More Than a Skeleton

by Paul L Maier

  Eyes tightly shut, the beggar was led to a spot at the edge of the pool, where he knelt down. “Ah . . . what am I supposed to do now?” “Wash your eyes,” said Joshua gently.

  The man thrust two tremulous hands into the water and splashed it across his face and eyes several times.

  Moments passed. Someone gave him a towel to dry his face. No one said a word.

  “I . . . I can see nothing!” the beggar finally cried.

  A loud murmur filled the crowd. All eyes switched from the beggar to Joshua.

  “It would help if you opened your eyelids,” Joshua advised, with a modest grin.

  Slowly, the blind beggar popped one eye open, then the other. He shook his head rapidly from side to side. An instant smile bloomed across his face. He looked left, right, up, down, and shrieked, “I can see! Bless God, I can see!”

  He stood up, laughed, heaved with exultation, and twirled about with arms spread wide as if he were a teenage ballerina. Then he stopped abruptly and looked around. “Who?” he stammered. “Who did this for me?”

  “Joshua Ben-Yosef,” several replied, pointing him out.

  The beggar stared, walked over to Joshua, and asked, “Are you . . . you are the one?”

  Joshua nodded, smiled, and said, “Give God the glory!”

  “Rabbi, Rabbi!” he said, brimming with joy. “What can . . . what can I say?” Then he stooped down and wrapped his stubby hands around Joshua’s ankles. “You . . . you are the Holy One of Israel!” he gasped. “I . . . I thank God! I thank you!”

  Joshua gently lifted him up with both hands, cradled an arm across his hunched shoulders, and said, “Go your way. Bless the Almighty! Your faith has made you whole.”

  Shannon could barely breathe. She felt lightheaded and giddy, dizzy with awe. The people surrounding Joshua began praising him, many on their knees, some singing hymns, a symphony of waving arms and shouts of admiration. “It is the Lord!” many cried. “It is the Lord Himself!” The once-blind man, no longer bereft of sight, was embraced by everyone within reach—most with tears cascading down their cheeks—as he continued whooping with delight.

  It was too much for Shannon. She, too, fell to her knees, hands clasped, head bowed in reverence, eyes brimming with tears. Joshua stopped, walked over to her, laid his hand on her head, and whispered, “You, too, daughter, will be free of your problem. Those dark dreams of yours . . . they will cease.” He caressed her cheek lovingly and moved on.

  A feeling of incredible peace came over Shannon, a soft featherbed of faith displacing the demons of doubt that sometimes tormented her. She was not even surprised that Joshua knew about her occasional nightmares, although a month earlier she would have responded, “What? How in the world did you ever know that!”

  Now she looked up through blurry eyes to see Joshua and the crowd moving back up the stony flight of stairs. She had an indescribable yearning to follow them and suppressed it only with extreme effort. It was late in the afternoon, and Jon would be wondering “where in blazes” she had been.

  While returning to where she had parked the Peugeot on a road leading up to the Old City from the Kidron Valley, she shook her head slowly and asked, “Did this really happen?” No one answered her. Finally she smiled, nodded, and replied, “Yes . . . it did happen! And this is the day that changed my life!”

  When she let herself into their apartment, Jon stormed out of his study and demanded, “Just where in blazes have you been, Shannon?” She only smiled serenely and replied, “I . . . I don’t quite know how to tell you this, Jon. And I don’t want to shock you, but . . .” She stopped and groped for words.

  “But what, Shannon?”

  Twice he had called her “Shannon” in demanding tones—the first time in their marriage—rather than “Shannon dear,” “darling,” “sweetheart,” “honey,” or some other term of endearment.

  “Okay,” she said, fighting for composure against the emotional maelstrom building inside. “I spent the afternoon with . . .”

  “With whom?” Jon barked.

  “I . . . I spent the afternoon with . . . with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” She started sobbing, but her tears seemed born of happiness, not grief.

  Jon simply stared at her for a long moment, eyes bulging in disbelief, mouth agape. Would he ever even speak again, she began to wonder.

  “You did what?” he finally bellowed. “Should I look in the yellow pages for a psychiatrist? Are you okay, Shannon, or have you lost it?”

