Able has offered them righteousness, which is certainty. I step back from him, I mouth the words but I cannot give myself to them. I am struck by what I am not when I look into this crowd. The words of my teacher are seemingly fulfilled: not slave nor master, not man nor woman, not Stranger and not Jew, they gaze upon me with one face and they shout in one voice. But I am as removed from them as the most revered noble who would not allow the gaze of a commoner to fall on him. My lips move but it is fear that drives my acquiescence, not love. Am I only my father’s blood? Will I never be one with them?
The song is broken by a terrible cry as a youth flings himself before our feet, spewing forth vomit and bile, his body jerking in cruel torment. ‘Uncle,’ he screams, his mouth frothing, ‘the demons of lust are eating my flesh, they will not leave me alone.’
I betray the boy. As he falls I recoil, make evident my disgust. It is Able who kneels before the youth and holds the boy’s head. He shakes him and commands: ‘Demons be gone! In the name of the resurrected son, in the name of Jesus the Saviour, be gone.’
The young man twists with the strength of a cornered beast in the arena, and I see his face. It is the face not of man but death—his teeth are fangs and his eyes are only white. In his writhing and desperation to escape, he scratches at the old man’s face. But Able will not let go. He keeps a tight grip on the youth; he is without fear.
‘In the name of Jesus the Saviour,’ he declares again, ‘demons be gone.’
The boy slumps. He lies in my brother’s arms. Still on his knees, the old man raises his head.
‘Can demons possess the kingdom to come?’
The hush seems concrete, eternal, and impossible to shift. But a voice calls shyly: ‘No, brother.’ And one more confident: ‘They will not, brother.’ It is followed by a clapping of hands and a joyous confirmation: ‘No, brother, no, brother, they will not!’ There is jubilation.
I have not moved. I am standing back. This spectacle sickens me; I have seen it feigned in temples from east to west. But I force myself to smile, and I give a quiet nod to Able. And he, assured by my agreement, allows two of the men to carry the child into the crowd. There, awakened, he is greeted with a multitude of kisses, hands reach out to touch him, to be part of the small miracle that has occurred.
Able offers them certainty.
He is at my side again, using a sleeve to wipe away the boy’s vomit. His cheap actor’s tricks bring revulsion from my belly to my throat. I do not dare speak. He’s a freed man now, but born a slave. My thoughts are ungodly: he was born to the gutter; how can someone like that grasp the mysteries and meaning of the Lord?
He is breathing heavily; the struggle has revealed his age and his fragility. Now, it is now that I should step forward and speak. But it is as if with my spite all light has abandoned me and I am filled with darkness.
He finds his voice. ‘Our brother Timothy told me this morning that one of the city’s idols was desecrated in the night. It is said that the culprit claimed his crime in the name of the only God. Who amongst you committed this act? Declare yourself.’
He awaits, his head cocked, in patience and silence. Some dare not look at us, others glance at their neighbour then quickly lower their gaze. There are those, the hungriest and the most ravaged of the refugees, who raise their chins proudly, as if they are staring directly into my eyes, their scowls announcing their defiance. I labour with what remains of my will to return their belligerent stares but it is impossible to move these men.
But Able surprises us all, the bold and the meek. Our brother laughs. ‘The idol, like all idols, is dung. It is not a sin to visit shit on shit, is it?’
The mutinous, the impatient, the pious and the hungry all burst into thunderous laughter at this obscenity. I cannot laugh. If there is just one among us working for the governors, that blasphemy condemns us all. I have to intercede, regardless of the rage that will follow.
But I hesitate too long; my fear has made me timid.
Able has stepped forward and is declaiming, ‘You would be mistaken!’
The dazed silence is the monumental quiet of the morning after the great Deluge.
‘It was a sin, it was an outrage,’ he continues, ‘not because of the insult to the impotent goddess but because it insults our neighbours and the First Amongst Men.’
There is a bellicose stirring from the refugees at the mention of their subjugator. Able does not care. ‘We are all, regardless of origin and regardless of caste, loyal subjects to Rome.’
