The Swapper - The Sumerian Me

Chapter 0: The Translation Of The Myth

Berlin, Germany. January 1945.

Her fingers trembled as her eyes roamed over the Sumerian text she had to translate. In her unsteady hands, she had a series of photographs of a myth written on stone 5.3 millennia ago.

Dry lips with partly smudged red lipstick parted while a cold sweat ran down her spine. Her half-burning cigarette, stained in red, lay on the border of an ashtray, far on her right on the desk.

The gentle, thin trail of smoke evidenced its slow consumption. A twirl of smoke caught her attention. She shot her eyes in its direction. The thread of smoke curved and briefly drew a smile in the air. She went pale and gulped as if it was a matter of life and death.

She chuckled. "The smoke... No, the smoke demon isn't real," she whispered in a throaty voice.

Her lips forced a smile upon themselves, but an involuntary shaking moment later, she let it go. Blinking with a sense of purpose and self-imposition of common sense, she left the photographs on her desk, on the left side of her typewriter, her silent companion for the last hour in which she had been reading the source text.

The middle-aged woman cleared her throat, combed a stray blond lock of hair behind her ear, and started to hammer her fingers fast on her typewriter's keys. The scent of fresh ink spread in her vicinity.

Her mind reeled as she wrote the unthinkable, a bizarre translated story.

Ishtar, the goddess of love, sex, and war, was cold and distant. Her beauty knew no limits, but her arrogance was second to no other trait. Proud instigator of trouble, she would challenge the authority of other gods or that would trigger significant events, changing the lives of both mortals and immortals. Her cunning mind spurred many warriors to beg for her aid in upcoming battles, making her offerings in gold and precious stones.

Urku, the city at the heart of the devotion to her image and divine spirit, held a beauty contest in a celebration to honour her in her temple. Many young women came from all regions of Mesopotamia bringing fancy clothes and riches.

When Ishtar saw the young women rivalling against each other with arrogance before the actual contest had begun, mischief was in her mind. She wanted to craft a special prize for the winner, who would undoubtedly be the most conceited and arrogant of those human girls, and she asked for the help of Enki.

Enki, god of water and wisdom, was open to Ishtar's words. Enki was associated with trickery and magic, which had always pleased Ishtar. She begged him to craft with her a godly object of power which would grant eternal youth to its owner.

He collected the required ingredients. Bull's testicles, the heart of a young male wolf, and the eyes of an owl. She put them together in a large bowl and put them in the fire. Spells in Sumerian echoed in the air as both gods held their hands together over the fire. On and on they chanted, channelling their invaluable 'me', their divine power.

The Smoke Demon—Ibi Idimmu—was born in the figure of the towering trail of smoke between their arms. The one who could swap bodies. It embodied change, an immortal spirit who was designed to constantly metamorphose, hungry for adventure and mischief and to punish arrogance with arrogance.

The young would always become old in the face of time. The powerful would always become powerless in the face of death. Those were the rules for mortals—but not for gods and their creations, like Ibi Idimmu.

Ishtar and Enki stopped chanting. The vertical trail of smoke twirled and drew a smile in the air. A giggle broke the silence, and Ishtar was happy.