In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist Read online

  He emptied his rucksack into a bin and made his way to the Dome of the Rock shrine, or what he liked to call the Golden Lady. The Persian carpets around the holy rock needed to be straightened, and he squatted and arranged them so that they circled flowerlike around the rock. He loved this place best because of its beautiful smell. Sheikh Tawil, his boss, said it was a smell of the hereafter.

  A group of Israeli tourists thronged by, the women covering their bare arms and legs in shawls provided by the Waqf officials. Mustafa gazed at them. Sinners. Sinning according to their Torah and the Five Books of Moses that forbade them from walking on this holy ground, some parts holier than others. He had seen the rabbis’ sign on the Gate of Magharbeh forbidding Jews to enter.

  Somewhere up here they claimed was the Holy of Holies, a place only the Jewish high priest could enter on their holiest day of the year, yet look how the stupid Israelis called out, “Yooo!” or “Wow!” in their foolish shorts and bright T-shirts, not caring where they slapped their feet down. Well, every man sinned according to his own religion. In all his years on the mountain, Mustafa had gone only once to the Al-Aqsa mosque to pray. Mostly he prayed alone, when he remembered. I am a sinner, too, he thought, and a pang lodged deep in his chest.

  Now he stepped over a pile of rocks and nearly tripped. The workers were supposed to clean up, but look how they never finished the job. Sometimes they asked him to haul away these big chunks of stone, not things you could just sweep. Then he had to use a wheelbarrow. But why should he do this? Was he a construction laborer? So he did the work when asked, but slowly, sometimes letting the wheelbarrow tilt to the side and spill its contents. “Laa! Sorry!” he’d exclaim, cuffing the side of his head.

  At least he had a job. Many fifty-five-year-old men with no education or trade were beggars, made sick by years on the street. The life of a beggar could have been his. His mother’s cousin, the one who got him this job, had warned him, “Don’t stand out in any way or bring attention on yourself. It would be like drawing attention to a mistake of Allah, and on the Noble Sanctuary, that would be improper.” So Mustafa quietly did his work. The pay covered his simple needs and also came with benefits. “Work and you will be strong. Sit and you will stink.” So his mother used to say when she sent him off to sweep in a button factory at the age of eleven.

  In the distance he saw his good friend: tall Hamdi with the big stomach and the big lips like a lady movie star. Hamdi was the only one who never called him moak like the others. Deformed and crippled.

  Mustafa called out, “Salaam Aleykum,” but Hamdi turned his head to talk to a little boy, and Mustafa got no “Aleykum salaam” greeting in return. Well, maybe his friend didn’t see. He let loose a stream of spit into his rucksack and continued on to the bathrooms near the elementary school that needed cleaning. Afterward, he surveyed his work: a so-so job, a so-so day.

  Nobody saw him when his shift was over, and he shuffled off, moving sideways like a crab, passing under the arched Gate of the Cotton Merchant with its many-colored stones, until he made his way into the market. At a stand in the souk he bought a bottle of Coca-Cola. From a sullen teenage boy with brilliant blue eyes he bought a few moist figs. He ate them and drank the Coca-Cola for strength. He waded through the souk, buying vegetables here and there as he lurched his way toward the little room he rented from a carpet seller. No one bothered him, especially when he carried his tools of the trade. No one saw him, really, except for the children who teased. A janitor, even one with a crooked head, was always a little invisible. When he stood in front of a mirror straight on, even then he couldn’t see himself—his head turned only the other way, looking over his right shoulder.

  Now he fingered a jalabeeya with sequins and turquoise embroidery. Maybe he would buy the robe for his mother and give it to someone from his village who happened to pray at the Haram. He hadn’t been back in his village in years. His mother always had a reason he shouldn’t come to visit. He picked up an olivewood camel and smiled at its haughty expression. When the shop owner scowled at him between puffs on his shisha pipe, Mustafa set it down.

