by Ray Bentley
In the next moment the direction of the wind switched, bringing the warmth of summer and the scents of ripening strawberries. New mown hay accompanied the suggestion of figs, plums, apricots, and peaches.
“What an odd place,” Jack said aloud. “Summer and spring, new life and harvest are all mixed up here. And yet—and yet it feels exactly right. Like home.”
“Everyone who sees this place mentions something like that,” Eliyahu said, standing beside Jack’s elbow.
Jack had not seen him there, but he was neither surprised nor alarmed.
Seen in soft morning light Eliyahu was an impressive figure. Slightly taller than Jack, though thinner; older, but not elderly. His beard and hair were streaked with silver. He leaned on a wooden staff planted in the soft earth beside leather-sandaled feet. He wore a simple brown robe, and over his sturdy shoulders was a sky-blue mantle exactly matching his cheerful eyes.
“Where are we?” Jack asked.
“Gan Eden,” Eliyahu explained.
“The Garden of Eden?” Jack returned. “So this is a dream?”
“No,” Eliyahu corrected. “You are dreaming—but this is real. Walk with me.”
Eliyahu led the way beside a crisply flowing stream across the meadow to a circular clearing where shorter grass surrounded a pool of crystalline water. Dotted around the basin were a dozen boulders. Each large enough to sit on, they were not granite or limestone or even quartz. One was banded with browns and tan—agate, perhaps? Another was translucent green, shot through with golden sparks. Another Jack recognized as turquoise, but Jack had never seen a chunk this big before. Lapus lazuli was succeeded by a fiery opal.
Eliyahu waved Jack toward a seat on a deep purple crystal that could only be amethyst, while he rested on a stone of dark red with black veins. “So—Gan Eden,” he said again. “The place to which all long to return even though they don’t know it; a cry just below the surface of conscious thought. When you are quiet enough you can hear its sound. It is a song that bubbles forth from our inner spirit, calling us home. Though few know this truth, this ‘home’ for which we long is the same for everyone. So here we are, on the holy mountain of God.”
“Wait,” Jack urged. “This garden is also a mountain?”
Eliyahu nodded. “Think of what you know of Gan Eden: four rivers flow from it, yes?”
Jack remembered. “The river that watered the garden split to become the headwaters of four rivers….”
“Just so,” Eliyahu agreed. “The spring at your feet is one of them, but this pool is the source of all four. So: we are on a summit and all four rivers flow down from here.”
“It is so beautiful and peaceful here,” Jack said. “Why not stay here forever?”
“Why not, indeed,” Eliyahu agreed. “Shall I show you the answer?”
Jack nodded.
The ring of trees surrounding the pool and pasture began to spin until the outline blurred. Against the swirling colors a new vision appeared: a man and a woman and a third figure clothed in brightness, walking in absolute harmony beside the basin.
Next the woman appeared, speaking with another being; handsome, beguiling in face and form, offering her something—the woman and man furtively sharing a meal, then hiding from the being of light, whose calls to them resonated with sorrow, not anger.
The scene changed. At the sole entry to the encircling forest appeared a winged creature with a flaming sword. The man and woman, clothed in animal skins, stumbled despondently down a slope, casting longing glances over their shoulders while the seraphim sternly blocked them from turning back.
Beside them—not with them, but paralleling their every pace, slithered a serpent, loathsome and fascinating by turns.
With each succeeding step the couple took, green grass withered and in its place arose brambles and thorn bushes. Apple tree leaves yellowed and fluttered downward, leaving barren branches.
Gemlike boulders resembling the ones on which Jack and Eliyahu sat lined the trail. As the couple passed each glistening jewel turned inward like flowers closing for a long night. Now the visible exteriors were dull, grays and browns, rough, and impenetrable to the eye.
Jack cried. Tears of loss and grief rolled down his cheeks, joining the rivulet at his feet. “Never to return?” Jack said. “Is there no way back?”
