by Dara Horn
“How may I help you?” he asked, perfunctorily. He was already counting time in his mind, waiting for sleep, waiting for peace, waiting for David’s return. He modified his question, hoping to get to the point: “Where does it hurt?”
“Great Master in Israel,” the man addressed him humbly. “I am sorry to meet you under such circumstances.”
“Under what circumstances?” Mosheh asked, unable to drain the languidness from his voice. He assumed the man was referring to his own travails, some vague medical problem that Mosheh would be expected, as always, to cure. He examined the man from his couch, noticing the man’s thin frame, his untrimmed beard, his sallow skin. The man was ill, no question. He was looking down now, avoiding eye contact as he straightened the yellow patch on his robe.
“Great Master in Israel,” the man said, “I am Rashid ibn Abdullah, the brother of Mansur ibn Abdullah.”
“Mansur ibn Abdullah,” Mosheh repeated absently. The name sounded familiar, but in the haze of fatigue he could not think of how he knew it. It was then that the man withdrew a parchment from his robe. Of course the man wanted a prescription, a dosage, a blessing—any sort of nonsense to cure his aching body. Everyone in the world was seeking a cure.
“Mansur ibn Abdullah, who was traveling with your brother from ‘Aydhab to Malabar,” the man said. “They boarded the ship to India together.”
Now Mosheh sat up. He stared at the man, puzzled, as the man passed him the parchment. Mosheh took it in his hand, glancing at the opening lines. They were filled with the usual formulas of respect and wonderment for addressing an older brother. Mosheh didn’t bother to read them through. Instead his eye skipped to the end of the greeting, where he saw the words Nothing can describe what I survived on my voyage, thanks be to the Holy One, may his name be praised. Survived, Mosheh thought. So all is well. He sighed, once again feeling his own fatigue, and looked back at the man.
“Please read the letter, Great Master,” the man said.
The man’s voice was quaking. A symptom of some sort, Mosheh reasoned. He was ready to conclude the evening, exhausted. “I cannot read it now,” he said curtly. “Tell me what is ailing you.”
The man leaned back in his chair, pausing for breath. Finally he spoke. “The ship to Malabar was caught in a storm,” he said.
The slowness of the man’s voice caught Mosheh’s attention. Mosheh was listening now, avidly listening. He found himself suddenly praying, begging God with the vain prayer: God grant that this is not from my house.
“My brother managed to preserve his own life by clutching a plank that God’s providence carried away from the squall,” the man continued. “He witnessed how your brother, may his memory be a blessing—”
The man continued speaking after that, for hours, for days. But Mosheh did not hear him. Instead he scanned the words on the page, unable to recognize the letters. He had forgotten how to read, how to think, how to breathe. Only the letter’s final line resolved itself into meaning before his uncomprehending eyes: Blessed be the True Judge.
EIGHT DAYS LATER, WHEN Mosheh rose from the week of mourning—a physical rising, unaccompanied by any elevation of the mind—he wandered into the Palestinian synagogue with a pile of useless papers under his arm. Friends and colleagues, students and patients had mobbed his house relentlessly since the news had spread; this was the first time in a week that he had been allowed to be alone. He had walked through the neighborhoods by way of minor streets and alleys, avoiding people he knew, strolling carefully in the gutters as the new dynasty’s laws prescribed. At the synagogue, services had long concluded. No one was there but the custodian, who was sweeping the floor. Mosheh usually prayed at a study hall near his home, and usually came to the synagogue only on holidays, when petitioners would crowd him so horribly that he could barely move in the room. The thought of his own fame sickened him. It was his own arrogance that had caused this horror—the ridiculous quest to conquer the world, to invite death in the service of a cure. He would never do it again, he privately vowed, would never even encourage others to take those arrogant risks, not even for the sake of his patients. Mosheh had written his compendium of the laws of repentance years before, and knew that the only way to seek absolution for sins against the dead was to gather ten men by the grave of the deceased. His brother’s body lay at the bottom of the sea. No one could forgive him.
He stepped quietly into the synagogue. The custodian, whom Mosheh diagnosed at a glance with a congenital mental deficiency, did not recognize him. Mosheh was grateful. The simple man shouted a greeting, invoking God’s blessings. Mosheh did not reply.
Instead he stood in the back of the room for a very long time, near the stairs to the women’s gallery. There was a small door to the storage room on the main floor, he knew. But no one had been able to open that door in fifty years, because of all the parchments pressing against it from within. The synagogue officers had since cut out a little door high in the wall on the second level, from which they dumped whatever papers no longer mattered down into the well below.
When the custodian left, Mosheh ascended to the women’s section, where he found the ladder that was kept alongside the wall that held the little door. He righted it, and climbed up until he reached the tiny doorway. With more force than he thought he had, he thrust it open. Far below him lay a shallow sea of parchments, codexes, and scrolls—two hundred years’ worth, all inscribed with the name of God, as was his brother’s letter.
He discarded his other papers first: notes from his study of the Mishnah, drafts of letters he had already mailed abroad, error-riddled copies of books he had already published, until only one document remained in his hand. He read his brother’s letter one more time, lingering over the ink of his brother’s name. And then he cast it down into the papers below, dropping it into eternity.
