The Discovery of Heaven (103 page)

Quinten groped under his shirt for his compass, and first felt his new Star of David. The entrance through which they had come faced due south, in line with the al-Aqsa mosque, which, naturally, pointed toward Mecca. So that west was in the direction of the Wailing Wall, east in the direction of the Mount of Olives. The chapel had doorways there too.

"But surely," he said, as they walked on, "Mohammed didn't come precisely to this spot for his heavenly journey because there were Jewish temples here?"

"No," said Ibrahim with a smile. "Things are still not like that."

"Why, then?"

"For a reason that is also connected with the buildings of the Jewish temples on this spot."

"Which was?" asked Onno. It was as though the inquisitorial manner in which Quinten was again trying to get to the bottom of things had infected him.

Rather surprised, Ibrahim looked from one to the other. "This is like a cross-examination."

"So it is," said Onno decidedly.

"There are all kinds of traditions connected with this place," said Ibrahim formally. "Will you be satisfied with four? The first is that King David saw the angel standing on this rock on the point of destroying Jerusalem. When that danger had been averted, he built an altar here. Solomon, his son, subsequently erected the first temple here."

"And the second tradition?"

"It says that a thousand years before that, the patriarch Jacob dreamed of a ladder to heaven here, by which the angels descended and ascended."

Onno raised an arm and recited the Dutch Authorized Version: " 'And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!' - That's Dutch," he added in English.

"Nice language," said Ibrahim. "A bit like Arabic. Just as guttural."

"That's right. Your colleagues never tire of saying
'Allemachtig achtentachtig.

Ibrahim looked at him reproachfully. "They are not my colleagues," he said in a voice that suddenly seemed a little hoarser.

At the same moment Onno felt sorry he had made the remark. Perhaps Ibrahim really was a poet who earned his living as a guide, and not a guide who wrote abominable poems in his spare time.

Meanwhile they had walked around the northern, narrow, side of the rock, where there were women in white sitting everywhere. With each step and with each word, Quinten was less and less in doubt that the Holy of Holies had stood here.

"And why," he asked, "did Jacob sleep on this exact spot?"

Ibrahim ran the palm of his hand over his thin gray hair. "Because something else had happened here even earlier. This is also the place where his father, Isaac, was about to be sacrificed by his grandfather, Abraham."

"Of course," said Onno, again in Dutch.

"But at the last moment he was prevented by an archangel."

"Gabriel?" asked Quinten.

Ibrahim made a skeptical gesture. "Michael, if I remember correctly. So in a certain sense there was already an altar in the rock then: for human sacrifices. That was why the Prophet came to this exact spot—or, rather, why Gabriel brought him to this exact spot on his horse. When he arrived, he was welcomed in this place by Abraham, Moses, and Jesus."

"Yes," said Onno. "We accept everything you say at face value because that's how we are. But I'm getting really curious about the fourth tradition, because I detect a rising line in the events as you are narrating them, Mr. Ibrahim." He hesitated for a moment. "What does my ear suddenly hear from my own mouth? Ibrahim? Were you named after Abraham?"

Ibrahim made a short bow. "My father did me that honor." On the eastern side, where the stone was lower and a praying woman in white sat tucked into an alcove like a moth, with her back to them, he stopped. "Of course Jerusalem is the Jewish center of the world," he said, stretching out his arm, "but from the earliest times this rock was the center of the center for the Jews."

"The center of the center?" repeated Quinten, wide-eyed.

"This rock," said Ibrahim solemnly, "not only bore the temples, but according to the Jews it is the foundation stone of the whole edifice of the world. Here is where the creation of heaven and earth began—the first light emanated from this point."

The Big Bang, thought Onno; a pity Max was no longer here to see this tangible proof of the theory—religion and religious background radiation. . .. He looked in alarm at Quinten. Something was brewing in that head again; but whatever it was, he was having no more part of it.

Perhaps because he had seen the skeptical expression on Onno's face, Ibrahim now addressed himself solely to Quinten.

"This stone is where heaven and earth and underworld meet. As long as God is served here, he will hold back the ravaging waters of the underworld, which burst forth in the days of Noah."

