O Jerusalem

Holmes started to rise, then paused to address Ali. “Shall I take it that you are now convinced of the need for this operation of ours?”

“If the monk in Wadi Qelt saw a man who looked as he described, by God, yes. Most certainly, there is urgent need.”

Holmes nodded, and stood up. He ducked across the corridor to his room and came back in a moment pushing his tobacco and rough papers into a pocket and carrying his sheepskin coat, which he proceeded to put on.

“I expect I shall be back before dark,” he told me. “If anything comes up, I shall try to send a message.”

“Wait and I’ll get my coat,” I said, getting to my feet.

“You have some sleep,” he said firmly. “If Mahmoud rounds up any newspapers or dispatches, go through them, see if anything catches your eye.”

“I don’t need any sleep.”

“Bazaar talk is a job for one person” (“one man,” he said in Arabic) “and I may need you tonight.” He left before I could formulate any lucid objections, a sure sign of my fatigue, so I went across to my own airless cubicle, jammed a wedge beneath the door, wrapped myself up on the mat, and so to sleep.

I awoke to the harsh, flat clang of bells. The crack of light around three sides of my door was dim, but natural, not from a lamp. I stretched, scratched myself thoroughly (the room had not been as free from insect life as I had optimistically thought), knotted my hair securely into my turban, and kicked away the wedge.

It was still daylight, but only just. There was no sign of Holmes, Ali, or Mahmoud, and no indication they had been back since I had gone to sleep. I felt logy, my bladder was full, and my teeth were covered with fur. I took up my abayya and made my way downstairs, used the privy and ran some water from a spigot to wash out my mouth and splash my face, and began to feel human again. I have never been one for naps in the afternoon.

As I walked back into the courtyard, a voice hailed me from one of the open doors, asking if I would drink tea. I agreed, with pleasure, and I did so, squatting against the sun-warmed stones with the young boy who brought it. Daylight was little more than a deepening blue in the square of sky over our heads, but the tea was flavoured with mint, hot and sweet and revitalising. I blew and slurped at it with pleasure indeed, and ate a handful of the candied almonds he offered me as well. When we had each asked politely half a dozen times how the other’s health was, and reassured each other that the tea was most agreeable, thanks be to God, I asked if he had seen my tall friend with the blue kuffiyah. The boy was heartbroken to admit that he had not seen the man since he had been seen walking through the gates into the street some time since, but he assured me that my friend would undoubtedly return soon, if it were God’s will. As I suspected that even Allah had little influence over the actions of Sherlock Holmes, I thought I might go out and see for myself.

I thanked the boy for his hospitality and we wished each other peace and good fortune. As I went out the gate, adjusting my abayya across my shoulders, it occurred to me that I had just conducted my first true conversation with a native speaker.

Our inn was at the edges of the Christian Quarter, a place well supplied with pilgrim hostels. I walked back towards the Jaffa Gate, and in the open place before the Citadel I turned past the Grand New Hotel and dived into the bazaar, picking my way cautiously down the slippery, uneven stones that were more stairway than street. On either side of me the sellers of carpets and clothing, mother-of-pearl knick-knacks, copper pots, and narghiles kept watch. When a European woman and her lieutenant escort approached, the raucous calls of “Bakshish!” and “See my carpets, madam, finest quality!” and “Olive-wood crosses from Bethlehem, effendi!” merged into a single sound which heralded their progress like the voices from a flock of crows. They passed by without noticing me, the woman looking harried and the officer furious, and for the first time I was truly grateful for my occasionally inconvenient disguise: No man there gave this dusty Arab youth a second glance, save to be sure I did not come within snatching distance of the wares.

