A guide for the perplexed: a novel

by Dara Horn

  “An important patient, I imagine?”

  Mosheh frowned. “All patients are important.”

  David stroked his beard. Mosheh still thought of David as a boy, but he was a man now, and a more worldly man at that. They had traveled together involuntarily since childhood, fleeing one country after another—Spain, Morocco, the Holy Land—but David as an adult had become constitutionally incapable of remaining in one place, and had become a traveling merchant. At twenty-four, David had already traversed the world, from Córdoba to Bombay. Mosheh would never admit it, but he admired him.

  “I have often been surprised by how physicians elsewhere treat illnesses,” David offered. “Often their approach is quite different from ours.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In India, for instance,” David said. “On my last voyage there three years ago, the captain of the merchant ship on which I was a passenger fell ill with a horrific catarrh. All the passengers were talking about it, particularly since we had already buried the first mate at sea. Everyone was frightened. With what little I’ve gleaned from listening to you speak about your studies, I would have simply recommended complete rest.”

  “That’s certainly the standard treatment for catarrh. Along with hot liquids for relief of inflammation.”

  “Under the circumstances, complete rest was impossible. The sea was quite rough, and none of us had slept in days. I never expected him to live,” David said. “But there was an Indian physician who had boarded our vessel in Cochin, and the Indian administered a certain potion to him. The captain recovered within a week. I was astounded.”

  “What sort of potion?”

  David laughed. “If you had been there, you of course would have asked all the intelligent questions. All I know is that it was something created by God, a plant or herb of some sort, dissolved into a kind of tea. It was my impression that it was a plant which only grows in that climate. It occurred to me that there must be many plants of which you and I know nothing, and which God saw fit to scatter throughout the world without providing every nation with the same ones. Perhaps it was the divine hope that men might trade and share the various blessings they have been given, and thus complete the sacred work of creation.”

  It sounded harmless enough, but Mosheh heard the faintest echo of idolatry in his brother’s words. He grimaced. “If God is perfect and unchanging, and omniscient as well, how can he be said to hope?” he said. “One can only hope for a particular outcome if one is ignorant of the future.”

  David reddened, and Mosheh regretted what he had said. It was true, of course, but he had humiliated his brother. The tradeoff was one that eternally disturbed him.

  But this time David surprised him. He had been surprising Mosheh more and more since their father’s death, challenging him in ways previously unheard of. “Is it really impossible to suggest that God might wish for something particular from us?” David asked. The meekness in his voice struck Mosheh as pretense, a younger brother feigning innocence in the rivalry between them. “The divine commandments require as much.”

  “The divine commandments require free will,” Mosheh corrected. “That doesn’t mean that God isn’t aware of all the eventualities resulting from that free will. The Mishnah tells us that ‘everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is granted.’”

  “That’s always baffled me, I’ll admit,” David said. His candor, Mosheh noted with relief, had returned.

  “The fact that outcomes are already known by God doesn’t preclude free will,” Mosheh said. “It enhances it. Think of the story of Joseph in the Torah. His brothers sell him into slavery in Egypt, but then his ability to see the future allows him to save the nation from famine. When his brothers arrive in Egypt to buy food from him, he could have refused them completely. He had the freedom to do that, even with his advance knowledge of how the famine would progress. What shows his free will isn’t how he controls the future, but how he controls the past. He doesn’t tell his brothers how cruel they’ve been; he doesn’t punish them. Instead he tells them—”

  David provided the quote, like the obedient student he had always been. “Do not be sad or angry at yourselves for selling me here,” he recited, and then Mosheh joined him: “‘because it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you.’”

  The biblical Joseph appeared to Mosheh in his mind—­brilliant in his insight, blessed with profound intelligence, unconquerable by his fellow men, able to foresee the future, glorious in his service to the Egyptian king. The man felt familiar to Mosheh: not like a friend, but rather like a possibility.

  “That troubles me too,” David was saying. “If Joseph’s brothers committed this horrible crime, then how can Joseph claim that their crime was actually a benevolent act of God?”

