The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice

by Noah Gordon

  They were on ziaret, pilgrimage to the saintly tombs in Mecca.

  “Why do you wind leather about your arms in the morning?” Melek asked him.

  “It’s the Lord’s commandment,” he said, and he told Melek of how the order was given in the Book of Deuteronomy.

  “Why do you cover your shoulders with shawls when you pray, sometimes but not always?”

  He knew too few answers; he had picked up only superficial knowledge from observing the Jews of Tryavna. He fought to conceal his agony at being questioned. “Because the Ineffable One, Blessed be He, has instructed us to do these things,” he said gravely, and Melek nodded and smiled.

  When he turned away from the dervish he saw that Reb Lonzano was studying him with his heavily lidded eyes.

  35

  SALT

  The first two days were calm and easy, but on the third day the wind freshened and produced a heavy sea. Ilias skillfully maintained the keseboy between the dangers of the pirate ship and the pounding surf. At sunset sleek dark shapes rose from the blood-colored waters and curved and lunged alongside and under their boat. Rob shuddered and knew genuine fear, but Ilias laughed and said they were porpoises, harmless and playful creatures.

  By dawn the swells rose and fell in steep hills and seasickness returned to Rob like an old friend. His retching was contagious even to hardened sailors and soon the boat was filled with sick and heaving men praying in a variety of languages for God to put an end to their misery.

  At the worst of it Rob begged to be abandoned ashore, but Reb Lonzano shook his head.

  “Ilias will no longer stop to allow the Muslims to pray on land, for here there are Turkoman tribes,” he said. “Any strangers they don’t kill are made their slaves, and in each of their tents are one or two mistreated unfortunates who are in chains for life.”

  Lonzano told the story of his cousin who, along with two strapping sons, had attempted to move a caravan of wheat into Persia. “They were taken. They were bound and buried up to their necks in their own wheat and left to starve, not a pretty way to die. Finally the Turkomans sold the wasted bodies to our family for Jewish burial.”

  So Rob stayed in the boat and thus, like a series of bad years, passed an interminable four days.

  Seven days after they had left Constantinople, Ilias piloted the keseboy into a tiny harbor around which were clustered some forty houses, a few of them rickety wooden structures but most built of sun-hardened clay blocks. It was an inhospitable-looking port, but not to Rob, who ever after would remember the town of Rize with gratitude.

  “Imshallah! Imshallah!” exclaimed the dervishes as the keseboy touched the dock. Reb Lonzano recited a blessing. With darkened skin, a thinner body, and a concave belly, Rob leaped from the boat and walked carefully over the heaving earth away from the hated sea.

  Dedeh bowed to Lonzano, Melek blinked his eyes at Rob and smiled, and the dervishes went away.

  “Come,” Lonzano said. The Jews plodded as though they knew where they were going. Rize was a sorry place. Yellow dogs ran out and barked at them. They passed giggling children with sores in their eyes, a slatternly woman cooking something over an open fire, two men asleep in the shade as close as lovers. An old man spat as they went by.

  “Their main business is selling livestock to people who arrive by boat and continue through the mountains,” Lonzano said. “Loeb has a perfect knowledge of beasts and will buy for all.”

  So Rob gave over money to Loeb, and presently they came to a small hut next to a large pen containing donkeys and mules. The dealer was a wall-eyed man. The third and fourth fingers of his left hand were missing and in removing them somebody had done a crude job, but he had stumps that were useful to him as he pulled halters, separating the animals for Loeb’s inspection.

  Loeb didn’t bargain or fuss. Often he scarcely seemed to glance at an animal. Sometimes he paused to check eyes, teeth, withers, and hocks.

  He proposed to buy only one of the mules and the seller gasped at his offer. “Not enough!” he said angrily, but when Loeb shrugged and walked away, the sullen man stopped him and accepted his money.

  At another dealer’s they bought three animals. The third dealer they visited took a long look at the beasts they led and nodded slowly. He separated animals from his herd for them.

