Tuesday 19 March 2024

One rare herb

 

Shay walked out of the gates of Shaary Tzedek hospital and headed up the hill, to the tram line. Absentmindedly, he broke a small branch of the rosemary bush that grew behind the low stone fence, and inhaled the spicy scent. The news was not good. In fact, it was terrible. His father was given a month to live, at most. The doctor, a tall bold man with round glasses and red, inflamed eyes, looked somewhere above Shay’s shoulder, when he pronounced the words “hospice” and “keeping him comfortable”. Shay stared down at the doctor’s polished shoes, thinking, “He won’t even look me in the eyes. I guess that’s how he copes.”

Despite his name, Eitan, which means “mighty”, his father had been very weak after the last round of chemotherapy, mostly bedridden. The sores in his mouth would not heal, and the situation was getting worse by the day. The doctors explained that his whole digestive tract became too ulcerated to process any food at all. His cheeks were so sunken that they looked blue with a day’s old stubble. Shay’s mother, Rosa, spent her days and nights by her husband’s side, looking thinner and older all the while. There were no relatives who could help out, but Rosa still refused to share her burden with strangers. Shay was their only child, and both of his parents were only children, as well. There was no way to explain the genealogy of Holocaust survivors to Moroccans or others, like the guys at his office. Above their desks they hung pictures of all those numerable cousins and nephews and nieces, sitting on toy cars and holding ballons, reading the Torah for their bar-mitzvas or getting on planes. When you have so many grandchildren that you cannot even remember them all by name, from your own eight kids… sitting round your table ‘like olive saplings’… he sighed. What was this sudden Scripture quotation business? Did talking of his father’s impending death really make him superstitious? Never! This, too, Moroccans could never understand, just how far removed he felt from the tradition. Being an atheist had its advantages. This was one instance where he had been proud of his ignorance. The day was a regular July furnace, but he could not find any shade. “Maybe I should cool in the shade of my own cold Ashkenazi heart”, he chuckled to himself.

He got off the tram by the central bus station, and settled to wait for the bus to Mevasseret, a small but luxurious suburb, where he lived with his wife Angela and his own two children, one of whom was getting married in just over a month. If father dies now, the wedding would have to be postponed… she shuddered with guilt at such thoughts, but the grim reality could not be changed by any amount of guilt. The sun was beginning to roll down towards the Sacher park, dipping in the cool shade of the pine trees by the Israel museum. He had to shield his eyes with his hand to see the number of the bus which almost knocked him off the pavement. The only free seat was next to his neighbour, the most talkative old woman called Zlata. Usually, he avoided her like the plague, but now it was too late – she had seen him. Grudgingly, he climbed up onto the free seat next to her, waiting for an onslaught of words to hit his ears, expecting useless comments about the weather and the inept politicians. But instead, she reached deep into her knitted purse, and searched in it for a really long while. When she found her glasses, she settled them over her head, sliding them all the way to her tiny grey bun, which sat there cozily on top of her head, and continued searching. At last, she pulled out a worn newspaper cutting, and handed it to him. “Here,” – she whispered. “Something for your dad. I wanted to slide it into your mailbox, but look, God has brought you all the way here, to save me the trouble.”

“Thanks!” – Shay suppressed another internal cringe, because the last thing he wanted was publicity about their situation. Still, the circumstances demanded that he cooperate, and so he did. Opening the article, he began reading. “Israel Today” had sent a correspondent to visit a plant nursery in the North, where a line of desperate people queued up day and night, the line of cars stretching for kilometers down the road. They were all asking for the extract of something called “Leafless Shrubby Horsetail”, and the nursery staff was being run off their feet trying to produce a sufficient amount for all the patients battling cancer in the country. Shay grunted noncommittally and thanked Zlata, trying not to exhibit the skepticism he felt. Had the herb been so magical, surely the doctors would have known about it, no? But he managed to keep this sentiment to himself. “I know you don’t believe in anything alternative. But look, it’s worth a try! I know it’s not good, son.” She put her tiny dried out hand onto his wrist. He put the “son” address where his skepticism about alternative medicine was being stored, and thanked her again. Her hand on his arm was making him think of birds’ feet. It was just as dry and weightless. Angela would never believe how well he restrained his temper today. “Oh, I see you’ve been changing your opinions!” – Zlata was pointing at the rosemary branch, which he was still clutching in his left hand. “Yeah, it smells nice,” – he conceded, still deep in his thoughts and totally absent from the conversation. His dad had really wanted to see the wedding… he sighed. This is when all those believers, whom he always thought to be mental weaklings, unable to face the grim reality of human demise, would high-pitch their prayers, begging for a few more days in this world, even though they would be just more pain and fear. So immature.

