Amos Oz - A Perfect Peace

At the beginning of the last century, John Lewis Burckhardt, an intrepid Swiss traveler, reached the ghost city disguised as an Arab. Looking down from a precipitous height, he caught sight all at once of the red shrines that time forgot and was staggered by their awesome majesty. For a full hour he stood there, a man turned to stone. Later he described in detail the enormous columns carved with mysterious glyphs, the stone galleries climbing one above the other in the torrid air like catwalks, the Greco-Roman auditorium built by the Emperor Hadrian, the palaces, the fortifications, the arcades, the temples, the tombs, and all of them rose-red. Oleander bushes blazed among the ruins. Whole forests of them grew in the gorge that wound up to the site. At sunrise and sunset the vaults and archways and sculpted rock flared upward in tongues of red, purple, and vermilion flame.

Half-awake, Yonatan sought to picture the magically moribund world that awaited him. The steep steps cut into the mountainside, the great staircase ascending almost two hundred meters above the city to the sanctuary of ed-Deir, its walls surmounted by Medusa heads. And still other stairs leading up to the Mount of Sacrifice, with its pool for collecting the blood of the victims, on either side of which, lifting skyward, were two colossal monoliths carved in the shape of human phalluses, the remnants of a vanished orgiastic cult. An unearthly dread, so the booklet reported, overcame all those who dared to climb the mount and look down on the nightmarish ruins below. Here and there among the mounds of debris the visitor to Petra might encounter human skulls and thighbones, even whole skeletons, bleached by the sun and preserved by the dryness and heat in a state of polished perfection. Even in the empty passageways of Petra the oleanders grow. Solitary lizards slither over the forsaken ground and jackals wail into the night.

Once upon a time myrrh and frankincense scented this valley. Its priests and priestesses lifted their voices in sacred hymns. Lewd pagan revels and human sacrifices took place side by side. Orchards, vineyards, and gardens, winepresses and threshing grounds, ringed the city. The desert gods dwelt in perfect peace with Baal, Aphrodite, and Apollo. Until all was struck down. The ancient gods perished utterly. Man turned to dry bone. An angry, wrathful Jehovah, as always, had the last laugh. Who is it that cometh from Edom, in crimsoned garments from Bosra? It is the God of the burning bush, of the fiery wilderness, Who has come to spread the stillness of death.

For fourteen hundred years the ghost city of Petra was not mentioned in a single known document. Only in recent times had a few moonstruck adventurers tried reaching it across the hostile border. A few had made it safely back. Nearly ten had died in the attempt. The Atallah Bedouin were a notoriously bloodthirsty lot.

He picks up and goes, said Yonatan out loud, swept by a drunken joy. He stuck the booklet in his pack, rolled up the maps, and slipped them under his shirt. It was almost noon. He badly wanted a cigarette. Oh no you don't! You're all through with that.

He stripped his rifle and cleaned it with a barrel rod and a flannel swatch, taking time to do a thorough job. Once it was reassembled, he lay down on his back, his head on his pack, his rifle resting on his chest, only to feel last night's thrill of pleasure once again in his loins. He yawned and stretched luxuriously. Scattered words and phrases from the booklet passed like clouds through his mind. Ghosts. Unearthly dread. Jackals. Human skulls. We'll go have a look-see. Once we've come back it'll be time enough for life to begin.

He dozed off. As flies paraded across his face, he envisioned his death that night from a burst of bullets in the chest or a curved dagger between the shoulder blades. There was no fear in the thought of such a death, alone in the wilderness on enemy soil, face down on the dark sand, his blood soaking into the dust like a venom purged from his body. In such a death, he might at last find perfect peace, as sometimes he had found it when, during a childhood illness, he had lain between the cool sheets of his parents' bed, in the dim light of the shuttered blinds, beneath his mother's quilt. Yonatan yearned for a death as gentle and painless as this, one that would turn him into just another rock in the stony desert, one that would leave him without a single thought or longing, cold, inanimate, and forever still.

Anyone looking at Yonatan at that moment could have easily detected beneath the mask of dust, the scraggly growth of beard, and the tangled, grimy hair the face of the delicate eight-year-old boy he had once been, the sleepy-eyed child always enveloped in a quiet sorrow, as if the grown-ups had made him a promise that he had been sure would be kept but still had not been. Even sleep, when it came to gather him up, failed to wipe away the lines of hurt from his face. So he appeared to the man leaning over him now, staring at him intently with light blue eyes, his gaze slowly shifting to take in the pile of equipment, the sleeping bag tied to the pack, and the rifle cradled on the young man's chest. A weary, compassionate smile spread over his face. With the tip of a long finger, he prodded the sleeping Yonatan.

"Hey, you chudak, dehydrate is what you'll do here. Come on now, let's put you to bed in style. In a fourposter, like a king. On sheets of royal purple, of byssus and lace."

Yonatan gave a start. Opening his eyes wide, he cartwheeled backwards, supple as a cat, gripping his gun with both hands, prepared to fight for his life.

"Bravo!" laughed the old man. "Bravo! What reflexes! Splendid! But have no fear. You face a friend, not a foe. A hat you have maybe? To be put on immediately. Tlallim."

"Excuse me?"

"Tlallim. Alexander. Sasha. That was one horrible dream I woke you from, eh? Come, malenki mine, off we go. When you fell asleep, there may have been shade here, but now it's a blazing furnace."

Yonatan glanced at his dead watch. His voice dropped to its lowest register. "Do you know what time it is?"

"The very best of times! Here, give me a hand, my love. We'll put you to bed in the royal palace until morning comes. And we'll feed you with sweetmeats and cakes. And bird's milk will be yours to drink. Come on, now. Kushat i spat. Dayosh! "

Yonatan vaguely remembered this tall, thin codger from last night, when, upon arriving in Ein-Husub, he had made out among the soldiers, workers, and transients a lanky, long-limbed bushranger with an unruly white beard, a naked, gray-curled chest as brown as a Bedouin's, and a pair of blue eyes peering merrily out of a copper-colored face.

"Thank you," said Yonatan. "But I've got to be on my way."

" Nu , hit the road, by all means." The old man grinned, his twinkling eyes sly and friendly. "Hit it as hard as you can. Only with what, eh? The only vehicle in all of Ein-Husub right now is Burlak."

"Excuse me?"

"Burlak, my beloved jeep. It was once the apple of General Allenby's eye. He used to take it for spins from Cairo to Damascus, but now it's my own pet. In a few hours Burlak and I can bring you with all honors to Bir-Meliha. You won't be slipping across the border before nightfall anyway. And what about water, krasavits ? Do you really mean to try to get by on that one pathetic flask? Believe me, you'll die of thirst, man! I'll give you one of those plastic, nu, what do you call them, jerrycans. Then you'll have enough water to get you there. You call me Tlallim. Or Sasha. Or Grandpa. Whatever you call me, I'm still in charge of the desert around here. Come on, let's get moving. Just please stick a headpiece on that crazy skull of yours before I count to three. You call me Tlallim, and I'll call you krasavits. Dayosh! "