In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist (22 page)

“A date?” How had they leapfrogged to this?

“Yes. You should ask me out, and you should ask me to go horseback riding. At Yoffi HaGalil. It’s a beautiful area that overlooks the Galilee Sea right between Safed and Tiberias.”

“Horseback riding?” he sputtered. “What do I know about riding a horse?”

“You don’t need to know anything. They teach you, it’s slow and geriatric,” she soothed him.

He rolled his eyes at
geriatric
and looked at her tanned forehead catching the light between the branches of the olive tree. “I have work to do.” His arm swept the desert-colored stones of the walls and ground. “Here, in Jerusalem, in this courtyard.” He had no business gallivanting off with a teenager practically. Okay, she was twenty-eight. But horseback riding? Sheer madness!

Tamar stood. The high heels she wore made her closer to his height. She put her head square in front of his. “Look,” she said, “we both need a break from Jerusalem.”

He glanced a moment at a wisp of red hair falling against her cheek like a lovely comma. The idea struck him as absurd, embarrassing, and wonderful.

Rich dirt, rich dirt. Riches buried everywhere. How else to explain this, his second discovery on the Haram? It happened a day after the Prophet’s birthday, in the lunar month of
Rabi Al-Awwal
(Mustafa took this as a good omen). He was sweeping a few feet away from the tour guide, the one he didn’t like, the Israeli with the hair in his eyes (but why did Mustafa always stop to listen to him?), when the tour guide dropped this curious remark: “Women who gave birth would offer a turtle dove sacrifice in the temple. Afterward, the mothers received a dove-shaped token as a kind of receipt.”

Mustafa, who was busy tilting his dustpan into his rucksack, jerked suddenly, and bits of garbage spilled. A token the shape of a dove? He had seen something like this in his collection, he was sure of it. But he had dismissed it as junk! He knocked the side of his head. Could it be? He took off for his hiding spot, his hands clasping the dustpan and broom like walking staffs.

His breathing came in fits and starts. Pale weeds poked his ankles. With a sharp shove, he dislodged the round stone covering the hole he had enlarged. The bag lay there in the dirt like a dead animal, and he groped his hand into the bag, seeking with his fingers, his hands, then his eyes. He held up a sliver of clay, light as a grape.
Yawaladee!
It was shaped like a bird! Maybe this was the same token the mothers had used long ago. He gently turned over the clay piece and saw the Hebrew letters:
Lekarban—
For Sacrifice—and his armpits went damp. Another miracle. A clay bird so old it had come into this world hundreds and hundreds of years ago, even before the Prophet himself. He touched the bird’s tail with the tip of his finger. His prayers to Allah, the Finder of Lost Objects, had opened his eyes.

He paced between the chunks of pillars lying on the ground, stopping every few seconds to gaze at the Hebrew letters. In his mind he saw the mothers in the temple courtyard after birth, sluggish and plump, surrounded by the white cooing birds. Ah, how could it be, all this time he had looked at the clay bird but his eyes had passed over it, as though nothing. Like Rabbi Isaac once said, no one knew how to look with his eyes anymore.

The rabbi.
Laa
. His throat went dry as sand. He wasn’t going to give the bird to Rabbi Isaac. He would sell it for money. A lot of money. “But how can I take the bird?” he groaned. This one was more special than the others, much more. The Hebrew letters. The bird for their sacrifices. It belonged to the Jews. It wasn’t his to give away. Still—he had found it. He had saved the bird and so it was his. Besides, if he gave it to the Jews, there’d be trouble. He could lose his job. Sheikh Tawil would kick him off the Haram in a second. He whacked the side of his head again.
Laa
. Why was he thinking such thoughts? He owed nothing to this man who wouldn’t even try to help the pain in his neck go away. The truth was, Allah had dropped a piece of good luck on the earth just for him to find. He who always had his luck in the sky and his brains in the dirt.

As he gathered supplies for washing the windows, he plotted: He would take the dove off the mountain and bring it to Mr. Kareem. “Let me speak to the owner!” he would insist until the owner came. The bird had to be worth a lot of money. His life would change. He would buy new shirts and throw out all the frayed ones with the chipped buttons. His black shoes looked terrible, especially the left one with the hole. Now—only new ones, not the cardboard junk, but proper shoes from the big Israeli store, the Mashbir. Maybe he would buy new underwear, a loose-fitting kind he had seen in
JC Penney
magazine. A man should look good on the outside
and
the inside. He would buy his mother the red-stoned necklace with the gold ropes, so many jewels she wouldn’t know where to put them all; and for his sister Samira, a dishwasher, the best; for his nieces and nephews, presents on each of their birthdays; and for his brother Tariq, who complained of the heat in his bedroom, a ceiling fan with gold trim. Maybe something for Hamdi, too, who he already forgave for his mean words, but why was his old friend keeping far away from him, as if
he
were the wronged one, and not Mustafa?

