Oh just the scarab. Yes it is.
There's a secret latch hidden somewhere?
In the nostrils. A combination of latches, very clever. Built for smuggling.
What?
Mummies and bones. The Romans had strict sanitation codes and wouldn't allow dead bodies to be transported from one province to another. But the Egyptian traders here would pay well to have their mummies smuggled home when they died and the Jewish traders in Alexandria would also pay well to have their bones brought back here. An Armenian made quite a bit of money out of that trade. I must have bought it from him when he retired.
Ever use it yourself?
Not for smuggling but for something else. What was it?
Haj Harun backed away from the empty wall and gazed at the crumbling plaster.
I seem to remember taking naps in it. Is that possible? Why would I have done that? Age. My memory's going, all the years slide together. Now when were those naps, under the Mamelukes? I had the falling sickness then, at least I think it was then, and that might have been a reason for crawling inside the scarab and curling up there. But no, it must have been earlier. I also seem to recall bumping my head so that I was paralyzed from the neck up for a while. When? Under the Crusaders?
His voice was doubtful, then suddenly he smiled.
Yes that's it exactly. Those knights were always clanking around in their armor so I used the scarab for my siestas. It was the only quiet place I could find.
Still as still as stone, said Joe, who climbed off the scarab and went over to examine the mysterious safe once more.
Noisy days, said Haj Harun, his memory suddenly jarred into place by the prospect of a pageant of Crusaders banging their swords on the cobblestones.
Noisy but not the worst. When the Assyrians took the city they put rings through the lips of the survivors and led them away as slaves, everyone except our leaders, who were blinded and left behind in the deserted ruins to starve.
The Romans thought the people in the city were swallowing jewels, so they cut open stomachs and slit intestines but all they found was worn leather. The famine was so bad during the siege we had been eating our sandals.
The Crusaders killed about a hundred thousand and the Romans almost five hundred thousand. The Babylonians murdered less than the Assyrians but blinded more. The Ptolemies and the Seleucids also murdered on a smaller scale, as did the Byzantines and Mamelukes and Turks, generally speaking just the religious leaders and anyone who was educated. Naturally the people were made to change the churches into mosques and destroy the synagogues, or change the mosques into churches and destroy the synagogues, depending on the new conqueror. What came after that? Where was I? Oh yes, my last wife came after that.
Joe drummed loudly on the safe. The swelling echoes shook the walls of the empty shop.
She was the one who took what I had left, my books. She was a failure in life you see, and being an Arab the only explanation was that someone had betrayed her. There had to be a traitor in the house and who else was in the house but me?
Haj Harun sighed and straightened his helmet, which fell forward with a new rain of rust. The tears began running again.
But you have to remember I still wore socks in those days and the socks were always wet because my feet were always wet, and wet feet aren't pleasant in bed. She put up with it for a time and I don't deny it.
Where does it lead? asked Joe quietly.
Always having wet feet?
No, the shaft below the safe. It is a bottomless safe, isn't it?
Well not really. Deep but not bottomless.
How deep?
Right here about fifty feet
And there's a ladder?
Yes.
To where?
A tunnel that leads to the caverns.
How deep are the caverns?
Hundreds of feet? Thousands of feet?
Joe whistled softly. He sat down beside the safe and pressed his ear to the iron door. Far away a wind hummed. Haj Harun was retying the green ribbons under his chin.
What's down there?
Jerusalem. The Old City I mean.
Joe looked out at the alley. A lean cat was sneaking in front of the shop with some kind of wire clamped between its teeth.
Isn't that Jerusalem out there? The Old City I mean?
One of them.
And down below?
The other Old Cities.
O'Sullivan Beare whistled very softly.
How's that now?
Well Jerusalem has been continually destroyed, hasn't it. I mean it's been more or less destroyed several hundred times and utterly destroyed at least a few dozen times, say a dozen times that we know of since Nebuchadnezzar and before that another dozen times that we don't know of. And being on top of a mountain no one ever bothered to dig away the ruins when it was rebuilt, so the mountain has grown. Do you see?
So I do. And down there where your ladder goes?
What's always been there. A dozen Old Cities. Two dozen Old Cities.
With some of their treasures and monuments still?
Some. Things that are buried tend to be overlooked, and then in time they're forgotten altogether. Look here, in my lifetime I've seen a great many things forgotten, the dents in my helmet for example. Does anyone remember how I got those dents?
The wizened Arab paced aimlessly around the room.
Jaysus, thought Joe. Haj Harun's ladder. We are descending.
Being a native of the city, which had always been thronged with conquerors or pilgrims, Haj Harun had quite naturally spent most of his life in the service trades. During the Hebrew era he had begun his career by raising calves and later lambs. Under the Assyrians he was a stonecarver specializing in winged lions.
He was a landscape gardener under the Babylonians and a tentmaker under the Persians.
When the Greeks were in power he ran an all-night grocery store and when the Maccabees were in power he poured candles. During the Roman occupation he was a waiter.
For the Byzantines he painted ikons, for the Arabs he sewed cushions, for the Egyptians he cut stones again but this time with emphasis on square blocks. He was a masseur for rheumatic ailments during the Crusader occupations, shoed horses for the Mamelukes and distributed hashish and goats for the Ottoman Turks. In the beginning he had also spent intervals as a sorcerer and prophet and in the less demanding field of general medicine.
To succeed in sorcery he had shaved his head and had his credentials engraved on his skull with a stylus, so that in moments of crisis he could ask that his head be shaved and thereby prove his authenticity.
As a prophet he didn't wear a collar and have himself led around on a rope from customer to customer as was the common practice, preferring instead to sit in the bazaar shouting unsolicited warnings to passersby.
In medicine he dealt entirely with the pasty residue of a plant with star-shaped flowers known as Jerusalem cherry, a form of nightshade. These mixtures he prepared by mashing them on the filthy cobblestones around Damascus Gate, where he was frequently seen down on his hands and knees, doing a land of dance to escape the feet of the crowds.
He also used a more potent juice from the wilted leaves of deadly nightshade, an effective narcotic which also caused severe vomiting. This left Haj Harun weak most of the time, since by necessity he had to take his own cures several times a day. To give some substance to his vomit he consumed large bowls of mush made from Jerusalem artichokes.
During that period he still had the ability to address all men in their own tongues even when he himself didn't understand the language, a great advantage in Jerusalem. In this manner he soon acquired a reputation for being able to transform a loquat or a jackass or even the unintelligible cries of hawkers into astonishing portents of grandiose events.
In the course of time he had been known by many names he couldn't now remember, but after his first haj in the eighth century he had permanently taken the name Aaron, or Harun as the Arabs pronounced it, in honor of Harun al-Rashid who figured so prominently in the tales he loved above all others, the Thousand and One Nights. It was also after his first haj that he had dedicated himself to defending Jerusalem and its past and future inhabitants against all enemies. Yet despite his good intentions he had to admit his accomplishments remained vague.