False Papers

by André Aciman

Christmas is good business here: the town’s financial well-being relies almost exclusively on tourism. This may explain why, during the Intifada, the citizens of Bethlehem kept the violence relatively tame so as not to frighten off visitors. “They would put their hands into their pockets as if to pick stones, but what they hurled at the Israeli soldiers was paper napkins,” an Arab journalist said.

  I inquire about the Christians. I try to avoid direct questions, but I ask Freij about the Christians’ future prospects in a Muslim world. Are there any similarities between the endangered Copt minority in Egypt and Bethlehem’s Christians? “None whatsoever,” he replies. He insists that the Christian community is thriving and faces no threats. “Still, many Christians are leaving,” he adds upon reflection, confirming my cabdriver’s observation. I know the story well. Christians are nervous. Whether or not Freij decides to run, it is quite possible a Muslim will become the next mayor. This does not worry the Christians as much as the fact that Hamas and Islamic fundamentalist elements will inevitably make life difficult for them as a minority. Bethlehem University, which is partly supported by the Vatican, has been asked to build a place for prayer to accommodate Muslim students. Koranic words have been scribbled on church walls. A few years ago, a graffito in Beit Zahur, nearby, proclaimed, “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.” To illustrate the extent of Christian fears, a conservative Israeli essayist told me that since the announcement of the redeployment of Israeli soldiers from Palestinian territories, more than 10,000 Palestinians, many of them Christian, have applied for Israeli citizenship.

  The writing on the wall is clear. There are Christian mothers who breathe easily once their children are safely abroad. Young Christian couples claim they cannot find adequate housing in Bethlehem and therefore leave. There are numerous Orthodox Palestinian communities in South America Many Christians apply to emigrate.

  I want to ask Freij whether a latter-day Joseph and Mary would come to Bethlehem or whether they would flee to South America instead. I know what he would say.

  I am waiting for Moishe, the cabby, on Manger Square. A boy wandering about the square hugs what seems to be a bundle of newspapers but is really a collection of sides of corrugated cardboard boxes

  A man at a pastry stall catches me staring at a huge round rainbow cake. He offers me a slice. I have to accept, though its dubious ingredients trouble me Someone is scowling in my direction. I feel uneasy. Everyone is glaring. I tell myself I am imagining things.

  This place is hardly welcoming. I try to think of the sheep I had seen on the way up to Bethlehem and of Shepherds’ Field nearby, and of Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze.” But the melody, so familiar, will not come.

  Instead, I hear the voice of the muezzin intone the opening call to prayer from a loudspeaker at the very top of the minaret on Manger Square. Allah is great, Allah is great, Allah. There is no Allah but Allah

  After summoning the faithful to prayer, the muezzin begins a sermon. People are drawn closer together, packing the entrance to the mosque, which is already full. I understand now why young men were thronging along the walls only ten minutes earlier; they were saving the spot nearest the mosque.

  The sermon, which I don’t understand, is impassioned. The muezzin frequently repeats the words amrikan, yahud, harb, meaning Americans, Jews, war, but I don’t know the context and don’t want to mistake what I fear is being said for what, perhaps, is not being said. Some of the faithful, arriving late, find no room and move across the road, clustering outside the Christmas Tree, where an Israeli Army patrol car has also staked a position. A teenage boy passes in front of those packed by the café and makes the sign of the cross. It is not even clear who is snubbing whom: the Israelis parked three yards away from the Muslims or the Muslims who decide to pray right in front of the army jeep. Everyone is aware of everyone else, the atmosphere is tense and hostile, and everything is being done with an “in your face” attitude. It could not be otherwise in a square that has a steeple, a minaret, and a flagpole that bears the Israeli flag. Rarely in my life have I sensed collective anger seething to the point of explosion. The sermon lasts forty minutes.

  And still no Moishe.

