Sinai Tapestry

by Edward Whittemore

  Joe studied the iron safe more closely. Why was it so tall and thin?

  Then another of my wives was born in the deserted city of Golconda which used to be famous for its diamond trade, but it’s been deserted since the seventeenth century and that’s not a pleasant memory to have either, to come from a totally deserted city I mean. So look here, no wonder she wanted to have the security of some furniture and carpets and took all of mine when she left. You can see that can’t you?

  Joe rapped the antique safe. The muffled echoes were out of all proportion to the size of the safe. Haj Harun was roaming around and around the bare walls.

  Still another wife was the daughter of a twelfth-century Persian poet whose song told of a pilgrimage made by a flock of birds in search of their king. Since the pilgrimage was over water most of the birds died, and when the survivors finally reached the palace behind the seven seas what did they discover but that each of them was actually the king. So see here, given a father who saw things that way it’s not surprising she took all my vases and lamps. Naturally she wanted to surround herself with flowers and light.

  Joe got down on his knees and rapped the safe more loudly. The reverberations were uncanny. Deep hollow echoes boomed up into the room. Something was going on here that he didn’t understand.

  Why do you wear a yellow cloak?

  It was bright yellow when it was new but that was seven hundred years ago and since then it’s faded.

  Do you tell me so. But why yellow?

  There must have been a reason but. I can’t recall it at the moment. Can you?

  Joe shook his head. He still needed time to think.

  What’s that cord in the corner?

  I had an electric light once but a dog was always sneaking in behind my back and biting the wire. He liked the shocks. Finally it was so full of holes I had to go back to using a candle. Did you know I discovered a comet no one else has ever heard of?

  Did I? No I didn’t. Tell me about it.

  Well I knew it had to exist because of certain events in the lives of Moses and Nebuchadnezzar and Christ and Mohammed. I knew there had to be an explanation for all those odd things happening in the sky so I went to my copy of the Thousand and One Nights and was able to date it from some of the episodes.

  Good, very sound. What’s the cycle of your comet then?

  Six hundred and sixteen years. It’s been over five times since I’ve been in Jerusalem although the first four times I didn’t know it, and I still don’t know what happened in 1228 that was so important. Do you?

  No, but I haven’t studied the records for that year closely.

  Nor have I as far as I know. Anyway the last time I saw it was in the desert on my annual haj. I met a dervish in a place where no man should have been and the strange light thrown by the comet’s tail made him look seven and a half feet tall. It plays tricks, that comet.

  Comet tricks, muttered Joe, as he continued noisily sounding the safe. Now he was sure of it. The echoes rose from deep in the ground.

  He left the safe and went over to examine the giant stone scarab in another corner of the back room. Why was it smiling in such a cunning way? He thumped its broad nose. He rapped his way down its back.

  Yes he was sure of that too. The massive stone beetle was hollow. He sat down with the flat nose between his legs and began beating the nose with his fists, rapping out a rhythm. Haj Harun had stopped in front of a bare wall to adjust his helmet in a nonexistent mirror. The noise startled him and he peered toward the alley.

  What’s that out there?

  Not out there, in here. I’m riding the scarab. It’s hollow isn’t it?

  Oh just the scarab. Yes it is.

  There’s a secret latch hidden somewhere?

  In the nostrils. A combination of latches, very clever. Built for smuggling.

  What?

  Mummies and bones. The Romans had strict sanitation codes and wouldn’t allow dead bodies to be transported from one province to another. But the Egyptian traders here would pay well to have their mummies smuggled home when they died and the Jewish traders in Alexandria would also pay well to have their bones brought back here. An Armenian made quite a bit of money out of that trade. I must have bought it from him when he retired.

  Ever use it yourself?

  Not for smuggling but for something else. What was it?

  Haj Harun backed away from the empty wall and gazed at the crumbling plaster.

  I seem to remember taking naps in it. Is that possible? Why would I have done that? Age. My memory’s going, all the years slide together. Now when were those naps, under the Mamelukes? I had the falling sickness then, at least I think it was then, and that might have been a reason for crawling inside the scarab and curling up there. But no, it must have been earlier. I also seem to recall bumping my head so that I was paralyzed from the neck up for a while. When? Under the Crusaders?

  His voice was doubtful, then suddenly he smiled.

  Yes that’s it exactly. Those knights were always clanking around in their armor so I used the scarab for my siestas. It was the only quiet place I could find.

  Still as still as stone, said Joe, who climbed off the scarab and went over to examine the mysterious safe once more.

  Noisy days, said Haj Harun, his memory suddenly jarred into place by the prospect of a pageant of Crusaders banging their swords on the cobblestones.

  Noisy but not the worst. When the Assyrians took the city they put rings through the lips of the survivors and led them away as slaves, everyone except our leaders, who were blinded and left behind in the deserted ruins to starve.

  The Romans thought the people in the city were swallowing jewels, so they cut open stomachs and slit intestines but all they found was worn leather. The famine was so bad during the siege we had been eating our sandals.

