The proprietor came back and said he could let us have the scroll for $2,000. He said that the codex predated the Dead Sea Scrolls and that it had been found in a cave a few years ago by a Bedouin and it was his grandson who had brought it to market. I told him, with Noor’s help, that I wanted to see documents of any sort that related to the Second and Third Crusades, and particularly to anything to do with the treasures and records of the Latin Kingdom. I gave him my address at the École Biblique and my phone number. Father Prosper had told me that vast amounts of documents and artefacts were lost with the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, some taken away in a mile-long caravan by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Heraclius, himself.
I am enjoying my conversations with Father Prosper. When I show him my photograph of the codex, he says it is a fake.
‘What I can see of the text, the Aramaic and the Greek are from different periods. And the image of the Madonna is a copy of a well-known picture in the museum in Amman. The original dealer from Jerusalem, who got it in Jordan, tried to sell it to some New York dealers. He was arrested. Only a fool would fail to see that the Bedouin, the cave, the Christian resonances are all supposed to recall the Dead Sea Scrolls. But because these dealers have no training, and no Greek or Latin, they sometimes sell things without knowing what they are or what they may be worth. In this country, it is a little different: everything that is found or excavated, an ossuary or a tomb or a bit of wood, is said to be something to do with Christ, or John the Baptist or Judas Iscariot. It was the same with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are one hundred per cent Jewish documents. In the early days they said they were Christian or about John the Baptist and that the Vatican wanted to suppress them because they contained explosive passages, which would undermine Christianity. All nonsense. Let us have some tea. In this part of the world, tea is a sedative. I hope I wasn’t boring you.’
‘No, not at all. It’s a real privilege for me.’
‘The art of the Crusader period is very little written; it would be an excellent choice for your work.’
I am filled with an unfamiliar zeal.
We drink the tea from small glasses under the weary cypress trees, soothed by the diffident approbation of the turtle-doves. It strikes me, not for the first time, just how arbitrary the choices we make can be. I have become very fond of Father Prosper and I think I could happily have done what he has if things had been different. I tell him that I was estranged from my father before he died and went to live in Scotland with my aunt and worked as a ghillie in the school holidays.
‘Oh, that is very sad. There is someone here you should meet. She belongs to one of the grand families of Jerusalem. Your father was very close to her. It was difficult and their friendship was seen as a scandal. They drank together and went dancing. Now she is the
grande dame
of her family. Would you like to speak to her about your father?’
‘Will she agree?’
‘I will ask her, of course, but I think she will be delighted. Her name is Haneen Husayni. She is a very cultured woman. You will find her interesting, I am sure. She is also an art historian. She may be able to help you more than I can about the Crusader art and manuscripts.’
This is my subject – the lost art of the Latin Kingdom. Where did the Patriarch take the loot after the fall of Jerusalem? And what happened to the True Cross, last seen in 1187 attached to a lance and heading for Damascus?
Haneen Husayni’s house stands at the head of a wadi that appears to run all the way down to the Dead Sea. From here you can’t actually see the sea, but you can see the hills of Jordan on the far side. The house is built of stone, and has huge arches along the ground floor, with one very old, seasoned front door providing the only access. Up above is a balcony of six arches holding up the roof. I imagine that there are cooling breezes up there. A manservant opens the door to me. Haneen Husayni is waiting just beyond the first hallway, extravagantly dressed in a floor-length robe, and above it she wears a sort of turban in yellow shot silk.
‘Hello, my boy. My heart gave a short, how do you say?
galipette
. You look so like your father. So handsome. And you must excuse my headgear; my wretched hairdresser is on holiday. He has gone to Cyprus to do garage music. What is that? Come, we will have lunch.’
She is tall and slender; her eyebrows are arched, and her eye sockets are dusted with something that catches the light, something that looks like spice. Her voice is from a lost epoch, as though it is being played on a wind-up gramophone. Every word she utters carries some elements of complicity, drawing me into her own special alliance.
She asks for my arm, and leans on it heavily as we climb the flight up to the balcony, which is more of an open-air room than a balcony. Here we sit on Ottoman divans amid palms in pots. A servant brings us tea and very cold lemon juice and sugared water, which she calls a nimbu-pani.
‘It’s Indian,’ she says, ‘a colonial drink. Now you want to know about your father and me?’
She laughs.
‘Well, yes, there is a lot about his life I don’t really know. We were estranged when I was very young.’
‘Estranged?’
She repeats the word as if she is trying to taste it.
‘How sad. When I look at you, I see your father. It’s quite disturbing. I loved him as I have never loved anyone else, and I have been married twice and had many lovers. He had a rare quality of enthusiasm; he was eager for love, for strange experiences – sometimes hash had a part in this, but it didn’t seem to us to be bad. We believed that the world was changing. We believed in love and sex. My family was horrified, not by your father himself, but by the fact that I was in love with this long-haired, wild boy. My mother secretly adored him too. Seeing you at my door has shaken me.’
She rings a bell.
‘Are you ready to eat? Your father was always hungry. It was the munchies.’
She says it as if it was an historical period,
the golden age of the munchies
. The servant appears. He glides in the traditional fashion. He bows, holding one hand to his chest. Haneen glances at him disdainfully for a second. I see that people who have always had servants feel no need to ingratiate themselves; this is the natural order. The servant bows again and retreats, sliding backwards towards the door in his slippers, as elegantly as an ice dancer.
She points to the far hills.
‘Have you been down there? To the Dead Sea?’
‘Yes, I went to Qumran and Masada. Just on a bus tour.’