He cleaned and cleaned, and his plans grew bigger. Next on the list: Go to a doctor in America for his neck. Forget the rabbi and his do-nothing help. Why should he rely only on the Jews’ secret powers? Instead, he would search and search until he found a good doctor. And if the doctor said there was no hope, no operation that would ever fix him, then he would have to find help in another way, a man with special powers, he knew such persons existed. No more giving up after just one try. If he gained even four centimeters it would be worth it. He pictured his mother looking at him and seeing a new man. She would open her arms and say, “Finally you came home, Mustafa.” Then she’d say, “You look different. What is it? How handsome you look!”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” he’d reply. “My neck got straighter, that’s all.” She would take his hand and suggest a stroll down the main streets, the two of them. He would hold her, because now she was frailer, and help her sidestep a grouchy goat or two. He would gaze at the men who sat in their front yards playing a card game of
shadde
or backgammon, and they would make a gesture for him to join them. Mustafa stood still in front of a window, his finger on the nozzle of a spray bottle, smiling and thinking how it all would turn out.

A bulbul bird landed on a tree, making happy loud sounds, as if it lent blessing to his plans. Just beyond the tree, he heard a
tock, tock
sound, and his eyes fell on a long cane and Sheikh Tawil coming around the bend. He glanced up. His boss was frowning at him; his squarish head swiveled from side to side.

Mustafa grabbed a cloth and wiped down the window. He staggered over to the next window, as if to say: See how fast I am? I am the best worker on the Noble Sanctuary! He held up the bottle and sprayed the window in generous spurts, but the sheikh had already passed by, intent on some other task, Mustafa imagined.

Not long after the midday call to the
dhuhr
prayers, Mustafa was drinking a bottle of carob punch under a tree when a loud sound like a gun shot shook the Haram air. Mustafa set down his bottle and looked around, terrified. A bomb? He clambered to his feet. Strings of smoke vaulted up from the Al-Aqsa mosque. Mustafa grabbed his tools. Who had done this evil thing? He scurried toward the Gray Lady mosque, his legs teetering and tripping, joined by a rabble of workers, sheikhs, tourists,
and policemen from every corner of the Haram. Shouting and yells. A stampede of feet. The imams hurrying in tight knots, a skinny Waqf official shouting, “The occupiers want to blow up the Haram!”

“Don’t worry,” shouted another, a fist raised. “Allah is stronger than any infidel!”

When he got to the mosque, a scared young boy stood to the side holding a smoking stick: a firecracker. One of the elders and wise men, an angry-eyed sheikh, shouted, “Foolish boy, what have you done!” It became revealed that it was his own son, and the sheikh pulled down the boy’s pants and spanked him right there. The crowd nodded with approval. Mustafa’s buttocks clenched, though, with every slap the boy got.

Toward the end of his shift, he stuffed the clay bird deep into his rucksack and prepared to leave the Noble Sanctuary through the Cotton Merchant’s Gate. As he neared the beautiful arched gate with its black-and-white- and red-checkered stones, a long line of workers stretched out. Up ahead, a long table blocked the gate, and policemen milled around. A Druze policeman was patting down the thick arms and legs of a construction worker. “Can you believe this?” the heavyset worker groaned, his voice rising with grievance. “We’re getting checked! Like any old tourist or Jew!”

Mustafa’s feet tensed in their worn-out shoes. They were checking the workers, his brothers? He pondered this strange deed. Why would they do that? Then he remembered: the firecracker. Now everyone was frightened about bombs on the Haram. And suddenly frightened about people stealing things and who knew what else. He thought: They’ll check me. They’ll find the clay bird.
Laa!
He held his rucksack close to his chest and stomach, his heart pounding against the bag. They’d catch him and bring him to Sheikh Tawil. “Why are you taking this off the mountain?” the sheikh would accuse him. “Do you want to sell it?”

“Didn’t you say it’s garbage?” Mustafa would protest.

