Leon Uris (50 page)

It was a very famous town, but it didn’t look very good these days.

We had to sell Absalom because we could no longer feed him. He had been a very good donkey and became my friend. We had many conversations when we went from the cave to our spring and into Jericho. Many peasants can be cruel to their donkeys, so I made certain that Absalom had a good master. Nada cried openly when he was sold. I hid my tears, naturally.

Haj Ibrahim and I walked from Aqbat Jabar into Jericho each day and listened anyplace where we could pick up clues of who might be doing business with the Jews across the armistice boundaries. We covered every café, souk, kiosk, and store and sniffed among the street peddlers. We fenced around with the beggars, who often were undercover traders in things like hashish. We listened around the bus station, the Red Crescent office, at the Allenby Bridge, the Jordanian military camps, even the mosques.

When we felt we had hit upon a likely agent of the Jews, we had to be extremely tender about how we approached him. In our world, it often took two men ten minutes to merely say hello to one another. If there were no point to the meeting a half hour of fruitless parables and proverbs often drifted out of their mouths, followed by another ten-minute discourse to break off the meeting politely so that no one was left offended. It was painstaking work, but after a month’s search we were left completely frustrated.

One evening I returned late from Jericho and reported to Father that I had found nothing new. He threw up his arms in despair and turned his back. I was enraged with frustration. Making contact with the Jews had become the obsession of my father’s life. It cut me deeply not to be able to do this for him.

There were other reasons I had to succeed. Sabri had won a new place in my father’s heart. With his great skill as an auto mechanic, he was the one in a thousand who could find work in Jericho. When he handed my father his pay each week, Ibrahim often patted his head and told him what a great lad he was.

Jamil was also coming more and more into view. He was hanging around all day with a gang of boys who talked nothing but vengeance. Their bravado was encouraged by the older men, who fed them on battles that never were, acts of courage that never happened. So far, Haj Ibrahim was not listening to the voices of revenge, but when one hears that talk day and night, Allah only knew when he would change his thinking.

As night crept into the valley, I would walk through the camp up to the base of Mount Temptation to get away from the mangle of people. I would climb up in the rocks so I would not have to look down on Aqbat Jabar. Once in a while, I had a reverie that I was back on my ledge in the cave before all the trouble began there.

The sky was never as clear at Mount Temptation because of the lights from the camps and the town. Yet there I could meditate, just as Ibrahim had done at the prophet’s tomb in Tabah. One night I put all my might into thinking about our problem as I huddled in the rocks to sleep.

I awakened to the sound of music of a shepherd’s flute. It was neither day nor night, but all around and about me was a strange, soft glow of light—blues and violets and yellows—that seemed to be illuminating and pulsating from the rocks. I walked toward the music and there, around the next boulder, sat a plump little man, bald on top, with a fringe of silver hair.

‘Good evening,’ I said politely. ‘May God bless our meeting.’

‘He has, Ishmael,’ he said, setting his flute aside.

‘How do you know my name?’ I asked.

‘Because I am a Moslem saint and prophet,’ he answered. Oh, now that scared me! ‘You have heard of revelation, haven’t you ?’

My mouth quivered out a yes of sorts. ‘Who ... are you?’ I croaked.

‘I am Jesus,’ he said.

My impulse was to flee, but some strange power held me fast.

‘Do not be frightened, my little friend.’ Whoever he was, he was a nice man and I began to feel I was not in danger.

‘You look nothing like your pictures,’ I dared.

‘Graven images,’ he snapped. ‘Do I look tall and red-haired and with a beard?’

‘No.’

‘If I were, then I surely wouldn’t be Jesus. I don’t know how the rumors about my appearance got started. And I certainly don’t know why a man with my aspect cannot be as holy as those graven images.’

Just that quickly, he disappeared.

‘Where are you?’ I cried.

‘Here!’ bounced back crazily in echoes through the stone walls.

I chanced to look at myself. My rags were gone! I was dressed in a robe of fine black and white linen trimmed in gold with a breastplate of jewels.

‘Here,’ the voice called ... ‘here.’

