Jericho Mosaic jq-4

by Edward Whittemore

  Bell laughed, sensing more devious schemes at work. A holy man who drinks all day? he asked.

  Once more Abu Musa majestically scattered smoke, wafting aloft the mouthpiece of his nargileh as if he were a magician dispensing illusions with a wand.

  My friend, he murmured, we live in the lowest and oldest town on earth, far below sea level where facts and the air lie heavy and have done so for ten millennia, much nearer the core of the world than people elsewhere.

  Who can be concerned with a little sipping in such an ancient dry hot place? And anyway, no one's claiming you're a saint, just holy. Of course while I was thinking my thoughts back then I also asked myself why I spend so much time on your porch talking and talking and talking, and listening. According to Jericho time I'm nearly three hundred years old, counting four summers and therefore four years for each one on a normal calendar, and it's inconceivable I should be a fool at such an advanced age. No, impossible, surely I should be wise with so many years behind me, God willing. And so? And so I considered these flowers within my head and decided the reason I like to sit here and talk and talk with you, and listen, is because I'm in the company of a holy man with whom such things are right and good and the one true way of the one true God.

  Don't you see? It's all very clear when you think about it.

  Bell laughed again. Well it was clear enough, he thought, given Jericho time and his friend's logic. Why shouldn't a three-hundred-year-old patriarch assign himself grand motives for his everyday habits?

  But Bell also sensed the old Arab was only partly joking and that disturbed him, because Bell knew there was nothing admirable about his retreat from the world, which was caused solely by his unbearable ugliness.

  He knew he was a drunkard and a coward who was terrified by the horror of his own face, which to him was a brutal cause for shame, a mark of his utter uselessness as a human being. Indeed, Bell sometimes felt he wasn't even qualified to be called human. Others might think he acted out of humility, but to Bell his ways weren't those of humility but of abject humiliation. No one could ever know what the horror of his face meant

  — to him.

  For a time, it was true, he had tried to hide reality from himself in the secret conceits of espionage. But all of that clever subterfuge had ended long ago in the Monastery in Egypt. By becoming a recluse in Jericho he had intended to render his soul naked through a life without visible purpose, and the reverence he now saw in people's eyes was causing him a new agony of self-doubt, because he felt he was slipping back into deception. Even the respect shown him by Abu Musa was painful in a way it had never been before.

  Bell abhorred deception because of his face. But he also loved Abu Musa and was always careful to hide his pain, for the simple reason that he felt it was his to bear and shouldn't be inflicted on others.

  ***

  Besides Abu Musa, the only regular visitor to Bell's north verandah was his neighbor from the adjoining orange grove, a eunuch and monk who was the biggest man anyone had ever seen. Even Abu Musa looked small when standing next to the great chocolate bulk of Moses the Ethiopian, a resident of Jericho since Turkish times.

  The giant had arrived in Palestine early in the century, a retainer to an elderly Ethiopian princess who had come to the Holy Land to live out her last days in pious Christian seclusion. After a few winters on the windy heights of Jerusalem the princess had drifted down to Jericho, where the perpetual warmth was more to her liking. She built a small bungalow and a private chapel in the middle of an orange grove and there devoted her days to prayer and contemplation. Her royal retinue, a half-dozen monks and nuns, had their tasks to perform and saw to her needs. Moses was the youngest among them and it was his duty to sit by the gate of the orange grove and guard the solitude of her tiny estate. This he did from first light to last, wearing the brilliant yellow robes of his native land while positioned beneath a royal poinciana or flamboyant tree. The combination of colors thereby presented to passing villagers was startling even for Jericho — bright yellow and gleaming chocolate, flaming orange-red and deep green. Moses took his role as gatekeeper seriously and managed never to smile while the princess lived, but he also utterly failed to look fierce because he was such a gentle young man by nature.

  Once a week the princess had gone into town to select the hot peppers that were used in such abundance in her dishes. She did this with great care, feeling and sniffing each pepper, accompanied on her shopping excursions by a nun-in-waiting and by Moses, who towered along behind the two elderly women delicately holding a parasol over their heads, by his sheer size enforcing an air of decorum where they passed.