Dark mutiny flashes across the faces of the most zealous.
Able stumbles over the rugs, scattering the plates and cups. He throws himself into the crowd; he is amongst the most bitter of the refugees. He grabs at a man, one who fled Jerusalem on the last days and had one of his eyes torn from its socket; his vivid purple scar is as terrifying as the face of a Cyclops.
Shaking the man’s shoulders, Able intones, ‘Carthage and Athens are conquered and Damascus and Alexandria are conquered. And do not be mistaken, Jerusalem is conquered. Israel is no more.’
Able’s voice drops to a hush again, a whisper that is heard by all of us, and taken up by all and repeated from brother to brother and from sister to sister.
‘Nazareth is not conquered, Nazareth conquers. He has risen, he is returning and he will conquer.’
I cannot bring my mouth to speak or even muster the strength to raise my hand. I am shocked by the affront of his words. No apostle claimed this. This is not the teaching of our Saviour. But the brethren neither know that nor care. They are now shouting in fury: ‘He has risen, he is returning and he will conquer.’
Able has offered them vengeance.
He raises his arms, calling for silence. The uproar subsides.
‘I ask you once again: who was it desecrated the idol?’
Not one eye moves from him; not even the infants cry; yet no one admits to the offence.
‘What did our Lord, our Redeemer, say? Let he who has ears hear.’ He adds with fury, ‘But you lot are as deaf as you are blind!’
A murmur, almost a wail, rises from the crowd, but he is oblivious to the disturbance
‘Who doesn’t hate us? Who doesn’t want to destroy us? The Romans scorn us, the Greeks despise us, the righteous Jews shun us, and all of the unbaptised laugh at us. There is no tribe that doesn’t slander us with the ugliest gossip and there is no authority that doesn’t want us eliminated!’
Even I can’t resist this passionate eloquence; I too have been seduced by that adamant, exalting voice.
‘They kill us, they crucify us, they throw us to beasts in the arena, they sew our lips together and watch us starve. They bugger children in front of their mothers and violate men in front of their wives. The temple priests flay us openly in the streets. We are hunted everywhere and we are hunted by everyone.’
In his fever he has returned amongst them, touching shoulders, heads, the fingers and hands that reach out to him.
‘Look around you, brothers and sisters—we are still alive! We are despised, yet we grow. We are tortured and crucified and yet we flourish. We are hated and still we multiply. Why is that? You have to wonder, how is it that we not only survive but we grow stronger?’
I am transfixed, as eager as the most desperate of my brethren to hear his words.
As if awoken to my enchantment he finds his way back to me, sits beside me and takes my hand. ‘Do you not ask yourself why they hate us so, Brother Timothy?’
The first urge is to best him, to win the brethren for myself. Then I am ashamed of my pettiness, as if I am a silly boy competing for a tutor’s favour. I resist, I resist vengeance. I remember the words of Paul. I will cast my anchor on faith.
‘They hate us because we speak the truth,’ I respond. ‘That there is only one God, only one just and righteous Lord, and He sent a Saviour to redeem us, who was born as a man and lived as man and died as a man to be born again as a son to the Lord. As we all will be.’
I have
spoken simply. The words hit their mark. The calls thunder—‘Amen! Amen!’—and the youngest and strongest brothers stamp their feet in thundering chorus.
Able nods at my words as the pandemonium of the stampeding feet eclipses all other noise and becomes the only sound on earth.
He turns back to the crowd. His eyes are raised to the sky and his arms are outspread. The calls and the shouts die away.
‘You are a fortunate assembly,’ he begins. ‘Possibly the greatest one we have. I doubt the assemblies in Rome herself are guided by anyone as noble or as right with the Lord and His anointed son as is our beloved brother Timos. He speaks wisdom. Always trust this man’s voice; he speaks directly from the apostles.’
Then he shatters that goodwill. ‘And you do not deserve him! Because you are filthy cowards.’