  Then there is a change of voices and the muezzin intones something I recall from the past and have not heard in thirty years. These are the opening verses of the Koran, and they fill me with a sense of joy and serenity I have not experienced all day. I remember learning these verses long ago in Egypt, and the punishment for not learning them fast enough, and the sense of dread with which I, a Jew, would go up to the front of the class and recite what I feared I had not studied; I never knew at what point, during my recitation, things would break down. But I also remember waking late on winter Fridays and hearing the voice of the muezzin, realizing there was no school that day. And I remember the clear morning sky on summer Fridays when we would head for the beaches, listening to the opening verse reverberate in the Alexandrian sky, still and beautiful, relayed from mosque to mosque, from all corners of the city, until it reached us on the beaches, which were empty because all the men had gone to pray.

  Suddenly there is a mad rush into the square. People seem to be coming from everywhere, from the marketplace especially, each carrying a square of corrugated cardboard in his hand. The little boy with the great stack does a brisk business selling them to those who did not bring their own. It is time for prayer, and the faithful begin to prostrate themselves, using the cardboards as makeshift prayer rugs on the streets and sidewalks. Rows of prostrating men form rapidly, each growing in size as stragglers keep joining in. “Allah!” the muezzin sputters. “Allah,” he repeats in a heartrending, disconsolate, last gasp of sadness so intense that it hovers over the crowd like a benediction filled with grief, love, and premonition, though no one cries and no one seems moved and everyone thinks only of praying. “Allah,” the muezzin intones, with the sorrow of prophets who have stood by and worried for mankind and watched cities die. There is no more stirring sound in the world. “Allah,” he repeats, his voice almost crackling with emotion. Then, totally sobered, “May Allah be with you,” and finally he closes.

  Without any show of emotion, people pick up their cardboard pieces and go back to what they were doing before the prayer. Gradually, voices and shouts can be heard rising in the marketplace. Things are back to normal. I hear the words kheyar, zeitoun, and marameyeh—cucumbers, olives, and sage. I have not heard them in thirty years. The last time I walked into a souk must have been with my mother, when I was ten.

  Later that day, I am standing high on the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem with Itzhak. The clouds have broken momentarily and we are standing along the parapet looking over a sunlit view of the Old City, studded with beautiful olive groves. Olive trees are not beautiful and yet they are—stumpy, majestic, austere. I have an impulse to walk down the slope and tear a twig and, as in Dante, watch the tree bleed

  A boy walks up to me and tries to sell me olive leaves. I want to buy the whole branch. But I remember that I have no change and apologize to the boy. He insists I take it anyway. Itzhak says he has some change in the car, opens the door, searches in the glove compartment, and hands the boy a coin. The boy seems pleased. Itzhak, who knows how to leave you alone, probably suspects I am thinking of peace symbols. But I am thinking of Jesus on Gethsemane looking down over Jerusalem, his sweat falling like drops of blood, sensing that someone is about to betray him.

  So this is where He was born, I think, scanning the horizon for Bethlehem. I want to nurse this thought, to stroke its beauty and feel what I know I will never have words for. But suddenly a tussle breaks out between the boy who sold me the olive branch and another boy who is trying to sell palm fronds. The olive boy kicks the palm boy. I turn and am about to tell them to stop, but Itzhak is faster than I am and yells at them in Hebrew. The boys pay no heed and are now throwing punches at each other. Itzhak urges two Arabs sitting on the wall to do something to stop the fight. But the men do not budge, do no
t seem interested, and go on talking. Now Itzhak gets in between the boys and separates them, pushing each away, cursing in Arabic, still imploring the men to help. One of the boys begins to cry: I know how these things can turn. All we need is an Israeli grabbing an Arab boy. “Let’s go,” I tell Itzhak. He is breathing hard, obviously more disturbed than I thought. Meanwhile, a camel, with its rider, squats on the ground not far from us and urinates. The stench is unbearable and the stream endless. “Yes, let’s go,” Itzhak says.

  As we drive down the slope, I turn to take a last look at the Mount of Olives, thinking of Bethlehem and the broadcast of Midnight Mass that I know I, too, will be listening for this year. Itzhak chuckles. He has heard a rumor that the Israelis may be asked to help with the broadcast. The Palestinians want to be in charge of transmitting the Midnight Mass from the Church of St. Catherine, but they don’t have the expertise. So they will ask the Jews to help a predominantly Muslim city broadcast a Christian Mass.

