The galleries give way then to the Sackler Wing: the huge room, glass stretching above them, still water reflecting the green of the park, the stone temple, dusk falling, tinges of golden sunset fading at the edges of the sky.
“You know, most of this shouldn’t really be here,” Lili says. Her voice is quieter, a little more reverent as they walk around the reflecting pool, past its benches. Spare coins gleam under the water. “It’s a form of cultural pillaging.”
“Nasser gifted the temple to the States in ’65. The Aswan Dam would have flooded it.”
“That’s one piece in hundreds of thousands.”
“Would you have them repatriate all of it? Leave the museums of the world empty?”
“Should people have to travel and pay to see their own heritage?”
“Yes, of course. The museum’s preservation of the art, that’s a service—”
“Oh, dear God,” she mutters, as they step into the temple.
“Nations aren’t always best positioned to preserve their own legacies,” he says, rounding a column, looking up at the carvings on the lintel: the sun disk, outspread wings of Horus.
She gapes after him. “How can you say that? These are the literal cradles of Western civilization. You don’t think the Greeks can handle the Elgin Marbles?”
“The Greeks can barely handle a common currency,” Aleksandr mutters.
“What was that?” Lili asks sharply.
His smirk indicates he knows she heard him, as he examines a relief carved into the sandstone walls. He skims a light finger over the outline of Isis, ankh in hand.
Lili’s eyes widen. He should not be touching that.
“I find it strange you wouldn’t want this preserved,” he says. “Is this not your heritage?”
She frowns. “You think the Middle East is just one big place? Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, all synonymous?”
“No, I’m not American.”
“Yes, because the Brits have a much better track record in the region.”
He laughs. “I’m not British either, Lili.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” she retorts, frustrated.
Aleksandr raises an eyebrow. “Nor you me.” He continues walking through the temple. “What about the ruins of Palmyra?” he asks. “Their preservation required Western intervention.”
“My God, you can’t justsaythat. An extremist group doesn’t constitute the entire Syrian people.”
“The only reason some artifacts persist is because collectors purchased them.”
“Exactly, Western art collectors. ISIS looted those ruins, sold themto the West, fed into the market’s demands. Blood antiquities prove my entire point—it’s the pressures of capitalism that drive this type of cultural exploitation. It splinters people from their history. Capitalism is violence.”
“The world is violence. Doesn’t matter what ideology, what society.”
“Christ. Is it difficult, being so incredibly coldhearted?”
“It’ll get easier for you with age.”
She scowls, ignoring him, examining the temple’s carvings of lotus plants for a moment—the sunk relief of deities, etched in stone—before glancing back at Aleksandr. He’s watching her.
“Alright, then,” she says. “What about property rights? You must love those.”
“What I work for, I intend to keep as mine, yes.”
