The Convert

  One day she is standing with Shmuel by the Fustat harbour near the ancient Babylon Fortress. As they watch the activity around the pontoon bridge, she gives into a sudden urge to tell him about the port of Rouen. She explains to him what a snekkja is, and admits that her father descends from one of the Vikings who overran northern Europe two centuries ago. With slight dismay, Shmuel realises that in fact his new wife is related to the cruel, despised Normans rampaging like demons through the cities of the Orient. All she had told him before was that she was of Flemish descent. She was the daughter-in-law of the chief rabbi of Narbonne; that had been his guarantee of an honourable marriage. Now he’s confused and even feels somehow cheated. The revelation gnaws at him, a little more each day. That’s when he starts to view her with suspicion.

  A few weeks later she learns the story of the brutal pogrom in Rouen from Jewish refugees and tells him about it. It begins to dawn on him how hard it is to be involved with a proselyte – as he should have known when this unfamiliar woman first drew his attention. Yet their marriage holds firm, partly because it is supported by the family and very formal in character, unlike the unforgettable amour fou of her childhood.

  She is tough; her body has adapted to the new climate, diet and culture. She does all she can to regain Shmuel’s trust. She has opportunities to join him in conversations with the nagid and with Jewish scholars, and they even welcome Islamic theologians and dignitaries as guests in their home. She learns all about the tangled social and political networks in Fustat, and in the process finds out more about the chaos in the Orient, caused by her kinfolk. Jews debate with Muslims, and Christian pilgrims headed for Jerusalem are warned of the danger there; word has it the crusaders are quickly remobilising and seem determined to take Jerusalem. Troops are marching across Europe, traversing the Mediterranean, arriving by the shipload on the coast of Lebanon and attacking the coast-dwellers there. In one place after another, Muslims are taking up arms to defend themselves from the Christian aggressors. But there is often little they can do to stop the uncoordinated slaughter, the rape of their women, the destruction of their communities. Sometimes they win short-lived victories over the heavily armoured knights; they ride small, supple horses and learn to aim at the eyes in the helmet visors or the legs and eyes of the northerners’ clumsier steeds. The violence reaches Egypt’s eastern desert. Tensions are mounting everywhere. She hears tell of unrest in Spain; there are said to be crowds of refugees moving north to Narbonne, because the Reconquista shows the Jews no mercy. Many Christians see them as accomplices of the hated Saracens. The lively social circles of Fustat, where everyone has a story to tell, make her feel as if the threads of her life are winding together. At the same time, she is more aware than ever that she will never again be truly safe anywhere – as if she’s living on a raft that is drifting towards a cataract.

  She bears her fourth child at the height of summer, a fast delivery. It’s a boy; she wants to call him Yaakov again. Her husband says no, the child’s name will be Avram. The circumcision ritual takes place in the synagogue. Afterwards she hears that her son did not cry or even flinch, but appeared to be smiling.

  That evening a venomous viper shoots inside through an open door and nestles in the basket where the newborn is sleeping. The nurse comes inside, notices the snake and shrieks. The snake slides into the baby’s swaddling clothes. In a panic, the nurse snatches the child out of the basket; quick as lightning, the snake bites her in the wrist and holds fast, twisting in the air, eyes glittering and jaws wide open around the arm of the screaming woman. Its venomous fangs sink deep into her artery.

  Other women rush in and take the child from the nurse’s arms; one of them beats the snake with a stick till it lets go, and a few fleet-footed women crush the writhing reptile’s head. The nurse collapses as the poison takes effect, and passes out a moment later. Not long afterwards she stiffens, her throat swollen and her tongue black. Her rolling eyes come to a stop, their light extinguished. The women surrounding the nurse see her final, choking spasm, the bloody foam that rises to her lips. By the time Hamoutal rushes in from her adjoining bedroom, roused by the noise, the women are already wailing and carrying the nurse’s body out the door. She takes her baby from the woman holding him and thinks, God, whichever god you are, why do you keep coming after me?