“Only one,” Eliyahu said firmly as the whirling panorama ceased. “The single entry, now blocked by the warrior with the blazing blade, can only be passed by the One found worthy to return. Only He can reopen the gate of Paradise.”
Jack felt himself stirring. His cheek was indeed moist, but the meadow and the trees faded into a hotel room’s walls.
Yet Eliyahu continued to speak. “Remember,” he said in a fading whisper. “Mountains. On the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided.”
Awake and unable to stay alone with his thoughts another moment, Jack dressed and went down to the Presidents’ Hall buffet. He took a table for one, then toyed with a plate of scrambled eggs pushed around the plate by a croissant. When neither sparked any interest, he settled for a cup of fruit.
It was only 7:30 when Bette crossed through the line waiting for omelets and appeared beside Jack’s table. “You’re early,” he said, glancing up. “How’d you know I was here? Your little spy tell you?”
“No spy needed. When you didn’t answer your room phone I cleverly deduced you might be at breakfast. Now; shall I sit down or would you prefer I wait out in the car?”
Realizing he was being churlish—probably a result of the weird Jerusalem-inspired dream—Jack ducked his head and gestured toward the chair across from him. “Please,” he said. “Coffee?”
A white-jacketed waiter appeared with a silver coffee pot and a fresh cup almost before Bette said, “Yes, thanks.”
“Anyway, if I’m grumpy,” Jack continued, “it’s your fault—or your boss’s anyway. What was that stunt about last night?”
Stirring the cream in her coffee Bette said, “You know I was going to ask you the same thing?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Going out in the middle of the night and traipsing across Jerusalem without telling anyone. And then refusing to tell Ghassan who you were speaking with.”
Jack dabbed a croissant crumb from his lip. “Look, I don’t know why you’re playing this game. Why have someone meet me and call me by name and then refuse to tell me why?”
Leaning back in her chair Bette narrowed her eyes. “I assure you, the only one around the hotel was Ghassan, and I admit he followed you to make sure you were safe. We sent no one else. Who else knows you’re here?”
Jack folded his arms across his chest. “How should I know? The only person I know in Israel is Lev Seixas. He knew I was coming, but not when.”
“And it was not he you met last night?”
“No! This person was, well, old seeming.”
“Describe him to me.”
Jack struggled to separate the imaginary figure in his dream from the real man in the valley. “Well, he was—about my height—medium build….” Jack stopped, consternation evident in his expression.
“Bearded?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Dressed modern or traditional? Hat or coat?”
“I didn’t get a good look.”
“Arab? Jewish? Western?”
Putting his hand down on the table more forcefully than he intended, Jack jostled his coffee cup. The attendant waiter mopped the drips, spread a napkin over the stain on the table cloth, bowed respectfully, and retired.
“I didn’t really get a close look,” Jack insisted.
“You say he called you by name? What did he want?”
“I—look, I don’t know that either.” Jack did not know what this was all about but he intended to learn more for himself before he answered any more questions.
Bette rested her elbows on the table and put her chin atop her folded hands. “Are you feeling alright this morning?”
“Confused and tired but otherwise okay, yes. Why?”
“The last thing I want to do is offend you,” Bette said, “but have you ever heard of the Jerusalem Syndrome?”
“Like a messiah complex?”
“Not exactly,” Bette corrected. “About 100 tourists each year suffer—a kind of religious mania. A fervent desire sparked by arriving in Jerusalem that seems to—cause them to need to warn the world of impending doom, for instance.”
“You think I was hallucinating?” Jack retorted, perilously close to spilling more coffee.
“No,” Bette replied cautiously. “But—this city does have a profound effect, especially on first time visitors. Occurrences like you describe have happened to others.”
“Terrific! Not only am I being followed but you think I’m crazy. Is that a way to discredit me and my report? Tell people I’m nuts?”
Bette seemed to decide argument was useless. Quietly she said, “You still haven’t told me where you wish to go today.”
“I only just decided,” Jack said firmly. “I want to speak with Lev Seixas. I want to do that first.”
