“I have instructions to take you to your hotel to drop your bag, then to the street where Professor Ismet lives.”
“Thank you.”
At least I now knew something. My contact was Ismet and he was a professor.
“Does, uh, Professor Ismet speak English?”
“Professor go to university in the West a long time ago. He is not a young man.” He leaned forward and blew garlic breath on me. “You wish to go over matter so you are better prepared for professor?”
I smiled. “Sure. Why don’t you tell me what I need to know.”
That shut him up. He knew nothing and was trying to pump me. I also caught the fact that he was to take me to the street where the professor lived, not the house … obviously, he wasn’t supposed to accompany me into the house or be within hearing distance.
So much for Lipton’s honor among his thieving blood brothers.
One other thing I noticed about Vahid—he had two cell phones and one of them looked like a twin to the satellite phone Lipton gave me. I wondered if it was receive-only? Or was Vahid able to call and keep Lipton informed about my movements?
It was late in the afternoon and traffic was heavy on the streets. In the past I’d traveled from Istanbul and down the west coast of Turkey, visiting cities that were citadels of power and knowledge during the glorious days of Greece and Rome. Some of the cities later became early Christian religious centers before the followers of Mohammed eventually conquered the region.
I had never traveled as far south in the country as Urfa, but the combination of modern concrete buildings and inadequate public services on the roadways—leaving potholes and litter—resembled most other Turkish cities I’d seen.
I registered at the hotel and dropped my bag off in my room, refusing Vahid’s offer to have him carry it to my room. I didn’t want to be alone with him. He made me uncomfortable when he looked at me. I got the feeling he was looking right through my clothes.
He reminded me of my landlord back in New York who was always hinting that there were ways I could pay my overdue rent besides by a check drawn on insufficient funds.
When I returned to the Land Cruiser, Vahid asked, “You have heard of the Sacred Fish?”
“No. What is it?”
“It’s called Balikli Gol and it’s located at a mosque at the foot of the hill the Crusader castle stands on. You understand that the prophet Abraham was born in a cave near here?”
I made a listening response rather than admit my ignorance. The printout that the hotel concierge had done for me in Dubai had been mostly statistical information. I didn’t realize the town had significant biblical history.
“In the days of our ancient ancestors the cruel tyrant King Nimrod ruled the region. To punish Abraham for showing more respect to Allah than the king, Nimrod had the prophet hurtled by a catapult atop a castle hill to a burning fire below. But before the prophet reached the fire, Allah turned the fire into water and the burning logs into carp.”
“Lucky for Abraham.”
“And for Urfa. The Balikli Gol pool of sacred fish is a wondrous site to behold. After you are finished with Ismet, I will show it to you.”
“Perhaps another time. I’m pretty tired after the flight.”
The sacred pool sounded interesting—spending an evening with Vahid alternately trying to pump me for information and paw me sounded like an evening in hell.
I got a surprise when we left modern Urfa and drove back in time to the days of Ali Baba and The Arabian Nights.
“The bazaar,” Vahid said.
A maze of narrow alleys and tiny footpaths seemed to spill out from all directions. Most of the streets were too narrow for cars. The structures were mud mortar rather than modern concrete. The pungent scent of spices and ripe fruit permeated the air.
I loved it immediately. The ancient and medieval always pinged for me. I was born in the wrong age. This was where I belonged—in a centuries-old marketplace that hadn’t changed since Columbus sailed the ocean blue and the most lethal weapon in the place was a curved dagger rather than an AK-47.
I know—centuries ago women had few rights, medical advice was primitive, there were awful things like the divine right of kings, the Inquisition was burning heretics at the stake … but it was also a time when people took the effort to build things with their hands, creations that would last centuries and eons and were still being admired today, a time when things moved at a slower pace and there were no serious threats that the world was going to come to an end because some lunatic pressed “the button.”
I smiled as I looked at the colorful stands of fruits and vegetables and meats, at vendors hawking their wares with waves of their arms and tongue-in-cheek pleas, at people in the traditional clothing of peasants—attire that would look medieval in Turkish cities like Istanbul and Ankara but was worn here with dignity and pride.
The Land Cruiser pulled up to a curb. Vahid pointed up a pathway much too narrow for anything wider than a single motor scooter.
“There. You must go up the alley to the next street, cross over and continue walking up the alley. About halfway up the passage you will come to the correct house. Professor Ismet’s house has a murekkeplik carved on his gate. You understand … murekkeplik?”
“An ink pot?”
“Yes, a covered bowl for ink and pens.”
I knew what he was referring to—murekkepliks were elaborately carved ink pots attached to a tube that held quills. Used by travelers and scholars to carry writing implements before pencils and pens came along.
“I will come back here in one hour,” he said. “A parade will pass nearby, but not here where I will wait for you.”
I left the SUV with relief.
Besides knowing that Vahid would be reporting my every move to Lipton, I found the man’s aggressive sexual advances insulting. He kept reminding me of my landlord—a man whose idea of romance was to relieve himself in a woman … never mind if the woman had any feelings or needs.
