“This is very different from the gardens of Seville,” I said. “Ours had palm trees,” I told Hutia, “not this severe cypress. In the gardens of the Alcazar, the arches and columns were Moorish work, elegantly curved and scrolled. Mama used to take us, Rachel. Do you remember? The paths were paved with glazed tiles in rich colors, and a profusion of flowers cascaded over walls and around corners. In comparison, this Italian garden is formal and lacking in color. It is peaceful, though. I suppose it is a matter of getting used to it.”
“It is a new fashion,” Rachel said. “Signora Bianchini was telling me. It started in Rome and Firenze, and now everyone in Ancona wants an Italian garden. They are based on classical Greek and Roman models. She said that some of the statues and fountains were not suitable for children. I know what she meant, because I got up early this morning and slipped out to explore their garden. In the farthest corner, there was a small clipped maze, a thick mass of shrubbery that you couldn’t see through or over, so I went in, and at the center of the maze I found a marble statue of a fat little angel boy, what they call a putto. He was a fountain, and guess where the water came out?”
“Rachel!” I tried to sound stern, but I had to laugh. “You will have to practice guarding your tongue before we arrive in Istanbul. The freedom of speech you learned in Quisqueya will not do for Mama and Papa, not to mention a respectable Jewish congregation.”
“How can you say that I cannot guard my tongue?” Rachel demanded. “I kept the secret that I was Jewish and a girl from 1493 to 1495. You will not meet another girl my age with such discretion in all of Europe or the whole Ottoman Empire. And in Quisqueya, nobody thinks of such silliness as respectability or having to watch what you say even to people you love. Don’t you agree, Hutia?”
Hutia stood up and reached out his hands, drawing her up beside him.
“Let us not quarrel,” he said.
“You never quarrel, Hutia,” she said.
I had opened my mouth to say the same. But arguing with Rachel was a futile exercise, as I knew by long experience. And I was happy. Even squabbling in jest was out of place today. I stood.
“Let us stroll and explore the garden,” I said. “Do you think we will find a urinating putto hidden away in a corner?”
Rachel chuckled.
“Not in a synagogue garden,” she said.
She danced down the path, which was made of pebbles that crunched agreeably underfoot. Hutia and I followed her. We passed down a long alley of tightly clipped shrubs that met overhead to form arches. I breathed in the slightly astringent spiciness of the shrubbery.
“I do not understand all this clipping and confining of what is meant to grow freely,” Hutia said. “Indeed, I am just beginning to understand the idea of a garden.”
“Quisqueya itself is a garden,” Rachel said.
Rounding a corner in the hedge, Rachel, in the lead, almost ran into a man standing stock still in the middle of the path. He wore tallit and t’fillin. It seemed an odd place for anyone to say his prayers. He must have supposed himself alone in the garden, as we had. He was elderly and gaunt, his sunken cheeks visible above the rust and gray strings of his unkempt beard. He wore a black robe that looked as if it had seen better days and traveled many roads.
Rachel stammered out an apology for interrupting him. I echoed it, but he ignored me. Slowly, he lifted one hand and stroked Rachel’s flushed cheek with his finger. I had never seen sadder eyes.
“‘O daughter of my people,’” he said, “‘gird thee with sackcloth, and wallow thyself in ashes.’” His voice was cracked but still vibrated with a faint sonority, as if it had been beautiful in his youth. “‘Make thee mourning, most bitter lamentation, for the spoiler has most bitterly come upon us.’”
Rachel took his hand.
“May I help you, sir? My name is Rachel, Rachel Mendoza. Would you care to sit and talk with us? Will you tell me your name?”
She drew him into an arbor that shaded a marble bench and down onto the seat beside her. I raised my brows at Hutia. He shrugged. My sister would do what she would do and say what she would say. I could hardly wait to hand the care of her over to Mama.
“I am Moshe Nahman,” the old man said. “Like Moshe, I have wandered in the wilderness. Do you know what Nahman means? ‘The Lord will console.’ But Adonai cannot console me. We are cursed in His eyes.” He raised his head and shook his fist at heaven. “‘Thou hast given us like sheep appointed for meat and scattered us among the heathen.’”
“Did you come from Spain, sir?” Rachel asked. “We are from Seville, and we seek our parents.”
“From Girona, and then from Portugal,” Moshe Nahman said. “‘And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shall serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known.’”
“We have just learned that our parents have gone to Istanbul,” Rachel said. “It is said that the sultan of the Ottomans allows Jews to live in peace in his lands.”
“‘And among these nations,” Moshe Nahman said, “shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind.’”
“You must have suffered greatly,” Rachel said, stroking his hand. “I am so sorry. Did you fall into the hands of the Inquisition?”
“No.” He held her hand in both of his, which were twisted and begrimed, the joints swollen and bumpy. “‘Thou shalt beget sons and daughters, but thou shalt not enjoy them; for they shall go into captivity.’”
“I am so sorry!” Rachel repeated. “They took your children?”
The old man released her hand and tore at his beard. Tears spilled from his red-rimmed eyes and ran down his furrowed cheeks.
