasn’t exactly in the same boat. As a wealthy and famous western woman travelling somewhat alone in Pakistan, Elizabeth was always armed. Her hand was firmly gripping the Glock 23 in her pocket.

As they drew closer, the flashlights began to reveal the two explorers to one another. Jason’s first impression was of a generic-looking woman who didn’t seem to be any sort of threat. Elizabeth’s first impression was of a generic-looking man sweating like no man she’d ever seen before. But he too seemed… okay. No other details seemed to pass through their minds.

Jason was the first to speak. “I’m Jason Clay,” he said.

“Elizabeth,” she said. Out of long habit, she provided no last name.

“I… uh… I think this might be some sort of Harappan site.”

“Ya think?” Elizabeth asked, a little bit of sarcasm leaking into her voice. The bricks made it obvious. Anybody who’d found this place would know it was. But as soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted them. That hadn’t happened before.

Jason asked, “Uh… do you want to explore it with me?”

The directness of the offer surprised Elizabeth. She was expecting a bit more negotiation in this most unusual dance.

“Yes,” she said. Her own directness surprised her just as much as his had.

She thought about going forward, towards where Jason had come from. But then her desire to go in that direction just sort of burnt away; like it had been turned to smoke. Without a word, she turned around, and she and Jason began to make their way down the hall. They soon came to a staircase.

Jason had been surprised by the wordless agreement on what to do. He’d never experienced that before; he always found himself arguing with people. He liked winning those arguments, demonstrating his superior intellectual firepower. But, in this place, his desire to argue just sort of melted away.

The two of them walked down the ancient staircase together. They seemed to go down hundreds of feet. They surely must have been below the level of the river itself. At the bottom, they came to seven different corridors leading in seven different directions. There was a moment of confusion as they shone their lights down the long corridors. But each of them felt an overwhelming desire to follow the path of the other. Together, as if all other options had simply been ruled out, they walked down the corridor that lay straight ahead. It was the least complex of the choices.

Elizabeth had a very brief moment of panic when she realized a vast array of her feelings, a churning reality just below the surface, seemed to have boiled away. The panic, though, soon dispersed. Somehow, she knew Jason was feeling the same sensations and that made it all okay.

In a few hundred meters of walking, the two explorers had drawn impossibly close to one another.

Finally, they arrived at a great room. There was a huge brick dome, a hundred feet high and 300 across. If the other corridors led to similar rooms, then together they must have formed the foundation of what was once a massive tower. The room was in far from perfect condition, though. Here and there, near the edges, piles of bricks had fallen. There were gaps in the ceiling. The domes had been meant to support something hundreds or thousands of feet tall. Even with the gaps, they could hold up the relatively small apartment blocks and other buildings that rose above them.

Then they both saw it. There, in the middle of the room, was a shimmering obsidian stone. Compelled, Elizabeth and Jason drew close to it together. They both knew what it was. It was one of the Devarim Achadim, a Dvar Achad. They both knew, and welcomed, that they were under its power. They were greater together than they been apart, right?

The only question that concerned them was what should they do with their newfound power and unity?

As they thought about it, every complex option just seemed to drift away. What intellectual or emotional argument, beyond the most basic, could they hold together if no disunity could persist? Jason might have wanted to unite the city and then use it to change the rest of the world. But that wasn’t what Elizabeth was thinking and so Jason dismissed it. Elizabeth might have wanted to run away and build a quiet house in the mountains of Nepal. But that wasn’t what Jason was thinking and so Elizabeth dismissed it.

As the options were burnt away, Jason and Elizabeth came to the only thing they could completely share: building a little pile of bricks – maybe a big pile of bricks – would be cool. People would know they had been here.

Jason got out his chisel and began to work at the base of one of the giant dome’s walls. Elizabeth joined him, carefully stacking the bricks he removed from the dome. Their little tower would be really neat. They cut and stacked and cut and stacked. Hours passed. Neither one of them noticed the increasing strain on the dome itself. Neither one of them would, unless it fell on them – and then it would be too late.

