Take This Cup (16 page)
It was dawn when I roused. Not yet fully awake, I said in a drowsy voice, “Mama. I’ve been having the strangest dream. Mama?”
My eyes and my awareness both snapped open at once. Instead of being in the shepherding tent or in my bed in Amadiya, I was on a hard slab of rock. The pillow under my head was the leather and oilcloth-wrapped parcel containing the Cup of Joseph. Tucked against my right side was the leather pouch containing the silver coins. Pulled up around my ears was the fur-trimmed woolen cloak.
If so much of what I thought was a dream was in fact real, was it possible the rest of the memory was also true?
The white hart stood at the edge of a precipice, gazing into the distance. When I raised up, the hart turned toward me. The beast raised his muzzle and swung it toward the land spread out below our perch, summoning me to join him.
In the morning haze it was at first difficult for me to distinguish what I was seeing. Gradually, as the sun warmed the valley, a veil of mist cleared. The light increased, revealing a sizable town no more than a handful of miles away from the bottom of the slope. The unknown city was a pendant glistening golden, strung from a thread of highway that ran east and west, disappearing from view in both directions.
“Is that where I’m supposed to go?” I asked.
The antlered crown dipped briefly in acknowledgment.
I had a sudden chill of realization. “You have brought me over the mountains, but this is where you’re leaving me.” I tried to picture traipsing into a caravansary beside the majestic hart while stupefied onlookers marveled and pointed, but I could not. Such a picture had more air of unreality than to be standing here, having this conversation with the creature.
I shrugged my clothes into order and secured the cloak around my shoulders, taking care to have both cup and coin purse safely fastened but out of view. “Thank you,” I said to the hart. “Am I right to think that we have both been given orders to carry out?”
Once more the glorious corona of antlers bobbed in acknowledgment.
“Then please carry a message for me: Thank the one who sent you to me. Will I see you again?”
This time there was no answering response.
“Then, may Almighty bless you,” I said and began the descent toward the village.
Halfway down the gentle incline, I turned to look back. The Great White Hart, nose raised into the west as if both scenting danger and pointing the way, stood outlined against an azure sky.
When I reached the bottom of the slope, I looked again. This time the rock ledge was bare. Scan as I might the expanse of dark green brush and brown earth, I spotted no white form moving against the backdrop.
B
efore I could enter the city, I had to cross an arched bridge over a small river. The structure, built of squared stone shaped to form slender, graceful pillars, looked ancient and much more attractive than the squalid, flat-roofed buildings I had glimpsed of the town.
Halfway across the span I met a man leading a donkey who waddled beneath the weight of stuffed saddlebags. “Please, sir,” I said politely, and with some fear of meeting a stranger. “Can you tell me the name of this place?”
The portly man paused in gnawing a pomegranate to ask suspiciously, “How can you not know that, boy? Where are your parents? Aren’t you very young to be wandering alone so early?”
“I was sent ahead to make arrangements for my family to follow,” I said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I am Nehemiah bar Lamsa, but I will ask someone else if it’s too much bother.”
The man revealed a gap-toothed grin. “My pardon, son of Lamsa. I know your father, and your mother’s workmanship in cloth. I am the traveling peddler, Obed of Zakho.” Over his shoulder he jerked a thumb stained red with juice. “From which I am just leaving. May I offer directions?”
“The caravansary?”
“There are two, and right you are to ask. The one on this
side is owned by a pig of a Parthian. He overcharges, cooks with pork fat, and his beds all have fleas. What you want is the inn on the far side of town. Its proprietor is my brother, Asa. Mention your father to him and say that you met me, and he will take good care of you.”
“And how will I find . . .”
Obed waved his hand and tugged the donkey into forward motion. “You can’t miss it. Straight through town, just past the synagogue.
Shalom
, Nehemiah bar Lamsa. Remember me to your parents.”
I passed the rival caravansary without stopping. The acrid stench of a muddy swine pen warned me away. There was a brace of pigs corralled right outside the innkeeper’s home, alongside a dozen camels.
The town of Zakho was waking up by the time I reached its center. A pair of Jewish men, fringes of their prayer shawls flapping and phylacteries bouncing in their haste, hurried toward morning prayers. A half-dozen Parthian stonecutters passed by. I recognized their floppy, Parthian headgear and the hammers and quarrying tools they carried.
At the synagogue the late arrivals were pushing in to join the
minyan
. Past the building’s ornately carved entry stood a wooden stockade. The main double gate for beasts of burden was still barred, but a smaller portal in one panel offered entry for me. I hammered on the door, and it was opened by an elderly porter. “What is your business, young sir?” the servant said.
“I am to arrange a room for my parents, Lamsa and Sarah of Amadiya,” I said. “I was told to ask for Asa. Is he here?”
“Indeed he is. I’ll take you to him.”
While the peddler Obed had named his brother, he had failed to mention that it was his
twin
brother. Identical to Obed
in face, stout build, and medium height, Asa’s head was bald and almost spherical. Since Obed had been wearing a turban, I wondered if the similarity was exact.
I repeated my requirements.
“Welcome to Zakho, boy,” Asa said. “Welcome to the Jerusalem of the North.”
“Sir?”
