O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [107]
The basket did look rather like a straw hat, one that had been thoroughly run down by a lorry, and though the priest remained intrigued by the object beneath his guest’s chair, he politely did not mention it again. Neither did Holmes. Instead he began what sounded like another round of catching up on local gossip, but I soon realised was not.
“What is happening in archaeology these days?” he asked. “I know everything stopped during the war, but has it begun again?”
“Preliminary work only, my friend. Surveys and explorations. The Germans, of course, were doing so much a few years ago, and now?” Father Demetrius gave an expressive shrug and pursed his bearded lips. “The English are in charge of it now, and they are not about to hurry.”
“Where in the Jerusalem area?”
The priest began to smile slowly. “We are interested in the active sites, are we?”
“I have always been interested in archaeology, as you may remember.”
The priest’s eyes flicked down to the thing under Holmes’ chair, then away, and it occurred to me that no-one in Jerusalem, and certainly no-one who had gone anywhere near a building site or an archaeological dig, could mistake that basket for a hat.
“He wants to know where the digs are,” Father Demetrius told the ceiling. He stood up and went to the wall of books behind the desk, taking down a long tube from the top shelf. He slipped his big fingers into the tube and, striking it smartly at one end, pulled at the roll of maps that emerged from the other. Deftly, as if he’d done it a thousand times, he put his fingertips under the top sheet and, rolling the remainder briskly, allowed the outside map to unscroll onto the desk, then popped the remainder back halfway into the protective tube to keep the whole bundle from unrolling.
We were looking at a very large-scale map of the city and its surroundings. He had used a pen to keep it up-to-date as buildings came and went and streets were added outside the wall in the New City. It was a wealth of information. He set weights on the corners, and stood stroking his beard.
“Here,” he said, touching a spot on the map. “Here. Here. Here. And for a short time last summer, here. Nothing much at this very moment, of course. It’s too wet.”
Holmes studied the map, saying nothing but radiating displeasure. Eventually he asked, “Nothing near the Haram?”
“The south wall, but again, not at the moment.”
“Then it must be a construction site.”
“Near the Haram?”
“Do you know of any?”
“Hundreds,” the priest replied with a laugh that rattled the cups. “The British are rebuilding the city, don’t you know? The bazaars are clean, there is a vast new supply of water, new roads in all directions, the police no longer seize men and beat them bloody in the Old Serai—not as often, at any rate. Cesspools are being cleaned that haven’t been emptied since the days of Jesus Christ. General Allenby wields a mighty broom.”
“Is there a project in particular that involves taking away a considerable amount of rubble?”
“Ah.” The priest smiled as if he’d tricked Holmes into admitting something, which in a way he had. “There are several. But perhaps you are thinking of the Souk el-Qattanin.” The Cotton Bazaar.
Holmes nodded as if he were not really satisfied, and then he turned the conversation and allowed it to meander through harmless matters. Much later, we took ourselves back to our inn through a city that was dark and lifeless and eerily silent. The inn was shut up and dark as well, and we had to hammer on the gates before a boy came to let us in. The door to the room Ali and Mahmoud shared was closed. To my relief, Holmes surrendered to the trend, and we went to our respective rooms and our hard beds.
* * *
TWENTY-ONE
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The income of the Bedu is not large, because they live where there is little need for hired work, and such is the basis of profit.