Edward Whittemore - Jerusalem Poker

Nubar snorted. No, it hadn't quite come to that yet. Routinely, in his head, he dashed off another cable to Dead Sea Control.

ARE YOU MAD? HAS THE SUN DOWN THERE IN THAT DRIED CUNT OF THE WORLD

BEEN GETTING TO YOUR BRAIN? NO, REPEAT NO, PROMOTION FOR THIS

ZOROASTRIAN CHARLATAN. MEDICAL AND RETIREMENT BENEFITS OUT OF THE

QUESTION AND NO HAZARDOUS-DUTY PAY FOR THIS SHIRKER. FOR ALL I CARE HE

CAN GO THE WAY OF THE LOST GREEK AND THE TWO OF THEM CAN RELIVE THE

PERSIAN CAMPAIGNS AGAINST GREECE AND THE GREEK CAMPAIGNS AGAINST

PERSIA. I ABSOLUTELY REFUSE TO BE DUPED.

NUBAR

SUPREME LEADER AND FIELD MARSHAL,

GENERALISSIMO COMMANDING EVERYTHING

That was better. Much better. He knew he couldn't be too careful. His control had to be absolute, discipline simply couldn't be relaxed for a moment. One instance of even the lowliest lackey promoting himself and everyone in the organization would see it as a sign of weakness on his part, at the top. Then all of them would begin promoting themselves and plucking grandiose new titles out of the air.

This dangerous tendency had to be stopped before it gathered momentum. A follow-up cable to Dead Sea Control was in order.

PRIORITY FROM THE VERY TOP. FREEZE, DOWN THERE. ALL PROMOTIONS BARRED

UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. DID YOU REALLY THINK YOU WERE GOING TO GET AWAY

WITH SOMETHING? WELL YOU'RE NOT. SIT RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE UNTIL YOU HEAR

FROM ME. IT MAY BE A HARDSHIP POST BUT IT'S THE ONLY ONE ANY OF YOU ARE

GOING TO SEE FOR A WHILE AND YOU CAN COUNT ON THAT. NO ANSWER

NECESSARY AND NO EXCUSES TOLERATED.

NUBAR

LEADER AT THE VERY TOP AND CHIEF OF ALL FORCES.

Suddenly Nubar frowned. Something the informer had said was troubling him, working at the back of his brain.

Yes, he remembered it now. He pursed his lips to whistle in surprise but of course he couldn't whistle. It was all coming back from those early historical reports, the background material on the poker game that had been sent to him when the UIA first began to operate in the Middle East.

A huge magnifying glass with an unblinking eye two inches wide behind it?

Menelik Ziwar, the unknown black Copt and foster father of Cairo Martyr, had allegedly used just such a glass when he was lying on his back in retirement in the sarcophagus of Cheops' mother.

But the magnifying glass hadn't originally belonged to Ziwar. It had been a gift from his dearest friend, an unnamed giant of a man who had worn a massive greasy black turban and a shaggy short black coat made from unwashed and uncombed goats' hair, both said to have been gifts from a remote hill tribe in Persia. This friend, mysteriously, had appeared from nowhere on Sunday afternoons to continue a forty-year conversation he was having with Ziwar over drunken lunches in a filthy Arab restaurant beside the Nile, the lunches ending toward sundown when both men jumped over the railing into the river for a swim.

A portable bronze sundial, monstrously heavy?

The one the giant explorer Strongbow had worn on his hip in the nineteenth century? The same sundial that was now on the wall of the former antiquities shop in Jerusalem where the poker game was being played? Chimes attached to it that sounded erratically, confusing time?

A giant in both cases. A giant. An elusive figure who may have secretly owned the entire Middle East at the turn of the century.

Nubar gripped his throat. He was having difficulty breathing. Being so small, he couldn't help but be terrified by the specter of a man seven and a half feet tall.

Or was he a man? Perhaps much more? Did that explain his height and his odd behavior, the sudden appearances and disappearances in a filthy restaurant beside the Nile? In a remote hill tribe in Persia in time of need?

Ahura Mazda, chief of the gods of goodness?

Nubar fell back limply on is paper couch. His unfocused eyes roamed the ceiling.

He had now arrived at the main body of the juice squeezer's report. The direction of the narrative was vague, a tortuous route through the Old City with no hint of its destination. To Nubar under the Grand Canal, mythical Jerusalem seemed to be growing ever more indistinct on its faraway mountaintop.

