Apeirogon

by Colum McCann

  Sixteen thousand finely carved blocks were joined together in interlocking pieces. The inside was hollow. The whole structure seemed to hang miraculously on itself. The latticework doors led to the staircase which led, in turn, to the upper pulpit. The panels were studded with ivory and ebony. The patterns emerged from a simple six-sided shape, but the resulting geometric effects—spiraling rosettes, honeycombs, circles, squares, triangles, arabesques—were almost unfathomably intricate. The cascading calligraphy featured lengthy quotations from the Qur’an.

  Every Friday for centuries the imam climbed the staircase and delivered sermons to the faithful below.

  133

  When Bassam was six, his father took him and his brothers to Jerusalem. They walked through the grounds of the mosque where their father sat and smoked and told them stories: the night flight of Muhammad, the tale of Saladin, the melting of the gold for the roof of the Dome. He said that there used to be a very beautiful pulpit in the mosque but that it had since been burned down.

  132

  The German writer Goethe said that the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music—that to look upon a thing is to hear it. Music is liquid architecture, he wrote, and architecture is frozen music.

  131

  The minbar stood for eight hundred years without a single nail or screw or any glue holding it together.

  130

  In the early morning of August 21, 1969, an Australian tourist, Denis Michael Rohan, passed the early morning guards at the Al-Aqsa mosque, carrying a camera and a backpack. The guards knew the young man: he had been visiting every day for over a month. He had already tipped them extravagantly. He greeted them in Arabic and asked if he could slip in early to take photographs. They allowed him to pass.

  Inside the mosque, Rohan opened his backpack, laid a scarf down on the steps, sprinkled kerosene over it, climbed the staircase, doused the pulpit with benzene and then set it all alight. He walked calmly out of the mosque, stopped to chat with the guards, then began to run when the flames were noticed.

  Inside, the roof of the mosque caught. By noon only a few charred pieces of the minbar remained.

  When word of the fire reached the Islamic world, a state of emergency was declared. King Hussein of Jordan called for a military summit. Saudi Arabia immediately put its troops on standby. A general strike was called in Pakistan. Iraq announced the execution of fifteen foreign spies. Deadly riots erupted in India.

  Rohan was arrested two days later by Israeli police. He was, he said, acting on the word of God. The fire would hasten the return of the Messiah. He saw himself as a direct descendant of Abraham—his last name spelled backwards, Nahor, was the same as Abraham’s grandfather.

  At his trial the Australian said that the fire was the most important event for the world since the trial of Jesus Christ. He pleaded insanity and was sentenced to lifetime confinement in a mental hospital in Jerusalem, but he was released in 1974 on humanitarian grounds. He died twenty-one years later in Callan Park hospital in Sydney.

  129

  During his trial, Rohan admitted to Israeli psychiatrists that his first-grade teacher in Australia used to make him crouch in a wicker basket when he misbehaved. His classmates filed past and taunted him, calling him Moses.

  128

  In the second half of the twentieth century psychiatrists began to notice an increasing number of tourists in Jerusalem suffering from acute psychotic decompensation: delusions and other episodes induced by proximity to the holy places of Jerusalem.

  Because of the high incidence of the cases—at least a hundred a year—they were channeled to one central facility, the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center.

  The patients who suffer from the syndrome—some believing they are Jesus, some Mary, some Moses, some Paul—can be found wandering in the streets of the Old City in clothing adapted from towels and hotel bedsheets, wearing crowns of woven thorns on their heads.

  Often the syndrome disappears as soon as they leave the city.

  127

  The Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center was built on the site of Deir Yassin. The village—a series of arches and gateways and narrow stone streets built with local limestone and lined with low palm trees—lay on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

  In early 1948 the residents of the village signed a nonaggression pact with the neighboring Jewish village of Giv’at Shaul, but in April rogue elements of the Jewish militia broke the peace and over one hundred Palestinian men, women and children were murdered.

  The event helped to set off the Nakba. Fears of another massacre prompted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes, never to return.

  On a wall of the village is a slogan in Danish scratched on a rock with a nail. It reads: True masonry is not held together by mortar, but by time.

  126

  Albert Einstein wrote to the American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel—known also as the Stern Gang—to say that, after the massacre in Deir Yassin, he would no longer be willing to assist them with aid or help raise money for their cause.

  125

  Over the years the Saladin pulpit had been photographed and sketched and filmed, but had never been intricately mapped. There were no blueprints. No working drawings. No craftsmen could be found who knew the full secrets to the patterns.

  A call from the Hashemite royal family in Saudi Arabia went out to teams of architects, mathematicians, computer experts, calligraphers, biomorphic designers and even theologians, but nobody, even with the aid of advanced computers, was able to decode the secret of the wooden pulpit.

  The craft skills, too, had been lost for centuries. Most craftsmen had, over the years, begun using nails or screws or glue and the joinery skills had all but disappeared.

  After three rounds of global searches, the job of designing the new minbar, and putting together a team of the world’s best craftsmen, was given to a candidate nobody had ever heard of before—a Bedouin civil engineer, Minwer al-Meheid.

