Dill of the Nile: The Wise Man Who Arrived Early

Contents

Epigraphs

Babylon

1. Morning Tour

2. Lunch Break

3. Clouding Around

4. Afternoon Tour

5. Royal Society Building

6. Chasing Words

Babylon

7. Nonsense Night

8. Setting the Table

9. Catastrophe Waiting to Happen

10. Wine List

11. Moment of Quiet

12. Classic Spaama Menu

13. The Dinner

14. Morning After

15. Appleman’s Chart

16. Eden Eviction Document

17. Ramsbottom Jump

18. The Stables

19. Postal Delivery Services

Desert

20. Tarps & Tents

21. Camelina’s Coffee Brake

22. Clicks and Clacks

23. Pages from the Sages

24. Bedouins

25. Oasis Onassis

26. Tulabegs

Jerusalem, Old City

27. The Roman Prefect

28. The Client King

Jerusalem, Souk

29. Logic Lane

30. Cyprus Lounge

31. The Molery

32. Palimpsest

Jerusalem, Rubicum

33. Directory

34. Libido’s

35. Pharma’s Market

36. Sub Rosa Amatoria

37. Cut-Rate Circumcision, 24-7

38. Bazaar Foods

Jerusalem, Mall of the Gentiles

39. Croesus International

40. The Golden Bagel

41. Nockovsky’s

42. Portal of Prayer Synagogue

43. Nockovsky’s

44. Portals of Prayer Synagogue

45. Nockovsky’s

Via Regis

46. Rose & Crown

47. Rose & Crown Menu

48. Spying In The Night

Natzaret

49. The Scream

Epigraphs

Super terram pax. NV.

Peace on earth.

Luke 2:14

Peace maybe, but the world was a total and absolute mess!

William Griffin

1

Babylon

Morning Tour

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

The word ladies was meant to get their attention; only gents with facial hair took tours; that one or more among them might be a woman or, worse, womanish was alarming to most of the tourists but promising to some.

My name is Dill, Dill of the Nile. I’ll be your tour guide this morning. The Royal City awaits.

Earlier that morning Dill had used Bab-El 3000, a hand-held, palm-sized unit capturing solar and lunar rays to energize Damson, a power card, small, wafer-thin, rectangular, rigid with rounded corners. Fully charged, he pinned the card on his attire but out of sight. Alas, whenever he addressed the gents, he had to raise his arm and speak into his sleeve. Allergies, bad allergies, that was the consensus among the tourists; either that, or their tour guide was mad.

The group that just arrived at the Visitors’ Bureau had embarked from Magna Græcia. They were on a package tour smartly labeled 36 Hours in Babylon,as advertised in the newspaper of record throughout the Roman Empire, Tempora Moresque. It’s motto: All the News That’s Fit to Draw; it was the cuneiform edition.

Welcome to Babylon! Oldest city of the world! Godliest city in the world! Pagan capital of the world! We have more divinities than we know what to do with! Once the best fortified city in the most powerful country of the world! Once and indeed still, the most beautiful city in the world!

Babylon had fallen on hard times, as the historians would put it. There was no national economy to speak of; the local fathers tried to make the most of what little they had. Hence, they advertised what was essentially a disaster tour. Rubble was referred to as quaint reminders of our glorious past. The once teeming population had been reduced to a mosh of improbables; artists, explorers, traders, philosophers; that was to say, no one you’d marry your daughter to.

As we head off on our tour today, Dill rattled on, we should hasten to point out that we come by our ruins honestly. We’ve been invaded by everybody who’s been anybody. The Ur-ites were first; they were followed by the Amor-ites, who were followed by the Hitt-ites, who were followed by the Kass-ites, who were followed by the Elam-ites, who were followed by the Dent-ites, who were followed by the Term-ites.

The tour guide waited for a laugh, but none was forthcoming. It was a truly bad joke, but it had been written by the Department of Tourism after lengthy and pricey consultation with a public relations firm in Corinth (where the leather comes from). It had to be recited word for word under pain of death.