Zlata carried on with questions about Angela and kids, then shared her own petty grievances, but Shay had only half-heard her. Nodding at regular intervals did the trick with old lonely women. At last, he got off the bus, then helped her. Shay thanked her profusely for the article, wished her all the best at least a few times, and finally found himself in his own apartment, still flooded with sunset glow from the west-facing windows. It was totally quiet, save for the hum of the dishwasher. Angela must’ve loaded it after work, before running out to accomplish some more errands for the wedding. Those of Eastern European descent were too neat, he thought. Once the kids grew up, the house began to resemble a museum, where things never moved, until moving them almost became an act of sacrilege, like violating the age-old custom. Almost like in a tomb of some Pharaoh. What on earth was wrong with him today? – Shay chided himself for not being his usual skeptical atheist self. Well, it’s not every day that he gets the kind of news he got today…  

He fancied a cigarette, but remembered just in time that he actually quit smoking two years ago, when his father was first diagnosed. He grunted, and deciding there was nothing to lose, looked up the number of the plant nursery mentioned in the article. A pleasant-sounding girl informed him that now they had distributing stations in all major cities. All he had to do was to go to a street called Shomrey Emunim, and take the first turn to the left after the bus stop. There was a small private pharmacy there. He nodded, while rapidly entering the address into Maps. The girl hung up just as Shay realized he would have to go into the deepest, darkest, and most stringent bastion of Orthodoxy – into Meah Shaarim itself. No matter… for his father… if these drops would even ease his pain just a bit… we would go visit the devil himself, if need be.

Right after work the next day, instead of going to the hospital, he decided to go straight to the pharmacy. Jerusalem’s #2 bus, with a route as long and monotonous as the great Exile, sped up from one modest black-clad area to another. Plain-looking women with black or brown kerchiefs on their heads lifted their double strollers onto the bus, followed by at least a dozen kids each, then stood behind his back conversing in rapidly flowing Yiddish or in Hebrew, while the children wreaked havoc all around. Shay closed his eyes and opened two more buttons on his shirt, waiting for his phone to buzz a signal to get off. He was feeling quite claustrophobic being surrounded by so many noisy people.

When he got off, at last, the street lights had already come on. He looked around. Ivory-coloured buildings, tiled with Jerusalem stone and dotted all over with miniscule balconies, with occasional black rash of age clinging onto them, looked very much one like another. There seemed to be very few people around, but a squat building nearby, which he immediately identified as a synagogue, was buzzing with the sounds of prayer. Shay regretted not bringing a kippa – he would have certainly felt more comfortable with one covering his head. On the steps of the synagogue, he spotted a youth with long peyot and a bizarre flat hat. His face was partially obscured by a tiny book he was reading in the light of the street lamp, as he rolled back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Rabbi Ashlag, The Secrets of Creation” – the book title proclaimed. When Shay coughed and ventured a meek “excuse me…”, the youth looked up, and Shay nearly jumped back, for the face looking at him was Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi in every exact detail. Gathering his wits, he managed to ask for directions, and when he turned back for one more look at the uncanny resemblance, the same unblinking stare nearly made him lose his gall. “Zai gezunt,” – his mouth produced suddenly. The man smiled with one side of his mouth, nodded, and dove back into the book.

Shay felt shivers crawling up his spine. The place was uncanny. It was hard to believe that barely a kilometer away there were restaurants, bars with alcohol and dancing, and even – oh no! – a cinema.

