Sinai Tapestry (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 1) Page 23

  Hundreds of sweating shoppers jostled each other and squeezed in front of the open shops where hawkers cried out their wares. Haj Harun absentmindedly picked up a handful of juicy fresh figs from a stand and pressed half of them into O’Sullivan Beare’s hand. Peeling and munching, their mouths dripping, they made their way slowly through the dense crowds, edging around loaded donkeys and pushcarts, putting their heads together and shouting to be heard above the noise.

  See that shop that sells loquats? yelled Haj Harun. A very grand place in its day, the best cabaret in Jerusalem. Run by a former grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire who introduced the cabaret acts and led the applause at the end. Curious how a man of his former importance could be reduced to such a shabby role in life.

  Curious, yes.

  What?

  Always thought so, shouted Joe.

  And this corner here was where I was fined for public cheiromania in Hellenistic times.

  What’s that?

  The man on the corner now? It’s hard to say. Either he’s had too much hashish or he’s gone into a religious ecstasy.

  No, I mean that offense the Greeks pinned on you.

  Oh that, shouted Haj Harun with a laugh. An obsession with the hand but not what you’re thinking. Palmistry without a license was the problem, I used to be quite a good palmist. See that old building there? I was in jail there once.

  They stepped up off the cobblestones into a fruit juice stand and Joe ordered two large glasses. Together they stood sipping their pomegranate juice and gazing at the building, Haj Harun beaming and laughing as he reminisced.

  That was during the great evil eye epidemic we had here. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of it?

  It strikes me that I haven’t. When was that?

  Early in the Assyrian era. For some reason everyone in the city was suddenly terrified of the evil eye. People imagined they saw it everywhere and no one dared go outside. The streets were empty, the shops closed, all commerce stopped. Jerusalem without commerce? Impossible. The city was dying and I knew I had to act.

  Joe wiped the sweat off his face and tried to dry his hands on his wet shirt.

  Of course you did. What acts then?

  Well first I tried baking bread.

  Good, always useful, bread.

  Yes I thought that would do it. Sexual organs are known to be one of the best defenses against the evil eye because they fascinate it and divert its attention, thereby keeping it from doing harm. Well I reasoned that if bread were baked in the shape of a phallus and eaten plentifully throughout the city, that would provide a sound internal safeguard people could have confidence in.

  Joe wiped his face again. It was terribly hot. In the blur of the cloudless sky he caught a glimpse of himself sneaking around Jerusalem one dark night painting evil eyes on doors. The next morning there would be an Assyrian panic and he would suddenly appear with the miraculous loaves of bread, sell them at an enormous profit and make a fortune. But how was he going to get the baking priest to bake the special shape? Tell him it was the arm and fist of God? No good, the arm of Allah was too common an expression here. The ancient Franciscan would think he had succumbed to the heathens and refuse to fire his oven.

  A total failure, laughed Haj Harun. Bread was too subtle. People needed a visible safeguard, not a digestible one, so I went around painting phalluses on walls. That helped a little, at least people began coming outside again. When they did I harangued them, urging them to paint phalluses of their own to reassure themselves and they did that, covering lamps and bowls and every other article they owned, even weaving them into their cloaks and wearing specially carved rings and bracelets and necklaces and pendants. Soon Jerusalem was a city of ten million phalluses. Of course you have to remember all this happened back in the days when I still had influence here and people not only listened to me but believed what I said.

  Joe tried to pull his shirt away from his chest and let a little air in but he couldn’t, it was glued there.

  Are you remembering? asked Haj Harun.

  I am. Keenly.

  Yes. Well for the next stage of my plan I needed the assistance of menstruating women.

  I see. Why this unusual convolution?

  Because at that time menstruation was a very powerful agent. It was effective against hail and bad weather in general and could destroy vermin in crops, not to mention withering cucumbers and cracking nutshells.

  Very good.

  I thought so but then it turned out I couldn’t persuade any women to expose their private parts on the street when they were menstruating. Home on their farms at night to help their own crops, of course they’d do it then, but not in Jerusalem in public even though it could have assured the safety of the city. I argued and argued with them in the squares but they remained adamant, claiming it would damage their reputations. Can you imagine? People being as vain as that when the whole city was endangered by a crisis? I tell you, people can be selfish.

  True.

  And ignore the public welfare.

  Very true.

  Even to the point of thinking only about themselves while everything around them is going to ruin.

  Very very true.

  Haj Harun laughed.

  Well that was the case then, so obviously there was only one thing to do. One final dramatic act was needed to break the impasse, to enlist the entire citizenry in the fight against the danger we were facing. Unquestionably I had to take an extreme religious position against the evil eye, no matter how unpopular and flamboyant it might appear to be, and through personal example show the people what was necessary to save us. There was simply no alternative. I had to do it and I did.

  Of course you did. What was it?

  Haj Harun grinned at the building across the way.

  I took off my loincloth and went striding boldly through the streets and every time I came upon an evil eye I whipped up my cloak and gave it a flash. Ha. I flashed and I flashed and each time I did the evil eye’s hold over us was weakened and Jerusalem was that much closer to total recovery.

