Stephan's Gate, Mary' s Gate. It has been knocked down and rebuilt, closed and opened up, but is in all cases the entrance to the Christian quarter."

"So, what's that wall there?" Valerie played the tourist.

"The north wall of the Temple Mount. What you see above it is the top of the Dome of the Rock, from which Mohammed visited heaven."

She pointed with her entire arm, the enormous size of the wall seeming to require an equally large gesture.

Then she pointed toward another lower structure built around a pool of water . "And over there is the Bath of Bethesda, where Jesus healed the sick. Oh, and the road we are walking on is the Via Dolorosa, where Jesus carried his cross."

"A lot going on in one place."

"You have no idea. Every brick and stone has got something * 155 *

'going on.'" Najya touched her sleeve, guiding her to the left. "Come on, we'll start with the Jews."

"So, that's the western Wall. It's higher than I expected." Valerie stopped behind the fence that separated spectators from active worshippers, who seemed to enter from under an archway at the side.

She scanned the yellowish granite blocks that rose high overhead. Each block was about a meter high, and tufts of grass grew in the spaces between them.

"It's part of the Temple of Solomon, isn't it?"

"No, only a part of the wall that supported the hill under the temple.

This wall, by itself, had no religious importance. The whole mount is essentially a Jewish shrine, and over the centuries, Jews prayed next to the southern Wall, eastern Wall, and even on the mount itself, wherever the authorities allowed them to."

On the one side, several bearded men in black coats and wide-brimmed hats were lined up facing the Wall. As they rocked back and forth murmuring, the long curls that corkscrewed on both sides of their heads swayed in countermotion. On the other side, a lone man read from a small leather-bound book. A black leather strap held a little box against his forehead and wound around his left arm to his middle fi nger.

A fringed shawl covered his head and shoulders and hung down his back."What's that little black thing on his forehead?" Valerie squinted, trying to make out the tiny object.

"They're called tefi llin. Little boxes with rolls of parchment with quotes from the Torah. There's another box on the left arm also tied with a strap that winds around his arm to the middle fi nger."

"Kind of like the rosaries we had to hold when we prayed in my convent school. You had to hold them a certain way and recite the Hail Marys and Pater Nosters in the right order."

"Yes. Everyone has their magic." Najya glanced at the Wall again.

The man in the shawl was leaning forward now, his head pressed against the stone. "And their sorrow," she added. "It's a schizophrenic city."

Najya touched her arm again and led her away . Valerie followed, noting that this time it was not just her sleeve that Najya touched. The spot on her arm still felt warm.

* 156 *

Vulture's Kiss A few minutes later they stood under the colonnade and gazed across the court toward the entrance of the famous octagonal structure.

"The Dome of the Rock," Najya announced. "Seventh century. One of the most important Muslim shrines. It was built by Byzantine Christian architects, and the Temple Mount beneath it is Roman-Jewish, but who's counting."

At the entrance they took their shoes off, pulled their scarves over their heads, and entered the cool semi-darkness. The dome rose high overhead, drawing the eye immediately upward. Below it, piers and pillars formed a circle around the rock and marked out inner and outer ambulatories. At the center stood the Rock, a heavily pitted granite formation. Najya leaned on the stone balustrade that encircled it.

"According to tradition, this is the rock where Mohammed leapt off to visit heaven, along with Moses and Jesus."

Valerie looked around at the circle of archways. "W ouldn't it be wonderful if that were the tale that everyone celebrated. Think of how different history would have been." She peered upward, as if through the ornamental tile work of the ceiling she could actually see the three prophets ascend together in a shaft of light. "A nice image. A shame no Muslim Michelangelo ever made a fresco or oil painting of that!"

"Muslim sacred art, such as it is, doesn'

t portray people, and certainly not the Prophet."

"I understand, but you have to wonder what happened between that peaceful image in the Muslim mind and the deep seething anger that's there now?"

"You know as well as I do that the creation of the state of Israel on land that was Palestine created the current rage. But before that colonialism caused it, and before that, the Crusades."

"Crusades? They were eight hundred years ago."

"Don't underestimate ethnic memory. If Christians get emotional about the Crucifi xion and the Jews about the destruction of the Temple, how much more should Muslims be bitter about the Crusades, which are historically documented in detail?"

