We unloaded them and pitched the tent, working all together. Aoua made a pile of the bits of wood he had taken such great care to collect along the route. He lighted a fire. Mansour, removing the casserole, rice, and butter from a sack made of braided straw, began to cook, while Taëma mixed fine cornmeal with water, thumped out the dough in the pan with his slender fingers, and prepared little pancakes resembling tortillas. The pilaf, meanwhile, started to give off a delicious aroma. Sitting together around the fire, we ate, made tea, then brought out our pipes and smoked, gazing sometimes at the dying embers, sometimes at the large disquieting stars suspended above our heads.
A strange sense of well-being flooded my body and soul. But I tried to bring all this romanticism—Arabia, the desert, the Bedouins—under control, and I scoffed at my heart for thumping away so excitedly.
Lying down inside the tent, I closed my eyes, and all of the muffled, inscrutable murmurings of the desert flowed into my mind. The camels were chewing their cud outside; I could hear their jaws grinding. The whole of the desert was chewing its cud like a camel.
The next day at dawn we began our journey through the mountains, those desolate, arid mountains which hate and repel human beings. Sometimes an ash-gray partridge beat its wings with a metallic sound in the black cavities of the rocks; sometimes a crow soared in circles over our heads as though it desired to smell if we had begun to exude the stench of cadavers, and then to pounce upon us.
All day long the camel’s rhythm and Taëma’s monotonous lulling song. The sun fell upon us like fire; the air trembled above the stones and our heads.
We followed the route which the Hebrews had taken three thousand years before in their flight from the rich land of Egypt. This wilderness we were traversing had been the terrible workshop where the race of Israel had hungered, thirsted, groaned, and been forged. With insatiable eyes I regarded the crags one by one, entered the sinuous ravine, imprinted the blazing mountain crests in my mind. I was reminded of how, once on the Greek coast, I had advanced for hours inside a cave filled with bulky stalactites, gigantic stone phalli which gleamed brilliantly red in the torchlight. Formerly the cave of a large river, it had been left empty because the river had altered its course over the centuries. The thought flashed through my mind that exactly the same had happened with this ravine we were now traversing beneath the sun. God—pitiless Jehovah—had dug out these mountain ranges in order to pass through.
Before He crossed this wilderness, Jehovah still had not firmly defined His identity, because His people had still not been firmly defined. The various Elohim were not one; they were innumerable spirits spread about in the air, all unnamed and invisible. They blew the breath of life into the world, procreated, descended upon women from on high, killed, flashed, thundered, came down to earth in the guise of thunderbolts. They had no homeland, belonged to no single person, nor to any single tribe. But gradually they took on flesh and became visible, preferably on huge rocks, prescribed sites of high elevation. Men smeared these rocks with lard, offered sacrifices, coated the rocks with blood. Whatever a man held dearest to himself—his first-born son, his only daughter—that he was obliged to sacrifice to God in order to creep into the Lord’s good graces.
Over the centuries, with prosperity, the race slowly softened, became civilized. God softened also, became civilized. Animals were sacrificed to Him now instead of humans; He began to be given appearances within reach: snake, hawk, golden calf, winged sphinx. Thus in this rich and sated land of Egypt the God of the Hebrews commenced to vent His ferocity. But suddenly the hostile Pharaohs came, uprooted the Hebrews from their rich lands, and cast them into the Arabian desert. Hunger and thirst began, as did grumbling and rebelliousness. It must have been in this very vicinity that they halted one noontime when they were thirsty and famished, and cried out, “Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and when we did eat bread to the full!” And Moses, incensed, lifted his hands in despair and cried to God, “What can I do with these ungrateful people? In a moment they shall pick up stones and stone me!”
And God bent over His people and heard. Sometimes He sent them quails and manna so that they could eat; sometimes He sent a sword and cut them down. Day by day, the farther they advanced into the desert, the fiercer His countenance became, the more fiercely did He approach them. Nighttimes He became fire and marched at their head, daytimes a pillar of smoke. He crammed himself into the ark of the covenant; the Levites elevated Him with terror, and the hand that touched Him was reduced to ashes.
