The Messiah Secret - James Becker [84]
A taxi squealed to a halt in response to his raised arm.
‘The airport,’ he snapped. ‘And make it quick.’
41
‘I’ll be as fast as I can with this,’ Angela said, sitting down at a table in one of the cafés and switching on her laptop.
Bronson bought some food and drinks at the counter, then sat beside Angela as she downloaded a Persian–English dictionary from the web and fed the letters and words she could see in the photographs into it, jotting down the results on a piece of paper.
But it wasn’t a quick job. They sat in the café for well over an hour before she finally leaned back in her seat.
‘I think that’s it,’ she said.
‘Right,’ Bronson said eagerly. ‘What’s it say?’
But Angela seemed strangely reluctant to read out the text. ‘Look, there are a couple of words in it that could have alternative meanings, and a few that aren’t in the dictionary at all, so maybe they’re proper names. I’ve transcribed them exactly as they’re written. Here. See what you think.’
She turned the sheet of paper round so that Bronson could see what she’d written on it, and slid it across the table.
He scanned the lines Angela had written down. ‘I recognize some of it from what you told me before, the bit you found in the guidebook, I mean. But there’s no mention of Judea or a temple, which were the other two words you found on the Hillel fragment, if I remember rightly. So what do you think all this means?’
‘That’s the problem. I’m reasonably certain this is the whole thing, but it’s still not clear to me where – or even what – it refers to. It looks as if the first verse is a statement of intent, if you like. Then the second appears to be a general description of what the people involved did, and the third section looks as if it provides some details about the location they picked.’
Bronson looked down again at the text, and then read it aloud, his voice low-pitched and almost reverent as he spoke Angela’s translation of the two-millennia-old verses.
And then the son of Yus of the purified,
instructed that the light which had become
the treasure was to be taken from Mohalla
and returned from whence it came.
And Isaac journeyed long and far
with his trusted followers into the
valley of flowers and there fashioned
with their own hands a place of stone
where they together concealed and made
hidden the treasure of the world for all
eternity until the heavens shall be rent asunder
and all shall tremble in the face of judgement.
With their shadows ever before them
from the rising to the setting
beyond the meeting point where waters tumble
towards the mighty river that flows never.
Then turned to face the glory
between the pillars and beyond their shadows
into the silence and the darkness formed of man
to rest forever.
‘More information, but a whole bunch of new questions,’ Bronson muttered. ‘Why couldn’t it be easy for once?’
‘If it was easy, it wouldn’t be fun,’ Angela said, ‘though I wouldn’t mind trying “easy” just once in a while.’
‘Which are the two words that have multiple meanings?’ Bronson asked.
‘In the first line, “purified” seems to be the best meaning of the word, but it also has something to do with lepers, and I can’t quite pin that down. Then in the fourth line, “it” can also be translated as “he” or “she”, but in that context the word has to mean “it”.
‘What about the last two lines of the second paragraph – they’re a bit apocalyptic, aren’t they?’
Angela nodded. ‘Yes, but you quite often find that kind of thing in ancient writings. If the author of the text wanted to emphasize that he was talking about a really long time, he might well include some kind of reference to a day of judgement. Don’t forget, this idea of the world ending and the souls of all the living and dead being judged by some kind of god is very common in most civilizations. In the Bible it’s the Book of Revelations and in Islam—’
‘Yes, I remember,’ Bronson interrupted. ‘All the dead are supposed to assemble in the Well of Souls on the Temple Mount to await