The Gates of Zion (12 page)

It was nearly 9 am, and only now did Ellie hear Miriam stirring in the kitchen. The old woman’s late-night vigil had undoubtedly caused her to sleep later than she had ever slept in her life. Ellie pulled on a sweater to cover her bandaged elbows and, feeling a little guilty, peeked into the kitchen.

Fully dressed, with every hair in place, Miriam stood grinding coffee beans and humming to herself.

“Good morning!” Ellie walked in and tried to take the handle of the grinder from Miriam. “Let me help.”

Miriam held tightly to the grinder. “Sit,” she commanded. “For twenty-seven years I grind coffee beans in this house every morning.

You want me to take pictures for you?”

Ellie plopped down at the table in resignation. “Rough night last night?”

Miriam glanced at her and shook a few more beans into the grinder.

“How did you sleep?” Ellie asked cheerfully.

“After Miss Ellie realize the error of her ways and come home to bed, I slept well. Our Lord Jesus watched over you last night. It is a shame that a young woman go out in the streets to dance like a harem girl,” she chided.

“Yes, well … Miriam, where is the scroll? I looked for it last night and couldn’t find it. Did you put it away?”

“Ha!” Miriam exclaimed, putting the coffee on to percolate. “You left it in the lab, lying on the counter. It is something holy. I know that. You will see when the professor comes—”

“Where did you put it?” interrupted Ellie, relieved that it had not simply disappeared in the night.

“In the professor’s study. Away safely in the case.”

“Good. I want to have another look at it.” Ellie started to rise.

“Sit!” Miriam demanded. “You need your breakfast. It is some days since you eat, and now that you are up, you will have a good breakfast.”

“Just coffee.”

“Coffee!” Miriam rolled her eyes and threw up her hands in despair.

“I’ve got some business in the Old City today. I want to take the scroll over to one of the Yeshiva schools. Maybe a rabbi can give us a clue, since Uncle Howard and Moshe are gone.”

“It is not safe today in the Old City. The Mufti has called all Muslims to a general strike. I will make waffles and you will stay home, Miss Ellie.” Miriam turned to the refrigerator for eggs and milk.

“Just coffee. Miriam, I really want to know what this thing is. I
need
to know.”

Miriam shook her head at Ellie and replaced the eggs. A sharp knock came from the front door, and Miriam retreated down the hall to answer it without another word.

Ellie poured herself a cup of coffee and leaned on the counter, inhaling the steam from her cup.

Miriam poked her head in the doorway. “They are here―those desert goatherds. They say they want money or the scroll back now.”

Strangely disappointed that they had returned so early, Ellie set her cup down and padded out to the front hall to meet them.

The two men stood before the painting of the young girl reading, discussing the merits of her figure with great animation as they waited for Ellie. She cleared her throat, and they turned to her, eyeing her with great interest.

“
Salaam.”
They bowed with elaborate courtesy as Ellie stood beside Miriam.

“
Salaam,”
she repeated, extending her hand to the tall young man.

“And good morning.”

He returned her handshake. “Not such a good morning, I fear. The vote last night makes it necessary that we leave Jerusalem now.”

“I would very much like to show the scroll to someone else before I give you my answer,” Ellie said.

“You have the photographs, no?” the young man noted. “We must go.

The scroll please, or two hundred pounds, eh?” He held his hand out, palm up.

“When will you return to the city?” she asked, uneasy about allowing the scroll out of her possession until Uncle Howard had seen it for himself.

“Two weeks, if it be the will of Allah.” He repeated her question in Arabic to the old man, who nodded enthusiastically.

“And you will bring the other scrolls as well?”

“You will have the money?”

Ellie turned to Miriam. “Go get this man his scroll,” she said with resignation. Then she told the younger man, “If only we could keep it here safely until you return.”

“There will be no safe place in Jerusalem anymore. No, lady. We must go.”

Miriam returned, reverently bearing the scroll in both arms as if it were a baby. Ellie took it from her and handed it to the old man, who stuffed it back into his leather bag.