His countenance became defined ever more firmly. It grew harsh, took on the fierce appearance of Israel. He was no longer a group of nameless, invisible spirits scattered through the air without a homeland, no longer the God of the entire earth. He was Jehovah, the hard, vindictive, bloodthirsty God of only a single race, the Hebrew race. He had to be hard, vindictive, and bloodthirsty because He was passing through difficult times, was warring with the Amalekites, the Midianites, and the desert. He had to conquer them—by suffering, intriguing, killing—and save Himself.
This arid, treeless, inhuman ravine we were traversing had been Jehovah’s fearsome sheath. Through here He had passed, bellowing.
How can anyone have a true sense of the Hebrew race without crossing this terrifying desert, without experiencing it? For three interminable days we crossed it on our camels. Your throat sizzles from thirst, your head reels, your mind spins about as serpent-like you follow the sleek tortuous ravine. When a race is forged for two score years in this kiln, how can such a race die? I rejoiced at seeing the terrible stones where the Hebrews’ virtues were born: their perseverance, will power, obstinacy, endurance, and above all, a God flesh of their flesh, flame of their flame, to whom they cried, “Feed us! Kill our enemies! Lead us to the Promised Land!”
To this desert the Jews owe their continued survival and the fact that by means of their virtues and vices they dominate the world. Today, in the unstable period of wrath, vengeance, and violence through which we are passing, the Jews are of necessity once again the chosen people of the terrible God of Exodus from the land of bondage.
That noon we were finally going to reach the Sinai monastery. We had climbed to the Midian plateau, an elevation of more than 5,000 feet. The previous night we had spent in a Mohammedan graveyard, where we erected our tent in front of the sheik’s tomb. We awoke at dawn. The cold was biting, snow had covered our tent. The whole of the plain stretched before us, brilliantly white. Dismantling the roof of a dilapidated hut in the graveyard, we lighted a fire. The flames tongued upwards. The four of us crouched around the fire to get warm. The camels came close too and stretched out their necks above us. We drank date raki and made some tea. Then the Bedouins spread a mat over the snow, knelt, and began to pray, their slender sunburned faces turned toward Mecca.
They were plunged in ecstasy, their faces radiant. It was with great respect that I watched those three buffeted, hungering bodies being so agreeably filled. Mansour, Taëma, and Aoua had experienced an Ascension; paradise had opened its gates and they had entered. It was their own paradise, the Mohammedan, Bedouin paradise of sun, white camels, and ewes grazing in green pastures, multicolored tents with women sitting cross-legged outside them, their heads thrown back in laughter, silver bracelets around their wrists and ankles, their eyes painted with kohl, their hair dyed with henna, two false beauty spots on their cheeks; and the meal was steaming: pilaf with milk, dates, white bread, and a jug of cold water; and there were three tents bigger than all the other tents, thirty-three camels faster than all the other camels, and three hundred and thirty-three women more ravishing than all the other women: the tents, camels, and women of Taëma, Mansour, and Aoua.
The prayer terminated; paradise closed its gates. The Bedouins descended to the Midian plateau, drew close to the fire without speaking, and cheerfully resumed their humble earthly tasks. After all, just how long could this life last? Paradise would follow, so
best be patient.
Extending my hand to Taëma, who was sitting at my right, I recited to him in Arabic the hallowed Mohammedan cry: “There is one God, and Mohammed is his prophet.” He jolted with astonishment; it was as though I had uncovered his secret. His face radiant with joy, he glanced at me and pressed my hand.
We set out. I proceeded on foot, no longer able to tolerate the camel’s slow, patient rhythm. Mountains of red and green granite rose on either side of us. Now and then a jockey-like bird passed overhead, small and black, with a tiny white calotte. A file of camels appeared at the end of the road; the Bedouins uttered cries of joy, and we halted. “Salaam aleikum”—“peace unto you”—the two approaching camel drivers said in greeting. They clasped hands with our drivers; the two pairs bent forward to each other and, cheek against cheek, spoke in hushed, lulling voices, prolonging the greeting. The simple, age-old stichomythy began: “How are you? How are your wives? Your camels? Where are you coming from? Where are you going?” The words salaam and Allah came again and again to their lips, and this encounter in the desert took on the sacred, elevated meaning which should always characterize the encounter of man with man.
