by Nathan Erez
Now he suddenly saw that Gabi was silent and was looking at him. Was he waiting for an answer? In order not to appear to have lost the thread of their conversation, he went on the offensive.
“OK. We agreed that you would tell me everything you know about Luria. What else is there that you haven’t told me yet?”
“Nothing,” replied Gabi.
“Gabi, I want the truth. I have no doubt that after what you saw, you spied on Abadi.”
“I guess I should tell you about that as well. But heaven help you if you repeat so much as a word of what I tell you to anyone. It appears to me that Luria Investments has not really vanished. It simply changed its name and is now known as Cordoba Investments. OK, I’ve come clean. Now it’s your turn. What can you tell me about Luria Investments?”
“Actually, it’s a very simple story,” said Elijah, playing for time. He was able to spot a red flag whenever a person says, “it’s really simple,” or “trust me,” or “to tell you the truth,” and knew that you should be all the more suspicious of what that person has just told you. However, he could not think of a better opening. He realized that whatever he said from that point on Gabi would regard with suspicion, but he felt he had no choice.
“As part of my work, every so often I have to deal with ancient manuscripts. By their nature, in most cases these manuscripts are owned by extremely wealthy people. Who else can afford a medieval Italian handwritten Megillah scroll with gold-leaf adornments? However, these people are not able to judge the authenticity of these manuscripts, and that’s where we come in. In short, I did someone a very big favor, and by doing so I saved him a fortune and he really likes me. He gave me a big tip, and he suggested I invest it in Luria Investments. And now I have just realized that I helped this guy so much, and his advice to me turns out to be worthless, as Luria Investments no longer exists.”
Elijah left the office, heard Rina mumbling something, and only after he was on the stairs did he realize that she had said goodbye to him in a very friendly manner, while he had left without even acknowledging her, treating her like nothing more than a piece of furniture. At that point it would have appeared silly of him to return and say goodbye to her, so he simply forgot the whole episode. He was totally engrossed in trying to decipher what made Norman tick, and tried - unsuccessfully, as he had to admit - to make sense of the man and his powers. Norman seemed far too intelligent to be a run-of-the-mill businessman. In Elijah’s world, businessmen were basically illiterate, knowing very little beyond a smattering of arithmetic. And the few that were not illiterate confined their reading to boring material like balance sheets, over which they could pose for hours. The first thing they did when they got the newspaper was to open it to the dreary financial pages, where they showed a sickening obsession for news of which communications company is merging with another.
Norman, on the other hand, read academic treatises for pleasure, and in fact had been one of the few who had read Elijah’s published articles. Norman was too good to be an ordinary businessman and Elijah assumed that he had to be one of the investors or even one of the owners of Luria Investments.
When he reached the street and had put some distance between himself and Moldovan, he finally remembered the name he had been seeking, the other man who had been able to predict what would happen in the future, the man who had predicted that land in Silicon Valley would be worth millions: he was the man mentioned in Odel Weiss’s article which Norman had noted in the list. The man’s name was John McDonald, and there had to be a tie of some kind between the two.
The Sixth Sphere
The Ottoman Empire Conquest of Jerusalem
In 1516, about twenty-four years after the Jews had been expelled from Spain, Sultan Salim I, also known as Salim the Grim, took Jerusalem. It was a relatively easy conquest, because the remnants of the Mamluks, whom he had defeated near Aleppo in Syria, offered no resistance. Salim visited the Temple Mount, donated large sums of money to the Al-Aqsa mosque, and reduced the poll tax that was levied on Jews and Christians.
Scholars agree that Jerusalem flourished in the first century after the Ottoman conquest. Salim’s son, Suleiman the Magnificent, refurbished mosques, built marketplaces, repaired water conduits, excavated new water reservoirs, and set up a soup kitchen for the poor. The crowning glory of Suleiman’s work in Jerusalem was the building of a large wall, which encircled the city. In order to build the wall, Suleiman brought in the noted architect Mimar Sinan from Istanbul. It took years for the wall to be constructed, but it still stands to this day.
The Jews greeted the Turks enthusiastically. They had already learned from their coreligionists in Istanbul, Salonika, Izmir, and throughout the Ottoman Empire that the Turks treated the Jews fairly. Jewish historians note regretfully how different Jewish history would have been had the expulsion from Spain taken place after the Ottoman conquest of Jerusalem. Many of the Jews who had been expelled were afraid to go to Jerusalem under the Mamluks, but they would have had no such reservations under Ottoman rule and would have settled in the city joyfully.
The Ottoman conquest strengthened the region’s Jewish population and many Jews were drawn to it, primarily to Safed. Some of the greatest Kabbalists and Halakhic - Jewish law - geniuses were active in the country during that era, including the Kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria, known as the Ari, and Rabbi Joseph Caro, author of the Code of Jewish Law, the Shulhan Arukh. There were even those who wished to restore the ancient institution of the Sanhedrin - the supreme Jewish court of law - but internal conflicts prevented the pursuit of this idea.
