by Tobias Hill
They buried Judit in the Jewish cemetery, halfway between the desert and the river. After she was gone Rachel became withdrawn, and accusing. ‘I have no one to talk to,’ she said once, as if she was not talking to Daniel as she said it. The house felt different. Four people had occupied it in a way that three could not. Three, Daniel thought, was a less human number. He found that he missed Judit’s presence in the house more than he missed the old woman herself. It surprised him. He wasn’t ashamed of it.
There was no food which could be trusted. Olives from the highlands sold for the price of meat. In the old town Daniel would sell artefacts to Hüseyin, Imam of the Muslim Kurds. More often he would walk through the walled city to the Alien Quarter, making any money he could from the Europeans. Few had stayed through the plague. Those that did bought little. There was the French Consul Monsieur Lavoisier, who spent his days hunting lion in the thickets of mesquite. The Bavarian merchant Herr Lindenberg, who drank laudanum at a thousand drops a day, and spoke for all the German peoples. Most regularly there was Cornelius Rich, Surveyer of both His Majesty’s Government of Great Britain and the East India Company of England.
He was a big Mancunian, muscled like a manual worker. His accent was unsoftened by years spent abroad. His laugh was surprisingly high-pitched, feminine, like that of an old woman. When the summer heat settled over Baghdad and the knowledge of his backwater posting became unbearable, Cornelius would go to the viceroy’s office. He and Mahmud would drink raki flavoured with apricots and argue violently all night over the ethics of the Battle of Navarino, when a British fleet had broken a truce, opened fire, and destroyed half the navy of the Ottoman Empire.
Cornelius taught Daniel to read the maker’s name on his bartered watch. He called Britain ‘the Empire on which the Rain never Stops’, and drank to overcome his homesicness. In the courtyard of his great house his servants maintained a small cricket pitch bordered by liquorice trees. No one ever played on it. The grass was scorched to nothing.
He traded with Daniel because the Jew learnt more English in six months than Cornelius had learnt of Arabic in ten years. He bought faience beads from Babylon or Ur, packing them up with letters to his fiancée in England. In return Daniel would listen to him. A thickset man, talking of England, as if he could bring it back with him.
London was four months away by sea. The East Indiamen went southwards around the Cape, turning back up the coast of Africa. Cornelius talked of how his fiancée would unpack Daniel’s beads in her parents’ house in Edgbaston. Her name was Dora. She had artist’s fingers. Daniel learned all this. Cornelius showed him a lock of her hair, coiled back on itself behind glass. To Daniel its blondeness looked like something cut from the scalp of an old woman.
They sat together in the courtyard. Cicadas chirred in the liquorice trees. The moon lit up the dry grass. Cornelius Rich and Daniel Levy talked about the dangers of the Suez land crossing, the whiteness of blackthorn in spring, the ways to trap coney in winter.
‘I’ll tell you what I miss, sir. White skin. There’s no shame in a dark complexion, none, only I like white skin on a woman.’
Daniel drank his tea. The servants had mixed it with milk. Over the months he had stopped noticing the taste in his mouth.
‘That and the nights in a big city.’
‘Manchester.’ He said the name only, having only Cornelius’s words for it. His stories.
‘Aye, that. And London also.’ Cornelius leant forward, his chair creaking under him. ‘Now, you should see London. Acknowledged centre of the world. All men should see it before they die. There are more Scots on the Thames than in Aberdeen, more Irishmen than in Dublin. More Papists than in Rome, I shouldn’t wonder. The grand capital of the grandest empire the world has ever known – you don’t get more acknowledged than that. If we were there now – if we were there, we should be entirely lit up with gaslights! That is something to see, sir, let me tell you. London Piccadilly by gaslight. Imagine that.’
Daniel tried to imagine it. The smoke of the mosquito coils drifted towards him and he turned his face away. ‘I have never travelled.’
‘There’s better places to be at the end of it.’
‘My family is here.’
