Sinai Tapestry (24 page)

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.

J
OE 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.

Before he left he brought a present to her down by the river and she threw it in the water. She screamed at him to go away, he disgusted her, she never wanted to see him again. Two weeks later when he came back she wouldn’t look at him. She wouldn’t speak to him. No matter what he said she ignored him.

At night he sat drinking alone in the garden behind the little house, drinking until he fell asleep, drinking until it was time to make another trip for Stern, not understanding any of it, having no way of knowing that Maud’s fear of being left again by someone she loved was so desperate it was driving her to leave him instead.

He was away when their son was born toward the end of winter, away in Constantinople smuggling more arms for Stern and Stern’s cause. He had to go to the midwife to find out it was a boy. Maud hadn’t even left a note.

Joe sat down on the floor and cried. Less than a year had passed since their month together on the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba.

Someday, he promised himself, I
will
find it.

Pillars and fountains and waterways, a place where myrrh grew three thousand years ago and forever.

T
HE TENT WHERE HE
was born in the Yemen stood not far from the ruins of Marib, the ancient capital of the Queendom of Sheba which had once sent apes and gold and peacocks, silver and ivory up the Incense Road to Aqaba, whence they could be transported farther north to the heights of Jerusalem. As a boy he played in the ruins of the Temple of the Moon at Marib among the former pillars and fountains and waterways where myrrh grew.

One morning he found nothing but sand where the temple had been. He ran back across the hills to their tent.

It’s gone, he whispered breathlessly to his immensely tall father and his short round grandfather who were roaming back and forth as usual, talking and talking as they pretended to watch over their sheep, the one a former English aristocrat turned bedouin hakïm who had been the greatest explorer of his age, the other an unlettered Yemeni Jew and shepherd who had never left the hillside that was his birthplace.

The temple’s gone, repeated the boy. Where did it go?

Gone? said his towering father.

Where? said his short grandfather.

A mystery, murmured the one. And not only gone but why?

And not only where, added the other, but when?

Right now, answered the little boy. Right where it’s supposed to be. It disappeared overnight.

The two old men shook their heads thoughtfully. The sun was already high enough to be felt so they sought the shade of an almond tree to consider the problem. While they took turns asking him questions the boy hopped from one foot to the other.

We must solve this mystery. What’s there in place of the temple?

Sand. Nothing.

Ah, nothing but sand, mysterious indeed. Did you stay there overnight?

No.

Were you there at dawn?

No.

Ah. Could it be then it’s only happening now?

They both looked at him. He was barely four years old and the question confused him.

What’s happening now? he asked.

His father tugged the sleeve of his grandfather.

Is there really a Temple of the Moon, Ya’qub?

There is certainly. Yes yes, I’ve seen it as long as I can remember.

But not today? asked his father.

No not today but I’ll see it again, answered his grandfather.

When? In a week, Ya’qub? Two months from now?

More or less then, o former hakïm. Yes assuredly.

And yesterday?

No.

Six months ago?

Yes and no. But in any case one of those times without any doubt whatsoever.

But what are these yesterdays and next weeks of yours, Ya’qub? These two months from now and six months ago? This strange way you have of discussing time? More or less, you say, running days and dates past and future all together as if they were the same.

His father smiled. His grandfather laughed and clasped the small bewildered boy to his chest.

Do I? Yes I do. It must be simply that the Temple of the Moon is always there for me because I know it in every detail, exactly as I’ve seen it before and will see it again. And as for the sand that may cover it from time to time, well sand is no matter. We live in the desert and sand simply comes and goes.

His father turned to him.

Do you know it in every detail the way your grandfather does?

Yes, whispered the boy.

And you can see it all in your mind’s eye even now?

Yes.

His father nodded solemnly, his grandfather smiled happily.

Then it must be as your grandfather says. Above the sands or beneath them is no matter. For you, as for him, the temple is always there.

The boy thought he understood and went on to another question.

Well if it’s always there now, how long has it always been there? Who built it?

His grandfather pretended to frown. Again he clasped the boy in his arms.

That’s history, he said, and I know nothing of such things, how could I? But fortunately for us your father’s a learned man who has traveled everywhere and gathered all the knowledge in the world, so probably he has already read the inscriptions on the pillars and can answer those questions precisely. Well, o former hakïm? Who built the Temple of the Moon in Marib and how long ago would you say? Precisely one thousand years ago and forever? Two thousand years ago and forever?

This time it was Ya’qub’s turn to tug his father’s sleeve and his father’s turn to smile.

The people were called Sabaeans, he said, and they built it three thousand years ago and forever.

The small boy gasped at the incomprehensible figure.

Father, will you teach me to read the inscriptions on the pillars?

Yes, but first Ya’qub must tell us when they will reappear. He must teach us about the sand.

Will you do that, grandfather?

Yes yes certainly. When next the wind blows we’ll go out together and sniff it and see if the incense is returning once more to the Temple of the Moon in Marib.

The short round man snorted, he laughed. His father, grave and dignified, led the way back to the tent where water was set boiling for coffee. And that night as so often the boy sat up by the fire until what seemed a very late hour, drowsily slipping in and out of sleep, never quite sure whether the wondrous words the two old men ceaselessly passed back and forth in the shadows were from the Zohar this time or the
Thousand and One Nights,
or perhaps written in the stones of the Temple of the Moon where he played, the mysterious myrrh of his childhood, vanishing pillars and fountains and waterways returning with inscriptions to be read one day as surely as gusts in the turning wind, a heady scent never to be forgotten no matter how deeply the strands of incense were buried beneath the sands that night and three thousand years ago and forever, as his father spoke of time in the Temple of the Moon after his long decades of wandering, or that night and the yesterday and next week of forever, as his grandfather described it on that remote hillside beyond ancient Marib which had always been his home.

His mother’s teachings also flowed when they walked together in the dim cool light of dawn collecting herbs and wild grasses for their salads. Sometimes she made strange sounds out there and gazed at the ground for whole minutes holding her side, her face weary in a way he didn’t understand.