Before Isaac could offer a word of comfort, before he could even return the ball, Ezekiel bolted out of the courtyard, howling, “Who’s going to watch me dribble now?”
Isaac watched him go. Ah, Rebbe, Isaac thought, pressing the ball to his stomach. I will be lonely for you forever.
When he returned to the courtyard, the young man with the long sideburns was stealing glances at him while writing in his pad. Isaac had seen him in the courtyard before, but they’d never spoken. Thrusting his pen into a pocket, the young man now strode over with determination. “That’s quite a story, Isaac,” he said, pronouncing his name as if they were old friends. He wiped his pinkish forehead with his plaid arm sleeve. “Here’s this star basketball player—Ezekiel Woods, a convert—thousands of fans, and he needs the rebbe to watch him. Amazing! I’d like to write a feature article about that cool kabbalist, what’s his name? Oh, right, Rebbe Yehudah. May he rest in peace,” he hastily added, catching a look on Isaac’s face. “My name’s Yossi Ben Ami,” he said, sticking out his hand.
“So you’re a reporter.” Isaac dully returned the handshake. “Don’t bother with the story. They might ban visits to rebbes along with taking steroids.”
Yossi threw his head back and let out a yip-yip of laughter. “Okay, forget that story.” He fanned himself with the notepad. “Really, I’d like to write about this whole courtyard, about you, Rebbe Yehudah, all the people here. And what about the kabbalist’s wife, that beautiful old lady with all that light pouring out of her eyes?”
Isaac studied the olive tree, for a moment getting lost in its complicated whorls. Would the rebbe have wanted an article about him, written at best in an amused, ironical tone? Those cute little religious folk and their anachronisms?
“Look, I’m dati, a religious guy just like you,” Yossi said. “Except for maybe the black hat. Hey, aren’t you tired of articles that make the black hatters look like throwbacks and jerks? Here’s a chance to hear something positive about the haredi.” He moved in closer. A lock of sandy-brown hair fell onto his forehead. “Open your eyes, things are really bad between the secular and religious. Our new man in office is no friend to the haredi.” Isaac stared at the back of his hands. An idea was winging its way through his brain. Just that morning, Shaindel Bracha had cornered him in the rebbe’s study, asking him what he intended to do about the pomegranate. Isaac had foolishly revealed that the rebbe’s last words—for Isaac to follow the pomegranate. Well, whatever he could do, he had already done. But he took another look at this Yossi fellow, at his sideburns, plaid shirt, and knitted yarmulka ringed with purple, yellow, and green flowers. “You work for which papers?” he asked skeptically.
“Mostly Ma’ariv and Ha’aretz. I freelance.” Yossi pushed some hair off his forehead. “That’s my mission—to tell the story of the religious, the Sephardi, Russians, Ethiopians—all the people who the left-niks, highbrow-niks consider interlopers. Yossi Ben Ami’s the name,” he reminded Isaac. A startled look played out on the reporter’s face. “What, you don’t read these papers?”
“Sorry, not regularly.” Isaac motioned with his hand to the dirt area behind the cottage. “Come here. I have a story for you.” Yossi followed him, tail practically wagging. Isaac tersely relayed the events surrounding the discovery of the pomegranate and how Shani had confiscated it, supposedly to determine its age. “Somehow, I doubt that. How long should it have taken? Who knows, the police officer might even feel it’s his duty to destroy it,” he ended, wiping a fleck of moisture from his eye. Yossi followed the story’s thread, head cocked, eyes growing bigger by degrees.
“You have any documents? A written statement from the archeologist?”
“Yes.” Isaac smiled grimly. The commander had overlooked that vital slip of paper.
Yossi tapped his pen against the cleft of his chin. “This story will make me as a reporter. All hell’s going to break loose, what with the recent elections, and you just know for all the new prime minister’s promises, he’ll trade away the Temple Mount like it’s a piece of swampland.” He cocked a pistol finger at Isaac. “Can I see that statement from the archeologist?”
“I’ll mail it to you.” After they exchanged contact information, Isaac added, “I’d have to see the article before you send it out. Please, nothing too radical. I don’t want to start any Temple Mount takeovers. No provoking the Waqf, please. I just want better supervision up there, so our history doesn’t get destroyed.”
