In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist

by Ruchama King Feuerman

  “Hide schmide,” she said softly. “ ‘What is hidden is blessed,’ ” she quoted from the Talmud. Then she tossed out, “Do you think people would have come to a courtyard with a woman at the head?”

  Aha. Of course. A female rebbe? In Jerusalem? People wouldn’t accept it. “I understand why you hid yourself from the others,” he said in a hurt voice. “But why did you hide yourself from me?”

  She tucked a tendril of white hair under her turban. “You were the one person I did try to tell. Ah, Isaac.” She shook her head. “You wanted no help from me.”

  “What are you talk—” He broke off. He remembered how there in the kitchen she had told him she’d help him. He had practically laughed in her face. There were the times he had dismissed her as arrogant, or worse, crazy. He colored deeply. It was true. In the end, his own prejudices had gotten in his way of seeing clearly.

  “I was an idiot. What can I say?” He slumped in his chair. He had no words left. The thin red hand of a brass wall clock slashed the seconds away. “But now you should step to the front,” he said finally. “I’ll stand behind you. When people know who you really are, everyone will come flocking.” In this way he would make amends and the courtyard would have a rebbe.

  “You don’t understand.” She smiled wryly. “I’m not interested.”

  “Oh?” He straightened abruptly. “Why not?”

  “I like my privacy,” was all she would say.

  “You utterly confuse me.” He sat back, exhausted. “So what was your plan?” He drummed his fingers on the Formica table. “You would feed me the answers, unbeknownst to me, through your … eh … promptings?”

  She made a helpless movement with her hands.

  “But how long could that’ve lasted? What were you hoping—eventually I’d transform into a rebbe?”

  Her head bobbed up and down, a slight bobbing.

  He stood up so abruptly the chair fell backward. He righted the chair. He picked up a colander off the counter and set it down. “You shouldn’t have gone to all the trouble. I’ll never be more than an assistant.”

  She tsked at this. “Where’s your faith in yourself, Isaac?”

  Faith? He had gotten a bit of love, a bit of faith, from his mother, and less than nothing from his father. And now with the rebbe dead, he had lost his last bit of steam—an eight-cylinder car going on four cylinders. “What is faith anyway?” he said, as if he could live without it.

  “Isaac, you must believe in your goodness.” Her light brown eyes looked with a warmth into his own. “The good in you is there all along. It doesn’t go away.”

  He wrapped her words around him like a fine cloak. In the word rebbetzin was the word rebbe. She had been his rebbe and more, but he had been too blind to see. Anyone could have seen the signs. His skin, though, must have known all along. He’d hardly had an eczema attack in the past month. He’d had her close by, helping him, guiding him. As the sages wrote, the greatest charity was enabling a person to stand on his own feet, to the point where assistance was no longer necessary.

  The door bell rang. Shaindel Bracha excused herself. Isaac got to his feet, and bending over the kitchen sink, washed his face. He fumbled through the drawers, looking for a fresh hand towel. He heard Shaindel Bracha’s footsteps coming back. “Isaac, it’s the police.” He turned. What? Her face through his watery eyes showed a peculiar bright calm. She opened a drawer and handed him a dish towel.

  He held it against his cheeks and eyes, his heart rattling in the kettle of his chest

  “Go out, and I will pack some things for you,” she spoke in Yiddish. “We don’t have time to get your tefillin. I’ll lend you my husband’s.” She kneeled under the sink, sorting out plastic containers.

  He thrust aside the dish towel. “They’re probably just going to ask me a few questions. Why do you think they’re taking me anywhere?”

  Still kneeling, she made a shooing motion. “Hurry, they’re waiting.”

  Isaac walked to the front door. Itai Shani stood before him with his bountiful dyed black hair and cupid baby lips. He was shorter than Isaac recalled, yet handsome and distinct as he stood in the doorway. “Sorry to disturb you in the midst of your”—he glanced back mockingly at the courtyard—“workday, but you must come down to the Russian Compound.”

  “The Russian Compound? What’s wrong with here?”

  “It’s going to take longer than you think,” said the commander with a fixed expression.

  Isaac stared at the design on his blue cap. “You came down yourself to get me. Unusual for someone in your high position.”