  “Come, darling, sit down, and I’ll tell you the whole story.” While a mask of shock continued to warp Jon’s features, Shannon gave a detailed report of all that had happened at the Gihon, Hezekiah’s Tunnel, and the Pool of Siloam.

  Jon seemed to take it all in with something less than sympathy. His eyes narrowed when she told of Joshua touching her, but he seemed most interested in the blind beggar who had regained his sight.

  “Who was that fellow, Shannon? What was his name? His address?”

  “I . . . how do I know?”

  “Well, you should!” he snapped. “If we’re going to claim another miracle here, let’s check it out! Why didn’t you get a handle on his background? Was he really legit, or maybe Joshua’s stooge, faking blindness so that he could be ‘cured’? Maybe this was an Israeli version of those wonderful healing services in the Bible Belt: ‘cripples’ carrying their crutches through the back door of the auditorium to avoid being seen earlier, then hobbling pathetically on them until the altar call, when they get healed and throw away their crutches in triumph!”

  “This was no fake healing, Jon.”

  “But how do you know that? See, this is why I wish you’d gotten into that fellow’s background.”

  “Look, Mr. Unreasonable, I didn’t know that I was assigned as a detective in this case! I suppose I should have gotten the guy’s fingerprints, blood type, DNA, social security number, and sexual preferences!”

  “Ah . . . okay, Shannon. Sorry. I—”

  “But I did learn from a vendor on the sidewalk next to him that the fellow has been ‘blind as a bat’ for at least seven years.”

  Jon paused for a moment. “You did? Hmmm, that could be a break for us.”

  “For you maybe, not for us. I’m convinced by what I saw, Jon. How in the world could Joshua have known about my bad dreams, for example?”

  “I . . . don’t really know, Shannon. But then again, everyone has bad dreams at times . . .”

  “Okay, Doubting Thomas. But add what I saw today to all the other reports of Joshua’s miracles and healings. Then also add the other impossible things Joshua has done—his fantastic linguistic abilities, his total knowledge about you, about us. And again, the final clincher is that he could never have staged all this: born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, et cetera. You know the list: we’ve been over it many times. What in the world does it take to convince you, Jon? For sure, your confirmation verse should have been: ‘You have eyes to see, but you see not.’”

  “Well, I don’t think—”

  “Exactly! You don’t think! Here something . . . cosmic is taking place right under your skeptical nose, and you’re blowing it! If I were Joshua, I wouldn’t have any more patience with you. You’re blinder than the man Joshua healed today!”

  Angrily Jon started to retort, but then he stopped abruptly. He walked over to the sliding glass door to their balcony, shoved it open, and stepped outside. A warm southern breeze seemed to waft up from the galaxy of lights in Jerusalem below, a beautiful sight to anyone not wrestling with a dilemma. Jon hoped the fresh air might clear his thinking.

  Shannon was about to join him on the balcony but thought better of it. There are times when a man has to be alone. Instead, she bowed her head and prayed to the man who had changed her life that afternoon, asking him to cure the blindness also of her husband.

  Several times in recent weeks, Jon had in fact dealt with the possibility that Joshua could be the returned Jesus. The mounting evidence, aft
er all, was very powerful. Each time, however, he had fought shy of going down that path. And why was that?

  Several honest reasons, but among them was one that pained him deeply. What’s more, it showed him to be petty and unprofessional in the extreme. It was this: if Joshua were Jesus in fact, then the “prophecy pack” was right after all, including the dimmest bulb in their manic marquee, Melvin Morris Merton. After a hundred miscues, could the man have it right at last? The law of averages almost demanded it.

  Jon clenched his fist, pounded the metal railing of the balcony, and went back inside the apartment.

  Shannon hurried over to him. “I’m sorry, darling. I shouldn’t have been so rough on you. I promise to—”

  “No, that’s okay, Shannon. You . . . had reason enough. But would you at least come with me tomorrow morning and point out where the blind man and the merchant spoke on that sidewalk? I want to ask a few questions.”

  “Of course! Why not?”

