Rihla (Journey 8): Ani, Turkey – On My Mind

Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years.

This one is about Ani, capital of old Armenian Kingdom, Eastern Turkey.

On the 12 October 2009, in Zurich, Turkey and Armenia signed a series of protocols aimed at normalising relations between the two nations. Two of the most important facets of this agreement was firstly an undertaking to open the common border to travellers and commercial traffic within two months after the entry into force of the protocols and secondly the establishment of a joint commission to conduct an impartial scientific examination of the historical records and archives relating to contentious issues. Although not spelt out specifically this commission is expected to primarily examine the ‘Armenian Genocide’.

The incarceration, extermination and deportation (the systematic nature of which has been recognized as genocide by about twenty countries and the European Parliament) of somewhere between 500,000 and 750,000 people of Armenian ethnicity between 1915 and 1918 is a highly emotive issue for citizens of both countries and something that I first encountered when visiting Armenia in 2002. Whether walking up the main street in Yerevan towards the very stark and somber genocide monument or waking up each morning and staring south-west towards Mount Ararat knowing that you could not reach the mountain from within Armenia or talking to people for whom the genocide was a fact of life and that the lack of acknowledgement or apology by Turkey, for this stain on its modern history, rankled most.

There was also, from my perspective, a medical connection as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the political party that came to power in Turkey in 1908, had been founded by four medical students in 1889 and which later as it took control, mainly through the actions of the Teskilat-I Mahsusa under the direction of another physician Behaddin Shakir, bore ultimate responsibility for many of the atrocities committed.

In an uncomfortable way since then the moral, economic, legal and geographic vacuum the genocide created has continually informed my travels in the area. For example while visiting the Vank Cathedral Museum in the New Jolfa district of Isfahan in Iran in March of this year the imagery and memorabilia from the genocide period displayed in the museum were numbing in their impact. Even more so when I remembered back to earlier travels in south-eastern Turkey in October 2007.

I was based in Kars, in a beautifully restored hotel that had once been a Russian mansion (at the time of the genocide Kars and this part of Turkey was in Russian hands and indeed one of the main reasons for Turkish establishment of concentration camps to detain Armenians was their supposed collusion with the Russians), and walking in the city I came across a closed museum dedicated to the genocide. A day or so later while driving near Igdir I noticed another sign in English for a genocide museum and thought this most enlightened. It was only later that I found out that both museums were in fact dedicated to the ‘genocide’ of Turks by Armenians!

That trip in particular brought home to me, in addition to this very obvious moral vacuum, the enormous geographic and legal vacuum the genocide has perpetuated. Returning northwards from driving half-way up Agri Dagi (Mt Ararat) to the fort of Koran Kilesi, with its guns pointed at Armenia, I encountered convoy after convoy of Turkish military hardware and manpower rushing the opposite direction into this south-eastern corner of Turkey. Why? Eradicating and deporting the Armenians from their lands, farms and homesteads had allowed Kurdish clans to move in and occupy the deserted spaces.

And now the ‘modern’ State of Turkey, which has been absolved in the main of responsibility for their Ottoman predecessors’ genocide of the Armenians, has a ‘Kurdish’ separatist problem. The sins of the grandfathers have come back to haunt and in an equally moral and secret vacuum the ‘modern’ Turkish State has over the past 20 years tried to militarily and governmentally eradicate the 'Kurdish problem'.

And so to Ani. And to vacuums.

Ani is about 50km from Kars, right on the Armenian border. Ani was a frontier fortress as early as the 4th century. It became capital of the Armenian Kingdom under King Ashot III in 961 and the residence of the Armenian Cathilicos in 992. At one point 100-200, 000 people were thought to have inhabited the city. It came into Byzantine overlordship in 1045, fell to the Seljuks in 1064, to the Georgians in 1199, and was nearly completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1319 at which time it began its terminal decline. The Catholicosate left in 1441 for Yerevan and the place was fully abandoned by the mid-1700’s.

The day I was there it was equally deserted but between the ruins of impressive fortifications, numerous churches, a Seljuq mosque, a Zorastrian fire temple and two deep gorges framing the plateau it was probably one of the most impressive archeological and historical sites I have ever visited. And yet the desertion, the empty spaces and fallen walls, lent themselves only to silence. I got no sense of previous reverberations or existence. No laughter, no chaste incantations, no call to arms. Just a vacuum! All memories extinguished by the repeated violence of men.

Perhaps this part of the world has always been a vacuum, and nothing can ever fill it. Certainly not love, fellowship, or co-existence.

Further Reading:

Protocol on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Turkey, www.armenianow.com/pdf/20090831_protocol.pdf.

http://groong.usc.edu/ICTJ-analysis.pdf

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/long-history-of-the-doctors-of-doom/2007/07/06/1183351455116.html

The Rhythm of Life and Sweet Vibrations

A shopfront in Innishannon, Co. Cork, Ireland.

With global warming and the gradual northerly shift in the warming Gulf Stream seasonal change in Ireland is becoming less obvious. However Galway is a university city and come the start of the academic year in mid-September the bedsits and flats around the town fill up with returning and first-time students and the vibrations begin again.

