In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist (28 page)

Mustafa moved between the stools of the El Kas Fountain, leisurely squirting cleaning fluid. He felt a soft pang as he wiped down the window with an already used rag, instead of a fresh one. Didn’t the El Kas deserve better treatment? Also, he’d hurried in the bathroom, done a slipshod job on the windows and the sink. Well, the work meant nothing to him anymore. What was the use? A raise—for Mustafa? Couldn’t be. Never. Does the sun shine at night? He would never get a raise no matter how hard he worked. Anyway, all this fancy kohein talk was nonsense. He was a janitor, nothing more. A job was a job.

A hand clamped hard onto his left shoulder—his good one—and he started violently, making a can of cleansing powder fall off a stool. “Again you’re working
schway-schway
. What is it, Mustafa?” a voice scolded him. Sheikh Tawil appeared before him, his hands on his pointy hips. “I’ve been watching you the last five minutes, and you’re just been standing there.”

“I was just thinking,” Mustafa said out loud. He stooped to pick up the cleansing powder.

“Not about work,” the sheikh observed, stroking the thin hairs of his beard. “Your mind is not on the work,” he repeated. He waited, as if for an apology. “You’ve been sulking far too long about this supervisor job. You must know, there are many brothers who would be happy to have this work.” His cane swung out vaguely in the direction of the other workers. “Just remember that, Mustafa.”

“Oh, Sheikh Tawil,” Mustafa said entreatingly, “I’m very happy here. Forgive me for working
schway-schway
like that. I was just worried about … my mother. Some private thing.”

“Whatever the matter, let it not interfere with your duties in the future.”

“Oh, she’s fine now,” he assured the sheikh, but his boss had already tock tocked away on his cane.

Mustafa watched him leave, his chest constricting with fear. Sheikh Tawil was not happy with him anymore. What if he lost his job? He would have to join the streets with the other beggars, with Ahmed who had a leg stump and Crazy Rahima who sang children’s songs to herself all day and could barely see. Mustafa rushed to find disinfectant among the cleaning products and poured a tablespoon amount onto a scrub brush. The pungent fumes stung his nose, and as he scoured, he prayed, “Oh, Allah, don’t let this job get taken away from me. If I don’t have this job, what do I have.” New fears sprouted in every corner of his mind. Rabbi Isaac had said the police were after him because of the pomegranate. What if the police came and arrested the rabbi? Would he tell on him? Mustafa considered this possibility. But didn’t Rabbi Isaac care about him? What about all the nice, good words the rabbi was always telling him? Then he remembered how Rabbi Isaac wouldn’t fix his neck, and Mustafa shook his head. Of course the Jew would get him in trouble. He would blame it all on the Arab janitor who worked on the Noble Sanctuary. “Protect me from the police and the rabbi,” he prayed. “Stop up the mouth of the Jew. Let him say nothing about how I brought the pomegranate.”

Mustafa bent low, trying to loosen a clot of tar between the stools. I owe him nothing, he reminded himself. I gave him everything and what did he give me? Nice words. A bowl of chicken soup. Fancy words about broken pots and old things. Nothing. This Jew could hurt him, like all Jews. Once when he was little, his mother tried to make him take a foul-tasting medicine, and she had said, “You must drink this, or else a Jew will come and kill you.” This one was no different. No one cared about him except Allah who had hidden a clay bird in the dust for him to find. He took up his prayers, “I ask you, Allah, oh subtle one who knows every little thing, tell me what to do with my bag of treasures. If I destroy it, I will have nothing, never a chance to buy jewelry for my mother. But at least I will be safe from the police. So what should I do? Forgive me, I know I am greedy, but as long as I am praying to You …”

He tapered off. Sensing a hulking presence, he whipped around. Nothing, just blue air and white stone and the leaves of an overhanging tree. But it could have been Hamdi. For days his old friend had been
sneaking up behind him. Mustafa would turn his head a centimeter or two and see Hamdi darting away, leaving behind all kinds of photographs—pictures of underwear, fancy carpets, girls in colorful shirts and flimsy short pants, men putting up tents, babies in cribs, legs tucked into various shoes, wooden chairs and lanterns. All of them from his
JC Penney
magazine.

He glanced at the ground and saw six or seven
JC Penney
pictures resting under a washing stool. He snatched up one—it had a picnic table on it. He called after Hamdi, “Why do you give me these papers? It just makes more work for me!”

