People of the Book

Hanna Sarajevo, Spring 1996

THERE WAS NO United Nations escort waiting for me at the Sarajevo airport, for the simple reason that I hadn’t told anyone I was coming.

It was late when I arrived; the connection through Vienna had been delayed two and a half hours. It was jarring, going from the Vienna airport, which is basically a big, shiny shopping mall, and arriving not quite half an hour later at the spare, empty, still-militarized terminal in Sarajevo. Outside, the cab pulled away from the airport entrance into streets still unnaturally dark—they’d repaired very few streetlights, which was a blessing, I suppose, given the blasted and depopulated appearance of the neighborhoods surrounding the airport. Although I wasn’t in quite the same state of dread as on my first visit, I was still pretty relieved when I got into my hotel room and locked the door behind me.

In the morning I called Hamish Sajjan at the UN office and asked him if I could sneak a look at the new display room at the museum. The official ceremony was still twenty-four hours away, but he said he was sure the museum director wouldn’t mind if I had a look before the crowds of invited dignitaries descended.

The wide boulevard, formerly known as Sniper Alley, on which the museum was located, had been given a Potemkin village spruce-up in the two weeks I’d been gone. The rubble piles had been moved, and some of the worst shell holes in the road had been filled in. A tram was running again, which somehow gave the street a sense of normalcy. I walked up the familiar stairs of the museum and was escorted to the director’s office for the compulsory Turkish coffee. Hamish Sajjan was there, beaming. For once, the UN was getting a bit of credit for doing something right in Bosnia. After sufficient pleasantries, he and the director escorted me down the hall to the new room, which was guarded by two security men. The director punched in the code. You could hear the slick new bolts retracting.

The room was lovely. The light was perfect: even and not too bright. State-of-the-art sensors scribbled out lines that tracked temperature and humidity. I checked the graphs: 18 degrees Celsius, perfect, plus or minus 1 degree. Humidity, 53 percent. Right where it should be. The walls gave off the clean, sharp scent of fresh plaster. I thought that just being in this space would be a morale boost for most Sarajevans, a big contrast with their broken city outside.

A specially made case occupied the center of the room. The haggadah rested inside, under a pyramid of glass that would protect it from dust and pollution as well as from people. On the walls were the related exhibits—Orthodox icons, Islamic calligraphy, Catholic psalter pages. I walked past each one of these, slowly. The selection was excellent, thoughtful. I sensed Ozren’s intelligence at work. Each piece had something in common with the haggadah—similar materials or a related artistic style. The point—that diverse cultures influence and enrich one another—was made with silent eloquence.

Finally, I turned to the haggadah. The case had been crafted by a master cabinetmaker from a handsome burled walnut. The book was open at the Creation illuminations—the pages would be turned on a schedule so as not to expose any one page to too much light.

I looked down through the glass, thinking about the artist, about the brush dipping into saffron pigment. The cat hair that Clarissa Montague-Morgan had identified—cut cleanly on both ends, stained with traces of yellow pigment—had come from the artist’s paintbrush. Spanish brushes were more commonly squirrel or miniver fur. Fur from the throat area of two-month-old Persian longhairs, specially bred for the purpose, was the brush material of choice for Iranian miniaturists. Irani qalam. Iranian pen. It was the name for the style, rather than the implement. And yet these miniatures were not at all Iranian in style or technique. So why had an illuminator working in Spain, for a Jewish client, in the manner of a European Christian, have used an Iranian paintbrush? Clarissa’s identification of this anomaly had been great for my essay. It had given me an excuse to riff on the way knowledge had traveled amazing distances during the Convivencia, over well-established routes linking the artists and intellectuals of Spain with their counterparts in Baghdad, Cairo, and Isphahan.

I stood there, gazing, wondering which had done the traveling—the brush or the artisan who assembled it. I imagined the stir in the Spanish atelier the first time someone used one of these superior brushes, felt the soft swish of the fine white hair across the carefully prepared parchment.

The parchment.

I blinked, and then leaned closer to the vitrine, doubting the evidence of my own eyes. The floor seemed to drop away from under my feet.

I straightened and turned to Sajjan. His broad smile faltered when he saw my face, which must have been as white as the fresh plaster. I tried to control my voice.

“Where is Dr. Karaman? I need to see him.”

“Is something the matter—the vitrine, the temperature?”

“No, no. There’s nothing wrong…nothing wrong with the room.” I didn’t want to start a fuss in public. There would be more chance of dealing with this if we acted quietly. “I need to see Dr. Karaman—about my essay. I just realized I forgot to make a necessary correction.”