WHEN THE SULTAN SALADIN returned from Damascus the following year, he appointed Musa ibn Maimoun al-Yahudi as royal physician, despite ibn Maimoun’s failure to provide him with anything more than a treatise he had written on the treatment and prevention of asthma. The treatise, several hundred pages long, described a strict and carefully moderated regimen of diet, exercise, sleep, and sexual function that would best control the patient’s symptoms.
It never mentioned a cure.
10
EGYPT WAS UNLIKE anything Judith had expected. She wasn’t sure quite what she had been expecting—pyramids? sand? men in flowing robes?—but what she hadn’t expected was the vast diesel-fueled parking lot called Cairo, unnavigably thick with cars, smog, and stray cats. The noise was deafening, even before dawn, as she attempted to sleep off the agony of the flight, the agony of the previous day, the agony of her entire life: amplified calls to prayer blended with the endless honking and groaning of trucks. Her hotel in Cairo was empty except for journalists, all of whom seemed to be accompanied by bodyguards. But Judith had no interest in Cairo. Her unease blurred into exhaustion as she took a private car service to Alexandria—or as her driver called it, “Alex”—where she had an appointment at what was once the largest library in the world. As she woke up in the car to the fresh smell of the sea, in a city that looked like a slightly cleaner version of the one she had just left, she remembered the email message she had received from the library director:
My dear Miss Ashkenazi,
I am terribly sorry upon the loss of your sister, who was very generous to our Library in her last days. Our entire Library mourns her passing.
Unfortunately I will be in London during the week you mention. If it is important for you to speak with someone when you arrive on Thursday, then I regret to say that the only person available would be our archival media director, Nasreen Jumay. Miss Jumay worked extensively with your sister, peace be upon her, and could perhaps answer some of your questions before I return the following week. Please inform us if this is inadequate for your needs.
With great sympathy,
Marwan Seladin
Judith already
knew that it would be inadequate for her needs. Irritated by the “my dear Miss Ashkenazi” (she couldn’t recall ever being addressed as “Miss” in the previous ten years), she suspected that she was being pawned off on the only woman in the building. But after dumping her suitcase at a deserted waterfront hotel, she proceeded by taxi to the library and was stunned by what she saw.
The library rose up from the waterfront like an ancient fortress surrounded by a moat, enormous pyramids and spheres and sloping glass ceilings emerging from water and surrounded by a barricade of palms. The complex spread for acres in every direction, and it took Judith some time, walking across the huge unshaded stone plaza in the surprisingly mild sunshine, to find the colossal multistory wedge of granite, inscribed with house-sized hieroglyphics, under which was the building’s main entrance. Once inside, she was immediately immersed in frigid air, as if she had jumped into an ice bath. The lobby was endless, blond flooring and skylights stretching in every direction like a desert of wood and glass.
She was twenty minutes early. She took the time to wander up the stairs to a balcony over the vast reading room, which buzzed with headscarfed women and neatly dressed men clicking at computer keyboards that rested on what appeared to be miles of study carrels in every imaginable configuration. On the balconies above their heads, illuminated glass display cases glowed with Arabic manuscripts and ancient statues made of ivory and gold. The idea that this library was in the same country as the cat-strewn city she had driven from that morning—or even the cat-strewn streets a few blocks away—was bizarre, as though aliens had created a private landing pad for themselves in the middle of the diesel-drenched country. Glancing at her watch, and avoiding eye contact with the young men and women hurrying down the halls beside her, she returned to the frigid lobby, still stunned. There a smiling man with perfect fingernails met her, and quietly escorted her up a wide staircase and down a hall to a spotless office, where he abruptly said goodbye and vanished down another corridor. Inside the office, Judith met the woman who may have been the last non-criminal to see her sister alive: Nasreen Jumay.
NASREEN, AS THE LIBRARIAN insisted on being called when Judith greeted her as “Ms. Jumay,” was much younger than Judith had expected—perhaps in her late twenties, though it was difficult for Judith to guess. Nasreen was wearing stylish tapered pants, a shimmering silk blouse, and a headscarf that barely covered her gleaming hair, which was dyed a peculiar shade of orange. Her face was carefully made up, accenting her subtle beauty. Her thick, dark eyeliner made Judith think of ancient Egyptian princesses, though Judith immediately dismissed the thought, assuming she was indulging in some oblique form of racism. Nasreen’s accent was British, vowels and consonants polished to perfection. Judith wondered if her sister had felt the envy she felt now, standing before such a striking, poised, and apparently accomplished woman. Then she remembered: if she were Josie, she would never have envied anyone. She wouldn’t have known the meaning of the word.
“Welcome,” the woman said, rising and sweeping herself around a neat blond wood desk to stand before Judith and take her hand. When she spoke, her voice was brusque, businesslike, beautiful. She reminded Judith of Josie. The shock of recognition alarmed her. Compounding Judith’s surprise, the woman not only grasped her hand, but raised it until she had touched it to her lips. It felt intrusive, invasive, as though Judith were being stripped.
