Ancient Echoes

CHAPTER 2



Jerusalem

“CHARLOTTE! IT IS GOOD to see you again, my friend.” Mustafa Al-Dajani kissed Charlotte Reed on both cheeks. She stood a whole head taller than he and bent forward with a stiff and awkward smile as he gripped her shoulders for the warm greeting. Thirteen years had passed since she last saw him.

They stood at the entrance to a two-story gray office building near Hebrew University’s Mt. Scopus campus. Years ago, Charlotte had studied there.

Only a handful of Arab scholars such as Al-Dajani taught at the University. A leading scholar of Egyptian history, culture, and language from the Middle Kingdom through the Ptolemaic period, roughly 2000 B.C. to 30 B.C., he served as an external lecturer for the Institute of Archeology. And he was one of the world’s few experts on early alchemical texts.

“It's good to see you, as well, Dr. Al-Dajani,” she said. He had gone quite gray, and his stomach, a gentle paunch thirteen years ago, was rotund. He seemed prosperous and happy.

She knew that when he looked at her, he no longer saw the willowy, enthusiastic twenty-four year old student she had been, but someone more angular, sinewy. Harder. Her once flowing blond hair was short and straight now, usually worn tucked behind the ears. She wore no make-up. Large blue eyes, analytical and cold, dominated her face.

“You look better than ever,” he said.

“So do you.” Her head inclined as her reserve slipped ever so slightly. “And we're both terrible liars.”

He chuckled as he led her into the building, past the security guard at the entrance, and down the hall to his office. The university secured the building due to the stature of its scholars and the value of the artifacts they studied.

When the two first met, Charlotte Reed had been a doctoral candidate in Al-Dajani’s field of expertise. But one day, after having lived and studied in Jerusalem for over a year, her life changed abruptly.

Her husband, Dennis Levine, had been seated in a small café when it was blown up by terrorists. He was killed instantly. She gave up her studies and returned to Washington D.C. where she found a quiet desk job as a Customs agent dealing with forgeries and smuggling of Near and Middle Eastern art and antiquities, an almost forgotten area ever since ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, became part of Homeland Security.

Then, one week ago, she received a baffling call from Al-Dajani.

“I have just learned of something that greatly interested your husband before he died,” Al-Dajani had said. “It’s complicated, impossible to explain over the phone. But if you have time to come to Jerusalem, you may find it of interest.”

Despite the calmness of his words, he sounded excited, even desperate, to share his discovery.

But then, he added, “I hesitated to contact you after so many years, Charlotte, to bring up the past this way. And also, if you have moved on from those terrible days, if your life is full now, I will understand if you choose to stay away.”

In truth, her life wasn't full. Pleasant, at best. Boring, in truth. She liked her home, her job; she had friends, even occasional lovers. Yet, at times, her surroundings felt oddly temporary, as if she missed something vital, crucial.

Al-Dajani gave her a reason to return to the place where her life had swerved so violently awry.

Hearing his voice, talking to him once more, made her realize that the past couldn’t be laid to rest by simply ignoring it.

But being here was even more difficult, emotionally, than she had expected.

An ancient quote played through her mind: that the world was like a human eye—the white was the ocean, the iris was the earth, and the pupil was Jerusalem. The center of all things. The center of her life.

As the sights, sounds and smells of the city flooded over her, a bit of her heart, what little she had left of it, broke all over again.

Al-Dajani’s office changed little from the way she remembered it: one small window, dark wooden shelves overflowing with books and folders, and a desk piled high with papers. He offered her tea heavily spiced with cinnamon and cardamom. While the tea brewed, he prattled on with animation and obvious love about his wife and three daughters. She offered few words about her job. He didn't bring up her private life, and neither did she. Finally, impatient and abrupt, she said, “Your call intrigued me.”

“Yes. We must talk about it,” he murmured.

She braced herself. “I would say so.”

He flinched at the coldness of her tone. “At first, I found it merely amusing,” he began, “that an American professor who specialized in the Western expansion—cowboys and Indians (your 'Indians,' as you call them)—should come to me about ancient Egyptian alchemical texts. I wondered if he planned to become an alchemist himself.”

Al-Dajani’s grin mixed mockery and humor at the American, but his words surprised her.