"But he is not being worshiped here any longer, you say."

"Not in the Jewish way."

Quinten sighed deeply. He was now absolutely certain that here was where the Holy of Holies had been. He had suddenly gone one step beyond
the center of the world
—he had gone beyond his dream. Here in the center of the center was where the ark of the covenant had stood, and later the tablets of the Law had lain on this rock. What he would have most liked to do was to climb up and see whether a recess had been carved anywhere, by Jeremiah, in which they could have lain. And at the same moment he saw the spot, nearby, at the edge of the rock, where the woman in white sat praying: an oblong hole about eight inches by twenty, into which the tablets would fit precisely.

Ibrahim saw him looking and said: "That's the footprint of Idris, Enoch from the Bible."

"Dad . . ." said Quinten, and pointed without saying anything.

Onno had understood at once and rolled his eyes in despair. "When are you finally going to stop this outrageous nonsense? Haven't we gotten into enough of a mess already?" Suddenly he became furious. "Why don't you realize that all you've brought from Rome is nondescript rubbish, a couple of old roof tiles, and that hole is more likely to be the footprint of Enoch than what you take it to be. Shoe size twenty-two!"

"Perhaps it's both."

"Rubbish, rubbish, total rubbish! I want to get out of here this instant. I've had enough. We're going," he said to Ibrahim.

"Don't you want to go to the cave, the Fountain of Souls—"

"We're going."

Onno's outburst left Quinten cold. He had the tablets of the Law in his possession and for centuries they had lain in that hole, in the complete darkness of the
debir,
completely unobtrusive, right at the side.

When they emerged through the eastern gate into the heat and blinding light on the white marble slabs of the temple terrace, he said, "I really don't intend to put them back there."

"You won't be able to anyway."

"I don't know about that, but they'd be found the very next day by the Arabs, and that might be an even bigger disaster than if they fell into the hands of the Jews."

"Do what you want. In any case I don't want to hear another word about it. But I'd be careful if I were you. If you want to be murdered by Muslims foaming at the mouth, then you should try something here. You're playing with fire, you are."

Ibrahim, who had kept politely in the background, resumed his task and pointed to a small silver dome, close to the gate, with scaffolding around it, surrounded by a fence. That was the Dome of the Chain—so called after a silver chain that King David had hung up in it, a gift from the angel Gabriel: if one lied while holding it, then a link fell out of it. Onno was no longer listening—he was no longer interested—but Quinten peeped inside through a small gap.

The supernatural lie detector was a miniature version of the Dome of the Rock, but open around the sides; the ground was strewn with fragments, broken stones, pieces and fragments, tools, dented cans, plastic bottles, and rags: in the center stood an electric masonry saw. To the north of the Dome of the Rock there were more small buildings, but Quinten too felt that he had seen enough. He joined Onno, who was standing at the top of the eastern staircase of the temple terrace in the shade of the arcades, looking out at the Mount of Olives.

Ibrahim was indefatigable. "There," he said in the tone of a proud owner, pointing to the foot of the hill, "is the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus Christ—"

"I know, I know."

"Over there is his mother's grave, and there on the top of it... do you see that small dome? That's the spot from where she ascended into heaven."

Onno felt giddy and leaned heavily on his stick.

"I hope," he said to Quinten, "they've got some official here in Jerusalem who directs vertical traffic, to prevent jams."

Quinten burst out laughing; he was glad that the fit of rage had passed. Although it might annoy his father again, he asked Ibrahim: "Do you know where Titus's encampment was?"

Ibrahim pointed to the north slope of the Mount of Olives. "Somewhere over there. The conquerors of Jerusalem always came from the north."

Quinten looked around him and opened the map. So that meant that the tablets of the Law and the menorah and all those things had been taken out of the temple along this same route, down the terrace here, and then across the valley of Kidron to the other side. He was struck by a strange gatehouse obliquely opposite, in the east wall of the plateau, surrounded by grass and trees. It was deeply embedded in the ground, with a double nave, crowned by two low towers with flat domes; both gateways had been bricked up. At the front, where the battlements were, stood Israeli soldiers in green berets.