“My dear Dr. Heath, the catalogs are printed already. Any corrections—”

“Never mind. I just need to tell him….”

“I believe he is in the library; shall I send for him?”

“No, I know the way.”

We went out, the new door closing and locking with a soft click behind us. Sajjan started translating the director’s very formal leave-taking, which I abbreviated rudely by walking backward away from them down the corridor. It was all I could do to avoid breaking into a run. I burst through the library’s large oak doors and hurried down the narrow alley between the stacks, almost knocking over an assistant librarian busy reshelving volumes. Ozren was in his office, seated at his desk, talking to someone whose back was turned to me.

I plunged through the door without knocking. Ozren stood up, surprised at the intrusion. His face was gray and haggard. His eyes were smudged with dark circles. For a moment I’d forgotten that his son had been in the ground for just a little more than forty-eight hours. My anxiety retreated for a moment behind a wave of feeling for him. I moved forward and put my arms around him.

His body was absolutely rigid. He stepped backward, out of my embrace.

“Ozren, I’m so sorry about Alia, and I’m really sorry to burst in on you like this, but I—”

“Hello, Dr. Heath.” His voice, cutting me off, was flat, formal.

“Hallo, Hanna!” The man in the chair was rising, slowly, as I turned.

“Werner! I didn’t know—thank goodness you’re here.” Werner Heinrich, my teacher, the best forgery-spotter in the business, would be able to see it instantly; he’d be able to back me up.

“Of course I’m here, Hanna, Liebchen. I wouldn’t miss tomorrow’s ceremony. But you didn’t tell me that you were coming. I imagined you were back home by now. It is wonderful you will be here for the ceremony.”

“Well, if we don’t move fast, there won’t be a ceremony tomorrow. Somebody’s stolen the haggadah. I think it must have been Amitai, he’s the only one who—”

“Hanna, my dear, slow down….” Werner reached for my hands, with which I’d been wildly gesticulating. “Tell us calmly….”

“It’s nonsense.” Ozren spoke over Werner. “The haggadah is locked in the vitrine. I secured it there myself.”

“Ozren, it’s a fake, the thing in the vitrine. It’s a fantastic fake—the oxidized silver, the stains, the smeared pigments. I mean, we’ve all seen fakes, but this is outstanding. It’s a perfect replica. Perfect, except for one thing. The one thing that can’t be replicated because it hasn’t existed for three centuries.” I had to stop. I could hardly breathe. Werner was patting my hand as if I were a hysterical child. His hands, his hard, craftsman’s hands, had the usual perfectly manicured fingernails. I pulled away my ugly untended mitt and raked it through my hair.

Ozren was pale now. He stood.

“What are you talking about?”

“The parchment. The sheep they made it from, that breed—Ovis aries Aragonosa ornata—it’s been extinct in Spain since the fifteenth century. What they’ve used, the pore holes, they’re all wrong…the size, the scatter…it’s parchment made from a different breed….”

“You could hardly tell that, surely, from inspecting one page.” Ozren spoke with a tense, thin-lipped terseness.

“Yes, I can.” I took a deep breath, trying not to hyperventilate. “It’s a subtle thing, unless you’ve spent hours comparing old parchments. I mean, to me it’s bloody obvious. Werner, you’ll see it right away, I know you will.” Werner’s face was creased now with concern. “Where is Amitai?” I demanded. “Has he already left the country? If he has, we’re in deep shit….”

“Hanna. Stop this.” Werner’s soft voice had a stern edge. I realized that the look I’d taken for concern was actually irritation. He wasn’t taking me seriously. To him, I was still the pupil from the antipodes, the girl who had so much to learn. I turned to Ozren. He, surely, would listen to me.

“Dr. Yomtov is right here in Sarajevo,” Ozren said. “He is the guest of the Jewish community for the ceremony tomorrow. He hasn’t been near the haggadah. The book has been locked in the vault at the central bank from the day you left here last month, until we moved it, under heavy guard, yesterday. It was in the box designed to your specifications, which you yourself watched me seal, until I personally broke the wax and the strings and deposited it in the vitrine. It was not out of my hand for one moment of that time. The vitrine is armed with state-of-the-art equipment, and the room is crisscrossed with sensors. There is a twenty-four-hour surveillance camera and a guard. You are making a fool of yourself with these accusations.”

“Me? Ozren, matey. Can’t you see? The Israelis—they must have wanted this book for ages…you must’ve heard all those rumors, during the war…. And Amitai, he’s an ex-commando, did you know that?”

