A Fall of Jerusalem (a short story)
Salmon, Elon
a fall of jerusalem elon salmon, When 1 flik har ad-Dawla, the governor of Jerusalem, heard that the Crusader army had turned inland and was marching on Jerusalem, he sent out parties to destroy...
...Joseph Ben Shamai was with his father and his elder brother, Pinehas...
...For the defense...
...It was a fierce battle...
...None at all...
...The Crusaders dragged him to face the walls, for all to see...
...His clothes were torn and spattered with blood...
...Were not Isaac and Ishmael both sons of Abraham...
...1 ftikhar was tall and sinewy, with deep-set black eyes...
...For fifty pieces of silver he takes people by night as far as the Edumim Pass...
...Allah wills it so," he said...
...Are we not brothers therefore...
...He did not cry or pray but a little while later called Joseph to his side, and laying his hand on the boy's head, said: "If it should come to pass that they break through the walls, we will quickly go to the Great Synagogue so that they may not desecrate us before we have prayed together...
...He is working on a historical novel based on his family which has lived in Israel for nine generations and has had a leading role in the building of The country...
...Joseph edged his way to a vantage point...
...If there is anyone who is afraid, better leave now, while there's still time...
...Jerusalem would be relieved of all those mouths to feed...
...Nothing but dust and heat...
...May God be with you...
...May His will be done...
...The man made a couple of wild jerks, then went limp as his body crashed against the rocks...
...It seemed to Joseph that Jerusalem was cleansing herself like a bride on the eve of a terrible Sabbath...
...Grouped together, they strode along the crenel I ati ons of the wall, pointing and talking until the tension from the street claimed them, and Iftikhar turned to face the crowd...
...Go to Safed, to your brother, until all this is over...
...There were two ugly red hollows where his eyes had been...
...The sound cut into Joseph's consciousness...
...A knight tied the end of the rope to the pommel of his saddle and tore off at a full gallop...
...Go then...
...The livestock which could not be brought inside the walls or driven far out to hiding places in the hills, Iftikhar ordered to be slaughtered...
...For Joseph this was a period in which the ordinary Dow of things seemed suspended...
...Get up quickly...
...Jerusalem fell to the Crusaders on Friday, July 15, 1099 A.D...
...this was more than a house of prayer...
...a fall of jerusalem elon salmon, When 1 flik har ad-Dawla, the governor of Jerusalem, heard that the Crusader army had turned inland and was marching on Jerusalem, he sent out parties to destroy all the wells within half a day's ride from the cily, and block up the tiny springs in the valleys of Kedron and Gehenna...
...Jerusalem prepared for siege...
...Joseph saw young men on the walls fall, pierced by arrows...
...Consider it only," said Pinehas, and left the table...
...At last the sounds receded to a soft wailing like the whisper of the wind, like Rachel's voice, his mother, crying in the heights for her dead child...
...Joseph had never seen such large hollow-looking horses, or so much steel on men...
...The order went out of the City's walls by sunset the next day...
...The crowd began to cheer...
...He felt as though an ebb of blood was washing over him, his own flowing out and mingling with that of others...
...He watches over His city...
...Moreover, they knew what Iftikhar was expecting of them...
...Of such an unheard of scale they were...
...The man did not seem to know what was happening to him...
...The Crusaders, flooding over the walls, were fighting their way towards the Gate...
...For all the killing, the Crusader host was never reduced but seemed greater, stronger, with every day...
...Immediately, the people hushed...
...The knights beat him down to his knees and fastened a noose round his neck...
...He thought he was going to faint as often happened when visions assailed him...
...Let them," the father replied stonily...
...Resting his arms on the wall as if to embrace it, he spoke: "No siege engine could ever breach these walls...
...He no longer went to study at the Rabbi's hall...
...Occasionally, he would ask Joseph "Well...
...The massacre of her citizens—men, women, and children—was so unspeakably horrible that it shocked both the Christian and Moslem worlds...
...His face calm, his eyes luminous and serene, the father said, "Do you hear the noise, Joseph...
...The white rim of the sun was edging above the curve of Mount of Olives...
...Have you had any visions...
...Old Rabbi Issachar stepped forward from the Elders and gave [ftikhar the gold and silver which had been collected...
...He stretched out his hand...
...Perhaps we should leave too...
...He saw eyes, burning cold, and heard the hiss of steel...
...He turned his eyes to the sky which was pale and remote...