Hamdi peeked his head from behind the great tree that gave shade over the El Kas Fountain. His thick lower lip drooped. “It’s boring up here. What else is there to do?”

“Be lucky we have jobs!” Mustafa said. “Remember where you are and stop making a mess with these papers. This is a holy place and you have an important job.”

Hamdi’s chin quivered. “It’s not important,” he sulked. “My brothers laugh at me and say it’s donkey’s work, dumb work.”

“Well, it would stink here without us.” Mustafa’s arm made a slow circle around the fountain. “People would slip and fall if we left the mess on the ground. No one would want to come and pray.” As he listed the reasons, he wanted to weep. Just a week ago he had believed that his work was holy, like the kohein’s. Then Rabbi Isaac had refused to help him, not once but twice. It struck him then—the rabbi could’ve brought him to meet the holy old man that made miracles, but he never thought to bring Mustafa the Arab. And now the old man had died and Rabbi Isaac wouldn’t fix his neck. Now Mustafa believed nothing and no one. “Ah, you’re right, Hamdi,” he said, with a dismissive flap. “I’m saying only empty words; it’s boring up here and awful.”

“Ya, Mustafa, you are mixed up and crooked all over. Okay,” Hamdi allowed. “I won’t bother you,” and suddenly, a woman’s scream shot through the humid air. There were shouts and yelling and angry voices and the slap of many shoes running against stone. Briefly, Hamdi and Mustafa’s hands clung to each other. “
Laa
, what is it?” Mustafa mumbled fearfully. He saw the dark blue uniform of an Israeli policeman flash by.

Hamdi said, “I will go and see,” and he took off, though Mustafa
shouted after him, “Stay here, don’t get into trouble, silly man!” but his words fell to the ground.

Mustafa waited. He washed his hands thoroughly under a spigot. After a few minutes, Hamdi came bounding back, a gleeful smile spreading on his large, sensuous lips. He raised a fist.
“Yawaladee!”

Mustafa seized his wrist. “What is it then? The Israelis—the police?”

Hamdi shook off his hand and laughed out loud. “Yes, the police, and the Waqf, too. They were arresting an Israeli woman for praying on the Noble Sanctuary. You should have seen her screaming and crying. It’s forbidden for them to pray up here,” he explained importantly. “Did you know that? They can visit but not pray.”

“Yes, yes,” Mustafa said, and he relaxed. The police had come for someone else, not him. Just a few days ago they had arrested a few Israelis for stirring up trouble: They were wearing their prayer shawls on the Noble Sanctuary. And now another episode. He wiped his forehead with the edge of his kaffiyeh.

“You should see how strong that woman was, fighting them. I saw her legs too when her skirt flew up for a second.” Hamdi’s cheeks trembled with pleasure. “Very pretty legs,” he said. “She and your boss—Square Head—are screaming at each other. Come, you have to see this.” His dark eyes thrilled.

“No, I—”

“This is exciting, do you want to miss this?” Hamdi was stamping his big feet with impatience, his belly flopping over his straw belt. “Anyway, it’s a mess there. Go bring your broom.” And so Mustafa let himself get pulled all the way to the Gate of Magharbeh.

Loud sounds ricocheted across the Haram. Mustafa willed his feet to walk faster and nearly tripped on a slew of water bottles scattered on the stone ground. Colorful abandoned plastic bags stirred in the hot air. Mustafa looked out, dazed. He saw a blur of people running, fleeing from the Gate of Magharbeh. Another blur of policemen barreling toward the gate area. A flock of Jewish men with their kippot and prayer shawls slipping to the ground, policemen knock-knocking their big sticks. And there in the middle, he saw Sheikh Tawil and other men from the Waqf. Sheikh Tawil cried out, “That one was praying, the one with the striped shirt, and her, too, the pregnant one. Arrest them!” He swung his cane at the Jewish
worshippers. The air was thick with dust and curses and pleading voices, but Mustafa couldn’t tell who was doing the pleading. A man from the Waqf almost slipped on a pink plastic bag, and Mustafa crept forward and snatched it up into his rucksack.

“I can’t see her legs,” Hamdi said in a wounded voice. But Mustafa heard the woman’s insistent shrieks. “It’s my religious right to pray where I damn please!” A short-legged man in a white knitted cap ran alongside the messy cluster of people. “ ‘My house shall be a house for
all
nations’,” he shouted at Sheikh Tawil who reddened in fury. The sheikh yelled at one of the policemen, “Arrest that man,” he jabbed with his cane, “he was praying on the Noble Sanctuary!”

