Read The Looters for Free Online Page A

caravans.
    Abdullah swung around when he heard his name uttered out loud. The shout wasn’t a call to him but an accusation yelled at his father.
    He had warned his son that others would be disgruntled because he had arranged for Abdullah to work at the museum in Baghdad, a reward for turning over the mask. But it wasn’t a monetary reward: Abdullah would share a small room with other boys at the museum and earn his keep by sweeping and cleaning.
    The job, however, came with an unspoken opportunity. “You are a smart boy. You’ll learn many things at the museum. Someday others will sweep the floors for you,” his father expressed to him.
    The real crux of the dispute was the other men’s suspicions that Abdullah’s father had not only arranged a better life for his son but had also been secretly rewarded with gold by the museum. Abdullah knew the only reward his father had asked for was a radio that could be used to call al-Hillah, the nearest large town, in case of emergency. The radio would benefit the whole village, not just Abdullah’s father.
    He suddenly turned his back on the men to return to his camels at the river.
    Abdullah shouted when he saw a man draw the knife from beneath his robe. As his father spun around, the man sprang at him. A second man drew a blade, then another, all of them hacking and chopping at Abdullah’s father.
    “Father!” Abdullah screamed, running toward the melee. His father was barely able to stand up. He gasped and began to fall.
    Abdullah ran into him, grabbing him around the waist, but the older man was too heavy for him. His father slipped to the ground, leaving a trail of blood down the front of Abdullah’s shirt.
    Abdullah tearfully shrieked at the five village men whom he had known since his birth.
    “Murderers! Thieves!”

Chapter 5
    Baghdad, 2003
    “Murderers! Thieves!” Abdullah ibn Hussein muttered as he staggered down a street on his way to the Iraqi museum.
    Forty-five years had passed since he had uttered that accusation at five men along the Euphrates River near Babylon. Now another life-and-death crisis had erupted over antiquities.
    Life is a circle
, he thought,
at least the parts of it we don’t want to meet again
. Confronting the pillagers of history had brought him full circle from the day his father had died in his arms.
    Abdullah’s dream as a child was to visit the great museum in Baghdad and see the cultural treasures his father talked about so often. The museum had been closed to the public for several years, so Abdullah was thrilled when his father told him that he would be working there. But his trip to the museum had been on the heels of tragedy. He had left the village of his birth soon after his father had been killed and had never returned.
    As Abdullah’s father had predicted, sweeping floors at the museum would change Abdullah’s life. He had stayed with the museum and worked his way up to become a curator for the museum. The large facility had a number of curators. His special task was to supervise the public displays and arrange exhibits of Babylonian art.
    The museum actually started out as one room in a government building in Baghdad on the east bank of the Tigris River in 1923. Eventually it moved to a bigger building in the same district at the foot of the al-Shuhada Bridge and became the National Museum of Antiquities.
    The museum’s first director, Gertrude Bell, the famous British adventurer, explorer, and archaeologist, remained in charge until her death in 1926.
    Bell had left Britain on the Orient Express in the 1890s for a life devoted to the Middle East. She traveled throughout Iraq, Arabia, and Persia learning Farsi, Arabic, and local dialects. She worked for the British intelligence in Cairo during the First World War before becoming director of antiquities in Baghdad after the war and the creation of the nation.
    In addition to approving applications for archaeologists to dig at sites, she visited them on their sites and