Edward Whittemore - Sinai Tapestry

Maud took his hand and smiled.

What would your father see if he were here now?

Surely the desert. We must be away from this babble of Jerusalem with its roving fanatics of every kind. Did you see that item pacing the top of the stairs to the crypt?

Yes.

Well he’s been doing that for two thousand years, just pacing and muttering and never stopping. How could we even begin to think clearly in a place where such things go on?

Who told you that?

About the man on the top of the stairs? My sorcerer friend. And he knows because he’s been watching him all that time. Around the beginning of every century he drops in to compare notes and see if there’s been any change in the general situation but there never is. But what do you think, will we be going to the desert then? I’ve never been but the old Arab says it’s a wonderful place for filling your soul. He’s been making a haj for the last ten hundred years or so and he says nothing compares to it in the springtime, wild flowers and all that. Shouldn’t we be going?

Yes my love, it must be a wonderful place and I think we should be going.

From Aqaba they rode south along the shore of the Sinai until they found a small oasis where they camped. Through the foothills in the moonlight they circled the colors of the desert, swam at noon in the brilliant gulf and lay on the hot sand of the beach, asleep in each other’s arms in early evening and awake again at dawn to slip down to the shore and embrace in the shallows, laughing over their figs and pomegranates and toasting the new sun with arak, whispering Do it again right now and spinning, sinking through the quarters of a moon.

On their last evening they sat on a rock by the water watching the sunset gather silently, passing the arak back and forth as the Sinai burst into flames behind them and the last of the light settled on the barren hills where darkness was coming to Arabia. The rustle of the waves and the fingertips of the wind, the desert cast to fire and the rush of arak in their blood, the air lapsing into blackness and inevitably on the far side of the gulf another and distant world.

He stood then and threw the empty bottle far across the water.

They held their breath and waited and a minute seemed to pass before they heard a tiny splash somewhere out there in the night, perhaps only imagining it.

Home from the sea free as birds.

JOE WAS OVERJOYED WHEN he found out they were going to have a child. He sang and danced all his father’s songs and dances and insisted they get married that afternoon, as he had been insisting since before they went to Aqaba.

It’s too hot today, September is soon enough. This heat is frightful.

Frightful it is and atrocious and terrible and just plain bad. Now just don’t move, you shouldn’t be moving, just sit quiet there and fan yourself while I make a cup of tea. Frightful, yes.

You know Joe, I’m really beginning to love Jerusalem.

It’s a madhouse isn’t it, nothing like it, just what the baking priest said. When he gave me his veteran’s papers I looked at him and said, you’re eighty-five and I’m twenty and how about apparent age? Laughed, he did. No problems like that in such a place, he said. Apparent anything doesn’t mean much in our Holy City, everybody’s Holy City, that’s what he said. Just a minute now.

I remember once I saw a man in Piraeus who looked a lot like you except he was older.

A sailor?

Yes.

How much older?

Fifteen or twenty years.

Seventeen to be exact. That was brother Eamon jumping ship on his way to join the Rumanian army. He got himself killed fighting for the bloody Rumanians, can you imagine. The father told me all about it before it happened. You saw him in 1915. April.

I’m not sure.

That’s when it was. None of my brothers ever wrote home after they left but the father knew what they were up to anyway. You can’t fool a prophet can you. Here’s a good cup now. Rest quiet and we’ll be home from the sea free as birds.

Maud laughed, the summer passed in their small apartment in Jerusalem. September came and again she made some excuse for delaying their marriage. Joe continued to make trips to Constantinople and now each time he returned he noticed changes in her mood. She was withdrawn and irritable. But that’s just her state, he thought, surely such things happen, only natural that they would.

With winter coming he decided their rooms were too drafty and cold for her to be comfortable. The warm sun of the Jordan valley would be better. He found a little house on the outskirts of Jericho and rented it, a lovely house on a small plot of land, surrounded by flowers and arbors and lemon trees. Proudly he took her down there and was astonished when she first saw it. She didn’t even smile.

But don’t you like it, Maudie?

No.

You don’t?

I hate it. It looks like some child’s idea of a doll’s house.

Joe couldn’t speak, he was terrified. He rushed inside and pretended to be straightening things, not daring to look at her. What was she doing, what was she saying?

When he went out again she was sitting on a bench under a tree, staring vacantly at the ground.

I’m going up to the market, won’t be long. Anything special you want?

She shook her head slightly but didn’t raise her eyes. Joe hurried out the gate and ran up the path, running faster and faster trying not to think.

Jaysus Joseph and Mary what’s happening? Blessed mother of God what is it? Tell me what I’ve done please God and I’ll do anything to make it up. Jaysus anything.

It became worse and worse in Jericho. Maud spent most of the day away from the house, sitting down by the river. Everything he did now seemed to enrage her, but most of all his trips to Constantinople.

I know, Maudie, but I have to make them, you see that. It’s our money, there’s no other way for me to make us a living.

You’re a criminal.

I know you don’t like the work but I’ve got nothing else right now, it’s all I can make do with.

Better no money than that kind of money. Guns are for wounding and killing people, nothing else. You’re a murderer.

What are you saying now?

In Ireland you shot people. Didn’t you shoot people down?

That was different, that was the Black and Tans. You can’t imagine the horrible things they were doing. It was a war we were in then only our side was just women and children and poor farmers trying to grow their crops.

Murderer.

Jaysus don’t be saying it Maud, it sounds horrible and it’s just not so.

Would you ever kill again?

No.

Liar.

The other thing that infuriated her was his fascination with the Sinai Bible. When he had told her about it, in Aqaba, she had laughed and laughed. Haj Harun writing his memoirs and then losing them? Three thousand years of secret Jerusalem history lying somewhere waiting to be found. Treasure maps to all the two dozen Old Cities? The old man convinced he had actually written the original Bible?

It was wonderful, she had loved it. Joe’s fanciful version of the manuscript was marvelous and she had said nothing about the last of the Skanderbeg Wallensteins and his forgery. But that had been in Aqaba. Now she reacted very differently.

Are you still dreaming of finding your stupid treasure map?

It’s no dream, Maud. I’m going to find it someday.

No you won’t, you never will because what you’re looking for doesn’t exist. What exists is chaos seen through a blind man’s eyes and an imbecile’s brain.

You’ll see, Maud, Haj Harun is going to help me look and someday I’ll find it.

Someday. Look at yourself right now in that absurd uniform that’s big enough for two of you. Well why don’t you leave if you’re going to, they must be jumping up and down in the Crimea waiting for you to get there and win the war.