  On one such occasion a camel in the marketplace had suddenly taken a manic turn and come charging toward the princess, legs flailing, dangerously out of control. Moses, murmured the little princess. Whereupon the giant, without lowering the parasol that shaded his mistress, stepped in front of the crazed beast and reached an arm over its neck and shoulders and gave the camel a heave that spun it up and over and dropped it on its back in the dust. The frothing camel was so surprised it lay with all four legs churning busily in the air, as if it thought it had broken free from the earth and was flying. At the same moment the camel's heavy upper lip fell back to produce a demented upside-down grin, quite friendly. The giant smiled in return and the noble procession proceeded on its way, and thereafter the fearsome strength of Moses was public knowledge.

  When the princess finally died she left her property in Jericho to the Ethiopian church in Jerusalem, to serve as a monastery. Naturally Moses stayed on in monastic retirement in the orange grove next to Bell's, a soft-spoken man of kindly humor given to wide smiles now that he no longer had to perform duties as a gatekeeper. He and Abu Musa had gotten into the habit of playing shesh-besh every day, either in the late afternoon or early evening, and when Bell became their friend they moved their game to his front porch, which was convenient for everyone. Bell himself never played, preferring to relax in his chair as he sipped arak and listened to their conversations.

  These leisurely sessions over the shesh-besh board, Bell noticed, had a peculiar way of exploring the universe without appearing to do so. Each of the two players, the elderly Arab and the elderly Ethiopian, merely related his thoughts of the day between throws of the dice, without apparently commenting on what the other said. The shesh-besh games had been going on for forty years, however, and Bell was forever amazed at this unsurpassed method of friendship the two men had devised for themselves. Moses the Ethiopian tended to talk about God and the river Jordan and his departed princess, while Moses the Arab talked about flowers and fruit trees and hashish. But somehow, in one guise or another, most of human experience seemed to find its way into their rambling monologues, which for Bell were thereby transformed into comprehensive philosophies of the highest order.

  In addition to the small estate next to Bell's orange grove, the princess had owned a bungalow down beside the Jordan where she retired on certain Christian feast days, to pray on the banks of the river and wade in the water in the spirit of John the Baptist. When she died this property was also bequeathed to the church. An ancient Ethiopian monk lived alone in the bungalow as an anchorite, a tiny frail man, mostly deaf, who had shrunk with the years until he was little bigger than a child. One of Moses's duties was to go down to the river every few weeks to visit the anchorite, to bring the man the few vegetables he required and keep the place in good repair.

  For these excursions Moses made use of the dead princess's elegant steam coach, an open touring vehicle from the experimental days of the automobile, specially built in Italy for the princess early in the century. She had chosen a steam-driven automobile after having been advised that gasoline, then rare, might be hard to come by in the Middle East. Wood fired the steamer's boiler and Moses preferred olive wood, following the tradition of professional bakers of bread in the Middle East who always used olive wood in their ovens, because of its superior scent and slow even heat.

 
; The coach was a baroque masterpiece. Despite its great age it appeared almost new, for in all its many decades it had made only one crosscountry jaunt of consequence, the triumphant journey from its point of delivery at the port of Jaffa up the hills to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem down the hills to Jericho. Thereafter it had only been used for the occasional trip over to the Jordan River and back, a matter of a few miles, and the fiercely dry air of Jericho had preserved it as easily as if it were just another paleolithic artifact.

  Reflecting its era and an Italian concept of Ethiopian princessly grandeur, the steamer resembled a huge horseless carriage fit for a coronation. A gigantic wooden statue of the Lion of Judah, symbol of the Ethiopian royal house, reared at the front of the coach. The carriage itself was all polished woodwork and shiny black leather with gleaming brass fittings, standing on wooden-spoked wheels half as tall as a man. Fold-down steps gave access to the lofty perch in front for the driver and the spacious cockpit in back for the passengers. An array of thick leather belts strapped down the barrel-shaped hood over the steam engine, as if the forces hidden beneath the hood were so dangerous they might try to break out at any moment. And a long menacing whip stood in a holder beside the driver's seat, on guard and ready to beat back any beast of the field or jungle which foolishly got in the way of the steamer.

