Then the Jewish doctor patiently explained to Arn that Jerusalem was the only holy site of the Jews, and according to prophecy the Jews would return to reclaim their kingdom and build up the Temple anew. Arn gave a deep and sorrowful sigh, not for the sake of the Jews, he quickly pointed out when he saw his newfound friend look somewhat puzzled, but for the sake of Jerusalem. Soon Jerusalem would fall into Muslim hands, if it hadn’t already happened. Then the Christians would spare no effort to take the city back. And if the Jews also got involved in the argument over Jerusalem, the war could go on for a thousand years or more.
Moses ben Maimon then went to get a little stool and sat down next to Arn’s bed in order to continue this discussion in earnest, which suddenly seemed more important to him than anything else he had to do at the hospital.
He asked Arn to explain what he meant more clearly, and then recounted conversations he’d had with both Saladin and Count Raymond of Tripoli. Both of them—despite the fact that one was Muslim and the other Christian, each other’s most dangerous foes on the battlefield—still seemed to reason the same way on this matter. The only way to bring an end to the eternal war would be to give equal rights to all pilgrims, no matter where their pilgrimage to the holy city was headed and regardless of whether they called it Al Quds or Jerusalem.
Or Yerushalayim, Moses ben Maimon added with a smile.
I agree, Arn said at once. These were the sorts of thoughts he had touched upon when he had given the rabbi from Baghdad permission for Jews to pray at the western wall. But back then he hadn’t known the full extent of how sacred this wall was for Jews. The two men soon agreed that they ought to seek an occasion to speak with Saladin about this matter before he took the city.
Their friendship grew during the following weeks as Moses began to urge Arn to stand up and try to walk. The doctor’s opinion was that he shouldn’t wait either too short or too long a time to get back on his feet. In the first instance he risked tearing open the wound in his leg again, but if he delayed too long the leg might stiffen and grow weak.
At first they walked only a few turns around the garden among the palms and fountains and pools. It was easy to walk there, because the whole garden up to the roots of the palm trees was covered with mosaics. Soon Arn was allowed to borrow some clothes, and they could venture out on cautious promenades in the city. Since the great mosque stood only a stone’s throw or two from the hospital, that was one of their first destinations. As infidels they were not allowed to enter the mosque itself, but they could go into the surrounding courtyard, where Moses showed him all the wonderful gold mosaics in the covered arcades. They clearly stemmed from the Christian era, while the Muslim patterns in black, white, and red in the marble floor were from the time of the Umayyads. Arn was astonished that all the Christian Byzantine art was allowed to remain untouched, since it depicted both people and saints, an art that most Muslims would regard as ungodly. And the great mosque was quite clearly a church, even though a minaret had been built beside it.
Moses ben Maimon pointed out that as far as he knew, it was the opposite in Jerusalem, where the two great mosques had now been churches for some time. It was practical, after all, he said with a hint of irony, to keep all such holy sites intact. Because as soon as somebody new conquered the structures, all they had to do was tear down the cross from the cupolaand put up a crescent moon, or vice versa, depending on who won and who lost. It would be worse if they had to tear down the old holy sites every time and build new ones.
Because Arn knew nothing about the Jewish faith, this was one of their first major topics of discussion, and since he could read Arabic, Moses ben Maimon loaned him a book he had written himself entitled Guide for the Perplexed. Once Arn started to read the book, their conversations became endlessly long, for what Moses ben Maimon worked on most in his philosophy was to find the correct juncture between reason and faith, between the teachings of Aristotle and the pure faith, which many people believed to be free of reason and a revelation from God. Making these alleged opposites mesh together seamlessly was the greatest task of philosophy, in his view.
With some difficulty Arn followed along in these lengthy arguments, for as he said, his mind had gone through a drought since the time in his youth when at least the ideas of Aristotle were with him every day. But he did agree that nothing could be more important than making faith reasonable. For the war in the Holy Land had shown with the power of an earthquake what blind, unreasoning faith would lead to. That so many men could walk across the trembling ground and say that they saw nothing and heard nothing was one of the great mysteries of the intellectual world.
Arn’s scabs began to fall off, leaving angry red but healing scars; at the same time his friendship with the doctor and philosopher Moses ben Maimon grew, along with his ability to think of other things besides rules and obedience. He felt as though his body was not the only part of him undergoing the process of healing.
He may have cast himself with such hypnotic zeal into the world of the higher intellect because he wanted to push aside the gnawing knowledge of what was now happening outside in the rest of the world. But his unconscious effort to keep this knowledge at bay met with difficulties whenever others who were being cared for at the Hamediyeh Hospital had visitors. With jubilation they would announce that now Acre and Nablus had fallen, now Beirut or Jebail, now this or that fortress had been seized. It was not easy to be the only Christian when everyone around him reacted with such strong and boisterous joy at the influx of such news.
When Saladin’s brother Fahkr came to visit Arn, all these reports from the outside world were soon confirmed, even though such matters were not the first things they discussed.
They were both moved by the meeting and immediately embraced each other as if they were brothers. Everyone in the beautiful garden who observed how they greeted each other was greatly surprised, for they recognized Saladin’s brother.
The first thing that Fahkr reminded him of, which was unnecessary because Arn had thought about the matter several times already, was how they had joked when they parted in Gaza. That was back when Fahkr had been Arn’s prisoner and was about to board the ship for Alexandria, and they had laughed about how amusing it would be if the roles of captive and guard were reversed. The present situation made them both think that God had seen fit to jest with them.
Arn pretended to be worried and upset that Fahkr might have complaints about the time he had spent as a prisoner in Gaza. Fahkr replied with the same feigned concern that his only objection was that he’d been forced to eat pig meat, which Arn heartily denied. And then they fell into each other’s arms laughing again.
Then Fahkr turned serious for a moment and asked for Arn’s word of honor that he would not try to escape or raise his weapon against anyone as long as he was Saladin’s guest. If there was any rule against this, then they would unfortunately have to treat him more prudently. Arn explained that, first, there was no rule that forbade a Templar knight from keeping his sworn word, which he gave to Fahkr without protest; second, he could not be regarded as a Templar knight any longer since his time in service to the Order had expired on the evening after the battle at the Horns of Hattin.
Fahkr instantly turned serious and said that it must be seen as a sign from God that Arn’s life was spared at the very moment that his time as a Templar knight ran out. Arn countered that if that was the case, he probably believed more in Saladin’s mercy than in God’s mercy, even though he no longer remembered exactly how things had gone.