CHAPTER 25

THE LIGHT FROM THE WELL OF SOULS DIMMED AND VANISHED. For hours I scrambled upward through the tunnel’s darkness. Then came a light from above, which grew brighter as I climbed.

The last ten feet were nearly vertical. At the top: a thick metal grate, bolted over the opening.

Useless, I thought. Hopeless. No way I was getting out of here.

Sink down. Slide back to the well. Drink its waters for eternity.

Who whispered those words?

My final message from the moon woman?

No matter; I knew better than to listen. I pulled myself up, braced my knees against one side of the shaft and my shoulders against the other. With both hands I struck at the underside of the grate. The screws, mostly rusted, pulled free on the third blow. I pushed away the grate. I dragged myself up into a small rock hollow, its floor paved with white marble. An electric light burned weakly over my head. A short flight of steps led up and out.

Naked I came forth.

 

Like a pilgrim, I circled the Rock from which I’d emerged. The golden dome arched over me; the carpet’s softness comforted my bare feet. Huge gold letters, in a script I recognized as Arabic, ran in a band around the dome’s base. This was the wrong city—Jerusalem, Jordan, not Jerusalem, Israel. The city and world of my enemies, where a person of my ancestry had no business being. Yet a human city at last, where there were languages and things had names.

I thought of the winged horse and the night journey. I thought of the picture that hung in the Rare Book Room of the Philadelphia library, where my own night travels had begun. I marveled that I was really here, that like the prophet on the winged horse I had flown. I imagined myself leaping over the ornate wooden fence that surrounded the Rock, clambering over the rough surface in search of his footprint. When I found it, I’d jump up fifteen feet and grab the end of the golden chain hanging from the center of the dome. I’d swing on that chain until I propelled myself into the sky. I was free, reborn. Anything was possible now.

It must have been late. The building was almost empty. A watchman, a huge man, dressed in a long gray caftan belted at the waist, sat on a folding chair by the entrance. His white kaffiyeh covered his head, flowed down over his shoulders. His fingers played with a string of beads in his lap. He looked straight at me.

My hands shot down to cover my crotch, and I let out a cry. Luckily he didn’t hear. He yawned and shifted in his chair. He looked absently out the doorway, then back toward me. Then back to the beads.

Of course. I was still invisible.

Half a dozen men sat cross-legged in a small circle on the carpet, chanting something I supposed was a hymn. One man was older than the rest. He wore a small wine-colored fez, sparkling white linen coiled around it. His eyes were closed and hollow.

Ya nabee, salaam alaika, marhaban;
Ya rasool, salaam alaika, ma’a salaam.

“O messenger, peace be upon you, welcome. . . .” Somehow, I don’t know how, I guessed at the words as they chanted them over and over. I must have drawn in my breath, softly but loud enough. The blind man, the leader, looked up. He called out to me in Arabic; he smiled in the most friendly way. He gestured to a spot beside him on the floor. I smiled back, though nobody could see me.

I shook my head no. The others looked toward me. Then one of them to the man beside him. He tilted his head and tapped it with his finger: The old man’s crazy.

 

The setting moon bulged as though a little bit pregnant. It lit the stone platform around the Dome of the Rock, where I stood alone. The gnarled, scattered trees bent under their foliage, rustling in the night breeze.

Down a long, winding ramp I descended to the shuttered city. I moved through it like a ghost. I passed darkened shops, their fronts stone archways. Young men in slacks and open-collared shirts walked in groups, close together, laughing and talking. I pressed myself to the wall as they went by. I slid through a turreted gate with high flanking towers, past a tall white pillar as mute and solitary as myself.

Did I walk or float? I can’t remember. Nor can I remember what was guiding me, how I knew exactly which street to turn into, which of the identical-looking buildings was hers. I went inside; I climbed two or maybe three flights of stairs. The button in the wall glowed like a dim orange moon. When I pressed it, I heard a distant buzz. I waited for her to come to the door.