‘You really are your father’s son. He, too, was here, there and everywhere. I haven’t been there for years. I have asked for our luncheon to be brought up here. It’s cool. I hate air conditioning. It dries the complexion.’
I have never heard the word ‘luncheon’ spoken before. I am my father’s son, of course, but I think this phrase means much more and I am unwilling to accept the implications: I don’t want to think that his follies and insensitivity have been lodged in me without my consent.
‘We were separated by the Six Day War. We call it
an-Naksah
, the Setback, by the way. Our Arab culture is full of tomorrow and yesterday. Today is more of a problem. Right there, on Mount Scopus, the Israelis had a battery. Your father wanted to come to this house but it was impossible and in the end he was sent away by the Israelis. Deported.’
‘Did you see him again?’
‘Yes. I saw him three times. We met in Paris first in 1972, but it was difficult to get back to what we had before.’
Her folded, haughty face inclines towards the Dead Sea, perhaps angled deliberately to avoid the view of the new Israeli settlements to the West, rows of apartments and condos attended by cranes. She pauses; she is moved by her own recollections, as people are when they speak of the dead at a funeral.
‘It was a shock to me to hear of his death. You must make peace with him now, even now. It’s not too late. I want you to do that.’
I wonder why the onus is on me to contact him on the other side. Can there not be two-way reconciliation traffic?
Servants bring up beaten copper trays loaded with small dishes. I have come to see that in these parts a profusion of food – tens of small dishes – indicates hospitality and generosity. I wonder what Haneen would make of my aunt’s penitential cooking. Her only firm rule is that the plates should be hot. She hasn’t yet come round to garlic, although she watches cooking programmes obsessively on her small television.
Haneen guides me through these dishes and tells me that the family cook has been here for forty years; some of these recipes are family secrets. I am unable to distinguish them one from another very clearly, but the family hummus, the aubergines with rose water and yoghurt, the zatar-flavoured flatbreads and the greenish-yellow olive oil are all wonderful, particularly when I compare them, disloyally, with the meals in the École Biblique’s refectory, which has now assumed a retrospective dullness.
I make dutiful remarks about how good Haneen’s food is. But my words sound hollow and formal, even to me; I don’t have the ease of manner or the language of hospitality or enmity, or the everyday courtesies or the talent for intrigue and the taste for ambiguity required in the Levant. I am treading
the stranger paths of banishment
to which Richard condemns Mowbray in
Richard II
.
‘Richard. Richard, there is something I must tell you.’
I find that sentences which contain the words ‘I must tell you’ often bear unwelcome information.
‘Is it about my father?’
‘No. I am sure we will talk more of him. The reason I asked Prosper to send you here is because Jerusalem is a small place. I know that you have been seeing Noor. There was no reason for her to tell you, but she is my niece. The daughter of my younger brother. He went to live in Canada after some trouble here. Our family was regarded as being too close to the Israelis. You should know that Noor has been staying here. I feel responsible for her. My driver was always close by.’
‘Did she tell you about me?’
‘She spoke to me frankly, because you young people think that women of my age are harmless. You can’t imagine that we were ever in love, or beautiful or carefree.’
‘Did you tell her about my father?’
‘Of course not. I didn’t know who you were when Noor and I spoke, but then Prosper called to say you would like to meet me and he told me you were Alaric’s son. It was easy to put two and two together.’
This is where Noor retreated every night – to her auntie’s home, driven by her auntie’s chauffeur and bodyguard. I have walked sleeping into the Levantine world; I wonder what else I don’t know. Haneen waits while the servants remove the dishes and platters. She gestures imperiously for them to hurry up. They give the impression that they would be honoured to move faster, if only they could. Still, they scurry quietly, looking to her for approbation.
‘Do you love Noor?’
The servants can only be heard faintly now, by way of a light clattering of plates from the steps below. The breezes from the desert are now quite cool. I find it difficult to answer.
‘I have never met anyone like her.’
‘You are infatuated.
Sous le charme
, as the French say. Do you think she is beautiful?’
‘Yes, I think she is beautiful.’
‘What I want to say to you is for your ears only.’
She lowers her voice, so that the deepish, Turkish-cigarette-rasped tones become a whisper.
‘Noor sees herself as a campaigner for human rights. Around here this is dangerous. “Human rights” ’ – she adds a little ironic emphasis as if to indicate that they are an illusion – ‘are seen as a kind of tactic by the West. The idea that everyone has human rights is mistrusted. I have rights, my family has rights, my religion has rights, but other people don’t automatically have rights. I have tried to explain this to Noor, but she is too much a Canadian. She thinks everyone in the world longs for the benefits of human rights, except the leaders, who are, of course, all evil tyrants. Here anyone could kill her. Muslims because she is a Christian, Jews because she is pro-Arab, the conservatives because she is too modern – actually the list is a long one. She is in Egypt now, reporting, but the truth is it is cover for a human rights organisation she works for. Already I hear rumours. She must go home to Canada.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘When are you going back to London?’
‘Soon. I have research to do.’
‘If she calls you, try to get her to come back from Egypt immediately. And when you go to London, I want you to call my brother and give him a message. At this moment I cannot call him or even email him or use social media. Everybody is watching us. Richard, I believe Noor is in danger. Will you do it?’
‘Of course.’
‘I will send my driver to the École Biblique with the message for you to give my brother, with his phone number.’
The term ‘social media’ is discordant here in the thickening biblical light. We settle down with Turkish coffee. I ask her about the art of the Crusaders.
‘Yes, Prosper told me and I have some suggestions for you about where to look. Let me give you an example. Have you heard of the Chinon Parchments?’