Valerie looked into the middle distance for a moment. "I dreamed once about a crusader. He killed a man in front of me, and I even remember the dead man' s name. A merchant, Husaam al Noori. It probably helped that I was dozing in his mausoleum in the tomb of his scribe Sharif al Kitab. Strange that after two years I still remember both names."

* 157 *

They had circled the Holy Rock and wandered outside of the shrine. At that moment, loudspeakers in the courtyard sounded the call to prayer. Valerie glanced at Najya. "Should we leave?"

Najya shook her head. "It's all right. The ones who pray worship mostly at Al Aqsa mosque."

A few men remained in the courtyard. They stood in place facing southeast, with their hands to their ears, and began to murmur . The words were blurred, but Valerie had heard them a thousand times and knew them by heart: "Bismillah Arrahman Arraheem."

They strolled to the middle of the square, away from the praying men, and Valerie took up the theme. "I don' t know much about the crusaders. The nuns in my convent school taught that they were heroes and martyrs."

Najya's voice was scornful. "I don't think so. Your own historian, William of Tyre, gives a hair-raising account of the slaughter. I can give you a copy of it, if you like."

Valerie studied the somber , distant expression on Najya' s face.

The golden dome behind her caught the midday sun and sent it back in a sudden blinding fl ash. Awash in the refl ected light, Najya Khoury was for an instant surrounded by gold, an icon of Muslim women, aggrieved and mourning.

"No, you don' t have to do that. But on behalf of my European Christian ancestors, I apologize."

Najya smiled gently. "On behalf of my Jerusalemite ancestors, I accept."

"Jerusalemite ancestors? I thought no Muslims survived."

"A few did. The emir, for example. My family insists we are his descendants."

"Very impressive. But how-" The "Hallelujah Chorus" sounded in a high, tinkly register . "Oh." She slapped her hand to her belt. "I can't get used to this thing." She fumbled the object of f her belt loop as it chimed "and he shall reign forever and eeeeever..." She fl ipped it open and held it to her ear.

"Auset? Oh, of course. It would have to be you, wouldn'

t it? Lunch tomorrow? With the whole family? Oookay. What time? Should I bring something? Uh-huh. Well, then...all right. Yes, that'll be fi ne. Bye."

She clapped the phone shut with the same fl ick of the wrist she'd seen Derek use, smiling to herself for an instant as she remembered it.

* 158 *

Vulture's Kiss She directed her attention back to Najya. "So, what' s next? Have we seen everything important?"

Najya laughed. "Y ou really aren't religious, are you, or you couldn't ask that question. Everything in Jerusalem is important." She looked to the side down the Via Dolorosa. "We haven't seen the Church of the Sepulchre yet. But you know , it's a big church." She glanced at the sky. "And it's getting late."

Valerie touched her forearm. "Oh, I'm sorry. You've given up your whole afternoon for me, and I haven' t even thanked you. Well, I'll let you go then. I'm sorry to assume-"

"No, that's not what I meant. It' s just that instead of dragging you to yet another holy place, where neither one of us will worship-I thought we could have dinner . I actually live pretty close to the Old City, on Sama'an al Sadek, fi ve minutes by taxi."

With a twinge of guilt Valerie wondered if she could be doing something useful that evening to convince Auset to leave. She couldn't think of anything.

"I'd love to."

* 159 *

39.

Najya Khoury It was a small apartment, Valerie thought. No, she amended, it was more an ordinary apartment made small by the fl oor-to-ceiling cliff of books on one wall and the clutter of heavy objects hanging on the other one. On the third wall, in front of the windows, a desk was covered with a computer monitor and piles of papers. An equal number was in and around the trash bin.

Najya walked into the kitchen while Valerie perused the library .

One whole bookcase held law books: treaty law , Ottoman law, Israeli law, directives of the British Mandate. The adjacent case was more appealing. Half a dozen histories of Jerusalem, in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. Art books, studies of the pharaohs, of the Babylonians, of Fatimed Egypt, of the Crusades.

"Do you read anything past the twelfth century?" Valerie called into the kitchen.

"Yes, on the bookshelf by the window. I hope you like tabouli and babagenouj. It's what you're getting. I also made a salad," Najya called back."Sounds delicious." Valerie examined the current reading material: D.H. Lawrence, Finkelstein, Mandala, Reinhart, Chomsky, Pappe.

Najya stood in the doorway with two bottles. "Red or white?"

"Red, if you don't mind. Looks like you're pretty political."

