Most of the graves have been dug up, with the ancient corpses scattered and heaped about. (Strange as it might sound, I would later be reminded of Chauchilla during a visit to the famous airplane graveyard in the Mojave Desert. But these aren't planes, they are people.) Visitors wander freely through a sandscape of mummies, skeletons and random body parts. It's a hot, impossibly ghastly place, a death kiln of nightmare imagery. Several of the bodies, propped upright, remain more or less intact -- racks of bone held together by tattered shawls and rope. The skulls, many sprouting wild manes of postmortem hair, wear ghoulish death masks of blackened, leathery skin. Elsewhere, bodies are strewn in various states of dismemberment and decay. Limbs and bones lay cracked and bleaching under the desert sun: feet, fingers, tibias, ribs, fractured craniums, femurs.
And, yes, a jawbone -- an entire lower mandible, still with several teeth. I kneel on the ground and pick it up, turning it in my hands. Who did it belong to -- a man, a woman, adolescent or adult? It could be a thousand years old, maybe more. I think in long, circular sentences of ways in which to justify the act of petty theft that I know, without the least bit of doubt, is about to occur. My taxi driver is tailing a few feet behind me, kicking idly at the detritus. He seems to know exactly what I'm thinking, and offers a slight, conspiratorial shrug. I blow a few grains of sand from the empty tooth sockets and drop the artifact into my day pack. Then we head back to the car. At the hotel, I rinse it clean in the bathroom sink.
A few days later, I am packing up my things for the long journey home. The jaw isn't my only Nazca souvenir. I had also purchased two small pieces of pottery -- clay saucers decorated with Nazca motifs. The saucers are gifts for Erin MacNeil, a girl back home. I wrap all three items in sheets of crumpled newspaper. When the wrapping is done, it is impossible to tell which item is which. All three have become identical balls of newspaper, each about the size of a grapefruit. I place them together in my backpack, near the bottom, swathed in a heavy cushion of socks and T-shirts.
That evening, at Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima -- one of the world's dumpiest terminals -- I'm standing in line at the American Airlines check-in counter. The flight to Miami leaves just after midnight. As the line slowly ambles forward, fellow passengers turn in my direction, flashing brief expressions of consternation. Considering my outfit, I can't really blame them: I am wearing a beat-up pair of Docksiders, dirty chinos, a creased and wrinkled oxford shirt missing its cuff buttons, and an awful checkered tie that had belonged to my grandfather.
What I'd like to be wearing is a pair of camping shorts and a T-shirt, but industry employees flying standby must adhere to a rather specific dress code. For men, this means a shirt, tie, slacks and shoes. (This protocol has since been relaxed, but for years it was strictly enforced and generally reviled among those of us forced to comply.) The style and condition of these accessories, however, are unspecified and left to the passenger's discretion. Business attire doesn't travel well during long, hot vacations with no access to irons or washing machines. When it comes time to dress again for the trip home, the results can be freakish. (Growing up around the airline business, one thing I learned is how easy it was to spot freeloading employees at airports. Generally, they were the people who looked like they'd been sleeping in their clothes for the past two weeks.)
In addition to my thrift store ensemble, I am sunburned, exhausted and haven't showered in 24 hours. My backpack is sandy and smeared with some unidentifiable goo acquired during the bus ride from Nazca.
I can't say for certain that my appearance -- that of an obvious and demented drug smuggler pretending to be a business traveler -- is alone responsible for what happened next, but I am approached by two policemen. One is tall, the other short. They are wearing paramilitary uniforms and sunglasses.
The officers ask me to please step out of line. After examining my ticket and credentials, including the Scotch-taped, mostly delaminated I.D. badge from the commuter airline I work for. "You are a pilot?" asks the shorter man. He stresses the word "pilot" with a tone of comical disbelief, as though I'd told him I was a lion tamer, or a ukulele repairman.
"Would you mind coming with us," the taller guy says. It's a command, not a question. "Downstairs."
Downstairs? Turns out the Lima airport is equipped with a sort of basement interrogation center. The room I'm led to is a concrete chamber the size of a small kitchen, completely empty save for a 100-watt bulb and a stainless steel table. I am thoroughly frisked and asked to remove my socks and shoes.
"Can you put your bag up here, please."
I hoist my backpack onto the steel table, and the cops begin to go through it, painstakingly inspecting each item as if it contained some rare and coveted secret. They poke, prod, squeeze and tap. Socks are unrolled; my guidebook is held out and shaken; my camera is opened; the caps are removed from ballpoint pens. My Timberland hiking boots are paid careful, almost loving attention, their soles tapped gently with a small hammer in a search for false compartments.
I am nervous, of course, and I wonder if the men can sense it. If so, my reason for being nervous isn't quite what they expect. Though I have no hidden stash of opium or cocaine, I do have a human jaw, wrapped in newspaper, masquerading as a souvenir. If discovered, it almost certainly will be confiscated, and I'm likely to face a fine. I'm unsure which of those possibilities worries me more, but I'm praying they won't find it.
The jawbone is near the bottom of the bag. I stand there silently, watching the two officers work their way toward it, slowly but surely.
After about 15 minutes, they have gone through everything -- everything, that is, except for three items: Erin's pottery and the jaw. There on the table, next to a pile of stale laundry, sit the identically wrapped packages. I have no idea which one contains the bone.
And so commences the most nerve-racking shell game I'll ever watch. As his partner begins returning my ransacked clothes to my now empty backpack, the tall officer reaches down and starts to unwrap the first package. I can feel my heart beating, and I'm trying to remember how much money I've got in my checking account back in Boston, to cover the penalty -- "plundering of artifacts" or whatever Peruvian statute might apply -- I'm about to be hit with.
It's one of Erin's clay saucers. The saucer is red, black and brown, painted with the figure of a spider -- a replica of one of the immense etchings I'd seen from the air during my Cessna ride over the Nazca Lines. It, too, I figure, will probably be confiscated.
So now there are two remaining packages: one more piece of 50-cent pottery and one ancient, grinning, human mandible taken from an Indian burial ground.
The officer picks up the second package and peels back the paper. I can't watch.
To the sound of ruffling newsprint, I see the second officer, the shorter one, glance lazily toward his partner's hands. There's a clunking sound, and he quickly glances away again and continues shoving clothes into my bag. When I return my eyes to the table, I see the other clay saucer sitting there.
It has come down to this. Every one of my belongings, from my camera to my underwear to my ballpoint pens, has been opened and inspected, except for the very item that will get me in trouble. There it rests, waiting. All the policeman needs to do is pick it up and open it.
Except he doesn't. Instead, he looks at his watch and yawns. "Souvenirs," he says with a brush of his arm.
He rewraps the two clay saucers, then hands all three packages to his partner, who covers them in a shirt and shoves them into the backpack.
They thank me for cooperating, and I am free to go.
For a series of photographs accompanying the article, click here.
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About the writer
Patrick Smith is an airline pilot. His column is archived here.
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