  “They know each other’s stock and he sees that Loeb will take only the best,” Aryeh said. Soon all four members of the Jewish party had a tough, durable little donkey for riding and a strong mule to serve as pack animal.

  Lonzano said they were only one month’s travel from Ispahan if all went well, and the knowledge gave Rob new strength. They spent a day traversing the coastal plain and three days in foothills. Then they were in the higher hills. Rob liked mountains, but these were arid and rocky peaks where foliage was sparse. “It is because most of the year there is no water,” Lonzano said. “In the spring there are wild and dangerous floods and then the rest of the time it is dry. When there is a lake, it is likely to be salt water, but we know where to find sweet water.”

  In the morning they prayed, and afterward Aryeh spat and looked at Rob in contempt. “You don’t know shit. You are a stupid goy.”

  “You are the stupid one and you speak like a swine,” Lonzano told Aryeh.

  “He doesn’t even know how to lay on the tefillin!” Aryeh said sullenly.

  “He has been brought up among strangers and if he doesn’t know, this is our opportunity to teach. I, Reb Lonzano ben Ezra ha-Levi of Masqat, shall give him some of the ways of his people.”

  Lonzano showed Rob how to lay on the phylacteries correctly. The leather was wound three times around the upper arm, making the Hebrew letter shin, then it was wrapped seven times down the forearm and across the palm and around the fingers in such a way as to spell out two more letters, dalet and yud, forming the word Shaddai, one of the Unutterable’s seven names.

  During the wrapping there were prayers, among them a passage from Hosea 2:21-22: And I will betroth thee unto Me forever … in righteousness and in justice, and in loving kindness and in compassion. And I will betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know the Lord.

  Repeating them, Rob began to tremble, for he had promised Jesus that despite donning the outer appearance of a Jew he would remain faithful. Then he recalled that Christ had been a Jew and doubtless during his lifetime had laid on the phylacteries thousands of times while saying these same prayers. The heaviness in his heart lifted and so did his fear, and he repeated the words after Lonzano while the straps around his arm empurpled his hand in a way that was most interesting, for it indicated that blood had been trapped in the fingers by the tight binding, and he found himself wondering whence the blood had traveled and where it would go from the hand when the straps were removed.

  “Another thing,” Lonzano said as they unwrapped the phylacteries. “You mustn’t neglect to seek divine guidance because you don’t have the Tongue. It is written that if a person cannot say a prescribed supplication, he should at least think of the Almighty. That, too, is prayer.”

  They were not a dashing sight, for if a man isn’t short there is a certain lack of proportion when he rides an ass. Rob’s feet barely cleared the ground, but the donkey was easily capable of bearing his weight over long distances and was an agile beast, perfectly suited for going up and down mountains.

  He didn’t like Lonzano’s pace, for the leader had a thornbush switch and kept tapping his donkey’s flanks with it, urging it on.

  “Why so fast?” he growled finally, but Lonzano didn’t bother to turn.

  It was Loeb who answered. “Bad people live near here. They’ll kill any travelers and especially have a hatred for Jews.”

  The route was all in their heads; Rob knew nothing of it and if any mishap should occur to the other three, it was doubtful he would survive this bleak and hostile environment. The trail rose and fell precipitously, writhing between the dark and brooding peaks of eastern Turkey. Late in the afternoo
n of the fifth day they reached a small stream moving moodily between rock-strewn banks.

  “The Coruh River,” Aryeh said.

  The water in Rob’s flask was almost gone but Aryeh shook his head when he started for the river.

  “It runs salty,” he said bitingly, as if Rob should have known, and they rode on.

  Rounding a bend at dusk, they came upon a boy tending goats. He sprang away when he saw them.

  “Shall we go after him?” Rob said. “Perhaps he runs to tell bandits we are here.”

  Now Lonzano looked at him and smiled, and Rob saw that the tension was leaving his face. “That was a Jewish boy. We’re coming to Bayburt.”

  The village had less than a hundred people, about one-third of them Jews. They lived behind a stout, high wall built into the mountainside. By the time they reached the gate in the wall it had been opened. It closed behind them at once and was locked, and when they dismounted they had security and hospitality within the walls of the Jewish quarter.

