He cleaned and cleaned, and his plans grew bigger. Next on the list: Go to a doctor in America for his neck. Forget the rabbi and his do-nothing help. Why should he rely only on the Jews’ secret powers? Instead, he would search and search until he found a good doctor. And if the doctor said there was no hope, no operation that would ever fix him, then he would have to find help in another way, a man with special powers, he knew such persons existed. No more giving up after just one try. If he gained even four centimeters it would be worth it. He pictured his mother looking at him and seeing a new man. She would open her arms and say, “Finally you came home, Mustafa.” Then she’d say, “You look different. What is it? How handsome you look!”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” he’d reply. “My neck got straighter, that’s all.” She would take his hand and suggest a stroll down the main streets, the two of them. He would hold her, because now she was frailer, and help her sidestep a grouchy goat or two. He would gaze at the men who sat in their front yards playing a card game of shadde or backgammon, and they would make a gesture for him to join them. Mustafa stood still in front of a window, his finger on the nozzle of a spray bottle, smiling and thinking how it all would turn out.
A bulbul bird landed on a tree, making happy loud sounds, as if it lent blessing to his plans. Just beyond the tree, he heard a tock, tock sound, and his eyes fell on a long cane and Sheikh Tawil coming around the bend. He glanced up. His boss was frowning at him; his squarish head swiveled from side to side.
Mustafa grabbed a cloth and wiped down the window. He staggered over to the next window, as if to say: See how fast I am? I am the best worker on the Noble Sanctuary! He held up the bottle and sprayed the window in generous spurts, but the sheikh had already passed by, intent on some other task, Mustafa imagined.
Not long after the midday call to the dhuhr prayers, Mustafa was drinking a bottle of carob punch under a tree when a loud sound like a gun shot shook the Haram air. Mustafa set down his bottle and looked around, terrified. A bomb? He clambered to his feet. Strings of smoke vaulted up from the Al-Aqsa mosque. Mustafa grabbed his tools. Who had done this evil thing? He scurried toward the Gray Lady mosque, his legs teetering and tripping, joined by a rabble of workers, sheikhs, tourists, and policemen from every corner of the Haram. Shouting and yells. A stampede of feet. The imams hurrying in tight knots, a skinny Waqf official shouting, “The occupiers want to blow up the Haram!”
“Don’t worry,” shouted another, a fist raised. “Allah is stronger than any infidel!”
When he got to the mosque, a scared young boy stood to the side holding a smoking stick: a firecracker. One of the elders and wise men, an angry-eyed sheikh, shouted, “Foolish boy, what have you done!” It became revealed that it was his own son, and the sheikh pulled down the boy’s pants and spanked him right there. The crowd nodded with approval. Mustafa’s buttocks clenched, though, with every slap the boy got.
Toward the end of his shift, he stuffed the clay bird deep into his rucksack and prepared to leave the Noble Sanctuary through the Cotton Merchant’s Gate. As he neared the beautiful arched gate with its black-and-white- and red-checkered stones, a long line of workers stretched out. Up ahead, a long table blocked the gate, and policemen milled around. A Druze policeman was patting down the thick arms and legs of a construction worker. “Can you believe this?” the heavyset worker groaned, his voice rising with grievance. “We’re getting checked! Like any old tourist or Jew!”
Mustafa’s feet tensed in their worn-out shoes. They were checking the workers, his brothers? He pondered this strange deed. Why would they do that? Then he remembered: the firecracker. Now everyone was frightened about bombs on the Haram. And suddenly frightened about people stealing things and who knew what else. He thought: They’ll check me. They’ll find the clay bird. Laa! He held his rucksack close to his chest and stomach, his heart pounding against the bag. They’d catch him and bring him to Sheikh Tawil. “Why are you taking this off the mountain?” the sheikh would accuse him. “Do you want to sell it?”
“Didn’t you say it’s garbage?” Mustafa would protest.