The pharmacy was hidden between a shop full of sewing paraphernalia, which sported a finely dressed board in the window for a mannequin, and a Judaica shop with tightly barred windows. Shay pushed the door, and tiny bell rang above his head, announcing the visitor. He looked around. Most of the boxes he saw on the shelves looked nothing like modern medications. “Oh… it’s an alternative place… not a pharmacy. But of course.” – he thought as he took in the boxes of dark cardboard with Yiddish and English writing on them. Instead of a counter, the pharmacy had a decrepit-looking wooden table, with an abacus settled in a corner. Above it hung a strange looking clock. The hours and the numbers were traced with fluorescent green paint. Next to it, there was a large hand-drawn placard, depicting medicinal herbs in the order of the Aleph-Bet. Even more strangely, the shop was lit by two ancient gas lights, buzzing faintly on the wall opposite him. “Those… they don’t recognize the State.” – Shay thought, with a tinge of his old, nearly extinguished anger. He looked down and noticed the floor paved in the most ancient tiles, with red diamonds and green clubs inside them. Across two of them lay a wooden toy, the kind that you pull along on a string. Just then, a stooped man with a long white beard shuffled slowly out of some back door which Shay failed to notice. His clothes looked home-spun, and his glasses could have easily been older than the State itself.

He eyed Shay suspiciously, then asked in a surprisingly young voice: “Vos vil herr….?”

“I am looking for the famous cure… for the Illness.” – Shay answered in Hebrew. He remembered that in the Orthodox circles, cancer was never referred to by name, for fear of the Evil Eye.

“Yes, of course… We have it.” – replied the man.

His Hebrew, which normally rolls around on your tongue like a hard-boiled sweet, gave off a distinct flavour of moth balls.

“Whom is it for?”

Shay explained about his father. The pharmacist nodded a few times slowly, scratched his head, then reached down under the counter for a small bottle of dark glass. Then he took out a yellowed sheet of paper, and proceeded to fill it with instructions, writing with quick strokes of a pencil. Then, he folded the paper and wrapped it around the bottle, which was filled with brownish murky liquid and stopped with a strange-shaped cork.

“How much is it?” – Shay asked.

“Thirty”.

Surprised at the low price, Shay took out his credit card, then, realizing how useless it would be here, he took some change out of his pocket, and handed it to the man. Least of all was she prepared for his reaction.

“What is this money? Give me liras.”

“What do you mean, what is this money?” – Shay did not even realize he started yelling, as hot rage flooded his belly and began rising into his head. “It’s shekels! Are you people so ungrateful, that even after the Holocaust and seven victorious wars you refuse to acknowledge you owe the State your lives?”

The man’s next question made his stop in his tracks, though.

“Vos iz der Holocaust?”

It just could not be. There was not a Jew alive who did not know. Maybe the man was going senile? Shay forced himself to calm down, and still his voice was heavily laced with sarcasm, when he began explaining. Yet, the man’s reaction could not be faked. He began rocking on his stool, pulling out his hair, tearing his shirt, and wailing in the most aggrieved voice, but refusing to believe a thing.

“Oy, you evil, evil man. A true Rasha! Making up such lies.” – The man sobbed. “My brother in Cracow, and another one on Lodz. It just cannot be! Oy, Gotenu!”

Shay stood there, quite helpless, and very much puzzled. It just could not be. What a ridiculous situation!

“Look, I’m sorry you didn’t know. But now we have the State. Our own Jewish State.” – Shay ventured again. “It was all a very long time ago… as opposed to our wars with the Arabs…”

The man looked at him as if Shay was crazy. “Hush, hush… the Turks will hear.” – He muttered. Now Shay knew the man was insane, all doubts gone.

He started pushing Shay out of the pharmacy. The tiny bell above the door rang again and again in distressing notes.

“I will never have enough liras to pay another bakshish. Just take the medicine and go. Go, I said! No need to pay.”

Shay had no choice but to retreat, clutching the bottle close to his heart.  

Outside, Jerusalem waited for him quite the same, permeated with smells of the cooking supper from the open windows, and the muezzin’s call from East Jerusalem. Shay felt dizzy, shaken by the experience. He decided to walk all the way to the central bus station to give himself time to think. The bottle of medicine weighing down his pocket proved that the encounter was real, and he did not imagine it, however bizarre and impossible it was. He made up some lame excuse when his mother phoned to find out why he hadn’t been to the hospital, and poured himself a glass of wine as soon as he got home. Angela, practical as ever, took the strange bottle out of his hands and put it on top of the fridge, claiming it was too fishy to even consider giving it to a very sick old man.

