by Tobias Hill
‘Look at this, Salman.’
‘You look at it. I hope your eyes fall out.’
The light settled inside them, red as halqûn, blue as meat. There was writing on the curves and facets. The elaborate knotworks of old Arabic calligraphy. Daniel put the cleaver down and picked out the largest stone. It was big as the palm-muscle of his thumb, from the knuckle to the veins and tendons of the wrist. Its surface was spotted with silk dust and Daniel wiped it clean.
It was purple, with the transparency and pitted polish of old ice. One side was flatter than the other, and on the levelled face was a line of writing. He turned the inscribed stone to the shuttered afternoon light. The script was ornate. Illegible as a cipher.
‘Salman.’
‘What?’ He had begun to scrub the skin of his palms with an old pumice. When Daniel didn’t answer he looked up, gave a snarling smile and put the washstone down. He walked up to the table, shaking his hands dry. The stench of rot was gone. Now there was only a staleness, and the clean smell of minerals. Daniel held the large stone up to the light. ‘There are more of these in the jar. What do you call this?’
Salman took the stone and weighed it in his hand. His hard smile faded with surprise. ‘Amethyst.’
‘Is it worth anything?’
‘I need more light.’
Daniel went to the window and opened the wickerwork shutters. From outside came the sound of one goat bell, one cicada. The summer of a dry, hot country. He breathed in the smell of the desert and felt the afternoon sun on his face.
He opened his eyes. From the lowering light, he knew that Rachel would be back before long. He wondered what she would think of this, their gift. Ajar of stones. He turned back and came round the table and stood beside Salman. The two brothers together, peering upwards.
‘It looks like an amulet.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Ibrahim didn’t lie.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘You should look at the others.’
Salman went on turning the amethyst. He gauged the depth of its colour. The absence of fractures. When he was finished he put it down, quickly and carefully. Without speaking, he picked out the other stones. Three of them, four. Finally, five. He stood back.
‘So?’ Daniel watched his brother.
Salman shrugged. He dug his finger into the green grains of the broken stone. ‘This was an emerald. I should be shot for it, but I think I broke it. It’s still worth a little now. Good clarity, see? Not Egyptian.’
‘Where else could it be from?’
‘Maybe India… and this looks like a sapphire. I can’t be certain.’ He picked up one of the amulets. An inch of clear slate-blue. The light slithered along it.
‘You don’t know?’
Salman turned on him. ‘How would I know a sapphire like this?’ He put the jewel down with both hands. ‘I worked with the cheap stones. Nothing like these.’
He picked up another amulet. It was a clear crystal, wide and deep as a human molar. Daniel saw that his brother was beginning to smile again. His face was still damp, but not with water. A thick oil of sweat covered him from neck to turban.
‘What is that one?’
Salman’s hand jerked. His fingers curved gently around the jewel. ‘These? These are our way out of here.’
‘Out of where?’
Salman looked at his brother, his stooping, owlish stupidity, and he laughed. ‘Here. This house, this town. Where else? The streets that flood with shit and piss every time it rains. The rotten rice and the weeks without meat. The floods, Daniel, the rivers. We don’t have to die of cholera, like everyone around us. We can be gone. We can be anywhere.’
It was a big grin, infectious. Daniel found himself beginning to smile too. He imagined the jar cracked open, releasing a plague of grins over Old Baghdad. He shook his head. ‘Salman, I don’t want to go anywhere. I am happy here.’
‘No! No, you’re not happy. You don’t see. Look.’ Salman picked up another amulet. It was an oval red stone, flattened and translucent, like a cod’s eye. He pressed it into Daniel’s hand. ‘This, I know, is a ruby. With it, we can buy a new home anywhere. Calcutta or Bombay. Not a house with two doors. A house with twenty doors.’
Daniel held the ruby. He could feel Salman’s sweat on it. He shook his head. ‘Are you sure of this?’
‘There is a foul in it, very small, but it is a ruby’s discolouration. It is as good as a goldsmith’s mark.’ Salman was talking quickly now, bent over the table, picking out stones. ‘Abalas ruby of ten or twelve carats. This we can sell wherever we go. A fine amethyst – this is our passage. This is a milk opal, not so good. This a sapphire, I am almost sure of it. And this–’ He picked up the clear jewel again, gripping it. His hand shook. He said nothing.