  “And we’ll do it,” Itzhak adds. “It’s Christmas.”

  Becket’s Winter

  For about a month or so in the winter of 1965, we spoke of little else but the movie Becket. Becket burst into our narrow little world the way all great dramas do when they suddenly take over a community, stirring new fantasies, latching on to old ones, giving our thoughts an edge and a wisdom we never knew we had, working its way deep into every crevice of our subconscious until we were no longer able to remember who or what we were before the play. I call it Becket’s winter, the way Shakespeare’s contemporaries might have called the 1600—1601 season the year of Hamlet, for after seeing Hamlet everyone is changed. Becket has become a marker, one of those time posts around which we situate events we would otherwise forget or lose track of. The play remembers them for us; over time, 1965, that ugly year that brought such terrible changes in our lives, has become a pale, lusterless satellite which periodically strays into the reflected light of the movie.

  We had terrible worries that winter, and there were always rumors that the police would come to search our home or take my father away. And yet I doubt that I would have remembered these incidents as vividly as I do today had Becket not been laced into them. Not a day went by that winter without someone speaking of Becket or of the police. We spoke of Becket to forget the police, to forget the anonymous calls every night, to forget that we were among the last Jews of Alexandria. Perhaps we spoke of Becket because there was nothing else to speak about, because, in the end, all that was left in our culture-starved world was—movies. Movies held great sway in Alexandria, displacing everything, including our worst fears. Movies screened those fears. And yet it is thanks to that screen today that I remember our fears.

  Everyone fell under their spell. My father, who had lost his business and had no notion what or where to turn to next; my mother, who was deaf and did not wish to face the truth about our abysmal prospects in Egypt; I, who always had my nose in books—or, as my grandmother said, my head in the clouds—down to my grandmother, a practical woman in her nineties whose feet were firmly planted not only on the ground but, as I liked to say, under it as well—all of us gave way to Becket. Even our cook, who, tired of hearing so much about the movie, decided to go one evening and, for the equivalent of about seven cents, had his fill of Jean Anouilh’s Becket, courtesy of Arabic subtitles. He, too, had caught the bug.

  The only one who resisted was my great-aunt, who was almost blind and never went to the movies and who, for entertainment, would listen to quiz shows on Radio Monte-Carlo. She was a religious woman and perhaps did not like all this talk of church in a Jewish home.

  Otherwise Becket was everywhere. Not a single magazine failed to mention it. Becket came into all my classes: in English class, where we were studying Chaucer’s prologue, in history class, where our teacher taught an already obsessed class all there was to know about excommunication; even the choir of the American Mission School, under the expert direction of a native-born Alexandrian, was glad to oblige with a few Gregorian chants, enough to stem the irreversible tide of Beatlemania which had already seized Alexandria by storm the previous year. And finally, Becket won over our group at school, where, no matter what part we played, all we wanted was to capture the sinister grin and the nasal ironies of Richard Burton, or the hysterical bawling of Peter O’Toole. Some of us wrote papers on Emperor Henry IV of Germany, whose famous three-day, barefooted stand at snowbound Canossa in 1077 finally moved Pope Gregory VII to revoke his excommunication ban The first piece I read by an unheard-of poet called T. S. Eliot was Murder in the Cathedral. Without it, I might have gone years more without knowing Four Quartets, or The Waste Land, or “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

  Medieval England was everywhere, even if the Egypt of the mid-sixties was Egypt at its most anti-English. It never occurred to us that this play which seemed so prototypically British could have been written by a Frenchman. I read it in English, though French is my mother tongue, siding with the British against the French, though, in reading Henry V, I’d always rooted for the French against the British at Agincourt