He stoops, fumbles for the thanksgiving cup, lifts it and brings it to his lips, as if to drink the last drop from it. Instead, he spits into it.
‘It is just copper,’ he says quietly and drops it with a clang.
That sound resounds with a ferocity that will echo till the defeat of time. None of us speak. None of us dares to challenge him. None of us dare move.
‘Copper doesn’t matter, brothers, metal doesn’t matter.’
He pinches the loose skin on his arms. ‘This doesn’t matter, brothers. Neither flesh nor copper nor stone nor marble nor gold nor silver. None of it matters. We survive, we flourish, because we have the word of the Lord. No sword, no stone and no flame can compete with that word. Our weapon is the word of the Lord. That is our lance and that is also our shield. That is how we multiply and that is how we conquer.’
A voice calls from amongst us. ‘Tell us, uncle, what is the word? What is the word that conquers?’
His eyes are shut, his arms are once more outstretched, as if calling forth a light. We await the word.
‘Jesus the Saviour said, “Do not resist the wicked foe. If the evil-doer strikes you on the cheek, then turn the other to him. Those who do so are beloved of our Father, the Lord of us all.”’
Sincerely I follow, ‘Truly, it was spoken.’
But the divisions of our fellowship can be seen in the response to my brother’s words. The literate and the citizen, those born Greek, those born in Ephesus, they assent with a nod of their bowed heads. This is the wisdom and profound compassion that has brought them to the Lord. But the refugees, those fleeing death and war, they abhor these words.
My brother has no fear. He speaks directly to the newcomers themselves, to those who have lost everything: land, kin and sons. They who hunger for revenge.
‘He is Jesus the Saviour and he is Jesus the Judge and Lord of not only Israel but of the world. These are his words. Would you deny your king?’
As a violent shudder of the earth can carve a perpetual gorge between neighbours, so does Brother Able’s question tear apart our congregation. The success of our grand initiative is marked by how our brother’s demand fortifies one group, frightens the other, and is of no consequence to many more.
I don’t look for the answer amongst the hungry and the homeless, I know what they want—a king to rise again in the east. For them, Jesus is the anointed son. I want to see how the youngest of our generations respond: boys coming to manhood and sisters reaching maidenhood. They have only known emperors and have only known Rome. Yet they too are fervent in their agreement. For them, the Sacred City of Jerusalem is as distant as the splendour of Persepolis and the wretched villages of the wild Britons. What they desire is a Saviour who is to be the First Amongst Men and a Lord who is the First Amongst Gods.
I finally comprehend: we are now more Strangers than we are Jews. I suck in my breath, awestruck by what I have not understood before. We are into our fourth generation and in their veins flows a blood that has not been named before. Christian, the derisive slur from those who detest us and want us destroyed, this cruel and scornful word, it no longer stings. Theses people are not Greek and they are not Romans and they are not Jews. They are no longer even Strangers. They are Christians. The Saviour is their inheritance. Theirs is not a king of cities or kingdoms or empires; theirs is a king of all the world.
My brother, gifted with preternatural talents, he claims this now. ‘He died as Yeshua the Jew and he arose as Jesus, the Lord of us all.’
As if guided by the Spirit itself, he lunges once more towards the refugees. He searches faces, settles on a strong youth with fierce, rebellious eyes that now lower.
‘Which of your false saviours survived the siege and onslaught of Jerusalem?’
He takes a handful of the boy’s long black hair. ‘Answer me! Which of those Zealots armed with bows and slings and swords and knives, which of them survived? Who didn’t starve? Who didn’t get sliced and gutted like a pig by a Roman soldier’s sword?’
The young man’s eyes brim with tears.
Able releases his clutch on the boy’s hair, and strokes and kisses his face. ‘What is your name, son?’
The youth’s will returns his strength. ‘I am Adam, son of Simon,’ he declares proudly.
‘We can turn our cheeks, Brother Adam, for we have the greater weapon in our arsenal. I promise you, son, we will conquer. We will remake the world. That is the meaning of our Lord’s words.’
