The Rock Read Online Free Page B

Israel become more dazzling than ever before.
    Hope is a medicine that needs continual administration. God, in His infinite wisdom, presses down on us when we breathe. Then He expands and fills our chests by releasing us from pressure. His mystery is present in both motions.
    “A prophet has appeared among the Arabs,” Ka’b said, testing the waters with an old friend. “They say that he is proclaiming the coming of the anointed one. What say you, dear Abraham?”
    “That he is an impostor,” Abraham replied, groaning at the prospect of the conversation he knew was about to transpire. “Do the prophets come with sword and chariot? There is no truth to be found in this so-called prophet, only bloodshed. It is written of his ancestor, Ishmael, that his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. Mark my words, Ka’b: Should those sons of locusts become a swarm covering the surface of the earth, their only purpose will be plunder.”
    “What if the Holy One is raising them up in order to save us from the Kingdom of the Cross? Have you thought of that, Abraham?God puts a prophet in their midst to bring them to greatness, following which a great terror will be unleashed between this prophet’s followers and the Christians.”
    “How can we know that these happenings in Arabia are our salvation and not harbingers of even greater hardship?” replied Abraham. “You are talking about a people who give the large and oddly shaped rocks they see around them names! They are rock-worshippers, my friend!”
    “Hardship,” said Ka’b, “is the nurse of salvation. Did not Isaiah hear in a vision, come to him while his loins were racked with pain, that the deliverance of Israel would come from a man mounted on a camel followed by a man mounted on an ass?”
    “He did.”
    “And was it not the habit of the prophet Elijah to appear in the guise of a desert Arab?”
    “It was.”
    “The rider on the camel is a prophet whose coming heralds that of the rider on the ass, the Messiah. Did not Isaiah hear our Lord Yahweh say,
    Now I shall lay a stone in Zion
,
a granite-stone, a precious corner-stone
,
a firm foundation-stone:

No one who relies on this will stumble
.
And I will make fair judgment the measure
,
and uprightness the plumb-line
.
    “Enough, Ka’b! My patience is at an end. You will bring a terrible retribution on all our heads. Do not force me to repudiate you. I will hear no more of this talk.” And with that, Abraham turned his back on my father and stalked out of the room.

Medina
    O n a night that had dropped over the Yemen like a stone, my father, with my unhappy mother in tow, left for the city of Medina. They arrived shortly after the unification of Arabia, in what became known as the Year of the Delegations, a momentous year in the annals of Believers. As tribes from all over Arabia were streaming in to swear allegiance to Muhammad, an air of excitement and unfulfilled promise hung over the dusty streets. It had taken Ka’b a long time to overcome his fears and leave; time had crawled like a worm. In Medina, it began to fly like a flushed bird.
    The beardless, fiery Syrians who live on my street and grew up under Caliphs from Abd al-Malik’s House think they know everything about those early years in Medina. They are like experts on the desert who have never seen a valley bare as an ass’s belly, much less lived in one. They cannot imagine that a man might bear witness to Muhammad’s prophecy and remain a Jew at the same time. But that was the practice in Medina when Ka’b, then known as Jacob, first arrived. He remained a Jew in that he prayed, observed the Sabbath, dressed, and in all other respects behaved and looked like a Jew. His friends thought him one. And even the rabbis I have consulted, however much they disapprove of calling Muhammad a prophet, say there is nothing un-Jewish about thinking it.
    The Prophet himself looked for Jewish recruits after the Exodus. He