The first term has its’ own very peculiar and very amplified rhythm. Next summer’s exams are but a Star Wars futuristic concept. There is money from summer work or grants, hormones are raging, life-long friendships are forged on the backhanded flip of a beer-mat and logged in beer-soaked mobile phones. First time refugees from the restrictions of home exult in a freedom of opportunity, of exploration, … of mayhem. University cities have always learnt to adapt and deal with this expected seasonal disruption but nowadays I get the sense that there is far less understanding on the real streets of the ‘Game Boy’ generation of boyos. For many permanent residents it has become a decibelic chaos and the confrontations more bitter.

A friend of mine, well known for her pithy and acerbic wit, lives on a narrow cul-de-sac next to a student house and was determined to be pro-active in confronting the potential problems. She decided to introduce herself to the poor unsuspecting students next door with the following:

‘Hi, I am your neighbour, and I wanted to introduce myself. I am a menopausal woman who has had a breast removed for cancer and also part of my bowel. Generally I am pretty angry and pissed off at my bad-luck. That said I don’t care whether you self-harm, harm each other, shoot yourselves up in the back garden, remembering of course to tidy up the needles ... or blow your heads with crack … nothing, I don’t care!

The students were still looking at her in amazement as she turned to leave. She stopped and in her most threatening voice called back at them, ‘Just don’t do any of the aforementioned to music!’

Young Leon creating his own rhythm

Sadness in Sa’ada

Sana'a, Yemen, March 2006

Looking northwest over the Sana'a rooftops, and President

Ali Abdullah Saleh's partially-constructed new mosque, towards the

mountainous strongholds of the Zaydi clans.

There is a real humanitarian crisis in Yemen at present resulting from the influx of external refugees from Ethiopia and Somalia but of more importance from the internal displacement of hundreds-of-thousands of villagers as a result of the Government efforts to eradicate Zaydi insurgents in the north, in Sa’ada, Hajjah and ‘Amran governates.

"The Sa'ada region has been largely sealed off to the outside world by Yemeni

forces since the current upsurge in fighting between government troops and

armed Zaydi Shi'a militants began last August, but it is clear that civilians are

bearing the brunt of the conflict,"

said Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International's Middle East

and North Africa Programme. 18 September 2009

The al-Zaidiya are a Shi’a sect named after Zaid b. Ali b.Husain b.Ali b.Abi Talib who rose up against the Umaiyads and was killed in street fighting in Kufa in 122 A.H./740C.E. The Yemeni branch was founded in the 9th century by al-Hadi ila ‘l-Hakk Yahya and has always been based in the mountainous area of north-west of the country.

In previous centuries the Zaydis were in constant conflict with the Ottomans and now a branch known as the al-Houthi are in a constant secessionist conflict with the central government in Sana'a. Although a Zaydi himself Ali Abdullah Saleh, the 67 year-old long-serving president of Yemen (President of North Yemen since 1978 and of Reunified Yemen since 1990) has unleashed the dogs of war to eradicate the insurgent clans.

And this is the rub!

Refugees from the fighting are unlikely to find optimal sanctuary in neighboring Saudi Arabia either. For two reasons! Firstly Saudi Arabia has never signed up to the UN 1954 Refugee Convention (or its 1967 Protocol) and thus sees no obligation in providing official relief. Secondly and probably more importantly the areas of south-west Saudi Arabia bordering Yemen and governed from Najran are the homelands of Saudi Arabia’s minority Ishmaili community particularly the al-Yam clan. In addition to ongoing objections by the Ishmaili of central Saudi government settlement of Sunni Yemeni in the Najran area, and the imprisonment of Ishmaili leaders for their temerity (http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=93757), historically the Zaydi and Ishmali are are also implacable enemies as a result of Da’i ‘Abdullah al-Hamdani’s enthusiastic support for the Ottoman campaign – designed to destroy the Zaydi imanate power – dispatched from Egypt in 1569 under Sinan Pasha.

Before the battle for Khadid castle in June 1569 Da’i Abdullah said ‘I shall unsheathe my sword from its scabbard after its long rest till tribe after tribe (of Zaydi) is slain.’

And to today.

There is still no safe place for those caught up in the fighting. A resolution must be found but in the meantime as much help as can be mustered should be directed to the UNHCR program in Yemen.

Further Information:

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/SNAA-7W7867?OpenDocument

http://www.unhcr.org/4a9d4a886.html

Further Reading:

Clive K. Smith, Lightening over Yemen – A History of the Ottoman Campaign 1569-71 (I.B.Tauris, London, UK 2002)

The Lisbon Treaty– An Inferior Monologue

The Last Lines of James Joyce's Ulysses

Eurynome

Friday 2nd October 2009

…oh yes to continue before 'Bertie' Athene’s sparrow sitting high in the rafters spoils suitors’ darts let me bring an end to my wantonness concerning the forthcoming parley on the Lisbon Treaty and yes deny ‘Blazes’ Ganley and other lesser and yes more selfish lovers of their opportunistic ride of Erin’s Bloom for yes surely it is a bull of an ideal personified by and strangely yes in a stage-managed way also by the physicality or yes the lack of it of ‘Poldy’ Barroso and yes I will put my arms around him and hear his heart go ‘mad’ for he will say yes it is federalist yes it creates concerns about Irish neutrality if we were ever neutral in anything yes it does embrace a common foreign policy yes by Zeus it is an abrogation of Europa's will yet yes I will announce him home light the fires and wash the dirt-slung away because yes it is the best of perfumed intentions yes the best of possible outcomes but paramount it is a consolidation of our love and thus

‘yes I said yes I will Yes.’

