From behind a curtain on the second floor of his home he spied with fatherly interest upon the life that began to move once more through the alleys of his town. Muslim shopkeepers lounged at the doors of their shops. An old Jew passed through the market, seeking rags, while through the entrance of the synagogue other Jews passed to resume their study of Talmud. A Christian missionary, unable to convert either Muslim or Jew, walked in perplexity beside the lake, wondering what secret power Jesus and Paul had possessed that they could unlock hearts which were barred to him. Finally the kaimakam saw what he was looking for: from the door of the mufti’s house slipped the little qadi, dressed in white and very nervous. Looking furtively in all directions the judge darted across the alley and started to walk in innocence toward the government buildings. After he was safely gone the portly mufti, dressed in black and with a red face on which his emotions could not be hidden, appeared from the same door and casually walked by different streets to the building where the meeting was to be held.
“They don’t want me to know they’ve been conspiring,” Tabari laughed. In a way he was pleased that they had been laying plans behind his back, and he was careful to give them time to reach his office, so that if necessary they could conspire further; for he judged that the more secure they felt, the better chance he had of squeezing from them a sizable chunk of baksheesh. This was contrary reasoning, for usually one would expect only a man alone and in desperation to offer real baksheesh; but Turkish administrators had discovered that it was men who felt sure of themselves, men who had substantial funds at their disposal, who paid for what they wanted. Such men could not be bullied, but they could be tricked.
Kaimakam Tabari put out his Turkish cigarette, adjusted his tarboosh, went in to kiss his wife, to whom he owed so much, and started his walk to the office. Arabs and Jews alike drew back to pay him respect, and he moved slowly, majestically past the mosque, but at the caravanserai, which occupied a central area, he paused to inquire whether the messenger had arrived from Akka with the dispatches from the mutasarrif, and he was disappointed to find that no horseman had come.
“If one does,” Tabari directed, “speed him to me,” and with this he could no longer delay facing his visitors, so with feigned eagerness he burst into his office, hurried up to the two conspirators and embraced them warmly.
“Good friends, be comfortable on this hot day.” He arranged chairs for them and asked, “Now what’s your problem?”
The little judge gaped. “Excellency! For two years we’ve been discussing our problem.”
“Of course,” Tabari agreed amiably. “But have we any new solutions?”
“What word from Akka?” the mufti asked bluntly.
“None.”
“Then you will make the decision?”
“Of course.”
“And what have you decided?”
“I am inclined toward your point of view.”
The hopeful qadi assumed that this meant victory and was obsequious in his praise: “Excellency, we knew in our hearts that a man of your wisdom …”
But the mufti, one of the ablest men in Tubariyeh, was better schooled in the tricks of Turkish administrators, and sought to pin Tabari down: “Can we rely upon your word?”
If the kaimakam was insulted by the mufti’s crudeness, he restrained himself by recalling his main objective: Today I want money from this man. Revenge can wait until tomorrow. He smiled blandly and said, “Of course you have my word.”
Again the qadi was delighted. “Then the Jew gets no land?” he asked.
“I didn’t exactly say that,” Tabari hedged.
“What did you say?” the mufti snapped.
Once more the governor stifled his anger. He thought: Sooner or later I must cut this man down. But not today. To the mufti he explained, “I said that I shared your opinions.”
“But what are you going to do about them?”
Tabari thought: Let the red-faced dog get madder. Then it will be easier to goad him for the money. He said easily, “What am I going to do? Exactly what you two gentlemen have recommended.”
The little qadi showed his relief that the uncertainty had been erased. “This is a memorable day, Excellency. Then the Jew gets no land?”
“Not under any possible circumstances,” the governor promised, and with a gesture of transparent honesty he threw his hands on the table, palms up, as if to say: “There you have the whole matter before you.”
The qadi laughed nervously, as if a burden had been lifted from him, but the dour mufti realized that the squeeze was on. Whenever a Turkish official used that ominous phrase, “under no possible circumstances,” every wise man knew that the matter was at last up for hard discussion and that the verdict would go to the claimant who paid the largest bribe. The mufti thought: Look at that damned Arab, waiting for me to make an offer that would seal the bargain. Well, he can wait.