Not looking back, I went up the narrow passage, coming out on the other side, and then crossed a slightly wider street. It was late in the afternoon as I walked by heaping mounds of rice, nuts, olives, dates, oranges and lemons, maize, and potatoes.
Here in Urfa, more than in Dubai—in which I had seen little of the old city, if one existed—I felt as if I had been transported back in time to the Baghdad of Aladdin and Ali Baba.
I kept going, up another passage. After about a hundred feet up, I came to a tall, sturdy wooden gate that had the murekkeplik ink pot carved on it. An appropriate symbol for a scholar.
I pulled a cord at the gate that rang a bell somewhere on the other side. Moments later the gate opened and a young woman whose English appeared to be limited to “welcome,” ushered me inside with a shy smile.
She led me across a tiny cobblestone courtyard serenaded by songbirds and a bubbling water fountain and shaded by lemon trees and a pomegranate tree. The dwelling appeared to be constructed like others I had passed in the passageway, mud brick with a brown mud stucco.
Professor Ismet met me at the front door and led me into the house, to a small, dark, cool room lighted only by a window shaded by a lemon tree.
We sat on cushions at a small round table no more than a foot high. Cushions were scattered around the room. In the corner was a hookah, a water pipe. I’d shared one before at Luxor, on a trip up the Nile in Egypt. I recalled that the smoke is drawn through the water to cool it before it reaches the mouth. My friend and I had smoked something more exotic than tobacco, but the smell of the professor’s room was of dark, pungent Turkish tobacco.
The reserved, smiling young woman who met me at the gate—his daughter, I hoped, considering her age—served us hot, fragrant tea in gold rimmed, tulip-shaped glasses, and then faded away.
I put two cubes of sugar into my tea and tasted it with the silver spoon and then added another cube. I hadn’t seen cubed sugar in years, though I imagined it was still sold in stores back ho
me.
Professor Ismet was thin and wrinkled and venerable, with wisdom’s white beard and lively dark eyes. He wore a red fez with a black tassel, a loose, striped robe over cotton pants and sandals.
He was exactly what I was told to expect—a scholar of ancient Turkey. He seemed an unlikely person to be involved with Lipton’s nefarious dealings. But I had to remind myself that Lipton spun transnational webs. And that money was an international language.
Still, I felt relaxed and comfortable with the scholar.
He spoke English with a thick accent. “In my youth I spent a year at Oxford,” he said.
I had no excuse for not speaking his language except ignorance.
The room was filled with maps, paintings, books, antique-looking volumes. Dusty. Cluttered. Scholarly.
“You know the traditions of the Image?” he asked.
“Assume I know nothing.”
It was the truth.
“The story I will tell you is one that I have pieced together over a lifetime from many records, legends, and traditions about the Image … writings that go back almost two millenniums. You will find that there is more than mystery about the Image.”
“What else is there?” I asked.
He shook a finger at me. “There is deception.”
“Deception?”
I pretended to act surprised. I could’ve told him that I knew a few things about deception. Lipton himself was a world-class practitioner of the art. If there were an Olympics event for trickery, Lipton would certainly have a chest full of gold medals. He had me on the run from conspiracies on three continents, so it came as no surprise that there were a couple thousand years of deception lined up behind whatever machinations Lipton was churning.
“The Image was protected by a ruse,” Ismet said. “But I will get to that in its own time. Naturally, because I am a scholar of Urfa, which was the home of the Image, I had an interest in it early on and had examined writings here at the university. But when I was still a young man I had what you would call a golden opportunity. On my way back from studies in England, I spent some time researching the Image in the Vatican library in Rome.” He chucked dryly. “A young priest was more than eager to get me access because he thought he could save my heathen soul.”
I sipped tea as I listened.
“Unless you are familiar with the tenets of my religion, you might wonder why an Islamic scholar would be interested in an historical mystery involving Jesus, why an image of Jesus is sacred to the followers of Mohammed. So let us begin with Allah and Jesus.
“Allah is, of course, the same deity worshipped by Muslims, Christians, and Jews. To us Muslims, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus—all Jews—are all prophets of God, with the prophet Mohammed, the final messenger.
“Since the Image is of the prophet Jesus, it is important to both Christians and Muslims. And it is also appropriate that one of the great mysteries of Jesus occurred in our city because so much religious history—and religious conflict—has inflicted Urfa over the eons.”
“I imagine your city experienced wars and conquests by Christian Crusaders and Muslim conquerors.”
“As well as Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Mongol, Persian, and Kurd. Even Alexander the Great occupied our city.” He shook his head. “The conflicting roles of religions that occurred in this part of the world for thousands of years are difficult for a Westerner to fully comprehend. The conquest in America occurred when the Christian Europeans arrived and killed most of the indigenous peoples you call Indians and stole their land. The stolen land is still populated today mostly by Christians of European ancestry. By the same token, most of Europe went from being pagan to Christian and has stayed that way ever since.
“But the Middle East has been a boiling pot of religions for thousands of years. Even before the Christians, Jews, and Muslims engaged in centuries of wars, Egyptians, Babylonians, Zoroastrians, and a dozen other sects fought for more millenniums.”
