Sinai Tapestry

by Edward Whittemore

  That’s true, it didn’t. What second and final discovery?

  That women and even emperors took shits just like I did. Once a day more or less with the same explosions and gases.

  A curious proposition.

  Yes. Very. It took me at least a year to get used to the idea and you know how long a year can be when you’re a child. Doesn’t it often seem like forever?

  Forever, true. Often.

  You know how I made those two discoveries?

  Not precisely I believe.

  Well it was from a blind storyteller who was chanting beside the road while an imbecile wrote down what he said. They were adult stories and I shouldn’t have been listening but I was. I was very young then.

  I see.

  Yes, added Haj Harun wanly. But isn’t it true we were all young and innocent once?

  By far the most striking influence on Haj Harun’s early years was his birthmark, an impressive phenomenon that had long been dormant and now appeared only on rare occasions.

  This birthmark was an irregular shade of faded purple that began above his left eye, gathered momentum around his nose, cascaded down his neck and swirled intermittently over his entire body in a restless proclamation of stops and starts, tentative here and emphatic there, now lashing out boldly and now retreating, lapsing and flowing by turns as it swung across his loins and drifted down one leg or the other to vanish near an ankle in the manner of a map of some fabulous land of antiquity, Atlantis perhaps or the unknown empire of the Chaldeans, or the known but constantly shifting empire of the Medes.

  When the purple pattern had still been largely visible there were those who professed to see in it a general layout of the streets of Ur before that city had been silted over by the primordial flood. To others it offered indistinct clues to the essential military strongpoints throughout the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, while still others claimed it was an accurate diagram of the oases in the Sinai.

  In any case the birthmark drew attention to Haj Harun early in his career. By the time of the first Isaiah he was a well-known figure in Jerusalem, variously respected or held in awe by men of many races and creeds.

  But during the Persian occupation a change set in. He was no longer considered totally reliable by either natives or foreigners, and when Alexander stopped off on his way to India, Haj Harun was already viewed as an obscure oddity, despite the fact that he had lived in the city much longer than anyone else. Certain disreputable soothsayers still sought his advice in private, but even they had to be mindful of public opinion and ignore him in the street.

  Once begun the erosion was rapid. Haj Harun’s confidence in himself steadily declined. He lost his forthright habits of speech and with them his fearless presentations. Well before the Roman era no one in Jerusalem took him seriously. By then he had already seen too many peoples come and go and witnessed too many eras erupting and ending. He had a muddled way of lumping all events together as if they had occurred yesterday, and when strangers happened to make the mistake of listening to him they were sent reeling in all directions, reality changing before their eyes as swiftly as the borders of the purple landscape that curled around his frail body.

  Therefore from about the time of Christ there was a total eclipse in Haj Harun’s credibility. The inhabitants of Jerusalem were forever piling new walls and gates and temples and churches and mosques on the ruins of the past, forever covering the old rubble with new bazaars and gardens and courtyards, forever massing and rearing new structures.

  They were busy and they simply didn’t have time to believe a man who had been born a thousand years before Christ. Whose mind, moreover, teemed with facts no one else had ever heard.

  10 The Scarab

  An Egyptian stone beetle and great secret scarab stuffed with the first arms for the future Jewish underground army.

  NEARLY THREE THOUSAND YEARS later in 1920, young O’Sullivan Beare was far from being ready to retire. As soon as he entered the Home for Crimean War Heroes he began to scheme, looking for ways to make money, hinting in various Arab coffee shops that he had extensive experience in illegal affairs. Before long a man of indeterminate nationality approached him.

  Smuggling arms? He nodded. He described his four years on the run in southern Ireland and the man seemed impressed. From where to where? Constantinople to here. For whom? The Haganah. What’s that? The future Jewish underground army. Who’s it going to fight, the English? If necessary. Good, bloody English.

  You’ll have the honor of bringing them their first weapons, added the man. If the money is right, thought Joe.

