by Paul L Maier
“But in Iran they speak Farsi, not Arabic,” Jon replied, ignoring the levity. “So why would-?”
“Apparently the offending passages were translated into Farsi, and they pounced on them.”
“But what offending passages, for goodness’ sake?”
“Don’t know. The only item mentioned in the dispatch was… let’s see, here it is. ‘The Iranian clergy feel that the author treated the Prophet Muhammad with great disrespect, if not outright sacrilege.’”
“Impossible!” Jon almost shouted into the phone. “Most of my book covers the first century, not the seventh! I mention Muhammad only in the final chapter, which does a quick summary of Christianity since Christ.”
“Yeah, but you know how sensitive Muslims are. Remember the Danish cartoon business or the pope’s comments in Germany?”
“But I can’t think of anything in the book that would be offensive. Anyway, I gotta go; someone’s at the door. I’ll get back to you.”
The knocking persisted as a voice resonated through the wood of the door. “Harvard Security-Captain Rhinehart here, Professor Weber. I have the president of the Muslim Student Association with me, and he’d like to speak with you.”
Jon opened the door to find Captain Rhinehart standing with a tall, bronzed figure dressed in a galabia and a maroon fez. A small crowd of campus police and curious students filled the hallway behind them. The student introduced himself-in excellent English-as Abdoul Housani, an Egyptian graduate student in international studies. Jon invited him into his office, and Rhinehart followed without waiting for an invitation.
“Have a seat, gentlemen,” Jon offered.
“I prefer to stand, Professor Weber,” Housani said.
“As you wish. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to explain why this demonstration is taking place?”
“Yes, of course. You are on record as insulting the Prophet Muhammad-may his name be blessed.”
“Why in the world would you ever think that?”
Housani opened the book he was carrying- Isa al-Nazrani, the Arabic edition of Jon’s book-and turned to a bookmark he had inserted at page 490. Pointing to the last line of the text, he said, “Here, sir, you have grievously offended all of Islam by what you wrote about the Prophet-may his name be blessed. I shall read your own words back to you as I translate.”
“Please do.”
“On this page, you deal with the great expansion of Islam, and the last line reads, ‘Undoubtedly, Muhammad introduced the greatest evil Christianity ever faced.’ Now that is an outrageous-”
“I never wrote that!” Jon exclaimed as he rose, stood next to Housani, and peered at the page. His Arabic wasn’t exactly conversational, but he had a reading knowledge of the language. Slowly, he read the offending line aloud: “La yujad shakk, qaddama nabi Muhammad al-radi al-’athim allathi wajahat al-masihiyah.”
Jon stopped reading and returned to his desk, fighting the impulse to clench his fists. “Unbelievable!” he almost whispered. “That’s exactly what it says!” Then he looked up and said, “You translate well, Mr. Housani.”
The swarthy face of his guest warped into a grim smile of triumph. Captain Rhinehart’s brow corrugated into a facial question mark as he looked on rather helplessly.
“But that’s not what I wrote!” Jon fairly bellowed. “It should be tahaddi, not radi – challenge, not evil.” He went to one of the bookcases insulating the four walls of his office and pulled off a copy of the American edition of Jesus of Nazareth. Quickly thumbing his way to the last chapter, he swooped down to the final line and held the book out for the student. “Now, Mr. Housani, please read what I actually wrote.”
Glowering with suspicion, the student read aloud, “‘Undoubtedly, Muhammad introduced the greatest… challenge… Christianity ever faced.’”
“ Challenge, Mr. Housani. Challenge, not evil!”
The Arab student seemed perplexed and was mute for several seconds. Finally he stammered, “I… I don’t understand…”
“It’s really quite simple. Either this was a wretched typographical error, or it’s a translation error. Believe me, I’m going to find out which.”
Slowly, Housani nodded, while Captain Rhinehart stopped wringing his hands and smiled.