The next day she took some time off work and drove all the way to the nursery in the North, where they swore by all that is holy that they never had any cooperation with any pharmacies in Meah Shaarim. On the way, she stopped by her friend Sharon’s lab in Herzliya, where the mysterious bottle was revealed to be full of the strongest unadulterated opium.

“You asked for the ‘medicine’, and he gave you ‘medicine’” – Angela retorted, when Shay tried to explain his experience, perhaps to himself, once again. He was being consumed by guilt. For her, the world was simple and devoid of any mystery. He only wished his skeptical atheist attitude could bring him such clarity, and especially – such calm. He also wished he cold get rid of what he called “hereditary Jewish superstitions”, but for some reason now it was harder than ever to let go of them.

At the wedding, Zlata was given an honorary seat next to Angela and Rosa, who kept smiling at her very thin and pale, but very much alive husband, not really seeing the wheelchair or the drip line, but the eyes of the man who had made her so happy for the last fifty odd years.

Monday 26 February 2024

Mahmoud finds a treasure

 

Mahmoud drilled the last hole in the wall of the future kitchen, then inserted the screw anchors into all of them. He sighed and climbed down the ladder. Two more hours until the lunch break. For now, he could have a coffee and cigarette, while Shuki and Yaakov were hanging the kitchen units. He was getting too old to be climbing up and down all day. His knees hurt, and his back creaked. His eyes were not as sharp as they used to be, and his bladder was beginning to give him the trouble of old men. Yet, he could not admit it even to himself, because who would feed the family, if he couldn’t? He knew that day would come eventually, sooner rather than later, and if the Jews were looking forward to their retirement, grandchildren and travelling, he could only look forward to silent resentment of his daughters-in-law and the forced obedience of his sons. He was not a citizen of Israel, so no pension awaited him in his old age.

There wasn’t enough cardamom left, and the coffee tasted weak, pale, just like the face of that new boy Yaakov just hired, Shalom. What a funny name. Arabs named for war; Jews named for peace. Weaklings. He shrugged. This was the way of the world.

“Mahmoud! Where the devil are you?” – Yaakov yelled. They needed another man to support the units. Yet, Mahmoud did not reply. Just another minute of rest. He shook the ashes off his cigarette, staring fixedly at his dirty and scarred hand, and thinking that one day, the hands of his newborn grandson, Amir, would look like that, too, unless he could scrape up some more money and send him to university in Cairo. The boy should be a lawyer, he is so smart, always making arguments. He sighed again. “I’m coming!” – he yelled in the direction of the kitchen.

That was exactly when the building shook. Something crashed down in the kitchen, and breaking glass sang out a sad note right behind him. It was as if a giant took a deep breath in the mountain under them, stretching after centuries of sleep, and began chewing the sheer rock under the new building. It sounded like a whole escadrille of fighter jets flying overhead. Then the floor became soft. Marble tiles turned into the dunes by the coast near Ashdod, even though they were on a hill overlooking Jerusalem. The Jews in the kitchen yelled something out in Hebrew, and thundered down the unfinished stairs. Mahmoud made his way down, too, quaking with the most primitive and instinctual fear, the same one that makes animals find their way out of a burning forest, without a thought or a plan. Yet, at the bottom of the stairs, instead of turning to the exit, the light and air, he pushed his way past the bales of sand meant for the floors, into the basement, where the storage rooms were meant to be, and squatted down by the rock wall, not yet dressed in stone. The tiles prepared for the job were piled up haphazardly in three different places, and Yaakov just hasn’t found anyone to blame for that yet.

The giant under him yawned, and Mahmoud saw the vast mouth of the earth opening up to swallow him. Forgetting all the right prayers, he covered his eyes with his hands and waited to be crushed by the hundreds of tons of concrete towering over his head. Then, the grinding noise stopped, the floor was solid again. Mahmoud opened his eyes and thanked Allah for surviving. He was covered in mud and pieces of rock, scratched and bruised, but otherwise unharmed. His heart was still racing, and he got up shakily to go back upstairs, when he realized… There was a mouth of a cave staring at him, and inside it, piled one on top of another, there were three ancient-looking amphoras and five stone chests.