  He lifted his eyes and saw a tall Jew passing between the shadows cast by the stalls’ rooftops. It looked as if he were walking on a thin strip of sunlight. The man’s beard was threaded with gray and brown—except for a dark patch above and under his lips—and he wore a hat on his head and a black suit. A religious Jew, he thought. The bony religious kind who prayed all day long at their ugly wall. Mustafa watched as the Jew sidestepped a hanging sheep and a boy pushing a wheelbarrow of eggplants, the man’s steps cautious but not afraid. He’s crazy, Mustafa thought. This was no safe place for a Jew. Yahudi majnun.

  As the man went by, Mustafa called to him in Hebrew, “Aren’t you frightened?” Then he bit down on his lower lip. Why should he offer good advice to this, this Jew? Yet a day had gone by and the only words he’d heard were that of the stupid shopkeeper’s.

  The man stopped and looked at him, staring where his head and eyes actually were. He said, “Should I be?” in a Hebrew that sounded funny to Mustafa’s ears, and pointed to his iron pronger.

  Mustafa looked at his tools and saw how terrifying they truly appeared, weapons to kill. His lips twisted into a smile. “No, no.” He shook his head. “This is for my work. I work over there,” and pointed the pronger toward the Noble Sanctuary. “I clean.”

  The man’s gaze followed the tip of his pronger. “You clean the Temple Mount?”

  “I clean the Noble Sanctuary,” he stated with an extra boldness. “I’m the janitor there.”

  The man’s watery eyes looked stunned. “You clean the mountain. This is a great deed. You are keeping our holy mountain—God’s mountain—clean and wonderful.” He leaned over and briefly took one of Mustafa’s dusty hands into both of his clean ones, and then he moved away, murmuring, “Like the kohein.”

  Mustafa stared down at his right hand, the one the Jew had touched. A kohein. He knew what a kohein was. He had heard the tour guides speak about these Jewish holy priests who took care of their temple in ancient times. He stared at the retreating Jew. He took a step forward and stood in the sunlit strip between the stalls. What did the man mean—he a kohein? The Jew was disappearing into the alley, about to turn at the copper and brass stall, and Mustafa opened his mouth and shouted, “Mister, where can I find you? What’s your name?”

  “Isaac Markowitz, Seven Ninveh Street,” the man called back and kept walking.

  “Isaac Markowitz,” he repeated. The name sounded like an old book, like history. “Isaac Markowitz,” he whispered. “I am Mustafa.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Isaac’s stomach tensed under his suit jacket. He looked out the kitchen window and saw the people in the courtyard: here a morose Hassidic teenager, there an out-of-work musician, and next to him a beggar, and there in the far corner near the rosemary bushes, someone who had brought his German shepherd, even though he had been asked not to.

  It wasn’t going to be easy today, not with the news he had to tell them.

  The kabbalist’s assistant settled the brim of his black hat and stepped out onto the pocked, desert-colored stones.

  A shiny purple flap of cellophane (probably used to wrap yesterday’s Purim holiday baskets) blew itself against the olive tree in the center of the courtyard. Before he could snatch it, he saw an empty vodka bottle under the stoop and tossed it into a garbage pail, then frowned, unsure what to do with a sultry Queen Esther mask he had just stepped on. The sun hung wanly in the March sky, as though it, too, were hungover along with the rest of the country that had spent the holiday fulfilling its religious duty to get drunk.

  “When is the rebbe coming out?” a grizzled-haired old woman called out fretfully.

  “I heard a rumor we can’t see the rebbe anymore,” said the bearded saxophonist. He gripped his instrument tightly. “Is it true?”

  “I have to see Rebbe Yehudah!” Mazal the beggar rested her bulging pita sandwich on her ample lap. �
��He always says I make him happy!” Her guttural trembling voice spoke for all of them.

  A murmuring went through the courtyard, rumbled past the jasmine and honeysuckle bushes littered with holiday garbage and swept past three women leaning against the iron gate. Isaac heard the fear in the murmurings. His own fear and concern for the rebbe he swallowed back.