I don’t believe I’ve heard of the Term-ites before, remarked an Athenian. I’d like to learn more.

Well, sir, said Dill, it’s just your luck. We’ll be passing by the termitorium later today. It’s not one of our regular stops, but I’ll see what I can do.

The tour itself was conducted in a luxury conveyance known only by its Babylonian name, jitanee. Its picture-alphabet representation was somewhere between a chariot and a cart, a rickety vehicle holding a dozen or so tourists, with a courtesy toilet hanging from the rear.

Where are we all from this morning?

Most were from Athens, the intellectual and cultural center of the empire; there was a Spartan, two Marathoners, a Mycenæan, and an Olympian. The rest was a small contingent from Samarkand, gem of the east, at the juncture of trade routes from China and India; they were wraithlike remnants of Alexander’s legions, probably some of the old lads on holiday; mostly on crutches and moving chairs on rollers. Whenever they were bored, which was often, they whipped out a soccer ball and went at it on the nearest lawn.

"Do we all have our Map of the Stars?"

Alas, the map wasn’t an astronomical one; rather it was a map of posh streets on which the rich and famous lived centuries before.

Hang on to your helmets, shouted Dill, as he pulled the jitanee out into the morning traffic. Much to the amazement of the tourists, drivers in Babylon signaled their desire to turn by extending, not their hand, but their foot.

Our first stop today will be the Tower of Babel, one of the Wonders of the Ancient World. In the time it takes to get there, I’ll tell you what the Hebrew Scriptures have to say about it.

Dill went on to explain that once there had been an Eden in which all the peoples of the world shared the same tent and spoke the same tongue. Eventually, as building techniques grew more sophisticated, they abandoned canvas held down by pegs for bricks held in place by mortar. Upon that good idea they laid another.

Why don’t we build a city and top it off with a tower, a tower so high that it punctures the heavens?

The coach stopped, and the tourists got out. The guide led them into the park where there was a reproduction of the Tower of Babel, made with colorful snap-on bricks and rising eighteen feet in the air; no danger of its scaling the heavens.

As Dill explained, the one g-d, or the many g-ds acting as the one g-d, felt that the people of Babylon were crowding his territory. As a protective measure he felt that he had to disperse them, and this he did by flattening their tenting and closing down their communications; that was to say, he took their language away. Once everyone understood each other; now no one understood anyone else. Husband became stranger to wife; child became orphan to parent; neither dog nor cat knew which kibble or bit to accept.

Rum thing, said Dill. "Worse than war or plague. But that’s how the Hebrews looked at it. Not that there was anything wrong with that. But Babylonians had a kinder, gentler point of view. They had no plans to dump the divinity, singular or plural. They just wanted to communicate better with the divinity, the one or the many, if such there might be.

But the people of Babylon rebelled, Dill continued; "they took action against the decree, rendering it virtually null and void. The engineers among them developed a complex device that gathered all the languages of the world and rendered them into one, a sort of universal translation machine, and named it Glossa, or Glotta, depending on how one transliterated the glottals and labials; the common folk dubbed it Glossy. Initially, the device had been housed in a rock formation. But miniaturization proceeded apace to the point where everything was reduced to the size of a boulder.

Tourists could touch the black stone and while in contact could speak in his own language, and everyone within earshot could understand.

Some of the rich tourists wanted to buy one right on the spot but were told it was still in development; Dill promised that similar stones would be ready for international distribution soon. If they’d leave their names and addresses, he would see to it that they received the introductory brochure.

Alas, there was always one or two who returned to the site after dark, determined to swipe the prototype. But as they approached, the stone addressed them sharply in their own language. Stand down, or take the consequences!

All aboard! shouted Dill to the tourists straggling back to the jitanee.

