A guide for the perplexed: a novel

by Dara Horn

  But much else had changed in Cairo in that frightening year—most notably, a new dynasty that was considerably worse than the last, shutting down libraries and demanding that people like Mosheh and ibn Jumay mark their clothing with a yellow badge. The vizier had wisely shifted his allegiance toward the new dynasty’s sultan, Saladin, vanquisher of infidels. It was this new sultan who, at critical moments, could not breathe.

  The vizier had mentioned this to Mosheh during one of their regular consultations, eager for his opinion. “Sometimes,” the vizier confided to him in a hushed tone as the two of them strolled through the gardens together, “His Majesty tends to crumple in violent coughing fits, very unbecoming.” He paused on the sandstone walk, breathing in jasmine as he lowered his voice. “I have heard from his courtiers that he has even been known to vomit phlegm, in public. On other occasions, I am told, His Majesty breathes so rapidly that it becomes necessary for him to take to his bed. What do you make of it?”

  Mosheh saw how the vizier drew his eyebrows together as he spoke. It was unlike the vizier to worry: he was a careful man, but a happy one, a man who understood that happiness was its own powerful medicine. Mosheh often thought he stood straighter when he smiled, despite the hump on his back. But the vizier had been a protégé of the previous sultan, scion of the Fatimid regime—the remnants of which the new sultan was in the process of rooting out. He saw, now, that the vizier was afraid.

  “Such things are usually the result of poor diet,” Mosheh offered, keeping his voice clipped, professional. “Another potential cause is mental agitation. Is that likely in His ­Majesty’s case?”

  The vizier laughed, a sound that harmonized with the trickling of the fountain behind him. “Well,” he said with a grin, “if I were faced with the Assassins plotting against me in the Sinai, an Isma’ili insurgency in Cairo, and the Crusaders at my door in Gaza, I might describe myself as mentally agitated, yes.”

  Mosheh smiled, grateful that the vizier seemed at last to be at ease, and ventured a comment of his own. “And I might have trouble breathing in that situation as well,” he said, aware of the risk, “especially if I had noticed that taking to my bed was the most sensible way to avoid the problems at hand.”

  The vizier stopped smiling, his brows furrowing again as he hunched below Mosheh’s height. This time he glanced around the garden, ensuring that they were alone.

  “I think you might feel differently if you were to examine him,” he said, lowering his voice once more.

  “Examine the sultan?” This was bizarre, unreal. Mosheh tried his best to hide his alarm, coughing into his sleeve. “I would hardly be qualified to—”

  “Observe him, I mean,” the vizier clarified. “I am required to appear at court tomorrow, and I would like you to join me. My back has been bothering me, as you know.” Mosheh heard this and stood still. “I would ask ibn Jumay to come as well,” the vizier added, “but he is ill with a fever, and isn’t likely to recover by tomorrow.” The name made Mosheh swallow, but he was still amazed. Luck, pure luck!—or, he corrected himself, evidence of divine providence at work. “If one of my own doctors were to help the sultan, then none of us would have anything to fear. Just observe him, please. At a distance, of course.” The vizier was pleading now, his voice surprisingly meek. Mosheh nodded. “And then tell me if you can provide any medical advice.”

  Mosheh went home that day as though floating, trembling as a driven leaf. A strange excitement seemed to buoy him above the fear that had haunted him in the past few months, ever since his brother’s wife had sewn the yellow badge onto his robe. He suspected that the sultan’s illness was nothing more than an elaborate ruse, and he looked forward to spotting the symptoms of a royal performance. Even to confirm such a thing to the vizier would surely anchor his place in the vizier’s court, perhaps even above the despicable ibn Jumay. That night he poured his distraction into a letter he had been writing to Jewish scholars in France, who had inquired about the reliability of astrology in predicting the future. It took some effort to dismiss their concerns without being rude. But as he wrote now, he found himself imagining his own future in the royal court.