  He had discovered that the secret to the structure was that the thousands of parts were not hung on a framework at all, but were harmoniously integrated.

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  The raw wood took years to source—the perfect grove of walnut trees was finally found by a Turkish joiner who led the designers to a remote forest on the border of Iran and Iraq. The walnut trees were chopped down in the middle of winter, but the lumbermen had to wait four months for the roads to unfreeze so the trunks could be hauled out.

  The wood was tough, hard, beautiful, with a fine grain and a subtle shade. The trees were tall enough to yield long panels and were not given to splitting.

  In a warehouse in Amman the craftsmen came together—Indonesians, Turks, Egyptians, Jordanians and Palestinians.

  Following al-Meheid’s design, they began to cut and piece together the sixteen thousand pieces of wood. The first panel took them two and a half months. The remainder took several years.

  When they were finished, art critics from London, Amman, New York, Paris, Baghdad, all said that they had somehow, miraculously, given new life to that which had disappeared.

  It had taken, in all, thirty-seven years for the minbar of Saladin to be reconstructed.

  123

  Philip Glass’s experimental opera Einstein on the Beach exists without a traditional plot. The libretto uses short bursts of poetry, song, rhythm, solfège syllables, and instances of numerical repetition. In performance, the four acts take five hours or more.

  The piece—intended to draw out what Glass thought of as a discovered Einstein, perhaps even a more truthful one, from the apparent plotlessness—is kept together by its knee plays, or intermezzos, stretching between the acts.

  The knee plays combine a chant-like choral pattern with a pulsing human narration. The effect is a sort of serenity surrounded by the fee
ling of being constantly disturbed.

  122

  From the age of eleven Rami knew the difference between a Panther and a Tiger. He could distinguish between the Obersturmbannführer and the Reichsführer SS. He learned the specifications of the Messerschmitt BF 109. He knew the engine sizes of all the Stuka planes. Sneaking up behind him were Eichmann, Goebbels, Koch, Himmler. Anger swelled in him.

  He did everything he could to nourish the rage. He studied all the books he could find on the Holocaust, combed through them late at night. Raul Hilberg. Israel Gutman. Chil Rajchman. He knew by heart all the names of the camps. Buchenwald. Flossenbürg. Belzec. Herzogenbusch. Mauthausen. Treblinka. He could rattle off the exact dimensions of the camps at Auschwitz.

  Every fact, every figure, haunted him. The uprising at Sobibor. Kristallnacht. Lidice. He studied the backs of products in the supermarket to make sure they weren’t German. He had nightmares about being turned into soap. He even abhorred the sound of the accent, found himself attributing it to teachers he disliked.

  The very thought of visiting Germany brought a fierce pour of cold along the length of his spine.