  “Shalom,” the Bayburt rabbenu said without surprise. He was a small man who would have looked perfectly natural astride a donkey. He had a full beard and a wistful expression about the mouth.

  “Shalom aleikhum,” Lonzano said.

  Rob had been told in Tryavna of the Jewish system of travel, but now he saw it as a participant. Boys led their animals away for care, other boys collected their flasks to wash them and fill them with sweet water from the town well. Women brought wet cloths that they might wash, and they were led to fresh bread and soup and wine before gathering in the synagogue with the men of the town for ma ‘ariv. After the prayers they sat with the rabbenu and some of the town leaders.

  “Your face is familiar, no?” the rabbenu said to Lonzano.

  “I’ve enjoyed your hospitality before. I was here six years ago with my brother Abraham and our father of blessed memory, Jeremiah ben Label. Our father was taken four years ago when a small scratch on his arm mortified and poisoned him. The will of the Most High.”

  The rabbenu nodded and sighed. “May he rest.”

  A grizzled Jew scratched his chin and broke in eagerly. “Do you recall me, perhaps? Yosel ben Samuel of Bayburt? I stayed with your family in Masqat, ten years ago this spring. I brought copper pyrites on a caravan of forty-three camels and your uncle … Issachar?… helped me sell the pyrites to a smelter and obtain a load of sea sponges to take back with me for a fine profit.”

  Lonzano smiled. “My Uncle Jehiel. Jehiel ben Issachar.”

  “Jehiel, just so! It was Jehiel. Is he in health?”

  “He was in health when I left Masqat,” Lonzano said.

  “Well,” the rabbenu said, “the road to Erzurum is controlled by a scourge of Turkish bandits, may the plague take them and all forms of catastrophe dog their steps. They murder, they exact ransom, whatever they please. You must go around them, over a small track through the highest mountains. You won’t lose your way, for one of our youths will guide you.”

  So it was that early the next day their animals turned off the traveled track shortly after leaving Bayburt and picked their way over a stony path that in places was only a few feet wide, with sheer drops down the mountainside. The guide stayed with them until they were safely back on the main trail.

  The following night they were in Karakose, where there were only a dozen Jewish families, prosperous merchants who were under the protection of a strong warlord, Ali ul Hamid. Hamid’s castle was built in the shape of a heptagon on a high mountain overlooking the town. It had the appearance of a galleon-of-war, dismantled and dismasted. Water was brought to the fortress from the town on asses, and cisterns were kept full in case of siege. In return for Hamid’s protection, the Jews of Karakose were pledged to keep the castle’s magazines full of millet and rice. Rob and the three Jews didn’t glimpse Hamid but left Karakose gladly, not wishing to remain where safety lay at the caprice of a single powerful man.

  They were passing through territory that was extremely difficult and dangerous, but the travel network was working. Each night they had a renewed supply of sweet water, good food and shelter, and advice about the countryside ahead. The worry lines in Lonzano’s face all but disappeared.

  On a Friday afternoon they reached the tiny mountainside village of Igdir and stayed an extra day in the small stone houses of the Jews there in order that they need not travel on the Sabbath. Fruit was grown in Igdir and they gorged gratefully on black cherries and quince preserves. Now even Aryeh relaxed and Loeb was gracious to Rob, showing him a secret sign language with which Jewish merchants in the East conducted their negotiations without speaking. “It’s done with the hands,” Loeb said. “The straight finger stands for ten, the bent finger for five. The finger grasped so only the tip is showing is one, the whole hand counts for one hundred, the fist for one thousand.”

  He and Loeb rode side by side the morning they left Igdir, bargaining silently with their hands, making deals for nonexistent shipments, buying and selling spices and gold and kingdoms to while away the time. The trail was rocky and difficult.

  “We’re not far from Mount Ararat,” Aryeh said.

  Rob considered the towering, unwelcoming peaks and the sere terrain. “What must Noah have thought on leaving the ark?” he said, and Aryeh shrugged.