  She falls to her knees, rocks the baby, and clasps him to her chest in desperation. The child gives a soft whimper and searches for her breast. She feels the warmth and breath flow back into her; she lets a servant lead her back to bed. As the child drinks, she is soothed by the scent of her own milk and the intense sensation of his mouth at work, his small tongue massaging her nipple. She strokes his head; the fontanelle is still open.

  Half a year of relative calm follows. Her cultured, prosperous surroundings do her good. She orders attractive new clothes and furnishes her quarters in luxurious style for herself and her child. She rarely sees her new husband; one day in late August he departs for Alexandria on family business she doesn’t learn much about.

  A few weeks later, he’s back. He comes up to her with a strange look in his eyes, takes her in his arms and says, Sit down, Hamoutal. I have something to tell you.

  Her heart pounds in her ears; she falters, doesn’t know what to expect, but feels she’s losing her mind.

  Hamoutal, the man says, Yaakov and Justa are alive. They are with your parents in Rouen.

  She stares at him, wild-eyed, unable to utter a word, opens her mouth and shakes her head as she grips his arm.

  5

  From that moment she knows no peace.

  She lies awake at night, her mind racing: how on earth did her parents find the children? Somewhere along the route to the East, divisions of the southern and northern armies must have met. Evidently, the many Norman knights accompanying the foot soldiers included a few from Rouen. And after that fateful night in Moniou when the children were taken by knights who had never heard of them, her eldest must have told them who his father and mother were. It’s even possible that one of her older brothers heard news of the children, came looking for them, and had them taken home. The thought obsesses and disturbs her; at the same time, she worries about her brothers, who may be laying down their lives in some siege in Antioch or God knows where. In any case, it’s more than likely that a number of Norman knights have heard her scandalous story. It couldn’t have taken long for one of them to figure out that these are the grandchildren of Gudbrandr, Vigdis Adelaïs’s father, and to send them off with the next set of messengers from Zadar to Rouen. Her Jewish children with her Christian parents – the idea is so strange that it hardly bears thinking about. Do David’s parents know?

  She sends word to Narbonne. Although her new husband is opposed, he cannot possibly stop her from contacting the chief rabbi of France; propriety forbids it. After a few weeks, she receives a reply; her former parents-in-law were unaware of the situation and ask her to come back to France and confer with them on how best to obtain custody of the children. She tells her husband, who flies into a rage and curses the day he told her that her children were still alive. At the same time, he knows her request is reasonable; he can’t expect her to pass up any opportunity to be reunited with her older children. But it would be impossible for him to leave the community for such a long time; she will have to travel alone. He permits her to go, on two conditions: their child Avram will remain in Fustat, and she must leave at once, while the Mediterranean is still open to navigation. She will have to stay in Narbonne for the winter, when maritime transport comes to a halt, and return on one of the first spring ferries.

  On a warm night in early September, she stands in front of the bronze mirror in her large bedroom, and as she changes for bed, she finds herself saying, My name is not Vigdis. My name is not Hamoutal. My name is. My name is. She can’t get any further, goes to the window and looks out over the city, sees the stars there in the distance where she knows the Nile is flowing in silence. Everything in her is spinning. I
am not Avram’s mother. I am the mother of. Again she gets no further; something in her mind has cracked.

  Knowing her children from Monieux are with her parents in Rouen, while she is here, married to an Egyptian Jew from Fustat and the mother of his child, she cannot be reasonable. She is reeling. For the past few days, she’s been lashing out at the women around her, no longer capable of patience, irritated by her baby’s cries. She has too little milk to breastfeed and lets other women nurse her child. She avoids speaking to her husband. After meals, she goes back to her rooms early. She realises it will be impossible to stay here. As Shmuel becomes more and more concerned for his wife’s welfare, she secretly sends a letter to her former father-in-law in Narbonne with a convoy from Fustat, asking him to pass on the news about her children to Rabbi Joshuah Obadiah in Moniou and to request his assistance. Assistance with what? She doesn’t know. She announces her plan to arrive in Narbonne in late October and travel on to Rouen – a disastrous idea that is sure to distress David’s father.