Kaimakam Tabari did wait. He saw that the stupid qadi had missed the point, but he knew that the mufti had understood what was expected and was remaining silent in order to humiliate his superior. But the mufti controlled the money that Tabari wanted, so it was the kaimakam who had to swallow his pride and say, “I’ve been thinking”; and when he used this universal phrase of Turkish corruption even the dim-witted qadi knew what was up.
“I’ve been thinking,” Tabari repeated, “that since the three of us have agreed that the Jew should have no land, I’d better inform the mutasarrif in Akka.” The mufti, a willful man but one eager to protect his Muslims, looked at the slippery kaimakam with contempt, so again Tabari was forced to spell out the negotiation: “But for me to go to Akka will require money.”
“How much?” the mufti asked scornfully.
“Thirty English pounds,” Tabari said unflinchingly. When he saw the qadi blanch he added suavely, “I say English pounds because I know you stole more than forty from the last group of pilgrims to Capernaum.”
As the mufti glared at the governor his red face became nearly purple. It was infuriating, the mufti thought, to be treated in this manner by an Arab playing the role of a Turk. Moreover, if he did give Tabari the thirty pounds, little of it would reach Akka, and this idea spurred a crafty thought: Why not give Tabari the thirty pounds, wait for him to steal half, then inform the mutasarrif in Akka that Tabari had stolen from him? By such a trick he might get rid of Tabari altogether, and that would be worth thirty pounds.
The qadi was not equal to such duplicity. The best he could do was sell legal decisions to the highest bidder and then split with the kaimakam, and the concept of springing a trap as far away as Akka was quite beyond him. But the moral problem in the case before him was not; and to everyone’s surprise he turned to Tabari: “Kaimakam Tabari, it seems clear that if you allow the Jew to buy land outside the wall he will bring in other Jews to work that land, and if they succeed, still other Jews will follow them, and soon we poor Muslims …” He waved his hand futilely, as if trying to stem the inevitable.
“Oh, I agree with you thoroughly,” Tabari cried enthusiastically. “That’s why I do hope you can find the money for Akka.”
“Will the mutasarrif be qualified to make the decision?” the mufti asked, lured against his will into discussing the case on its merits.
“Of course!” Tabari said in all seriousness, but even as he spoke he reflected: Two years ago the papers were started on their way from Tubariyeh to Akka to Beirut to Istanbul. The decision has surely been made by now, and somewhere along that chain a firman from the sultan is headed this way. Now the European governments have been insisting upon more liberal land laws throughout the empire, and if the sultan grants privileges to Russians and Englishmen, he must do the same for the Jews. So if I want to get my baksheesh from the qadi and the mufti I’d better get it now, before they learn that the sultan’s decision has gone against them.
The mufti was speaking in a low growl: “Aren’t you afraid of having Jews buy land?”
“I am indeed,” the ka
imakam replied with honest passion. “It would change everything. Open the gates for …” He didn’t know for what, but he suspected that the easy old days of accommodation and the quiet passage of years would vanish. He felt an honest sorrow, which he quickly suppressed, for time was passing and the firman might arrive at any moment without his having got the money.
“If we give you the thirty pounds?” the qadi asked plaintively.
“I’d work diligently to keep the Jews off the land.”
“And we could rely on this?” the qadi pleaded.
“You have my word of honor!” the kaimakam expostulated. “In fact, I’m riding to Akka tomorrow. I’ll hand the mutasarrif your money myself, and there’ll be no Jews in Tubariyeh.” To himself he reasoned: If the sultan’s decision is otherwise, I’ll insist I did my best to halt it.
This wily thought, as it came to him, must have betrayed its duplicity in some way, for the canny mufti, watching Tabari’s face, gasped to himself: That dirty swine! He already knows what the sultan decided and he’s trying to steal our money. Damn him! I’ll give him the money and strangle him with it. Tonight I’ll send a message to the mutasarrif telling him what’s happened. And before the week is passed, our friend Tabari will be in jail.