  He raised both hands for quiet. The German shepherd yelped sadly, refusing to stop, until finally, he and his owner left. Isaac coughed a few times and waited for the courtyard to settle down. “Unfortunately things have changed.” He paused to wipe a trickle of sweat with his jacket sleeve. “The doctor told us this morning that the rebbe isn’t well enough to have any more visitors.” They all stared back at him, shock-faced. As if on cue, the women near the gate reached for their little books of psalms, their lips already twitching in prayer. “Don’t worry,” Isaac rushed on. “From now on, you can give me your questions and I’ll pass them on to the rebbe. Plain and simple.”

  “Not so plain, not so simple,” shouted the old lady. “What about my food delivery?”

  Every Wednesday, the rebbe’s wife arranged for boxes of food to be delivered to the poor. “Mrs. Klopper, didn’t you get your food delivery?” he asked, solicitously bending his tall, lean frame toward the old woman. “It was sent to you yesterday. One of the volunteers delivered it.”

  “It wasn’t the rebbe who brought it,” she said in a voice that mingled grief and blame.

  “Mrs. Klopper, I promise you. It’s the same potato kugel and chicken soup. Same gefilte fish and cholent stew that gets delivered every week. No better, no worse. A kugel is a kugel is a kugel.” As he spoke, he felt a low inflammation, an itch, building in his scalp.

  “Yes, but when the rebbe used to come, he washed my floors, too. Better than anyone.”

  Washing floors? And what else was the frail rebbe doing against the doctor’s orders? “Don’t worry,” he said to the old woman. “I will contact the Daughters of Rebecca Kindness Hotline. Someone will be found.”

  But now the saxophonist was beseeching him, “Can’t I come in? The rebbe loves to hear me play for him. Can’t you make an exception?”

  Isaac sorrowfully regarded the Jesus look-alike in his fringed vest. “Forgive me, no, but I’ll tell you what.” He motioned with his forefinger, and the man, shlepping his saxophone, followed him off the stone plaza to a more secluded dirt area that skirted the rebbe’s cottage. The scent of chicken soup hit Isaac’s nostrils. Once a day, the rebbe’s wife made a huge potful. Maybe later he would take a bowl for himself. He pointed to a shuttered window. “The rebbe’s bedroom,” he told the musician. “You can play a little niggun for him here.”

  And the saxophonist was appeased.

  With a pad in hand, Isaac went from person to person, listening to and writing down everyone’s troubles while the saxophonist softly played, “Bei Mir Bistu Sheyn.”

  An hour later, when the rebbe woke up from his nap, Isaac approached him, pad in hand. Isaac relayed the questions and scribbled down answers. But what to do about two brides in two different neighborhoods of Jerusalem who dreamed the same dream, that they should call off their weddings? What did the rebbe advise here? One the rebbe encouraged to go ahead with the wedding, the other he told to cancel without ever looking back.

  Midday, a scent of fresh cilantro wafted through the courtyard. Mazal the beggar was packing fried eggplant, slices of hard-boiled egg, and cilantro into a fresh pita. Next she drizzled mango sauce on top, and Isaac watched, compelled, as her ravaged, yellowed teeth dug into the pita.

  And what if someone brought a three-course meal to the courtyard? Should he permit this, too? He shrugged. Some even came with their laundry to fold while they waited. In fact, there near the rosemary bushes he saw a lady sorting socks. Well, he supposed people couldn’t recite psalms all day while they waited.

  He extracted a comically sinister Haman mask and a sheet of newspaper caught in a bush. The mask, he tucked under his arm. He glanced down at the newspaper and read: “If Labor wins the upcoming election, there goes the Temple Mount.” He clopped his forehead. What fool of a political party would give back the holy Temple Mount? It was the heart of the Jewish people! His eczematic elbow started to spark and flare. Not so fast, he muttered, scratching hard at it. Surely God had some say in the matter.

  Both the mask and the newspaper went into the garbage. Ach, the whole country was a mess, and he stooped to pick up a cellophane flap moving fitfully around the courtyard.