Jon didn’t want to overdo the injured innocence bit, but he did have a few questions he wanted answered before this student left his office. “Might I ask, Mr. Housani, why you and the Muslim Student Association didn’t check the original English version of my book first before staging this demonstration? I can’t imagine it would have been difficult to find a copy. I think the Harvard Coop keeps about fifteen in stock at all times.”
“I… we… find Arabic easier reading than English.”
Jon nodded. “Okay, understandable. But something strange seems to be going on here. How in the world did you and your demonstrators even learn about all this? The publication date for the Arabic edition isn’t until a week from now.”
Housani was silent for some moments. Then he answered, “We have a contact in Cairo who mailed us a copy air express in order to help us… stay on top of things as much as we can.”
“As well you should,” Jon replied, now smiling. “I trust you’ll explain all this to the Muslim Student Association?”
“Yes. I’ll do that, Professor Weber. But please let us know how that terrible error got into the Arabic translation.”
“Of course. In fact, the moment you leave this office, I’ll be phoning my publisher in Cairo to stop the presses-literally-and make that correction. Then I’ll instruct him to recall as many of the faulty first editions as possible.”
“Thank you, Professor Weber. And… I apologize if any of our people went overboard during the demonstration.”
“Accepted. Thank you. By the way, how come you have such a perfect command of English-even our colloquial expressions-and hardly any accent?”
Housani smiled. “Well, as a boy growing up in Bahrain, I listened to Voice of America as much as I could, and I tried to imitate American English.”
“VOA? Well done, sir. Your association certainly seems to have picked a worthy leader.”
They shook hands. The moment Housani and Rhinehart left, Jon reached for the phone. Never mind that it was nearing midnight Cairo time. If his publisher didn’t roust himself out of bed and act quickly, much of the Islamic world might erupt into rioting that could make the demonstration in Harvard Yard look like a party in the park.
Jon’s second call was to his translator, Osman al-Ghazali, a Christian Arab who was a professor of Islamic sudies at Harvard, but he failed to reach him either at the university or at his home in Belmont. The messages Jon left on both answering machines were quite impassioned.
His third immediacy was to compose a written statement for the media on the glaring error in translation and proofreading. His two-page statement concluded: The offending word in the final sentence of the last chapter of Jesus of Nazareth has been correctly translated as “challenge”-not “evil”-in the twenty-nine foreign languages into which the book has been printed, as will become obvious to anyone taking the time to make the search. I deeply regret that the new Arabic edition contained a typographical or translational error that is understandably offensive to Islam. The printing of the first edition has been halted, and the publisher is in the process of recalling as many of the defective copies as possible. Those who have purchased a copy of the faulty first edition may exchange it for the corrected version or receive a full refund. All future editions in Arabic will contain the appropriate correction. Thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter.
“There; that should do it, Marylou,” Jon said to his secretary. “Better run off a hundred copies of this. The media will be hungry.”
“Not ‘will be’-they are hungry. Look out the window.”
Below, mobile television trucks were already desecrating the sacred turf of Harvard Yard, and reporters and camera crews were milling through the still-vocal c
rowd of demonstrators. Jon threw his hands up in frustration. “I haven’t gotten through to al-Ghazali yet, so there’s nothing I can add to that statement. Please just hand it out, and they’ll have to be satisfied with that for now.”
“But won’t you be here too? You look so nice on television,” she trifled.
“No, I’m escaping, and you don’t know where I am. Good luck with the media!”
Jon ducked out of his office just as the staircases and elevators disgorged the first wave of reporters. He used a remote fire escape and was on the road home to suburban Weston before the media even learned that he had left campus.
At the Tudor-Gothic residence the Webers called home, Shannon was catching up on her own correspondence between loads of laundry, relishing the quiet hours she was able to devote to more domestic pursuits. But in the late afternoon, the quiet seemed doomed as the phone began ringing incessantly. Each inquiry was from a newspaper, radio, or television station-all asking to speak to Jon but giving no hint as to the cause of all the furor. Yet each time she tried to call her husband at Harvard, the line was busy. His cell phone went straight to voice mail. She finally sent an e-mail to his BlackBerry, but there was no return call.