“No one shows a story before it goes out!” The reporter’s eyes creased with amusement. “It goes against journalistic standards. But I can show you every quote, every word that comes out of your mouth.” He lay a freckled hand over his shirt pocket and lifted the other hand, jury-oath style.
“Why did you come to the courtyard?” Isaac asked abruptly. “To get a story?”
The young man blushed and fingered a sideburn. “Actually, I can’t make up my mind about a girl. Driving me nuts. She’s good-looking, smart”—he ticked off her attributes—“has a great job—”
“Do you want her?” Isaac cut in.
The reporter looked up from his splayed fingers. “No,” he uttered. He stared at Isaac. “No, I don’t,” he said more firmly. “I don’t want her.” He smiled, a look of relief on his face, and solemnly shook Isaac’s hand. “Thanks, thanks so much. You just helped me realize what’s inside here.” He patted his gut.
Well, that was easy, Isaac thought after the reporter had left. If only he could be so incisive for himself. He became conscious of a prickly feeling behind his ear and took out a tube of hydrocortisone (extra strength) and discreetly patted it on. Well, he had contacted the press. That was something, he thought. The rebbe could have no complaints against him from the next world. Just then he heard a vroom-vroom sound somewhere on Ninveh Street. Thrusting the tube into his pocket, he hurried to the gate, and with clumsy fingers, his chest hammering, unlatched it. His eyes trained up and down the street sweeping every corner. No one there except for the dishwasher from the restaurant who was drinking dreamily from a thermos. Isaac absently scratched his elbow and stared out like a person who enters one room to retrieve something, but once there, forgets what brought him in the first place. Sighing, he walked back, opened the iron gate, and let it shut behind him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The days of spring stretched out and lengthened, and a parched pale yellow dust settled on all living things. Mustafa was walking down the Magrabeh ramp when he saw the motorcycle girl, Miss Tamar, at the water fountain not far from the Jew wall. These days, it seemed he spotted her often: parking her bike, pushing through the turnstiles, praying at the wall as if it were the best spot on earth, her head swaying from side to side. She looked at him now and nodded, an I-know-you nod. Other Jews stepped back when they saw him, but she—kind girl—she began walking toward him.
Mustafa washed his hands with the dented metal cup attached to the stone fountain so that he shouldn’t smell. She now stood before him—sweet as date honey, with her pretty hair like a sunset. Helwa. Pretty. Like the face of Mother Maryam, he thought, and a sense of well-being filled and surrounded him.
“Mustafa,” she said, not quite smiling, but not angry, either. “How are you? How is work?”
Her question made him stop and think. No one had ever asked him such a question before—how is work, how is your day—and it pleased him so much he could not stop smiling. Before he could answer, she said, “I wonder what it’s like to pray up there,” with a wistful glance that climbed higher than the Jew wall, toward the cypress trees and beyond.
“Ah, Miss Tamar, no Jew can go up there,” he said, happy to show off his knowledge of the Torah. He pointed to the sign right next to the Gate of Magrabeh: “According to the Torah, it is forbidden for any person to enter the area of the Temple Mount due to its sacredness.”
“Yeah, I know, Mustafa, I know,” she said with a heavy-hearted sigh. “But maybe one day—who knows?—it will be permitted.”
; “Well, Miss Tamar”—he shrugged his good shoulder—“even if the rabbis allowed it, you still couldn’t pray up there.” He had watched the Israeli police together with the Waqf make sure no Jew prayer book ever made its way onto the Noble Sanctuary, or that no Jew or Christian said a single word to their God. To tour, yes, but never to pray. If they did, the Israeli police arrested them and took their prayer book, too. Maybe it was the only time the Waqf and the Israeli police worked together. “The only place you could pray is in a mosque and to Allah.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” she said flatly. “So, tell me. How do you feel up there?”
Feel? He rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “It’s hot up there,” he said. And only getting hotter. The month of June had just begun. It would be at least four months till rain fell.
“I mean,” she made an impatient, clicking noise with her tongue, “aren’t you nervous to be surrounded by all that holiness? I’d be too afraid to breathe or think.”
