A Fool's Alphabet (13 page)

Daoud laughs. ‘Because it's so Arab! So he decided Jesus was buried in the Garden Tomb because he said burials were always outside the city walls in those days.'

‘So it couldn't have been here?'

Daoud shrugs. ‘Might have been. The city walls moved. Gordon was wrong. This place was probably inside them in Christ's time.'

They wander in the streets of the old city, Harry and Pietro occasionally questioning, Daoud telling stories with a smile that sometimes looks like condescension.

They go through the process of disillusionment that every tourist experiences. Daoud doesn't mind. He will show them something more interesting later on.

They can hear the frequent tap and scraping of chisels, the rattle of hammers as the archaeologists hunt for history through the layers of the city. Beneath the covered streets Pietro feels that he and Harry and Daoud are part of another stratum in an unresolved search; future generations will question their existence.

The lanes are muddy, full of eggshells and orange peel, with commerce spurting from the fronts of dwellings; donkeys led from indoors, trays of souvenirs slung from ropes and awnings, tailors pumping sewing machines with their feet, potters working with their doors open.

At the Dome of the Rock, Daoud at last becomes enthusiastic. He gestures towards the golden cupola. ‘This is beautiful,' he says. ‘Built on the site where the temples of Solomon and Herod once stood. The place where Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son and where Mohammed rose to heaven on his horse.'

‘Both?' says Pietro. ‘In the same place?'

‘It's a small city. A very small city.'

‘I'm surprised the Christians didn't muscle in too,' Harry says beneath his breath.

Daoud overhears him. ‘They did. The Caliph used Byzantine architects. Good, isn't it?'

Inside, they see the rock where Isaac lay beneath his father's upraised arm. Pietro is surprised to see it revered by Moslems, almost as much as a box next to it that contains some hairs from the Prophet's beard. ‘Doesn't it confuse you?' he asks. ‘Doesn't it tax your faith, seeing all these conflicting claims? It makes me inclined to disbelieve all religions.'

‘It's simple enough,' says Daoud. ‘Jerusalem is a holy city. The Moslem faith grew from a Jew – from Abraham. They have a respect for Jewish history. In any case, why should I mind?' The keyfob flicks. ‘I'm a Christian.'

Harry and Pietro arrive ten minutes early for dinner in the restaurant and order beer.

‘What does your friend David do?' Pietro asks.

‘He teaches. We knew his family in London. He came here a few years ago, when he married.'

‘And his wife?'

Sarah turns out to be American, a quiet, determined woman with searching eyes. David is fair, bespectacled, with a shirt that hangs loosely from his slightly concave chest. They have brought with them a friend, Shimon, also bespectacled, with a soft black beard. After the introductions David smiles broadly and spreads his arms. ‘So, Harry, you're a journalist! What on earth made you do that?'

Harry smiles sheepishly. ‘I can't think. My family have never forgiven me.'

‘Don't worry,' says Sarah. ‘We're used to it. There are more of them to the square foot in this city than anywhere else on earth.'

There are some enquiries about Harry's family, followed by a short pause. Then, as though the preliminaries have been properly concluded, Sarah begins: ‘Did you see the article, Harry? Did you see it? What is he thinking of, that man? Does he know what it's like?'

There is no need to ask what article she means. They have
already heard it mentioned. A visiting writer, an ironist of the aristocratic Anglo-American school, has written a magazine essay that includes the reflection that it was arguably unwise of the Jews to have assembled in one place, in case by some cruel paradox they made the task of genocide easier for a second aggressor. He has also enlisted the ‘lessons of history' to predict that the present ownership of the land is unlikely to be more enduring than any of the dozens that preceded it.