...the Crusaders shouted...
...The citizens of Jerusalem regarded the spectacle in stunned silence...
...He helped his father in the bakery...
...There was an acrid smell of burning in the air...
...Without dismounting Iftikhar addressed the congregation: "We have lived side by side for a very long time...
...The knights were leaping onto the battlements, killing, killing, killing...
...A Sudanese soldier held the grey stallion while Iftikhar bounded up the stone stairs to the battlements, followed by his aides...
...The Jews fled to the Great Synagogue where they perished as the Crusaders set fire to it...
...More than any other people they abhor you, Jews, for you have crucified their prophet whom they call the Son of God...
...Lying thus, he waited for his father to come so that they might set out on their journey together...
...On one such occasion he perceived a commotion by the Gate of Columns and hurried thither...
...All the knights had red crosses emblazoned on the breast of their tunics, giving them an awesome, unnatural uniformity...
...Allah is great...
...We could get to Safed," Pinehas said...
...He paused and leaned onto the pommel of bis saddle...
...He saw ad-Dawla come riding at the head of a cavalry squadron...
...its flanks and neck sent out shivers of brightness...
...Stories began to spread about the killing and destruction which followed the progress of the Crusaders...
...Below, the people of Jerusalem were rushing out of their houses, pushing up the wall to get a view...
...Then Iftikhar ad-Dawla raged against the Crusaders, shaking his Fists, spitting at them, cursing them in the name of Allah...
...A crowd was gathering, waiting tensely...
...This is your city, your home," Iftikhar was saying...
...Rah...
...In that defeated posture, Joseph recognized his brother...
...He got up and walked towards the noise...
...You and your property have always been safe with us...
...Joseph walked fast towards the Gate of Flowers, in the north, whence the din was coming...
...They stood not two hundred paces from the walls, rank upon rank of mounted knights, road-weary and grim, their lances erect against the sky...
...The people of Jerusalem hurried to the walls to look...
...The Crusader knights were galloping past in a heat of slaughter, crying "Glory be to God in the highest...
...He sighed...
...And when the enemies of Allah, those eaters of unclean food, are weak with thirst, I shall go out and smite them...
...The hills he knew so well now swallowed the road to Shilo in a swirl of haze...
...They had a long collective memory for great hours: for disasters...
...They spare neither women nor children...
...He paused...
...With every moment more of them were arriving, slowly surrounding Jerusalem: a silent living barrier...
...The arrow stuck fast in the head of the corpse...
...He set fire to the cornfields and orchards on the hillsides: for days the conflagration raged until nothing that grew was left, and Jerusalem stood gleaming with terrible immanence above the disfigured Judaean landscape...
...Iftikhar ad-Dawla held out for two days in the Tower of David...
...Let no man weaken...
...A large force from Ascalon is coming to help us...
...Here, on Mount Moriah, Joseph had always felt a more direct apprehension of God...
...From dawn to dusk the sound of hammers and saws agitated the air of the city...
...Instinctively, Joseph turned his eyes to the north, for it is written, "from the North Evil will come forth...
...We shall not leave...
...When at last the Crusaders rose, siege machines were brought forth and the attack began...
...Iftikhar raised his arms, heirarchical, unassailable, his crimson robe swelled about him, his pointed helmet steady as the focus of a world...
...He sat down on the cool stone and buried his head in his hands...
...The Crusaders were storming the city and all was lost, people were fleeing to the Temple Compound, to the Mosque of Al Aqsa...
...A recess between two houses offered shelter...
...Desecrating our land in their arrogance...
...Christian eyewitnesses recounted how the knights rode fetlock deep in blood through the streets of the Holy City: how heaps of mutilated corpses were piled up everywhere...
...Now, as in all times of trouble...
...He surrendered to Godfrey, Duke of Lorraine, and was allowed to ride out to Ascalon with a handful of his surviving retainers...
...All able-bodied men, come to the Tower of David in the morning and you shall be given arms...
...Sometimes Joseph thought his father wished he would never grow up to be a man...
...He entered the Temple area through the Mughrab Quarter as the Muezzin began to call out the morning prayer from the Al Aqsa Mosque...
...It hovered in his imagination leading on to endless distances, suggesting inevitabilities...
...Let the Crusaders come, we shall send them straight to hell...
...From there it's easy...
...They worked alone, for Pinehas, now armed with a spear and dagger, no longer deigned to knead the dough or work the oven but loitered in the souk in the company of young men of his age...
