Dreamers of the Day

Ashour was quite a catch, I gathered. His job at the café had afforded him a house with three rooms, and he was able to provide his bride with a wedding dress from a store. Everyone was impressed when she sat down among the veiled women of two families. His bride’s hair was dressed with gold bangles, and she brought with her a dowry of gold necklaces and gold chains for her waist. She was, Ashour assured us, “very pure.”

Karl asked something in Arabic, and there was a brief, prideful answer and a short discussion before Ashour spoke again in English. “At first she cry,” he admitted to me, as though I, too, had followed their exchange. “Every day she cry. But soon she will make me a son, and she all the time very happy. And she keeps my house clean. Very clean!”

Once again, he and Karl fell into Arabic. The conversation ended in Karl’s polite demurral, handshakes, and a large tip left on the table.

“What was all that about?” I asked, walking away.

“He invited us to his village to be his guests, but I said no.”

I tried to hide my disappointment. “It might have been interesting.”

“I think it would be too sad. Ashour’s wife is only twelve years old.”

“Twelve!” I stopped dead and stared.

“But very pure,” Karl said, echoing Ashour’s guileless pride. “And she keeps his house very clean! That’s why he wanted us to visit: so we could see what a good housekeeper he has.”

“Good gracious! No wonder she cries every day!”

“Islamic theology is sublime, Agnes. For Jews, I think, it is more familiar than Christianity—a true monotheism, unlike the Trinity. But at the level of the family?” He shook his head, and we walked on. “Most religions seem to concentrate on making sure that men do not raise someone else’s sons. And if little girls are married off at twelve—”

“There is less opportunity for the gods to visit in the night.”

“And fewer inconvenient babies.”

We walked on in silence, alone with our thoughts, until Karl stopped at the austere facade of a building he identified as the Ben Ezra synagogue. “After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, many Jews fled to Alexandria. A few came here, where there has been a synagogue since the time of Jeremiah. There is a tomb inside. Legends say it is Jeremiah’s, but I think not. He lived in Taphanes.”

“Are we allowed to go in?”

“There’s not much to see.” Karl seemed oddly distracted, as though his mind were elsewhere even while he explained, “The most interesting thing about Ben Ezra was its geniza—a treasury of ancient writings. Egyptian Jews believe that any paper bearing the name of God must be preserved. When the building was being repaired in the last century, many documents were found. They are a detailed account of medieval life in Cairo, but in Hebrew, naturally. I learned some Hebrew when I was a boy, but I have forgotten it all.” His shrug was not embarrassed or regretful but, rather, seemed a reflection of a deepening gloom. “In any case, the documents were removed to Cambridge University.”

We walked on toward Amr Ibn al-Aas, the “ur-mosque,” Karl called it. Like the suspended church and the Ben Ezra synagogue, it had been destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly, he told me, but the site had been dedicated to the worship of Allah since the year 641.

Rosie, of course, would not be allowed inside. So as not to give even a hint of disrespect, Karl stayed with her across the narrow street from the entrance. “That fountain is for ablutions,” he said, indicating a small stone object that dribbled water into what appeared to be a wading pool. “You must remove your shoes at the entrance. Walk through the water to wash your feet. Give the old man a piastre when you are finished. Then you may go in.”

It was a large, airy, open place, as unadorned and empty as the churches had been sumptuous. Like them, it was peopled almost entirely by tourists. In the center, however, stood three white-robed worshippers: two young men and an elderly one, who did not seem to notice that they were objects of foreign curiosity. Serene in their devotion, they dropped to their knees and bent forward until their foreheads touched the ground between hands held palms to the floor. Then they settled back on their heels, stood, and repeated the ritual.

“Muhammad was driven from Mecca for introducing that posture of prayer,” Karl told me when I returned. “He was forty when he was seized by God and commanded to recite the Koran and to preach islam: submission to Allah. To bow, forehead to the ground? That was outrageous and disgusting to the merchant princes of Mecca. Eventually, Muhammad defeated them in battle, and today a devout Muslim can be identified by the callus his forehead bears.”

As the day went on, Karl remained informative but distant from me, as though a pane of glass had come between us. I was increasingly distressed by the sense that I myself was the cause of his detachment. It was a familiar sensation: this feeling that I had unknowingly disappointed someone or failed to rise to an occasion when better behavior was expected of me. Anyone’s silence or despondency seemed to carry me back to childhood, as if I were still trying to imagine what I’d done to sadden Mumma and frantic to make it up to her.

That morning, Karl had risked rejection by revealing his religious persuasion to an American provincial who might well have cut him dead for it. I thought of his expression—poised between defiant pride and the expectation of insult—and my heart melted. He had taken a chance on learning something dismaying about me, while earlier, I had secretly tested him. It wasn’t fair, and I felt terrible about it now.

By the time Karl and I decided to return to our hired car, my mind was made up: I owed him a chance to be honest with me about his reason for cultivating my friendship. Besides, what did I care if Sergeant Thompson was right and Karl was a German spy? The war was over. I wasn’t a British subject. Why shouldn’t I help Karl learn about the conference?

As we strolled back to the hired car, I said tentatively, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Colonel Lawrence was kind enough to explain the difference between Shi’a and Su

“There’s an ethnic difference as well,” Karl said. “Persians are nearly all Shi’a, just as southern Europeans are mostly Catholics. There is a human element in Shi’a Islam that is also similar to Catholicism. There are Shi’a saints and shrines. The Prophet’s cousin Ali is venerated, as the Virgin is venerated among Catholics. Shi’a clergy—the imams— are co

“So that’s why Colonel Lawrence said no modern caliph can unite Muslims?” I asked. “It would be like English Protestants deciding to embrace Catholicism again when Bloody Mary took the throne of England.”

“Or vice versa, when Elizabeth succeeded her,” Karl agreed. “Worship Jesus the wrong way and you risk the rack or the stake.”

“Drawing and quartering. Heads and hands chopped off.” I shuddered. “Savage, when you think of it.”

“And quite recent, in the sweep of history. Not England’s most admirable era, although they obtained Shakespeare into the bargain. People forget that much of the Renaissance took place during constant religious warfare.”

As for the political element, he largely agreed with Lord Cox and Colonel Wilson. “Islam is a bond that unites western and central Asia, but there is no sense of nationalism associated with it, except when outsiders force the issue.”