Outside, the sirens wailed. He heard the other workers yelling out his name and asking if he was OK. He realized he had two minutes at most, before the treasure was found and claimed for the State. Yet, this was his once in a lifetime chance – to stop slaving on building sites, to send Amir to university, to add another floor so his son Nasser could take a wife, at last… He looked around frantically. The amphoras were too big and heavy to hide, and he had no time to check what was inside them. He knew scrolls could fetch the most, but he couldn’t see any scrolls anywhere. On top of the stone chests, he noticed a small metal box. When he lifted it, he gasped at its weight – it fitted in the palm of his hand, but weighed at least as much as an adult-sized bike. It’s got to be something special and expensive, to be stored like that, in a lead container. He shoved it hastily into the pocket of his jeans, hoping it wouldn’t tear, and turned to leave the newly formed cave.

“Here you are, man!” – Yaakov clapped him on the shoulder. Then he breathed out an oath. “Look what we’ve got here! A treasure!” He stood there for a while, just staring in awe at the mysterious containers. Then he ran out to call Antiques Authority. Mahmoud followed him, “We mustn’t touch anything! I thought all building projects were approved by archeologists, but look at this here! Come on, you will be rewarded for finding this!” He rubbed his palms together, his corpulent belly swaying right and left with the move. Then he pulled up his jeans and adjusted his kippa. Mahmoud shivered with distaste, and turned to leave. He wanted to have a look at the thing he took – curiosity was gnawing at him. Yet, he couldn’t exactly take another break now, when they were all discussing the earthquake and the treasure. They finished hanging up the kitchen and installed the sink before a phone call came, ordering them to stop all works at once until further notice. The archeologist on duty was on his way.

They sat outside, smearing thick hot pita bread from the bakery with labane or hummous, still talking about the earthquake. Many old buildings had collapsed… they all knew someone who lived in those areas. Shalom, being the youngest, chopped up some vegetables, and Shuki brewed some more coffee. Mahmoud got up slowly and headed for the nearest bathroom. They all heard a blood-curdling long scream. Then silence set in.

By the time Yaakov finished breaking down the solid wooden door, there was nobody left to save. In the bloody mess on the floor they found some severed fingers, sliced off as if by a giant razor, and Mahmoud’s leg, cut off with geometric perfection. But the strangest thing of all was that the toilet bowl was sliced in two, as well, with the same uncanny precision. Yaakov had enough time to see that the floor was being sliced with something invisible, cleaving the wall on the floor below them into two neat halves, moving slowly and deliberately towards the belly of the earth. It was small, grey, and it smelled of something like burning vinegar, but the metallic smell of blood overpowered everything. Then he slammed the door, and vomited all over himself and his workers’ shoes, undigested pieces of pita mixing in with the stream of bright-red blood leaking out from under the door.

What he remembered later, when the TV and radio hosts wanted to speak to him, was just the freckled young face of the archeologist, with beads of sweat glistening on his forehead, screaming out one word: “Shamir! Shamir!” and talking some nonsense about the Temple and the Messiah and everything being real. “How did you just let it go?!” – he demanded. “You catch it, idiot. It just killed a man here.” – Shuki spat out at him then. The archeologist was pulling his hair out, wailing that not a soul would believe him about this. Yaakov refused to be interviewed, saying the event traumatized him too much, and they all clucked their tongues and said they were so sorry. Shuki delivered stories worthy of the “Thousand nights” to anyone who would listen, until the public lost interest. Shalom had simply disappeared – his bride wanted nothing to do with him, until he denied any connection to the event. Mahmoud’s family received a hefty compensation from the company, after signing the report that spoke of a concrete mixer knife being dislodged by the quake. The family built another floor in their concrete shell of a house, enough for two more sons to take wives. The archeologist was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown, and Yaakov made his wife cook extra shabbat meals, so the only man who understood what happened could recover and explain. Biblical scholars from all over the world made their way to him, yet he stubbornly refused to speak to anyone, until the memory of the event was scattered by the four winds of Jerusalem, carried into the Judean desert by the winter gales and burnt to a crisp by the heatwaves of the summer.

Yet, if you creep quietly into the back yard of the building set slightly back from Jeremiah Street in Jerusalem, and ask the neighbours about the treasure, they will confirm every word, and even show you the graves of Yaakov the Builder and the young archeologist, who never recovered his sanity, after you solemnly promise to never, ever share this story with anyone else.