  Jon did not teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and it was on a bright and crystal Thursday morning that Shannon drove him over to the southern wall of the Old City above Silwan, parking their car near the Dung Gate. They walked downhill on the sidewalk to the spot where the blind beggar had sat.

  “Well, this is the place,” said Shannon, pointing to the open sidewalk. “But he’s obviously not going to be sitting here begging, now that he can see again.”

  “Yes, but where’s the vendor with the cart full of trinkets and soft drinks?”

  Shannon shrugged her shoulders. “Not here either, it seems.”

  “Dang!” muttered Jon. “Show me again where everything happened yesterday.”

  “You mean you want to slosh through Hezekiah’s Tunnel?”

  “No, no, not that. But let’s take the stairs down to the Pool of Siloam.”

  When they reached the bottom of the stone staircase, Shannon re-created the scene for Jon, showing him where Joshua and the blind man had stood, as well as where she had observed everything. “You really should have been here, Jon. It was the most moving experience of my entire life.”

  Jon frowned, shook his head, and said, “But why couldn’t Joshua simply have cured the man on the roadside above? Why have everyone trudge down here to the Pool of Siloam—unless this muddy water is magic?”

  “I can think of two reasons.”

  “And they are?”

  “If you are a biblical scholar, Jon, I think you know them both. One, it’s a parallel to what Jesus did in healing the blind man of John 9—and you know how many parallels are showing up between Jesus’ ministry and Joshua’s.”

  Jon nodded.

  “And two, just like the prophets in the Old Testament, Jesus also used physical items quite often in His ministry. Water for baptism, bread and fish in feeding the five thousand, a fish to deliver a coin for taxes, bread and wine for the Last Supper, some—”

  “Okay, point taken. The Pool of Siloam falls into that category, I guess. Well, let’s get back to the car.”

  While walking back along the south wall of Jerusalem, Shannon suddenly cried, “There he is! The street vendor!”

  “Great!” Jon grinned. “It must be warm enough to sell beverages.” They ambled over to the street merchant, who was busily laying out cans of Coke, Sprite, Seven Up, Schweppes, and orange juice onto his aging cart. Under a white canopy emblazoned with blue lettering declaring that this was “Saladin’s Store” were shelves full of chewing gum, candy bars, toiletries, watches, and, of course, T-shirts and other tourist bric-a-brac. When the darkly tanned, walrus-mustachioed proprietor had finished opening his portable warehouse, he clapped a dark red fez onto his balding scalp and rubbed his hands together. Then he smiled at Jon and Shannon and said, “So, my friends, I’m ready for business, may Allah be praised! What do you like?”

  Shannon was about to plunge ahead with questions, but Jon gently touched her arm. There was the matter of proper protocol and the necessarily oblique approach.

  “Are you the Saladin of the South Wall here?” This, Jon thought, was more diplomatic than “the Dude of the Dung Gate.”

  “Well, yes, sayyid,” he replied. “But—”

  “You’re something of a legend in Jerusalem. Been selling here for years, have you?”

  “Oh, yes, yes. Over ten years,” he said, proudly.

  “At this location?”

  He nodded. “The best in Jerusalem: tourists have to go through Dung Gate to get to the Wailing Wall—most of them, anyway.”

  They purchased a couple of Cokes and casually explored Saladin’s wares. With wicked humor, Jon held up a ghastly velvet drop cloth embroidered with the image of a literally openhearted Jesus. “This might be a nice present for your dad,” he said.

  Since her father was an agnostic, Shannon merely glared at him.

  Repaying him in kind, she pointed to a mother-of-pearl model of the Dome of the Rock—one of the holiest sites in Islam—and suggested, “Wouldn’t this look great on your father’s desk in Hannibal!”

  “Oh,” said Jon, ignoring her. “Here’s a T-shirt for our next archaeological campaign.” He purchased two shirts, white with orange lettering reading “I Dig Jerusalem.”

  Finally he winked at Shannon, who picked up the cue and asked, “By the way, Saladin, I think you were here yesterday when Joshua Ben-Yosef talked to that blind man, weren’t you?”

  “Oh yes, yes . . . now I remember where I see you before. You wanted to know about the blind man, true?”

  “Yes. I’m amazed that you remember that. There were so many people in the crowd.”

