The Haj - Leon Uris [172]
‘No.’
‘If I were, then I surely wouldn’t be Jesus. I don’t know how the rumors about my appearance got started. And I certainly don’t know why a man with my aspect cannot be as holy as those graven images.’
Just that quickly, he disappeared.
‘Where are you?’ I cried.
‘Here!’ bounced back crazily in echoes through the stone walls.
I chanced to look at myself. My rags were gone! I was dressed in a robe of fine black and white linen trimmed in gold with a breastplate of jewels.
‘Here,’ the voice called ... ‘here.’
Suddenly I began to rise off the ground. I felt a rocking motion beneath me and looked down to see I was astride a magnificent huge beast and we were levitating over the cliff of Mount Temptation. The animal galloped in enormous strides, although there was nothing beneath his hooves, and he snorted blue lightning bolts from his nostrils, making no sound.
He turned his face to me and smiled. It was Absalom! But it was not Absalom. He was the color of flowing honey and wore a blanket of the same magnificent cloth of my own robes. I was sure it was Absalom, but his face reminded me of Nada and his great hooves were covered with diamonds. He wore no saddle, so I clung to his mane, which was braided into shiny black tails three feet long.
‘Here ... here ... here,’ the voice called as we rose upward in leaps that covered a hundred miles.
I began to feel quite safe aboard Absalom as we plunged hell-bent into a belt of long-tailed comets. While they flashed past, I could see that each had the face of a Moslem saint but looked queerly like many of the old men who had died in Tabah. Once through the comets, we entered a rage of sheet lightning that boomed and distorted in the sky.
We had come to a sea as smooth as Nada’s skin, and Absalom strode upon the sea with no trouble, then through great caves a thousand feet high, their salt icicles encrusted with silver dust. Beyond the caves, we rode on in total blackness. The wind was filled with the scent of myrrh.
‘You may dismount now, Ishmael.’
I obeyed without hesitation and there I was, standing in the middle of the universe. Absalom was gone, but I feared no evil. A path appeared before me, paved with large alabaster bricks that I followed into a forest of olive trees with trunks of ivory and leaves of twinkly rubies and fruit that appeared as cats’ eyes.
The flute lured me off the path to a showering waterfall that fell into a pool of wine. There was a great open meadow past it, carpeted with deep rose petals of many colors and the softest grass I had ever felt. Jesus sat among the roses.
‘Where are we?’ I asked.
The first paradise,’ Jesus answered. ‘I can go no farther.’
‘But certainly you can go anywhere in heaven!’
‘Unfortunately, not until Allah makes a final disposition of my case. When I first arrived, Allah assured me that my followers and I had the exclusive use of heaven. It bothered me to have to evict everyone who had inhabited the earth and died before my birth. I was most troubled to throw the Jews out. I was once a Jewish rabbi, you know. However, an entire religion had been named for me and Allah had given them heaven, for they alone knew the truth out of all mankind. We could wander all the way up to the seventh paradise until he came.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Mohammed.’
‘You know Mohammed!’
‘Oh, indeed I do. Until he arrived, I was looked upon as the son of Allah. Mohammed argued vehemently for centuries and I was finally demoted to being a Moslem saint and prophet.’
‘Well, what are you, Jesus? A Jew, a Christian, or a Moslem?’
‘I am a true believer. Islam has the exclusive use of heaven now, you know.’
‘But why can’t you go beyond the first paradise?’
‘I still refuse to go along with Mohammed’s contention that all nonbelievers must be burned alive. I have managed to convince Allah that the nonbelievers should be able to remain, at least in the first paradise. But I must say, Mohammed is persistent. He wants everyone else burned.’
‘Do the Christians know you are truly a Moslem?’
‘They would refuse to believe it, at least until