‘Take them along with you. Aye, and there’s no denying families.’ Cornelius paused, shifting, uncomfortable. Thinking of Dora, of her skin, which was so pale it was not really white, but blue. And beside him in the cane chairs Daniel thought of Rachel, pressing limes. The house with two doors around her, solid as an heirloom. He tried to imagine her leaving, knowing she never would. It was too precious to her. Her body had grown too used to it. Stretched by the weight of wood and stone.
The man beside him took out his pipe, lit it from the coils. He waved one hand, punctuating the air. ‘You’re an intelligent man, Mister Daniel. Think on it. Baghdad is a plague pit. Foul, if you don’t mind me saying. There are Jews in London, and doing very well thank you. Only last month I read in The Times that there are Semites at the Bar. And a good thing. Now then, how would you describe your own business, sir? Jewels in the main, would it be?’
‘Jewels?’ He had never thought of anything as his business.
‘Well, so then London is your place. The jewellers’ Mecca. All the best goldsmiths, like your Rundell and Bridge’s. All the best stones and customers. I recall a sale a year or two ago – I’ve probably the article somewhere, but be that as it may – the buyer was an English banker, Thomas Hope. And the jewel was a blue diamond. Blue, mark you. The story went that it was part of an even greater stone. There was a fellow called Tavern, you see, who sold it to the king of France – I forget what came next. Suffice to say that this gem bought by Hope is a chip off the block of the old diamond. A chip, you understand. Now, sir. Hazard a guess to what it weighed.’
He shook his head.
‘Forty-four and a half. Carats. I tell you it’s true, and The Times carried it. Imagine such a diamond. That, my friend, is London.’
Daniel imagined it. He sat in the dark under the liquorice trees and pictured the jewel and the city. Their cold lines and planes. Rachel, pressing limes. The natural curvature of her arms and face.
Summer. The brothers stood by the Gate of Darkness. The sun was hot and rising. The sweat itched in their beards. All morning they had been waiting for Ibrahim. And as they waited, they talked. They argued about the time that day and night began, the colour of the face of God, clockworks and women, bullets and singing, the ways of sowing emmer wheat, the facts of cosmography. One was taller than the other. One was broader than the other. The gate traffic milled around them.
‘So you still believe that the earth is a plane.’
‘Yes.’
‘With oceans falling off its edges.’
‘Edges, ends. Yes.’
‘And fish? Salman?’
‘A number of fish must fall.’
‘What number?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So. And meanwhile, we are circled by the sun.’
‘Circled by the sun, and the moon. And beyond them, the stars. And beyond them, our God.’
Salman looked away. Olive trees glittered on the high ground. Green-silver, green-silver. The road edged under them, and the river. Two lines running south between alluvial fields.
He waited for Daniel to start arguing again. His own voice sounded blunt in his ears. He didn’t mind that. He felt blunt. He often felt blunt. And he always felt it was better to be honest.
‘Our God, of course,’ said Daniel. ‘Does he circle us too?’
‘Brother, what are you doing here? Why can’t you go home and let me work?’
‘Because today I feel like talking. I will stop when Ibrahim arrives. Really, I am interested in this circling God. He is making me dizzy. Tell me, because I would like to see it, what time does He rise and set tomorrow?’
Salman turned on his brother. ‘Listen to yourself! Use a little common sense. There is a difference between discussion and blasphemy
.’
Daniel shrugged. He was thinner than Salman, with a tall man’s clumsiness. At any rate, it had been years since they had fought physically. At twenty-two his beard was already streaked with grey. ‘I don’t mean to insult anyone. I am only saying that the world that has been made is a sphere.’
‘I know what you say.’
There was a cloud of dust far off down the road now. Salman couldn’t see if it was Ibrahim. He hawked and spat in the roadside dirt.
‘A sphere! And your English friend tells you it circles the sun and moon.’
‘No. Only the sun.’
‘Only the sun, of course. And the moon?’
‘The moon orbits the earth.’
‘How clever. Everything circles everything else. It sounds like a kind of children’s dance. What circles the moon? The stars?’
‘No. Each sphere also rotates on its own. The earth, the moon and sun. They spin through space. The older Muslims will tell you the same. It is not unlike a dance.’