Postscript:

A version of this blog was published in the Irish Medical Times on the 2nd October 2009, the date of the referendum. Thankfully the majority of the Irish electorate voted 'Yes'. Now for 'Poldy' Barrosa get the Czech and Polish governments to complete the ratification.

DEAD SLOW

Dead Slow is a nautical term used to indicate the very slowest a ship or boat progresses forward or backwards (ahead or astern) without actually stopping. The derivation and usage is as old as the earliest shipping along the coasts of the Mediterranean, perhaps even as early as 3500 B.C.E.

Most shipping in antiquity was entirely intimate to the coastline and the distance travelled depended on the winds and the manpower energy capable of being expended. When a galley entered the estuary of a river discharging into the sea the freshwater often formed a layer, without mixing, over the denser saltwater below. This type of water was known as ‘dead water’ because it was very difficult to maintain momentum and speeds would slow to a ‘dead slow’ pace. The term remains in usage today and in modern shipping terms equates to about 6 knots speed.

The term could equally and as aptly be applied to the tidal flows of human emotions. There are moments in our lives when a sudden surge of ‘freshwater’ stimulus creates an unmixed layer above the ‘saltwater’ and understood density of normality, of daily existence. Unexpectedly, for a little time, instead of speeding up your responses, your desires slow to a stop, unable to maintain momentum, unable to comprehend what is happening. Then the ‘dead water’ clears, purchase is regained, a way is found and often you speed up to regain lost time.

When a ship or person is at ‘dead slow’ they are at their most vulnerable.

Pirates of the sea and the soul know this is the moment to strike.

An Approximate Sense of Self

I am who you think I am, I am who I think I am, I am who I am.

I was browsing the other evening through the profiles of some of the various people who have shared interests with those quoted on my own BlogSpot – I am still waiting for someone else to share ‘a stolen smile’ with! It is an interesting exercise exploring the nuances of what people choose to reveal about themselves. You make judgements, second-guess them and sometimes feel compelled to reach out, to make contact, to be certain that your perceptions were accurate.

The objective and subjective perceptions of self rarely in ordinary life coalesce to give an accurate portrayal unless, I sometimes think, it is in a man saying ‘no’ or a woman saying ‘yes’ to those eternal questions, Do you believe, do you love me, are you happy, do you forgive? The reverse gender responses do not generally hold true.

And in writers it is never true!

Bernard-Henri Lévy, the Algerian born millionaire ‘media-darling’ philosopher of the French left – I have to state here that my perception of modern Socialist/Leftist French politics, and indeed also that of the current Iranian ‘theocracy’, is akin to that of a recent amputee, who inwardly, at a cerebral cortex level at least, has a sensation of something ‘out there’ where the limb once was, moving, touching, sensing, reacting yet in reality there is nothing there, nothing of substance at least, just a memory, a memory of a once viable purpose – said in an interview with the Sunday Times Magazine some years ago that ‘writers are not as interesting as the books they write.’

Is this the key?

The great books, the greatest poetry, the most beautiful music and art are all exploratory journeys of self, yet in their greatness reach or almost reach non-self, the approximate likeness of being.

Rihla (Journey 7): West Cork – Hercules and the Pipistrelle

Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years.

This one is about West Cork, Ireland.

What wonderful worlds words can transport you to! By their very nature they are of the moment, the present, yet each in their own way are a timeless lexicon of magic, of mystery, of descriptive pre-history when heroes and gods battled for our consciousness.

I was walking last week on Bere Island off the south west coast of Ireland. It was one of those panoramic days when the sky, land and sea were in symphony and each footpath taken became a journey into the language of the landscape. The island has an interesting pedigree in that it is the site of a Viking ‘naust’ or boathouse in Lonehort Bay but also has extensive English military fortifications and gun emplacements designed to protect the First World War Atlantic Fleet of Royal and US naval vessels that were anchored in its lee. I stopped at one point at the southern edge of the Derrycreeveen battery to read a blue metal plaque erected by the tourism authorities.

Like Ali Baba’s ‘Open Simsin’ or ‘Sesame’ the plaque was a doorway to a treasury unknown to me. It described the deserted fort as being the location of one of Ireland’s biggest colonies of Soprano Pipistrelle, the smallest Irish bat. It is called a Soprano Pipistrelle because it echolocates at 55 kHz whereas its’ Common Pipistrelle cousin (which it was confused with until 1999 when the echolocation frequency distinctions were made) echolocates at 45 kHz.

As I walked on the word 'pipistrelle' continued to evoke an enormous sense of wonderment as I had managed to get this far in my life without ever hearing it used. What was its origin?