Suddenly I began to rise off the ground. I felt a rocking motion beneath me and looked down to see I was astride a magnificent huge beast and we were levitating over the cliff of Mount Temptation. The animal galloped in enormous strides, although there was nothing beneath his hooves, and he snorted blue lightning bolts from his nostrils, making no sound.

He turned his face to me and smiled. It was Absalom! But it was not Absalom. He was the color of flowing honey and wore a blanket of the same magnificent cloth of my own robes. I was sure it was Absalom, but his face reminded me of Nada and his great hooves were covered with diamonds. He wore no saddle, so I clung to his mane, which was braided into shiny black tails three feet long.

‘Here ... here ... here,’ the voice called as we rose upward in leaps that covered a hundred miles.

I began to feel quite safe aboard Absalom as we plunged hell-bent into a belt of long-tailed comets. While they flashed past, I could see that each had the face of a Moslem saint but looked queerly like many of the old men who had died in Tabah. Once through the comets, we entered a rage of sheet lightning that boomed and distorted in the sky.

We had come to a sea as smooth as Nada’s skin, and Absalom strode upon the sea with no trouble, then through great caves a thousand feet high, their salt icicles encrusted with silver dust. Beyond the caves, we rode on in total blackness. The wind was filled with the scent of myrrh.

‘You may dismount now, Ishmael.’

I obeyed without hesitation and there I was, standing in the middle of the universe. Absalom was gone, but I feared no evil. A path appeared before me, paved with large alabaster bricks that I followed into a forest of olive trees with trunks of ivory and leaves of twinkly rubies and fruit that appeared as cats’ eyes.

The flute lured me off the path to a showering waterfall that fell into a pool of wine. There was a great open meadow past it, carpeted with deep rose petals of many colors and the softest grass I had ever felt. Jesus sat among the roses.

‘Where are we?’ I asked.

The first paradise,’ Jesus answered. ‘I can go no farther.’

‘But certainly you can go anywhere in heaven!’

‘Unfortunately, not until Allah makes a final disposition of my case. When I first arrived, Allah assured me that my followers and I had the exclusive use of heaven. It bothered me to have to evict everyone who had inhabited the earth and died before my birth. I was most troubled to throw the Jews out. I was once a Jewish rabbi, you know. However, an entire religion had been named for me and Allah had given them heaven, for they alone knew the truth out of all mankind. We could wander all the way up to the seventh paradise until he came.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Mohammed.’

‘You know Mohammed!’

‘Oh, indeed I do. Until he arrived, I was looked upon as the son of Allah. Mohammed argued vehemently for centuries and I was finally demoted to being a Moslem saint and prophet.’

‘Well, what are you, Jesus? A Jew, a Christian, or a Moslem?’

‘I am a true believer. Islam has the exclusive use of heaven now, you know.’

‘But why can’t you go beyond the first paradise?’

‘I still refuse to go along with Mohammed’s contention that all nonbelievers must be burned alive. I have managed to convince Allah that the nonbelievers should be able to remain, at least in the first paradise. But I must say, Mohammed is persistent. He wants everyone else burned.’

‘Do the Christians know you are truly a Moslem?’

‘They would refuse to believe it, at least until Allah renders his final decision on the matter. I don’t want to trouble Allah because, after all, he has seven hundred and fifty-four billion trillion other planets to look after, to say nothing of all the suns and all those crazy comets.’

‘But if there is only one true heaven, where do the people go from all those other planets?’

‘They all have their seventh heavens. One set per planet, that’s the rule. But I came to help you with your problem, Ishmael,’ he said, changing the subject of heavenly politics abruptly. ‘You will soon see the golden ladder,’ Jesus said. ‘Climb it and you will find the answer.’

‘But that is an impossible riddle,’ I protested.

‘Everything up here is a riddle. If we did not talk in riddles, no one would understand us.’

Just beyond him, the mighty golden ladder appeared. I was now terrified. ‘O Jesus,’ I cried, ‘help me! What is the truth of heaven?’