Salman began to laugh. There was a crowd of men at the Gate of Darkness, drovers and farmers. A few of them looked round at the sound. Daniel watched their faces. The big, wide features of the Sumer, the epicanthal folds of Mongols, the lantern jaws of the Beduin. All of them curious or suspicious, none of them smiling. He glanced back at his brother.
‘What I am saying is clearly true.’
‘Clear as a fart in a copper bazaar. The earth is spinning?’
Daniel nodded, and Salman leant towards his brother. ‘Then jump, and surely it will go on without you. If you can leap up here and come down arse-deep in river mud, I’ll believe the whole universe is round. Until then, you can keep your foreign bull-shit to yourself.’
‘Tigris! ‘Phrates! Salaam aleicum. You look like you are about to kill one another.’
They stepped apart like children caught fighting. Daniel shaded his eyes. Ibrahim was leading his horse towards them. His face was lined, smiling. He could have been Mehmet’s son, cousin, brother. Beyond him were the shapes of other men and horses, merged together in the dust.
Salman clapped his brother on the shoulder and walked away from him. ‘Ibrahim! Wa aleicum es. You are a few hours late.’
‘I apologise. There are sandstorms to the south.’ The marshlander’s Arabic was accented, lilting. He called over his shoulder to the other riders. They came closer to the city walls. Circling the crowd at the gate, not getting too near. Salman saw the way Ibrahim watched them. Pained, critical.
‘How is Mehmet?’
‘Weary.’ Ibrahim turned his smiling mask again. ‘I will always be grateful that you brought him to us. I have something special for you today.’
‘Not another musical keyboard, I hope.’
Ibrahim shook his head, unbuckling his saddlebag, bringing out a bundle wrapped in muslin. It fitted neatly in his arms. He passed it to Salman, not letting it go until he was sure the other man had it. It was heavier than Salman had expected. Under the muslin, the bundle was cold. He smiled. Rocked it. ‘What is this? A child from Babylon?’
‘Not a child.’ Ibrahim glanced round at the other tribesmen again. They were not only staying away from the city gate, Salman saw, but from him. Or from the bundle.
He looked back at his brother. Daniel was by the gates, in the private company of his own thoughts. Salman resisted the impulse to call out to him. He didn’t need help. He set the bundle down on the ground and unwrapped the layers of muslin.
Inside was an earthenware jar. The mouth was sealed with bitumen. The pottery itself was engraved with characters. Salman recognised them as Arabic. The shapes were subtly unfamiliar. He nudged the jar with one hand. There was a scuttle and a rustling. Something hard. Something soft.
He glanced up at Ibrahim sharply, curious to see his face. The sun was behind him, darkening the expression. The Marsh Arab was staring at the jar with a mesmerised fascination. Like a cat watching shadows.
For no reason, Salman thought of Mehmet’s children. The three girls buried alive. Bundles of muslin in the wet ground. ‘Ibrahim.’ He shook his head, thinking what he meant to say. ‘I’m not sure this is something I want.’
‘Oh no. You do.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
He stood up. Clapped his hands free of the jar’s touch. ‘Then put me out of my misery. Tell me what it is.’
A wind picked up dust devils on the road. It caught the length of muslin at their feet. Ibrahim bent down and began to roll it around his hand, neat as a turban. A careful man of an economical race, wasting nothing. ‘There is a place not far from Basra, an old town that has been left to the desert. The sandstorms uncovered it a fortnight ago. We found this container there. The inscription is hard to read but our old people know it. They say that this jar contains the medicines of a prince.’
‘Medicines? You surprise me. From the way your friends are acting, I thought it must be a plague.’
They watched the marshlanders together. The hardness of Ibrahim’s face relaxed. ‘My cousins are uneducated and superstitious. They say that this kind of medicine is not a part of Islam. Therefore it is an unholy power. A black magic. They say it has sent them bad dreams. They believe Allah will curse us if we keep it. Since I wish to live with them, I cannot possess the contents of this jar. And for all I know they may be right.’
Salman touched the jar with the tip of his sandal. ‘For all I know they may be right too. Their Allah is my Jehovah. Ibrahim, what do I want with old medicines?’