The sheikh would look at him with his sleepy almond eyes and reply, “If you sell it to the Israelis, that’s theft. Worse than that, you are delivering a lie into the hand of the infidels.” And here, Mustafa would have no words to answer. The sheikh could take his job away, punish him, or even cut off his hand for stealing, just like it said in the Koran. But no, cutting off the hand wasn’t allowed in this sabra country, and his fear eased a little. Still, maybe—Mustafa clutched the rucksack—he could slip by at another gate.
He cast his eyes around the Haram and tried to exit through the Gate of Magrabeh. It was no good over there, either. All the workers grumbled angrily to the police, “Why are you making an inspection?” and “This is not done on the Haram! Not for us, not for Muslims!”
Mustafa hefted his rucksack onto his good shoulder and resolutely set off for the north side. As the sun beat down on his kaffiyeh, bleaching out the stains, he walked the entire expanse, passing the elegant Dome of the Chain; the El Kas Fountain, where two old men sat washing their feet; the Golden Lady shrine, and the Dome of Suleiman. He panted from the effort and the heat until he reached the northern wall. But he had crossed a desert for nothing.
No, he would never pass their inspection, not here, there, or at any of the gates. The silly boy with the firecracker had ruined his plans. He mopped his dripping face with his kaffiyeh. Ya’allah. What luck. Throw a lucky man into the sea, and he rises with a fish in his mouth. Throw an unlucky man a pot of gold, and it will break his skull. It was his fate. He returned to his hiding place and tucked the clay dove back into its earthen hiding place. He rubbed his neck, massaging a sore muscle. Lucky, unlucky, what did it matter? Tomorrow he was sure it would be better. After all, everyone knew luck came from Allah.
CHAPTER TWENTY
At the corner grocery, Isaac placed three canteens on the counter: a khaki-colored army issue canteen, an orange plastic canteen, and one with a denim blue thermal cover.
“Which do you recommend?” he asked the clerk, a Yemenite Jew in his fifties, with deep-set eyes the color of plums. Isaac explained that he was going on an outing with a lady. A hike up north, near Safed. Tomorrow. He didn’t mention the horseback riding.
“A date, then?” said the clerk, his delicate brows yanking upward as if pulled by strings.
Isaac assented.
The clerk flung aside the cheap plastic canteen. “Not that one. That’s for babies.”
Isaac’s hand hovered between the blue thermal and the army. He couldn’t decide. Nor could he figure out why he had agreed to this frivolous outing. He never intended to look at Tamar that way, how a man looks at a woman. He had trained himself not to look at any of the courtyard women. Verboten. Yet the rebbetzin’s words echoed powerfully inside him: “What about Tamar?” And then Tamar’s own words, that time she got angry at him: “Maybe, Isaac, you’re talking about you! Not me.” From that moment, she was no longer a segulah single, some confused, pretty young thing, but a real woman.
His hand closed in on the blue thermal canteen. “Anything else I should bring?”
The Yemenite outfitted him with a visor cap, candy bars, and a tiny metal can opener. Isaac gathered up his purchases and the clerk called a blessing after him: “May you not stumble or fall!”
Isaac nodded his amen. Nice to be on the receiving end of blessings.
Halfway down the street he turned back to buy the juice boxes Mazal was always bringing to the courtyard. A shadow flickered on the sidewalk in the midmorning sun, and he caught sight of a thick-bodied man wedging himself into a gold Subaru. Isaac’s eyes snapped open. That black hair, thick and stiff as a beaver’s pelt. Those cupid lips. It was the police commander, Shani. What was he doing here? It was nearly a month since they’d last spoken. The car was parked in front of a laundromat. As the Subaru pulled out, making an aggressive sharp turn, the handsome commander seemed to
be moving his head to the beat of a tune Isaac couldn’t hear.
Isaac stared past the green awning hanging over the laundromat. Why had Shani come here of all places? To the black-hat backwaters, to Isaac’s territory? What this meant he couldn’t say, only that it disturbed him. The commander’s appearance collided with other recent strange occurrences. For instance: those two men who had taken to hanging out in the courtyard, a pair who for some reason didn’t strike him as the supplicant type, no matter how loud and enthusiastic-sounding their prayer. Why did they keep coming? Also, a few times he had heard a clicking noise as he was about to make another phone call. And still he had heard no response from that reporter. Isaac thought nothing of these things separately, but together, especially with the commander on his turf, they all lodged uneasily in his brain.
