For centuries the Synagogue of the Palestinians lay forgotten within the half-abandoned precincts of the ancient fortress of Babylon. In about 1890, the eleventh-century building, the structure that Ben Yiju saw, was finally torn down and a new one was erected in its place: it still stands on the site today.
Until recently the site of the Synagogue of Ben Ezra lay at one end of a plateau of rubble; an expanse of shattered brick and stone, that looked as though it had been flattened by a gigantic hammer. The Synagogue itself, an undistinguished, rectangular building, seemed just barely to have survived: much of its masonry had crumbled, and the shutters had fallen away from many of its windows. Its most striking feature was a pair of wrought-iron gates; although much discoloured and corroded, they were still graceful, their sinuous forms exuberantly Art Deco: they looked as though someone had ordered them from Paris in a flush of enthusiasm after a summer holiday. Above the narrow gateway, held in place by a length of iron tubing and a few heavy stones, was a Star of David, a little askew and festooned with cobwebs.
Today the building is once again rejuvenated, its exterior scrubbed and well-tended. Prefabricated huts have sprouted in the rubble outside, where young engineers stand behind drawing-boards, their toes tapping gently to the beat of muted rock music: a team of Canadian experts and restorers has arrived, Mountie-like, to rescue the Synagogue from the assaults of Time.
A few men wait for tourists at the entrance to the Synagogue, standing behind desks spread with beads, necklaces, bronze scarabs and busts of Nefertiti. One of them has been there for years, a plump, smiling man, dressed in a shirt and trousers. His trinkets and souvenirs do not seem to change much from year to year — in fact he never seems to do much business at all — but he is always full of smiles, good-natured, and helpful. He explains that ‘Amm Shahata, the caretaker, is inside, he can take visitors in and explain everything — he is Jewish, yahûdi, he knows all about the Synagogue.
In a while ‘Amm Shahata appears, a sprightly old man, very thin and a little stooped. He too is dressed in a shirt and trousers, and his skull-cap is very much like any Egyptian Muslim’s. The two men exchange some companionable banter; his Arabic is indistinguishable from theirs, the staccato speech of working-class Cairo. He tells you his name: ‘Nathan in Hebrew and Shahata in Arabic.’ Close up he looks unexpectedly old, his teeth are gone and veins stand out on his forehead.
‘Amm Shahata soon lets it be known that he is a busy man: he has no time to waste; he ushers you briskly through the gateway and leads you into the main chamber of the Synagogue. Prisms of light shine through coloured windows; you are in a room with a very high ceiling, but otherwise of modest, schoolroom size. In the centre is a raised, octagonal altar, with benches arranged in rows on either side. The room has two levels. At the upper level is the women’s gallery, which runs around three sides of the room. At the far end of the gallery, on the left, is a small hole, high up in the wall; it opens into an empty chamber adjoining the back wall. ‘Amm Shahata points at the opening; that is the Geniza, he tells you, where a lot of papers were found, years and years ago.
You wish it were indeed the old Geniza, but it cannot be. It is no higher than a bare six feet or so while the Geniza of the old Synagogue is known to have been at least as tall as the rest of the building, some two and a half storeys high. The old Geniza was probably left standing for a while, after the rest of the structure was torn down, but it must have perished later.
Of course, you have no cause to be disappointed. The Synagogue’s location has not altered, whatever the changes in its outer shell. The fact is that you are standing upon the very site which held the greatest single collection of medieval documents ever discovered.
It was here, in this forlorn corner of Masr, that the memories of Abraham Ben Yiju and his slave lay preserved for more than seven hundred years.
6
ONCE, ON A very hot afternoon, when the sweat was dribbling off my face on to my notebooks, I gave up trying to work, and sat in my room with the door open, hoping to trap a breath of fresh air. It was very still that day, with the moisture from the freshly-watered cotton fields and rice paddies hanging heavy in the air. At intervals, as though frightened by the stillness, the ducks and chickens with whom I shared the roof would burst into an uproar, erupt out of their coops and flap around the roof in a gale of frenzied squawks, undaunted by the flat, white heat of the afternoon.
As I sat watching, a pair of ducks began to race around and around the roof, one in pursuit of the other. They were of a species I had never seen before I came to Egypt: squat, ugly creatures, almost suicidally self-absorbed, with large red warts on their necks and mangy black and white bodies. The pursuer was the bigger of the two, and it soon caught up with the other and pinned it to the floor with its beak. Then, after it had hoisted itself on top, it raised one leg and suddenly its penis appeared, a bright, wet pink, about as long as a thumbnail. It flapped its tailfeathers for a moment, pressing against its mate, and then tumbled off, a look of bafflement on its face. I watched spellbound: I had had no conception that ducks had penises and vaginas.
I happened to look up then and I saw Jabir, standing silently in the stairway, watching me.
He began to laugh.
‘You were watching like it was a film, ya Amitab,’ he said, laughing. ‘Haven’t you seen ducks do that before?’
‘No,’ I said.
His laughter was infectious; I found myself laughing with him.
He came into the room and seated himself on the chair, taking care to keep his clean jallabeyya from touching the floor.
‘So tell me then,’ he said, throwing me a glance of interested inquiry. ‘What do you know on the subject of …?’
He used a word I had not heard before. I must have looked puzzled, for he gave an incredulous gasp and said: ‘You mean you’ve never heard of …?’
It was the same word again.
I shook my head and he sank back in the chair, knocking his head with his fist, nearly dislodging his white skull-cap.
‘Ya Amitab,’ he said in mock despair. ‘What are you going to do in life if you don’t know about that?’
‘About what?’ I said.
This only made him laugh. ‘If you don’t know you don’t know,’ he muttered mysteriously.
‘Don’t know about what?’ I said, in exasperation.
‘It’s not important,’ he said, grinning, elliptical. ‘It’s good to put a distance between your thoughts and things like that. But tell me this — of course you have circumcision where you come from, just like we do? Isn’t that so, mush kida?’
I had long been dreading this line of questioning, knowing exactly where it would lead.
‘Some people do,’ I said. ‘And some people don’t.’