But now something of the mufti’s trickery betrayed itself to Tabari, who was well schooled in the basic rule of Turkish administration: When you have forced a man to pay a bribe, study him carefully to see how he plans to take his revenge. It became clear to Tabari that if his mufti paid the bribe he would do so in hatred and only because he saw some way of hurting the kaimakam. What could the mufti do to endanger me? Tabari asked himself. Only one thing. Pay the money to me, inform the mutasarrif that he’s done so, and count on me to keep the money for myself. Smiling genially at the red-faced religious leader, Tabari thought: You illegitimate pig. I’ll take your money and I’ll give every piaster to the mutasarrif, then tell him what a swine you really are. In two weeks you’ll be in Yemen.
Now the qadi and the mufti looked at each other in consultation, and the qadi delivered their decision: “We’ll give you the thirty pounds, Excellency.”
“To be used as you suggested,” the mufti growled. “For Akka.”
“Of course,” Governor Tabari cried pleasantly, and by great good fortune something inspired him to go to the two men and throw his arms about them, as if they were his friends, because at that moment an Egyptian servant appeared at the door behind them carrying a dispatch case; but because the governor gripped the two men tightly in an embrace, they could not turn to see the servant, and when they were able to do so he had disappeared on a signal from Tabari, taking whatever messages he had with him.
When the embrace ended Kaimakam Tabari cried to the servant, “Hassan, accompany the mufti to his home. He has a package for me.”
The Egyptian, his hands now empty, returned casually to the room. The mufti looked at him suspiciously and suggested, “I’ll bring the money over tomorrow.”
This called for Tabari to apply the second rule of Turkish administration: When a man agrees to a bribe don’t let him out of your sight till he delivers. He may reconsider. “You forget,” Tabari reminded the mufti, “I leave for Akka in the morning, and to be effective, your money should reach the mutasarrif promptly.”
The mufti bowed, extended his hand in friendship, then led the qadi from the room. As soon as they had parted from the governor the angry mufti drew the judge aside, so that the servant could not hear, and whispered, “Did you have the feeling that someone entered the room while the old bastard was embracing us?”
“I didn’t notice anything,” the bewildered qadi replied.
Suddenly the powerful mufti whipped about, caught the servant by the arm and demanded, “You just brought the kaimakam a dispatch from Akka, didn’t you?”
“No!” the startled Egyptian replied. In silence he accompanied the mufti to the latter’s home, where he checked and rechecked the thirty English pounds which the religious leader handed him.
At that moment Kaimakam Tabari was opening the dispatch case which the servant had been about to hand him a few minutes before. The routine papers Tabari laid aside, shuffling through the others until he found what he had suspected would be in the pouch. Hastily he took out the precious firman, inscribed in gold and sealed with red silk, and read:
The petition of the Jew Shmuel Hacohen of Tubariyeh to purchase land at the foot of Bahr Tubariyeh, said land now in possession of Emir Tewfik ibn Alafa, native of Damascus, is hereby granted. The further petition of Hacohen to purchase additional land giving direct access to the Bahr Tubariyeh and the River Jordan is hereby denied. Under no circumstances shall Jews be allowed to acquire land with water frontage.
As Kaimakam Tabari finished reading the firman he smiled, for it meant that the mufti’s bribe had been ineffectual even at the moment of being paid, and as an official of the Turkish empire he relished such sardonic contradictions. But now his servant entered with the thirty pounds and news that was less pleasing: outside in the waiting room stood the Jew, Shmuel Hacohen, eager to discuss with the kaimakam the land which he had for the past four years been trying vainly to purchase.
… THE TELL
It was singular, John Cullinane thought, that twice in modern history the Jews had been saved by the Turks. It had happened in the sixteenth century when Turkey had offered the outcasts such refuges as Salonica, Constantinople and Safed; and it had been repeated in the nineteenth century when pogroms ravaged Poland and Russia. Why had it been the Muslim Turks who had salvaged the Jews when Christian nations tried to exterminate the religion from which they themselves had sprung? One might reason that Islam had been tolerant because it valued Old Testament traditions more highly than Christians did, for Muhammad had specifically directed tolerance toward Jews, while Christianity never did; but this was specious reasoning, and Cullinane dismissed it.