After lunch, a zaftig bewigged woman in the courtyard said something that sent all these troubling thoughts flying from his mind. The woman confided she was having fantasies about yeshiva students her husband brought home on Shabbos.
Standing near the open kitchen window, he caught a whiff of fried onions. “What kind of fantasties?” Isaac said, distracted, then immediately fell silent. He really didn’t want to know.
Her cheeks flaming, she muttered, “I don’t like to say it out loud. And here, most of these boys twenty, thirty years younger than me.”
He glanced at the plump lady standing there so tremulously, and he scratched roughly at his eczematic elbow. “A person must train his mind and heart to stand guard over his body,” he said firmly. “This applies to women, too. ‘You shall be holy’,” he quoted from Leviticus. “Try lighting a candle in your room for a zaddik,” he advised. “Learn some Torah before you go to sleep.” He nodded. That’s how he managed, more or less.
The plump woman leaned against the cottage and looked at the ground in bewilderment and shame. Just then, Isaac heard a tap-tap sound. It was the rebbetzin knocking at the open kitchen window. Shaindel Bracha had heard everything! He was mortified. The rebbetzin beckoned him inside with a quick movement of her turbaned head, and, after mumbling an apology to the lady, Isaac took off.
The rebbetzin was stirring about in the kitchen while fat ribbons of noodles boiled on the stove next to a pot of gefilte fish. He could smell a kugel in the oven—potato? broccoli?—and from the look of things, there was another kugel in the making. Shaindel Bracha was breaking eggs, one by one, into a plastic container and checking them for blood spots before plopping them into a larger mixing bowl.
“Yes, Rebbetzin?”
She rubbed her turbaned head with the heel of her wrist and wiped her hands against her apron—a new one, swirling with primary colors. “Give the woman this number.” She slid a scrap of paper across the counter. “A Reb Lazer Kaminsky. The lady and her husband should make an appointment with him.”
He stared down at the paper. “Who is he?”
She turned off the flame under the noodles. “A counselor in marital intimacy—something like that.” Now she was stirring the eggs, beating them until frothy. “Could you get me the cinnamon?”
A sex therapist. “Gottenyu!” he expostulated, his ears burning. “They’ll never go.” He opened a cabinet and plucked out a dusty cylindrical container.
Shaindel Bracha shut her eyes and averted her face as she poured the pot of steaming noodles into a colander. “Believe me, he’ll know how to talk to this couple. A lot of couples—even from Meah Shearrim—consult with this man.” Her cheeks and forehead were flushed from the steam. “Why shouldn’t this couple?”
Feh! She made it sound like going to an accountant. “It’s a private matter,” he insisted. “Between husband and wife …” he trailed off as he plunked down the cinnamon before her.
She rolled her eyes ever so slightly. “If your teeth are crooked, you go see a dentist. Now hurry, it’s urgent,” she said. She turned on the cold water faucet and let the water run over the noodles. “That lady outside is very, very angry. Her husband has been disappointing her for who knows how many decades. Give her the number. That’s what the rebbe always did in these situations.”
As if in a fog, he watched her pour oil into the egg mixture, followed by honey, a heavy shake of cinnamon and a gentle shake of salt. She glanced up as she squeezed out a splash of lemon juice. “Nu? Well?” she said. “She’s waiting.”
“It’s unseemly,” he protested. The whole topic filled him with disquiet.
“Ah, yes, better a woman should do it,” she conceded, and snatched the paper back. “Pour the noodles in,” she called over her shoulder. “And the cut-up apples.” Through the kitchen window, he watched her nimbly darting between various people in the courtyard, sidestepping Gilgul, a baby carriage, and a garbage can as she made her way to the woman. A few loose apple cubes lay scattered on the kitchen table and he ate them anxiously. “But the rebbe,” he mumbled out loud, lifting a feeble hand. He then remembered many sayings that the rebbe had loosely culled from the sages: “The women in Egypt brought about the redemption because they flirted with and desired their husbands.” Or: “When husbands and wives have a strong attraction, their children will be wise and handsome.” Or: “A man should have relations with his wife as if a spirit of the devil had entered him—and may they both have the pleasure of their lives.” Come to think of it, the rebbe and rebbetzin must have had a great time together, he mused with a touch of wistfulness. Often, late at night, he had heard muffled sounds of laughter coming from their bedroom.