‘The truth is that Allah is one. He is all-good and also all-evil. He has planted an equal measure of both in all of you. You have been given a mind, in order to wage the war within yourself and to satisfy only yourself. Hang onto your own soul. Don’t give it away. Find your own answer and you will be free.’

‘That is the most terrible riddle of all!’

‘Someday you might understand it Now climb, Ishmael. In order to answer your problem, you must climb to a level you have once climbed and you will find it’

‘But ... but ...’

‘No more questions. Use your mind. I must go. I still have a long journey and I have no horse.’

At first climbing the golden ladder was euphoria, a miracle. But as I kept going up, each new rung began to make my body heavier and my hands and feet less secure. I slipped! The ladder was gone! I was scaling a cliff—an impossible cliff—struggling and sweating and grabbing and grunting with fear. I fell exhausted on a ledge, bleeding and weeping.

There was a strange door before me. As I reached for it, it opened. I was in a room as great as a king’s palace, but it was bare except for a tiny little ancient pot that bore an inscription: ASHES OF THE PAST.

At that instant, I began to plunge. I was falling and all the strange sights and scents and noises I had heard were jumbled together and mocking me. I could see the planet earth come into view. I fell faster and faster. The lights of Aqbat Jabar appeared as a distant spark that grew larger and larger. I would be smashed into a million pieces! Down ... down ... down. ... O Allah, HELP ME!

A slit of sunlight pried my eyes open. I knew! I knew! I rushed down Mount Temptation to Aqbat Jabar, falling in my speed and skinning my hands and knees. I ran into our hovel breathlessly and grabbed Haj Ibrahim’s hand and pulled him outside.

‘Father,’ I whispered into his ear, ‘I know how to contact the Jews!’

I
COULD NOT TELL
Haj Ibrahim about my journey to the first paradise. The family would have believed me and would have been terribly envious that I had received a personal visit from Jesus.

When he had been the Muktar of Tabah, my father heard many strange stories at his table at the café. We do not scoff at something that appears to be fantasy. In fact, it is difficult for us to tell where fantasy ends and reality begins. My father alone usually doubted these stories, but never to the face of the storyteller, for that would have offended him.

I was certain my journey had taken place and had solved a baffling mystery. Yet I didn’t want to take the chance of appearing foolish in Ibrahim’s eyes. I decided to attack the problem with logic, for he was one of the few men who could respond to it.

‘Look!’ I cried, pointing to a sign below a second floor window across the street. The sign read:
DR. NURI MUDHIL, PROFESSOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY.

‘In the name of the Prophet, will you tell me what is going on?’ Ibrahim demanded.

‘Remember in Tabah, when the children hung around down by the highway? What did they do?’

‘They begged,’ he answered.

‘What else?’

‘They sold drinks and produce.’

‘And what else?’

‘The son is not supposed to give riddles to his father. It is the other way around.’

‘What else was sold?’ I insisted.

‘Arrowheads, potsherds.’

‘Who bought them?’

Ibrahim got caught up in my game. ‘Mostly the Jews bought them,’ he said.

‘May Allah forgive me for bringing up my terrible indiscretion of entering the Shemesh Kibbutz against your will, but I must tell you what I saw. The Jews put up an entire museum of antiquities. All the children in Tabah knew that the Jews would buy anything from us that was an antiquity. I learned that many other kibbutzim had their own museums as well. The Jews are insane for museums.’

My father’s face began to light up. I pressed on excitedly. ‘Do you remember that once or twice a year someone would discover an unbroken vase or urn? We always took it to Jerusalem because the Old City dealers gave a better price. I have seen things we have sold to the Barakat family end up in the museum in Shemesh. Do you remember when I read to you from the Palestine
Post
, just before the war, that the Jews had paid tens of thousands of pounds for some scrolls found near Qumran.’

‘Aha,’ Father said.

‘There are hundreds of caves all the way down the Dead Sea and there are many on the Jordan side. The desert is filled with tels covering ancient cities. Is it not logical that the Bedouin have scoured these sites? Is it not logical that he buys them?’ I said, pointing to Dr. Nuri Mudhil’s sign. ‘
And is it not logical that he sells them to the Jews?’