“Miss Tamar,” he slowly replied, “the only thing I fear is that I’ll step on something and break it.” She stared at him, her hair the color of fire falling into her eyes. “I find things,” he blurted. “I found a pomegranate,” and before he knew it, he told her how he and Rabbi Isaac had gone to the archeologist—“he had a fancy chair that made circles”—and how the rabbi almost fainted when the professor said how old the pomegranate was, and how the two men almost got into a fight over who would keep it. She listened with a kind of listening not of this world. He should have stopped talking right there about his private treasures that he had no wish to share. But no. He wanted her to keep listening in that good, serious way, nodding her head like she did, looking at him straight into his eyes, and not at his neck. He went on, “I’m not giving up, Miss Tamar. I’m still looking for more treasures to save,” and she gaped at him.
“It’s dangerous! You shouldn’t!”
Ya’allah. Why did he tell her? He knocked his head: Showoff. Fool. Moak. All to get a look and a nod, a little attention from this Jewish girl.
“It is very dangerous,” she repeated, and he was moved that her first words were about him and not the pomegranate. “Your people won’t like it, and I bet our government won’t, either.” But then she asked, “Can I see the pomegranate?”
“Ask Rabbi Isaac,” he said, suddenly confused. “I gave it to him.”
“Isaac,” she repeated, nodding a little. Then she cast her eyes down, as if sad or maybe angry. And he remembered how she had laughed with the woolly bearded man in her office. She probably didn’t care for the rabbi at all. Maybe it was all his, Mustafa’s, fault. He should have given her the plants right away, when they were fresh, not the next day when they got dried up and dead.
“Be nice to Rabbi Isaac,” he urged. “He is a good man.”
She looked startled. “With all my heart I know,” she said in a quiet voice.
Mustafa nodded as hard as his neck would allow. Because hadn’t the rabbi taught him how to look and find good things in the dirt? Still, he was sad about his neck. Why couldn’t the rabbi have tried something to fix it? he thought.
A group of girl soldiers walked past. They laughed and swung their arms, their sunglasses reflecting the Dome of the Rock. “I don’t know you well,” Tamar said, turning to him in a low voice. “But I want to warn you. Maybe you shouldn’t be doing this, taking things off the mountain.”
“Allah protects.” Then he saw her helwa face became less pretty. She didn’t like what he said.
“You still aren’t allowed to put yourself in danger,” she insisted.
He kneaded a joint in his neck. “Allah protects,” he sulked. He wanted her to smile on him like before, not look at him with the long, angry face.
She took a step closer. “Yes, God does protect you. Your soul he protects and preserves inside you, like a wrapped gift, and makes sure it doesn’t get damaged, especially when you need it most. But your body, your life—you can’t assume that kind of protection. Take care.”
A passing soldier frowned, then chortled at the sight of the two of them.
Mustafa’s eyes caught on a spark of white light, and he gazed, transfixed, at Miss Tamar’s arm. “Where did you get that?” He pointed at the bracelet that hugged her wrist, studded with stones as small as little pills. They flashed white fire, each stone separated by a dot of gold. She glanced at her wrist. “This? I got it for my college graduation. They’re opal stones.” She looked at him sideways, a smile slipping out of her eyes. “Do you want to get the bracelet for your wife?”
“No,” he said. “For my mother. Is it much money?”
Miss Tamar couldn’t tell him exactly how much it cost—maybe a thousand dollars, she said, which was like asking for the farthest cloud.
Later that night, he prowled around the small kitchen for a snack, though he had eaten a huge meal earlier. He tapped cautiously on the door of his flatmate, Ali. “Please, can I take a fruit to eat?”
The carpet seller muttered through the door, “Take what you need—except the cheese and milk.” For a moment Mustafa was surprised Ali was up so late and then remembered the carpet seller was studying to become a licensed tour guide, specializing in the holy sites in al-Quds. Now and then Mustafa would hear the carpet seller memorizing dates, names, ancient Arabic history late into the night, and the sounds would soothe Mustafa to sleep. But not this night.
