The Pillars of Hercules

“There is something about this man,” Samih Pasha said, and his mustache lifted as he smiled at me. He then tapped the side of his nose in a gesture of suspicion. “Something—I don’t know what.”

“I had business to attend to,” I said.

“We saw the pyramids,” Fikret said. “But for just a little while. Fifteen minutes at the museum. Then the shopping. Women shopping.”

“I was very angry,” Onan said.

I said, “You can’t leave Egypt unless you have a small stuffed camel toy and plaster model of the Sphinx.”

“You see? He is making a joke,” Samih Pasha said. He tapped his nose again, once again drawing attention to its enormous size. “Something, eh?”

Fikret said, “I think Mr. Paul is right. He does his business. He doesn’t waste time.”

“You are going to Jerusalem?” Onan asked me sternly.

“If I have time. Are you?”

Onan sucked his teeth in contempt, to demonstrate the absurdity of my question, and then he said, “The only reason I am on this ship is to go to Jerusalem. Not the pyramids, not the Sphinx. I don’t care about the Nile. But Jerusalem. It is a holy place!”

His tone was just a trifle shrill, combining something military with something obsessional, a touch of the ghazi—the warrior for God Almighty.

“Relax, Onan, of course I’m going to Jerusalem,” I said. “I have the feeling you are making a pilgrimage.”

“It is your feeling,” he said. “I must find a concordance in Israel—for the Bible. I read Hebrew. I am interested in the Bible.”

“Yet I feel that you are a devout Muslim.”

“Once again, it is your feeling,” Onan said. “I believe in the words of the holy Koran. I believe in Heaven and Hell.”

This statement had an effect in the darkness of the Levantine night. We had passed beyond the sea-level lights of the shore and were traveling surrounded by dark water and dark sky, a cosmic journey on a rusty ship.

Fikret was muttering to Samih Pasha. He said, “General Samih knows a joke about hell.”

“Thank you very much,” Onan said tersely.

“A man dies and doesn’t know whether to go to heaven or to Gehenna, as we call it,” Samih Pasha said, smiling broadly. “So an angel comes and shows him two breeches.”

He paused and smacked his lips, to make sure we had taken this in. I thought: breeches? Then I thought: Yes, bridges.

“First breech is Heaven. Very nice. Clean. Peaceful. Seenging,” Samih Pasha said. “Second breech. Man looks. Is Gehenna. Music! Fun! People dancing! Boys! Gorl!”

“‘Weech breech?’ the angel asks him. Man says, ‘Second breech! Thank you very much!’ He find gorl right away. Nice! He begin to make love to her. Nice! But! Something is wrong. He cannot make love. He look—no holes!”

Onan frowned, Fikret squinted. I said, “No holes,” and was interested that this Turkish man should use the plural.

“The man says, ‘Now I see why this is Gehenna!’ ”

I laughed, but no one else did, except the General, at his own joke. Onan continued to glare at him. Fikret said with his usual solemnity, “I understand.”

That night, lying in my cabin, I thought of poor diminished Alexandria, and it seemed logical that it should look that way, after so much of it—streets and buildings and monuments—had been ransacked by writers.

Offshore, twiddling my radio, I got classical music—Beethoven’s violin concerto from the Israeli shore—and remembered that the last time I had heard such music was in Mediterranean Europe. That was not so odd, for after all, Israel is an outpost of Europe. The moral high ground as a refuge and a garrison.

And because of the ethical commitment and the financial burden required by Israel of all Americans it is impossible for Americans to go to Israel and not feel they have a personal stake in it—or more, that Israel owes them something—perhaps an hospitable attitude? Reflecting on the twelve-figure sum of approximately one hundred billion dollars that America has given Israel since 1967, that was my feeling. It was not a number I ever dangled in front of an Israeli, though on deck at the port of Haifa, I said to Samih Pasha, “As an American taxpayer, I think I own that building.” He laughed and later in Turkish Cyprus, a place that is a drain on Turkey’s budget, Samih Pasha said, “That building! I paid for it! It’s mine!”

“Now Paul is going to disappear,” Fikret said.

“Bye-bye,” the General said.

Onan was busying himself with his maps and scriptures, in preparation for his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He looked more intense than ever, and even somewhat feverish, his eyes bright with belief.