I stumble forward, as if a punch has been delivered to the back of my head. This is an obscene perversion of our faith. Our Redeemer has asked us to be as passers-by—they are his very words and his instruction to us. We must turn from the world because the world is of no importance. Let the world hate us as it did him. We have to turn away, to offer our cheek for another blow, because it is not this world that matters, but the world to come.
But even as my mouth starts forming the words, the elation of the brethren snatches them from me. They want only to change this world—to seize it and conquer it. They are impatient with waiting. The words of my dream ring in my ears: I was wrong. The youth embraces the old man, there is a stamping of feet and resounding applause, as if this were a wedding or a dance. And maybe it is—in this certainty of victory, in the here and in the now as much as in the next world to come, the Jew and the Stranger, the Ephesian and the refugee, the first generation and the fourth, we are united and we are one. In victory, we are one.
I was wrong.
A voice pierces the jubilation of our crowd. ‘I, uncle, I insult the stone goddess.’
It is a boy, one of the refugees, his voice squeaking in fear, and though he struggles with the Greek tongue, his meaning is clear.
The crowd shifts till an open path snakes from him to the feet of brother Able. The boy, shaking but purposeful, walks unsteadily towards the old man.
Able welcomes him with an embrace. ‘You are a brave lad. What is your name?’
‘Jacob, son of Abraham.’
‘Is your father amongst us?’
‘My father is dead. He must rest, he must in peace.’
Adam pushes his way forward. ‘He is my cousin. He has honour.’
With his thin arm still clutching the boy’s shoulder, Able turns, his sightless eye seeking me. ‘Beloved Timothy, we are one family in the Lord and the Saviour. Here is a son that we must all be proud of.’
A hushed assent grows into a roar of approval. The boy’s bright eyes strike me to my soul. I can see, I am granted vision. The lashes and the clubs in the arena, his flesh torn by wildcats, a dismembering, a crucifixion—this boy will not see manhood.
I embrace him with tears that my brethren mistake for sanction. I whisper into his ear, ‘Be ready for me at dawn.’ He shivers, trying to be brave. ‘Of course, uncle.’
I release him and he returns to his place, grinning as older men slap his back and embrace him, declaring him to be beloved of our Saviour and of our Lord.
Exhausted, dying for sleep, I know that there is one last thing I have to do. I raise my hands and command silence.
‘Brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, it has been a long day. We have been honoured by
the wisdom and loyalty of our dear brother Able. We have much to discuss but that can wait till our next thanksgiving.’
I cross my arms. I know my expression is stern, my eyes cold, but I resent the words I must now speak and I can’t pretend the opposite. I search for a face, a young girl, a mother.
‘I know there are those amongst you who would wish to baptise your infants. You understand that I cannot do so, for I have pledged otherwise to my teacher.’
And yes, the young mothers, their bodies bend eagerly towards me, anxious for my words.
‘I see no reason, however, why our brother Able cannot immerse your children.’
I turn to him and bow. ‘If you are in agreement, brother.’
His smile is indulgent; he knows he has won.
The boy, Jacob, is waiting for me in the burst of fresh morning. He only has a dirty cloth around his waist and his torso is bare. The first thing I do is scrub his face and neck and chest. There are no clothes left for him to wear—what we had has already been claimed by the latest arrival of refugees. But I cannot allow him to walk to the temple in near nakedness.
I strip off my vest but, though the wool is frayed and moth-eaten, he shies away from accepting the garment. ‘Is yours,’ he says in his broken Greek.
I reprimand him in Syrian, remind him I am an elder, and he takes it and puts it on.
As we walk he turns chatty, with no premonition of the cruelty of his fate. He tells me about the mountain village he comes from, how the cracked desert stretched out from there in every direction but in the far distance one could see the silver waters of the Reed Sea.
But then he becomes silent and lets go of my hand, walking stern-faced beside me, as though ashamed of his moment of childish chatter. He is striding like a soldier now, wanting to prove that he is a man. He has survived war, violation and expulsion, so how indeed could he still be a child?
Damascus Page 27