Steve Katz - The Compleat Memoirrhoids - 137.n

My favorite place to stop for lunch for the short time I stayed in Istanbul was a wide-open restaurant on the street that curved down to the Galata Bridge. You felt like you could watch the movement of a large part of the city from there, the pedestrian traffic across the bridge, the ships moving into and out of the Bosporus. They make a flatbread, yufka , like a crepe, they grill on a sac , a kind of flattened wok, over an open fire. They sprinkle it with a helping of beyaz penir , a briny cheese, olive oil, and various savory spices, roll it up, and serve it to you with a glass of buttermilk. It’s happy food. With the fire popping and lively service, everyone is in a good mood. I think I saw my interrogator pass once, looking clean as he did when I first met him. He didn’t stop. I watched for Brigitte to pass. She never did. I went back to her hotel several times and checked with different clerks. “No Brigitte,” they said. “No Brigitte here.”

It was a pleasure to settle down to write at the café just inside Herod’s Gate in Old Jerusalem. The people made me feel comfortable and accommodated. The waiter, whose name was Nasr, kept my glass full of sweet tea. He made sure the bowl of the water-pipe was tamped with tobacco and topped with a glowing ember. If I moved to leave the others protested, implored me to stay, even though we hardly ever conversed and I never played shesh-besh. They seemed to enjoy having a writer in the room. That was in 1968, shortly after the six-day war. It’s in the context of my experiences with the people then that I see the bitterness, the hate, the murderous conflict today. A story goes that as soon as the gates were opened after the war the son of the owner of this café rushed into West Jerusalem, immediately met a girl, and became romantically entangled. When she told him she wouldn’t make love to him again until he learned Hebrew, he registered one of the shortest times ever in acquiring a language. He was fluent within three weeks.

One evening I sat with my friend Dorothy in another café in East Jerusalem. You rarely saw women in these cafés, certainly not Arab women, but the men seemed to enjoy having Dorothy there. They liked looking at her short, curly hair, her mannish gestures. She was my buddy in Jerusalem, nothing romantic. They enjoyed talking to a Western woman. I was waiting for Abdul, from whom I was going to buy a “sock” of hashish. I intended to carry this sock back into the States.

We watched the men play shesh-besh (backgammon). The games were loud and animated, the players exclaiming, slapping the table with each roll of the dice. They brewed us a beverage made with hibiscus, cinnamon, cardamom, and other spices. It had a reputation as an aphrodisiac. They watched us with the anticipation of frat boys who had set up a practical joke. Abdul arrived, dressed in a dark suit with a slim black knitted tie on a starched white shirt. He carried a black dispatch case. Every inch of him was businessman. He was young, trim, handsome, with dark, intelligent eyes, a graceful manner, and a ready smile. I liked him. Everyone in the café knew him, and they certainly knew what we were up to.

“My friends,” he said, taking both our hands. He sat at our table. Other people came by and greeted him. We made small talk until finally he focused his dark stare into my eyes. “You want?” He smiled.

“Yes. I want.”

My gut twisted as if through a wringer. Abdul grabbed his dispatch case. He walked to the door, and gestured for me to follow. I suddenly panicked. All the others who stared at me, all the sounds from the games, the weird stuff I’d been drinking, all seemed sinister. “Come on, my friend,” said Abdul, at the door. The “my friend” was ominous. How was he my friend? I looked at Dorothy, as if I needed her to rescue me. “I’ll be okay,” she said. I was sure I wouldn’t be. I could have backed out of the deal, but something stubborn and stupid in me wouldn’t let me do that. I was sweating as if I’d been running miles. I followed Abdul out the door, and into a narrow alleyway. My knees were weak. I didn’t remember what I’d imagined the buy to be like, but this had a specific gravity that made me feel nothing but dread. I would have made a piss-poor criminal.

He led me through the narrowest passageways of the old city deep into the guts of the orient. “Can we stop and do it here?” I asked. “Just come,” he answered. His smile now seemed less friendly than ingratiating. We went deeper, for what seemed to me to be hours, though it was probably less than twenty minutes. It was barely dusk, but some kind of night had already invaded these passages. It felt like my own dark destiny. I would never find my way out of this. Finally he stopped, opened his dispatch case, and lifted out one of the socks that filled it. It was solid, an inch thick, six inches long, about three and a half inches wide, wrapped tightly in a coarse cotton sack, printed with Arabic, and 500G in red near the top center. It was a big pocketful. I fumbled for my wallet, dropped it, scooped it up, and counted out the agreed on price. “Thank you,” he said, and vanished, leaving me to find my way back to Dorothy alone. I went down some stairs, back through the narrow alleys. It was much quicker than getting there. I took some deep breaths before going in to the café. The sock was still in my hand. I didn’t realize it until I reached out to push the door open. I hastily sunk it deep into my pocket. Dorothy was still there. She was playing shesh-besh with a bearded old man. A crowd of enthusiastic spectators engulfed them. They had never seen a woman play the game.

The sock stayed in my pocket. On the Turkish ship from Haifa to Brindisi I paced the deck debating whether or not to toss it into the waves. “Hang on. Don’t be a wimp,” I admonished myself. “You paid for it,” I told myself. “You have to keep it.” “Get rid of it,” I said to myself. It felt comfortable against my thigh all through Italy. As I boarded the plane home from Milan I hardly felt it, like a second wallet. It began to weigh again as I approached customs at Kennedy airport. By the time it was my turn to face the customs officer the sock weighed more than the two bags in my cart. I looked around. The terminal lights were blazing on me. I couldn’t get rid of it now. My three kids, I loved. Jingle, I loved. I had nothing to gain here. I wanted to see them again. I had everything to lose. What was I doing? I didn’t even enjoy smoking hash any more. After the brief euphoria, it made me cranky and lethargic. I wouldn’t keep it. I would give it all away, to friends, to strangers. If only I could stop sweating. The customs agent was looking right through me. “Can’t you fucking stop sweating?” I told myself, as I answered the few questions. You are not cool, Katz. That’s what I found out about myself at customs.

That’s why I write this to you from my prison, to alert you to the perils of Abdul. He is an honest businessman, but do not buy the sock of hash that Abdul offers. His price might be fantastic. He seems genuinely friendly. I tell you, however, that commerce with him leads to disaster, right to your private prison. I am responsible for my own distress. If any of you finds your way to Jerusalem, and it is still an option to relax at the café just inside Herod’s Gate, greet Nasr for me. Give him a kiss. If you run into Dorothy, give her my best. She might have moved on, but maybe not. She has built a great reputation as a woman who will play shesh-besh in a café against a man. But these days, like Isabel Eberhardt in the early twentieth century, I think she dresses and travels as a man. And these days I’m sure she carries a knife.