  “It’s a form of forgiveness,” Mosheh replied. “The sages taught that forgiveness is one of the seven things that was created before the world itself. That’s only an allegory, but I think it’s an allegory for this very problem. Forgiveness has to exist before the world is created, before anyone makes any choices that would need to be forgiven. That’s what I mean when I say that forgiveness is only possible when one is able to control the past.”

  David raised an eyebrow. “But we can’t control the past.”

  “That’s true, but also irrelevant,” Mosheh said. “I mean that we control the way we remember the past, and that’s what matters in the present. We choose what is worthy of our memory. We should probably be grateful that we can’t remember everything as God does, because if we did, we would find it impossible to forgive anyone. The limit of human memory encourages humility.”

  “Most of us don’t have to work so hard at remaining humble,” David said with a smirk. “Just being your brother is more than sufficient to remind me that I am but dust and ashes.”

  Mosheh coughed. After two years, he still felt his father’s absence—or rather, his presence, the odd eternal presence of the dead. Mosheh imagined how their father might have answered David, surely by saying something comforting and deeply true, perhaps reminding David that each person must always know that the world was created for his sake. But Mosheh was not their father, could not be their father, did not know how to dispel the shadow of his brother’s envy. Shaking off his father’s ghost, Mosheh changed the subject.

  “Did you try to purchase any of that miraculous plant, while you were in India?” he asked.

  David was clearly relieved that the conversation had returned to earth. “The plant? No, I’m sorry to say. I was only dealing in rubies and diamonds, as always. Foolishness. Rocks as money! Can you imagine if we were to use plants as money instead—plants that aren’t merely beautiful, as gems are, but actually useful as food or medicine? What a wonder it might have been if I had been just a bit more far-sighted, don’t you think? Of course, that is why you are the scientist, not I. And that is why al-Qadi al-Fadil has never invited me to his court.”

  That night, Mosheh found himself awake near dawn, despite the deep exhaustion that always haunted him. It was one of the only times of day when he could be alone. Normally he would have studied Torah, focused his thoughts on the divine presence, prayed. But as he held up a lamp to the few shelves that constituted his private library, he found himself taking down not a commentary on the Pentateuch, but a medical codex that he had barely opened before. For most medical questions he went straight to Galen—or rather, to the Galen in his mind, for from the age of twenty he had committed the texts of both Galen and Hippocrates to memory, and since then he had added Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine to his mental storeroom. But what David said about plants had haunted him. He knew now what he wanted to read.

  Several weeks earlier, a visiting physician from Constantinople had presented a beautiful book to him—written by an ancient native of a town near their beloved city—as a gift. The gift was in honor of a letter Mosheh had written to the Jewish community there, which had both enlightened them in a matter of Torah and, it would appear, comple
tely cured the ailing son of the head of the community, a boy who had been on the brink of death. Mosheh privately doubted that his letter had had any effect at all on the child’s health. In his letter he had barely given passing comment to the case, except to recommend an herb or two which he hardly expected to help. People do recover spontaneously, he knew—perhaps even the captain of David’s ship was one of their number—and he had accepted the Constantinople community’s gift to him with a degree of shame. It was a fine gift, too: a new translation into Arabic of a medical work that had previously only been available in Latin. Even the Arabic translation was only available in Baghdad; the community leader in Constantinople had come across it through a traveling merchant selling medicines. Mosheh intended to donate the volume to the library in the synagogue so the whole community could use it, and so that he could avoid seeing it every day. Every time he noticed it on his shelf, he remembered the boy in Constantinople and felt ashamed again. For this reason he had barely opened it. He grimaced as he pulled the book down. The book was a translation of On Medical Substances, by the ancient doctor Pedanius Dioscorides. It was a lexicon of herbs.

