You know that don’t you?
So much rust had fallen into Haj Harun’s eyes his cheeks were running with tears.
I mean of course they didn’t have an easy time of it. Take my wife who was a Bulgarian Greek. The Greeks up there were educated and they also had to serve as moneylenders because there were no banks. The Bulgars could only sign their names with Xs, so every now and then they came around and massacred the Greeks to cancel their debts and cheer themselves up. My wife’s family escaped during the massacre of 1910 and when they finally arrived in Jerusalem they were destitute, so you can’t blame her for taking all my plates and cups and pots when she left me.
Joe studied the iron safe more closely. Why was it so tall and thin?
Then another of my wives was born in the deserted city of Golconda which used to be famous for its diamond trade, but it’s been deserted since the seventeenth century and that’s not a pleasant memory to have either, to come from a totally deserted city I mean. So look here, no wonder she wanted to have the security of some furniture and carpets and took all of mine when she left. You can see that can’t you?
Joe rapped the antique safe. The muffled echoes were out of all proportion to the size of the safe. Haj Harun was roaming around and around the bare walls.
Still another wife was the daughter of a twelfth-century Persian poet whose song told of a pilgrimage made by a flock of birds in search of their king. Since the pilgrimage was over water most of the birds died, and when the survivors finally reached the palace behind the seven seas what did they discover but that each of them was actually the king. So see here, given a father who saw things that way it’s not surprising she took all my vases and lamps. Naturally she wanted to surround herself with flowers and light.
Joe got down on his knees and rapped the safe more loudly. The reverberations were uncanny. Deep hollow echoes boomed up into the room. Something was going on here that he didn’t understand.
Why do you wear a yellow cloak?
It was bright yellow when it was new but that was seven hundred years ago and since then it’s faded.
Do you tell me so. But why yellow?
There must have been a reason but. I can’t recall it at the moment. Can you?
Joe shook his head. He still needed time to think.
What’s that cord in the corner?
I had an electric light once but a dog was always sneaking in behind my back and biting the wire. He liked the shocks. Finally it was so full of holes I had to go back to using a candle. Did you know I discovered a comet no one else has ever heard of?
Did I? No I didn’t. Tell me about it.
Well I knew it had to exist because of certain events in the lives of Moses and Nebuchadnezzar and Christ and Mohammed. I knew there had to be an explanation for all those odd things happening in the sky so I went to my copy of the Thousand and One Nights and was able to date it from some of the episodes.
Good, very sound. What’s the cycle of your comet then?
Six hundred and sixteen years. It’s been over five times since I’ve been in Jerusalem although the first four times I didn’t know it, and I still don’t know what happened in 1228 that was so important. Do you?
No, but I haven’t studied the records for that year closely.
Nor have I as far as I know. Anyway the last time I saw it was in the desert on my annual haj. I met a dervish in a place where no man should have been and the strange light thrown by the comet’s tail made him look seven and a half feet tall. It plays tricks, that comet.
Comet tricks, muttered Joe, as he continued noisily sounding the safe. Now he was sure of it. The echoes rose from deep in the ground.
He left the safe and went over to examine the giant stone scarab in another corner of the back room. Why was it smiling in such a cunning way? He thumped its broad nose. He rapped his way down its back.
Yes he was sure of that too. The massive stone beetle was hollow. He sat down with the flat nose between his legs and began beating the nose with his fists, rapping out a rhythm. Haj Harun had stopped in front of a bare wall to adjust his helmet in a nonexistent mirror. The noise startled him and he peered toward the alley.
What’s that out there?
Not out there, in here. I’m riding the scarab. It’s hollow isn’t it?
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.