The Ottomans ruled Jerusalem for just over four centuries. From time to time, emissaries of the Turkish sultan would visit Jerusalem to impose order on the city, but their efforts were generally unsuccessful. This was primarily due to the vehement opposition of the local leaders. Ottoman rule in Jerusalem was characterized by a slow but steady decline in the control exercised by the central government. The Ottoman Empire finally came crashing down with the defeat of the Turks in World War I.
Elijah hurried home. Orna was on duty at the hospital that evening, and Elijah had to take care of the girls. Orna, who tended to distrust Elijah’s decision-making processes, had left out some watercolors and paper, so the girls could paint. Elijah arrived home a few minutes before the babysitter was due back with the girls from the amusement park. He arranged the table carefully so as to make it easy for the girls to paint, and he placed his favorite colors close to the paper. However, as his mind was preoccupied, rather than leaving paintbrushes for the girls to work with, he placed a silverware setting alongside each of the paint sets, as if they were to have supper there. Metaphorically, he had merged the two functions.
Spain. Spain. Gabi had mentioned Spain twice. Once he had mentioned Spain as a possible destination for the supercomputer, and again he had noted that the letter with the lighthouse on it had arrived from Spain. Elijah made a mental note to see if he could find a link to Spain. He also sent a request by e-mail to his favorite librarian asking her to dig up information on Luria and Cordovero, as well as to try to track down the origin of the name “Luzzato”. He was convinced that all three names were of Jewish origin, and finding out more about them might help him to learn more about Norman.
Efrat and Michali burst into laughter when they saw their worktable with the silverware along with the paints. To them that served as inspiration and they painted pictures of plates full of food, placing the paint containers on the drawings as “items” in their “meals”. The red paint represented ketchup, while the yellow was mustard. They had the time of their lives. Each in her own way expressed the thought that it was much more fun to be with Daddy than with Mommy, their nursery school teachers, or their babysitters. Elijah looked at the drawings as objectively as any parent can, and thought to himself - objectively, of course - that their work was way above average for their age.
He was amused by his daughters’ high spirits, brought about by his absent-mindedness, and was i
ntrigued at how creatively the girls had dealt with the situation. He tried to concentrate as he scrambled eggs, cut up some vegetables, toasted bread, and removed a packet of sliced cheese from the refrigerator. He was again rewarded with compliments; how much more fun it was when Daddy prepared a meal.
After supper, the girls made no fuss about taking their showers and were soon ready for bed. Any time friends called Orna at that time of day, she would hang up abruptly, telling them, “I have to get the girls ready for bed.” It was a major project each night. Elijah was delighted at how easy it was to “get the girls to bed”. He would have time to study the Ottoman conquest of Jerusalem. In other words, he needed to prepare for a flight to Istanbul. Actually, there was very little for Elijah to catch up on with regard to the Ottoman conquest of Jerusalem. It was one of his favorite eras, and he was very familiar with it. He, nevertheless, decided to look through some of his books in order to remind himself of any isolated fact he might have overlooked.
He was soon deeply engrossed in reading about the construction of the city wall; suddenly he heard a plaintive voice:
“Daddy!” It was Michali. And here he had thought he had gotten them off safely to bed.
“Yes, Darling?”
“Could you come here? I’ve got a tummy ache.”
“Lie on your tummy. It will soon pass.”
Elijah wondered what type of local discord had led to the Jews of that era to abandon the idea of reconstituting the Sanhedrin.
“Daddy!”
“Yes, Michali?”
“I want you to come here. The door is bothering me.”
“What?” Elijah was not sure that he had heard correctly.
“The door to my room is bothering me.”
“Oh, all right... I’m coming.” Well, he could see that his was not the only creative mind in this house.
What does it mean when we are told that the sultans were unable to impose order on the city? How could they permit such a situation to continue?
“Daddy!”
“Yes, Michali?”
“You told me that you were coming already!”
“Mommy will be home soon. If you lie quietly, she will come and give you a kiss.”
“OK.”
“Good night, my precious.”
Elijah surfed the Internet. He found that the Kabbalist Luria was none other than the saintly Ari. The information on the Internet was very minimal, merely noting that the Ari was the founder of the later stream of Kabbalah. Unlike the earlier Kabbalah - that of the Zohar – the Kabbalah of the Ari offered redemption for the entire nation and not only for the individual. Elijah devoted some time to rethinking what he could remember about Norman’s mysticism. What was Norman seeking in the Kabbalah? Was it merely a business proposition, given the worldwide interest in it? Were its financial rewards so great that he was willing to sacrifice people’s lives in order to attain his goals? Or did it involve something so much more profound, something that Elijah had not yet discovered?
About five hundred years after the Turks came from Istanbul and conquered Jerusalem, Elijah was on a plane flying in the other direction, and he visualized to himself the causes for the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. It had probably fallen for the same two reasons that all empires fall. First, it had grown so large that it was impossible for the central government to control its far-flung territories. Second, it had become internally rotten, with the primary preoccupation of its bureaucrats being self-preservation, with little regard for what was good for the empire. In today’s world, no one country rules a distant land, with the locals administering it on behalf of the central government. Elijah found himself with plenty of time to dwell on this subject.