  Dioscorides, Mosheh learned from the book’s introduction, had been a physician traveling with Nero’s army, and in the course of his journeys across the world he had done precisely what David regretted not doing: gathered and recorded samples of every useful medical plant known to man, or at least known to him. The volume itself was utterly astonishing. It not only listed hundreds of herbs, but also provided detailed illustrations, descriptions of uses, recommendations for dosages, and warnings of possible side effects for each one. And in something that even a rationalist like Mosheh could not help considering a human form of divine grace, Dioscorides had been intelligent enough to organize his work not by the names of the herbs, but rather by their therapeutic uses, with chapters devoted to Warming, Drying, Soothing, Binding, Relaxing and so forth. It was as if the volume had been written with precisely Mosheh’s predicament in mind. And so it had been, since his was the predicament of every physician for millennia: how to heal the most intractable cases, to transform the impossible into the possible. Mosheh read, his hopes giving way to mere curiosity, until the first light appeared at his window. As his eyes began to close over the folio, he saw what he was searching for.

  According to Dioscorides, a plant known as ephedra sinica had been used in China to treat asthma for two thousand years—or, as Mosheh quickly calculated, three thousand years before the present day. For those afflicted with asthma, the ancient pharmacist wrote,

  Orientals are known to boil the stems of this plant, at dosages of five siliqua per quartarius of heated liquid. The patient then ingests the resultant liquid while inhaling its fumes, for rapid restoration of calming breath. Ancillary effects include temporarily increased agitation and palpation of the humors, though these effects are balanced by the efficiency with which the substance is known to regulate the respiratory tract. Common in western China, ephedra sinica is also known in India, where it is used in a similar fashion. Indian dosages differ, however, resulting in the ancillary effect of prophetic dreams.

  Mosheh replaced the book on the shelf and returned to his bed, dreaming what he believed to be prophetic dreams.

  “ARE YOU PLANNING ANOTHER trip to India this year?” Mosheh asked when he and his brother had finished their meal the following night.

  “Not exactly planning. Thinking about it, yes,” David said. He was smiling, contented with food and family. Mosheh envied his brother’s talent for happiness. “I was just now beginning to gather capital and materials to trade. I hadn’t yet settled on a date of departure. Of course I would want to time my visit so as to benefit from the monsoon winds in the summer. The journey on the Nile and then overland to the port on the Gulf of Aden will take me eight weeks at least. Realistically I would have to leave nine months from now to make the most of the winds. Or I could also leave right now, I suppose, though that would be rather ambitious. As I said, I’m only beginning to think about it.”

  Mosheh spoke. “If you were to go as soon as possible, I would be honored to assist in financing the journey. I would like to entrust this to you.” He passed David a silk sack.

  David leaned forward, opening the bag with his large steady hands. As he peered inside, his puzzled expression turned into one of astonishment.

  “It’s three hundred dinars,” Mosheh said, when David remained silent. “You may count it if you’d like.”

  David breathed. He was no longer smiling. “I don’t need to count your money. However much it is, it’s too much. This entire house only cost us two hundred.”

  “I’m quite aware of that,” Mosheh said.

  “Well, then, what on earth is this for?” He tried to grin again, though Mosheh could see he didn’t mean it. “Would you like me to build you a palace in Malabar? I don’t think the climate would suit you.”

  “Ephedra sinica,” Mosheh said.

  “What?”

  “The miracle plant. The one that cured the captain on your last voyage. I’ve identified it. It grows in India and China. Doctors there have been using it to treat asthma for thousands of years.”

  David laughed out loud.

  Mosheh ignored his laughter, just as he had ignored the sultan’s. “I would like you to come home with as much of it as you can manage to acquire,” Mosheh said. “Of course I cannot even guess how much such an item would cost, but—”

  David interrupted. “Don’t you think your important patient could provide the funds himself?”

  Mosheh frowned. His eagerness to serve the sultan was shameful, he knew. He would say nothing. “For this patient, it would be a question of trust.”

  “Why? Would he think I was running off to India with his money?”

  “Understandably so,” Mosheh replied.

  “If he is so important, surely he can take steps to protect himself.”