  Money. He remembered Haj Harun’s lost treasure map, which he was sure existed. The old Arab had referred to it only in passing as the story of my life, but Joe had been too intrigued to let the matter rest there.

  You wrote it down? he’d asked Haj Harun.

  The old Arab had waved his arms in circles. He couldn’t remember whether he had or not but to Joe the implication was that he had and later lost or misplaced it, this real or secret history of the riches he’d discovered in the caverns beneath Jerusalem, in the Old Cities he’d explored down there and then mixed up in his mind with tales from the Thousand and One Nights and the other fancies that obsessed him, a detailed guide to the incalculable wealth brought to Jerusalem over the millennia by conquerors and pious fanatics.

  He’d pressed Haj Harun about it.

  Are you sure you don’t have any idea what you could have done with it?

  With what?

  The story of your life.

  Haj Harun had shrugged helplessly and wrung his hands, certainly wanting to please his new friend by recalling this or anything else yet simply unable to, his memory slipping as he said and the years all sliding together, pumping his arms in circles and sadly admitting he just couldn’t be sure, just couldn’t say, the past was too confusing.

  Was he forgiven? Were he and Prester John still friends?

  That they were, Joe had answered, nothing changed that. But the treasure map had never left his mind and now he wondered whether to mention it to his new employer, who seemed to know a good deal about Jerusalem. Why not chance it? Carefully, without enthusiasm, he asked the man if he had ever heard of a document that supposedly included three thousand years of Jerusalem’s history, written by a madman and worthless, thought to have disappeared not too long ago.

  The man studied him curiously. Was he referring to the myth of an original Sinai Bible? An original version totally unlike the forgery later bought by the czar?

  The czar. Even the czar had been after it. So eager to get his hands on the map he’d been going around snapping up forgeries.

  That’s it. What do they say happened to it?

  Supposedly it was buried. But no one has ever seen it and of course it’s all nonsense, the fabrication of a demented mind.

  Demented certainly, nonsense of course, buried assuredly. Haj Harun unlocking his antique safe one evening and putting a foot on the ladder, a short time later padding stealthily away down a tunnel fifty feet below the ground for a long private night in the caverns.

  What do they say was in it exactly?

  The man smiled. That’s the point. Supposedly everything is in it.

  Everything. Persian palaces and Babylonian tiaras and Crusader caches, Mameluke plunder and Seleucid gold. A map so valuable the czar had been willing to trade his empire for it.

  When do they say it was buried?

  In the last century.

  Yes that would be right, Haj Harun would still have had his wits about him then. He’d have written it and hidden it and then forgotten where he’d hidden it when he was seized by the idea of his holy mission. He saw the old man stumbling around the walls of his empty shop staring into corners. Mission to where? The moon. Residence? Lunacy. Occupation? Lunatic.

  Jaysus that was his Haj Harun all right. Explorer of secret caverns and discoverer of two dozen Old Cities, mapmaker of the centuries, the former King of Jerusalem now reduced to
peering at blank walls and absentmindedly adjusting his helmet, which released a shower of rust to fill his eyes with tears and blur the figure he’d hoped to see in his nonexistent mirror.

  The man on the other side of the table was talking about routes from Constantinople. Trails, roads, paths, English border posts and sentries, defiles to be crossed at night. Joe held up his hand.

  Here now, aren’t we talking about the first arms ever to be smuggled to the Haganah? What’s an everyday wagon with a false bottom doing on such an occasion? Figs for cover? I have a better idea. There’s a giant stone scarab I happen to know about, hollow inside so that it could hold a lot. A scarab, I said. A giant Egyptian stone scarab.

  The man gazed at him. Joe lowered his voice.

  Picture it now. From the heart of the enemy’s camp a huge beetle inches across an ancient parched homeland one day to be fertile again. A relentless scarab creeping forward, an Egyptian scarab as patient and hard as stone because it is stone as still stone. A scarab as old as the pyramids, as determined as the people who will now escape those pyramids, a giant stone scarab scaling the slopes of the mountain to reach Jerusalem at last in the first light of a new day, an Egyptian stone beetle and great secret scarab stuffed with the first arms for the future Jewish underground army.

