In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist (36 page)

Mustafa rolled up his sleeve and checked the time on the watch he had bought just for this day. Nine fifteen. He scooped the bag up in his arms, the rope lying in a coil on top, and he started to walk toward the wall of the Jews.

Hamdi’s head popped up over the stone ledge. “Ya, Mustafa.”

Mustafa’s skin jumped. “Ya, Hamdi,” he said evenly, though his heart careened this way and that, like a bike out of control.

Hamdi reached over and drank the remainder of Mustafa’s Coca-Cola resting on the ledge. He wiped his fleshy lips on the back of his wrist. He pointed at the bag in Mustafa’s arms. “You have pictures in there. From my magazine. They’re mine.”

“No,” Mustafa said. Stupid
JC Penney
, he thought. “That’s not true.” His arms tightened around the bag.

Hamdi poked his dark head over the wall. “Let me see what’s inside,” he half-demanded, half-begged. One big arm shot out and tried to grab the bag, but Mustafa was too far away.

“No.” Mustafa took a few steps back. “It’s not for touching.”

“Why not?” Hamdi grinned at Mustafa. A gold tooth caught the light off the Dome of the Rock.

His mind went dark and blank. And then: “There’s blood and mess. See, I found a dog up here.” Mustafa added, “Sheikh Tawil made me kill it.”

“Square Head made you kill a dog?” Hamdi’s pupils glowed with bewilderment and delight. “There’s a dead dog in there?”

Mustafa nodded. “No dogs are allowed up on the Haram. Then he found out it belonged to his daughter who was keeping it as a secret pet,” he improvised, his heart knocking against his ribs, “so he realized he could get into trouble, you see, his own daughter disobeying the rules.” Hamdi was nodding. “That’s why he asked me to kill the dog,” Mustafa finished. Allah surely had blessed his mouth today to think so quick.

“So why are you walking around with a dead dog?” Hamdi tilted his large, rough hands outward in a sensible way.

“Well, a dead dog has no place up here on this holy ground. I have to remove it.”

Hamdi’s head drooped, defeated by this logic. “Oh.” A moment later his head lifted. “But why are you jumping like that, nervous, you know, Mustafa?”

“Because Sheikh Tawil wants no one to know.” He was getting impatient. He had no time to waste. He flicked his wrist. “Now go ahead. I will buy you an ice cream in the souk. Or a new magazine, a better one than
JC Penney
. I have to go.”

Hamdi took a few shuffling along steps, his shoulders slouching, and looked back. “Maybe you’re lying,” he sang out with a happy slyness.

Mustafa had no time for this nonsense. It was getting late. Miss Tamar was surely waiting below. All his hard work would get lost. “Just go, Hamdi,” he said sharply. “I’m busy.” He began to walk quickly. Hamdi shambled after him, making a detour around the wall. Here, Mustafa darted for the olive trees. Hamdi walked in his direction and crooned, “Show me what’s in the bag!” Mustafa wove among the trees. He quickened his gait, and so did Hamdi. Like a game. But it was no game. Mustafa panted under the weight of the bag. He began to run fast, faster, even with his heavy load, leaving the olive trees behind. He ran, so sure of his way he didn’t move sideways but forward, seeing with his feet every mound and pillar. He, slow, awkward Mustafa. Allah must have put blessing into his feet, too. He was quicker than Hamdi, who was too heavy and dull to maneuver the rocks and boulders and low walls and trees and rubble blocking the way. But Hamdi carried nothing while he had a bag.

I must go toward the wall of the Jews, he thought as he ran and dodged. Fat droplets of sweat wet his kaffiyeh, trickled down his neck, went between the blades of his shoulders. He heard the pieces moving in the bag as he ran. They were getting disturbed! No. He had wrapped the treasures too well. But now, with Hamdi chasing him, how would he be able to lower the bag? An olive branch clawed his back as he hurtled by. Too late to dodge a small boulder, he leaped over it. Then it was quiet. No feet chasing after him. Still, he ran toward the Jew wall. Miss Tamar. What if she wasn’t there? Maybe she and the rabbi didn’t love him. She better be there, he raged, a tear flinging against his cheek. She better be. If not, everything was a trick, and nothing counted, there was no love in the world. He banged his exposed toe hard against a rock. He heard shouts and the distant
tock tock
of a cane, and Sheikh Tawil screaming from far away, “Where are you, ungrateful
boy who I treated like my firstborn son? What are you stealing from me?”

Mustafa’s neck stiffened and he continued running toward the protection of the cypress trees near the Jew wall. More feet were chasing and pounding after him. They will beat me up, they will kill me, he panted. He ran toward the wall, past the cypress trees.

Isaac stood outside the Russian Compound, blue jail tote bag in hand, squinting in the hot, hard sun like some fish belched out of a whale’s belly onto a scorched beach. Shani stood beside him, barking into a phone. Isaac smelled bad. He hadn’t had a chance to even brush his teeth, it all had happened so fast. Mustafa. Tamar, Mustafa. He was restless, on
shpilkes
.

“You’re one hard-nosed Jew,” Shani commented as he clicked off his phone.

Isaac turned his palms upward slightly.

“Where is this Tamar?” Shani lit up a cigarette. “You sure she’s necessary?”

“Oh yes. A woman’s touch. She’ll be here soon,” he said quietly.

“So did you think”—Shani took a whiff and let out a long exhale—“you’d come to our little jail and teach these criminals some Torah?”

Isaac stared at him. A shock of black hair fell over one of Shani’s bloodshot eyes.

“Oh, I know all you rabbis. Everything is pretty and make-believe. This jail, these criminals, this Jewish state, eh? You don’t believe in this state, do you? You believe in your own state.” Shani tapped a thick finger against his temple. “The one up here.”