I have a heartfelt admiration for these children of the desert. Look how they live—on a few dates, a handful of corn, a cup of coffee! Their bodies are nimble, their shins are slender as a nanny goat’s, their eyes like a hawk’s. They are the world’s most indigent people, and also the most hospitable. Though hungry, they never eat their fill, but save a little coffee, a little sugar, a handful of dates to offer to a stranger. At Raïtho the Superior told me how a small Bedouin woman stood gazing at an English tourist who had opened his tins of conserves and begun to eat. The Englishman offered her a mouthful, but she declined out of pride; then, suddenly, she swooned from hunger and collapsed to the ground.
The Bedouin’s first love is his camel. I used to watch Taëma’s, Mansour’s and Aoua’s delicate ear shells wag with anxiety whenever they heard one of the camels utter the slightest sigh. They would stop, adjust her saddle, examine her belly and hoofs, collect whatever desiccated grass happened to be available, and feed her. In the evening they unsaddled the camel and covered her with a woolen blanket; then they spread a cloth out on the ground and carefully removed any impurities from her grain.
There is an old Arab poem which extols the Bedouin’s beloved companion:
The camel steps upon the desert and proceeds.
She is as solid as a coffin’s planks; her firm thighs resemble a high fortress gate.
The traces of the cinch on her flanks are like dried-up lakes filled with pebbles.
Touch her there and you think you touch a rasp.
They are similar to the aqueduct built by a Greek engineer and covered by him with tiles!
We were hastening up the mountains, burning with desire to finally encounter the monastery. A bit of water in a natural basin, a few date palms, a stone hut, and a little farther on, a wooden cross implanted in the rock. Suddenly Taëma raised his arm.
“Derr!” he cried. The monastery!
Below us on an exposed stretch between two tall mountains appeared the celebrated monastery of Sinai, girded by high walls. I had greatly desired this moment, but now that I held the fruit of so much effort in my hand, I rejoiced quietly, without vociferation. Nor did I increase my pace. For a second I felt an impulse to turn back; there flashed through me the thrice-callous pleasure of not harvesting and enjoying this fruit of my desire. But then suddenly a warm breeze blew, carrying the aroma of blossoming trees. The human being in me triumphed, and I proceeded onward.
Now I began to distinguish the monastery’s features more clearly, its walls and towers, the chapel, a cypress tree. We reached the monk’s orchard, which lay outside the walls. Pulling myself to the top of the fence, I saw olive, orange, walnut, and fig trees, also huge divine almonds, all gleaming in the sunlight here in the very center of the desert! With the gentle warmth, the fragrance, the buzz of small insects, it was Paradise!
I enjoyed this face of God for a good while, the jovial one that loves men and is fashioned out of soil, water, and human sweat. For the past three days I had confronted His other face, the terrible unflowering one made all of granite. I had told myself that this, the fire that burns, the granite too hard to be incised by human desires, was the true God. But now as I leaned over the fence into this flowering orchard, I recalled with emotion the ascetic’s saying: “God is a quiver and a gentle tear.”
Buddha declares, “There are two kinds of miracles, those of the body and those of the soul; I believe in the second, not the first.” The monastery of Sinai is a miracle of the soul. Built around a well in the middle of the inhuman desert, surrounded by rapacious tribes that profess a different religion and speak a different language, for fourteen centuries this monastery has towered like a citadel and resisted the forces, both natural and human, that have besieged it. I reflected pridefully that a superior human conscience exists here; human virtue, here, has subdued the desert.
It was only with difficulty that I succeeded in keeping my exultation in check. Here I was amidst the biblical peaks, on the elevated plateaus of the Old Testament! To the east lay the Mountain of Knowledge, where Moses embedded the serpent of brass. Behind this the land of the Amalekites and the Amorite Mountains. Northward the Kedar, Idumaea and the Thaiman Mountains, reaching to the Moab Desert. To the south, Cape Pharan and the Red Sea. Lastly, toward the west, the Sinai range with the Holy Peak where Moses conversed with God; and farther in the distance, Saint Catherine’s. The monastery garden glistened amidst sun and snow. The olive trees rustled quietly, the oranges gleamed in their sober foliage, the cypresses rose up ascetically, black as pitch. The perfume from the blossoming almond trees came slowly and regularly, like the breath of God, making your nostrils and mind thrill with joy.