"What gate is that?"

"Ah!" said Ibrahim raising both hands. "The Golden Gate! According to the Jews, that's the gate through which God once entered their temple to mount his throne there. It must stay closed until the coming of the Messiah, at the end of time. That is why every religious Jew wants to be buried over there on the slopes of the Mount of Olives."

Onno pointed to the soldiers on the roof with his stick.

"The Messiah would be gunned down immediately."

A crooked smile appeared on Ibrahim's face. "Not only that—the Messiah has a second problem. On the other side of the wall there are Muslim graves, and that's unclean; he mustn't walk over them."

"What a rotten thing to do," said Quinten, "putting them there."

"So you see,"—laughed Onno—"they ride rough-shod over dead bodies here—or precisely not, how shall one put it?"

"For the Christians," added Ibrahim, "the Golden Gate is a symbol of Mary, through whom Jesus came into the world and who remained a virgin before during and after his birth: closed, so to speak."

Those words made Quinten rather uncertain. He glanced timidly at the mysterious gate and thought of his mother for a moment; to hide his embarrassment he looked at the map, which he still had unfolded in his hand. Suddenly he was struck by the fact that the whole temple square had the shape of a trapezoid, and the raised terrace with the Dome of the Rock too. He showed his father.

"What's so special about that?"

"Well, that stone that we just saw is a trapezoid too."

"Yes," said Onno. "That's right."

Quinten did not know what to make of it either. Had the rock served as the model for the terrace and the square? The Piazza San Marco in Venice was in the shape of a trapezoid, too—he'd thought that so beautiful. Were all those trapezoid-shaped things connected in some way through that shape? Or all spherical objects? Was an eye connected with the sun? Yes of course, profoundly. And with a soccer ball? The sphere, the circle, the octagon, and square, the ellipse, the rectangle, the triangle, the cube, the pyramid—all those shapes with which Mr. Themaat had first acquainted him; what was their real message? What were they themselves? Did they actually exist somewhere? Perhaps where music came from too? He looked back at the map, and saw that it was not the Dome of the Rock but the Dome of the Chain that was exactly in the center of the temple square.

"To tell you the truth," said Onno, letting his eyes wander over the Mount of Olives, Mount Scopus, Mount Zion, "all this metaphysics here is starting to make me sick. Anyway, it's getting far too hot. What would you say if we got a bus and had a drink in the west, in the new city? Nothing can happen to us there, I think." He turned around. "What's happened to our poet? We've still got to pay him."

"There he goes."

Hands behind his back, his head cocked a little to one side, like a real gentleman, they saw Ibrahim just descending the northern staircase of the temple terrace.

64
Chawah Lawan?

They got off at a busy junction and crossed to a row of shops, where a table was just being vacated on a shady terrace.

"Look at that," said Onno, rubbing his left thigh. "Here we can finally have a normal conversation."

The priests and Orthodox Jews had vanished from the streets; even the tourists had largely given way to women shopping, workmen, and groups of schoolchildren. Although there wasn't an Arab in sight, there were again fully armed male and female soldiers sitting on the edge of a large container of plants.

"Why is it," asked Quinten, "that Ibrahim knew so much about all those biblical figures? Muslims have got the Koran, haven't they?"

Onno looked at him for a few seconds. "Is that what you understand by a normal conversation?"

"What's so abnormal about it? It's an ordinary question, isn't it? All these things exist, don't they?"

"All right, I'll answer," said Onno with resignation. "The Bible and Koran overlap to a great extent. According to Islam, Allah in heaven has the original copy of the Holy Scripture; the Torah and the Gospels are corrupt editions and forgeries of it; the Koran is a true copy." He nodded, looking at Quinten. "Yes, you need quite a nerve to declare your grandfather and your father to be your son and your grandson. . .. Right. And now could we change the subject perhaps? Or don't you have any sense of everyday reality anymore?"

"This
is
everyday reality to me."

"That's what I was afraid of. But do you never have the feeling that it might get utterly exhausting for other people in the long run?"