The old man smiled his broad, toothless grin and looked Ellie over from head to foot, jabbering to his son in a stream of Arabic.

Miriam threw up her arms in exasperation, opened the front door, and firmly escorted them both out onto the street.

“What did he say?” asked Ellie as Miriam slammed the door behind the two men and bolted the lock.

“He says that you would make a nice addition to his wives and wonders if you are the same girl in the picture hanging on the wall there. He says you are created to suckle many little lambs.”

Ellie felt the color rise in her cheeks. “I’m a long way from UCLA, eh?”

“Yes, but I think maybe you will go home soon, and you will be much safer there than you are here.”

***

Ibrahim Hassan cleared his throat and spit through the gap in his teeth.

From his post across from the Moniger home, he watched as the old Arab woman pushed the two Bedouins out the front door. They stood for a moment, then turned toward the wall of the Old City and walked rapidly away.

Hassan hesitated, wondering whether to follow them or wait until the young woman emerged and follow her as he and Gerhardt had followed her and Moshe Sachar for the last several weeks. Since Hassan wore the uniform of a Palestine police officer, the Bedouins would not question his right to search the leather pouch that they carried into the house empty and brought out full.

He crushed out his cigarette, conscious that it was Gerhardt’s cigarette last night that had gotten them into trouble with the girl in the first place. If Gerhardt hadn’t lit the match, chances are she never would have seen them.
Ah, well,
he thought,
if it hadn’t been for the
witness, it would have all been water under the bridge anyway
.

Perhaps Gerhardt had been right. Perhaps they should have killed her and been done with it. There was still time for that―after they located the witness. There would be time and opportunity to kill them both.

Without more thought, Hassan started out after the two Bedouins. If the uniform did not convince them to stop, then most certainly the gold symbol of the crescent moon he wore around his neck would.

No faithful Muslim in Jerusalem would dare to deny or refuse the authority of one of the Mufti’s secret police.

He quickened his pace as the Bedouins turned the corner of the residential district and, jabbering too much to notice him, turned up the long sloping road that led into the Arab Quarter of the Old City.

As they passed through the gate, he was only a few yards behind them. Almost immediately inside the Old City, the two ducked into a darkened coffeehouse and inched their way through the crowded tables to an empty space in a back corner.

Every eye turned in hostility toward Hassan, now painfully aware that the uniform he wore was out of place in the midst of these keffiyeh-clad warriors preparing for a jihad against the infidel Jews.

He reached into his shirt and pulled out the crescent-moon medallion, a sparkling announcement of his place among the Arab political structure. He was in the “Gestapo” of Haj Amin, Mufti of Jerusalem. As he passed through clusters of men, heads nodded in recognition of his importance. Salutes and quiet
salaam
s echoed throughout the coffeehouse, and the warriors set their cups of bitter coffee on the table. They waited in respectful silence for him to pass.

The two Bedouins gazed in astonishment as Hassan passed by all the other tables and chose instead to sit at theirs.
“Salaam.”
They stood and bowed to their uninvited guest.

“You have been to the home of the infidel Zionist woman this morning!” Hassan accused in Arabic without returning their greeting.

Smiles instantly faded as father and son exchanged fearful looks.

“But, sir,” began the old man, “we went simply to transact business.”

“Quite simply,” repeated his son.

Hassan motioned with a barely visible movement of his index finger.

“Sit down.”

Slowly they sank to their cushions, horrified that they had somehow offended the Mufti, who with a wag of his finger could end their lives―indeed, the life of anyone in Jerusalem’s Arab Quarter who offended him.

“The gentleman is fond of
antikas,
or so we have heard, having never done business with him before. We have this to sell.” The young Bedouin hastily pulled out the scroll and laid it on the table in front of Hassan.

Hassan glanced at it with only minor interest before he peered back at the two. “The Mufti is not pleased,” he said grimly, watching the color drain from their faces. “What is this you have shown to the Zionists?”

“An ancient scroll, Your Excellency. Very old.”

“And what did the American professor say?”

“We did not see him. But the woman seemed interested―quite interested. She wishes us to return so that her uncle might examine it.”