“How does the Image fit into all this religious turmoil?”
“The story of the Image began two thousand years ago during the time of the Roman Empire, when the prophet Jesus walked the shores of Galilee. His reputation as a healer had spread throughout the area we now call the Middle East. In those days my city of Sanliurfa was called Edessa. It was a large and important city on the main trade routes, about four hundred miles northwest of the Palestine. During this period that is important to our story, the ruler of Edessa was a pagan king called Abgar, who paid tribute to Rome.
“Abgar suffered from leprosy and word had come about the miracles of a healer named Jesus in the Palestine. In Edessa at that time was a merchant from the Palestine named Jude who came to trade. Word reached the king that this Jude was a blood relative of the healer Jesus.”
“Sounds like Saint Jude,” I said. That much biblical knowledge took me to the freaky fringes of my memory of Sunday school lessons.
“Yes, Jude was a nephew of Mary and Joseph. He and his brother James were both apostles. And cousins of Jesus. It is even said he and Jesus looked a great deal alike. He would ultimately become a saint of both the Catholic and Orthodox religions. But that would come years later, after Jude returned to the Edessa region to spread the word of Jesus. After he was beaten to death and beheaded.”
“Doesn’t sound like being an apostle was a safe job.”
“Not at all. While Jude was here trading goods, Abgar called him to his palace and questioned him about the healing abilities of Jesus. Jude told him of the miracles, which included Jesus cleansing a leper of the affliction. Impressed by this, Abgar instructed Jude to take back a message to Jesus, inviting the healer to Edessa to heal Abgar of his leprosy.”
“The king must have been desperate,” I said. “Even today with modern drugs, leprosy is a terrible affliction. Is there any documentation that Abgar sent the message?”
He stared at me for a moment as if I had posed a problem for him.
“There is a tradition of such a record,” he said.
“Have you seen it?”
“There is a tradition of such a record,” he repeated. “The language of Edessa at the time was Aramaic, the same language the prophet Jesus spoke. I have seen a writing in Aramaic that mentions the message King Abgar sent, but never the actual handwritten message.”
He held up his hand in a signal not to go any further. “Not all secrets from the past wish to have light shined on them. There is much I can share with you … and matters that even I dare not disclose.”
“Why would anything be kept secret now?” I asked
He smiled, a little sadly. “On every continent of our small planet, people are murdering one another over religion. The Irish Catholics and Protestants, the Hindus and Muslims in Pakistan and India, Christians, Jews, and Muslims battling in the Middle East, the tribal wars in Africa, the jihads against the crusaders…” He threw up his hands. “People die every day, sometimes dozens of them, thousands every year, all in the name of religion. Right now in my own country controversy has stirred up again about whether we are a nation of Islam or a secular state.
“It should not come as a surprise that even here in Urfa we are troubled by the clash of religions. There are those who do not want anything shared with the West … and those, like me, who want all peoples to share the knowledge of the ages. But even I have taken an oath and can only reveal those things that I have not been sworn to secrecy.”
I nodded, biting my lip to keep from trying to probe deeper. Ismet had been granted a privilege of examining the artifacts, but apparently that privilege came with a promise not to reveal the source. I didn’t know why the information was still a secret, but I was in the crossroads of war and religious conflict that started two millenniums ago and was still going on. As he said, people were still killed on a daily basis over religious disagreements that began thousands of years ago.
He went on with his tale.
“Jude carried the message back to the prophet. We know Jesus n
ever came to Edessa. Instead, he went to his death on the Mount of Olives during the Hebrew Passover. But before he did, he sent a reply to Abgar that while he could not come to Edessa, he would send a representative. That representative was Jude, who returned to Edessa, but not before he witnessed the martyrdom of the prophet Jesus. He stood at the foot of the cross during the crucifixion and anointed the body of the prophet after death.
“But before the death of Jesus, while Abgar waited for the visit that would never happen, the king sent Hannan, the court painter, to paint a likeness of the prophet.”
Now we had gotten to the Image.
“The Mandylion icon?”
“That is not a name we would use to describe it here in Urfa. That’s what the Byzantium Greeks called it. We called it the Image of Edessa.”
“Is it still here?”
“No, that I can tell you for a certainty. You must understand that for several hundred years after the death of Christ, Christianity was an underground religion in the Roman Empire, practiced only in secret—”
“Under penalty of death,” I said. “Christians were fed to lions, butchered by gladiators, ripped apart in torture chambers.”
“And anything sacred to them was destroyed. Thus the Image and other precious objects were hidden to protect them. When Christianity was finally declared the official religion of the Roman Empire three hundred years after the crucifixion, the existence of the Image could be revealed. Even then it was still not safe to be openly displayed, it had to be kept hidden.”
“Why?”
“It was of immense value, not just as a holy relic, but as a source of power for kings.”
“Spiritual power?”
“Political and spiritual. Kings who held sacred relics had an advantage over their enemies—the king’s armies marched with the relic at its head, giving confidence to its own troops that they had the power of a god behind them. It also served to frighten the enemy forces.”
The Shroud Page 14
