Edward Whittemore - Sinai Tapestry

That women and even emperors took shits just like I did. Once a day more or less with the same explosions and gases.

A curious proposition.

Yes. Very. It took me at least a year to get used to the idea and you know how long a year can be when you’re a child. Doesn’t it often seem like forever?

Forever, true. Often.

You know how I made those two discoveries?

Not precisely I believe.

Well it was from a blind storyteller who was chanting beside the road while an imbecile wrote down what he said. They were adult stories and I shouldn’t have been listening but I was. I was very young then.

I see.

Yes, added Haj Harun wanly. But isn’t it true we were all young and innocent once?

By far the most striking influence on Haj Harun’s early years was his birthmark, an impressive phenomenon that had long been dormant and now appeared only on rare occasions.

This birthmark was an irregular shade of faded purple that began above his left eye, gathered momentum around his nose, cascaded down his neck and swirled intermittently over his entire body in a restless proclamation of stops and starts, tentative here and emphatic there, now lashing out boldly and now retreating, lapsing and flowing by turns as it swung across his loins and drifted down one leg or the other to vanish near an ankle in the manner of a map of some fabulous land of antiquity, Atlantis perhaps or the unknown empire of the Chaldeans, or the known but constantly shifting empire of the Medes.

When the purple pattern had still been largely visible there were those who professed to see in it a general layout of the streets of Ur before that city had been silted over by the primordial flood. To others it offered indistinct clues to the essential military strongpoints throughout the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, while still others claimed it was an accurate diagram of the oases in the Sinai.

In any case the birthmark drew attention to Haj Harun early in his career. By the time of the first Isaiah he was a well-known figure in Jerusalem, variously respected or held in awe by men of many races and creeds.

But during the Persian occupation a change set in. He was no longer considered totally reliable by either natives or foreigners, and when Alexander stopped off on his way to India, Haj Harun was already viewed as an obscure oddity, despite the fact that he had lived in the city much longer than anyone else. Certain disreputable soothsayers still sought his advice in private, but even they had to be mindful of public opinion and ignore him in the street.

Once begun the erosion was rapid. Haj Harun’s confidence in himself steadily declined. He lost his forthright habits of speech and with them his fearless presentations. Well before the Roman era no one in Jerusalem took him seriously. By then he had already seen too many peoples come and go and witnessed too many eras erupting and ending. He had a muddled way of lumping all events together as if they had occurred yesterday, and when strangers happened to make the mistake of listening to him they were sent reeling in all directions, reality changing before their eyes as swiftly as the borders of the purple landscape that curled around his frail body.

Therefore from about the time of Christ there was a total eclipse in Haj Harun’s credibility. The inhabitants of Jerusalem were forever piling new walls and gates and temples and churches and mosques on the ruins of the past, forever covering the old rubble with new bazaars and gardens and courtyards, forever massing and rearing new structures.

They were busy and they simply didn’t have time to believe a man who had been born a thousand years before Christ. Whose mind, moreover, teemed with facts no one else had ever heard.

An Egyptian stone beetle and great secret scarab stuffed with the first arms for the future Jewish underground army.

NEARLY THREE THOUSAND YEARS later in 1920, young O’Sullivan Beare was far from being ready to retire. As soon as he entered the Home for Crimean War Heroes he began to scheme, looking for ways to make money, hinting in various Arab coffee shops that he had extensive experience in illegal affairs. Before long a man of indeterminate nationality approached him.

Smuggling arms? He nodded. He described his four years on the run in southern Ireland and the man seemed impressed. From where to where? Constantinople to here. For whom? The Haganah. What’s that? The future Jewish underground army. Who’s it going to fight, the English? If necessary. Good, bloody English.

You’ll have the honor of bringing them their first weapons, added the man. If the money is right, thought Joe.

Money. He remembered Haj Harun’s lost treasure map, which he was sure existed. The old Arab had referred to it only in passing as the story of my life, but Joe had been too intrigued to let the matter rest there.

You wrote it down? he’d asked Haj Harun.

The old Arab had waved his arms in circles. He couldn’t remember whether he had or not but to Joe the implication was that he had and later lost or misplaced it, this real or secret history of the riches he’d discovered in the caverns beneath Jerusalem, in the Old Cities he’d explored down there and then mixed up in his mind with tales from the Thousand and One Nights and the other fancies that obsessed him, a detailed guide to the incalculable wealth brought to Jerusalem over the millennia by conquerors and pious fanatics.

He’d pressed Haj Harun about it.

Are you sure you don’t have any idea what you could have done with it?

With what?

The story of your life.

Haj Harun had shrugged helplessly and wrung his hands, certainly wanting to please his new friend by recalling this or anything else yet simply unable to, his memory slipping as he said and the years all sliding together, pumping his arms in circles and sadly admitting he just couldn’t be sure, just couldn’t say, the past was too confusing.

Was he forgiven? Were he and Prester John still friends?

That they were, Joe had answered, nothing changed that. But the treasure map had never left his mind and now he wondered whether to mention it to his new employer, who seemed to know a good deal about Jerusalem. Why not chance it? Carefully, without enthusiasm, he asked the man if he had ever heard of a document that supposedly included three thousand years of Jerusalem’s history, written by a madman and worthless, thought to have disappeared not too long ago.

The man studied him curiously. Was he referring to the myth of an original Sinai Bible? An original version totally unlike the forgery later bought by the czar?

The czar. Even the czar had been after it. So eager to get his hands on the map he’d been going around snapping up forgeries.

That’s it. What do they say happened to it?

Supposedly it was buried. But no one has ever seen it and of course it’s all nonsense, the fabrication of a demented mind.

Demented certainly, nonsense of course, buried assuredly. Haj Harun unlocking his antique safe one evening and putting a foot on the ladder, a short time later padding stealthily away down a tunnel fifty feet below the ground for a long private night in the caverns.

What do they say was in it exactly?

The man smiled. That’s the point. Supposedly everything is in it.

Everything. Persian palaces and Babylonian tiaras and Crusader caches, Mameluke plunder and Seleucid gold. A map so valuable the czar had been willing to trade his empire for it.

When do they say it was buried?

In the last century.

Yes that would be right, Haj Harun would still have had his wits about him then. He’d have written it and hidden it and then forgotten where he’d hidden it when he was seized by the idea of his holy mission. He saw the old man stumbling around the walls of his empty shop staring into corners. Mission to where? The moon. Residence? Lunacy. Occupation? Lunatic.