O Jerusalem

two guides were proposing to double back and see what they could find out about Yitzak’s “man with the mullah.” Holmes, naturally enough, was objecting to this plan; if I knew him, he would propose instead that he himself return to Jaffa and investigate while Ali and Mahmoud cooled their heels here. Seeing Ali’s expression flare into outrage, I judged that the proposal had just been made, and that perhaps it was a good time for me to step in.

“Holmes,” I called. “Do I understand it aright, that they wish to go into Jaffa and ask questions but that you object?”

“But of course,” he began. “How can I know—”

“Holmes,” I said, addressing my mentor, my senior partner in crime, a man nearly old enough to be my grandfather, a person revered by half the world. “Holmes, don’t be difficult. They’re right, and you’re wasting time. I didn’t argue last night when I was sent away with the rest of the household goods, because it was the sensible thing to do. Now the sensible thing would be to let them get on with it. Painful as it is to admit, I can’t be left alone here during the day—my Arabic wouldn’t stand up to a visitor. Yours would.”

I allowed nothing in my attitude to suggest another reason that he stay where he was instead of haring off for a strenuous day in Jaffa; if he was not going to mention his half-healed back, I was certainly not about to bring it up. He glared suspiciously at me, and Ali looked flabbergasted at my effrontery, but Mahmoud glanced sideways at me with something verging on respect, looked up into the air, and recited in English, “Would they attribute to Allah females who adorn themselves with trinkets and have no power of disputation?” He then arose, taking the argument as settled. Ali followed his example with alacrity lest Holmes change my mind, but before they went, Mahmoud went to one of the packs and dug out a grimy block of notepaper, the stub of a pencil, a wooden ruler, and a tidy skein of string with knots tied all through it. He handed the collection to me, and pointed with his chin to a spot down the dusty road.

“The tall rock with the vine?” he said in Arabic, and waited until I nodded. “One hundred metres, with that as the centre. We need a map.”

“Why?”

It seemed a reasonable enough question on my part, but his answer was not helpful.

“ ‘A subdivision of geometry is surveying,’ ” he pronounced.

“And… ?”

“ ‘One who knows geometry acquires wisdom,’ ” he elucidated, then turned on his heel and walked away, with Ali close behind him. I looked at Holmes, let the crude survey instruments fall to the ground, and went back to my pile of packs to sleep.

However, further sleep was not meant to be, thwarted by (in order of appearance) an old man in a cart, a young boy with a cow, an even younger boy with six goats, three cheerful and extraordinarily filthy charcoal burners gathering fuel, the old man in the cart returning, and a chicken. All including the chicken had to pause and investigate our curious encampment, making conversation with Holmes and eyeing his apparently dumb but not unentertaining companion.

In the end, I threw off my cloak and my attempt at sleep, to storm over to the vine-covered rock and begin my assigned survey. I knew it was a completely pointless bit of make-work, given us by Mahmoud just to see if we would do it, but by God, do it I would, and in a manner so meticulous as to be sarcastic. Taunting, even. So I sweated beneath the sun with that length of tangled string, barking my shins on rocks and disturbing whole communities of scorpions and dung beetles, mapping out a precisely calculated square whose sides ran compass straight, placing in it every bush, boulder, and patch of sand. I measured, Holmes (when we were alone) noted down the measurements, and then I took a seat in the shade of a scruffy tree and rendered up drawings that would have made an engineer proud. Four drawings, in fact: the map; a topographical diagram; an elevation from the lowest point; and finally as precisely shaded and nuanced an artist’s rendering as I could master.

Holmes chose a remarkably similar means of dealing with the frustration, impatience, and resentment of having been relegated to the side-lines, only instead of string and inert paper, he worked with words and fools. He sat on his heels, rolling and smoking one cigarette after another, while our visitors (except for the chicken) climbed out of carts or divested themselves of burdens and settled in for a long talk. Holmes nodded and grunted and wagged his head or chuckled dutifully as the conversation demanded, and the only time he even came close to leaving his scrupulously assumed position on the side-lines was when he asked the old man (on the cart’s return journey) if things were peaceful in Jaffa. I pricked up my ears, but it was obvious the man knew nothing about Jaffa and was interested only in equine hoof problems—his donkey’s and our mules’.

By dusk, Holmes and I were ready respectively to strangle a visitor and shred a notebook. He stood up abruptly, and with uncharacteristic rudeness all but lifted the garrulous old man back onto his cart, waved an irritable arm at the stray chicken to dislodge it from its roost on the heap of our possessions, threw some wood on the fire, and slumped down beside it. I tossed my ridiculously precise drawings onto the ground, took out my pocket-sized Koran, and went to sit beside him. I was physically tired and mentally frazzled, but I positively welcomed submitting to the lessons that followed.

Holmes had learnt Arabic nearly thirty years earlier during a sojourn to Mecca, and I had begun intensive lessons upon leaving London ten days before. I did not know if I would be able to absorb enough of the language in the time at my disposal to be of use, but I was determined to try, and Holmes, as always, was a demanding teacher. Our every spare moment of the past days had been given over to the lessons, in language, manners, and deportment. I knew to use only my right hand for eating, I had the most useful verb forms and the most basic vocabulary under control, and I was learning to adopt the small, tight hand motions and the head and body movements of the native Arab speaker.

I had also received a quick tutorial concerning the society into which we were moving, Arab (both hadari, “settled,” and bedawi, “nomadic”), Jew (some of whom had ancestors here in the days of Temple sacrifice), and myriad splintered varieties of Christian. Until the war, with the Turk on all their backs, these disparate groups had existed as more or less amicable neighbours; but since the Turkish surrender, the cap was off, the long-building pressure threatening to erupt—complicated further by British attempts at even-handedness, the rise of Arab nationalism, and the growing number of brash Jewish immigrants, both Zionist and refugee.

The British government looked to have its hands full with this tiny country in the next few years.

None of which explained why Ali and Mahmoud had been so fearful of detection on the night we arrived. I looked up from the small leather book I had been puzzling at.

“Holmes?”

“Yes, Russell.”

“You referred to Ali and Mahmoud’s ‘little games.’ Was that whole demonstration of caution a facade?”

“Not all, no. Certainly if we’d been caught by a patrol at that hour of the night we’d have had a most unpleasant time of it. I do think, however, that the good brothers were attempting to illustrate how very awkward our presence here will be. A fact of which any sensible person would be aware.”

“You don’t think they wanted us here? Then why did Mycroft—”

“I don’t think they wanted us here, no. Two young soldiers trained in desert warfare they might have tolerated, although even that I doubt.”

Lovely, I thought morosely. I was on the verge of my twentieth year, I had worked with Holmes for four of those, and I had just in the last few weeks succeeded in convincing him of my competence and my right to be treated as a responsible adult. Now I would have to start all over again with these two proud and no doubt misogynist males. I did not look forward to the task.

“Do you think they’re trying to get rid of us?”

He did not answer directly but with another lesson in cultural identity. “In the desert, Russell, your brother’s abilities are all that stand between you and a burial in the sand. It is why the Bedouin’s sense of loyalty is so absolute: he must have complete faith in the man who watches his back. These two don’t yet know us.”

It seemed to me that Holmes was demonstrating a good deal more forbearance towards these Arabs than he would have had they been, say, from Scotland Yard. I said as much, and he only smiled.

“Patience is a virtue much valued in the Arab world, my dear Russell.”

“Patience, loyalty, and eating with the right hand,” I said crossly. His smile only deepened.

“Wait, Russell, and watch. But for now, how much of the foregoing can you put into Arabic?”