Chapter Eight
The Etz Café on Yanai Street was a couple hundred yards from Jaffa Gate and due west of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, just across the wall around Old City Jerusalem.
Lev and Jack sat at an outside table in bright, though chilly, sunlight.
“Glad you were able to meet me so soon,” Jack said.
“Glad you saved my phone number,” Lev returned. “After we met at the Savoy, I didn’t know if you’d call or not. Anyway, glad this worked out. Yesterday I was in Bethlehem and tomorrow I’m heading up to Nazareth.”
Though Bette and Ghassan walked with Jack from the hotel, he wanted to speak with Lev alone. After introductions they withdrew, though Jack suspected they had not gone far. In fact, he thought he spotted the Druze a block away, pretending to be absorbed in a newspaper.
“I could have come to your hotel,” Lev chided.
“This is better,” Jack returned. “Listen: there are things going on here I don’t understand and—well, it’s better this way. I need to ask some questions of someone I trust.”
Lev nodded. “I’m honored, Jack. Okay. Just so I don’t have to pretend about what I know and don’t know, tell me officially why you’re here.”
Sipping a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, Jack explained. “The ECMP wants me to investigate certain conditions here which we—the Committee—believe will damage any prospects for peace: Settlements. Any country recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the last—” lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper, Jack added, “rebuilding the Jewish temple.”
Lev ducked his head and smiled. “You don’t need to be so furtive,” he said. “Building the Third Temple has been discussed around here—and around the world—for almost 2,000 years.”
Jack frowned. “I’m serious! Can you imagine the chaos that would follow?”
He was surprised to hear Lev agree. “Yes, I can, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen—or won’t happen.” Lev laid his hand on Jack’s arm. “Be easy. I know you don’t want to hear me preach. Anyway, to show up looking for me on the morning of your first day in Israel—there must be more to it than something you could research online by Googling the Temple Mount Faithful.”
Pressing his palms together and holding his fingers across his lips, Jack wondered once more how much to reveal. How crazy was this going to sound? But this was Lev, after all. Jack plunged ahead. “I had a—well—an encounter last night and I need some explanations. Just let me get this out before you ask any questions, okay?”
He had already decided not to mention the dream of Eden. Mixed with meeting the man in the valley, it would sound too crazy.
Lev flicked his fingers to say, “Get on with it, then.”
Jack retold the story of his interrupted journey toward David’s Tower without pausing or even stopping for another sip of juice. “Maybe I dreamed it,” he concluded. “But that can’t be right. My Druze bodyguard—or whatever he is—asked me who I was talking to, so he heard it too.”
“And this man said his name was Eliyahu?”
“Yeah, just like the street I came down before meeting him: Eliyahu Shama.”
“How’s your Hebrew, Jack?” Lev inquired.
“El is a word for God, right?”
Lev nodded. “Eliyahu: ‘The Lord is my God.’ Shama: ‘He hears’ or ‘He has heard.’ So: ‘My Lord is the God Who has Heard,’ or, ‘My Lord is the God Who Hears.’ ”
“He didn’t agree to the Shama part,” Jack objected. “I just suggested that.”
“In Israel,” Lev corrected, “you learn to think like this; ‘Everything means something.’ ”
“And what this Eliyahu character said? He’s here to instruct me? On the mountain of the Lord, it—something—will be provided? What about that?” After what his friend just remarked, Jack was surprised at the startled look on Lev’s face when he mentioned the Scripture quote.
“I think—I think we need to take a walk,” Lev said. “Are you up for it?”
“Sure,” Jack agreed. “Just one detail first. Do you think I’m crazy? Jerusalem Syndrome?”
Tossing a trio of ten shekel coins on the table to pay the tab, Lev grinned more broadly than before. “Answer me this: Do you have a desire to turn bed sheets into a toga? Do you feel convicted to stand on a corner and preach? Have you been sent with a message to save the world?”
“Not yet, no.”
“So, you’re safe for the moment.” Then more seriously Lev added, “But Jerusalem is a special place in the world, Jack. Don’t be surprised if it changes you.”