  The Crusaders killed about a hundred thousand and the Romans almost five hundred thousand. The Babylonians murdered less than the Assyrians but blinded more. The Ptolemies and the Seleucids also murdered on a smaller scale, as did the Byzantines and Mamelukes and Turks, generally speaking just the religious leaders and anyone who was educated. Naturally the people were made to change the churches into mosques and destroy the synagogues, or change the mosques into churches and destroy the synagogues, depending on the new conqueror. What came after that? Where was I? Oh yes, my last wife came after that.

  Joe drummed loudly on the safe. The swelling echoes shook the walls of the empty shop.

  She was the one who took what I had left, my books. She was a failure in life you see, and being an Arab the only explanation was that someone had betrayed her. There had to be a traitor in the house and who else was in the house but me?

  Haj Harun sighed and straightened his helmet, which fell forward with a new rain of rust. The tears began running again.

  But you have to remember I still wore socks in those days and the socks were always wet because my feet were always wet, and wet feet aren’t pleasant in bed. She put up with it for a time and I don’t deny it.

  Where does it lead? asked Joe quietly.

  Always having wet feet?

  No, the shaft below the safe. It is a bottomless safe, isn’t it?

  Well not really. Deep but not bottomless.

  How deep?

  Right here about fifty feet.

  And there’s a ladder?

  Yes.

  To where?

  A tunnel that leads to the caverns.

  How deep are the caverns?

  Hundreds of feet? Thousands of feet?

  Joe whistled softly. He sat down beside the safe and pressed his ear to the iron door. Far away a wind hummed. Haj Harun was retying the green ribbons under his chin.

  What’s down there?

  Jerusalem. The Old City I mean.

  Joe looked out at the alley. A lean cat was sneaking in front of the shop with some kind of wire clamped between its teeth.

  Isn’t that Jerusalem out there? The Old City I mean?
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br />   One of them.

  And down below?

  The other Old Cities.

  O’Sullivan Beare whistled very softly.

  How’s that now?

  Well Jerusalem has been continually destroyed, hasn’t it. I mean it’s been more or less destroyed several hundred times and utterly destroyed at least a few dozen times, say a dozen times that we know of since Nebuchadnezzar and before that another dozen times that we don’t know of. And being on top of a mountain no one ever bothered to dig away the ruins when it was rebuilt, so the mountain has grown. Do you see?

  So I do. And down there where your ladder goes?

  What’s always been there. A dozen Old Cities. Two dozen Old Cities.

  With some of their treasures and monuments still?

  Some. Things that are buried tend to be overlooked, and then in time they’re forgotten altogether. Look here, in my lifetime I’ve seen a great many things forgotten, the dents in my helmet for example. Does anyone remember how I got those dents?

  The wizened Arab paced aimlessly around the room.

  Jaysus, thought Joe. Haj Harun’s ladder. We are descending.

  Being a native of the city, which had always been thronged with conquerors or pilgrims, Haj Harun had quite naturally spent most of his life in the service trades. During the Hebrew era he had begun his career by raising calves and later lambs. Under the Assyrians he was a stonecarver specializing in winged lions. He was a landscape gardener under the Babylonians and a tentmaker under the Persians.

  When the Greeks were in power he ran an all-night grocery store and when the Maccabees were in power he poured candles. During the Roman occupation he was a waiter.

  For the Byzantines he painted ikons, for the Arabs he sewed cushions, for the Egyptians he cut stones again but this time with emphasis on square blocks. He was a masseur for rheumatic ailments during the Crusader occupations, shoed horses for the Mamelukes and distributed hashish and goats for the Ottoman Turks. In the beginning he had also spent intervals as a sorcerer and prophet and in the less demanding field of general medicine.

  To succeed in sorcery he had shaved his head and had his credentials engraved on his skull with a stylus, so that in moments of crisis he could ask that his head be shaved and thereby prove his authenticity.

  As a prophet he didn’t wear a collar and have himself led around on a rope from customer to customer as was the common practice, preferring instead to sit in the bazaar shouting unsolicited warnings to passersby.

  In medicine he dealt entirely with the pasty residue of a plant with star-shaped flowers known as Jerusalem cherry, a form of nightshade. These mixtures he prepared by mashing them on the filthy cobblestones around Damascus Gate, where he was frequently seen down on his hands and knees, doing a kind of dance to escape the feet of the crowds.

  He also used a more potent juice from the wilted leaves of deadly nightshade, an effective narcotic which also caused severe vomiting. This left Haj Harun weak most of the time, since by necessity he had to take his own cures several times a day. To give some substance to his vomit he consumed large bowls of mush made from Jerusalem artichokes.

  During that period he still had the ability to address all men in their own tongues even when he himself didn’t understand the language, a great advantage in Jerusalem. In this manner he soon acquired a reputation for being able to transform a loquat or a jackass or even the unintelligible cries of hawkers into astonishing portents of grandiose events.