...The Governor of Jerusalem smiled down fiercely, and taking the leather pouch with the money, he handed it to his adjutant...
...He kept on walking against the mounting noise...
...There was a great shuffle of shields and armour along the wall as the soldiers moved to their positions...
...Perhaps always...
...He wanted to pray, but all he could do was mutter "Adonai, Adonai...
...By noon the Crusaders retired, bruised and dented but not defeated...
...There was a hum in his head, and he hunched himself, expecting the swell of dizziness to break over him, until he realized that the hum came not from within him but from a distant section of the wall to the north...
...Every morning the Crusaders attacked and were repulsed, yet their determination never weakened nor did their ferocity abate...
...Tancred tossed the bow away, wheedled his horse around and saluted the host...
...Over supper Pinehas said suddenly, "I heard that some people were leaving...
...Suddenly, the knights dismounted and knelt...
...When Pinehas's father was told what had happened, he rent his garments, put ashes over his head, and threw the dough into the extinguished oven...
...His brother, a simple man, believed Joseph could look into the unknown...
...Out there," he threw his arm in a violent gesture, "no water, no shade, no comfort...
...He saw no faces, only masks of iron, turning swords, and crosses on blood-stained breasts...
...many died on either side...
...After moments of intense concentration he would be like a weightless vessel which was slowly filling with a strange, radiant presence...
...He saw that the Crusaders had arrived...
...Iftikhar ad-Dawla purged his palace guard of all those he suspected of disloyalty, and appointed hard desperate men to command his battalions...
...He could not move but he felt no pain...
...Only a gaunt old man, dressed in a soiled white tunic which reached down to his feet, remained standing, holding high a large wooden cross...
...The landscape transformed into a scene of apocalyptic horror with their presence...
...In this way, he reasoned...
...Arriving within sight of the Gate, Joseph saw the tops of siege towers loom over the wall, all red and smoky, like heads of monsters...
...He stood still, waiting...
...Their horses will lurely die...
...When Joseph would not budge, the Arab let go of him and ran off...
...his voice spaced out emphases in a soft, ominous lone: "Now the Christians from across the sea are marching against us Destroying our towns...
...A man had been caught...
...Others, regarding his frail body and sallow complexion, considered that he had not long to live...
...The foot soldiers and the camp followers did the same...
...Terror numbed his senses...
...Chanting and weeping they stretched their arms out to the city as though moved by great compassion...
...he wanted to die cleanly...
...and the emptiness inside him told him that he was abandoned...
...There is no mercy in their hearts and their minds are possessed by evil...
...The citizens, now short of water and food, prayed and fasted and fought...
...Nothing...
...What will be will be...
...None of the Jews left Jerusalem that night or in the days that ??1lowed, but like their Moslem brethren, prepared themselvef, fasted and prayed...
...The weight on his heart somehow made his mind sharper and steeled his resolution...
...Take the money," the father replied...
...The knight cut loose the rope and cantered away...
...A foot soldier passed him a bow...
...Every able-bodied man was marshalled for work on the defenses to the harsh rhythm of Iftikhar's lieutenants...
...Their voices rose...
...A wash of gauzy blue suffused the village on the slope...
...people in Jerusalem were saying the end of the world was at hand...
...They held Jerusalem in a grip of death...
...Then he banished all the Christians from Jerusalem...
...Eton Salmon is an Israeli who now lives and works in England, He has published several short stories and a radio play...
...The father fixed his dim gaze on his eldest son, "Why do you go about with that spear if you talk of leaving...
...In his dreams he saw them...
...But a knight was bearing down on him...
...At onceHhe Gate was pushed open and the horsemen were in, swords in hand...
...We have respected your customs, for we know and understand each other...
...He imagined he was coming straight into hellish fire, into the thick of the battle of Gog and Magog...
...Nothing Iftikhar ad-Dawla could do, not his raids, not the mangolets hurling boulders and Greek fire, not the blasting June heat, could stem the tide of their relentless purpose...
...He knew them all: Armenians, Copts, Syrians, some Latins too...
...Among the lines of horsemen and foot soldiers moved a bedraggled ragtag crowd of camp followers...
...A thought, light as a tear of cloud, passed through Joseph's mind: "Here I shall stand and be struck down...
...At dusk the Crusaders appeared in full force before the walls, this time unarmed and barefooted...
...There's a man in the Street of Chains who knows a secret way out...