  Joe reeled back against the counter of the fruit juice stand and quickly ordered two more glasses of pomegranate juice. His head was spinning and the centuries were making him thirsty, Assyrian centuries, the sight of Haj Harun as a vigorous young man still confident and influential, still respected for his credibility in those far-off days, boldly striding through Jerusalem in 700 B.C. whipping up his cloak to defeat the evil eye at each dramatic new encounter, striking out alone through the streets to do battle with the epidemic that was threatening to lay waste to his Holy City, flamboyant and selfless, shunning vanity and undeterred by any possible damage to his reputation, marching on and doing his duty as he saw it, Haj Harun the fearless religious flasher of antiquity.

  I got caught, said the old man with a chuckle.

  Do you tell me that.

  Yes, the Assyrian police picked me up for lascivious behavior or indecent exposure or some other indefensible charge. Anyway they locked me up in that jail over there and said I’d have to stay locked up until I promised to change my ways. But my campaign had been largely successful by then and the great evil eye epidemic was nearly over. They freed me before long.

  A personal triumph, said Joe.

  I thought so but of course I didn’t get any particular credit for it.

  Why?

  Commerce. As soon as they got their commerce back they forgot about my religious sacrifice. That happens around here.

  I see.

  They left the fruit juice stand and once more began pushing their way through the din of the bazaar.

  You know, shouted Haj Harun, sometimes it seems I was an old man early in life and had little later to unlearn. When I walk here there are memories and more memories on every side. Did you know Caesar used geese as watchdogs?

  Quack, I did not, shouted Joe, but the bustling and shoving may be loosening my brains.

  Or that when the Egyptians held the city they had a custom
of shaving off their eyebrows when a pet cat died? The cats were then embalmed and sent home to be buried in Bubastis.

  Cat city you say? Bubbling my brains quite possibly, it must be this infernal heat. I seem to feel the need for some powerful sobering tonic. Or as you said once, Time is.

  Haj Harun laughed.

  The memories it brings back, that’s why I like walking here.

  But how do you manage to keep up with them? shouted Joe. These changing nonstop smells of time I mean?

  By keeping on the move.

  That sounds like what I used to do in the mountains of the old country. But County Cork’s a place, or at least it was then. What does it mean in terms of millennia, keeping on the run?

  Well take the Roman siege for example, shouted Haj Harun.

  Yes let’s do that.

  What did you say?

  I said what happened during the Roman siege?

  Oh. Well the Romans bombarded us for weeks with their catapults and there were monstrous boulders falling everywhere. Most people hid in their cellars and many were killed when their houses came crashing down on them. But not me. I survived.

  How?

  By staying out in the open. I jogged through the streets. A moving target is always much more difficult to hit than a stationary one.

  Right you are, thought Joe, and there you have the answer to it all, right there in that picture of Haj Harun jogging through Jerusalem, jogging around his eternal city. Jaysus yes, Haj Harun the moving target of the Roman Empire and every other empire that ever existed. Cloak flowing, spindly legs churning, bare feet wearing down the cobblestones, around and around for three thousand years outrunning siege machines and conquering armies. Around and around in a circle, defying the arsenals of war that were always being dragged up the mountain to defeat him. Plodding stubbornly up and down the alleys wearing down the cobblestones, puffing and wheezing on the run through the millennia, Haj Harun the ghostly jogger of the Holy City surviving and surviving.

  The old man clutched Joe’s arm in excitement. He laughed and shouted happily in his ear.

  Do you see that tower?

  Yes, shouted Joe, there it stands in its suggestive shape and I’m ready for it. Which century are we in?

  17 The Bosporus

  The other hour needed for life.

  IN 1933 STERN FOUND himself walking beside the Bosporus in the rain, and to him the colors of that gray October sky were reminiscent of another afternoon there when an enormously tall gaunt man had entered a deserted olive grove and ceremoniously removed all his elegant clothes, thrown them together into the black passing waters and climbed back through the dark grove, barefoot and wearing only a tattered cloak, a hakïm making his way south to the Holy Land and perhaps beyond.

  Over half a century ago and now instead of an olive grove there was a hospital for incurables where he had just gone to see his old friend Sivi for the last time, or rather the body that had once been Sivi’s, tied to a bed and motionless now, staring blindly at the ceiling, the spirit having finally fled its torment.

  Stern walked on. By the railing he saw a woman gazing down at the water, a foreigner dressed in a shabby way, and suddenly he realized what she was thinking. He went over and stood beside her.

  Not until after dark I suppose. The wind will be high then and no one will see.

  She didn’t move.

  Do I look that desperate?

  No, he lied. But remember there are always other things. Ways to help.

  I’ve done that. I just don’t have the strength anymore.

  What happened?

  A man went mad today after it started to rain.

  Who was he?

  A man. His name was Sivi.

  Stern closed his eyes and saw the smoke and flames of the garden in Smyrna, an afternoon eleven years ago that had brought him and now this woman to a railing beside the Bosporus. He squeezed the iron bar as hard as he could and when he spoke again he had control of his voice.