Truly, how had the monastic citadel been able to resist these enticing springtime puffs of wind? Over so many centuries how had it failed to crumple, one spring, to the ground?
I entered the monastery through the high fortress gate. In the center of a large courtyard stood the chapel, and next to it a small mosque with its slender minaret. Here, at long last, the cross and the crescent had joined. Round the periphery, covered with snow and gleaming in their whiteness, the cells, guest quarters, and storerooms. Three monks were sitting in the sun warming themselves. I stood for a long time and listened to them with absorption; their words echoed clearly in the air’s great silence. Each was anxious to speak and relieve his mind. One told about the miracles he viewed in America—steamships, skyscrapers, women, brilliant illumination at night; the other how lamb was roasted on the spit in his home town; the third about Saint Catherine’s miracles, how the angels took her from Alexandria and brought her here to the mountain peak, and how you could still see the imprint of her body on the rocks.
I climbed the tower to survey the environs. A pale young monk saw me and ran to bid me welcome. He turned out to be eighteen years old, and from Crete. Pierced as it was by the sun, the thick, curly fuzz on his cheeks had a chestnut-blond translucence. While we were conversing about our distant homeland, a sweet, peaceful old man of about eighty appeared, out of breath and puffing. With one foot in the grave, he no longer possessed the strength to desire either good or evil; his bowels were as Buddha wished them—emptied.
The three of us sat down in the sun on a long bench. The youth produced a handful of dates from beneath his shirt; he gave them to me, still warm from his body heat. The old man, touching my knee, began to relate how the monastery was built and how it had struggled for so many centuries. Seated as I was in the sun amidst these legendary mountains, the monastery’s story seemed to me as simple and true as a fairy tale.
“The monastery was built by the Emperor Justinian around the well where the daughters of Jethro came to water their sheep, and just exactly on the site of the bush that burned with fire but was not consumed. Justinian dispatched two hundred families from Pontus and
Egypt to settle near the monastery and service and protect it, to be its slaves. A century later along came Mohammed. He visited Mount Sinai; his camel’s footprint is still preserved in a slab of red granite. The monks received him with great honor, which pleased Mohammed—may his bones fry in hell!—and led him to accord the monastery great privileges. These were written in Cufic script on the hide of a roe deer. As a seal he used the palm of his hand; he didn’t know how to write, of course. The privileges say: “If a Sinaite monk takes refuge on the plain, or in the desert, the mountains, or a cave, I shall be there with him and shall protect him from all harm. I shall defend the Sinaites no matter where they happen to be—on land or sea, east or west, north or south. They shall not be obliged to pay tribute, nor shall they be conscripted or pay poll tax, nor shall their harvests be tithed. The wing of mercy shines over their heads. . . .”
As the old man spoke, his voice so removed from all human contact vivified the mountains and Byzantine walls surrounding me; the air filled with saints and martyrs. The Cretan adolescent at my side listened to the miraculous legend with gaping mouth, rapt in ecstasy. In the courtyard below, monks had emerged from their cells to weigh the corn which the Arabs had brought. The door to the kitchen was open, and through it I spied a long table loaded with huge red lobsters. A pale monk wrapped in a coffee-colored blanket was sketching a large marine conch.
“That’s Father Pachomios,” said the old man with a laugh. “He’s half crazy, the poor idiot, and he draws pictures.”
“The Apostle Luke was a painter too,” I said, wishing to defend all artists.
“It’s a terrible temptation, my child—God keep you from it. You’ve got to be an Apostle to resist.”
He was right; I kept quiet. Rising, I descended to the courtyard. The monks were picking up the snow and playing with it like children. They were delighted that it had snowed, for this meant that the desert would produce grass, the sheep and goats would eat, and men would have their fill of bread.