“‘Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people, and thine eyes shall look and fail with longing for them all the day long.’”
“Oh, no!” Rachel cried. “It is unbearable! How did it happen?”
“The king of Portugal, cursed be he, stole our children and sent them to the Isle of Crocodiles.” He shook his fist at the sky. “"Adonai! Adonai! ‘Thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons and covered us with the shadow of death.’”
Part Two
Istanbul
Chapter 23: Diego
We reached Istanbul just before sunset. We had bought appropriate garments in Edirne: comfortable baggy trousers and long surcoats for Hutia and me, a long-sleeved underdress, a simple light brown overdress, and an enveloping robe and head scarf for Rachel. After some discussion, Hutia and I chose nondescript caps. The dazzling white turbans we saw everywhere once we entered Ottoman lands were reserved by law for Muslims. A stiff red cap like an overturned flowerpot caught Hutia’s eye, but the vendor told us that they were made in Fez, a city of the Saadi sultanate in southern Morocco, and only foreigners wore them. We sold our doublets and Italian hats, along with Rachel’s dresses, for ready money in the Ottoman silver akçe. While we remained ignorant of the rules that governed Jewish behavior here, we could not afford to be conspicuous.
The vast dome of Hagia Sophia dominated the city. Built by the Byzantines to be the world’s greatest cathedral, it had been transformed into a mosque upon the conquest of Constantinople. At this hour, the light turned it into a great bowl of gold. We could see two minarets that the Turks had added, the slender towers from which the men known as muezzins called all Muslims to prayer. We could see many more minarets rising above the roofs of the city. As we looked, the call of the muezzins rang out in a melodious chant.
“Allāhu akbar . . . Lā ilāha illā-Allāh.”
The call to prayer was in Arabic, the language of Islam. “God is the greatest . . . there is no God but God.” A Turkish trader had been kind enough to tutor us on the road. We had left the caravan with enough mastery of Turkish to manage on our own while we made our way from Edirne to Istanbul. The road was very well traveled.
We had never been alone or lacked for someone to ask if we needed anything or saw something we did not understand. We had grown accustomed to the sight of Muslim men unrolling their prayer rugs, as they did now, and prostrating themselves, turbaned heads bowed to the ground.
I moved my mule up to stand beside Rachel’s, jerking on its rein when it tried to nip its companion. I put my lips close to Rachel’s ear and sang the Shema.
“Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echod.”
“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”
Jewish prayers and Muslim were not so very different. And if what we had been told was true, this Shabbat might find us in a synagogue, hearing a cantor sing these words aloud. As night fell, the Muslims, prayers completed, rolled up their prayer rugs and went about their business. Those with tents and wagons started fires by the roadside, while veiled women, who had withdrawn into the shadow of tent or wagon to pray, emerged and began to prepare their evening meal.
“Let us find a caravanserai,” I said. “We will begin our search for Papa and Mama in the morning.”
When we reached the inn, Rachel was relegated to the harem, the women’s quarters, while Hutia and I shared a bed in a room assigned to dhimmi, the Turkish term for non-Muslims in their territories. Most of those with whom we shared the room were Christians. We soon fell into conversation with the only Jew, a trader in textiles from Salonica who knew no one in Istanbul except those engaged in his own business.
“We have a thriving Jewish community in Salonica,” he said. “You might consider settling there if you find Istanbul too big and bustling for your taste. We have a booming textile industry. We also have Jewish printers in Salonica as good as any in Istanbul.” He lowered his voice. “Would you believe that there would not be a single printing press in the Ottoman Empire without the Jews? It is against the Turks’ religion to reproduce the written word in Arabic characters, that is, to print Turkish, Arabic, or Persian text. Their calligraphy is considered a holy art. It is beautiful, of course. But the net result is that the works we are allowed to print, in Hebrew as well as in the Latin alphabet, are those that will endure.”
“We seek my parents,” I explained. “They may have arrived months ago and established themselves so well that we have only to rejoin the family to feel at home in Istanbul. But I will remember your words about Salonica, just in case. Can you at least tell us where to find the Jewish quarter?”
“There is no Jewish quarter as such,” he said. “There are many neighborhoods where Jews are welcome, as long as they do not build their houses too close to mosques or to the homes of Muslims. That too is prescribed by their religion.”
“But there must be a synagogue,” I said.
He laughed.
“There are many. The oldest is the Ahrida Synagogue in Balat, to the east, not far from the Bosphorus. That has been here since before the Ottoman conquest. But your people, the Jews from Spain and Portugal, have formed their own congregations. Not all of them have built their own synagogues, since the construction of new houses of worship by the dhimmi is against the Sultan’s law as well.”
“So many rules,” I said, because I knew Rachel would have said it, had she been present.
“We may repair those that exist,” the man from Salonica said. “And we are not forbidden to gather in a building the congregation designates for community use. So in fact, we do have synagogues, as long as we do not build conspicuous houses of worship to rival the mosques. To tell the truth, sometimes the rules are enforced, and sometimes we can do what we will for a while, until the wind changes.”
“Can you direct me to the congregations of the Spanish Jews?” I asked.