For some unfathomable reason, the Turkish customs officials appeared to be on a working-to-rule strike and it took him longer than anticipated to leave the airport. The long wait gave him time to glance through his guidebook and he even managed to catch a few winks in the First Class lounge.
Only when he finally arrived in Istanbul did he realize that the customs officials had not been the only ones on strike. The country, on the whole, had a rhythm and tempo that were geared to doing everything slowly. It was simply the way the country was run. The contrast to Hong Kong was incredible. It seemed that no one in Turkey was ever in a hurry to get anywhere or do anything, and every line and queue inched along at a snail’s pace. There was a long row of taxis waiting, and when Elijah’s turn came, the taxi driver, who had been busy playing backgammon, begrudgingly rose to help him with his luggage. It was clear that the driver mightily resented this unwelcome and uncalled-for intrusion into his leisure time.
The hotel was in the middle of the Old City, and the driver had to perform various acrobatic stunts just to end up parked outside the hotel entrance. It was a luxury, square-shaped hotel built around a massive atrium. In the atrium, a giant fountain sprayed colored water. The elevator was encased in glass, and it, too, was located inside the atrium. Totally at variance with the elevators in Hong Kong, the elevator in this hotel just crept its way up and down. It was clear to Elijah that if he wished to save time he should use the stairs, but the lethargy of the country had already infected him, and he waited patiently for the elevator.
Elijah’s cover story was that he was an Israeli professor in Istanbul on a short, private vacation, and had only come upon the manuscript by chance. That was why the trip would last but three days, and most of the time he would indeed be touring. To him, this did not exactly present any hardship, especially given the amount of money that would accrue to his account for these three days. In fact, after discovering the ties between Norman and the Luria Investment Company, he had no compunctions about bankrupting Norman.
After a brief tour of the city and of the Emir’s palace, he returned to the hotel, ate an early supper, and went to sleep happily. Those who do not have small children cannot imagine the joy of being able to sleep through an entire night without being disturbed even once. And a person with two small children knows very well that either or both of them would be sure to wake him at least once a night, and that the best one can hope for is that if both children wake him up in the course of a night, at least they should do so at the same time.
Luxuriating in his temporary freedom, Elijah got up later than usual the following morning. He had to be at the book bazaar at noon and passed hundreds of stores selling gold and silver jewelry in order to reach it. He wandered around the book bazaar, cast an eye on the store where his meeting was to take place, and continued strolling around. He spotted a very old Ketubah - a Jewish marriage agreement - which had evidently been copied from an even more ancient one. It was obvious to him that whoever had done the copying was not too familiar with the writing style he had tried to copy.
Soon it was time for his meeting. He returned to the store. Someone behind him appeared to have said something like “donmeh”, and it sounded as if the person was speaking to him. He entered the store with trepidation, and was relieved to find that the salesperson was a young woman. He wanted to explain what he was doing there, but before he could say a word the young woman said, “Good morning, Professor Shemtov. I am delighted that you came. My name is Ozlem.” Her English was impeccable.
The young woman could not have been more than twenty-three years old. She was thin and wore very old-fashioned glasses. Her hair was short and she had a very pleasant voice. Although she was not beautiful in the conventional sense of the word, there was something exotic and captivating about her looks.
“I thought I was supposed to meet Mr. Alfred,” replied Elijah, somewhat confused.
“Alfred is my brother. He should be here any moment,” said Ozlem with a smile. “He asked me to entertain the distinguished professor from Israel until he arrives. We are delighted that you found time to come to us during your vacation.”
Elijah sat down and enjoyed the apple-flavored tea that Ozlem brought him. He enjoyed talking to her, especially as she seemed to know everything th
at there was to know about Turkey and Istanbul. The name of the bookstore would translate as “the Tradition of the Book” and she mentioned to Elijah that it had been in the family for five generations and that it dealt with an eclectic selection of books and manuscripts. The family also owned an antique shop in the city’s commercial center.
A young man of about thirty entered the store as they were speaking and Elijah guessed correctly that it was Alfred. Alfred, too, wore glasses, and was somewhat overweight. He sported a short beard and an obvious tendency to baldness.
“Professor Shemtov,” exclaimed Alfred loudly, as he grabbed Elijah’s outstretched hand and shook it enthusiastically. “I’m really sorry about the delay. I hope that Ozlem treated you well.” Like his sister’s, his English was as good as that of a native speaker.
“Ozlem treated me very well indeed, and I learned a great deal from her,” said Elijah.
“I’m sure that you didn’t expect to see the manuscript here,” said Alfred with a smile. “The conditions here are deplorable. In order to see the manuscript, you’ll have to accompany me to our home in Asia.”
“In Asia?” blurted out Elijah, but he immediately recovered from his initial shock. “You, no doubt, mean the Asian section of Istanbul.”
