timbre Ahmad recognizes, from assemblies at Central High, as that of an electric organ, poor cousin of the real pipe organ that he spies gathering dust beyond the Christian minbar. All stand to sing. Ahmad is brought to his feet as if by chains tying him to the others. A blue-robed mass, a choir, floods down the central aisle and fills the spaces behind a low rail beyond which, it seems, the congregation dare not pass. The sung words, distorted by the rhythm and languid accents of these zanj, concern, as best he can understand, a hill far away, and an old rugged cross. From within his resolute silence he spots Joryleen in the choir, a mass of mostly women, massive women among whom Joryleen looks girlishly young and relatively slim. She in turn spots Ahmad, in his pew up front; her smile disappoints him by being tentative, darting, nervous. She, too, knows he should not be here.
Up, down, everyone in his row but he and the smallest girl go onto their knees and return to sitting. There are group recitations and responses he cannot follow, though the father with the gold tooth shows him the page in the front of the hymnal. We believe this and that, the Lord is thanked for that and this. Then a long prayer is offered by the Christian imam, a stern-faced, coffee-colored man with wireless glasses and a flashing tall bald head. His gravelly voice is electrically amplified so that it booms from the back of the church as well as the front; while he, his eyes tight-shut behind his spectacles, burrows more deeply into the darkness that his mind's eye sees as he prays, voices from the congregation, here and there, shout out agreement-'Thass right!' 'Say it, Reverend!' 'Praise the Lord!' Arising like sweat on the skin, a murmur of assent continues when, in the wake of the second hymn, concerning the joys of walking with Jesus, the preacher ascends into the high minbar decorated with carved angels. In ever more rolling tones, moving his head in and out of the amplifying system's range so that his voice shrinks and swells like that of a man calling from the topmost mast of a storm- tossed ship, he tells of Moses, who led the chosen people out of slavery and yet was himself denied admission to the Promised Land.
'Why was that?' he asks. 'Moses had served the Lord as spokesman in and out of Egypt. Spokesman: our President down there in Washington has a spokesman, our company heads in their lofty offices in Manhattan and Houston, they have spokesmen, spokeswomen in some cases, being spokespersons comes more naturally to them, doesn't it, brothers?'
There were guffaws and titters, inviting a digression: 'Mercy, our beloved sisters do know how to speak. God didn't give Eve our strength of arm and shoulder, but he gave her double our strength of tongue. I hear laughing, but that's no joke, it's simple evolution, like they want to teach our innocent children in all the public schools. But seriously: nobody trusts himself to speak for himself any more. Too many risks. Too many lawyers watching and writing down what you say. Now, if I had a spokesperson right now I would be home watching a TV chat show with Mr. William Moyers or Mr. Theodore Koppel and having a second helping, a second slice or two or three, of that delicious, syrup-saturated French toast my dear Tilly makes for me some mornings after she's bought herself a new dress, a new dress or some fancy alligator purse she feels the teeniest bit guilty about.'
Above the chuckles that greet this revelation, the preacher goes on, 'That way, I would be saving my voice. That way, I wouldn't have to wonder out loud with all of you listening why God held Moses back from entering the Promised Land. If I only had a spokesperson.'