‘We are rich then.’
Daniel was surprised by the sound of his own voice, the unhappiness in it. He didn’t feel unhappy. Only cautious, as if there might still be a danger here. Not a plague from a jar but something more subtle. He tried to catch his own thoughts, but Salman was taking his hands. Pressing the clear stone into his palm.
‘Rich. Do you remember the game of changing the world?’
Daniel remembered it. Despite himself, he smiled again.
‘The game of changing the world. You always tried to have too many wishes. Well, now you can have anything. We can leave here. We can buy Rachel a house with twenty doors. In India we can ride horses, Daniel. Twenty horses. Horses with green turbans. Or we can go to London, if you like. You choose. I don’t mind where. ‘Phrates? You choose for both of us. Say yes.’
He shook his head. Not meaning to answer Salman, although it was the answer he meant to give. With the clear stone in his hand, there was no room in his head. Not even for Salman, his brother, who was half his family. The voice next to him was a buzzing incoherence. He looked down at the jewel.
It was heavier than it looked. Dense, like a bullet. It was shaped like a pyramid. Daniel felt that it was old in a way Ibrahim’s jar was not, although the vessel had been dull with age, and the jewel looked as if it had been cut yesterday.
In the afternoon sun, the five facets did something extraordinary. They caught the light inside their matrix, and released it brighter than it had been before. They swallowed the sun and threw out rainbows. In those first few moments, as he held it, Daniel thought the Heart of Three Brothers was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He turned it over. There was an inscription on the pyramid’s base. The writing was simpler here than on the other amulets, as if the lapidary had found it difficult to carve. Daniel could almost read it. He frowned, making himself work harder.
‘Daniel? You choose a place. Please, for us both.’
The words resolved themselves. He repeated them softly, only to himself. ‘To keep one from ghosts.’
‘Where?’
‘It says it is to keep one from ghosts.’
He looked up at Salman. His wide face and dark skin. He was paler now. His hands were curled into fists. The sweat was thick on his cheeks.
‘You have to come.’
He put the jewel down. He listened to the words his brother didn’t say. I cannot go alone. Through the crystal, he could see the table. Old wood, new scars. The jewel lit them up. It made them more beautiful. Daniel spoke quietly, the way he would in a synagogue, so as to disturb nothing.
‘Salman, this is our house. Our father was here, and our grandfather, and his grandfather.’
‘It is rotting around us. A rotten house in a dying city.’
He spoke up. ‘It is the house of our family. Because of that, Rachel will never leave it. Think of her and you’ll know it’s true. And I will never leave Rachel alone.’
They stood together in the long kitchen. The broken jar between them. From the Island Road came the sound of street children laughing. The broken note of a nine-holed shepherd’s flute. Distantly, Daniel wondered if it was the one he had made for them. He would have to
teach them to play it.
The door opened beside him and he only half-turned, knowing it would be Rachel. No one else came to the house with two doors. Not Judit or Yusuf the honey-slat seller, Yusuf the official beggar or Mehmet the lapidary. She was out of breath from the weight of her load. There was sand in the folds of her clothes, and the hem of her dress was dark with river mud. She still had the laundry basket balanced on her head, one arm raised to balance it. Now she hoisted it down to the ground. Distantly, Salman saw that she wasn’t wearing her earrings.
‘Boys. I see neither of you thought to bring in my drying trays. There’s a storm coming.’
‘You are home late.’ Daniel’s voice was breathless. He waited for Rachel to look up at his face, to read the tension there. Instead she walked past him to the table. She picked up a fragment of pottery. Laughed.
‘So this was what all the shouting was about. The marsh-lander traded you this, did he? He can sell a Jew a broken pot. I’m impressed.’
‘We were not shouting.’ Even as he said it, Salman felt how quiet his voice was now in the darkening room. Rachel pulled a stool from under the table. Sat. The potsherd still in her hand.
‘Ah. Just a little. I could hear you from some distance across the Tigris. Is this what is going to buy me a house with twenty doors?’