  “Oh, but so few . . . beautiful people,” he said, whipping off his fez and bowing gallantly.

  “Well, shukran, kind sir,” she replied with a little blush.

  “How long have you known the blind man, Saladin?” Jon could now put it directly.

  “Oh . . . he begs here for the last six or seven years. At first I didn’t want him around. He’s Jewish, after all, and even if he were Arab, who would want someone like that next to you? Bad for business.” “What changed your mind?”

  Saladin smiled. “I . . . in the name of Allah the Merciful and Compassionate, I finally took pity on the poor man, blind and all. And his singing and his playing were so bad that people stopped and stared at him. They’d toss him a couple of coins and then notice my shop here!”

  They chuckled. Jon then grew serious again and asked, “Are you sure he was blind, Saladin?”

  The vendor looked puzzled. “I . . . I not understand . . . don’t understand your question,” he said.

  “I mean, how do you know he was blind?”

  Still, Saladin looked bewildered. “He had to be blind, sitting here and begging all those years. Oh, I understand. You wonder if he could have told a lie about blindness in order to get sympathy from people?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I also thought about that when he first came here. But those milky eyes of his, his stumbling, running into things . . . once I had to pull him out of the road to save his life. There is no question.”

  Shannon looked knowingly at Jon, who avoided her stare.

  “You say that he was a Jew, Saladin?” asked Jon. “Isn’t that unusual? A Jew begging in the Old City of Jerusalem, which is mostly Arab?”

  “Maybe. But Jews are here, too, of course, and—I tell you again—this is best spot in Jerusalem for tourists.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “Schmuel.”

  “Schmuel what? What’s his last name?”

  “I never call him anything but Schmuel. But I did know his last name once. And what was it . . . ?” He thought for some moments, then shook his head.

  “Do you know where he came from?” asked Shannon, to Jon’s smiling approval.

  “He wasn’t from Jerusalem. He was Israeli from—where was it?—Haifa, I think.”

  “Did you see him after Joshua Ben-Yosef talked to him?” Shannon continued. “Do you know what happened down at the Pool of Sil
oam?”

  Saladin nodded and grinned. “I never saw anything like it in my life! First there is this big crowd shouting blessings to Ben-Yosef! And then comes Schmuel: he could actually see now! Oh, how he was laughing and singing—better this time than when he was blind.” “Did he walk over and thank you for attending to him all these years?” Jon wondered, hoping to expose the beggar’s chicanery.

  “No, he didn’t. That got me angry at first,” replied Saladin, “after all I did for him. Then”— he laughed—“I forgot he had been blind! So I run after him and yell, ‘Hey, Schmuel! Don’t you say hello to an old friend?’ He stops and turns around. ‘Saladin?’ he calls out. ‘Saladin, is that really you?’ When I tell him yes, he puts his arms around me and has tears running down his face. I . . . I admit it: I was crying too! So great a wonder it was! Then he thanks me for the years I took care of him. He even promises to make it up to me somehow.”

  “Well . . . what do you think happened to your friend?” asked Jon. “How did he get his sight back?”

  “Who knows? It had to be . . . Joshua Ben-Yosef somehow. Oh!” He suddenly brightened. “I think I remember something about Schmuel’s last name now. It had something to do with helicopters.” “Helicopters?”

  “Yes, every time one flew over, he’d hear it and say, ‘I wonder if that one was made by my relatives.’ He told me the name of the company, but I’ve forgotten it.”

  “Was it Bell? Or Grumman? Boeing?” asked Jon.

  The vendor shook his head.

  “How about McDonnel? Bristol? Sikorsky?”

  “That’s it . . . that last one, Sikorsky—Schmuel Sikorsky.”

  “Excellent,” said Jon. “Do you know where he lives?”

  “No. No. Not at all.”

  “Well, if you do see him again, please find out where I can reach him. Here’s my card . . . please get in touch with me. I’m a writer, and I’d love to do a story on how a blind man could see again.” Along with his card, Jon slipped a twenty-dollar bill into Saladin’s hand.

  “Shukran! I thank you, sayyid!” he responded enthusiastically. “Most surely I will do that! Salaam! ”