“That’s the second time I’ve heard that this morning,” Jack admitted. “Okay, I’m still sane—for the moment. Where’re we going?”
“Follow me.”
At Lev’s suggestion, Jack invited Bette and Ghassan to join them. “That way you won’t have to wonder if they suspect us of plotting something,” Lev said to Jack with a laugh. “Or wonder if they’re following you.”
Bette agreed, but Ghassan said he would move the car to a closer spot for when they were ready to change locations again. “So where are you headed?”
“No surprise there,” Lev returned. “Where all first time pilgrims should go on their first day here: the Western Wall.”
Jack was enough of a historian and student of the Middle East to know how compact the Old City of Jerusalem was, but even so, he was surprised at how quickly centuries of history could be traversed. Past the Tourist Information Center and shops thronged with haggling visitors, their route lay straight along David Street, before veering south toward Ha-Kotel ha-Ma’aravi, the Western Wall. They walked in silence for ten minutes, then arrived at the back of the plaza. It is expansive enough to handle 400,000 worshippers at once. Jack estimated the number before them at a couple thousand, dwarfed by the towering courses of limestone blocks.
Reaching into his jacket pocket Lev withdrew a plain blue kippah, twin to the cap he already wore on his own head, and handed it to Jack who unfolded it and put it on.
“Jack,” Lev said, “I don’t mean to insult your training and your résumé by sounding like a tour guide, but let me begin like one and then unspool it from there.”
“Fair enough,” Jack agreed.
“What you see there is just the visible portion of the retaining wall built by King Herod when he expanded the Temple previously rebuilt in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. The structure continues beneath the base of the wall we can see and extends behind those structures,” he said, sweeping his arm from pavement to sky and from south to north. “Some people say Jews come here to pray because it’s the holiest site in Judaism. That’s not exactly correct. The most sacred spot is the location of the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant rested atop the Temple Mount—up there.” Once again, Lev indicated the place where both the First and Second Temples once stood. “The Temple w
here Yeshua ha’Mashiach worshipped and taught was up there. Since Jews may not worship on the Mount—it belongs to the Muslim Waqf, the religious authorities—Jews come here to pray instead.”
Jack indicated this was history with which he was already familiar. “But why contend for a piece of earth?” he said with a challenge in his tone. “If a rebuilt temple is so important to Jewish worship, why not find an uncontested spot, consecrate the ground, and build away?”
“And there you have summed up the conundrum that is Jerusalem,” Lev returned. “Another spot cannot be chosen, cannot be consecrated, cannot be used for worship, because this one was chosen by HaShem—the Almighty Himself—right up there.”
“That’s an argument that only works if you believe in religious myths,” Jack said with a shrug.
“Yes, but I’m not the one who brought it up to you first,” Lev argued. “You know what that Eliyahu character said to you: ‘On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided?’ It’s from the book of Genesis, chapter twenty-two. You remember the story of Abraham being told by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac? Well, the place Abraham was directed to complete the sacrifice was also right up there—Mount Moriah. And it was there he found the ram caught in the thicket that became the substitute sacrifice for Abraham’s use. To us believers in Yeshua it is also the foreshadowed image of His death for us.”
“Okay, I get the connection. . .”
“Four thousand year old connection,” Lev clarified.
“Okay, four thousand, whatever. Still a religious argument.”
“That’s not the point. Whatever Eliyahu was trying to convey he started with this same location, just like me. Listen to Genesis 22:14: ‘So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide and to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”’ That,” he concluded, gesturing toward the courses of stone, “is the mountain of the Lord—or one of them, anyway.”
Jack stopped arguing long enough to let it all sink in. “So, what will be provided? I’m not looking to carry out a sacrifice. I already sacrificed enough,” he said bitterly. Then cutting off Lev’s expression of consolation with an angry slice of his hand, he addressed Bette. “How about you? You buy into this. . .” stopping himself just before saying something ugly and offensive he substituted, “. . .this—legend?”