With growing confidence I walked on, down the shop-lined alleyways, through the merchants of grain and seed and into an area where the streets were so narrow that the wooden lattice-work boxes over the upper windows nearly met in the middle. Then the vaulting began, and the open street became a stone tunnel. When a cart or a laden donkey came along (and once a mounted police constable) pedestrians had to squeeze to one side. I paused at a book-stall and made two small purchases, and wandered on until I came to a meat market. There I held my breath and scurried through the foetid air and the flies, slowing again when I came to tables heaped high with fruit. I bargained for a couple of withered apples at one stall, a clot of dates and a handful of sweet almonds at another, and nibbled at them as I passed through a baffling variety of hats, caps, turbans, and scarfs, long black robes and dust-coloured khaki, a Scotsman in a kilt and a Moroccan in his embroidered robes, a Hasid dressed in his best silk caftan and a wild-eyed ascetic wearing almost nothing at all. I listened to the rhythm of Arabic (understanding a great deal of it) punctuated by the cries of children and a waft of Latin that smelt of incense and the occasional murmur of Hebrew, breathed the scents of freshly watered dust and old sweat and young bodies, of gunpowder and petrol, turmeric and saffron and garlic, incense and wine and coffee, and everywhere the smell of rock, ancient stones and newly crushed gravel and recently hewn building blocks.

At the far end of the souk I perched on a high doorstep and ate the second apple while watching the residents of Jerusalem go about their business. Half a dozen urchins screamed up and down the steps after a fraying golf-ball; two oblivious grandfathers in gleaming white robes sat in an inner courtyard, playing chess and rubbing their long beards in thought; a trio of adolescent girls with demurely hidden faces huddled together and giggled madly when a pair of handsome young boys went past them. A police constable strolled by me, followed by a small group of fashionably dressed tourists searching for the place (forty feet above what would at the time have been street level) where Jesus stumbled and put out his hand.

A few minutes such as this could almost make a person forget the lives that had been lost on these stones, the Nazarene Jesus two millennia before, the British Tommy bare months ago. It was a precarious peace that a handful of us were fighting to maintain, a foothold of good-will and security that future generations might use to rise above the bloody past. If we failed, if Karim Bey had his way, the fragile structure of government would collapse, anarchy would reign, and tyrants would again walk these stones. Hell lurked just outside the city gates.

I finished my apple, watching the tourists go by. They would lose their purses to a nice peaceful pickpocket if they weren’t more careful, I thought, and tossed the core of my apple into the gutter to follow them. Night was closing in fast, and the original purpose of finding Holmes had long faded from view—after an hour in the souk I had to admit that I had little hope of stumbling across him. I turned back towards the Christian Quarter, and there I took a wrong turning.

It is difficult to become seriously lost in a walled city that covers less than a square mile, and I had memorised the names of the principal streets that cut through the maze; however, with most of the streets lacking either signs or street-lamps and darkness settling over the already dim lanes, I mistook the Akabet et-Tekkiyeh for the parallel Tarik es-Serdi, and found myself in an alleyway of locked shops and few people. Wondering if it ended in a cul-de-sac, I put my head around the side of the one lighted shop I came across, and said to the man, “Good evening, my uncle. I beg of you, does this street lead to the Jaffa Gate?”

For a moment I thought the man knew me, such was the look of delight that dawned on his rotund features, but when I looked more closely at the face under the incongruous bowler hat, I realised that he was merely filled with the bonhomie of drink. He started around the high piles of his goods (hats and shawls) with both hands out to greet me and protestations of undying servitude on his tongue. I backed away but could not avoid him entirely without being undeservedly rude, so I allowed him to grasp my hands and rant on while I smiled and nodded and tried to keep my distance. This went on for some time, and I began to feel more than a little ridiculous. Finally, I decided I had expressed enough politeness, so I brought my hands together, raised them in a tight circle to break his hold, and then took a step back—directly into two more sets of hands with two more friendly mouths breathing alcohol at me.

God, I berated myself as I tried to pluck six hands from their grasp on my person, leave it to me to find the only drunks in the Moslem Quarter. They were not intoxicated enough to be clumsy, only free from restraint, and they had me well and truly cornered— in a friendly manner, I admit. An entirely too friendly manner.

All good things must end, however, and reason was obviously no weapon against these three: flight would have to do. Bending over sharply, I scooted backwards under the arms of two of the men— and my concealing