‘What does he mean, “another short-term tenancy”?' Sarah wants to know. ‘Has he read no history? Doesn't he understand about a land promised by God and by man? I wanted to write to him and say, “Excuse me, but it's not the Jews who have been inflexible. When the original partition plan was drawn up in 1947 it included a separate state for the Arabs and we said, Yes, go right ahead. It was they who didn't want it. They wanted all of the land; they wanted to drive us into the sea.” This man doesn't understand that at all. We attracted Arabs from other countries because we were so good at cultivating the land and making it work – something they'd never managed. That's why there are so many of them. Not because they came from here but because the Jews made it such a good place to live! And what are these countries they come from anyway? Jordan is a line in the sand. Syria, Saudi Arabia . . . Good heavens! All these places suddenly so proud of themselves when they were just bits left over, unwanted by the Europeans from what was left of earlier empires. And the Palestinians, don't put me on. They have a homeland if they want it. It's called Jordan. They want to stay here, of course. Who can blame them? Who would want to live in Jordan? But if they stay they must remember this is our country. What did that writer say – “Just another passing phase”? And that old story about how the Jews had been offered Uganda? He doesn't understand. He should talk to these people. They won't let us live. They want to kill us, all of us.'

Pietro feels uneasy that the conversation has already
reached such fundamental questions. In a gesture of what he thinks of as tact, he gives vent to his curiosity about some of the more superficial aspects of life in Jerusalem. With the menu in his hand, he remarks on the amount of chicken and asks what else people eat.

‘A lot of salad, and hummus – you know hummus?' says Sarah. ‘And sweet things. People here eat a lot of cake and sweets.'

Harry says, ‘It's mostly chicken though, isn't it? Chicken and eggs.' He laughs sociably.

Shimon leans forward and runs his fingers through his beard. ‘We eat anything.' There is a wry, defensive note in his voice. ‘We don't have human sacrifices, you know.'

‘I just . . .'

‘Sarah's right,' says Shimon, taking some bread. ‘It was the Arab nations who resisted the idea of partition put forward by the UN. What's more, they went on to persuade world opinion – even Americans – that the Jews had descended on Palestine after the Second World War and evicted the Palestinians by force. Nothing could be further from the truth. During the conflict that followed the Arab refusal of partition, Palestinian society – which had never really taken root here – began to fall apart. This is not just my view, this is the account of their own historians. The big families left to find peace in Egypt, Syria or Lebanon. They left behind the peasants and villagers. They were frightened, they fell apart. If anyone displaced the Palestinians it was themselves.'

Shimon speaks English with only the slightest accent, though there is a certain thickening of passion in his voice. Pietro wonders how many times he has rehearsed these events, how often he has been believed or disbelieved. He does not spare them, or hold back; he is ready with the full argument, facts, history, assertion. When the waiter brings meat he does not check his urgent version of events. It is as though each reiteration makes it more certain, makes the defence more unbreachable.

David, a mild man, smiles at Harry and Pietro, and makes sure they have what they want to eat. When there is a moment he asks them about their hotel and how they have spent the day. He still has the English habit of drinking alcohol and becomes effusive as the meal wears on.

‘Your first visit to Jerusalem, Pietro? Isn't it a wonderful city? I lived here once when I was a student and then I made the mistake of going back to London. It was hard to return to Jerusalem. If once you leave her, she doesn't easily take you back. Now I'm so happy here. It's the centre of the world. This tiny little city. Yes, I believe that, I really do. Everything that happens here has significance for the rest of the world. Even the bad things.'

Pietro nods in agreement. In a way this is what he has already begun to feel: that the intensity of dispute gives a charged atmosphere to the place, though this seems to him unfortunate rather than marvellous.

‘And it's so beautiful,' says David. ‘If you look towards the Dead Sea, there is something in the light. It is very ancient, yet glowing. And the powder and dust under your feet is that of history, lived by people who have given their lives for what they believe in, all here, here in this one tiny place – this place out of all the places in the world. Sometimes even the air seems magical. Invigorating.' He smiles.