  For a whole week, at the age of fourteen, all I did every evening was ride the tramway to the main station in Alexandria, buy about ten loose cigarettes, purchase my ticket at the Cinema Strand, and enter this dark world to which I had arrived purposely late so as to miss the previews, the newsreel, and the cartoons. I knew most of the lines by heart; I still do now, thirty years later. This, I think, is what people mean by the magic of the stage or of the silver screen. It consumes you as you’re watching, haunts you as you leave, and never lets go, that night, or the next, or the one after that. It became a compulsion to return every evening at the same time to the same seat to the same show, a compulsion which, like all addictions—to gambling, drugs, alcohol, or pleasure—corrupts us not because it excludes even those we love but because it allows us to devote ourselves entirely to ourselves, to our pleasure. I, too, like King Henry II—or like King Philip II in Don Carlos—was learning how to be alone. In this, I had found a sister soul. My sympathies were always with the lonely King, never with Becket, or the honor of God.

  I shall never forget the opening scene: the Gregorian chant immediately following the credits, the lofty view from the cathedral’s large belfry, the King dismounting and then entering a dark nave and finally kneeling before his old friend Becket’s tomb, asking with almost rakish melancholy, “Well, Thomas Becket, are you satisfied?”

  Then I know the journey has started. It is the story of an impossible friendship between two men: one who loves, or says he loves; the other who doesn’t, or says he can’t. One tyrannizes but is always rebuffed; the other gives but never yields. The ill-tempered King with soulful urges, and the high-minded Archbishop who is at once cunning and sincere in a world where “sincerity [has become] a form of strategy.” Everyone changes—or, rather, molts his older self. The erstwhile dissolute playboy turns into an earnest priest, and the anti-clerical monarch ends lonelier than a monk in an empty palace. As in all good stories, the cat’s cradle goes on forever.

  Between the two giants are the jealous barons, the chiding mother, sniveling heirs, and the snarling young Queen, the famous Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose “carping mediocrity” is matched only by her body—that “empty desert which duty forced [the King] to wander in alone”! Everyone envies Henry’s love for Becket. Finally, the sparring comic duo, the Pope and the Cardinal, double- and triple-dealing with each other, two foxes outfoxing each other at the nth remove, while they bilk both Becket and Henry, almost without thinking.

  Becket: the man whose talents were for sale to the highest bidder until God outbid them all; the jack-of-all-trades who “improvises his honor” and collaborates with the enemy, but is neither a Norman nor really just Saxon any longer. Towering over everyone at court, he thinks and knows too much; he is elusive with others and himself, distrusts everyone, but most of all himself, especially after his conversion. Becket, the man who found nothing truly worthy of love
until a capricious ploy verging on a royal prank steers him to the righteous path: against Becket’s wish, the King laughingly appoints him Archbishop of Canterbury. But as in the legend of Saint Genesius, the man who thought he was only playing the part of the holy man becomes a holy man indeed. The vocation is almost thrust on him, it comes too easily, and in good Augustinian fashion, Becket is wary of saintliness itself, for saintliness—as both he and his rival Gilbert Folliot know—is a temptation, too, “one of the [devil’s] most insidious and fearsome snares.”

  Then there’s the King: as ill-mannered, vindictive, and guileless as a spoiled brat who was never taught to be alone and who, like a snubbed lover now, must learn to deal with loss as he bawls and aches, seeking comfort, but finding pity instead. He exacts revenge and he gets it. But he won’t commit the deed himself. “Will no one rid me of him?” and “Are there none but cowards like myself around me?” he asks. A coward needs others to do his dirty work. But he needs others to blame as well.

  The symmetries here are almost too ironic. Becket, who helped foil an assassination attempt on the King while visiting a cathedral in France, is himself downed by the King’s four barons in his own cathedral. But the King, who thought he could outsmart his old friend, is caught in the snare as well. To appease the Saxon population, which has seen its beloved Archbishop murdered by Norman henchmen, the King must now kneel on exactly the same spot where his friend had breathed his last, and there be flogged by no less than four monks. Tit for tat. “Are you satisfied now, Becket?” asks the King as he prepares to stand up and forgive the four monks who administered the lashes. “Does this settle our account?” After which, the King puts on his shirt and swears to one of his baffled barons that the law will have to seek out those guilty of the murder.

  No parody of justice has ever been more wicked.