Again the phone rang. Might it be Jon? “Weber residence,” she said, trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice.
“Meeses Web-air,” someone with a thick accent said, “your husband has spoken lies about our great Prophet-may his name be blessed-and we will have our revenge. We know where you are living in Wes-tone. Dr. Web-air will be punished.”
“Who is this?” she demanded.
No answer. Just a click and the line went dead.
A clutch of apprehension started building inside her. First the media inquiries about Jon, then his failure to call, and now an ugly threat. She locked all the doors in the house and spent the next hour pacing the floor, looking out the windows, and alerting several neighbor friends. Call 911? Too early for that.
Suddenly the sweet music of her garage door opening provided welcome relief. More relieved than she wanted to let on, she greeted him with a fierce hug. “What in the world is going on, Jon? The phone’s been ringing all afternoon. Mostly media, but then there was a nasty call from someone with a thick accent who threatened ‘Dr. Web-air.’”
Jon sighed. “Sorry you were bothered, darling. I think I’ve cleared it all up, and-”
“But why didn’t you check your e-mail? I kept calling, but your line was busy. So I-”
“I’ll give you the whole story very shortly. But until things have a chance to blow over, let’s pack immediately for-shall we say-an ‘early vacation’ at the Cape. I mean now, instantly, Shannon. Twenty minutes and we’re outta here.”
“Good! You can explain on the way.” And explain he certainly would. Shannon never ceased to be amazed at the way controversy and unsought fame seemed to follow her husband wherever he went. It might even be amusing if it didn’t so often disrupt the quiet, scholarly life they both preferred.
Somehow, they managed their escape in a half hour. En route to Cape Cod, Jon told her all about the demonstration at Harvard Yard and that the real reason for their drive to the Cape was not the phoned threat but to escape the media. He refused to stand in front of TV cameras, a blank stare on his face, and whimper, “I have no idea how this happened.” He also admitted to a tinge of conscience in not having personally proofread the Arabic edition before publication. Had he done so, he would have caught the error immediately. “Of course, that should have been the translator’s responsibility,” he told her, “and if I don’t hear from Osman al-Ghazali soon, I’m going to go after him bare-handed!”
Just before reaching their hideaway at Cape Cod, Shannon asked, “So then, you think your-Mr. Housani, was it?-will explain things to the guy who threatened us on the phone?”
“Right.”
Shannon hoped Jon’s optimism was not misplaced. As much as she enjoyed their beach house, hiding out from the media when they had a major research trip on the horizon was not her idea of a vacation.
As a strategic retreat for times of both vacation and duress, Jon and Shannon had purchased an oceanside home several miles east of the Kennedy compound on Cape Cod. Only the police at Hyannis Port, Marylou Kaiser, and several trusted friends and neighbors knew of its existence.
They loved the place. It was spacious by Cape standards with four bedrooms, three baths, and a great room with cobblestone fireplace. The exterior siding was composed of cedar shakes painted in Cape Cod gray with white window trim, and it blended in perfectly with the many thousands of other homes at the Cape, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard. They had named the place Thistle Do.
A broad lawn that rolled down to the Atlantic comprised their backyard, part of which fronted a small bay, where they had built a boathouse to match Thistle Do. It housed a thirty-two-foot runabout cruiser they used for excursions up and down the New England coast. Jon always apologized to his friends-piloting a tall-masted schooner with billowing sails would have been far better sport, but he just didn’t have time enough for all the hassle involved in readying the ship for a sail and then stowing it all away again. Maybe after retirement, or maybe sooner if the price for gasoline rose any higher.
Because of the extraordinary success of his literary works-both scholarly and popular-Jon was by no means poverty-stricken. He tried to use his wealth wisely. He gave to charity and tithed to the church but still had little twinges of conscience each time he fired up his boat or sped off in his BMW Z4. This merely proved that the man was Lutheran, a tribe that celebrated God’s grace and forgiveness all the more because of an inbred sensitivity to shortcomings and sin.