Through the kitchen window, he saw the zaftig lady opening the gate. She seemed to be smiling at the rebbetzin. And he thought: Why couldn’t I do that? He cautiously poured the noodles into the egg mixture, and they slithered out in one whoosh. He tossed the cubed apples into the stew of noodles and eggs and inserted the whole mess into a greased dish. A fan on the counter gave off gusts of relief in the hot, small kitchen.
Later, when Shaindel Bracha peeked into the oven to see how the noodle kugel was faring, he said, “I have a favor to ask,” and watched as she grazed the kugel’s outer skin with her finger. She was frowning. “Oven’s broken again?” he observed.
“It went kaput. It’ll get it working soon, I’m sure,” she said, bending on a knee and squinting at the oven’s dark insides. “If not, we’ll call a repairman.” She pulled on the oven’s crotchety knobs and gave a sharp whack at the side. Some internal clicking noise happened. “There!” She got to her feet.
“You and your miracle oven,” he said, smiling. “Now, what was my question? Oh, yes.” He coughed, trying to dispel an itch at the back of his throat. “Do you think you can manage alone for one day? I need to take time off. Day after tomorrow.”
“Oh?” She toyed with an amber brooch. “Where are you going?”
“Out with Tamar,” he said in a neutral voice. “Up north.”
“That’s nice,” she said, rinsing her hands at the sink. “Have fun.”
He tensed slightly in his chair, waiting for encouragement, tips and blessings, and when none came, he sat back.
She dried her hands on a checkered dish towel. “So tell me, Isaac, what’s doing with the pomegranate?” She looked over at him. “When is the story coming out?”
“Who knows?” He tossed an arm. “I keep calling and get no answers.” That Yossi was a bungler, just like Isaac had suspected.
“Oh.” She looked crestfallen as she straightened the towel on the oven’s handle. “Well, why not contact the Israel Museum authorities then? Something has to be done,” she said, sitting down on the wooden folding chair facing his.
These were the same words Rebbe Yehudah had said to him. Practically his last words. But Isaac hadn’t listened. Not really.
“I’m sorry, Rebbetzin. I suppose you could say I’ve been distracted.” He stared out the window at the same pair of men who had taken to hanging around the courtyard for no reason he could discern. Both wore large black hats and thin black ties as if in a cowboy Western. He shook his head at their ridiculous att
ire. Dressed all wrong for the part. And they did seem to be playing a part, with their overly earnest prayer. “Have you seen any strange doings at the courtyard, people sniffing around, anything out of the ordinary?”
“Not that I’ve noticed,” Shaindel Bracha said. “Why do you ask?” She opened the oven and gently laid the noodle kugel inside.
His eyes followed the men outside. They were perspiring profusely, constantly adjusting their oversize hats, as if unaccustomed to their weight. Neither had yet to speak to him, so what were they doing here? Were they plants? Like his father used to say, “If you have nothing to do here, go do nothing someplace else.” Up to no good, he concluded, though he didn’t want to alarm the rebbetzin. “No reason,” he said out loud.
Then he gathered up the loose dishes and ingredients.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mustafa stood outside Jaffa Gate. A mild westerly wind blew in from the wadi jehinun, and he lifted his arms slightly, to catch the breeze. A date tree stuck out its dried-out fronds as if begging for alms. What a terrible day it had been. Lines and lines at the Haram.
A few Israelis waited at the bus shelter, holding fast to their huge shopping bags as if they were young children who might run off. Shopping and shopping, for this world and the next. The men and women stared at him with eyes of fear and curiosity. His gaze brushed past them and he saw a young woman with red hair, in braids. Ah, yes. Miss Tamar. She wore a long, colorful skirt almost touching the ground.
In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist Page 17