  One nightmare keeps returning: she sees Yaakov and Justa caught in the coils of a huge snake in the Nile, which pulls them into the depths. Each time, she sees the cloud of blood in the brown water. She wakes up shivering and coated with sweat, her eyes scanning the room as if she recognises nothing. She feels she will lose her mind if she does not leave now. The night is cool and enchanting; her room with its breeze-blown curtains is suddenly a hell. She looks out over the district below; by the city wall, the thieves and whores are in whispering motion. Her heart pounding, she dresses in silence, takes a few silver pieces from the box in the large wardrobe and wraps herself in a light djellaba belonging to one of the Ethiopian wet nurses. Passing the room where little Avram is breathing quietly, she looks at the child, touches his motionless face, and murmurs an apology. Just as she’s about to leave the room, she turns and goes back to the sleeping infant. On impulse, she takes him in her arms and wraps him in a silk shawl. She steps outside, into the light of the waning moon. It’s a quiet night; a few trees rustle peacefully. She can hear a jackal in the distance. Above her head, an owl breathes its call. She thinks of the story of the man who killed another man over the soft cry that obsessed him. Is that the voice of God, then? A sound you make yourself, which you hope is from the other side and will show you the meaning of life? She no longer knows what time, what year she’s living in; everything rotates and revolves in overlapping circles. She says, Be quiet, Yaakov, to her sleeping baby Avram; she hurries through the Mar Girgis district, heedless of the danger, and onto the jetty by the pontoon bridge.

  There, in the mild dawn, she waits for the morning ships, boarding the first one bound for Alexandria. She offers no explanation. The boatman gives her an appraising look, feels two silver coins pressed into his hand, notices the delicate collar under the white djellaba and says nothing. She has to try to breastfeed her baby again now, with no wet nurses to help her, and she must find food for herself. The ship speeds down the Nile at a startling pace, snaking with the current along shoals and riverbanks, past the morning’s first fishermen and last beasts of prey. Before she knows it, they have passed the large bend and Fustat is sinking beneath the horizon behind them. That’s when it hits her what she’s done; again, she has simply fled. As if fleeing has become her only response. Without a letter of recommendation or any proof of her origins, she is completely vulnerable, with no claim to anyone’s protection. Once again, she left a family behind who will come after her, because she’d promised to leave Avram in Fustat. Again, she rushed to leave as fast as she could without being spotted. Again, she has left a caring household in utter distress; she tries not to think of Shmuel waking up, standing in desperation at the door to her room, crying first her name, and then Avram’s – the same anger and sorrow that she can no longer bear. She tries not to think of her act of betrayal, of her mother-in-law, of the troubles she’s left in her wake. She may not be alive, but she has survived her own death once again. She’s breathing, she’s moving, that’s all. Until that evening a thought strikes her: If I don’t move then death won’t see me. So she lies frozen in a corner as her child sucks, pointlessly, painfully, on her cracked left nipple.

  After only three days, the cedar-wood felucca has already passed through the foam-crested waves of the Rosetta estuary. The next day, it safely reaches the Pharos of Alexandria. A day and a half later, she is sitting, veiled, on a merchant ship to Palermo. By the time that graceful vessel reaches its destination, to the groans of the exhausted rowers, a heavy autumn storm has transformed it into a wreck with a broken mast. She too is broken, by nausea and confusion, her child worn out by his mother’s hardships. She staggers on shore and goes to the house of a money-changer she remembers from her previous stay in the city. She lies to him about the reason for her voyage and spends two days there before taking a boat to Marseilles. There, on the coast of southern France, she pays another visit to the wealthy shipowner’s house. Again she lies about her journey, about the child. The shipowner’s wife understands that some kind of disaster is in the making but asks no questions.