  To have some company and make a day of the outings, Moses took Abu Musa and Bell with him on his trips down to the river. The day began before first light with the sound of wood being chopped — Moses preparing his fuel for the excursion. In due time he fired up the boiler and the magnificent coach came rolling around the corner to Bell's front gate, where Abu Musa and Bell were waiting. Moses always wore racing goggles when he was at the wheel, his bright yellow robes gusting dramatically in the early morning sun.

  All three men waved in greeting and Abu Musa and Bell climbed aboard. Moses filled the entire front seat so his two friends sat in back. Bell, thin and austere in white, pressed himself into a corner and held down his floppy straw hat with the claw of his bad hand. Abu Musa spread himself and his pale blue galabieh over the rest of the seat, a dazzling white keffiyeh on his head for the occasion, set at a rakish angle above his hawklike face.

  Are we ready? boomed Moses, studying the gauges in front of him.

  Check, replied Bell. Onward, roared Abu Musa.

  Moses turned valves and pulled levers and with a whoosh they glided away. Driving was a solemn concern to Moses and he peered intently through his goggles at the road ahead, maneuvering with care and continually tooting the rubber bulb of the hand-horn to alert stray goats and children. Bell sat stiffly erect in his corner but Abu Musa swayed from side to side and merrily waved to everyone they passed, in the manner of some benign desert chieftain reviewing his slaves.

  After a stately turn around the dusty central square, where they scattered chickens and raised a chorus of ululations, they headed out of town past the fruit trees and the banana plantations to the edge of the cultivated lands. Once civilization was behind them Moses let fly with the valves and the levers and the coach shot forward, gaining speed on the flat wastes of the plains of Jericho, the expanse of the Dead Sea shimmering deep blue off to the right, the high ridge of the Moabite hills looming up in the distance in front of them, the thin line of green which marked the banks of the river directly ahead.

  An advantage of the steamer's engine was its lack of noise, so they floated across the desolate landscape in near-silence, not even disturbing the gazelles in the desert where they passed. It was a sensation of flying, thought Bell, of swooping along a few yards above the earth with all the carefree grace of a bird.

  A journey on a magic carpet, Abu Musa called the trip, and the silence of the smooth ride was so eerie Bell sometimes wondered if he hadn't been transported across the centuries to some ageless tale from the Thousand and One Nights.

  They floated up to the banks of the river and came to rest near the bungalow. Moses went to find the anchorite and to see to his duties around the place, while Abu Musa and Bell sought out a shady grove beside the water. Bell usually brought a book with him as cover for the hours of daydreaming ahead. But Abu Musa, decisively shameless in old age, at once hoisted up the skirts of his galabieh and went wading boldly into the shallows to amble away the entire morning, playing with sticks and squealing and launching toy rafts on the currents, as delighted in the miracle of flowing water as the youngest of his great-nephews would have been.

  Toward noon, his labors done, Moses joined them on the river bank with the picnic hamper packed by Abu Musa. With their feet dangling in the water they feasted in the shade, devouring pots of thick goat's cheese flavored with pepper and olive oil, whole onions and tomatoes and cucumbers and ragged hunks of coarse chewy bread, the rich fare washed down with quantities of fiery arak. After lunch Abu Musa and Bell slept, to awake much later to the haunting strains of an Ethiopian chant and the thump of an African drum drifting down from upstream, where Moses and the shy anchorite were conducting an impromptu service of prayer on the shores of their holy river, far from home.

  All too soon came the silent journey back to Jericho, across the stark somber valley in the spreading twilight.

  Their magic carpet flew west toward the purple Judean hills and the orange-red sky glowing with memories of the fast-falling sun, the moon and the evening star already fixed in their places for the long night ahead. To Bell that was always the magical time in the desert, when the sun finally sank beneath the hills and the land softened into a thousand colors for a few brief moments, as the sands and the dark sea prepared to receive the full might of another vast starry night over Jericho.