  More people came. Homemakers, unemployed Israelis, yeshiva students, a concert pianist who hiccupped excessively and couldn’t play anymore, a couple from Uruguay—a lichen expert and a botanist—with marriage problems, two obese quarreling neighbors. Isaac explained to disgruntled customers that the protocol had changed, that now everyone had to go through him to talk to the rebbe. Their distress was huge. He couldn’t blame them. He was used to escorting confused, sad, incensed, or scared people into the cottage, one by one, and then watching them emerge from the rebbe’s studio ten, fifteen, twenty minutes later with faces looking like some freshly peeled hard-boiled egg. Clean. Clarified, somehow. And now, all they were getting was a few words from the rebbe read out loud from the assistant’s notepad? So he commiserated, he definitely did.

  Toward the end of the day, just as he was about to rush off to his prayers across the street, he heard the vroom-vroom sound of a motorcycle. A tall young woman dismounted from a scooter parked on Ninveh Street. She unsnapped her helmet to reveal a fat red braid resting on each shoulder.

  She walked toward him in long strides, her tiered peasant skirt swishing, her white helmet bouncing against her thigh. A ba’al teshuva, he thought. Someone so new to the ways of the Torah Isaac could almost reach over and pull off the tag. He could tell her newcomer status by her clothes, sad to say. A mixture of the Salvation Army and Fifth Avenue. Ankle-length skirt and baggy top thrown together with fine leather boots and some gauzy neck scarf no doubt dating from her pre-religious days. Frumpy and avante garde. And definitely American.

  She gave a little hoot to the tabby nicknamed Gilgul, or Reincarnation, by the regulars. Then she stared boldly at Isaac through large green eyes. “Do you remember me?” she asked, her accent from somewhere in the Northeast, though not New York.

  “Forgive me, no.” It was hard to keep track of everybody. “Uh, what’s your name?” He scratched his neck where a patch of psoriasis had made a recent appearance.

  “Tamar.” She bent and gathered Gilgul in her arms. “I came here more than forty days ago. We spoke. You don’t remember?” Her tanned, freckled cheeks blushed ever so slightly.

  “Please. Refresh me,” he said gently.

  “I told you about my friend who did that segulah thing—she went to the Western Wall and prayed there for forty days?—and then she met this amazing guy on a setup. Her basherte, her honest-to-goodness soul mate. Now they’re engaged.”

  Ah, yes. A segulah. Everybody and her friend wanting a spiritual charm to bring on heavenly assistance. Next thing you know, the young women would come flocking to the rebbes from all corners. The young men would ignore their Torah studies and come, too, hoping to put an end to their dating woes. Isaac didn’t deny a segulah’s special power, but such quick remedies to people’s problems didn’t appeal to him. They led to exaggerated expectations with minimal labor. But there was no stopping them. That’s what people wanted. Microwave pizza, microwave marriage, microwave God.

  “That’s nice,” he said out loud. “Mazal tov for your friend.”

  “Then you told me to do the forty-day segulah at the wall. You—”

  “I did what?” He drew back skeptically. Why would he advise that? Then, in a flash, the whole conversation returned to him. Tamar. The young lady on a motorcycle. No, a scooter. She wanted to get married, to meet a Torah scholar, like all the girls wanted. He had suggested a matchmaker to help her, but she had scorned the idea, as if being practical-minded in Jerusale
m were some kind of sin. “I didn’t suggest anything,” Isaac insisted. “It was you who asked for one of these”—he cast his eyes heavenward with a resigned look—“charms, the same one as your friend, I forget her name. The rebbe said, fine, go ahead, pray forty days at the Kotel, he wouldn’t stop you.”

  “Whatever.” She airily flipped her wrist. “The point is, I did it, I prayed forty days at the wall. Today, I finally completed the circuit. D Day, right? Deliverance? And guess what happened?” She let a pause sink in. “I got fired from my job as a translator. The first decent job I ever had in this country.” At this, even the cat in her arms lifted its head to accuse him with slitted yellow eyes.

  Isaac sneezed. “That’s terrible. I’m really sorry. Now you need a husband and a job, too.” He blew his nose with regret.

  “You don’t understand.” She took a step closer. The freckles on her cheeks stood out vividly. “I prayed and prayed. I came in the rain, I came late at night and early in the morning. I even came when I had strep throat. And how did God answer me? By sacking me. So why, I ask you, did you push this segulah?”