  Three disagreements exist in matters of predestination and free will, he wrote to the rabbis of Provence. Imagine this situation. Here is Judah, a poor tanner whose children have died in his own lifetime. And here is Joseph, a rich perfumer whose children stand before him. The situation was somewhat extreme, of course, as hypotheticals always were. In the back of his mind he could not help but envision a much pettier scenario: Here is Mosheh, a rational, responsible, and realistic physician who can barely dream of serving the sultan. And here is Hibatallah ibn Jumay, a complete charlatan, who will surely rise to ever greater fame. He sighed, focused, and continued writing.

  1. Philosophers maintain that this is due to chance. It is possible that Judah could become a rich perfumer and have children; and Joseph could become an impoverished tanner and witness his children’s deaths.

  2. Astrologers, whose follies are widespread, maintain that it is impossible that a given thing should change. Never will Judah be anything but a poor childless tanner, nor will Joseph be anything but a rich perfumer with children, for it was fixed at the time of their births.

  Both of these positions are falsehoods. For what then would be the purpose of the commandments? In that event, no one could do anything he set his mind to, since something else draws him—against his will—to be this and not that.

  3. The true way we walk is this. We say, regarding Judah and Joseph, that nothing draws one to become a rich perfumer and the other to become a poor tanner. The situation could be reversed. But we maintain that this depends on the will of God, that all this is just. We do not know the end of the Holy One’s wisdom. We must believe that if Joseph sins, he will become impoverished and his children will die, and if Judah repents, he will grow rich and succeed. If someone says,“But look, many have done so and still have not succeeded,” that is no proof. Our minds cannot grasp how divine decrees work in this world and the world to come. What is clear is that astrology is considered falsehood by all men of science.

  As he concluded the thought, Mosheh wondered if he were being too harsh—if, perhaps, the scholar who had written to him might not be a tanner himself, or a man who had lost a child before his time, a man like the biblical Job. But this seemed irrelevant in the face of the rational truth. As he dropped off to sleep, he thought only of reward and punishment, of how everyone, in a manner obscure to even the brightest of men, must get what they deserve.

  The following morning, as if it had been planned by a benevolent God, Mosheh witnessed the sultan’s suffering.

  FOLLOWING A FEW STEPS behind the vizier, Mosheh could not control a slight shudder as he entered the throne room for the first time in his life. He hadn’t approached the palace since the Fatimids were overthrown, and even then he had only been to the harem, tending to sick concubines—girls who had been captured overseas, girls who sometimes barely spoke a word of Arabic, girls who were often so young that they had never even bled before being forced to bear some courtier’s child. It was a part of his work he never spoke of in Fustat. Entering the harem and watching the girls cringe before him was painful enough that he would usually just dispense the relevant potions and antidotes to the oldest-looking maid­servant, hoping against all logic that she would be able to read the prescriptions he wrote indicating the dosages needed by some poor girl who had been stricken with the nameless infection—an infection whose potentially fatal quality he never mentioned to the women in the room. Surely they all knew it.

  But now, in the enormous throne room with its endless mathematical tiles expanding in all directions toward infinity, Mosheh watched in wonder as the vizier and everyone else present dropped to their knees before a small man seated on an enormous dais in the front of the hall. The vizier respected Mosheh’s religious refusal to bow before mortals, but the sultan surely wouldn’t. Just that week, Mosheh had completed the
section of his new codification of the Talmud on idolatry, on when and whether it was ever permissible to bow before an idol. Weighing the commandment forbidding idolatry against the law to preserve life at nearly any cost—but not at the cost of idolatry, adultery, or murder—Mosheh saw in an instant that he was the only man standing in the room. He considered the possibility of execution, and dropped to his knees. As he pressed his face into the plush rug on the throne room floor, feeling cool silk on his forehead at precisely the spot where his Muslim neighbors’ brows were callused from years of daily prayers, he told himself that he was merely dissimulating, pretending to bow before man while he was really prostrating himself before the king of kings. When he rose from the ground, he shivered as if shaking off filth before finally peering over the vizier’s shoulder at the newly crowned king.