  On the evenings of their excursions to the river there was never a shesh-besh game on Bell's front porch. The friends were exhausted from their day's journey and retired early to their separate concerns. Moses to chant prayers in his monastery chapel for the soul of the anchorite who dwelled by the river. Abu Musa to recount his splendid knee-deep adventures with rafts and currents to a crowd of sleepy children. And Bell to sit beside his grape arbor and gaze for hours at the night sky from his still point in eternity, once more a witness to the entire universe laid bare to the eye of man in all its incomprehensible glory, utter joy in his heart at the beauty of the world.

  EIGHT

  It was around the middle 1960s that Bell got to know Halim, the mysterious and appealing adventurer from Damascus. When strangers turned up in Jericho and wanted to see Bell, it was common practice for them to pay a call first on the man known locally as his protector, Abu Musa. Without an introduction from Abu Musa the hermit generally remained inaccessible, not for a passing word or two but certainly for a more meaningful visit. Abu Musa took his role seriously and guarded his friend's privacy with vigor, turning away the merely curious with consolatory tales of antique Turkish trains blowing up in the wastes. So Bell was surprised when Abu Musa suddenly began insisting he meet this man called Halim whom Abu Musa didn't really seem to know.

  At first I thought he was a Palestinian with Syrian connections, said Abu Musa, but then I decided he must be a Syrian with Palestinian connections. His accent and manner tend to move back and forth as it suits him, now Palestinian, now Syrian. He is Syrian after all, as it turns out, but he's also much more, a kind of conscience for the Arab world, a visionary and a man of ideas who's above any one nation or cause. A remarkable man for one so young, great things will come of him. Men look to him instinctively and perhaps he's already a secret leader, who can say.

  Bell laughed. It didn't make any sense to him. And how do you know him? he asked.

  Through a cousin in Damascus, replied Abu Musa, puffing his waterpipe. Oh he comes very highly recommended, but that's not the point. The way he talks is the point, and his eyes and his smile and his grasp of people and events. Men like Halim are rare, as rare in their way as you are.

  Why does he come to Jericho? asked Bell.

  To visit the refugee camps outside of town, replied Abu Musa. He
has contacts there, naturally. Such a man would have contacts everywhere, it's only to be expected.

  Is he political then? asked Bell.

  In some manner, I suspect, although I don't know anything about that, nor do I care. I would say, rather, that he's very deep into the affairs of men in all ways.

  This time Bell didn't laugh. Instead he nodded, thoughtful, perplexed by Abu Musa's enthusiasm. It was true that Abu Musa had no interest in politics and usually avoided men who were involved in politics.

  I turn my back on all of them, Abu Musa often said. They disgust me because they haven't learned the simplest truths yet. Having lived for three hundred years in our Jericho time, I know man's political endeavors are devious and futile and completely without merit when compared to even one flowering fruit tree, which is truly a boundless philosophical subject. . . .

  Yet somehow the stranger from Syria had made a powerful impression on Abu Musa. Why did he so much want Bell to meet the man? Was it because he felt the Syrian was a visionary, and therefore perhaps a seeker on his way to becoming holy? Was the purpose of their meeting in order for the man to be instructed in some unknown way in the shadowy and undefined vocation Abu Musa had conjured up for Bell?

  These thoughts made Bell uneasy as he was always made uneasy by any reference, other than in jest, to Abu Musa's belief that Bell actually was a holy man. Abu Musa's faith in Bell wounded him because he knew he wasn't worthy of it. But at the same time he couldn't ignore Abu Musa's request, no matter how much it discomforted him. They were too close for that and the old Arab's friendship was too precious.

  Bell spoke directly. And why must I meet this Halim? he asked.

  Above all because he wants it so much, replied Abu Musa. He's heard about you and feels he must meet you. He needs that, he says. And why? Ah, but the why is not for me to know and perhaps not even for you to know. What is true is that a holy man sometimes has special obligations, to others even more than to himself.