To Ahmad it seems as if suddenly, in the midst of this expectant and heated crowd of dark-skinned knffar, the preacher is musing to himself, having forgotten why he is here, why all of them are here, while mockingly loud radios can be heard from cars swishing past on the street outside. But the man's eyes fly open behind his glasses and with a thump he pounces on the big gold-edged Bible in the minbar lectern, saying, 'Here's the reason; God gives it in Deuteronomy, chapter thirty- two, verse fifty-one: 'Because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah- Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, because ye sanctified me not in the midst of die children of Israel.' '
The preacher, in his blue big-sleeved robe with a shirt and red necktie peeking out at the top, surveys the congregation with eyes widened in amazement and seems to Ahmad to focus especially upon him, perhaps because his is not a familiar face. 'What does that mean?' he asks softly. ' 'Trespassed against me'? 'Sanctified me not'? What did those poor long-suffering Israelites do wrong at those waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in that wilderness of Zin? Raise your hand, anybody who knows.' Nobody does, taken off guard, and the preacher hurries on, consulting his big Bible again, tugging a thickness of its gilded edges over to a place he had marked. 'It's all in here, my friends. Everything you need to know is right spang in here. The Good Book tells how a scouting party went out from the people Moses was leading all that way out of Egypt, they went into the Negev and north to the Jordan and came back and said, according to die thirteenth chapter of Numbers, that the land they had explored 'floweth with milk and honey,' but 'nevertheless the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great,' and furthermore-furthermore, they reported-'die children of Anak' are there, and they are giants next to which 'we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.' They knew it, and we knew it, brothers and sisters- next to them we were just little old grasshoppers, grasshoppers that live in the weeds for a few quick days, in the hay of a meadow before it is cut, in the outfield of the baseball field where nobody ever hits the ball, and then are gone, their exoskeletons, as intricate as everything else the good Lord makes, easily crunched in the beak of a crow or swallow, a seagull or a cowbird.'
Now the preacher's blue sleeves thrash and bits of spittle from his mouth spark in the lectern light, and the choir below him sways, with Joryleen in it. 'And Caleb said, 'Let's go, let us go up at once, and possess it'-'We can take 'em, giants or not. Let's go do it!' ' And die tall coffee-colored man reads, in a voice vibrant and rapid, taking many voices: ' 'And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness!' '
He looks gravely out at the congregation, his spectacles circles of pure blind light, and repeats, ' 'Would to God that we had died in Egypt!' So why did God bring us out of slavery into this wilderness'-he consults his book-' 'to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey'? A prey! Hey, this is wrious! Let's hustle our asses- our oxes and asses-back to Egypt!' He glances into the book, and reads a verse aloud: ' 'They said to one another, Let us make a captain, and let us return to Egypt.' That Pharaoh, he wasn't so bad. He fed us, though not much. He gave us cabins to sleep in, down by the marsh with all the mosquitoes. He sent us welfare checks, pretty regular. He gave us jobs dishing up fries at McDonald's, for the minimum wage. He was friendly, diat Pharaoh, compared to those giants, those humongous sons of Anak.'
He stands erect, dropping his impersonation for the moment. 'And what did Moses and his brother Aaron do about all this talk? It says right here, in Numbers fourteen, five: 'Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel.' They gave up. They said to the people, the people they were supposed to be leading on behalf of the Almighty Lord, diey said, 'Maybe you're right. We've had it. We've been wandering out of Egypt too long. This wilderness is just too much.'
'And Joshua-you remember him, the son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, he was one of the twelve on that scouting party, along with. Caleb-and Joshua stood up and said, 'Wait a minute. Wait a minute, brethren. This is good land those Canaanites have. Don't be afraid of those Canaanites, for they'-and I'm reading now-'are bread for us: their defense is departed from them, and the Lord is with us: fear them not.' ' Solemnly, slowly, the preacher repeats, ' 'The Lord is with us: fear them not.' And how did those average Israelites react when those two brave warrior-men stood up and said, 'Let's go. Don't be afraid of those Canaanites'? They said, 'Stone them. Stone those noisy rascals.' And they picked up stones-some considerably sharp and ugly flint lying around in that desert wilderness-and were set to crush the heads and mouths of Caleb and Joshua, when something amazing happened. Let me read to you what happened: 'And the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel. And the Lord said unto Moses, 'How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have showed among them?' ' Manna from Heaven had been a sign. Water from the rock of Horeb had been a sign. The voice from the burning bush had been a clear sign. The pillars of cloud by day and of fire by night had been signs. Signs, signs around the clock, twenty-four/seven, as the saying is now.
'Still, the people had no faith. They wanted to go back to Egypt and that friendly Pharaoh. They preferred the devil they knew to the God they didn't. They still had a soft spot for that golden calf. They wouldn't mind going back to being slaves. They wanted to give up their civil rights. They wanted to forget their sorrows in dope and