  “Yes.” The police commander’s eyes blinked rapidly, as if coarse particles of dust had flown inside. “It is unusual, Rabbi,” he said, with ironic intonation on the last word.

  “I told you, I’m not a rabbi. So tell me: What’s my crime?” Isaac asked. “Why have your people been following me, listening to my conversations?”

  “You’ve endangered the State of Israel. You went against my explicit orders not to contact the press.” Shani jabbed an upright finger close to Isaac’s eye.

  They were now standing outside the cottage. “The press contacted me,” Isaac said, just as it dawned on him that Shani must have sent that bogus reporter his way.

  “And you opened your big mouth.”

  “I never would’ve done so if you had tested the pomegranate like you said you would. Frankly, I didn’t trust you ever would.”

  “Who are you to trust me or not trust me?” Commander Shani said, bringing his head so close, Isaac smelled the unhappy combination of coffee and falafel on his humid breath. “I’m protecting the security of the State of Israel. What are you doing?”

  Just then, Shaindel Bracha appeared outside and handed Isaac a bag. “There’s a kugel here, too, and other things.”

  The commander squinted at the rebbetzin. He stepped back a few feet, his thick arms crossed, granting them their moment or two.

  “Apparently they’re taking me in,” Isaac said quietly to the rebbetzin, “though I can’t see how they could detain me.” A sadness overwhelmed him even more than his fear.

  Shaindel Bracha looked at him with eyes of such gentleness and concern, it was painful for him to look back. Instead, he snuck a look up the street. He saw a figure in a long skirt swishing her way up Ninveh Road. Was it Tamar? Lovely, sweet Tamar. A current of feeling rushed through him. He strained to glimpse her. Where had all this yearning sprung from? Now he saw her unlatching the iron gate. It was a woman in a purple head scarf pushing a stroller into the courtyard. Not Tamar. He sagged with disappointment.

  “Let’s go, Mr. Markowitz,” he heard Commander Shani say brusquely.

  Gilgul was licking his paws and stopped to coolly regard the procession.

  “Nu …?” Commander Shani gave Isaac a short shove, and Isaac began to walk. He threw a look at the woman in the scarf in sad disbelief. How could it not be Tamar? Tamar meant a date tree in Hebrew. A person had to climb high to get its fruit. But he hadn’t even been willing to make a phone call. He still had her number in his suit pocket. In that instant he grasped the toll it had taken, not having a woman in his life. Once the rebbe had said—about a mere insect—“Maybe you should consider letting it live.” Hadn’t he let too much life slip away? He had the pomegranate and let it slip through his hands. He had the rebbetzin at his side all these weeks helping him, and he had been too much a fool to realize her worth. And Tamar—he felt for her, and still had been inclined to let it drift. He was devastated with loss.

  All he said as he passed the rebbetzin was, “Call Tamar.” He fumbled in his jacket pocket and gave her the number. “Tell her what happened.” He threw in, “Please help the people here. The courtyard needs you now. Didn’t you once say the same thing to me?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mustafa moved between the stools of the El Kas Fountain, leisurely squirting cleaning fluid. He felt a soft pang as he wiped down the window with an already used rag, inste
ad of a fresh one. Didn’t the El Kas deserve better treatment? Also, he’d hurried in the bathroom, done a slipshod job on the windows and the sink. Well, the work meant nothing to him anymore. What was the use? A raise—for Mustafa? Couldn’t be. Never. Does the sun shine at night? He would never get a raise no matter how hard he worked. Anyway, all this fancy kohein talk was nonsense. He was a janitor, nothing more. A job was a job.

  A hand clamped hard onto his left shoulder—his good one—and he started violently, making a can of cleansing powder fall off a stool. “Again you’re working schway-schway. What is it, Mustafa?” a voice scolded him. Sheikh Tawil appeared before him, his hands on his pointy hips. “I’ve been watching you the last five minutes, and you’re just been standing there.”

  “I was just thinking,” Mustafa said out loud. He stooped to pick up the cleansing powder.

  “Not about work,” the sheikh observed, stroking the thin hairs of his beard. “Your mind is not on the work,” he repeated. He waited, as if for an apology. “You’ve been sulking far too long about this supervisor job. You must know, there are many brothers who would be happy to have this work.” His cane swung out vaguely in the direction of the other workers. “Just remember that, Mustafa.”