  The courtyard with the blue bird, the orange tree, the white sheet floating above. Back in the room where she stayed before, she confuses Avram with the child who vanished into the crocodile’s jaws. They can hear her talking in a loud voice, pacing, rummaging around, deep into the night. Not until dawn does exhaustion calm her down. She puts the child to bed and lies on the floor beside it, talking in her sleep. The lady’s maid finds her there around noon, still sleeping with the whining child in the bed beside her. Hamoutal wakes with a start: Leave me alone, leave me alone, I won’t, leave me alone. She swears and rages and only then is wide awake, her eyes darting back and forth, foam on her lips. The child is cared for; later, she too is dressed; soothing words are spoken. The shipowner’s wife sends her off with a package of food, a bundle of clothing, and a small dark slave girl who speaks nothing but Greek. The girl accompanies her to the docks and helps her board a coaster bound for Cap d’Agde.

  The child is severely underweight, and his mother looks like a savage nomad. In Agde she goes begging, because she’s forgotten she brought money with her. She sleeps in the shade of a fortress where beggars, dogs and whores menace each other until the moon sinks behind the archways. The next morning, she is woken by a girl who has taken the crying Avram onto her lap. Hamoutal pulls the child out of her arms and walks off, followed by the girl’s curses. To her surprise, she hears Norman being spoken nearby. She runs away, heading towards the harbour, and hides behind a few bales of hay. Rifling through her bag, she finds her last few precious coins. She gives one of the silver pieces she grabbed as she left Fustat to an old man with a primitive covered wagon who says he’ll take her to Narbonne. Throughout that bumpy, drowsy ride she mutters old prayers – she’s forgotten where she learned them. She mixes up languages, sees children she never had. She thinks she’s riding back to Fustat and laughs.

  6

  Her reunion with her parents-in-law is thrown into confusion by the new child in her arms; that was not the arrangement. Seeing those admirable people, she bursts into tears and struggles for words. David’s parents, too, can scarcely contain their emotion. Over the past few years, her father-in-law has grown old. His hair is white and his skin mottled with brown patches. Her mother-in-law is slower and heavier; her hair, which once gleamed jet black with olive oil, is now dull and grey. Hamoutal, she says with feeling, Sarah Hamoutal, and does not seem capable of saying more. She takes the child and calls out to one of the women in the back of the house, who recognises Hamoutal and claps her hands to her face. To her surprise, the family has a house guest: Joshuah Obadiah from Moniou, older and stiffer than ever. She flings her arms around him. The conversation turns to stories of the pogrom. Little cries of lament escape the rabbi as they revisit the massacre in the mountain village. Narbonne, too, has had attempts at pogroms, so far no more than scuffles.

  Later that day, ten men say Kaddish in the synagogue. The so
unds are unfamiliar – part Aramaic, which means almost nothing to her. In any case, her mind wanders.

  That night, Hamoutal stays with the women of the household, who tend to her needs and soothe her. She is in almost constant tears. A painful joy, a misery full of warmth. Tragic and happy memories. An uprooted feeling, a momentary sense of coming home, the sorrow of David’s death welling up again, and the fear of what’s ahead. Shmuel becomes David, David becomes Yaakov, Avram becomes Gudbrandr, Gudbrandr becomes David, and where is Justa, maybe with her mother in Rouen. Was Justa bitten by a crocodile? Oh, that poor child, stolen by a whore in Agde as she slept, a whore with the jaws of a snake. One vast confusing whirlpool. The world is abandoning me. I can’t do anything about it, I’m scared. My brother is a crusader, may God help him fight the Saracens in Fustat. She bites her cuticles till her fingers bleed. She feels like she’s possessed by the Devil, she says with a grin to the women, who cover their mouths and tell her not to say such things.