“I am so, so sorry for your loss,” Nasreen said. “We were all stunned by this unthinkable tragedy. My colleagues and I wish you and your family much comfort during this terrible time.” Judith wondered if the words had been rehearsed. But the librarian’s voice was earnest, drained of pretense. “I was so grateful for the time your sister spent with us, may peace be upon her.”
Judith marveled at the idea of her sister resting in peace. It was implausible. She had never seen her sister sit still. Would a woman like Josie even want to rest in peace, after she died? Judith eyed the Egyptian woman again.
“My supervisor, Mr. Seladin, informed me that you wished to learn more about your sister’s visit here,” the woman said. “Please, have a seat.”
“I suppose that’s right,” Judith replied. She perched on the edge of a chair opposite Nasreen’s desk, glancing at the books along the shelves of Nasreen’s office. Most were in Arabic, though there were at least two shelves of English and one of French. Another brilliant woman, Judith thought, and felt the paper burning in her purse.
“I will tell you that your sister’s work was absolutely instrumental in bringing our systems to their maximum potential,” Nasreen said. “She is—she was very professional. Eminently professional. As you know, our library aims to be the greatest scholarly institution in the Arab world, and the Egyptian people recognize this. During the demonstrations leading up to the revolution, there was a great deal of looting elsewhere. But here, the young people of the city joined hands with each other and stood in a protective ring around the library. This is how important the maintaining of knowledge is to the Egyptian people. It has been true since ancient times.” Judith noticed how little this had to do with Josie. She tried to interrupt, but failed. “We have an entire school of information sciences here, and the highest-capacity digital archives in the country. Your sister’s systems were a perfect match for our digital needs. She came with a data implementation plan, and then she trained our staff in how to—”
“Actually, I’m much more interested in how she was kidnapped,” Judith blurted.
Nasreen drew in her breath. “There is a police report,” she said. “She was last seen getting into a car outside the main lobby. The police determined that—”
“I know. I read the translation of the police report months ago,” Judith said. “I didn’t come here to hear it again.”
Nasreen stared at her, clearly insulted. But Judith could not wait any longer. Josie never would have. She took the piece of paper out of her bag and pressed it onto Nasreen’s desk, turning it around to face her. “Do you recognize this number?”
The woman bent her head down over the paper Judith had given her. She looked at the number for a very long time. For an instant Judith felt the dread she had felt when Itamar first glanced at the screen with Josie’s message, the stomach-sinking horror of a world coming to an end.
“No,” the woman said.
The finality of that syllable was a door slammed in Judith’s face. For a half hour more, Judith tried asking further questions, pulling possibilities out of the air. But it soon became clear that the woman knew nothing, and Judith gave up.
“Mr. Seladin will be back on Monday,” the librarian offered politely as she escorted Judith to the lobby. “I’m sure he will be able to tell you more about the investigation. In the meantime, please feel free to come back if you think of anything else you would like to know. We are indebted to your family.” She kissed Judith’s hand again and retreated back up the stairs, leaving Judith in the vast open space just before the metal detectors at the building’s front door.
Judith considered leaving immediately, but she had nowhere else to be. Instead she wandered into the reference area and watched people tapping away at dozens of new computers. The piece of paper where she had copied out the phone number was still in her hand. She had already tried calling it, of course, and had gotten nothing but a recording in Arabic. The man at her hotel’s front desk in Cairo had translated it for her; the number was disconnected. She wasn’t surprised. Everything in Egypt seemed to be a dead end. But now something obvious occurred to her: I’m in a library!
She stepped up to one of the reference computers and began poking at its menus, searching for a way to begin. But the English-language screens were hard to navigate, and frustration consumed Judith quickly. She hurried to the reference desk, toward the headscarfed woman behind it.
“Excuse me,” she said delicately, and placed the paper on the desk. “I’m trying to identify this phone number. Could you look it up for me?”
The woman regarde
d her with a smile. “English reference, one level up,” she recited.
“I don’t need a reference in English,” Judith said, trying to mask her irritation. “I just need—”
“English, one level up,” the woman repeated, and waved a hand at the stairs.
Judith followed the wide staircase back up to the next floor. She was about to wonder where to go when she found herself returning to Nasreen Jumay’s open office door. She tapped on the doorpost.
“Nasreen?” she asked. “May I come in?”
Nasreen looked up from her computer, startled. “Did you forget something?”
“I’m—I’m sorry to interrupt you again,” she stammered. She stumbled into the room and pressed the piece of paper onto Nasreen’s desk again. “I was going to ask at the English reference desk but—well, could you just look this number up for me?”
Nasreen took the paper again, holding it as though it were slightly dirty. “It’s not a landline, is it,” she said, not quite making it a question.
“No,” Judith said. “Someone sent me a text from it.”
Nasreen frowned, and handed the paper back to Judith. “We don’t have a database for mobile numbers. You’ll have to contact the telephone company.”
“But—but this is a library. The finest research facility in the Arab world and all of that,” Judith said. She was descending into sarcasm now, desperate. She put the paper on Nasreen’s desk again, turning it toward her. “You’re using my sister’s systems here. Can’t you just run a search and see?”