“There are many of those too by now,” he said. “You might start by seeking out Gerush, which was established when the first Jews from Spain arrived.”
“A congregation of the exiled,” I said. “The name is apt.”
We set out the next morning, after swallowing a hasty breakfast of bread and dried figs, retrieving our mules from the stables, and loading all our possessions on their backs.
“How do you find something whose direction is away from any mosque?” Rachel demanded. “There are mosques everywhere!”
It was true: wherever we looked, we saw minarets thrusting up toward the sky. And those we could not see, because of some accident of the terrain, we heard five times a day when the muezzins called their people to prayer.
The innkeeper had advised us to keep Hagia Sophia on our right as we proceeded eastward to the central part of the city, which lay along the Bosphorus, the strait that divided Europe from Asia. As a guide, it left us a lot of territory to cover.
“It is also difficult,” I said, “to look for buildings large enough to hold a congregation that do not display the Star of David anywhere.”
“We must eliminate folk who cannot be Jews,” Hutia said, “and question all the rest.”
Rachel sighed.
“It will take forever,” she said.
“It is the best idea we have,” I said. “We need only ask those who are likely to know. We can eliminate men in white turbans.”
“And women with their faces and bodies completely veiled,” Hutia said. “Diego is right, Rachel.”
“We need not accost anyone wearing a cross around his neck,” I said.
“Very well,” Rachel said. “Let us try it.”
After carrying out this program for several hours, we were footsore and thirsty.
“We are closer to the Bosphorus,” Rachel said, reaching for her water skin, “and Hagia Sophia is still on our right, but we are no closer to finding Mama and Papa.”
“We can find ourselves lodging and a meal and take up the search tomorrow,” I said.
“No, let’s keep trying for just a little longer,” Rachel said.
As she spoke, a skinny, curly-headed boy dashed by almost under her mule’s nose. He was too young to grow a beard and wore neither turban nor cross. We could hear the muezzins begin the afternoon call to prayer, but the boy did not stop to pray.
“Hey!” Rachel said. “You, boy!” She encouraged her mule to shift its hindquarters, blocking the boy’s way forward. “I just want to ask you a question.”
The boy looked up at Rachel. He patted the mule’s nose and reached out to scratch it behind its long ears.
“Nice mule,” he said. “Does she like carrots?”
At Rachel’s nod, he produced a purplish-black carrot from about his person and fed it to the mule.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“Can you tell us where we might find the Jews of Istanbul?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said. “Which Jews do you want? The Iberians, the Germans, or the Greeks?”
“The Iberians,” she said.
“We have heard that a congregation called Gerush,” I said, “might know of the people we seek.”
The boy produced another black carrot for my mule, which had moved closer as we spoke, pushing its muzzle forward.
Rachel gave him a sunny smile.
“We are from Seville ourselves,” she said.
“Oh, in that case,” the boy said, “you don’t need to ask at Gerush. There’s a Seville congregation. They started it last year.”
“Can you take us there?” I asked.
The boy looked not at me, but at Rachel.
“Sure,” he said. “Will you give me a ride on your mule?”
An hour later, I stood with my fist poised to knock on the door of a house two stories high, made of wood and brick with a roof of ceramic tiles and a mezuzah fastened to the door post. I recognized the mezuzah. The small silver case with its filigree pattern of vines and roses had hung in our doorway in Seville. The house had no windows on the street. The rooms must face an inner courtyard, for I knew my mother could not live without light. Rachel was trembling with excitement. Hutia hung back, suddenly shy, with one hand on the gathered reins of the mules.
“Knock!” Rach
el urged me. “Go ahead. Do it!”
I banged on the wooden door hard enough to make my knuckles tingle. I could hear voices within the house, not loud enough to make out words or recognize voices. I thought two people called to one another. Then one voice fell suddenly while the other got louder. Someone must be coming to the door. It swung open. A young man I did not recognize, wearing a tallit, peered out at us, squinting as if nearsighted.
“Yes?”
Then I heard my sister Elvira’s voice call out, “Akiva? Who is it?”
A girl with a mop of hair as unruly as Rachel’s came flying out of an inner room, shrieking, “It’s them! It’s them!” My sister Susanna flung herself upon me, arms tight around my neck and legs clinging to my waist. “Mama! Papa! Come quickly! Diego and Rachel have come home!”
And then Rachel was sobbing in Mama’s arms, and Papa was lifting Susanna down so he could hug me himself, his beard wet with tears as it brushed against my cheek, or maybe the tears were mine.
“My boy, my boy!” Papa said. “Baruch Ha’shem! Thank God you’re home!”
Chapter 24: Rachel
In the morning, Papa and Diego left the house early to pray with the minyan, the men of the Seville congregation. Mama wept a little as she fingered Diego’s begrimed and tattered tallit. Along with his t’fillin, it had accompanied him since he first sailed with Admiral Columbus in 1492.
“I will launder it,” she said, “and Diego must have a new one. Fine silk cloth can be found in the Bedestan. But none will find the state of this one lacking in respect for Adonai. Every Jew in Istanbul knows a symbol of survival when he sees one.”
Journey of Strangers Page 15