  “Oh, Sheikh Tawil,” Mustafa said entreatingly, “I’m very happy here. Forgive me for working schway-schway like that. I was just worried about … my mother. Some private thing.”

  “Whatever the matter, let it not interfere with your duties in the future.”

  “Oh, she’s fine now,” he assured the sheikh, but his boss had already tock tocked away on his cane.

  Mustafa watched him leave, his chest constricting with fear. Sheikh Tawil was not happy with him anymore. What if he lost his job? He would have to join the streets with the other beggars, with Ahmed who had a leg stump and Crazy Rahima who sang children’s songs to herself all day and could barely see. Mustafa rushed to find disinfectant among the cleaning products and poured a tablespoon amount onto a scrub brush. The pungent fumes stung his nose, and as he scoured, he prayed, “Oh, Allah, don’t let this job get taken away from me. If I don’t have this job, what do I have.” New fears sprouted in every corner of his mind. Rabbi Isaac had said the police were after him because of the pomegranate. What if the police came and arrested the rabbi? Would he tell on him? Mustafa considered this possibility. But didn’t Rabbi Isaac care about him? What about all the nice, good words the rabbi was always telling him? Then he remembered how Rabbi Isaac wouldn’t fix his neck, and Mustafa shook his head. Of course the Jew would get him in trouble. He would blame it all on the Arab janitor who worked on the Noble Sanctuary. “Protect me from the police and the rabbi,” he prayed. “Stop up the mouth of the Jew. Let him say nothing about how I brought the pomegranate.”

  Mustafa bent low, trying to loosen a clot of tar between the stools. I owe him nothing, he reminded himself. I gave him everything and what did he give me? Nice words. A bowl of chicken soup. Fancy words about broken pots and old things. Nothing. This Jew could hurt him, like all Jews. Once when he was little, his mother tried to make him take a foul-tasting medicine, and she had said, “You must drink this, or else a Jew will come and kill you.” This one was no different. No one cared about him except Allah who had hidden a clay bird in the dust for him to find. He took up his prayers, “I ask you, Allah, oh subtle one who knows every little thing, tell me what to do with my bag of treasures. If I destroy it, I will have nothing, never a chance to buy jewelry for my mother. But at least I will be safe from the police. So what should I do? Forgive me, I know I am greedy, but as long as I am praying to You …”

  He tapered off. Sensing a hulking presence, he whipped around. Nothing, just blue air and white stone and the leaves of an overhanging tree. But it could have been Hamdi. For days his old friend had been sneaking up behind him. Mustafa would turn his head a centimeter or two and see Hamdi darting away, leaving behind all kinds of photographs—pictures of underwear, fancy carpets, girls in colorful shirts and flimsy short pants, men putting up tents, babies in cribs, legs tucked into various shoes, wooden chairs and lanterns. All of them from his JC Penney magazine.

  He glanced at the ground and saw six or seven JC Penney pictures resting under a washing stool. He snatched up one—it had a picnic table on it. He called after Hamdi, “Why do you give me these papers? It just makes more work for me!”

  Hamdi peeked his head from behind the great tree that gave shade over the El Kas Fountain. His thick lower lip drooped. “It’s boring up here. What else is there to do?”

  “Be lucky we have jobs!” Mustafa said. “Remember where you are and stop making a mess with these papers. This is a holy place and you have an important job.”

  Hamdi’s chin quivered. “It’s not important,” he sulked. “My brothers laugh at me and say it’s donkey’s work, dumb work.”

  “Well, it would stink here without us.” Mustafa’s arm made a slow circle around the fountain. “People would slip and fall if we left the mess on the ground. No one would want to come and pray.” As he listed the reasons, he wanted to weep. Just a week ago he had believed that his work was holy, like the kohein’s. Then Rabbi Isaac had refused to help him, not once but twice. It struck him then—the rabbi could’ve brought him to meet the holy old man that made miracles, but he never thought to bring Mustafa the Arab. And now the old man had died and Rabbi Isaac wouldn’t fix his neck. Now Mustafa believed nothing and no one. “Ah, you’re right, Hamdi,” he said, with a dismissive flap. “I’m saying only empty words; it’s boring up here and awful.”