The informer's account began with the anonymous pilgrim, mentioned at the very beginning, whose name and race and nationality were all unknown.

One hot afternoon in August this pilgrim had lost his way in Jerusalem. He was trying to find a gate out of the Old City, any gate would do, but the maze of alleys had confused him. He wandered into the cul-de-sac where the informer's fruit juice stand was located and collapsed in the doorway. After numerous glasses of pomegranate juice the pilgrim eventually revived. As he did he began to talk about the cause of his near-total disorientation.

The first stop on the pilgrim's itinerary that morning had also been his last, St Savior's Convent, the Franciscan enclave in the Old City that was practically a city in itself. He had arrived in time to join a scheduled tour, but soon after the tour started he became enamored with a statue in an alcove and found himself detached from the group.

The pilgrim opened the nearest door and discovered he had chanced upon the convent bakery, his first serious mistake of the day.

At this point in the narrative, wrote the informer, the pilgrim had begun to twitch violently. He laughed loudly until tears came to his eyes, then all at once stopped laughing and moaned as if in great pain. The informer thought the man was suffering from sunstroke or perhaps some hysterical disorder. In any case it was only after gulping down several more glasses of pomegranate juice, newly squeezed, that the pilgrim was able to resume his account.

Somberly Nubar chewed his lip. A cable had come to mind. Imprecise language could be dangerous, because it might very quickly lead people to make false conclusions.

MY FRIENDS. LET ME MAKE ONE THING PERFECTLY CLEAR.

IT IS ESSENTIAL TO OUR NATIONAL SECURITY, AND TO OUR SURVIVAL AS A FREEDOM-LOVING PEOPLE LIVING UNDER GOD, THAT THE JUICE SQUEEZER BE

WARNED NOT TO USE EXAGGERATED TERMS FOR CONCEPTS HE DOESN'T

UNDERSTAND.

WHAT I MEAN TO SAY IS JUST THIS. STRICTLY SPEAKING, THERE IS NO SUCH THING

AS AN HYSTERICAL DISORDER. THERE IS ONLY DISORDER OF A GENERALLY

LAWLESS NATURE, WHICH IS TO SAY LAWLESSNESS IN GENERAL, AND THAT CAN

ALWAYS BE CONTROLLED BY DISCIPLINE AT THE TOP, IF IT IS IRON DISCIPLINE. SO, MY FRIENDS, LET ME SHARE THESE THOUGHTS WITH YOU. TELL OUR GOOD FRIEND

THE FRUIT JUICE SQUEEZER TO SIT UP STRAIGHT AND CONCENTRATE, AND TO BE

READY. HE TOO WILL HAVE HIS ORDERS, NO LESS THAN YOU DO, FOR THERE IS A PLACE FOR EVERYONE BENEATH ME.

AND SO LET ME SUBMIT AGAIN FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION THE SIMPLE YET VITAL

PROPOSITION THAT WE CANNOT HOPE TO SURVIVE AS A FREEDOM-LOVING PEOPLE

UNDER GOD IF WE ALLOW SELF-DELUDED CITIZENS AND SELF-APPOINTED

ZEALOTS, NO MATTER HOW WELL–INTENTIONED THEY ARE, AND I PERSONALLY

KNOW THEY ARE OFTEN WELL–INTENTIONED, STILL WE CANNOT ALLOW THEM TO

RUN AROUND THE STREETS OF JERUSALEM, OR AROUND THE DEAD SEA FOR THAT

MATTER, EVEN IF IT IS THE DRIED CUNT OF THE WORLD, SHOUTING WHATEVER

COMES INTO THEIR HEADS. BECAUSE, MY FRIENDS, IT JUST WON'T WORK.

NUBAR

THE GENTLE AND UNDERSTANDING,

YET NONETHELESS, BY NECESSITY,

IRON FIST AT THE TOP.

Nubar smiled benignly. He tucked his housecoat more tightly around his legs and read on.

The anonymous pilgrim, wrote the informer, now found himself standing in the doorway of the convent bakery. Inside the bakery a very old priest was doing a jig in front of the oven, while removing loaves of freshly baked bread. All the bread seemed to have been baked in one of four distinct shapes. The pilgrim remarked upon this, upon saying hello, and the old priest readily agreed.