Edward Whittemore - Jerusalem Poker

True?

Haj Harun smiled shyly. He nodded.

Oh yes, Prester John, absolutely. We're holy men now, you and I, and our concerns are spiritual ones.

But even a single night with the princess is worth a century of incoherency.

Ah, now that's a fine sentiment.

And it's worth the twenty-three centuries of abuse and ridicule and humiliation.

Fine, very fine.

Yes, Prester John. If we were young again, I tell you, the ladies would know it. They'd hear our knock on the door and see the gleam in our eye and know our intent.

We'd be lusty, you say? Not taking no for an answer? Doing a proper passionate job in Jerusalem?

Giving the dear sweet souls God's gift, murmured Haj Harun. Unabashedly giving them love.

Unabashedly, I say. Why not.

But unfortunately we're no longer young, Prester John, and we have our mission before us.

Before us, yes, along with a rainy March day in 1925. Well I do feel like I'm going the other way sometimes, but do you know how old I am according to the calendar?

Younger than I am, certainly.

True. Soon to celebrate my twenty-fifth birthday to be exact.

But of course that's apparent age, which doesn't mean anything here.

I do know it. That information was passed on to me during my first foodless days in the Holy City. By the baking priest who gave me this uniform and awarded me the Victoria Cross and set me up in residence at the Home for Crimean War Heroes. Take the uniform and the medal for bravery, he said, apparent age is no problem in Jerusalem. So said the former MacMael n mBo, baking priest and my first benefactor here.

Haj Harun leaned over and picked up a flat worn stone. He peered into it.

The baking priest, you say?

That's who he is, the very article. And when I ceased to be a Poor Clare nun upon my arrival here and joined the ranks of the Jerusalem unemployed, outcasts on the summit, he was the one who put me on my feet.

I know him, announced Haj Harun, still peering into the flat worn stone.

You do?

He always bakes his loaves of bread in the same four shapes, I believe.

That's him all right.

One in the shape of his homeland and one for his God, a third in the shape of the land where he gave up fruitless strife, and a fourth in the shape of Jerusalem where he found peace.

All true, that's him. Ireland, the Cross, the Crimea and Jerusalem.

And that's all he does. He bakes and bakes his four shapes in the Old City and is content.

Very true. But how do you happen to know him?

I've known him a very long time, ever since he arrived. His role is a traditional one here.

Ah. And when did he arrive?

In the first century. Soon after Christ died.

Ah.

Yes. Baking his bread in the Old City, a cheerful man then as now. Given to little dances in front of his oven as he shovels in his dough and shovels out his bread, sandals clapping on the stones as he does his little dances.

That's him.

Bits of wisdom flying between the loaves, and laughter and merriment and rhymes as well, tales to hum to and a gay glint always in his eye.

By God, for sure.

A cheerful man, our baking priest, we've always relied on him. Of course we have. We couldn't possibly get along without him.

Haj Harun looked up from the stone mirror. He smiled.

Yes. Jerusalem must have its merry baking priest with his leaven and his laughter, his leaven and his dances in front of his oven. He gives us something we in the Holy City must have, something simple yet special that we will never be able to do without. And we're thankful for that I'm ready, whispered Joe. That something is?

Haj Harun nodded gently.

Bread, Prester John. Even here men can't live by spirit alone.

— 8-

Joker Wild

Change the view, that's the article. If you're down on the coast, bugger it up to the mountains, bugger it down to the coast. Do you follow me?

Still the Old City, still everybody's Holy City. In the back room of Haj Harun's shop the high round table was heaped with currencies and jewels and precious metals, the Great Jerusalem Poker Game now in its ninth year and notorious throughout the Middle East as the place where fortunes could be quickly made or quickly undone, the game still run by its three founders and only permanent members, an enigmatic African, a clever Hungarian, a wily Irishman.

From the far side of the table Munk Szondi snapped his fingers, signaling to the Druse warrior on mess duty to refill his bowl of garlic bulbs. The warrior took the bowl to the corner where the garlic bunches hung and lopped off a load with his sword, returning the overflowing bowl to the table.

Munk picked up a handful of bulbs, crunched his way through them and yawned. It had been a long evening of seven-card high-low, and business was slow. In front of him lay a meager supply of chits representing Jericho orange futures, Syrian olive-oil futures and not much else. Munk sighed, rippling his cards with garlic fumes, and gazed dully around the table.

To his left, a lean leathery British brigadier on long leave from the Bombay Lancers.

Next to him a limp cringing Libyan rug merchant who had stopped off to pray at the Dome of the Rock after shamelessly and successfully beating his dying cousin with a stick, somewhere to the east, in order to acquire the cousin's valuable collection of Bukharas.

Continuing clockwise, a French dealer in stolen Byzantine ikons, a shifty-eyed pederast who regularly visited Jerusalem on his trips of desecration up and down the Levantine coast.

An elderly Egyptian landowner, cotton-fat, spastic when excited, said to be impotent if his favorite hunting falcon, hooded, wasn't perched on the mirror that ran the length of his bed.

Two enormous Russians with shaved heads, ostentatiously dressed as kulaks and picking their teeth with knives, pretending to be mining technicians interested in sulphur deposits on the shores of the Dead Sea, obviously Bolshevik agents sent to foment atheism in the Holy Land.

A commonplace group, in short, with the players dropping in and out of the game.

Off somewhere to Munk's right was Cairo Martyr hunched beside his hookah, not doing very well either, in front of him a small stack of Maria Theresa crowns which the African fingered from time to time, listlessly polishing the impressive breasts of the former Austrian empress with his smooth thumb.

And also off somewhere to his left, as usual, O'Sullivan Beare, quiet tonight for a change and apparently more interested in his antique cognac bottle than his cards, the bottle actually containing his fiery home-brewed poteen. The Irishman absentmindedly traced with his finger the distinctive cross that appeared on all his bottles, in front of him an insignificant pile of Turkish dinars, backed up by a totally useless reserve of Polish zlotys.

Munk yawned again and gazed down at the cards he held. The betting had come around to him.

Fold, he said, reaching under the table to scratch himself. Joe also folded, as did Cairo.

The servile Libyan rug merchant and the French ikon thief went on to win. But the British brigadier and the spastic Egyptian landowner had been more than holding their own all evening and the two noisy Bolsheviks seemed on the verge of a breakthrough. Luck was running to the strangers at the table.

Hello there Munk, called Joe from across the table. Would you be having the time on this dreadfully dreary evening?

Munk took out his three-layer pocket watch and began flipping through the faces. Eventually he came to one that satisfied him and glared at it. A heavy garlic belch erupted from deep inside him.

Hello there Munk, called Cairo from his side of the table. How's it read?

Slow, answered the Hungarian.