  In the course of time he had been known by many names he couldn’t now remember, but after his first haj in the eighth century he had permanently taken the name Aaron, or Harun as the Arabs pronounced it, in honor of Harun al-Rashid who figured so prominently in the tales he loved above all others, the Thousand and One Nights. It was also after his first haj that he had dedicated himself to defending Jerusalem and its past and future inhabitants against all enemies. Yet despite his good intentions he had to admit his accomplishments remained vague.

  Perhaps, as he said, because such a task is both immense and perpetual. Am I making myself clear?

  Not quite, replied Joe dizzily. Could you be just a little more specific?

  Haj Harun looked embarrassed.

  I doubt it but I’ll try. What about?

  Oh I don’t know. How about that time when you were practicing medicine. That’s a good profession, why did you give it up?

  Had to. The market for deadly nightshade disappeared overnight.

  Why?

  Someone started a rumor that wiped out the business. You see most of it was bought by women to enlarge the pupils of their eyes, to make them more beautiful. Well a young man whose wife was a customer of mine came to confide in me. They’d only been married a short time and it seems she wouldn’t take him in the mouth. She thought it was unnatural or unsanitary or both. So I advised him.

  What advice for such a problem?

  I told him to tell her it was perfectly natural and sanitary and furthermore there was no better substance in the world for instantly enlarging the pupils of the eyes. For best results, I said, the dosage should be repeated every few hours. It was only a little lie to help their marriage you see, or maybe it wasn’t a lie at all. Maybe it works, who knows. Do you know?

  It is true that I do not. What subsequent developments in the matter?

  Well he told her all that and she asked me, as her physician, if it was true and I said it was, and after that her husband went around looking so happily exhausted his friends began to wonder what was going on and asked him.

  And?

  And he told them, and they told their friends, and overnight all the men in Jerusalem were looking happily exhausted and I couldn’t sell any more deadly nightshade because the women were getting too much of the other substance.

  So the rumor that drove you out of business was started by yourself?

  Haj Harun moved his feet uneasily.

  It seems so.

  Not exactly the way to maintain yourself in a profession is it, would you say?

  No I guess not but look at it the other way. Didn’t I help to make a lot of marriages happier?

  Agreed, that help you must have been. Well what else?

  What else what?

  What else can you be specific about?

  Let’s see. Did you know that when the bedouin are starving they cut open the vein of a horse, drink a little and close the vein? I learned that on a haj.

  I did not know it. And if they’re horseless?

  They make the camel vomit and drink that.

  I see. I won’t ask about camel-less days.

  And that bedouin girls wear clusters of cloves in their noses? That they paint the whites of their eyes blue? That the hills around Kheybar are of volcanic origin? I learned all that on different hajes.

  I see. Where’s that?

  A haj? Where does it lead you mean?

  No, the place with the surrounding hills and so forth.

  Oh that’s near the great divide of the wadis of northern Arabia.

  Good. What else?

  Well once I supplied an Armenian antiquities dealer with some parchment that was fifteen hundred years old.

  Had some left over did you?

  I did. In the caverns. In a grave down there. I don’t know why, do you?

  Could you have been thinking of writing your memoirs fifteen hundred years ago and laid in a burial stash just in case?

  It’s possible, anything is. Anyway he was very desperate to get his hands on it. But you know, he wasn’t really an antiquities dealer at all.

  Is that a fact?

  No, not at all. He spent all his time practicing penmanship, learning to write with both hands, I used to go and talk with him sometimes. And you know he wasn’t really Armenian either. We spoke Aramaic together.

  What’s that?

  The language that was used in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. And now that I think of it, that’s probably the only time I’ve used it since then.


  And very sensible too, taking advantage of the opportunity I mean. Probably non-Armenians who write with both hands and speak Aramaic don’t turn up that often, not even in Jerusalem.

  Haj Harun stirred. He frowned.

  That’s true. You know I didn’t see him for seven years after that, not until he wandered into my shop one morning looking like a ghost. You’ve never seen a man so dusty. And his nose gone and one ear falling off and a bundle under his arm.

  Hard times in the desert, you think?

  It would seem so. He said something about having been in the Sinai and talking to a blind mole down there but it wasn’t clear at all, I couldn’t make any sense out of it. He was lost, poor man, he couldn’t even find his way around Jerusalem. He begged me to lead him to the Armenian Quarter, to the basement hole where he used to live there, so I did.

  Excellent. What event occurring thereby?

  None really. He began digging in the basement and dug down a few feet until he came to an old unused cistern. Then he put the bundle he’d been carrying in the cistern and filled up the hole. Why did he do that? Do you know?

  Not at the moment but fresh ideas are always coming to me.

  You see he didn’t realize I was there, he seemed to have lost hold by then. He was muttering all the time and passing his hand over his eyes as if he were trying to wipe something away.

  Muttering, losing hold, do you tell me so. Well that’s a good one too. Is there anything else now?

  Only those two discoveries I made as a child.

  Only two you say?

  The first had to do with balls.

  Playing kind?

  Well, my own.

  Oh I see.

  Yes. When I was a little fellow I always thought they were for storing piss. Looking at them it seemed reasonable enough, but then when I was a little older it turned out to be not that way at all.