The Rosetta Key

For guide and bodyguard to Jerusalem I chose a bearded, sharp-bargaining entrepreneur named Mohammad, a moniker seemingly given to half the Muslim men in this town. Between my elementary Arabic and Mohammad’s primitive French, learned because Frankish merchants dominated the cotton trade, we could communicate.

Still conscious of money, I figured that if we left early enough I could shave a day off his fee. I’d also slip out of town unseen, in case any Royal Marines were still lurking about.

“Now then, Mohammad, I would prefer to depart about midnight.

Steal a march on the traffic and enjoy the brisk night air, you see.

Early to rise, Ben Franklin said.”

“As you wish, effendi. You are fleeing enemies, perhaps?”

“Of course not. I’m told I’m affable.”

“It must be creditors then.”

“Mohammad, you know I’ve paid half your extortionate fee in advance. I’ve money enough.”

“Ah, so it is a woman. A bad wife? I have seen the Christian wives.” He shook his head and shuddered. “Satan couldn’t placate them.” t h e

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“Just be ready at midnight, will you?”

Despite my sorrow at losing Astiza and my anxiety to learn her fate, I’ll confess it crossed my mind to seek an hour or two of female companionship in Jaffa. All varieties of sex from the dullest to the most perverse were advertised with distracting persistence by Arab boys, despite condemnation from any number of religions. I’m a man, not a monk, and it had been some days. But Smith’s ship remained anchored offshore, and if Big Ned had any persistence it would be just my luck that he’d find me entwined with a trollop, too single-minded to outwit him. So I thought better of it, congratulated myself for my piety, and decided I would wait for relief in Jerusalem, even though copulating in the Holy Land was the kind of deed that would choke my old pastor. The truth is, abstinence and loyalty to Astiza made me feel good. My trials in Egypt had made me determined to work on self-discipline, and here I was, past the first test. “A good conscience is a continual Christmas,” my mentor Franklin liked to say.

Mohammad was an hour late, but finally led me through the dark maze of alleys to the landward gate, its paving stained with dung. A bribe was required to get it opened at night, and I passed through its archway with that curious exhilaration that comes from starting a new adventure. I had, after all, survived eight kinds of hell in Egypt, restored myself to temporary solvency with gambling skills, and was off on a mission that bore no resemblance to real work, despite my fantasies of becoming a ledger clerk. The Book of Thoth, which believers contended could confer anything from scientific wisdom to life everlasting, probably no longer existed . . . and yet it might just be found somewhere, giving my trip the optimism of a treasure hunt.

And despite my lustful instincts, I truly longed for Astiza. The opportunity to somehow learn her fate through Smith’s confederate in Jerusalem made me impatient.

So off we strode through the gate—and stopped.

“What are you doing?” I asked the suddenly recumbent Mohammad, wondering if he’d had a fainting spell. But no, he lay down with the deliberation of a dog circling a fireplace rug. No one can relax like an Ottoman, their very bones melting.

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w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h

“Bedouin gangs infest the road to Jerusalem and will rob any unarmed pilgrim, effendi,” my guide said blithely in the dark. “It’s not just risky to proceed alone, it is insane. My cousin Abdul is leading a camel caravan there later today, and we will join him for safety. Thus do I and Allah look after our American guest.”

“But what about our early start?”

“You have paid, and we have started.” And with that he went back to sleep.

Well, tarnation. It was the middle of the night, we were fifty yards outside the walls, I had little notion which way to go, and it was entirely possible he was right. Palestine was notorious for being overrun by brigands, feuding warlords, desert raiders, and thieving Bedouins. So I stewed and steamed for three hours, worried the marines might somehow wander this way, until at last Abdul and his snorting camels did indeed congregate at the gate, well before the sun rose.

Introductions were made, I was loaned a Turkish pistol, charged five more English shillings both for it and my added escort, and then another shilling for feed for my donkey. I’d been in Palestine less than twenty-four hours and already my purse was growing thin.

Next we brewed some tea.

At last there was a glimmer of light as the stars faded, and we were off through the orange groves. After a mile we passed into fields of cotton and wheat, the road lined with date palms. The thatched farmhouses were dark in early morning, barking dogs signaling their location. Camel bells and creaking saddles marked our own passage.

The sky lightened, bird call and rooster crow started up, and as the dawn pinked I could see the rugged hills ahead where so much biblical history had taken place. Israel’s trees had been depleted for charcoal and ashes to make soap, yet after the waterless Egyptian desert this coastal plain seemed as fat and pleasant as Pennsylvania Dutch country. Promised Land, indeed.

The Holy Land, I learned from my guide, was nominally a part of Syria, a province of the Ottoman Empire, and its provincial capital of Damascus was under the control of the Sublime Porte in Constantinople. But just as Egypt had really been under the control of t h e

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the independent Mamelukes until Bonaparte threw them out, Palestine was really under the control of the