"On your right we now come to the famous Hanging Gardens. Another wonder of the ancient world. Not the glorious Eden of previous millennia, but quite a nice if modest re-creation. First thing you’ll notice is that the florals overflow their pots and hang down like fringes from every balcony, but the aboreals reach upward to the balcony above and from there to the heavens. A challenge, yes, but hardly to a divinity above or below, only to one’s ability to appreciate the beauty here and now.

Straight ahead, you’ll see The Temple of Marduk, our chief divinity. By making it the biggest building in the world, Marduk meant to signify to one and all that Babylon was the center of the cosmic universe. Thanks to our invaders, it’s now a humongous pile of rubble; the highest pile of rubble in the known world, or so the Department of Tourism has given me to understand.

Dill maneuvered the jitanee slowly around the pile as he continued his description.

"Marduk was, if anything, an upwardly mobile divinity, beginning his career as god of thunderstorms and rising steadily till he was appointed fertility god. From there he went on to defeat the sea dragons of chaos. In gratitude he was elected creator of the universe and humankind, g-d of light and life, ruler of destinies, plus three or four dozen more such titles.

"Rumor had it that he paid a handsome sum to have his name prominently inserted in Enuma Elish, the Babylonian national epic. He was often depicted as a super hero in a silly costume; pasted onto his chest were the tablets of destiny; slonelyt or tylenols, depending on whether one read the cuneiform backward or forward, or so they’ve been identified by modern scholars.

After circling the temple grounds, Dill drove into the parking lot of the building next door, Marduk’s palace.

We shall stop here for fifteen minutes. Please feel free to get off, stretch your legs, prowl about. As for the convenience, one at a time, please!

Obviously, the palace had been a luxury dwelling, but all that remained was its most extravagant room. Lavishly restored, it contained a sprawling bed with floating mattress. The quilt on the bed had fifty panes, each one depicting his consort, the planet Venus, in a different erotic pose. Alas, unbeknownst to Marduk the Magnificent, she was consort to many other divinities, and hence rarely got around to spending a night in this particular bed. But, thanks to the quilt, she was now on that bed every night of the year.

Certain of the group liked to linger at every site.

No wonder these places fell down.

What?

Mud brick, dried in the sun!

Egyptians used limestone.

Greeks used marble.

All aboard, please! hallooed Dill from the door of the coach. Next stop, lunch!

Not every tourist made it back to the jitanee before Dill pulled away from the curb, but one who did had a question.

Whereabouts on the Nile are you from, exactly?

2

Babylon

Lunch Break

On the way to the restaurant, Dill said a few words about a couple of hot spots in and around Babylon. The wall with the writing that Daniel read; the room where Alexander the Great died of an overdose of sleeping pills. More on Marduk; his festival was celebrated at the spring equinox, which was rapidly approaching.

In a few minutes, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be arriving at the Mesoplex. A local joke has it is that the café is located in Mesopotamia—that’s to say, on an islet named Mesopotamia in the middle of a river named Mesopotamia that bisects the country named Mesopotamia.

Again no laugh.

You had to have been there, said Dill apologetically.

On arriving he unloaded the tourists at the front door, sent another jitanee back to pick up the stragglers, and wheeled his round to the parking lot where, as usual, he had trouble parallel-parking.

At the door the tourists were greeted by an officious humanoid in mossy green cap and coat with gold braid in appropriate places; he herded them toward the dining room. On the way they had to pass through the souvenir shop. Irresistible was the lapel pin that read Don’t Mess with Meso! Most popular item, 50 little jugs, each with a bobbing head on which was painted one of the 50 Marduk gods.

No such shop would be complete if it didn’t carry the complete line of desert attire by Babylonian designer, Jae Peetermann. All items reversible, with non-stick zips and knot-resistant pulls; everything cut on the bias for that scurrilous look. Outselling all other items was the desert dashiki, sandy on one side, plum on the other; the one for invisibility when marauders approached; the other for visibility when caravans passed.