Pipistrello is the Italian for bat. It derives from the Latin for bat, vespertilio, a creature of the evening dusk, vesper. Further exploration shows that vesper is the Latin derivative of hesperos, the Greek for the evening star Venus.

And this is where Hercules comes in.

A Statue of Hercules overlooking the Bisotun Mountain

Kermanshah, Iran

The Hesperides were the Nymphs of the Evening who inhabited a paradisiacal garden – personified by the clouds – at the western end of the world. Here were kept the golden apples from the tree of immortality that Hercules was ordered to retrieve as one of his extra two labours (a.k.a. anger management course) by Eurystheus.

The Hesperides

Hare Island Sound, West Cork, Ireland.

The following evening after discovering the pipistrelle on Bere Island I travelled a short distance by ferry to dine on Hare Island at the Cottage Inn. It was evening time and the sun was setting on another wonderful day. Venus was rising and somewhere in the shadows of the twilight I knew that the Soprano Pipistrelle was emerging to chase insects across the waters. Magic, mystery, ancient lore fuelled my imagination.

And to the west the golden clouds of the Hesperides drifted by.

Ma Tars

Ahad Hossein Sculpture, Azarbayjan Museum, Tabriz, Iran

Ma Tars, in Persian, means ‘Don’t be Afraid’, and it is my sincerest wish for friends in Iran at this time.

It is perhaps all to easy for a ‘westerner’, far removed from the daily reality of life in Iran, to get excited, animated, worried, concerned about the ongoing oppression and yet be safely removed from the fear that that oppression invokes.

Where fear is deliberately perpetuated then it incapacitates totally, and invalidates any understanding of humanity, either for the victim or the perpetrator. And yet that is what the regime in Iran wishes to achieve – a denial of humanity, suffused with the selective abuse of an interpretative understanding of the will of Allah, and the guidance of the hidden 12th Imam.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime, its ideals and raison d’etre, survives only because its purpose is validated by a clerical jurisprudence, which is in the hands of hand-picked jurists on the so-called Council of Guardians. Guardians of what, one is tempted to ask. A system of thought, or a system of humanity? As Catherine Z. Elgin has succinctly put it, in her book Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary, when building ‘systems of thought’ then there is often a deliberate suspension of judgements that are in dispute. It is obvious that the humanity of the Iranian majority is subsumed to the wishes of an elite minority, who are willing to suspend, to suppress, any judgements that are in dispute.

This is treachery!

Where the combination of perfidious and selective religious jurisprudence (fikh) is used to subjugate the will of a people, particularly when allied to a completely cynical and base political warning to a legal, military and religious elite of the potential loss of all of their powers and privileges if that popular will is manifest, then there is not only a denial of a core principle of Islam (Quran 8:58) but also of any aspiration of achieving a true Islamic Republic.

Sassasin Plate

In a tradition dating back to Umar ibn al-Khattab, the Second Caliph (not a man who endeared himself, it must be said, to Shi’a who implicate him in the death of Fatima and who in turn was assassinated by a Persian slave) learnt of a Muslim soldier at the Battle of Nahavand in 642, who killed a Persian soldier after luring him into surrender by the implied promise of safe conduct or quarter on the battlefield by saying ‘ma tars’. When this incident was reported to Umar he issued an order declaring that any soldier saying ‘ma tars’ to an enemy who then intentionally fails to fulfil the safe conduct pledge would they themselves then be executed: “By Him in whose hand my self is, if I learn of the whereabouts of anyone doing this, I will put him to death.”

Umar was of a family who were noted for their ability to settle disputes between other Arab tribes. But any one individual’s reasoning – even a rightly-guided caliph – was open to interpretation. One of the earliest Islamic jurists was Malik ibn Anas al-Ashbahi and in an analysis based on the Quran, hadith and the early ijtihad (independent reasoning) felt that the prohibition on Muslims breaking their pledge of safe conduct was agreed upon but that the execution of Muslim soldiers prosecuted for doing so was not an accepted practice.

Islam, as a system of belief, thought and action – and indeed the same problems are encountered equally in Judaic and Christian systems – has seen from the very beginning its core principles, its truth, interpreted by different and differing factions who then wish to impose that interpretation on the masses. Fundamentalism develops and Islamic fundamentalism, as seen in the ideological activities of such groups as the Kharidjites or Nizari in the past, or al-Qaida or Hizb ut-Tahir in the present, decry western-style ‘systems’ – democratic, capitalistic, socialist whatever – as being in complete denial of the will of God.

However, any fundamentalist positional interpretation creates an immediate counter-force. Fundamentalist interpretative essence is orgiastic but never fully satisfied and the very human desire to be a material and spiritual beneficiary of that interpretation has often meant ignoring competing or more valid beliefs until it is too late.

The Iranian regime now has an opportunity, given the signals sent out by the recent demonstrations, to re-invent its commitment to all the people of Iran, to rightly claim that the ‘revolution’ is not just an elitist aspiration but one which embraces the entire constituency. Otherwise it will surely implode. Any fundamentalist regime relying entirely on its own validation of an interpretation of the will of Allah, but entirely benefiting only a ‘chosen few’, is by its very nature already spent.

