Edward Whittemore - Sinai Tapestry

To succeed in sorcery he had shaved his head and had his credentials engraved on his skull with a stylus, so that in moments of crisis he could ask that his head be shaved and thereby prove his authenticity.

As a prophet he didn’t wear a collar and have himself led around on a rope from customer to customer as was the common practice, preferring instead to sit in the bazaar shouting unsolicited warnings to passersby.

In medicine he dealt entirely with the pasty residue of a plant with star-shaped flowers known as Jerusalem cherry, a form of nightshade. These mixtures he prepared by mashing them on the filthy cobblestones around Damascus Gate, where he was frequently seen down on his hands and knees, doing a kind of dance to escape the feet of the crowds.

He also used a more potent juice from the wilted leaves of deadly nightshade, an effective narcotic which also caused severe vomiting. This left Haj Harun weak most of the time, since by necessity he had to take his own cures several times a day. To give some substance to his vomit he consumed large bowls of mush made from Jerusalem artichokes.

During that period he still had the ability to address all men in their own tongues even when he himself didn’t understand the language, a great advantage in Jerusalem. In this manner he soon acquired a reputation for being able to transform a loquat or a jackass or even the unintelligible cries of hawkers into astonishing portents of grandiose events.

In the course of time he had been known by many names he couldn’t now remember, but after his first haj in the eighth century he had permanently taken the name Aaron, or Harun as the Arabs pronounced it, in honor of Harun al-Rashid who figured so prominently in the tales he loved above all others, the Thousand and One Nights. It was also after his first haj that he had dedicated himself to defending Jerusalem and its past and future inhabitants against all enemies. Yet despite his good intentions he had to admit his accomplishments remained vague.

Perhaps, as he said, because such a task is both immense and perpetual. Am I making myself clear?

Not quite, replied Joe dizzily. Could you be just a little more specific?

Haj Harun looked embarrassed.

I doubt it but I’ll try. What about?

Oh I don’t know. How about that time when you were practicing medicine. That’s a good profession, why did you give it up?

Had to. The market for deadly nightshade disappeared overnight.

Why?

Someone started a rumor that wiped out the business. You see most of it was bought by women to enlarge the pupils of their eyes, to make them more beautiful. Well a young man whose wife was a customer of mine came to confide in me. They’d only been married a short time and it seems she wouldn’t take him in the mouth. She thought it was unnatural or unsanitary or both. So I advised him.

What advice for such a problem?

I told him to tell her it was perfectly natural and sanitary and furthermore there was no better substance in the world for instantly enlarging the pupils of the eyes. For best results, I said, the dosage should be repeated every few hours. It was only a little lie to help their marriage you see, or maybe it wasn’t a lie at all. Maybe it works, who knows. Do you know?

It is true that I do not. What subsequent developments in the matter?

Well he told her all that and she asked me, as her physician, if it was true and I said it was, and after that her husband went around looking so happily exhausted his friends began to wonder what was going on and asked him.

And?

And he told them, and they told their friends, and overnight all the men in Jerusalem were looking happily exhausted and I couldn’t sell any more deadly nightshade because the women were getting too much of the other substance.

So the rumor that drove you out of business was started by yourself?

Haj Harun moved his feet uneasily.

It seems so.

Not exactly the way to maintain yourself in a profession is it, would you say?

No I guess not but look at it the other way. Didn’t I help to make a lot of marriages happier?

Agreed, that help you must have been. Well what else?

What else what?

What else can you be specific about?

Let’s see. Did you know that when the bedouin are starving they cut open the vein of a horse, drink a little and close the vein? I learned that on a haj.

I did not know it. And if they’re horseless?

They make the camel vomit and drink that.

I see. I won’t ask about camel-less days.

And that bedouin girls wear clusters of cloves in their noses? That they paint the whites of their eyes blue? That the hills around Kheybar are of volcanic origin? I learned all that on different hajes.

I see. Where’s that?

A haj? Where does it lead you mean?

No, the place with the surrounding hills and so forth.

Oh that’s near the great divide of the wadis of northern Arabia.

Good. What else?

Well once I supplied an Armenian antiquities dealer with some parchment that was fifteen hundred years old.

Had some left over did you?

I did. In the caverns. In a grave down there. I don’t know why, do you?

Could you have been thinking of writing your memoirs fifteen hundred years ago and laid in a burial stash just in case?

It’s possible, anything is. Anyway he was very desperate to get his hands on it. But you know, he wasn’t really an antiquities dealer at all.

Is that a fact?

No, not at all. He spent all his time practicing penmanship, learning to write with both hands, I used to go and talk with him sometimes. And you know he wasn’t really Armenian either. We spoke Aramaic together.

What’s that?

The language that was used in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. And now that I think of it, that’s probably the only time I’ve used it since then.

And very sensible too, taking advantage of the opportunity I mean. Probably non-Armenians who write with both hands and speak Aramaic don’t turn up that often, not even in Jerusalem.

Haj Harun stirred. He frowned.

That’s true. You know I didn’t see him for seven years after that, not until he wandered into my shop one morning looking like a ghost. You’ve never seen a man so dusty. And his nose gone and one ear falling off and a bundle under his arm.

Hard times in the desert, you think?

It would seem so. He said something about having been in the Sinai and talking to a blind mole down there but it wasn’t clear at all, I couldn’t make any sense out of it. He was lost, poor man, he couldn’t even find his way around Jerusalem. He begged me to lead him to the Armenian Quarter, to the basement hole where he used to live there, so I did.

Excellent. What event occurring thereby?

None really. He began digging in the basement and dug down a few feet until he came to an old unused cistern. Then he put the bundle he’d been carrying in the cistern and filled up the hole. Why did he do that? Do you know?

Not at the moment but fresh ideas are always coming to me.

You see he didn’t realize I was there, he seemed to have lost hold by then. He was muttering all the time and passing his hand over his eyes as if he were trying to wipe something away.

Muttering, losing hold, do you tell me so. Well that’s a good one too. Is there anything else now?

Only those two discoveries I made as a child.

Only two you say?

The first had to do with balls.

Playing kind?

Well, my own.

Oh I see.

Yes. When I was a little fellow I always thought they were for storing piss. Looking at them it seemed reasonable enough, but then when I was a little older it turned out to be not that way at all.

That’s true, it didn’t. What second and final discovery?