We shouldn't quit just because it's midnight, Munk Szondi had said.
No reason to stop just because a new year is upon us, Cairo Martyr had agreed.
Well if both you gents see it that way, Joe had said, I know just the place to set up a more permanent table here in the Old City. It's a former antiquities shop that belongs to a good friend of mine, the place largely empty now because this friend is no longer in the business except in his head, an odd proposition as you'll see.
And thus the Great Jerusalem Poker Game came to be played in the back room of an empty shop owned by an obscure dealer in time known as Haj Harun.
On that final day after twelve years of play, O'Sullivan Beare had the deal. His call was for straight poker, three-card draw, and both Cairo Martyr and Munk Szondi nodded with approval when he announced it. A hard and basic hand with nothing wild and nothing stray, the appropriate way to end the game.
And knowing the moment had finally come, they approached it in a leisurely manner. O'Sullivan Beare opened a bottle of poteen and took his time sipping it down. Cairo Martyr filled his hookah with a potent dose of mummy mastic and puffed contentedly. Munk Szondi placed a large bowl of garlic bulbs in front of him and methodically chunched his way to the bottom.
The Druse warriors who guarded the game were paid off and dismissed. In the middle of the table sat a new deck of cards ordered from Venice for the event. Each man tapped the pack once before the cellophane wrapping was carefully removed.
The shuffling began, each man spending fifteen or twenty minutes over the pack to get the feel of it, and after that they spent another fifteen or twenty minutes cutting it in turn. With twelve years behind them no one was in a hurry. Gone were the cunning maneuvers of the past. More than skill was needed now.
The empty hookah, the empty bottle of poteen and the empty bowl of garlic bulbs were set aside. Cairo Martyr gazed at the ceiling and announced his ante.
The goats in the Moslem Quarter, he said.
The other two men looked at him.
Those used for sodomy, he added solemnly.
O'Sullivan Beare's eyes narrowed.
The goats in the Christian Quarter, he countered. Meat.
The goats in the Jewish Quarter, said Munk Szondi. Milk.
The three men watched each other. Over the years it had become customary for them to open a hand in this way, as a reminder to outsiders that only real goods and services had any ultimate value in the Holy City. Because sooner or later the conquering army presently in the city would have to retreat as its empire shrank and collapsed, as all empires had done since the beginning of time, thereby rendering its currency foreign and useless in Jerusalem.
But as the gentle Haj Harun had airily noted once, even a Holy City needs the service trades: In fact it needs them more than most places.
O'Sullivan Beare dealt the cards. He and Munk Szondi raised theirs slowly and held them close to the chest, revealing them one at a time. After a few minutes of study they both chose three for discard. Cairo Martyr, as always, had left his cards lying face down on the table, untouched. With some deliberation he now separated the first and the third and the fifth for discard.
Three new cards were dealt to each man. Munk Szondi's face was grave as he rapidly weighed the comparative values that day of every known Levantine commodity. O'Sullivan Beare seemed a trifle feverish as he calculated patriotic ballistic arcs. Only Cairo Martyr, with his immense self-assurance, seemed completely at ease with what lay before him.
And since he was sitting on the dealer's left, he had the right to open the betting. Again, as usual, he didn't look at his new cards.
No openers, said Cairo Martyr, not this time. I have no intention of wasting time tonight trying to inch the stakes up. I'll start at the top and the two of you can play or not, as you choose. Now I think you'll both agree that through my various illicit enterprises, I control the Moslem Quarter in this city.
The mummy dust king is about to strike, muttered O'Sullivan Beare. But at the same time he knew the claim was true, just as was his own secret control over the Christian Quarter and Munk Szondi's over the Jewish Quarter, religious symbols and trading in futures being just as essential to Jerusalem as mummy dust.
Well do I or don't I? said Cairo Martyr.
You do. Agreed.
Correct. Now then, that's my bet. Control of the Moslem Quarter. I'm putting the Moslem Quarter on the table. If either of you wins, which you won't, it belongs to you. But first you have to match my bet.
No openers. The real thing.
O'Sullivan Beare whistled softly.
That's arrogance and then some, he muttered. You mean the whole Moslem Quarter?
That's right. Down to the last sun-baked brick.
People? asked Munk Szondi.
Down to the last unborn babe asleep in its mum's belly, not knowing what it's in for when it has to wake up.
Fair enough, said Munk Szondi, gesturing extravagantly. If that's the way it is I'm betting the Jewish Quarter.
Jaysus all right, shouted O'Sullivan Beare, all right I say. If that's what you're up to I'll put down the Christian Quarter.
He said the last two words in Gaelic but they both understood him. By now they all knew enough of each other's languages to recognize a bet in any one of them.
So there it was. The three men leaned back to savor the moment, a chance that came once in a lifetime, if ever. They had each bet what they controlled and it went without saying that the fourth section of the Old City, the Armenian Quarter, would automatically go to the player who held the best cards.
The end had come. Jerusalem lay on the table. At last it was a case of winner take all in the eternal city.
But twelve years of unscrupulous poker had to pass before that final showdown could take place in the former antiquities shop of Haj Harun, an ancient defender of Jerusalem who even then was wandering around the room in distraction, just a few years short of his three thousandth birthday.
— 2-
Cairo Martyr
Going far? asked Cairo. All the way, whispered the mummy with a resigned expression.
From his earliest years Cairo Martyr had picked cotton as a slave in the Nile delta alongside his maternal great-grandmother, a proud indomitable woman whose passions in life dated from 1813.
In that year, as a young woman in a village on the fringe of the Nubian desert, she had taken into her hut a charming wanderer by the name of Sheik Ibrahim ibn Harun. The sprightly young sheik, who said he was an expert in Islamic law, also claimed his blue eyes were the result of Circassian blood.
But as Cairo Martyr was one day to learn, his wandering great-grandfather had actually been a European in disguise, a highly gifted Swiss linguist with a passion for details whose other descendants, known and unknown, were also to play a crucial part in the Great Jerusalem Poker Game over a century later.
Young Sheik Ibrahim, as always, soon grew restless in the village on the fringe of the Nubian desert.
With tears he parted from his new wife to resume his wanderings, promising to return in three months.
But when he did come back at the end of that time he found the village had been savagely destroyed and its inhabitants carried off by a Mameluke raiding party.