Isaac let the commander go on with his rant.

“You know, there’ll come a time all you black hatters”—he waved his cigarette to include a large swathe of those kind of Jews—“you rabbis will yearn for a mamzer like me who fights all your battles.”

“Could be,” Isaac replied, slightly averting his head from the smoke. “Zionists like you, you’re a dying breed.”

“You’re talking out of your armpit, Markowitz.” Shani tossed his cigarette. “Just be glad I dropped the charges.” He bent to reclaim the
cigarette that had missed the garbage can. “Is that her?” he said in a wondering voice, and Isaac’s head sharply turned.

As if in a mirage, Tamar stood swinging her helmet beside a huge Herodian column near the parking lot. Her hair was neatly braided in two, just like the first time he had met her at the courtyard. She was even wearing the same frumpy, flouncy skirt, and it made him beam even harder as he walked toward her.

“You have no idea how good it is to see you,” he said.

Before she could even open her mouth, Shani broke in, “This is no time for smiles.
Bo
. Come. My car’s over here.” He jerked his thumb backward.

“Actually,” Tamar piped up, her braids glancing off her shoulders “we have our own transportation.” She hooked her thumb toward where she had parked. “D’ya mind?” She was already sprinting toward the street. Without thinking, Isaac followed her.

Shani stared after Tamar. He lifted his cap and gave a scratch or two.

“We’ll beat the traffic better in my scooter,” she called back.

Shani made an ah-forget-it motion with his wrist and then dashed toward his car, his powerful thighs pumping. “I’ll be following you every turn you make!” he shouted from the window of his gold Subaru.

Isaac tried to keep abreast of Tamar, but after twelve days in jail, his limbs moved stiffly, as though in need of oiling.

“What’s with the police,” she said under her breath as she ran.

“What choice was there?” he said, panting between words. “He tries to pull that stunt at the wall, he’ll get blown to bits. We can’t let Mustafa risk his life for these artifacts. Eh, excuse me, but it’s ridiculous.”

She was silent, which he took for agreement.

A few feet away he saw her Vespa, and right next to it, another scooter, with no handlebars. Strange, he thought. Two scooters side by side, attached by metal bars. “What’s that?”

“A sidecar!” she said over the traffic noise.

He stared dubiously at the strange contraption. “Am I getting into that?”

“Yeah!” She threw a leg over the seat of her Vespa, and her flouncy skirt parachuted outward over her knees and calves. “Come on!”

He clambered into the sidecar and threw his tote bag near his feet.

She pushed away the kickstand and pulled the throttle, and they took
off, she steering in the scooter, and he looking out from his sidecar. Shani stayed a car or two behind, his gold Subaru nosing in and out. She skidded down a small side street, then took a reckless left, and his own car skidded in sync with hers. They passed Zion Square and the post office, and the noise of traffic and wind and the scooter came between them. The wind splayed his beard and hair every which way. His skin didn’t itch anywhere. The blood was rushing through his calves and legs and arms. He was alive. Such movement, such freedom after the forced constriction of jail was a shock to him. A wonderful shock. He closed his eyes and murmured from Psalms, “ ‘From a narrow place I have called out to you, and you have answered me with great breadth and expansion.’ ”

“How’d you get out?” she shouted into the wind.

“Miracles,” he shouted back. With guts he never knew he had.

“Wish I could’ve been there to see it,” she sang out.

He could hardly believe it himself. He had spoken to Shani like a different man.

They passed a slew of old men in Russian-style caps playing chess along a shady sidewalk area off Jaffa Road. At the light, the old men stared at Tamar and Isaac, and a few Russians tipped their caps at him. He lifted his hat back, dazed.

Above, the swallows were flying in formation, toward the Kotel, as they always did around midday. One swallow fell behind, and as he watched, it seemed the other birds glided in place, waited for it to catch up. Even birds cared for each other.

“Take off that hat!” Tamar called as they sped up. “It’s going to fly away.”

He flung it to the floorboard. “Good?”

“Good!”

They passed the pretzel maker sitting behind his stall at Tzahal Square. A pigtailed Hassidic girl at the corner pointed at the two of them and guffawed.

“So what’s the plan, Isaac?”

“I have a note I wrote to Mustafa.” He had to nearly shout the words. “I begged him to stop, told him I don’t want the presents, I just wanted him safe and alive.” He held his hand against the glare of the morning sun as they rattled down Jaffa Road. “The plan is, Shani will track him down
on the Temple Mount and give the note to him.”

Suddenly the scooter was idling at the light at Jaffa Gate. Shani’s car hummed directly behind them. A cluster of tourists crossed a street.

Tamar turned her head, stricken. “But Mustafa was
counting
on me,” she said in an anguished voice that cut right into him. “I’m supposed to take the bag.”

“You’ll be there. You’ll be there,” he repeated, as if to reassure himself, too. “Shani will point you out when he takes Mustafa off the Mount. He’ll see you and know that we came for him, out of love. We have to save his life, Tamar.”

She said nothing, but he could see her mouth working as she chewed this over.

His eyes followed a mother pushing a double stroller across the walkway. “So what happens to all the things he collected?” she asked angrily. “We just forget about them?”

“Tamar,” he said, in a near groan, “what else can we do?” He steadied himself as she revved up the scooter. “The one good thing is,” he called to her over the engine’s rising noise, “this whole event, it’s too public. Those artifacts can’t be kept hidden much longer. Shani knows the game is up. Probably why he released me.”

“Okay,” she said so quietly he almost didn’t hear her. “I guess it’s the only way.” She peeped at him from under her helmet. “I’m with you.”

Isaac smiled.