Further Reading:

Muhammad Munir, Suicide Attacks and Islamic Law. 2008 International Review of the Red Cross, Vol 90, No.869. P.71-89

Yasin Dutton, The Origins of Islamic Law. 1999 (Curzon Press, Richmond, UK)

Catherine Z. Elgin, Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary, 1997 (Cornell UP, Ithaca, USA)

Rihla (Journey 6): Ireland – Gigli in Galway

Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years.

This one is about Galway, Ireland.

I went to the gala opening, on Friday July 17th, of the revamped Druid Theatre here in Galway. I say revamped deliberately, as the building has a very confined footprint, and the architects have managed to sex it up with a very sleek and modern foyer below, a rehearsal room above while at the same time maintaining an incredibly intimate and effective theatre space. The play that was chosen to relaunch the Druid was the Gigli Concert by Tom Murphy, one of Ireland’s best living playwrights. The stage management, the acting, the tempo and the lighting were ultra professional and slick. The play? I am not entirely certain.

The central character is an English new-age ‘ologist’ fallen into an age-old trap of alcoholism. His fuelled, deranged and displaced psychosis creates two characters – a melancholic and manic-depressive real estate developer, and a child-yearning nymphomaniac with an imaginary god-child – whose actions and interactions are sub-consciously theraputic, and yet in an unusual twist of his psychosis he has these characters transfer their own longings back to him. Hence his desire to sing like Gigli, to break his five years of celibacy. The play is a highly intellectual, and Murphy has created an almost clinically detached and impressive exposition of some of the pathological pathways of alcoholic dementia. Not everyone’s ‘cup-of-tea’ it must be said. Perhaps it is me, but none of the characters, real or imaginary, evoked any empathy on my part. I really did not care what happened to them, but wished for a pharmacological hammer blow to stop the rot. As it happened – thank you Dr Murphy – the central character in an attempt at suicide managed to take enough sedatives to jerk him back into a temporary reality and he leaves, suitcase and bottle in hand.

I was glad of the wine waiting for me at the end.

The Grandfather Clause

Jenny, my son’s partner, gave birth yesterday (July 11, 2009) to a fine baby boy, our first grandchild. What a strange yet wonderful moment this is in their lives, and in ours.

Watching while Jenny instinctively handled the baby I pondered on the connections, the timeline beyond the DNA. For the baby through my son, then me, then my own father, there is a link to the past, and a shared history and memory that stretches back for five generations, to my father’s recollections of his own grandparents. Through the baby I have a distinct, if tenuous, connection to the future, a future I will not necessarily experience but which I will remain a small part of. I am remembered therefore I was, to paraphrase Berkeley.

Our imprint on this world is but a footstep on the ebb shoreline of time: for a brief moment distinct, strong, determined, until the tide comes in. Bon chance young Leon Alex. I hope to share some of that journey with you, to teach you, to learn from you, to hand you back with regret.

That is the Grandfather Clause in this contract.

The Simurgh and the Nightingale (Final Chapters)

Chapter 42 

Burano, Venice

10th June 1667

Most of the council members of the Constantinian Order had gathered earlier that day in the Comneno Palazzo. After a light lunch the Grand Master of the Order Angelo Maria Angelli Flavio Comneno - Prince of Macedonia and Tessaglia and Duke of Drivasto and Durazzo - welcomed them into the large room that served as their council chamber. He waited for all to take their seats before beginning to read - aloud - the recently arrived letter of Alessandro Zatta, the Venetian envoy or balio to the city and republic of Ragusa. The letter gave his graphic account of the devastating earthquake that had struck Ragusa -and other towns on the Dalmatian Coast- between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth hour on the sixth day of April in the year of Our Lord 1667.

“A citta di Ragusa posta nell’illirico versa la bocca del Golfo Adrriatico...”

Apart from the extraordinary description of the strange phenomenon where the harbour was seen to completely empty and then refill with three successive tidal waves the early part of the report did not appear to interest Comneno much. He skipped over many of the details before pausing to emphasise the section of the account where Zatta had noted - while documenting the destruction of the city’s Palazzo and the death of the Knez and twenty four other nobles of the Legislative Council - that one Dom Djivo Sorkocovic and his lady wife Katerina were amongst those killed. A tenth of Ragusa’s entire population, Zatta estimated, had perished in the earthquake.

When Comneno had finished reading the report he pushed the document towards the centre of the table. It slithered across the polished surface. He waited a moment to see if anybody reached for the letter before speaking again. “I am now convinced that the person we knew as Dom Djivo Slavujovic of the Sant’Iago Order was in fact this man Sorkocovic.”

One of the other council members suddenly reached forward and pulled the letter towards him. He read it with more emotion than the Grand Master had shown and his face flinched and an eyebrow lifted at the recognition of a familiar name or place. 