  Mosheh could see that David assumed the patient in question was the vizier. He winced as he thought again of ibn Jumay, the man who told a lie simply by never telling the truth. “This patient has endured attempts on his life in the past, some involving poison,” Mosheh said delicately. “He is not a trusting man. I am convinced that asking him to finance the trip in any way would be a mistake in many respects. But I expect we could recover the costs quite easily. The patient will surely be eager to purchase the remedy upon its arrival.”

  “After he’s given it to one of his servants first,” David grinned. “Or to you.”

  Mosheh remembered Saladin’s servant sipping coffee, and carefully continued. “David, I don’t think you appreciate the possibilities that would arise from this, for both of us,” he said slowly. “This patient is hardly the only one in the kingdom who suffers from this illness. Can you imagine if all of Egypt had access to this medicine, just as India and China do? And it wouldn’t merely be doctors in Egypt who would suddenly be able to treat this ailment. It could benefit the entire Maghrib, from here to Fez. Perhaps even farther. Just think how we would be spreading the divine miracles of creation.”

  “And just think how much money we would make.”

  “David,” Mosheh said, in their father’s voice.

  David looked down, humbled, but Mosheh knew he was admonishing himself. Mosheh was already imagining himself as Joseph, the far-sighted servant of an Egyptian king. He noticed that his brother was still grinning.

  “You know, it’s possible I wouldn’t even need to travel all the way to India for this,” David said. “At the port at ‘Aydhab near the Horn of Africa, there are often Indian goods for sale. I’ll admit that I never searched for this particular item before.”

  “But if it weren’t available there—” Mosheh began, testing him.

  “Then I would continue on to India,” David finished. “I’ll arrange the trip immediately.” He rose from the table with Mosheh’s sack, then bowed to kiss his elder brother’s hands. “For the honor of God’s creation.”

 
“May your free will be the will of God,” Mosheh said as the brothers embraced.

  David smiled. “Insha’allah.”

  THE NILE PORT AT Fustat was a terrible place. The docks were mobbed by crushes of people and animals as each ship unloaded its goods—glass, pottery, spices, dyes, paper, silks, and every other material that made Egypt the crossroads of the world. For most people, especially people like David who lived on trade, the port at Fustat was a marvel. But what made it terrible were the other commodities being unloaded at the same time as the spices and dyes: rows upon rows of bound slaves, pulled onto the pier by ropes and occasionally prodded by whips. Most of these slaves, Mosheh and everyone else knew, hadn’t been purchased at proper slave markets but instead had been taken captive in other cities, or even pirated from other ships. He could hear them speaking and knew they were educated men and women. The previous year he had personally handled the ransoming of thirty captured Jews in Alexandria, including, other than the women and children, five doctors, seven merchants, and a scribe.

  The cargo he saw being unloaded now, as he and David maneuvered through the crowds, consisted of what appeared to be a family of six, including two small and angry-looking boys, two pretty teenage daughters with their hair hanging loose and bare like harlots after someone had clearly stolen their veils, and an older couple fat enough to have once been rich. Each member of the family was fastened to a common rope by a thick metal ring locked around his or her neck, while a sailor pulled the rope along the pier. The daughters, Mosheh saw, seemed to know what awaited them. They were crying silently with their eyes pinched closed, unable to wipe at their tears with their wrists bound behind them. It was difficult for Mosheh to avoid thinking of the harem, of the young girls whom he had repeatedly tried and failed to treat, incapable of preventing not only their humiliation but their ultimate meaningless deaths. The captives’ father—stripped to the waist, with a dark beard and curly dark hair on his pale thick chest—shouted at one of the sailors in an almost literary Arabic, cursing him in something approximating rhyme. This prompted another sailor to use an iron rod to knock him to the ground, which in turn caused the whole family to trip, jerked by the rings around their necks, into a moaning heap on the father’s bleeding back as the sailors laughed. Anyone on any long journey could wind up just like this, Mosheh thought, stripped of everything, bound at the wrists and neck and paraded down a pier in a foreign city like an animal. He glanced at his brother and saw him averting his eyes.