  Well if you’ve made the decision the only thing you have to worry about now is being sure it’s a success. Your friends won’t have it any other way for two reasons.

  He spoke so matter-of-factly she turned away from the water and looked at him for the first time. He was a large bulky man with hunched shoulders, his nationality difficult to place. Probably she didn’t see the weariness in his eyes then, just the outline of his shapeless figure beside her in the rain.

  Only two? she said bitterly.

  It seems so, but they’re enough. The first has to do with the guilt you make them feel. Was there something more they could have done? Of course, so they resent you for reminding them of that by still being alive. Then too you also remind them they’ve wasted their lives and they resent that. When they have to look at you afterward they have an uncomfortable feeling you’re not willing to accept as much moral corruption as they are. They’re not exactly aware of it but you’ll know the minute they sit down with you. A serious face, there’s something they have to say. Welcome you back from the dead? No. It’s cowardice they want to talk about. It’s too easy. Those are always their first words.

  But it is easy, she whispered.

  Of course. Real solutions always are. You just get up and leave. But most people can’t do that and that’s why they talk about your cowardice, because they’ve been trying to ignore their own for so long. It makes them uneasy. You make them uneasy.

  She laughed harshly.

  Is that all they say?

  No, often there are special concerns depending on who they are. A mother worrying about how she brought up her children is likely to criticize you for not making it look like an accident. After all, how would your mother have felt?

  Touching.

  Yes. Then a businessman is likely to point out you didn’t even have your business affairs in order. When you commit suicide, in other words, you should be thinking about everyone but yourself. You’re only losing your life. What about other people?

  Dreadful to be that selfish.

  Yes. But there are also a few people who never mention it and go right on with you as if nothing had happened. It’s a way of finding out who’s close to you, I admit, but a dangerous one.

  You seem to be quite an expert.

  No, just one or two experiences. But don’t you want to hear the other reason why you can’t fail? It’s because you’ll have learned a life just doesn’t matter much except as a memory, even a great life. In fact I suspect that explains what Christ did after he was resurrected.

  Christ?

  Well we know he spent forty days on the Mount of Olives seeing his friends, then disappeared. And during those forty days he must have realized he couldn’t go on doing the same things with the same people anymore. It was over. They had their memories of him and that’s what they needed, not him. In the three years he’d been preaching he’d already changed a good deal and of course he would have gone on changing, everyone always does. But his friends didn’t want that.

  So what did he do?

  Stern tapped his forehead.

  Two theories, one for good days and one for bad. The theory for bad days is set in Jerusalem. Have you been there?

  Yes.

  Then you’ve seen St Helena’s crypt in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?

  Wait, I know what you’re going to say. It’s the man who paces back and forth at the top of the stairs, isn’t it. Staring at the floor and muttering to himself and he’s been doing it for two thousand years.

  You mean you’ve already heard my theory?

  No, but I saw that man once and somebody told me about him.

  Oh, well according to my theory for bad days that man is Christ. What happened was that after his forty days with his friends he fully intended to go to heaven, but first he decided he might take a last look at that spot where he was crucified, that hilltop where the most momentous event in his life had occurred. So he did and he was so stunned by what he saw he never left, and ever since he’s b
een there pacing back and forth talking to himself about what he saw.

  What did he see?

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They’d taken down the three crosses and it was just an empty hilltop. For all anyone could tell, nothing at all had ever happened there.

  She shook her head.

  That’s certainly for bad days. What about good days?

  On good days I think he did leave. He saw what he saw all right, but then he decided to do something else anyway. So he clipped his hair or tied it up and shaved his beard or grew a longer one, put on some weight and taught himself to speak directly like other men, then went on to acquire a trade so he could pay his way.

  What trade?

  Cobbler, say, perhaps even carpentry again although I doubt that. After seeing the emptiness of that hilltop he’d probably have preferred to try something new. Yes, cobbler perhaps.

  And where did he go?

  Oh he didn’t go anywhere. Theories for good and bad days have to be set in the same place. He stayed in Jerusalem and now that he’d changed his appearance he could come and go as he pleased without being recognized, perhaps disguised as an Armenian or an Arab. Which he still does of course, being immortal and having long since forgotten his former troubles, even the man he used to be. And all because a very beautiful thing happened, a strange and glorious transformation. It took more time than going to heaven, had he done that, but it happened.

  What?

  Jerusalem moved. Over the centuries it slowly moved north. It picked itself up from Mt Zion and inched its way toward what had once been that empty hilltop outside the walls. Foreign conquerors who thought they were desecrating the place helped by razing the city every so often, and each time they did the city was rebuilt a little closer to the desolate hilltop. Until the hilltop was no longer far away but right beneath the walls, then within the walls, then nearer to the center of the city and at last in its very heart, crowded around with bazaars and playing children and swarms of traders and pious pilgrims all shouting and laughing and rubbing together. No longer a sad little empty hilltop at all you see. No just the opposite. Jerusalem had come to him, the Holy City had embraced him and that’s why at last he was able to forget his former sorrows. He no longer had to fear the nothingness of his death.