Angelo Maria watched him and waited, somewhat impatiently, until the man had finished. “I have also received a further report from one of our Order’s own spies in the city. He managed to search through the rubble of the Sorkocovic house but there was no apparent sign of the Scrolls. He relates, however, that in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake many peasant looters had come down into the city from the outlying villages and were still there two days later when he arrived. Everything was in chaos and what was not in ruin was burning. He even reports encountering and being chased off by a peasant group, led by a black slave-woman, who were sifting through the charred remnants of the Franciscan convent library.”

Comneno paused for a moment and reached into an inner pocket of his tunic. “This was all he could recover from Slavujovic’s house.” He placed a jewelled dagger on the table. The sheath was missing and the blade tip was broken. 

The council member who had re-read Zatta’s letter a little time earlier lifted the knife and noted that many of the bigger jewel sockets were empty. He looked at Angelo Maria. “We were never certain brother, that Djivo Slavujovic or Sorkocovic as you now call him, still had the Scrolls.”

The Grand Master appeared to be distracted, lost in his thoughts, and there was a long pause before he answered. “True brother. But if he did, the secret has died with him.”

Marco Comneno - the Constantinian Order’s Grand Prior in Constantinople - continued to run his finger along the curved edge of the blade. “It is probably for the best. His lady wife Katerina Cullen, was quite an extraordinary woman.” 

Chapter 43

Artillery Walk, London, England

2nd Sept. 1667

“Mammon led them on-

Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell

From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts

Were always downward bent, admiring more

The riches of Heaven’s pavement, trodden gold,

Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed,

In vision beatific...”

The round faced man -with the high wig of the times- stopped reading aloud as the woman entered the room. She spoke in an apologetic voice,“I am sorry Mister Dryden, but my husband is asleep and I will not wake him. He had one of his terrible headaches this morning.”

The visitor tried to hide his disappointment. “It is of no consequence Mistress Milton. I hope he is well soon. I will call again and pay my respects.” Dryden then left the book he had been holding back on the table. It was still open on the last page he had been reading from. He turned to the woman. “John must be happy that Paradise Lost has finally been published. It is a truly splendid effort.”

The woman blushed. “I must confess Mister Dryden, I understand very little of it. On the other hand I loved Nell Gwynn in your own Secret Love. It is nice to see real women rather than eunuchs in the female roles. Much more my taste.”

It was Dryden’s turn to be embarrassed. “Thank you Mistress Milton. It was gratifying that it was so well received. However. This work of your husband . . .” He pointed to the first book of the opus as it lay open on the table. “ This . . . this cuts us all out. And the ancients too!” Dryden lifted the book up again and began reading from where he had left off.

“. . .By him first

Men also, and by his suggestion taught,

Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands

Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth

For treasures better hid.”

Epilogue

Murat Reis was finally released by the Knights of Saint John in 1640. He retired to become Governor of Oualidia in Morocco. In 1648 Murad Corbasi was one of a number of senior Janissary officers returning from the ill fated campaign against Crete who revolted and executed the mentally unstable Sultan Ibrahim brother and successor of Sultan Murad IV who had died in 1640. The hospital for the insane was never built in Tvanshanli.

In 1797 Napoleon abolished the position of Doge in Venice when he ceded the republic to Austria in exchange for Belgium. In 1798 he expelled the Knights of Saint John from Malta without resistance. In 1806 the Holy Roman Empire was disbanded by Napoleon as was the Republic of Ragusa the following year when he created his Illyrian Provinces. Finally, in 1809 Napoleon annexed the Papal States, disbanded the Inquisition and removed the compulsory internment of Jews in designated Ghettos.

In 1903 the private collection of books and manuscripts built up by Masseo Barberini, Pope Urban VIII, until his death in 1644 became part of the Vatican Library.

©R.Derham 2001,2009

The Simurgh and the Nightingale (Part 27)

Chapter 41

Ragusa 

6th April 1667

The four litter-men carrying the curtained chair lowered it gently from their shoulders to rest the base on the ground. One of them then drew back the curtain and helped Catherine step out onto the roadside. Although happy for the custom they all appeared equally eager to be homeward bound for their evening meal and fidgeted impatiently as they watched her walk towards the figure of an elderly man who was standing at the end of the small mole that jutted out from the base of Saint John’s fort. He appeared to be mesmerised by the setting sun.

As Catherine drew closer the man turned and even now as he neared his sixty fifth year she was struck by his handsomeness. Although slightly heavier about the jowl and paunch Djivo still had the bearing of her warrior lover. She could not be angry with him. “Djivo. I knew I would find you here. You should have been home some hours ago. We are due at the Knez’s palace for the reception.”

He smiled, disarming her completely. “Must we go? I would rather you stay with me here and watch the sun go down.”

Catherine pretended to be cross. “The Knez is your niece’s husband. Personally I can not suffer his pomposity but we promised her we would come.”

Djivo looked beyond her and held up his hand to the litter-men, asking for their patience a little longer. He then lowered his hand and wrapped it around her waist, pulling her close. As he did so he spoke quietly,

“I strive dear sweet - for Libya nor wild Thrace

Gave birth to me - to draw thee to this place

This, where warm winters and cool summers reign:

Washed with calm waters of the still-quiet Maine.

Here vacant life, here Peace her empire keeps:

Never disturbed Rest, unbroken sleeps.