And why was it only the Jew whom the Turk tolerated? During the periods when the Turk was showing his greatest consideration to the Jew, he was at the same time persecuting the Druse and the Armenian, the Bulgarian and the Greek. The same kaimakam who on Monday aided the Jew, on Tuesday hung the Armenian, and on Wednesday shot the Greek.
It was necessary, Cullinane thought, to look outside the field of religion for an explanation, and when he did he found certain ideas which made sense. The Turk did not favor the Jew because he preferred him to the Christian; on the contrary, the Turk, like God, found the Jews to be a stiff-necked people, most difficult to manage. But the Jew stood alone and could be treated alone. He had no outside nation pressing to intervene on his behalf, and so long as he behaved himself reasonably well he was welcomed in Turkey and treated generously. This was not so with the Christians or the Arabs. With the former there was the constant threat that they might summon to the Holy Land nations like France, England or Russia to protect them; while with the Arabs there was the insidious possibility that they would somehow unite to throw off Turkish rule. Consequently, neither Christians nor Arabs were allowed freedom to expand.
At first glance, Cullinane thought, the situation seemed contradictory. One would normally argue that since the Jew was friendless he could be persecuted with impunity, whereas the Christian, surrounded by friends, had better not be touched. The Turks had reasoned otherwise: they did not wish to persecute anyone for his religious beliefs, but they did want to hold their shaky empire together and would tolerate no one who might in the future pose a threat to its continuance. Thus in Tubariyeh there was no possibility that the sickly ghetto students of the Talmud might one day coalesce into rebellion against the empire, whereas there was always the danger that the Arabs might do just that, so it was not illogical for a devout Muslim kaimakam to render decisions unfavorable to his mufti.
On the other hand, Cullinane learned that he must not interpret Muslim indifference to the Jews as constituting approval. The tragedy that was allowed to overtake Safad in 1834 was a classic example of Muslim administr
ation, although in this instance it had been the invading Egyptians and not the Turks who were involved. On May 31, 1834, a sizable earthquake struck Safad, accompanied by much loss of property, and some weeks later word reached town that the Egyptian army was going to conscript Arab men. Superstitious Arabs concluded that some malign influence was working against them, and the Jews were blamed. The logical solution was to massacre them, which the Arabs started to do. For thirty-three unhampered days the Muslims were allowed to riot, destroying synagogues, killing rabbis and defacing over two hundred scrolls of the Torah, each worth more than a man’s home. The remnants of the great Jewish settlement were driven into the countryside, where for more than a month they lived on grass and slaughtered sheep, after which the government came back, caught the Arab ringleaders and hanged thirteen of them.
This was the way the Turks ruled: Start no pogroms yourself, but if the Arabs went to massacre the Jews, let them; then sweep in and execute the Arabs. Thus each community lost its leaders and relative quiet was maintained. But certainly in this cynical system the Turk treated the Jew no worse than he did the Muslim.
To Cullinane this impartiality was not surprising. He had found that most people, in their study of history, evaluated religion as a rather more important political force than it was. In the abstract one might expect Catholic France and Catholic Spain to recognize common interests, but they rarely did. Once when Cullinane was inspecting a dig in Persia he developed the attractive idea that the Muslim religion would some day unify western Asia, but before he had time to perfect his theory he found that Muslim Afghanistan was an ally of Hindu India, but wanted to go to war with Muslim Pakistan, which was an ally of Buddhist China. A little later Muslim Egypt tried to destroy Muslim Arabia. Even more spectacular to anyone digging in Israel was the example of the Crusaders, who set forth as a Christian army but who found their first enemies in Catholic Hungary, in Orthodox Constantinople and among the Christian communities of Asia Minor.
The Source: A Novel Page 107