  “Ya, Mustafa, you are mixed up and crooked all over. Okay,” Hamdi allowed. “I won’t bother you,” and suddenly, a woman’s scream shot through the humid air. There were shouts and yelling and angry voices and the slap of many shoes running against stone. Briefly, Hamdi and Mustafa’s hands clung to each other. “Laa, what is it?” Mustafa mumbled fearfully. He saw the dark blue uniform of an Israeli policeman flash by.

  Hamdi said, “I will go and see,” and he took off, though Mustafa shouted after him, “Stay here, don’t get into trouble, silly man!” but his words fell to the ground.

  Mustafa waited. He washed his hands thoroughly under a spigot. After a few minutes, Hamdi came bounding back, a gleeful smile spreading on his large, sensuous lips. He raised a fist. “Yawaladee!”

  Mustafa seized his wrist. “What is it then? The Israelis—the police?”

  Hamdi shook off his hand and laughed out loud. “Yes, the police, and the Waqf, too. They were arresting an Israeli woman for praying on the Noble Sanctuary. You should have seen her screaming and crying. It’s forbidden for them to pray up here,” he explained importantly. “Did you know that? They can visit but not pray.”

  “Yes, yes,” Mustafa said, and he relaxed. The police had come for someone else, not him. Just a few days ago they had arrested a few Israelis for stirring up trouble: They were wearing their prayer shawls on the Noble Sanctuary. And now another episode. He wiped his forehead with the edge of his kaffiyeh.

  “You should see how strong that woman was, fighting them. I saw her legs too when her skirt flew up for a second.” Hamdi’s cheeks trembled with pleasure. “Very pretty legs,” he said. “She and your boss—Square Head—are screaming at each other. Come, you have to see this.” His dark eyes thrilled.

  “No, I—”

  “This is exciting, do you want to miss this?” Hamdi was stamping his big feet with impatience, his belly flopping over his straw belt. “Anyway, it’s a mess there. Go bring your broom.” And so Mustafa let himself get pulled all the way to the Gate of Magharbeh.

  Loud sounds ricocheted across the Haram. Mustafa willed his feet to walk faster and nearly tripped on a slew of water bottles scattered on the stone ground. Colorful abandoned plastic bags stirred in the hot air. Mustafa looked out, dazed. He saw a blur of people running, fleeing from the Gate of Magharbeh. Another blur of policemen barreling toward the gate area. A flock of Jewish men with their kippot and praye
r shawls slipping to the ground, policemen knock-knocking their big sticks. And there in the middle, he saw Sheikh Tawil and other men from the Waqf. Sheikh Tawil cried out, “That one was praying, the one with the striped shirt, and her, too, the pregnant one. Arrest them!” He swung his cane at the Jewish worshippers. The air was thick with dust and curses and pleading voices, but Mustafa couldn’t tell who was doing the pleading. A man from the Waqf almost slipped on a pink plastic bag, and Mustafa crept forward and snatched it up into his rucksack.

  “I can’t see her legs,” Hamdi said in a wounded voice. But Mustafa heard the woman’s insistent shrieks. “It’s my religious right to pray where I damn please!” A short-legged man in a white knitted cap ran alongside the messy cluster of people. “ ‘My house shall be a house for all nations’,” he shouted at Sheikh Tawil who reddened in fury. The sheikh yelled at one of the policemen, “Arrest that man,” he jabbed with his cane, “he was praying on the Noble Sanctuary!”

  “Adoni, he was just quoting from the Torah,” the policeman said with a shrug.

  “Verses from the Torah count as prayers!” the sheikh snapped, but the policeman just moved on. Sheikh Tawil furiously shook his head as if to say, Those Israelis, they get away with everything, and he leaned all his disgust and outrage into his cane.

  The policeman lunged toward an older man who had taken out a prayer book. Pale dust scattered as the policeman tackled him to the ground, trying to wrest the prayer book from his groping hands. “Got it!” the officer announced triumphantly a moment later. The prayer book wedged under his arm, he entered deep into another tangle of flailing people. Four policemen emerged, each holding a limb of the accused woman, and clumsily carted her off the mountain.

  Mustafa fixed his eyes on the elder Jew sitting cross-legged on the ground. The man was crying out, “Where’s my siddur? It belonged to my grandmother!” A tear dangled on the tip of his nose.