“
Adoni
, he was just quoting from the Torah,” the policeman said with a shrug.

“Verses from the Torah count as prayers!” the sheikh snapped, but the policeman just moved on. Sheikh Tawil furiously shook his head as if to say,
Those Israelis, they get away with everything
, and he leaned all his disgust and outrage into his cane.

The policeman lunged toward an older man who had taken out a prayer book. Pale dust scattered as the policeman tackled him to the ground, trying to wrest the prayer book from his groping hands. “Got it!” the officer announced triumphantly a moment later. The prayer book wedged under his arm, he entered deep into another tangle of flailing people. Four policemen emerged, each holding a limb of the accused woman, and clumsily carted her off the mountain.

Mustafa fixed his eyes on the elder Jew sitting cross-legged on the ground. The man was crying out, “Where’s my siddur? It belonged to my grandmother!” A tear dangled on the tip of his nose.

Mustafa became enraged. “Go from here!” he shouted at the elder Jew. He pointed roughly at the Gate of Magharbeh. “Pray down there, not here! Get out! Get out!”

Hamdi tugged on his arm, and the two workers scuttled away.

“Sheik Tawil—
yawaladee!
—that Square Head’s a real cowboy!” Hamdi punched the air, a one-two jab, as they walked back toward the El Kas Fountain. “Swinging his cane like that! But the woman—I could hardly see her legs or anything,” Hamdi said in a sorrowful tone. “Well, I have my own work to do at the villas.”

Mustafa watched him stagger off, fistfuls of magazine pictures crumpled into his back pocket. A whirring mosquito sound buzzed at this temples. He drank thirstily from one of the abandoned water bottles. He remembered Sheikh Tawil’s angry red face, his sharp, swinging cane. He had never seen his boss like this. How angry he would be if he only knew what Mustafa had done. No forgiveness for Mustafa.

Then he knew what he had to do. He must go back and see the rabbi, away from the courtyard, and convince the Jew—warn him—not to say a word to the police. At first he would use words of logic: “What good will it do to tell them my name. It will only get us both into trouble. I gave you my presents from the simpleness of my heart. I didn’t even know what I was doing,” and this was the truth. And then, if soft words didn’t work, he would use threats and hard words. He would raise his arms and show the Jew the strength of his hands. Not kohein hands of blessing, but closed fists.

Ah, his stupid days were gone. He would not play the mule anymore while they held the reins. His brother Tariq used to tell him to act smart, to put himself first. There were the ones on top and the ones on the bottom. The rich ones, the poor ones. The handsome, the ugly. The smart, the stupid, and the strong and the weak. These were the lines that divided this world. He glided his squeegee mop over the El Kas tiles.
Glide, tap tap. Glide, tap tap
. Over and over. He squirted extra fluid on a stain in the floor and when the mop didn’t work, rubbed at it with the toe of his still unpatched shoe. There was no true goodness or love anywhere. Not in this world. Only in the next world—a place with no lines. But now he lived in this world, and he had to do things that were good only for Mustafa, and he didn’t know what Allah had to say about it all.

At the end of the shift, Sheikh Tawil complimented him for his foresight in coming and cleaning up after the chaos of the day.

At the precinct, Isaac sat in a small, ugly gray room made of stone. The commander informed him he had the right to remain silent but didn’t recommend it.

“Who gave you the pomegranate?” Shani began.

Isaac hesitated. The best defense had to contain some truth. “An Arab worker. I met him in the
shuk
on the way to the Kotel and he gave it to me.”

Shani wrote down everything down with short, abrupt motions as if erasing, not writing. “What’s his name? Where does he work? What does he do?”

Isaac rubbed his closed eyes. He was out of his depth here.

“Well, Rabbi?”

“I’m not a rabbi,” Isaac said in a low voice. “He must work somewhere around the Old City, a carpenter or construction worker, I think.” That description fit a hundred thousand Arabs. “I don’t remember his exact name,” he fudged. Actually, he didn’t know his last name.

Shani poured hot liquid from a thermos into a cup. “Coffee?” He held out his thermos. “I have paper cups somewhere.”

Isaac shook his head. Itai Shani shrugged and drank.

“Where did you say he found the pomegranate?” the commander said, setting down his thermos cup. “The Temple Mount, eh?”

Isaac closed his eyes and nodded.

“Why did he offer it to you?”

“He—” Isaac groped for a plausible reason. “He wanted to give me a present. I’d gotten to know him. I helped him a little.”