  At Nazik, the next town, they were delayed. The community was built down the length of a large rocky defile, with eighty-four Jews living there and perhaps thirty times as many Anatolians. “There will be a Turkish wedding in this town,” they were told by the rabbenu, a skinny old man with stooped shoulders and strong eyes. “They have already begun to celebrate and they are excited in a mean way. We do not dare leave our quarter.”

  Their hosts kept them locked within the Jewish section for four days. There was plenty of food in the quarter, and a good well. The Jews of Nazik were pleasant and polite, and although the sun was fierce there the travelers slept in a cool stone barn on clean straw. From the town Rob heard sounds of fighting and drunken revelry and the breaking of furniture, and once a hail of stones came raining down on the Jews from the other side of the wall, but no one was injured.

  At the end of four days all was quiet and one of the rabbenu’s sons ventured forth to find that the Turks were exhausted and docile following the wild celebration, and the following morning Rob left Nazik gladly with his three fellow travelers.

  There followed a trek through country devoid of Jewish settlement or protection along the way. Three mornings after they left Nazik they came to a plateau containing a great body of water surrounded by a wide perimeter of white cracked mud. They got down from their donkeys.

  “This is Urmiya,” Lonzano told Rob, “a shallow salt lake. In the spring, streams carry minerals here from the mountainsides. But no stream empties the lake, and so the summer sun drinks the water and leaves the salt around the edges. Take a pinch of salt and place it on your tongue.”

  He did, gingerly, and made a face.

  Lonzano grinned. “You are tasting Persia.”

  It took him a moment to get the meaning. “We are in Persia?”

  “Yes. This is the border.”

  He was disappointed. It seemed a long way to travel for … this. Lonzano was perceptive. “Never mind, you will be enamored of Ispahan, I guarantee it. We had best remount, we still have long days to ride.”

  But first Rob pissed into Lake Urmiya, adding his English Special Batch to Persia’s saltiness.

  36

  THE HUNTER

  Aryeh made his loathing plain. He was careful to watch his words in front of Lonzano and Loeb, but when the other two were out of earshot his comments to Rob were apt to be cutting. Even when speaking to the other two Jews, he was often less than pleasant.

  Rob was larger and stronger. Sometimes it took an act of will to keep from striking Aryeh.

  Lonzano was perceptive. “You must ignore him,” he told Rob.

  “Aryeh is a …” He didn’t know the Persian word for bastard.

  �
�Even at home Aryeh wasn’t the most pleasant of men, but he does not have the soul to be a traveler. When we departed from Masqat he’d been married less than a year and he had a new son he didn’t want to leave. He has been sullen ever since.” He sighed. “Well, we all have families, and often it is hard to be a traveler far from home, especially on the Sabbath or a holy day.”

  “How long have you been gone from Masqat?” Rob asked.

  “This time it is twenty-seven months.”

  “If this merchant’s life is so hard and lonely, why do you follow it?” Lonzano looked at him. “It is how a Jew survives,” he said.

  They circled the northeast corner of Lake Urmiya and soon were in high, bare-earth mountains again. They stayed overnight with Jews in Tabriz and Takestan. Rob could see little difference between most of these places and the villages he had seen in Turkey. They were bleak mountain towns built on stony rubble, with people sleeping in the shade and stray goats near the community well. Kashan was like that too, but Kashan had a lion on its gate.

  A real lion, huge.

  “This is a famous beast, measuring forty-five spans from nose to tail,” Lonzano said proudly, as if it were his lion. “It was slain twenty years ago by Abdallah Shah, father of the present ruler. It played havoc on the cattle of this countryside for seven years and finally Abdallah tracked and killed it. In Kashan there is a celebration each year on the anniversary of the hunt.”

  Now the lion had dried apricots instead of eyes and a piece of red felt for a tongue, and Aryeh scornfully pointed out that it was stuffed with rags and dried weeds. Generations of moths had eaten the sun-hardened pelt down to bare leather in spots, but its legs resembled columns and its teeth were still its own, large and sharp as lance-heads, so that when Rob touched them he felt a chill.