‘Medicines is the old name for them. Now we would think of them more as amulets.’
‘Magic’
‘Good luck stones. Fetishes. East of Persia, they have things like this. They call them nauratan. They are fetishes set with nine jewels. And here, this writing says these are the amulets of a prince. Do you understand?’
‘You are suggesting this –’ he looked down at the vessel again. It wasn’t really a jar. There was no lip or handle. The clay was thick and rough. An ugly object, built for a long containment’– this thing contains jewels.’
It lay between them. They looked down at its squat weight. It was nearer Salman than Ibrahim now. Without having to ask, he knew that if he picked it up now, the vessel would be his. All he had to do was claim it.
He shrugged. ‘Well, this is certainly interesting. But if you are right about it, I cannot afford to buy it from you. What would it be worth?’
‘Whatever someone would give for it.’
‘Some price that would pull my tongue out, I’m sure. And if you are wrong, I don’t want it. I deal in trinkets and paraffin, not–’
Ibrahim raised his hand, claiming the air. His teeth were the colour of old ivory, Salman thought. Relics and antiquities. ‘Salman ben Levy bar Israel, I have never bartered with you for profit. You must have wondered why I travel so far north. Do you think we have any need to come to the Turkish cities we hate, just for paraffin and pipes?’
He stopped talking. Salman could think of nothing to say. The marshlander leaned towards him. His breath smelt of goat meat. ‘Friend, you brought someone back who had been dead to me. Something that is worth any price. I have always come here to repay that debt.’ He stepped away. ‘The jar is for you and yours.’
Behind them, a small man began to argue about his gate toll with the Turkish guards. Salman listened to his shrill, harsh voice. He could smell fish in the man’s cart. Rank carp baking in the sun. He looked back. Daniel was watching him and Ibrahim. The two men, and the jar between them. He began to walk towards Salman, tall and stooping, and as he did so Salman felt a jolt of emotion. A possessive anger, as if Daniel might take Ibrahim’s gift from him.
He bent and picked up the dull earthenware vessel. He held it in both hands while Ibrahim replaced the muslin in his saddlebag, climbed onto his horse, turned it south.
Daniel arrived beside him. He had walked fast, and his breath came quickly. ‘You have finished already? What have the marshlanders found for u
s?’
‘Amulets.’
The sky was brighter now. The wind seemed to intensify the light. As the Marsh Arabs started off Salman felt an intimation of loss and he called out. ‘Ibrahim! We will see you again. Next month, yes?’
The horses and the wind were picking up storms of dust. The shapes of the riders merged together. One of them raised a hand, but Salman couldn’t see if it was Ibrahim or another man. He watched as they rode away southwards. He knew he would never see them again.
‘Amulets?’
He looked at Daniel. Behind him the dust was already settling, and Salman could make out the olive trees on the high ground. They winked like spearheads. Green-silver, green-silver.
‘What kind of amulets?’
The house was empty. Rachel was still out at work. In the kitchen Salman set the jar down. Faintly Daniel could smell yesterday’s fire. Cold rice. Terebinth wood.
He put his hand out and touched the jar. Its earthenware was pitted. The old script had been carved while the clay was still wet. He could make out only fragments. A word that might once have meant medicine. He peered at the seal, nicked it, talking quietly, mostly to himself, speaking his thoughts.
‘There is metal under the bitumen. It looks rusted shut. Bronze or copper, I think. This is an odd thing.’ He rocked the vessel on its base and heard the scurry of objects inside. Something soft, something hard. There was a repulsiveness about the sounds, and he stepped away and spoke up. ‘These inscriptions – there are scholars in al-Karkh who could read them for us. Hüseyin the Imam …’
He looked up. Salman was beside him. In his hands was Rachel’s meat cleaver, a heavy wedge of iron. Daniel laughed gently. A quiet man. Not speaking, keeping his thoughts to himself.
‘I want to open it.’
‘Now?’ Daniel watched his brother’s eyes. They had become hard. Eager in a way he hadn’t seen for years. It reminded him of the way Salman had looked the day he had given Rachel the diamond dust.