Edward Whittemore - Sinai Tapestry

For no reason he saw his father striding into Aqaba eighty years ago after marching the length of the Sinai without food or water, unaware he had walked through three dawns and two sunsets until he found a dog yapping at his heels, smiling then when a shepherd boy told him so and asked him whether he was a good genie or a bad genie, as a reward relating to the boy an obscure tale from the Thousand and One Nights before striding on, Strongbow the genie, many men in many places, truly a vast and changeable spirit as his grandfather had once said.

What? No. I didn’t get this from him. Not like us. No. He became a hakïm in his latter years. First a scholar, then a hakïm.

Better professions, whispered the Arab. Better than ours. Especially the healer. Healer of souls. I would have liked that. But today, you and I. We don’t have time. Is that so? Just an excuse we give ourselves?

Stern started to reach for his cigarettes and then remembered. If only the man hadn’t mentioned the Armenians. Why did that have to have come up tonight? It always had this effect on him, the memory of the afternoon in a garden in Smyrna, that night on the quay and the Armenian girl soaked in blood whispering please, her thin neck and the knife and the crowds and the screams and the shadows, the fires and the smoke and the knife.

His hands were beginning to shake, it was happening all over again. He tried to bury them in his pockets and squeeze his fists closed but it didn’t help, the wind outside wouldn’t stop.

The hakïm, a huge presence sitting behind a trembling young man at dawn somewhere in the desert half a century ago, telling the frightened man to turn and face the emptiness in all its vastness, to fix his eye on a distant eagle swooping in the first light of day living a thousand years, tracing the journey of the Prophet, the footsteps a man takes from the day of his birth to the day of his death, suggesting the swirls of the Koran shaping and unshaping themselves as waves in the desert and saying Yes, the oasis may be small but yes, we will find it, yes.

The Arab was struggling to get to his feet. Stern jumped up to help him and led him to the door.

It was over. Hurrying back and forth and meeting for an hour, fifteen years gone, leaving again unknown to each other. The man had started as a scholar and would have liked to have ended as a healer but here was his end.

I envy your faith, whispered the man. What you want. I couldn’t conceive of it on earth. We won’t see each other again. Peace brother.

Peace brother, said Stern as the man limped away in the night toward his river, no more than a hundred yards away but lost now in the blackness, so small and narrow and yet so famous because of events washed by its currents over millennia, and shallow here as well as the earth began to swallow it toward the end of its brief and steeply falling course from the soft green heights of Galilee, rich in gentle fields of grain and kindly memories, a promised stream plunging down and down to the harsh glaring wilderness of the Dead Sea where God’s hand had long ago laid lifeless the empty cities of salt.

A few years after that, searching for an explanation of world events, the Arabs in Palestine began to weave the first of their elaborate fantasies around Hitler. One theory was that he was in the pay of the British Secret Service, which was aiding Zionism by having him expel Jews from Europe in order to increase emigration to Palestine.

Or more incredible still, that Hitler himself was a secret Jew whose sole aim in Europe was to undermine the Arabs in Palestine by sending more Jews there.

So Stern’s vision of a vast Levantine nation embracing Arabs and Christians and Jews came apart, and the effect of the cascading rumors and swirling events on his dreams might well have been shattering if he hadn’t retreated to the memory of a peaceful hillside in the Yemen and begun to take morphine on the eve of his fortieth birthday.

The ghostly jogger of the Holy City surviving and surviving.

EARLY ONE HOT JULY morning in 1932 O’Sullivan Beare arrived at Haj Harun’s barren shop and found the old man hiding in the back room, cowering deep in the corner behind the antique Turkish safe. The rust from his helmet had fallen into his eyes, streaking his face with tears. He was trembling violently and the look he gave the Irishman was one of total despair.

Jaysus, said Joe, easy man, get ahold of yourself. What’s going on here?

Haj Harun cringed pathetically and wrapped his arms around his head as if expecting a blow.

Keep your voice down, he whispered, or they’ll get you too.

Joe nodded gravely. He moved in closer and gripped the old man by the shoulders to try to stop the pitiful shaking. He bent over the crouching figure and spoke in a low voice.

What is it man?

I’m dizzy. You know how I always feel dizzy first thing in the morning.

Jaysus I do and no wonder. After what you’ve seen out there in the last three thousand years anybody would expect you to be dizzy when you suddenly had to take another look at it. A new day is always trouble so that’s all right, calm down and give me a whisper of the problem we’re facing.

Them. They’re still out there.

Are they now. Where exactly?

In the front room. How did you manage to get around them?

Sneaking on my tiptoes along the wall, a mere shadow of myself. How many did you say there were?

At least a dozen.

Bad odds. Armed?

Only daggers. They left their lances back at the barracks.

Well there’s that at least. What sort of cutthroats?

Charioteers, the worst kind. They’ll cut a man down without thinking twice about it.

O’Sullivan Beare whistled softly.

Bloody bastards all right. Which conquering army are they from then?

The Babylonian, but I don’t think any of them are regular Babylonian troops except perhaps the sergeant. He may be, he’s arrogant enough.

Irregulars are they? Working for loot like the Black and Tans? There’s no meaner bunch.

Yes they’re mercenaries, barbarians, by the looks of them hired horsemen from the Persian steppes. Medes, I’d say from their accents.

Medes, are they? Now there’s a scruffy lot. When did they break in?

Last night when I was grinding my teeth and trying to fall asleep. They took me by surprise and I didn’t have a chance to defend myself. They threw me in here and they’ve been out front ever since drinking and gambling over their spoils and bragging about the atrocities they’ve committed. I’m exhausted, I haven’t had any sleep at all. They brought a sack of raw liver with them and they’ve been gorging themselves on it.

Do you say so. Why this particular article of meat?

To arouse their lust. The Medes have always believed the liver was the seat of sexual desire. Now they’re talking about loin pie and they say they won’t leave until I hand them over.

After them are they. Bad, very bad. Hand what over?

The boy prostitutes.

Ah.

They’re terribly confused. They think this is a barbershop.

Jaysus they are confused.

Not so loud. It’s true, barbershops in Jerusalem used to be a place to procure boys but wasn’t that a long time ago?

More or less I’d say but the important thing now is for me to send them packing.

You’ll have to be careful. You can’t count on Medes to listen to reason.

I’m not and I won’t. Just keep under cover here.

O’Sullivan Beare marched to the door between the two rooms and snapped to attention. He saluted smartly.

Sergeant, emergency orders from headquarters. All liberty’s canceled, charioteers to return to barracks immediately. Carnage on the southern flank, the Egyptians have just launched a surprise attack. What? That’s right, the squadrons are grouping already. To your lances man. Double-time it.