  O’Sullivan Beare leaned back and smiled, suspecting this man Stern might pay him well.

  He had the baking priest’s papers and Stern’s instructions, now all he had to do was get Haj Harun to agree to the trip, since there was no hope of parting him from the scarab. This morning, he said, I overheard someone mention a man named Sinbad. Who is he anyway? A local trader?

  Haj Harun abruptly stopped pacing along the walls.

  A local trader? Do you mean you’ve never heard of Sinbad’s mighty adventures?

  No. What were they then?

  Haj Harun took a deep breath and launched into a headlong account. Twenty minutes passed before the sundial chimes struck, causing him to pause.

  Midnight though the sun’s out, said Joe. When was the last time you went to sea?

  Haj Harun’s hands hung in midair.

  What?

  To sea.

  Who?

  You yourself.

  Me?

  Yes.

  Haj Harun lowered his head in embarrassment.

  But I’ve never been to sea. I’ve never left Jerusalem except to make my annual haj.

  The hell you say. Sinbad did all that and you’ve never been to sea even once?

  Haj Harun covered his face, overwhelmed by the pathetic failure of his life. His hands shook, his voice quivered.

  It’s true. How can I ever make up for it?

  Why we’ll make a trip of course. We’ll follow resolutely in the wake of Sinbad.

  I can’t. I can’t leave my treasures unprotected.

  No need to. No one can make off with the safe, it’s too heavy or too deeply rooted or both. Your helmet you can wear, Sinbad probably wore one himself. And the scarab we’ll take with us.

  We will? Would a ship captain allow it?

  We’ll tell him it’s cargo. We’ll say we’re in the antiquities business and we’re lugging it to Constantinople to sell for some lighter pieces. He’ll understand. Who wants to own something that heavy? Then when we come back we’ll say we couldn’t get a proper price for it, all neat and tidy and no one suspecting a thing. What do you say?

  Haj Harun smiled dreamily.

  Resolutely in the wake of Sinbad? After all these years?

  The same afternoon the sea voyage was proposed Haj Harun noticed something that bewildered him. All at once his new friend had begun to refer to his past as a Bible. More specifically he called it the Sinai Bible.

  What did it mean? Why was his past a Bible to his friend and what did it have to do with the Sinai? Was he being accepted as Moses’ spiritual companion and brother in the wilderness because his name was Aaron?

  He pondered the problem as best he could and kept returning to Moses. After forty years of wandering Moses had arrived somewhere, and although he had been wandering about seventy-five times that long he hadn’t gotten anywhere at all yet. But in the near future? Did his friend have faith in the eventual success of his mission? Was that what he was saying?

  Haj Harun peeked shyly at the crumbling plaster in his nonexistent mirror. He straightened his helmet.

  Was it blasphemous? Should he accept this new information as he had accepted so many apparently incomprehensible truths over the centuries?

  Humbly he agreed it was his duty. His friend was insistent and he couldn’t turn away from facts just because they seemed unlikely. Facts had to be believed. Although he had never suspected it until this moment, he, Haj Harun, was the secret author of the Sinai Bible.

  And once having accepted it as fact he easily fitted it into his background. That very evening he was referring to the Sinai Bible as his diary, an account of adventures recorded in the course of a Jerusalem winter during some earlier epoch of his life.

  By epoch you mean the last century? asked O’Sullivan Beare.

  Haj Harun smiled, he nodded. He couldn’t quite recall why he had written down what he had, but probably it had been to pass the time and forget the icy drafts in the caverns where it was likely he had been living then.

  Why this likelihood? asked O’Sullivan Beare.

  Haj Harun looked doubtful, then laughed.

  Because the caverns have been my winter residence as far back as I can remember.

  They have? Then you admit the Sinai Bible deals solely with what you found in the caverns?

