Джеймс Миченер - The Source

Cullinane had learned not to expect Catholic Ireland and Catholic Spain to share common views, and he doubted that Muslim Turkey and Muslim Syria ever would, either. For religion was not a solid basis upon which to construct either a nation or a congeries of nations, and he could foresee the distant time when Pan-Arabism, not religion, would unite true Arab states like Syria, Iraq and Arabia, while surrounding non-Arabic states would go their historic ways: to the west Muslim Egypt would assume a position of leadership among the nations of Africa; to the east Muslim Iran would concentrate on Asia; while to the north Muslim Turkey would associate herself with the problems of Europe. Nationalism, not religion, would decide, and he often caught himself wondering whether the new state of Israel had been wise to commit herself so completely to one faith, no matter how ancient and deeply rooted in the local soil that faith might be. He was surprised at the power of religious parties in the government, at the religious emphasis in schools and at the fact that Israel, like Turkey of old, had handed civil problems like marriage and inheritance to religious courts composed of rabbis if one were Jewish, priests if one were Catholic, or ministers if one happened to be Protestant. As a good Christian he could not help concluding: This is where Byzantium was sixteen centuries ago. Why would a new nation of its own free will insist upon repeating such mistakes? He felt that one of these days he ought to ask Eliav about these matters, for apparently Jews felt that their religion contained special features which exempted it from errors which had overtaken other faiths.

• • •

Shmuel Hacohen wanted land. He had to have land. More than any other man in Palestine this sway-backed, hard-working Jew from Russia had to find land; and as twilight ended on this hot summer day he became desperate, for the same messenger who had brought the dispatches from Akka to Kaimakam Tabari had brought word to Hacohen that the first shipload of Jews from Europe had landed two days earlier at that port. Tomorrow they would begin marching to Tiberias, and unless there was land awaiting them Hacohen would face disaster.

Four years ago, when he first came to Tiberias, he had thought that buying land for a Jewish settlement would be a simple task, but months and years had slipped by in tantalizing negotiation, in bribery and confusion, and Hacohen found himself in 1880 no nearer to having acquired his acres than he had been in 1876. For example, two full years had elapsed since his last petition had been forwarded to Istanbul. How could any government postpone making such a decision for two whole years?

At six o’clock on this very hot day Shmuel sat in his miserable room, wondering what to do. He lived in a hut that marked the border between the Ashkenazi and Sephardi sections, and not even in the worst of Russia had he known such a room, for in Russia one had at least a floor and—if he tried hard enough—a freedom from bedbugs; but here in the hopeless filth of Tiberias there was nothing except old men studying the Talmud, women living their pointless lives like animals, and children growing each year in ignorance. It was a hideous perversion of the way a Jew ought to live in his homeland, and Shmuel Hacohen was morally outraged.

He groaned in the heat. Obviously he must again implore the kaimakam to release the land needed by the incoming Jews, but as he visualized the kaimakam he shook his head: I can’t understand him at all. He recognized that Tabari was corrupt beyond any standard existing in Russia, and he knew that the kaimakam intended to squeeze out of the Jews every piaster possible. He was also aware that Tabari used the mutasarrif in Akka and the wali in Beirut as convenient excuses for extracting additional baksheesh, but what Hacohen could not understand was the man’s apparent lack of any moral base from which to operate.

Shmuel was willing to concede that Kaimakam Tabari was at heart a good man; otherwise he could have played Jew against Arab, and Christian against both, generating rifts within the community as Russian governors did, but this Tabari refused to do. He handled each religious group in his community in the same corrupt manner, thus preserving a kind of happy-go-lucky peace, and after Hacohen’s experiences in Russia he knew how to appreciate such peace. In his homeland Hacohen had learned to work with men who were mostly good or mostly bad, and with such men he knew where he stood. But with Kaimakam Tabari the problem was more complex, for the man could never bring himself to announce forthrightly what was to be done. Even when Hacohen bought him off with many pounds, things could not be considered settled, for the next man who brought the kaimakam a few more pounds could buy him back the other way. Trying to purchase land through such a man was frustrating to the point of despair, and Shmuel Hacohen had reached that point.

In his steaming, filthy room, not fit for sheep or goats, the wiry little Jew pulled on his western clothes, jammed his feet into hot leather shoes and prepared to wrestle yet again with the slippery, smiling kaimakam. But this day was going to be different. He was determined to get land. He would get the land he had paid for or …

He did not finish the sentence, because even in his state of anxiety he knew that he had no weapon with which to threaten the amiable official. A Jew could not protest to Akka or go to Beirut. He must deal only with Kaimakam Tabari. Nor could a Jew, like a Frenchman, appeal to his ambassador for aid—because the Jew had no ambassador. All Shmuel Hacohen could do was to pay more baksheesh to Tabari, and then more, and then still more.

Consequently, on this last desperate day Hacohen knelt in the dust at the head of his mattress and rummaged among some stones, from which he withdrew his final cache of funds. He had nearly a thousand English pounds, the last of his money from Russia, and this must close the deal. He brushed his trousers and started for the door, then stopped, considered for a long time, and returned reluctantly to the foot of his bed, where he dug into the earthen floor, coming up at last with a beautiful, shining gold coin. He studied it with love and regret, concluding that on this day of judgment even that coin was expendable.

He had found the ancient piece on one of his first scouting trips along the southern end of Bahr Tubariyeh where he had stopped to kick at the soil to see if it was promising. When he uncovered a dark, rich earth, capable of yielding fine crops if properly farmed, he took a stick and continued digging as if the land were already his, and in so doing turned up this antique coin covered with Arabic writing. It was waiting for me, he told himself.

It had been Shmuel’s intention to spend this lucky coin toward the purchase of his own home in the new settlement, and he had resisted all temptations to waste it otherwise, but now he was trapped. He must have land for his Jews, and if this gold coin could help him get it, the coin would have to be spent.

Into his right pants pocket he put what little Turkish money he had left. Into his coat he put the roll of English bills. And into his left pants pocket, where he could feel its reassuring weight against his leg, he placed the gold coin. Putting on his Turkish fez he brushed his suit again and prayed, “God of Moses, lead me out of this wilderness.”

Shmuel Hacohen had been born Shmuel Kagan in the little village of Vodzh along the western boundary of Russia. His father was a thin, pious man who collected rents for Russian landlords, and Shmuel’s first argument came when he was nine: his orthodox father had forced him to wear soft curls dangling down beside his ears, the Hasidic mark of piety as demanded by the Bible, but young Shmuel, a sickly and sway-backed child who walked with his left shoulder thrust forward, was learning that boys with curls were apt to be set upon by the Russians, so, borrowing his mother’s scissors, he had shorn himself. At the time his mother said nothing, but when Kagan senior returned from collecting rents she burst into tears and Shmuel’s father took him into a darkened room, where he recited the terrifying admonition of Moses our Teacher: “‘If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die.’ “His father had paused before adding, “You let your hair grow in curls.”