No noise of Courts, nor wrangling strife of laws:

Old usage is their rule.”

Catherine snuggled even closer. All the cross words had deserted her. “Virgil? ” She asked.

Djivo laughed. “No. You heathen! It was written by Pampinius Stadius to his wife, inviting her to Naples.” He paused to look seawards. “I was thinking of my time in Naples all those years ago and how fortunate I have been in my life to have had you Katerina. My still beautiful Katerina.”

Catherine felt her eyes watering. “Come on you old fool poet. Flattery will not release you. We must not delay.”

They walked hand in hand like young lovers back along the mole to where the litter rested. Before ducking under the canopy to take his seat Djivo looked up at the sky. He spoke as he sat in beside her. “I have a sense of strange unease Katerina. It feels as if the sky is leaning heavily on us. Did you notice how few sea-birds were about? ”

Catherine felt the litter being lifted. She had also noticed on her way here from their house near ‘The Holes’ - the city’s granary - that there was a distinct quietness of the normal evening bird-song. Even her two pampered cats were nowhere to be found as she left. Catherine tried not to convey her own unease. “You are imagining it, my love. Perhaps a bad storm is coming.”

Djivo squeezed her hand. “Perhaps.”

The four litter-men strained as they took a route that took them along the city walls of the Karen and then up the narrow stepped street to the plaza where the Cathedral of King Richard the Lion-Heart stood. Dodging the evening worshippers they pulled along side the arched portico of the Knez’s palace. Ahead of them the ‘green-men’ of the clocktower chimed the twenty-third hour. Then, just as the litter was lowered, the ground it rested on appeared to tremble and just as suddenly went quiet again. Doves took to the air from the rooftops all around. Djivo stepped out quickly and helped Catherine do the same. “It is over. Here take my hand.”

They were just under the central archway when the second tremor hit. Catherine was thrown violently sideways against the base of the supporting column and could only watch as Djivo fell heavily as well. He struggled to get up, taking the strain on his one good arm. Suddenly the capital stone from the column nearest him suddenly caved inwards and fell towards the ground. Catherine looked on, helplessly, as if almost in slow motion, it crushed into the half-kneeling Djivo at the base of his neck and shoulders. With a loud snap and sickening thud the light went out of his eyes.

Catherine tried crawling towards him, reaching out with her hand to touch his fingers. She screamed with the intensity of a trapped animal. “Djivo. Djiiiiivo. . . Djii- ”

Her own cries were also suddenly cut-short as the whole archway, and indeed the entire series of arches of the portico, gave way to topple. Imploding they showered Catherine in a hailstorm of fatal masonry.

©R.Derham 2001,2009 

The Simurgh and the Nightingale (Part 26)

Chapter 40

Djerba, North Africa  

10th Av 1647

Issac was relieved to enter the secret tunnel that buried itself into the hillside. The raging sandstorm that had whipped across from the mainland had turned the summer heat into a choking furnace. He leant against the rough-hewn wall to clear his throat and eyes and to shake off the sand. The grains fell and dispersed - as droplets of quicksilver would - across the stone floor, its surface like polished marble from the footsteps of centuries. As Issac began to walk forward towards the first door, the passageway and his ears reverberated with the squalls. It was only when he had closed the door behind him that the sensation finally stopped. Ahead of him lay the second door - more ornate than the first - with its three carved panels. Issac relaxed as he touched the familiar depiction of the white Bull of Mithra, the labours of Samson and on the lower section that of Tyche. As he opened this door the passageway widened. Bright light from the large wall-mounted torches lit up the mosaic floor. He knelt - as he had done so often as a child with Jacob - to read the words deeply carved in marble flagstones. He whispered them as he kissed the floor. “The Most High never does anything without contemplating the celestial host.” Issac paused for a moment before standing up and moving forward. He reached the third and final door and drew back the pink curtain that concealed it. This was the door of Solomon’s Temple saved after its destruction. Hiram’s brassworking on the cedar panels was as polished as it had been thousands of years before. The heavy door opened with no sound and beyond its portals lay a circular room its walls covered in frescoes.

In the centre of the room was a menorah standing on a gold, scale model of a four-wheeled chariot. Each of the wheels was being pushed by an angel. One had the head of an ox, another a lion, another an eagle and the last the head of a man. At that very moment a number of figures emerged from the shadows. They wore the togas of old and, barefoot, carried their sandals in their hands. In unison they placed these on the floor and facing him stretched out their forearms palms upward. “Welcome back Khalil Issac to the Closed Temple of Mal’ak. Our beloved Duran of Algiers is dead and it is the wish of our waad that you should now occupy the position of the Resh Galutha.”

Issac stepped forward and accepting a taper, lit the candle atop the central shaft. “Jabrail your light is with us.”

The other members of the Temple then retreated to take their seats. These were carved into recesses in the walls. Issac circled the menorah seven times, lighting the remaining six candles at the start of each circuit. When finished he stopped in front of a small throne whose base contained a basalt slab covered in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Issac knew it to be part of an ancient historical record recovered from the Temple of Apis which had been built by the Egyptian monarch Djoser at Sofar-Osiris. Behind the throne - on a small pedestal that sat in a deep alcove - lay the Arc of the Law. 