  Oh yes indeed, answered the old man grandly. Didn’t you know that’s been my routine for some time now? Wandering around the Judean hills in the summer enjoying the sunshine, back to my shop and the streets of the Old City for the brisk clear air of autumn, the caverns of the past in winter and a haj in the spring? I’ve kept to that schedule for millennia and why not? What could be more exhilarating?

  The morning they were due to leave O’Sullivan Beare was locking up the safe when he noticed a small piece of paper caught in a crevice at the back. He pulled it out and passed it to Haj Harun.

  A reminder you wrote yourself before the Crusaders arrived?

  Not mine. It’s a letter in French.

  Can you read it?

  Of course.

  Well who’s it to then?

  Someone named Strongbow.

  Bloody myth, muttered O’Sullivan Beare, who had heard stories about the nineteenth-century explorer in the Home for Crimean War Heroes. Never existed. Couldn’t. No Englishman was ever that daft. What’s it say?

  It thanks this man Strongbow for a present he sent across the Sahara in honor of a special occasion.

  What’s the present?

  A pipe of Calvados.

  All that way and only a pint?

  No, pipe, a kind of measurement I believe. About one hundred and fifty gallons. Say about seven hundred bottles.

  And why not, might as well say that as anything else. What’s the special occasion?

  The birth of his nine hundredth child.

  Do you say so. Whose nine hundredth child?

  The man who wrote the letter.

  How’s he sign himself?

  Father Yakouba.

  Oh I see, a priest. Where’s he writing from?

  Timbuktu.

  What?

  That’s all there is except the number on the letter. They must have had a large correspondence.

  Why this opinion?

  The number is four thousand and something. The script is faded there.

  Well Jaysus it should be. A priest fathering nine hundred children? Seven hundred bottles of Calvados marching to Timbuktu? Four thousand letters each way? What’s the date on it?

  Midsummer night, 1840.

  What were you doing then?

  Haj Harun looked puzzled.

  Never mind. At least you weren’t tramping around the Sahara boiling your brains in the su
n. Come on, here comes the cart for the scarab.

  Sinbad’s hour arrived. In Jaffa they boarded a Greek caïque and a course was set for southern Turkey. Haj Harun was sick from the beginning, unable to go below decks because of the engine fumes and unable to keep his balance topside because he was so weak from vomiting. He was afraid the waves would wash him overboard and eventually O’Sullivan Beare had to lash him to the gunwale beside the scarab to keep him from tumbling around and hurting himself.

  The Irishman crouched astride the scarab holding its ropes like reins, riding it backward to Constantinople. The boat pitched violently. As each new wave broke over the bow Haj Harun clenched his jaw and closed his eyes. The waves smashed down, his body writhed, a stream of water shot out of his mouth.

  How many? shouted O’Sullivan Beare.

  How many what? groaned Haj Harun.

  Like I said, how many others know about the Sinai Bible?

  The bow of the boat sank out of sight, a wall of water loomed in the sky. Haj Harun pressed himself against the gunwale in terror. The sea swept over them with a roar and the boat began to climb.

  What did you say?

  Two or three.

  That’s all?

  At any given moment, but after all we’re talking about three thousand years of moments.

  Jaysus.

  Haj Harun screamed. A new wave rose majestically. Haj Harun turned his head.

  How many does that add up to all together then?

  Twelve?

  Only twelve?

  More or less.

  But that’s nothing at all.

  I know it’s nothing. Could the number have something to do with the moon or the tribes of Israel?

  Are you sure only twelve more or less?

  Haj Harun wanted to be brave. If he had been standing on solid ground in Jerusalem he would have straightened his shoulders at least a little and pushed back his helmet and fixed his gaze on the domes and towers and minarets of his beloved city. But here he was helpless.

  Yes, he whispered, trembling and ashamed. Then once again he tried to be hopeful as he had by invoking and aligning himself with the twelve tribes and the moon.

  There’s an old saying that there are only forty people in the world and we get to know only a dozen of them in our lifetime. Might that explain it?