Their guide had taken them to the edge of the city that afternoon and swept his arm towards the landscape of the Judaean hills, inviting them to look and form their own view of the promised land. They had driven towards the Arab town of Bethlehem. The land looked white and bleached bare, with knots and hillocks formed as though by bones; later there were olive groves, but here it was like an ossuary created by a conceptual artist of a zealous cult: no lichens, moss or weed softened the death-white, leprous bubbles and crags; it was as though petrification had squeezed organic life, even decay, from the blankness of the hillsides. Yet within that landscape were people whose lives drew the gaze of the world. It was strange that their struggles, so heavily contemplated, so vital
that the participants and most onlookers were convinced that of all such struggles they were sure one day to be labelled ‘history', were enacted in this shroud of white dust. It gave a ghostly quality to the present, with all its guns and passion, as though it were already powdered with futile antiquity.

‘Come back to my house,' says Shimon when dinner is finished. ‘Come and have some tea.'

‘Thank you,' says Harry, looking interrogatively at Pietro.

‘Sure,' he nods.

‘It's not as if we have a busy schedule tomorrow,' says Harry. ‘We're meeting the guide at ten.'

Harry walks with David and Sarah, while Pietro goes on ahead with Shimon.

‘Were you born here?' he asks.

‘Yes. My parents escaped from Hitler. My grandparents were all killed. I was brought up here in Jerusalem. I fought in the Six Day War when we liberated East Jerusalem. In some ways that was the greatest time of my life, except that I lost many friends. I was only twenty years old.'

They climb some stairs to Shimon's apartment and he goes to the kitchen to make tea.

When they are all sitting down, ranged around the sofas of Shimon's room, each within reach of tea or cigarettes, Shimon says, ‘You know, one thing annoys me more than anything about people like that journalist. It's not necessarily what he believes or what he sees. It's the way they come to Israel for moral recreation. People expect Israel to be better than other countries, to have to prove its right to exist by constantly being more just. This is absurd. It is a country, a nation like any other, there can be no argument about that. By continually accepting the need to set some sort of world example we tacitly accept also that we have not yet been granted automatic right to nationhood. This must stop. We don't need to prove that we are “better” than Syria or Iraq. God, that would not be difficult. We need to be smarter or stronger. That's all. I don't want people to feel sorry for us, to view us with special concern. I want them to be frightened of us.'

Sarah is nodding her head in agreement. ‘That's what your journalist friend will never understand. There will be no more Hitler, no more pogroms. It is a matter of life or death. I feel sorry for someone who cannot see that.'

Occasionally David asks to differ on some particular from his wife and friend, but he looks tired, and slumps back further in his chair as the talk rolls on. Shimon and Sarah both want to redefine themselves, to set things straight. Pietro suspects this is a daily process, but they go through it with enthusiasm. They hold nothing back. There is no sense of fatigue, no sense of going over familiar ground. Any alternative opinion, even David's, is swept aside with the certainty of truth. Words like ‘genocide' are the unembarrassed currency of their talk.

Pietro and Harry leave at one in the morning to walk back to their hotel. Pietro's head is throbbing with the effort he has made to try to follow the facts that have poured out. Life and death, the right to exist. He can't think of anything else to say to Harry as they go up to their room; it would seem frivolous.

‘I suppose what I remember best about my time on the kibbutz,' said Harry, as they drove northwards the following day, ‘was the amount of sex. All these young women in the army, toting their big guns around, the feeling that you were smack up against life and death.'

Harry's lightly freckled face lit up with pleasure at the memory. His large brown eyes took on a mischievous look.

‘I thought you were in charge of watering the avocados,' said Pietro.

‘That too. I wasn't personally in uniform, you understand. But if all boys and girls are in the army from the age of eighteen, it puts things in perspective.'

Sarah, who had decided to accompany them and was sitting in the front with Daoud, the guide, laughed out loud. ‘Do you remember nothing else about the kibbutz, Harry?'

‘Marijuana. Getting up very early. Working hard. Most of us went home thinking small communes were the best way to run society. I don't know if that was what was intended. Mostly I just remember this overpoweringly erotic atmosphere.'

They stopped at the Jewish settlement of Ofra, where Sarah, a keen amateur archaeologist, wanted them to see some pipes from the Nablus-Samaria aqueduct. Daoud watched in pantomimed amazement as she explained how the Jewish settlers in the West Bank, pioneers whose camps were considered provocative even by many fellow-Jews, investigated the historical antiquity of the area.