Issac’s eyes were glistening as he faced the slab. “Begone Asmodeus ! The throne is now mine. Be about your business within the temple.” The candles behind him appeared to flicker as he turned to take his seat on the throne facing the others. “Brothers. The waad is now in session.”

Almost at once the dignified restraint that had characterised the ceremony thus far appeared to evaporate. Eleven voices clamoured to make themselves heard. Issac waited for the noise to settle of its own accord but when it did not he held up his hand with authority and some impatience. “My friends, you have done me great honour today and I hope to serve you well. It is right and proper that the eldest member of the waad will speak first.” Isaac’s voice was strong and he was gratified when an old man - with flowing white beard and locks - shuffled forward. “Elias ben-Henadad.” Issac bowed his head to the old man. “I welcome your counsel.”

The older man smiled. It was a smile that reminded Issac of Jacob’s grandfatherly indulgence. “Issac. I have known you since you were a boy and have been proud to watch you becoming a man. Uzzah Jacob was rightly justified in his faith in you but I fear that times have changed. We have become increasingly impotent in our capabilities and there is little you or any of us can do to alter that fact.”

Issac leant forward to look up at the impassive eyes of the older man. He knew he was been tested and therefore must show his resolve. The words came freely as he looked at the faces around the chamber. “My brothers. We are the Uzzah of the Path, the inheritors of the legacy of Philemon. We are the Oaks of Mamre, the Witnesses of the Covenant. We are the merkabah , the servants of the bein-ha-arbayim. For thousands of years the members of the waad of this Closed Temple of Mal’ak have striven to protect the interests of our people. By necessity our own lives are spent in the twilight. We are visible yet cast no shadow. We guide yet have no determined destination save opening the eyes of our oppressors to the true Path and the value of our Diaspora.”

Issac paused to see what effect his words were having. The shadows remained silent. “It is true that the ancient secrets and sciences, that we were privy to, are no longer exclusive and the skills honed over thousands of years that allowed us to blunt the edge of our oppressors by influencing their leaders are less effective. We must adapt to the improvement in literacy and have to try and alter the thinking of many rather than the few. This is the role that Jacob dedicated us to and that is the mission that I will continue.”

Elias ben-Henedad appeared satisfied with the answer. He bowed deeply then retreated to his seat and sat down. 

Issac exhaled deeply before continuing. “Now my brothers. I would like a full report of your labours of the past few years.”

The full council had not been together for nearly five years and the reports took the best part of four hours. Three of the members had concentrated their efforts on the New World. It was soon obvious to the others that the colonisation of the Americas presented a whole new opportunity for the waad and they deliberated - long and hard - on how best to capitalise on it. 

Finally it was Isaac’s own turn. “Since we last met I have been in Amsterdam with Manassem ben Israel. He is working with our friends in England to negotiate a re-entry for our brethren to that country.”

A Book by Menasseh ben Israel (1604-1657)

A voice from the shadows sighed. “Kezeh - ha - arez. I would like to have gone there.” Issac smiled. “Yes Elias. Angle-terre. No longer the ends of the earth mind you, it is none the less, a very powerful country. Getting our people back in would be a great step.” He paused for a few moments. “I was also privileged to be the tutor of quite an extra-ordinary young student called Baruch Spinoza. For one so young he carries a fearless pursuit of the truth in his veins and in the century to come he will be, as Maimonaides was, the torch-bearer of our Path.”

Silence descended. Issac stood up. “We are all tired and hungry. Return to your lodgings. We will meet with our sisters in public council tomorrow at the synagogue and God willing will open this temple again in three years. Retrieve - ” Issac was suddenly interrupted by the strident voice of one of the younger members. Issac recognised it as belonging to David ben Levi who had responsibility for the Balkans and Russia. “What ever happened to the Jesus megilloth ?”

Issac had not thought of his friends for many years. “They are in the Library of the Franciscan Church in Ragusa, secreted amongst the legacy of Queen Catherina Cosaccia of Bosnia.”

Ben Levi persisted. “Should we not endeavour to retrieve them at this time? ”

Issac shook his head. “I promise you that they will return to our care within a generation. For the moment the megilloth are safe and I have an angel watching over them.”

More than one voice called out. “Who? ”

“Maryam. Daughter of our brother Arif.” Issac turned to look at the tall black council member - from the Ethiopian highlands - who sat in the nearest recess to his right. There were no further questions. Issac took one last look around the chamber before continuing. “Brothers. The yeshibah is closed. Come forward from the shadows and retrieve your sandals.”

All stepped forward to kneel - one at a time - in front of Issac. Each in turn held out his hand, palm upward and squeezed the back of Issac’s left thigh. They then retreated and gathered their footwear. Once reshod the council members linked arms and formed a circle around the menorah. Issac also stepped forward and entered the circle. As he doused the candles he dismissed them with his final words, “We love God through the knowledge we have of him, and as the measure of the knowledge so is the measure of the love.”

©R.Derham 2001,2009