The pile was about 15 feet tall. Somehow, the two of them had agreed to build a ramp into the very design of their brick tower. The Dvar Achad seemed to allow for complexity in the implementation of a shared idea. Elizabeth began to climb, for the umpteenth time. But despite the ramp, Elizabeth slipped. She slid down the side of the pile and onto the floor and into a neighboring pile.

Her feet knocked aside a few bricks, and then she saw it.

A human skull.

In a moment, she knew what had happened here. She and Jason were not the first explorers to discover this room. In fact, the others had all done what they had done. They had built little piles of bricks, at least until sections of roof over their heads fell in on them and buried them forever. Suddenly, she didn’t want to add anything more to their own tower.

In a mere moment, neither did Jason. He looked and saw what she saw. They were overwhelmed by indecision, but only for a few seconds. Then Jason came to same conclusions she had come to.

In the presence of the Dvar Achad, and knowing what danger it posed, what single motivation could they share? That was clear. They had to destroy the object that held them together. Jason held the chisel, Elizabeth the hammer. A few strikes later, the obsidian was cracked, and the spell of the stone was broken.

They both felt it then, a rush of complexity. Complexity that had been missing mere moments earlier. Complexity that defied understanding. Jason looked at Elizabeth and saw something he hadn’t seen before. She was a beautiful, dark-haired, complex woman with sparking eyes. There were universes hidden behind what he could see. As Elizabeth looked at Jason, she saw a man with deeply thoughtful eyes – one who was weighing and considering everything he saw. Despite knowing this, she had no idea what he was thinking.

“It whitened the white and burnt the burnt,” they said together, but not in a programmed unison. It was another way of reading the ancient story of Bavel. They had experienced a kind of extremism, with shared ideas and motivations growing stronger until they shone brightly, while ideas that did not conform were burnt away.

Then, together, they quoted the same text, “And let us confuse their boundaries, so that one cannot hear the boundaries of his neighbors.” It was another alternative translation – as the word for ‘language’ could also refer to borders.

As they looked at one another, they realized that is exactly what had occurred. Their boundaries had been confused. Each of them was complex and now undefinable. There were barriers now, but despite that the lines that divided them were clouded. There were new discoveries to be made and new realities to be defined. There were universes to be shared. And all of it was beyond certainty.

In the darkness of that cavern, Elizabeth tentatively extended her hand. As Jason took it, she said, “I’m Elizabeth Mumford.”

Jason’s voice quavered just a bit. He wasn’t sure if it is from the near-death experience or the self-assurance of the woman in front of him.

“Elizabeth,” said Jason, “Can I share a thought with you?”

Elizabeth nodded.

Jason said, “Elizabeth, I think I’ve just discovered that the way to a better world isn’t programming people; but simply seeing them, loving them and working with all their very real complexity.”

Elizabeth stood there for a long while, dwelling on his words.

Then she said, “Can I share a thought?”

It was Jason’s turn to nod.

Elizabeth said, “I think I’ve just discovered that the way to love isn’t unity, but simply a desire to be together despite all the risk, danger and uncertainty.”

Over the next few weeks, the two of them explored the caverns, patching up the many holes left by the explorers who came before them. Perhaps lives will be saved by the mortar they applied to the foundations of the modern city of Sukkur. As they worked, they arranged the bones of those overwhelmed by the Dvar Achad as respectfully as they could manage.

Finally, they emerged back into their basements, closing up the holes they had made, repacking the dirt and repouring the cement. Soon, there was no trace of the hidden ruins.

Life in Sukkur went on as it had before, but Elizabeth and Jason had long since left this place.

Together, they had discovered that love – complex, undefinable, risky and uncertain – could change the world.

Katy and Joshua, may you be blessed with many years of discovery, growth and the realization of your dreams.