  The sultan was much shorter than Mosheh had expected. He was a small, ugly man, with a thick beard and a slight figure that nearly drowned in his brocaded robes as he rose from his throne. He looked almost comically harmless. But when the sultan opened his mouth to speak, Mosheh was astounded. Sala­din’s voice was cavernous, booming, bursting with pitch and fury—a commanding, explosive sound that slammed the room into stunned silence. As he harangued some visiting diplomat for what was apparently a catastrophic error in a message sent to the Crusaders at Gaza, the dozens of nobles and servants around him moved back, as if edging away from an encroaching fire.

  “Do you think it’s acceptable to have the Franks knocking at the gates of Cairo?” the sultan shouted. The short, ­narrow-chested king pushed aside several servants to step closer to the now cowering diplomat. His royal mouth frothed, spewing hot, fast breath. “Is that why we overthrew the Fatimids? To rid Egypt of heretics, only to see it conquered by infidels?”

  “Your Majesty, I merely requested their aid against the Assassins,” the diplomat whimpered. “The Assassins have already broached the gates of the city, Your Majesty, and after the previous attempts on your life—”

  “You deserve to be impaled.”

  The sultan reddened as he thrust his face at the cringing diplomat, and then he began to pant. Mosheh almost expected him to draw his dagger and disembowel the poor visitor himself. Instead Saladin leaned back, his breathing growing faster by the second as his face burned. Then he gasped and fell to his knees, still panting, on the marble floor.

  The term was asthma, just as Hippocrates and Galen had described it. Mosheh watched as the sultan’s royal body convulsed, wracked by uncontrollable coughs, gasping for air like a fish caught on a line—clear evidence of the bronchial spasms that Hippocrates and Galen had illustrated, and which they had described as a form of epilepsy affecting the lungs. Despite the shocked paralysis of everyone in the room, Mosheh jumped.

  Remembering a similar episode among the servants at the royal court in Fez, he dashed to the coffee tray beside the throne. Then he knelt at the sultan’s side and, to the bewilderment of all present, offered him coffee. When the sultan momentarily regained his breath, he drank, and calmed. As the sultan’s breathing eased, Mosheh backed away from him and returned to his place behind the vizier, hoping to render himself invisible. But everyone in the room was watching him.

  The following day, when he returned with the vizier to the sultan’s court, the sultan shocked him by addressing him, face-to-face.

  “Musa ibn Maimoun al-Yahudi,” he boomed. “Al-Qadi al-Fadil has mentioned to me that you are a talented physician. And my courtiers all witnessed your intervention yesterday during my suffering.”

  Mosheh hesitated, unsure whether it was proper to speak. With a nod from the vizier, he opened his mouth. “It was a privilege to assist Your Majesty,” he said.

  “I was curious as to your professional opinion, ibn Maimoun,” the sultan continued. His voice was softer now, inviting. Mosheh still trembled. “Would you recommend coffee as a cure for my predicament?”

  Mosheh hesitated. Should he say yes, to impress the king? The man was surely hoping for a cure. Ibn Jumay would have provided him with the best nonsense money could buy. But Mosheh’s rational brain would not allow him to speak less than the truth.

  “Your Majesty, I unfortunately cannot prescribe coffee as a consistently effective treatment,” he admitted. “There are substances in coffee that dilate the bronchial tubes of the lungs, and the moist vapor from the coffee’s heat may have been helpful as well. Those facts, and the probability that the convulsions were just then coming to a natural end, might explain its apparent effectiveness during your—during the incident yesterday. But for patients suffering from Your Majesty’s ailment, I would rather recommend moderation in all things. I very much regret to say that coffee is hardly a cure for Your Majesty’s condition.”

  To Mosheh’s surprise, the sultan smiled.

  “You are certainly not stupid, ibn Maimoun,” he declared. “Obviously coffee is no cure. If it were, I would never have developed this trouble. I already drink coffee several times a day.” Mosheh drew in his own breath as he realized that the sultan’s initial question had been a test. The sultan gestured to a servant, who brought him a glass full of steaming coffee. Mosheh watched as the servant sipped from the glass, paused, and then passed it to the sultan. “A safe and healthy drink, even if not a miracle,” Saladin said, grinning as he raised it to his lips. It took another long moment before Mosheh understood that the servant had been checking for poison. “What, then, would you recommend?”