"You think?" Najya poured out a large goblet of merlot, handed it to her, and returned to the kitchen.

Holding her glass, Valerie moved to the opposite wall.

An elaborately woven red camel bag hung on hooks, its tassels nearly to the fl oor. Next to it was a collection of antique weapons. At the top was a Moroccan musket, its stock inlaid with silver. Under its barrel, a hammered metal powder fl ask hung on a silver chain. Below it was an impressive inventory of blades and scabbards, from full-sized scimitars to sleek daggers and sharply curved Yemeni jambiyas. She took a drink of the wine. "I've never had dinner in a terrorist' s apartment before,"

she joked.

* 160 *

Vulture's Kiss Najya came in carrying bowls of dips, tomatos, pita. "Oh, you like my wall? There's a lot of family history there. The musket, for example, was my great-grandfather's, and the scimitar on top is one of the things my brother brought back from Saudi Arabia. He claimed he got it from a desert sheikh in exchange for his best hiking boots, but with Said, I was never sure how much of his stories was fi ction." She offered warm pita.

"Your brother. You said he was killed. I'm sorry . That must have been hard for you." Valerie took the bread and a generous helping of each of the dips.

"It was much worse for my father , who had made his peace with the Israelis. He felt completely betrayed."

"What happened? To Said, I mean. Tell me about him."

"He was a teacher , you know , at Al Quds University . Middle Eastern history . That's why he traveled so much. He had already published a few things, mostly translations of medieval works. He even found documents that support our family's assertion of being here since the First Crusade."

Valerie began to appreciate Najya' s somber nature. What she'd misread as humorlessness was really a too close familiarity with life' s brutalities, a familiarity she'd recently gained herself. "How was he killed?"

"He went to Nablus one weekend for a wedding. An IDF tank rolled in for some reason or another while they were celebrating, and the men threw rocks at it. It was a reckless thing to do because the IDF shot back with real bullets. The groom was killed too."

"Gods, I'm so sorry . I know what that feels like. The anger and sorrow together, you just choke on it. All for religion."

Najya cleared away dishes. "Not only religion. After thirty years of wars and intifadas, I don' t know anymore where religion ends and greed and vengeance begin. Not to defend religion, mind you." She returned with the wine bottle and directed her to the sofa.

"Well, we've established what kind of Muslim you are." Valerie held up her wine glass.

"That's what happens when you let women go to school." Najya laughed softly. "Actually I do know Quran fairly well. My father made us study it. It never seemed to have anything to do with me, though, and the last straw was when I read Sura 53."

* 161 *

"The so-called Satanic verses, about the goddesses Lat, Uzza, and Manat. Yes, they are something of an embarrassment to the infallibility of scripture. A bit like Leviticus."

"Oh, I am impressed. A European Catholic who knows Quran.

What other surprises do you have?"

Valerie smiled to herself. You have no idea, she thought. "Ironically, the last time I talked about those verses and those goddesses was with Yussif, the man who was killed in the train explosion. He was still Muslim then and was troubled because he'd seen what seemed like a goddess in the night sky. We all did."

"You saw a goddess in the sky . I wish I'd been there with you.

I told you I thought human beings naturally craved moral direction.

Maybe we crave sentience in nature too."

"Have you ever thought how you would react if you saw one? I mean a goddess in the sky, or anywhere?" Valerie asked, cautiously.

"Uh, no. I can't say I have. It would play havoc with my atheism though, wouldn't it? Let me know the next time your goddess appears, and I'll tell you then what I think."

"There's more than one, actually. You know, in the nature religions, divinity is everywhere." She could feel her face getting warm. It might have been the diffi cult subject and the risk of sounding demented, or the wine, or even the proximity of an attractive woman she had once seen naked.

Valerie had taken pains all evening to keep from staring too long at any one part of Najya' s person, most particularly the golden-tan color of the skin of her neck, or the fi ne bones of her face, or even her narrow hips so fl attered by cotton trousers. She glanced around the room. "So many books. Law, history, politics. Some pretty heavy meals here. What do you read for pleasure? Or for solace?"

Najya poured out the last of the wine into both their glasses.

"Well, for pleasure I read Arabic poetry. While for solace, I read..."

She reached past Valerie's shoulder and pulled a slender volume from the shelf. "Persian poetry. I'm sure you know Omar Khayyam."