“Don’t you know your people’s history, boy? When King Shalmanezer carried away Israel into exile, this became our home. Seven hundred years ago that was, but we remain here still. Or don’t they teach you that in Amadiya?”
“I’m a shepherd, sir, and I’ve never traveled, that is, until now.” I drew myself up even straighter. “I am told I should offer you one silver coin for half a week’s lodging, bread, and suppers. Within that time my parents and I will join a caravan bound for Jerusalem.”
The terms were agreeable and, after handing over a silver shekel, I was shown to a room on the second floor of an adjoining building. The lower floor did not contain rooms but rather open stalls filled with straw for animals. It was also shelter for people too poor to afford better accommodations.
The room was small but clean and serviceable. Once inside I sat down to think. I was overwhelmed with loneliness. I had always been surrounded with those who cared about me: Father, Mother, older brothers, Beni, the good rabbi, the other shepherds, my mother’s weavers who treated me like an extra nephew. Now I was completely alone. With the immediate danger over and time to reflect on what I had lost, I felt crushed and ready to cry. I wanted to run home to Amadiya and beg for help.
Three things stopped me: the idea of finding my brothers in Jerusalem as soon as possible, the commission I had been assigned
by Rabbi Kagba to take the Cup of Joseph to the Messiah, and the mystery of the White Hart.
I lifted my chin. “I will take a bath and wash my clothes,” I said aloud. “I will have a good meal. Then I will be ready to locate a caravan and go to Jerusalem.”
I wasted no time setting out to locate a caravan bound for the Holy City. The afternoon of my arrival in Zakho, I made my way around the compound, hunting a suitable group. I did not forget to secure the sack of coins and the bundle containing the cup to my waist under my clothing before leaving my room.
There were two bands of travelers within the fences of Asa’s caravansary. The first group I approached looked weary and their clothing travel-worn, as if they had come a long distance. Even the camels appeared gaunt, their eyes hollow and staring and their humps shrunken.
The caravan leader, a man named Eram, was a perfect match for his charges. His face was as scored with the crevices of age and rough living as the canyons back of Amadiya.
“My family and I want to go to Jerusalem,” I said. “We can pay.”
The travel master tilted his head and tugged thoughtfully on an earlobe lengthened by several decades of such abuse. “And I would love to take you,” the man replied. “But we are returning from there, heading east and not west.” He shook his head glumly. “It was not a profitable trip.”
“But you were there? In Jerusalem? Can you tell me about it?”
Eram shrugged. “News is cheap and gossip free. But later. Right now I must see which of these spavined beasts will live to cross the mountains and which I must sell here. Go see Jehu
over there. He is heading west.” Eram indicated a younger man with a pointed beard who leaned against a heap of bolts of silk.
“Jerusalem?” Jehu said, stroking his beard. “How many are you, boy? And can you keep up? I have a load of fine cloth, spice, and amber I am eager to sell in the markets in Damascus and Caesarea before I go on to Jerusalem.”
This was beginning to sound promising. The animals looked healthy and the fittings well cared for. Eagerness to arrive was also in my thoughts. “How long does the passage last? Two Sabbaths?” I guessed.
Jehu roared with laughter, calling to a drover, “Did you hear that? Boy, do you see wings on these animals? Two Sabbaths? The best crossing we’ve ever made is forty-five days. And we are the fastest. What do you say? Will you join up with us?”
I was taken back. Rabbi Kagba had not told me the length of the journey. A month and more before arriving, and then I still had to locate my brothers?
“I . . . I’ll have to think about it,” I said. “And you stop for Sabbath, of course.”
Hooking his thumbs in a wide silk sash tied around his middle, Jehu burst into another gale of laughter. “We are not religious pilgrims, boy. This trip is all about profit! Stop for Sabbath? Weren’t you the one who was just in a great hurry?”
“I have to think,” I repeated, and I retreated to my chamber.
T
he following morning I went to Sabbath service at the synagogue with Asa and Eram. Jehu did not attend. His caravan was preparing to leave Zakho and would not wait for the end of Sabbath to depart.
I sat in the women’s gallery beside Asa’s wife. The reading was from the Book of Beginnings: “Now the Lord had said to Abram, ‘Get thee out of thy country . . . unto a land that I will shew thee.’ ”
1
I was curiously pleased at the scripture. It made me feel that I was doing the right thing in embarking on the trip to Jerusalem. This was further confirmed for me when the rabbi, offering his commentary on the passage, mentioned that Abram had passed through Zakho on his way from Haran to Canaan. “Then as now,” the rabbi said, “we were a resting place for travelers.”
Eram, shuffling his feet with some show of embarrassment, was called up to read the Scripture portion that followed. It was from the prophet Isaiah: “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold, who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might.”
2
It was just like Rabbi Kagba said: The Almighty not only created the starry host, but he had a name for each of them and
each name meant something. The recollection made me wonder about the scholar’s fate. It caused a catch in my throat and a sniff of homesickness until I caught Asa’s wife watching me. Then I straightened my back and squared my shoulders.
Eram concluded with, “They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”
3
Then Eram rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, returned to his place, and resumed tugging at his ear.
It was still another confirmation for my pilgrimage. Jerusalem might be far away to the south and west, but the promise I heard was that I would be strong enough to make the journey.
It was time to tell Jehu my decision: I would be going with the caravan to Judea, even if they were not properly devout Jews.