Hassan pursed his lips thoughtfully and toyed with the crumbling edge of the scroll. “Perhaps this might be of interest to the Mufti,” he said solemnly.

“We would be most honored,” exclaimed the old man, “if the Mufti would accept this humble gift!”

“Then you two will disappear into the desert to tend your flocks?”

“Exactly. With great joy, if Allah and the Mufti will it so!”

“Then go.” Hassan raised his finger once again, and the men jumped up from the table and scrambled from the coffeehouse in relief.

Hassan threw a coin onto the low table and took a sip of the young Bedouin’s coffee as he stared thoughtfully at the scroll before him.

Perhaps the Mufti would be interested in something so obviously of interest to these Jew-lovers, these Americans. Perhaps there would even be great reward in it for himself.

He gathered the scroll under his arm and walked through the crowded room and into the streets of Jerusalem.

***

Ellie took the photographs of the scroll from the drying racks one by one until they lay in numbered order in a neat stack in front of her. She pushed away the disappointment that she had returned the original scroll, telling herself that at least she had the photographs. She shoved the pictures into a large padded envelope and flicked off the light to the darkroom.

She found Miriam peeling potatoes in the kitchen.

“I fear that we should not have let the scroll go.” The old woman sighed.

“It’s probably just junk, Miriam. You know how much of that stuff is floating around here. We’ll know what it says soon enough, anyway.” Ellie dipped her finger into the sugar bowl as Miriam washed off the counter.

“We shall hope that those two return with the other scrolls, Miss Ellie. My heart tells me that this is something of great importance, though I do not know just why.”

Ellie wondered about the strange inner voice that the old woman seemed to have. Miriam had heard that whisper of truth on several occasions. But she was, after all, only an old woman who worked in the home of an archaeology professor. She had no knowledge of archaeology itself―yet there were times when Uncle Howard had consulted her about the location of this or that biblical story, and she had seldom been wrong.

“You must not take these photographs to the Old City today,” Miriam chided when she saw Ellie’s package. “I tell you, this Mufti has called for a general strike. It is not safe to travel in the city today, I think.”

“You think there will be violence?”

“Probably yes. It is not safe.”

“I ought to take a camera, then. I might win a Pulitzer if I get a couple of good pictures―who knows?” Ellie retreated quickly to the lab for a camera, regretting once again the loss of her Speed Graphix.

“If you win a prize, you will collect it after you are dead!” Miriam shouted down the hall after her. “And if you are killed, somehow I am thinking I should have stopped you. But if you are so foolish …”

Ellie rushed past her. “Not foolish, Miriam. I’m a journalist.”

“You are a girl. I will pray to Jesus that you do not get your head shot off!” Miriam turned back to her potatoes as Ellie loaded her camera and headed out the door to the Old City.

Yacov’s directions were plain enough for those who had lived in Jerusalem all their lives. Ellie studied the scrawl on the back of the envelope and wished for the thousandth time that Moshe were here with her. “Of course, if he were here,” she muttered as she walked briskly toward King George Street, “I wouldn’t need to show this to anyone else.” She patted the envelope and searched the street ahead for one of the ancient taxis that rattled through the city. A taxi was the only way she would get where she wanted to go without Moshe.

Even then, a taxi would take her no farther than the entrance to the Old City’s crooked streets.

As she stood on the corner of King George, ten taxis dashed by within a minute, leaving a swirl of last night’s trash in their wake.

Confetti carpeted the sidewalk, and fragments of the morning’s special edition of the
Palestine Post
proclaimed the passing of Partition. It was the morning after the celebration, yet Ellie could not see any signs that Miriam’s prediction of violence would come true.

Life appeared to be resuming a normal pace in this part of the city―if perhaps a bit hungover. She flagged a taxi and stuck the directions under the nose of the non-English-speaking driver.

Jerusalem is an old city, but there is also so much that is new and
hopeful about it,
she mused. As her driver turned left onto Julian’s Way, she noticed the sapling trees that lined both sides of the road.