Jon and Shannon planned to stay no more than a week at the Cape and return to Cambridge once the brouhaha had blown over. Then they intended to fly to Greece and Jordan, as planned.
The day after they arrived at Thistle Do, however, Marylou Kaiser phoned, somewhat breathlessly. “You do have television reception out there, don’t you, Dr. Weber?”
“Sure. Of course…”
“Then please turn on your TV. You just have no idea…” There was a catch in her voice. She cleared her throat and began again. “All the networks-NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, CNN-they’re all showing footage of Islamic riots across the world over your book, with-”
“ What! Across the world? That’s ridiculous. Don’t they report that it’s all an error, for goodness’ sake?”
“No. At least, not yet, evidently.”
“ Why haven’t they reported it?” he demanded. Then, realizing Marylou couldn’t possibly have the answer, he quickly added, “Probably because they want to let the ‘sensation’ play out first, maybe to build ratings, and then sober up with the truth.”
“I hope you’re right. Oh, I do have a bit of good news, Dr. Weber.”
“I need it about now.”
“Professor al-Ghazali is trying to reach you. Shall I give him your cell phone number?”
“Yes, please! But don’t tell him where I am.”
“Never.”
“Call me if anything else comes up. Sorry to leave you with this mess.”
She chuckled, her good humor once again restored. “I think it was all part of the package when I signed on with Indiana Jones-Harvard edition.”
Smiling, Jon said good-bye, then reported the conversation to Shannon. “I can’t believe this thing has gotten so out of control.”
Shannon gave a wry smile. “That’s what you get, darling, for being so famous.”
“As the Brits would say, ‘Balderdash!’”
Jon turned on the wide-screen TV and watched in growing horror-high-definition horror-the Muslim riots across the world. The BBC showed footage from London of a papier-mache Jon being hanged in effigy from a lamppost in front of the Nelson monument at Trafalgar Square. In Paris, a similar Weber dummy was ceremoniously hurled from the top of the Eiffel Tower. In Madrid, he was gored in a mock bullfight, and only Germany provided a bit of grim humo
r when the Weber figure was drowned in a bathtub full of beer-though Muslims there insisted others had poured the amber beverage, of course.
Jon shook his head. “This is beyond all belief!”
His cell phone chirped, and he lunged for it. It just had to be Osman al-Ghazali. He was not disappointed.
“We were in Poughkeepsie, Jon, at our daughter’s graduation from Vassar,” he opened, “and I didn’t get the news until late last night, or I would have called you immediately.”
“All right, Osman. I’m listening.” It was not the friendliest response, Jon knew, but his translator deserved it. Unless he had some reasonable explanation for his now-notorious gaffe, Jon was ready to throttle the man.
“I… I can’t find the words to express my concern… my shock,” al-Ghazali said, “and you have my profound apologies for what happened, Jon. The typesetter in Cairo must have made the error, of course, but I should have caught it… I should have caught it.”
Jon said nothing, so al-Ghazali continued. “I just can’t believe I didn’t catch it, since radi – evil -sounds nothing like tahaddi – challenge, as you well know. Well, they rhyme, but…”
“That could be, Osman,” Jon finally replied, softening. “Have you called our publisher in Cairo?”
“Even before calling you. I made them repeat the correct term for ‘challenge’ three times, and they’ll e-mail me proofs before going back to press.”
“Good, Osman. What in the world ever made the typesetter in Cairo do that- if he’s responsible? He’s not a Coptic Christian, is he?”
“I don’t really know. But I’ll find out.”
“In any case, you should also have a few words with him-to say the least.”
“You bet I will.”
“More than that, I think you’ll have to do a careful proofing again of the whole Arabic edition to make sure there are no other errors.”
“I’d already planned to do that.”
“Good. Oh, one more thing: word about the translation error seems to be a deep, dark secret as far as the media are concerned. I worry most about Al Jazeera. If they don’t report that it was all a mistake, rioting will rage on in the Islamic world.”