Daniel spoke without moving. Keeping back. ‘Not that, Aunt. The stones.’
‘Ah yes.’ She picked through them. The milk opal, the sapphire. ‘Yes. They’re pretty things, aren’t they? Are you sure, Salman, they’re worth what you think they are?’
‘No.’
‘Ah.’
‘Aunt – Rachel –’ he bent his head, trying to get the right words out ‘– the stones are our chance, I’m sure of it. Perhaps God meant them for us–’
‘God? Tch. Now you sound like a rich Jew. Only the wealthy love God so much.’
‘But we can be rich, all of us. Old Baghdad is dying. And we are young, Daniel and I. There are other places, and better lives–’
‘Yes, there are, and yes, it is. You are quite right. You are practical, Salman. You have grown into a good, practical man.’ Rachel said it without smiling. Her slippers were wet and she took them off, then the socks. Underneath, her feet were curled up on themselves, the nails uncut, like the claws of dead birds. She laughed, her face in shadow. ‘Look at me. I am monstrous today’ She blinked up at Salman. ‘I am turning into a sirrusch.’
‘Aunt–’
‘I can’t leave, Salman. I’m too old, too set. Your brother understands. I know you don’t.’ She tidied her shoes beside the stool, picked up the wet socks, hobbled to the empty hearth. Clicked her tongue. ‘Daniel, where is the flint and steel?’
He moved, stooping to find the tinderbox, not speaking. Behind him Salman shook his head, his voice loosening inside him. ‘We must leave!’
Rachel put down the tinderbox. ‘Yes, you must. Of course. But I’m not coming with you. It is time you were both going.’
‘No.’ Daniel stood back, caught off guard. ‘Rachel? We will not go.’ The words almost a question. At the hearth Rachel bent to bank up the old ash.
‘Yes you will, my love. If I say so, you will. You won’t stay in this house if I do not wish it.’
He took another step back, as if he had been struck. The breath wheezed out of Rachel when she stood.
‘Salman? Wrap up the stones. There is cloth in my basket. Daniel, I want you to take them to Hüseyin the Imam. I trust him better than the jewellers. He knows old Arabic, and he likes jewels. More than a man of God should. Ask him about them.’
She stood, and Daniel saw she was smiling at him. A cold, sweet woman. ‘And come back soon. I don’t want you gone yet.’
He went. The jewels under his arm, wrapped in hessian. It was an hour until dusk, but the bats were already hunting. He could hear them around him as he walked. Their flutter, like leather gloves shaken out.
There were words running through his head. Salman shouting, Rachel quiet. Daniel didn’t want to hear them. Instead, he listened to the city around him.
Beyond the bats were the ordinary sounds of voices, calling voices home. From the lowland fields, the grieving of an ass. Far away. Beyond the city, clear air and silence. He listened to that and thought of nothing.
Hüseyin’s house was quiet and unlit. Daniel knocked and waited for the servant. Next door, a goat had been tethered to the minaret pillars of the Four-Footed Mosque. Daniel watched it idly. He imagined what would happen if the goat strained so hard that a pillar came loose. The minaret toppling like a hashish smoker. Its marble feet pulled from under it.
He knocked again. No one came. The servants Daniel remembered were old Turkish women, a cook and a housekeeper, both unpleasant and half-deaf. Either characteristic might prevent them from answering the door. Between the Kurd’s house and the mosque there was a dusty alley, and Daniel went down it. Along the back of the property the garden wall had fallen across a patch of waste ground. Daniel hitched up his robes and stepped over the rubble, under two overgrown pomegranate trees, up to Hüseyin’s verandah.
He could see the old man now, sitting in a wicker chair, reading and smoking. The stained vase of a hookah stood beside him. Before he got too near and the Imam heard him he called out, raising a hand.
‘Sir! Salaam aleicum!’
The old man looked up. Daniel saw he was wearing spectacles. They were too big for his face, the wire loops poking out behind his turban like the antennae of a cricket. He put down the book and waited for Daniel to climb the verandah’s rotten steps.