Slowed down with their purchases, the tourists trundled from the souvenir shop through the coffee shop, where there was smoking, tobacco-stained teeth, and universal bad breath. As for the coffee, it was served in a mug bearing the mug of Homer, the Greek epic poet. Everybody’s eyes were popping; even blind Homer’s eyeless sockets teared up. At the base of each mug was a couplet of his to the effect that a drink such as this would jolt the jism out of a janissary. As served in the coffee shop it was thinned with camel’s milk and sweetened with cinnamon.

In one corner, holding forth in extra-virgin Arabic, was a lithe and lovely youth, Narbig Narbig. He was smiling and mumbling mystical nothings in exchange for drinks.

If you have to dump her, dump her with style.

Yesterday is but today’s memory, tomorrow is today’s dream.

Your woman, love her or leave her!

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, don’t blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

At another table toward the middle a slippery nomad named Loyd was trying to sell insurance to caravans, but offering no assurance that he’d ever know when a caravan had been hijacked or destroyed, or indeed when if ever he’d cover the loss.

At still another table were some ragged free-lance rhapsodes patching new passages into frayed epics, trying to jazz up classic works that hadn’t aged gracefully or hadn’t been that good in the first place, all to make some small change on the side. Gilgamesh in particular had grown gray hairs; the Iliad and the Oydssey had long abandoned sandals for slippers. And what about the younger crowd who’d never had the pleasure of being bored stiff by an epic, not even a Babylonian one?

None of the regulars made a move to make the passage to the dining room easier for the tourists. But for the light-fingered among them it was heaven, what with their being able to dip their fingers into fat wallets as the over-weight tourists lumbered by. Their attitude wasn’t so much to render them penniless as to exact a small but reasonable toll for the walk across the crowded floor; after that the wallets were returned to the tourists without their ever having missed them.

Next ordeal was the cocktail bar. There the tourists were encouraged, nay forced, to sit down and be served with starched napkin the Babylonian national drink, a cocktail commemorating the madcap reigns of the suzerains. The suzerac it was called, and it was served at virtually every watering hole in the souks and bazaars of Babylon.

The recipe was closely guarded, but for a few pence the sad waiter would gladly, if surreptitiously, produce a damp card giving it away. Basically, it was a toddy. Slosh of rye, dash of bitters, splash of rose water, soupçon of sugar, stirred not shaken, anticlockwise not clockwise, and served in an eye cup. That was the classic recipe, but for the tourists the bartenders kicked it up a notch, substituting witch hazel for rose water. If sipped slowly, the tourists were advised, it would bring up tears of remembrance.

Alas, the drinks weren’t complimentary. Each tourist had to cough up the exorbitant price, which included an elaborately carved, genuine ivory eye cup, before they could proceed. One tourist refused to pay, but as two bouncers approached, he flung his coins on the floor and fled.

Completely tiddled by now, the tourists were led into the dining room, where they were greeted by the maitre d’, seated at tables that were tilted, on chairs with flat cushions, and presented with menus that were stained. There appeared to be twenty entrees, but in reality there was only one—Mar-Duk-Hen—expressed in twenty different languages.

And just what would that be? asked a tourist of the wait staff.

"A hen stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a mar, one of the many Babylonian words for turkey."

Isn’t that sacrilegious, considering that Marduk is one of your g-ds?

Don’t be a quack! shot back the waiter, who didn’t have a pious bone in his body.

After the heavy dinner, another round of suzeracs was served. Soon the tourists, tilting backward in chairs that adjusted to their movement, dozed off for a short but loud nap.

Upon waking they’d be ushered back into the jitanee to begin the afternoon tour.

3

Babylon

Clouding Around

Inside the jitanee Dill put his feet up, opened his lunch box, which bore the likeness of Philip of Macedon in high bore, and took out a poor boy, meat slung between slabs of bread dressed with toppings and drippings. He rolled back the overhead panel to reveal the sky.