Mustafa opened the refrigerator, and then shut the door. Nothing would satisfy him, he realized. His father used to say: “The soul wants not coffee and not a café, but company.” The coffee was just an excuse. Mustafa remembered sipping hot drinks with his father late at night, his father humming a tune sung by the famous singer, Umm Kulthum, the Star of the East—was it “The Lover’s Heart Softens” or maybe “The Ruins.” What did it matter. He loved sitting with his father, away from the others, just the two of them. Sometimes his father would reach and rub Mustafa’s neck, digging his hard thumb into the old knots. Mustafa would sit very still, so as not to lose any bit of this moment. One time his father said, “I wish I could have saved you, Mustafa.” The regret in his voice was hard for a son to hear. If only Mustafa had answered, “You save me every day with your kindness, Father,” but he’d said nothing. Always his good ideas came too late. On these lonely thoughts he lulled himself to sleep, wishing, as he did every night, that he could lie on his side. As always, the awkward position of his neck forced him to sleep flat on his back.
He got up half an hour early, the predawn air sharp as a knife against his skin as he walked through the souk. In the dark, the mosque and shrine and minarets and rounded arches appeared like the humps and shadows of strange animals. He carefully eased himself on the stone seat next to the fountain, washed quickly, dried himself, and hurried to the Gray Lady before all the worshippers arrived. He hadn’t entered the Al-Aqsa mosque to worship for many years—only to clean the place. He prayed slapdash; he picked up what he could from books and watching others. But now he was alone in the gray vault of Al-Aqsa.
He spread his arms. There was no one left to talk to—only Allah. What should he say in this large room? It wasn’t yet time for the faqr prayer, yet he had washed himself and now was his chance. He began reading from the first chapter of the Koran—Al Fatiha, “Praise be to Allah, sustainer of the worlds,” putting on a serene yet yearning expression, just like he had seen others do. Ah, he was a monkey, copying faces. He shut the Koran. Not a bit of serenity, no yearning here. In fact, why had he come? Oh, what should he say to Allah?
He gave his throat a good clearing. “Allah, you see, I—” And he left off speaking. He tried again. “Allah, I trust you like I trust … like I trust …” he trailed off. He began again: “You are my only real friend, Allah, if I didn’t have you I would surely die. Why should I be cast out from all? Oh, forget it, Allah, I am so shy right now—” He couldn’t continue, the words got jammed up in him. On a window ledge he picked up a laminated card: the ninety-nine names of Allah
. He began chanting: The Irresistible, the Comforter, the One Without a Partner (here he saw a special kinship), the Gentle, the Subtle One, the Reckoner, the Finder, the—He stopped. The Finder.
“Allah, Allah, Allah,” he spoke in a burst, his eyes shut, “please, find me money to buy my mother gold jewelry, the real thing. Allah, don’t be insulted, my heart loves you, but I also want my oma to say a good word to me, too, and let me back to the village. Put it into your servant’s feeble brain from where all this cash will come. From your trying-to-be-loyal-and-good custodian, Mustafa, ameen, ameen.” His eyes sprang open and he added, “I know you can do all miracles and this wouldn’t be so great for you, but for me it would be great.” He paused. “Ameen.”
He prostrated himself on the carpet, his head heavy and important with his prayers. How comfortable this kneeling position was! Here, his face and nose didn’t poke into the floor but turned naturally to the side. His crooked head that bothered the other worshippers was meant for praying, he decided.
The cry “Prayer is better than sleep” sliced the dawn air, and as the heavy-lidded worshippers began to arrive, Mustafa unfolded his body, got stiffly to his feet and exited the mosque. He went to his hiding place and surveyed all the treasures he had collected these past few weeks: a base of a jug; a long, thin marble stick broken at the end; a piece of clay that looked like a bird. Each was a present from Allah. A gift, yes. He struck his forehead. By the hand of Allah, look what was here! These objects had to be worth some money! Allah was showing him how to get back to his village and his mother. “Praise be to the Finder of Lost Objects,” he uttered.
After work, he browsed through the souk and picked up green wheat and other items for a soup. He passed a store: Hala’s Jewelry Shop. An old woman in a white jalabeeya held out her arms from under an awning, strands of gold chains streaming from her spindly gray fingers.
While he was cooking the onion, chicken, and green wheat for the soup, his flatmate entered. Ali sniffed with pleasure, his thin nostrils dilating. “Salaam, Mustafa. What’s this nice thing cooking? Is that freka?”
In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist Page 14