...In the evenings the dry wind would carry the stench of putrifying corpses into the city...
...The Jews lowered their heads...
...Once he caught sight of his brother jumping up and down at a safe distance from the fray, waving his spear in the air...
...And the people of Jerusalem, Moslems and Jews, stood on the battlements silent and fearful, receiving the strange communion...
...And when the hammers fell silent there was prayer, hot prayer, sung with fervor of distress...
...When the knight brought the body back it was a shapeless muddied heap...
...Tancred advanced on his enormous charger...
...God has chosen you to witness this great hour...
...I tell you, the Crusaders will get nothing here but shame and defeat...
...Mixing in the crowd, Joseph squeezed along a narrow stone stairway to arrive at an unused shooting slit from where he could see the broad sweep of the hill beyond...
...The vast indifference of the hills confronted him, locked in silence against which the voice of the Muezzin beat helplessly...
...You'll fight to defend Jerusalem...
...Joseph was lying with his head against the wall of the house he had tried to escape to, his body splayed in the gutter...
...The next day, in the heat of early afternoon, something happened at the foot of Mount Zion...
...But his father, now almost totally blind, loved him above all else, particularly since his mother died...
...The Jews had come out of the Great Synagogue and gathered in the large courtyard where the smooth flagstones, touched by the declining sun, gave off a pink radiance...
...Tancred took aim and shot...
...Be prepared now...
...He listened and heard a distant clamor gathering force...
...He rode a grey Barb stallion richly caparisoned in damask...
...Tell me when you do, tell me rightaway...
...The officers around him nodded and repeated his words...
...But above all, he feared treachery: the Crusaders had already reached the Judaean foothills...
...He never knew how or why this came about, and he never talked about it...
...I think the hour has come...
...Somewhere far out, a cock crowed...
...The dead lay unburied outside the walls...
...They were like angels of death, indestructable, propelled by a force of destiny...
...Led by the gaunt priest who held the cross, they sang softly and wept, stretching their arms in supplication to the walls of Jerusalem which glowed honey-color in the setting sun...
...By and by Joseph learnt to recognize some of the Crusader knights by their names: Godfrey, Raymond, Tancred—the most terrible of them all—princes of shadowy domains...
...Three blind beggars holding on to one another were tapping their way across the luminescent space of the Compound...
...At the turn of a corner, an Arab, a customer at the bakery, grabbed him by the arm...
...Soldiers in full battle array were racing up to the battlements...
...In the early hours of the morning Joseph was awakened by his father...
...So he cried inwardly in anguish, "Adonai, what am I to do...
...People were running in confusion, screaming...
...See what it is, then hurry back...
...At these terrible words, a picture formed in his mind, at once familiar and undefinable, altogether too remote for him to make any sense of it...
...it was a haven, the only home, and ultimately, if it were to come to that, a gateway to a realm far beyond the reach of evil.Here they waited for [ftikhar ad-Dawla, and presently the approaching clatter of hooves announced his arrival...
...When he did not work in the bakery, he wandered in the streets of Jerusalem...
...He stood on the battlements and watched the Christians under their loads process out of the Dung Gate into the Valley of Kedron...
...A thin scar twisted across his right cheek, parting his beard...
...red-eyed Samuel, Ashmadai, Baalzebub, stalking a desolation that was David's City...
...After the killing and plunder was done, yet another gift of peace descended on Jerusalem...
...His legs felt heavy, unyielding as roots...
...And Pinehas would return to his comrades empty-handed...
...The Crusaders roared...
...Orders were being shouted...
...Not a soul escaped the Crusaders' wrath...
...He reined in and jumped from the saddle...
...Flocks of vultures and carrion crows appeared from nowhere to feed on the bloated carcasses of man and beast...
...He became aware of the redolence of spices which hung in the still empty allies of the souk...
...They reached it and hacked down the cross beam...
...He ordered the grain and olive oil from the surrounding villages to be taken and stored in the great warehouse by the Tower of David, and he put guards over it day and night...
...Here there is food and water in plenty...
...At times Joseph felt that his visions were sunk in the depth of his father's darkness and would emerge like a rainbowV of a dark void, as a covenant between them...
...And Joseph would answer, "No...
...Meanwhile, Iftikhar had descended from the battlements and was riding away...
...Turn away and hide somewhere," he told him...
...Pray to the God of Abraham and stand fast with us...
Vol. 5 • October 1980 • No. 9