Werner shook his silvery mane. “I had no idea.” Ozren just looked at me, blankly. I couldn’t understand why he was so passive. I wanted to shake him. Maybe he was still in shock over Alia. And then I thought of the weird phone call I’d made to his apartment.

“What was Amitai doing at your place, anyway, the other night?”

“Hanna.” His voice had been cold. Now it was icy. “I risked my life to save that book. If you are suggesting…”

Werner raised his hand. “I am sure Dr. Heath is not suggesting anything. But I think we’d best make an examination.” His brow was furrowed. His hands were trembling. What I’d said about Amitai clearly concerned him. “Come, my dear, and show us what it is that troubles you so.”

Werner, unsteady, took my arm. I was suddenly worried about him. He would be so shocked when he saw the fake.

Ozren rose from his desk and led the way back down the interminable corridor, through the exhibition halls where glaziers were at work, replacing the plastic sheeting that still covered many of the museum’s shattered windows. Ozren nodded to the guards and punched his code into the keypad.

“Can we take it out?”

“Not without disarming the entire system,” Ozren said. “Show us what it is that you think you are seeing.”

I pointed.

Werner bent over and peered into the vitrine. He examined the place I’d indicated for several minutes. Then he straightened.

“I’m relieved to say I can’t agree with you, my dear. The scatter is entirely in keeping with many examples I’ve examined from that type of parchment. We can, in any case, compare the page with the documentation photographs you took at the time of the stabilization, to set your mind at rest.”

“But I sent those negatives to Amitai! He used them to make this fake, don’t you see? And then he’ll have replaced my photos with pictures of this…thing. You’ve got to call the police, now, and alert the border authorities, and the UN….”

“Hanna, my dear, I am sure you are mistaken. And I think you must be a little more circumspect about throwing around such wild accusations against an esteemed colleague.”

Werner’s voice was low and soothing, still treating me like an overexcited child. He laid a hand on my arm. “I’ve known and worked with Amitai Yomtov for more than thirty years. His reputation is impeccable. You know that.” He turned to Ozren then. “But perhaps, Dr. Karaman, to reassure Dr. Heath, we’d best disarm the system and do a full inspection of the codex?”

Ozren nodded. “Yes, of course. We can do that. We must do that. But I will have to inform the director. The system is designed so that it requires both of us to input the codes that authorize a shutdown.”

The next hour was the strangest and most uncomfortable of my professional life. Werner, Ozren, and I went through the codex page by page. Everywhere I pointed out an anomaly, they both professed to see nothing irregular. Of course they sent for the facsimile photos, which were in perfect accordance with the book, as I knew they would be. But Werner’s conviction was unshakable, and my opinion wasn’t worth much, compared with his. Ozren, who, as he said, had risked his life for the book, was adamant that any security breach was impossible. In the end, a rat’s tooth of self-doubt began to gnaw at me. Little hot beads of sweat broke out all over my skin. Maybe it was all the stress of the last few days: Mum’s accident, the shock of finding out about my father, the news about Alia. And something else. When I’d seen Ozren, his forlorn eyes, his exhausted face, I’d felt something. Something unfamiliar to me, but I knew what it was. I knew then that I’d come back to Sarajevo because of him, not just for the book. I’d been missing him, desperately. They say love is blind. I started to believe that I was seeing things.

At the end of the inspection, Ozren and Werner turned to me.

“Well, what do you want to do?” Ozren said.

“Do? Me? I want you to get a search warrant and check out every last jockstrap and handkerchief in Amitai’s suitcase. I want you to close the borders in case he’s already given the codex to an accomplice.”

“Hanna.” Ozren’s voice was low. “If we do these things, we will be creating an international incident over an allegation that both Dr. Heinrich, whose expertise is without question, and I, myself, believe to be false and without foundation. Because of the special tensions here, once such an allegation is made, certain people will chose to believe it, even if it proves groundless. You will be sowing intercommunal dissent over the very artifact that was meant to stand for the survival of our multiethnic ideal. And you will be making a fool of yourself, ruining your professional reputation. If you are completely and utterly convinced that you know better than Werner Heinrich, then go ahead, inform the UN. But the museum will not support you.” He paused, then delivered the hammer blow. “And I will not support you.”

I couldn’t talk anymore. I just looked from one to the other of them, and then at the book. I let my hand rest on the binding. The tips of my fingers sought the small area where I’d repaired the worn leather. I could just feel the minute ridge where the new fibers melded with the old.

I turned away then and walked out of the room.