Darling by Richard Rodriguez Read Free Book Online Page B

Allah—that was as binding as blood, as expansive as sky.
    The Christian monastic movement in the Judaean wilderness reached its peak in the sixth century, by which time there were so many monks, so many monasteries in the desert (as many as eight hundred monks in some of the larger communities), that it became a commonplace of monastic chronicles, a monkish conceit, to describe the desert as a city.
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    I am driving with Mahdi through Bethlehem, then several Bedouin settlements to the east, leading into the desert. The road narrows, climbs, eventually runs out at the gates of Mar Saba, a Greek Orthodox monastery.
    A monk opens the gate. Mahdi asks in Arabic if we may see the monastery. The monk asks where we are from. The monk then takes up a metal bar, which he clangs within a cast-iron triangle.
    Waiting in the courtyard below is another monk. He greets us in English. Obviously four bangs, or however many, on the contraption upstairs summons English. The monk’s accent is American. He, too, asks where I am from. He is from St. Louis.
    We are first shown the main church. The church is dark, complexly vaulted, vividly painted. We are told something of the life of Saint Saba, or Sabas, the founder of the monastery. Saba died in AD 532. “He is here,” the monk then says, ushering us to a glass case in a dark alcove, where the saint lies in repose. “The remains are uncorrupted.”
    The monk carries a pocket flashlight that he shines on the corpse of the saint. The thin beam of light travels up and down the body; the movement of the light suggests sanctification by censing. The figure is small, leathern, clothed in vestments. This showing takes place slowly, silently—as someone would show you something of great importance in a dream.
    We ask about another case, the one filled with skulls. They are the skulls of monks killed by Persians in AD 614. One has the impression the young monk considers himself to be brother to these skulls, that they remain a part of the community of Mar Saba, though no longer in the flesh. One has the impression grievance endures.
    The monk next leads us to the visitors’ parlor. No women are allowed in the monastery. In this room the masculine sensibility of the place has unconsciously re-created a mother’s kitchen. The monk disappears into a galley; he returns with a repast that might have been dreamed up by ravens: tall glasses of lemonade, small glasses of ouzo, a plate of chocolates. The lemonade is very cool, and we ask how this can be without electricity. Butane, the monk answers. For cooking and refrigeration.
    The monk’s patience is for the time when we will leave. Until this: “What has brought you to the Holy Land?”
    I have come to write about the desert religions, I reply. I am interested in the fact that three great monotheistic religions were experienced within this ecology.
    â€œDesert religions, desert religions,” the monk repeats. Then he says: “You must be very careful when you use such an expression. It seems to equate these religions.”
    I do mean to imply a common link through the desert.
    â€œIslam is a perversion,” he says.
    A few minutes later, the monk once more escorts us through the courtyard to the stone steps. He shakes my hand and says what I remember as conciliatory, though it may not have been: “The desert creates warriors.”
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    Haim makes his living conducting tours of the desert. He is, as well, a student and an instructor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where we stop briefly to exchange vehicles.
    Haim invites me into his house; he must get some things. Haim’s wife is also a graduate student at the university. There are some pleasant drawings of dancers on the walls. The curtains are closed against the desert. Mrs. Berger returns while I am waiting. She is attractive, blond, pregnant, calm.