  Mosheh hesitated, gathering his thoughts. “Your Majesty, the most effective treatment for asthma involves a regulation of physical functions, returning the body to an appropriate balance of humors, as Hippocrates describes,” he said patiently. “The ancient physicians explain that this can be done through changes to the diet, moderation in physical exertion, ample rest, altering the quality of the air in your chambers through fumigations, particularly during the damper months, and”—here Mosheh hesitated as he often did in the vizier’s court, where the nobles’ private reality frequently conflicted with common sense—“I would also add to these recommendations a moderation in one’s relations with the fairer sex, for while the ancients do not mention it, this realm too would undoubtedly affect—”

  The sultan cut him off. Mosheh knew why. “Ibn Maimoun, you are boring me,” he loudly announced. The courtiers around him checked the royal face for a smile, and then allowed themselves to laugh.

  Mosheh bowed his head, waiting for the laughter to pass. He reminded himself of his other life in Fustat, where people waited for hours merely to stand in his presence, where his was the only opinion that mattered, where no one would dream of laughing at him, much less the servants of a king. In Fustat—and not merely in Fustat, but everywhere among Jews across the planet, from France to Yemen—he was Rabbi Mosheh ben Maimon, the Great Master in Israel, the human embodiment of Torah, the personification of the divine scholarship required by the covenant with God. It was only here, he forced himself to remember, that he was Musa ibn Maimoun al-Yahudi, the nobles’ slave. He remained silent.

  “Do I have time to learn everything the ancient physicians had to say?” the sultan laughed. “No. That is your responsibility, and you needn’t share it with me. And to return the favor, I promise never to ask you for advice on how to defeat the Franks.” The sultan smirked, and drank more coffee. “All I need from you, ibn Maimoun, is a cure. Not a ‘moderation of the humors.’ Not an ‘adjustment to the royal chambers.’ Not your medical advice on which of my wives or concubines should be brought to me this evening.” The courtiers tittered again, after the sultan blessed them with a smile. “No, ibn Maimoun. I want a cure. Do you understand?”

  Mosheh cleared his throat, suddenly afraid he might fall into a coughing fit of his own. “Your Majesty, I must advise that a chronic condition—”

  The sultan stood as Mosheh cowered. A servant adjusted Saladin’s robes for him as he began moving toward a door behind his throne. “Enough,” he announced, waving a hand. “I haven’t time for this.
One of the ladies in the harem is ill. Go treat her. And then go back to your synagogue and find me a cure.”

  That evening in Fustat, Mosheh could think of little else.

  “SOMETHING IS TROUBLING YOU, Mosheh,” his brother David said.

  The brothers were dining together, as had become their habit during the two years since their father’s death. A servant had already cleared away the dishes, removing the remains of a date and apricot stew, and the two had just finished reciting the blessings after the meal. But Mosheh, reluctant to meet the petitioners who he knew awaited him in the courtyard, had lingered at the table, drumming his fingers as he hummed the final words of praise. David had noticed. “What is it?” David asked.

  Mosheh disliked sharing his concerns with his younger brother. It struck him as a sign of weakness, against the natural order. But since their father’s death, Mosheh had felt the enormous burden of authority, of knowing that there was no longer anyone in the world in whom he was entitled to confide, or to whom he could express any form of doubt. David was right: he was preoccupied. No study of Torah would be possible this evening, he told himself, if he remained this way. That alone was justification enough to do something as petty as telling David his thoughts. He breathed, and spoke.

  “I have a patient who is suffering from asthma,” Mosheh said. The sultan wasn’t his patient, of course, or at least not in any sense but the aspirational. But to Mosheh, this slight distortion seemed harmless, then. “The only treatments I know of are moderations to the diet and so forth. But the patient absolutely insists on a cure.”