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  The trains rattled through them. Berlin. Cologne. Munich. Hanover. Frankfurt. Leipzig. Interview after interview. Town hall gatherings. Meetings with philanthropists. They were whisked around from place to place. By the end of the days they were exhausted. It stunned Rami to be there. He tried to explain it to journalists: that he had grown up a child of the Holocaust and had vowed never to visit. He had been sure it would unhinge him. The thought of traveling near the death camps made him bristle. A train station. A loudspeaker announcement. A man in uniform. A belted overcoat. A trolley car. A pair of hands clasped behind a back. A woman hurrying along the street. Anything at all. They were met at the arrival gate by a small group of professors and activists. Rami felt the fear skipping along the walls of his throat. His hands were clammy. He couldn’t shake it. The trunk of a Mercedes was lifted. The silver badge shone in the fluorescent light. It appeared like an ironic peace symbol. He eased his way into the back seat. On the drive into the city he stayed silent, allowed Bassam to do all the talking. Out the window, the high glass buildings, the clean architectural lines. The hotel was what he had anticipated—the high columns, the brickwork, the fountain, the grand entrance—but the employees were cheery, the light bright. Somehow he had expected Germany to be darker, lower, more insidious. He took the elevator to his room, locked the door, called Nurit on the phone. She chided him. She had been to Germany many times: there was nothing to worry about. Relax. Enjoy yourself. Call me every day. He stepped into the shower. Even that, even here: the shower. He paused and looked at himself in the mirror. His bright pale skin, his hair newly cut. He shaved carefully, put on a fresh shirt, phoned Bassam’s room. They went downstairs together. The restaurant was a mirrorhouse of chandeliers. A table of ten people, at least two of them Jewish, he thought. He knew that Bassam would likely be doing the same mathematics, listening for the Muslim names, looking for the Arab faces. The hosts outlined the trip: the talks they would do, the interviews, the meetings. There was extraordinary interest among the German people, they said. An Israeli and a Palestinian traveling together. More than that. An Israeli, against the Occupation. A Palestinian, studying the Holocaust. How to hold these things together. How to waken the sleep in the audience. The silence was there to be undermined. They were sure that people were ready to listen. Trust us, they said. The restaurant filled. Wine was opened. Bassam stepped outside to smoke. Rami told the hosts about his Hungarian father. He observed every Memorial Day, he said, but he had grown over the years to watch for the manipulation of those times, the nostalgia, the industry of it. The grief. The fear. The way the past now shaped the present. To be powerless against it. Rami poured another glass of wine. Topics swirled, contradicted, returned. The flights over Auschwitz. The delegations at Bergen-Belsen. What it meant to remember, as opposed to never forgetting. The restaurant felt kaleidoscopic: so many plates spinning. He was surprised when he slept well that night. He walked out into the morning and followed a streetsweeper who sounded as if he was the first man ever to whistle. The light was raw and yellow. He walked by the Main river. The height of the skyline surprised him. It was a country, he thought, that was pushing itself upwards. In the late morning they had the first of their meetings, at a law firm in Innenstadt. A silence settled over the room when their stories were finished. A journalist waited for them in a restaurant on the Goethestrasse. She had a shine to her eyes, fierce and tender. She layered her questions, dug at acute angles. She wanted to know what Bassam thought of the Arab response during World War Two? What did Rami have to say of the Second Intifada? Did they think they were normalizing the conflict? Rami leaned forward. How does grief normalize a conflict? he asked. He could feel himself opening: a perplexing freedom. The interviews piled into one another. In the evening they addressed a crowd of two hundred. Rami could hear a rustle in the audience. A handkerchief being furtively passed along the front row. So many accents, so many languages. Hebrew, Arabic, English, German. He could feel his body loosen. They continued on trains across the country. The stations were neon-lit. Music was piped along the platforms. No flags flew. The carriages were comfortable. They snoozed on one another’s shoulders. In the evenings the halls were full. Rami spoke about being a graduate of Auschwitz. The listeners sat up. He could see something travel across their eyes. He might have been a thorn, a reminder, he knew, but afterwards they came up to talk to him, shook his hand, thanked him for coming. He kept looking for a crack in the veneer: a curt dismissal, a misplaced word. None came. They took a plane to Berlin, went to the last remnants of the Wall. End the preoccupation, he whispered to Bassam. They laughed quietly. At the Shalom Rollberg center, Rami said to the audience that all walls were destined to fall, no matter what. He was not so naïve, though, to believe that more would not be built. It was a world of walls. Still, it was his job to insert a crack in the one most visible to him. They traveled south to Leipzig and walked through the gates at Buchenwald. It felt to Rami like an ancient ruin. The sign on the ironwork could only be read from the inside. Jedem das Seine. They walked back out together. To Each His Own. In interviews they tried to defer to one another. It became, at times, like a comedy routine. You first. No you first. They were Assi and Guri, Abbott and Costello. Once, at the end of an interview, Bassam touched Rami’s elbow, smiled and said: Haven’t the Jews suffered enough? Their own private joke. The journalist was mystified. Rami pulled up an Israeli TV clip on his phone and showed her a video from the Hahamishia Hakamerit comedy show. For a long time the clip had been Rami and Bassam’s way to blow off steam. They knew many of the words off by heart. On your marks. Get set! It’s about the bambino in Lane Six. Come on, finish the job. The journalist was stone-faced at first, but at the end of the video she allowed herself a small embarrassed chuckle. Rami played it again on the train towards Hanover. Wolfgang, he laughed, get your head off my shoulder, I’ve suffered enough.

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  Bassam received a note from a professor of theology in Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich: It is in your image that I would like to enter into the remainder of these days given to me.

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  SCENE: A running track in Stuttgart, Germany. 1995 World Championships. A German SPORTS OFFICIAL is about to pull the starting gun trigger at the 100-meter hurdle race.

  SPORTS OFFICIAL

  On your marks. Get set!

  Lined up at the blocks are several tall, well-built sprinters from all over the world, along with a short skinny ISRAELI ATHLETE. Just as the race is about to begin two APPARATCHIKS make their way across the track, pushing aside the hurdles to get to the SPORTS OFFICIAL.

  APPARATCHIK ONE/TWO

  Excuse me, excuse me, just a moment please! Hello and good evening. We are from the Israeli delegation and we wanted to ask for a favor. Look,
I’ll be honest with you, it’s about the bambino in Lane Six. The little one. He is, how do you say it? not very fast. Slow even. Very. But very talented. Very. And we wanted to ask you a little favor. Nothing big. Just to give him five or six meters’ head start.

  The confused Sports Official turns around to look for help and calls on his friend Wolfgang, but nobody replies.

  APPARATCHIK ONE

  Come on, what do you say? Only six meters! Anyway he will come last! We just want to lessen the humiliation! You know, it’s not nice, his mother is in the stadium.

  The Israeli Athlete gestures from the starting line, putting his fingers to his lips to quiet them.

  APPARATCHIK ONE

  Look over there, his mother. Very brave woman.

  The German Sports Official guardedly waves the starting gun in the direction the Apparatchik was pointing. The athlete’s mother is nowhere to be seen.

  APPARATCHIK ONE

  After all she’s been through—she came back here to see her son running! It breaks the heart!!

  SPORTS OFFICIAL

  Wolfgang?

  APPARATCHIK ONE/TWO

  Look at them, they are all on steroids. Only him with the chicken legs, like popsicle sticks. What are we asking from you? Just a little help to—to—lessen the historic injustice. What do you say? Eight meters?