She probably knew more than most people about alchemy and alchemists. Many Americans formed their opinions from children’s books and movies in which alchemists were depicted as sorcerers or wizards with pointy hats and long white beards, spending their lives in dark, dank castle laboratories trying to change common metals into gold.

Al-Dajani’s gaze caught hers as his expression changed to fear. “Soon after the professor left, strange incidents began to occur. I felt watched. Someone broke into my office. I couldn’t help but feel more was behind this than appeared on the surface. The American had been referred to me by Pierre Bonnetieu in Paris. I believe you have met him.”

Her world shifted as the past rushed at her once more. Bonnetieu was curator of the Cluny Museum in Paris. She shut out the onslaught of memories of being with Dennis in Paris, of how it felt to be young and in love in that magical place. “Yes,” she murmured. “I’ve met him.”

Al-Dajani continued. “The American professor, Dr. Lionel Rempart, had been at the Cluny asking to see medieval writings about alchemy. When Bonnetieu couldn’t answer, he referred the professor to me.”

“What did this professor want you to do? Create some gold for him? Professors don't make a lot of money, you know.”

Al-Dajani's round face crinkled into a smile. He lifted his hands, palms up. “Who knows? But at least that would make sense!” Then he turned serious. “This professor acted nervous, impatient, and arrogant. I explained that everyone made up stories about alchemy from day one. But Rempart’s only interests were in the author of the Emerald Tablets, and in a Kabbalist scholar named Abraham who, some believed, wrote down the information from those tablets. Do you remember your studies regarding any of that, Charlotte?”

Charlotte felt like a student again, a wayward student who'd forgotten to do her homework. She smiled. “All I remember is that about 1900 B.C., a scholar known only as Hermes Trismegistus produced the earliest writings on alchemy, the Emerald Tablets. Hermes believed all life, human, vegetable and mineral stemmed from one single source. A few centuries after his death the Emerald Tablets were lost, but many adepts claimed their own writings included information from those original texts. The most well-known of these adepts, Geber or Jabir, is best known because his name became the root of the English word 'gibberish,' which tells what people thought of him.”

Al-Dajani chuckled mischievously. The mystical East baffling the materialistic West remained a constant source of amusement to him. He took a loud slurp of his tea. “Dr. Rempart seemed to think an ancient book of alchemy had been brought to the western part of your country many years ago, during the time of some early explorers…Lewis and Clark, I think their names were. As I answered his questions, his excitement grew. His last words to me were ‘Maranatha, it exists.' Then he left.”

“What exists?” Charlotte asked.

“The same book that your husband wanted to know about,” Al-Dajani said.

“My husband?”

He looked surprised. “You don't know?” At her blank look he shifted, nervous and chagrined. “I'm so sorry, Charlotte. I thought you knew. It's what your husband was investigating when he was killed, the reason for his trips to Paris, and his meetings with me. Maranatha was the last word I ever heard him say.”

Her mind whirled with confusion. She had introduced Dennis to Al-Dajani, but she had no idea they had ever met beyond that.

“You’re telling me Dennis looked into alchemy?” Her voice rang with doubt. Dennis used to laugh that deep, throaty laugh of his about the Egyptian mysticism classes she took from Al-Dajani. She could almost hear him now. No, she couldn’t imagine Dennis investigating such a thing. Not her Dennis. Al-Dajani had to be mistaken.

“I'm so sorry, Charlotte, if I'd known you were unaware I wouldn’t have asked you here at this time. It will take a while to explain. Come this evening so we will have time to talk and we won't be disturbed by confused undergraduates.” Al-Dajani patted her hand. “What I've found is incredible. An ancient secret. One that extends from this area to China and then to the New World—your world. A secret some men have died to learn, and others have died to keep.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

He nodded sadly. “I'm glad you decided to come and hear what I have found. If the tables were reversed, if it were my wife who had died and you had learned something about what she had been pursuing...”

She stared at him, scarcely able to believe what she heard.

He glanced at his wristwatch. “I must be off. Shall we meet here at six o'clock?”

“Fine.”

He quickly signed a pass to get her admitted through security after hours, then walked her to the door, and took her hand. “Don't be late!”

“I won’t,” she said, still somewhat dazed by all he had stated and implied.

“Insh'Allah,” he called. God willing.