The sheikh would look at him with his sleepy almond eyes and reply, “If you sell it to the Israelis, that’s theft. Worse than that, you are delivering a lie into the hand of the infidels.” And here, Mustafa would have no words to answer. The sheikh could take his job away, punish him, or even cut off his hand for stealing, just like it said in the Koran. But no, cutting off the hand wasn’t allowed in this sabra country, and his fear eased a
little. Still, maybe—Mustafa clutched the rucksack—he could slip by at another gate.

He cast his eyes around the Haram and tried to exit through the Gate of Magrabeh. It was no good over there, either. All the workers grumbled angrily to the police, “Why are you making an inspection?” and “This is not done on the Haram! Not for us, not for Muslims!”

Mustafa hefted his rucksack onto his good shoulder and resolutely set off for the north side. As the sun beat down on his kaffiyeh, bleaching out the stains, he walked the entire expanse, passing the elegant Dome of the Chain; the El Kas Fountain, where two old men sat washing their feet; the Golden Lady shrine, and the Dome of Suleiman. He panted from the effort and the heat until he reached the northern wall. But he had crossed a desert for nothing.

No, he would never pass their inspection, not here, there, or at any of the gates. The silly boy with the firecracker had ruined his plans. He mopped his dripping face with his kaffiyeh.
Ya’allah
. What luck. Throw a lucky man into the sea, and he rises with a fish in his mouth. Throw an unlucky man a pot of gold, and it will break his skull. It was his fate. He returned to his hiding place and tucked the clay dove back into its earthen hiding place. He rubbed his neck, massaging a sore muscle. Lucky, unlucky, what did it matter? Tomorrow he was sure it would be better. After all, everyone knew luck came from Allah.

At the corner grocery, Isaac placed three canteens on the counter: a khaki-colored army issue canteen, an orange plastic canteen, and one with a denim blue thermal cover.

“Which do you recommend?” he asked the clerk, a Yemenite Jew in his fifties, with deep-set eyes the color of plums. Isaac explained that he was going on an outing with a lady. A hike up north, near Safed. Tomorrow. He didn’t mention the horseback riding.

“A date, then?” said the clerk, his delicate brows yanking upward as if pulled by strings.

Isaac assented.

The clerk flung aside the cheap plastic canteen. “Not that one. That’s for babies.”

Isaac’s hand hovered between the blue thermal and the army. He couldn’t decide. Nor could he figure out why he had agreed to this frivolous outing. He never intended to look at Tamar that way, how a man looks at a woman. He had trained himself not to look at any of the courtyard women. Verboten. Yet the rebbetzin’s words echoed powerfully inside him: “What about Tamar?” And then Tamar’s own words, that time she got angry at him: “Maybe, Isaac, you’re talking about you! Not me.” From that moment, she was no longer a
segulah
single, some confused, pretty young thing, but a real woman.

His hand closed in on the blue thermal canteen. “Anything else I should bring?”

The Yemenite outfitted him with a visor cap, candy bars, and a tiny metal can opener. Isaac gathered up his purchases and the clerk called a blessing after him: “May you not stumble or fall!”

Isaac nodded his amen. Nice to be on the receiving end of blessings.

Halfway down the street he turned back to buy the juice boxes Mazal was always bringing to the courtyard. A shadow flickered on the sidewalk in the midmorning sun, and he caught sight of a thick-bodied man wedging himself into a gold Subaru. Isaac’s eyes snapped open. That black hair, thick and stiff as a beaver’s pelt. Those cupid lips. It was the police commander, Shani. What was he doing here? It was nearly a month since they’d last spoken. The car was parked in front of a laundromat. As the Subaru pulled out, making an aggressive sharp turn, the handsome commander seemed to be moving his head to the beat of a tune Isaac couldn’t hear.

Isaac stared past the green awning hanging over the laundromat. Why had Shani come here of all places? To the black-hat backwaters, to Isaac’s territory? What this meant he couldn’t say, only that it disturbed him. The commander’s appearance collided with other recent strange occurrences. For instance: those two men who had taken to hanging out in the courtyard, a pair who for some reason didn’t strike him as the supplicant type, no matter how loud and enthusiastic-sounding their prayer. Why did they keep coming? Also, a few times he had heard a clicking noise as he was about to make another phone call. And still he had heard no response from that reporter. Isaac thought nothing of these things separately, but together, especially with the commander on his turf, they all lodged uneasily in his brain.