A FEW DAYS LATER he had still not recontacted de Lussac, but had spent time researching the history of the Temple. There was a mass of Internet sites, most were serious; historical, political and religious sites, but there were also a good number of extremist sites of every of leaning, including Israeli and Arab nationalists, and a quantity of NGOs dedicated to peace, not to speak of tourist organisations and of course the usual crazies.
It was no surprise; on occasions in the past he had covered events related to the Middle East in Paris: visits of heads of state, peace conferences, oil crises, wars and terrorist attacks. He had never really interested himself in the roots of the region’s long drawn out problems, in spite of his interest in history, modern and ancient, he had never thought of its link with the real world.
As different ideas came into his head he decided a walk across Saint Louis en Ile to the Latin Quarter would be in order. Walking and looking at people in the cafés, people going about their business, stimulated his imagination. As he strolled along the boulevard Saint Geramin he remebered a second-hand English bookshop run by an American on rue Monsieur le Prince, where he knew he could find out of print books and books dating back to the twenties of thirties that gave a different perspective of history, history as seen in those decades.
Perhaps he could find a guide to Israel or something on its history. He found both, first a 1949 Guide Bleu in good condition with fold out maps, interesting because it pre-dated fifty years of political events and appeared to be concentrated on Israel’s ancient monuments and ruins. Then to his surprise he found a 1950 copy of Archaeology in Israel, he felt pleased with himself, they were a good buy and would provide a good background to the ancient history of the Near East.
He felt the first stirrings of enthusiasm as he walked up to the Jardins de Luxembourg, where he found a chair by the circular pond and started to explore the contents of his two finds, refreshing his mind on the formative history of the modern Middle East and the geography of Israel, or to be precise Israel and Palestine according to the 1949 boundaries described in the Guide Bleu.
A couple of hours later back in his appartment he took a cold beer from the fridge – the weather was beginning to feel hot – then grabbing de Lussac’s introductory section of three hundred and fifty pages he stepped out onto the terrace, adjusted a parasol and settled himself on a comfortable chaise longue. Clearly there were enough ingredients to make a novel, but what would de Lussac think? The man had spent ten years of his life writing a serious work. O’Connelly picked up the bound volume and started to turn the pages.
The history of Israel was more than just interesting, a series of disasters, exiles, destruction, invasions and conquest. Assyrians, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, British and finally the rebirth of a nation from the ashes of a war inflicted on them by an alliance of neighbours sworn to destroy them.
The problem was how to make sense of de Lussac’s work, filled with endless repetition, an arcane vocabulary, an elliptical syntax and an excessive use of multiple adjectives, in short in its actual form it was unreadable. However, apart from its value as an archaeological work, for which O’Connelly was incapable of making a judgement, it could form the background for a good story.
De Lussac had clearly explained his own motivations; to demonstrate the present day conflict was based on an erroneous belief, the cause of a murderous dispute over Jerusalem and its most holy site, which that he believed, would be resolved as a result of his research and discovery.
If O’Connelly agreed to accept the task of having the book translated into English, at his own expense, perhaps he could persuade de Lussac to agree to an abbreviated version more accessible to a broader public. As to the French version he would have to find a specialised publisher, perhaps a religious foundation. He would talk with Laura, if anybody had contacts with religious organisations it would certainly be the Irish, he remember her talking of the St Patrick’s Day mass, where a good number of people from different interdenominational groups had been present or invited to the reception afterwards.
7
Water and Purification
The Legacy of Solomon Page 7