‘What are you doing in my garden? Trying to steal my pomegranates? You are a little old for that.’ His voice was precise, wiry, like his body. Daniel could think of nothing to say before he was waving him in. ‘Sit down, sit down. You want tea? Nurten! Tea!’
Beside the wicker chair was a small stool. Daniel sat down. From inside the house came a clattering of pots.
‘One of the Levy boys, isn’t it? Which one are you?’
‘Daniel, Imam. I came to sell you three old seals, from the mounds of the Palace of Nineveh. It was some months ago.’
‘So you did. I had forgotten.’
‘I am sorry to bother you.’
‘Well, you do. And my book is interesting.’ The old Kurd picked up the volume. Daniel saw that the title was in English. It was nothing he could understand. ‘I would like to read until Nurten comes. Then we can talk. Sit quietly.’
‘Yes, Imam.’
He sat. Beside and above him, Hüseyin sipped smoke from the hookah. The smell of it hung low over the two men. Daniel looked around at the verandah, the unkempt garden beyond it. He had never been inside the Imam’s house for long as a trader, but he remembered it from the time Salman had left home, years ago. He had come here then with Rachel, as they looked for the lost child. The atmosphere had not changed. It was a ramshackle, open house, the sense of indoors and outdoors blurred by the quantities of balconies and terraces, courtyards, roof gardens. He saw now that the house reflected the character of the Imam. It took confidence to live in such an open space. A trust in God, or a carelessness.
The bundle of stones rested on his knees. Nurten came out with tea. Her face and hands were stained like the vase of the hookah. The Imam sighed, put down his book again, took off his spectacles, and looked straight at Daniel. Waiting.
He unwrapped the stones. It was not necessary for him to talk. When they were all revealed Hüseyin put his spectacles back on. Clumsily, not taking his eyes off the jewels. He reached across for them and Daniel lifted the cloth into the Imam’s lap. He waited. The tea cooled beside him.
‘May I ask where you got these?’
His voice was softer now. The form of address more polite. He was turning the amethyst in his hands. The light turning with it.
‘We were given them. My brother was given them.’
‘A gift?’ He peered at Daniel. The spectacles had slid sideways. He prodded them back straight.
‘Yes.’
Slowly, the Kurd looked away. ‘Well. You have generous friends.’
In the quiet he could hear someone crying, streets away. A woman or child. When it stopped, he spoke to break the silence. ‘We deal with the marshlanders.’
‘Do you. But your brother is apprenticed as a lapidary, I seem to recall. You don’t need my help with stones.’
‘We can’t read the Arabic.’ He picked up the tea in its small glass. Already it was cold. He put it down. ‘And my brother worked only with cheap stones. He says these–’
‘These are not cheap stones. I see. Well, this one is amethyst. And it was not written by the Marsh Arabs.’ The Imam held the writing aslant to the faint light. To keep the fields from locusts. A talisman of some kind. I think the script is Indian. Not ancient. More old-fashioned.’ He put the amethyst down. ‘Who did the marshlanders steal these from?’
Daniel shook his head. Already the old man was picking up the other stones. Reading their hard, cold scripts. ‘Against toothache. This is an opal. And this, I do believe, is a sapphire. For the poison of scorpions. And this a ruby of some description, from its size I would guess a balas. To make men good. And this–’
He picked up the clear jewel. Daniel repeated the passage as Hüseyin squinted at it. He whispered it. ‘To keep one from ghosts.’
‘You can read this?’
Daniel nodded. The Imam was looking at him again, long and hard, his face still snarled up from squinting. The jewel was still in his hands.
‘Yes. You always were an intelligent boy. You should be in the priesthood, with a head like yours. Not hawking and trading.’
The jewel pinched between his fingers. The knuckles white. Daniel kept his eyes on it.
‘What is that one made of?’
‘This? Spinel, maybe. Or yâqut, zircon. What did you think?’
He shrugged. ‘It is very beautiful. I thought it might be a diamond.’
‘Diamond?’ Hüseyin jerked forward in his wicker chair. His arms on its arms, elbows stuck out. Like a cricket, thought Daniel again. ‘Diamond! Ha! ha! My God, boy. If this were diamond, it would buy you the whole of Baghdad, old and new. For what that would be worth.’