I had to be vigilant. It was just common sense. The competition to uncover ancient texts was intense and sometimes attracted unscrupulous characters, people willing to lie, cheat, steal or worse. Knowing this did not stop me from doing my job, even if it meant I had to constantly be looking over my shoulder.  

The Levant in the summer can be an oven, so hot your lungs feel like they are on fire. 

The summer of 1954 was no different. I had spent the months of June, July and August searching monastery libraries and haggling with unreliable antiquities dealers. With money from my university department and my father, I was able to purchase a number of ancient religious documents that I hoped were interesting and genuine. 

On the difficult journey home I was constantly on the lookout for criminals. From Jordan I traveled by donkey, car and train to Aleppo, Syria where I boarded a ship to Milan. I then made my way across Europe by boat and train to Liverpool where I sailed aboard the MS Queen Elizabeth to Canada. Never once during these travels did I take my eyes off the small cardboard box that held my precious papers. Now back in Toronto I was looking forward to the start of the school year and time to conduct a thorough examination of the documents I’d purchased in the Holy Land.

On my first day back on campus my colleague Paul Wilson pulled up next to me as I exited my little Corvette C1. We’d parked on King’s College Circle across from Knox College. 

He gave my sports car a long admiring look. “Roy, seems sort of cramped to me,” he said with a smile.

I knew he envied my red Corvette. “Cramped? It’s got two seats. That’s all the room I need. The less weight the faster it moves. It has a top speed of nearly a hundred and twenty miles an hour,” I said, sounding both defensive and foolishly proud. “Even when it’s standing still it beats the tortoise you’re stuck in.” 

He was driving his father’s new Chevrolet Suburban station wagon, an ugly green box that didn’t fit the image of a stylish man of thirty. We’d been friends for years and I knew that, unlike myself, he did not come from a family of great means.

“Professor Karam will be hopping mad when he finds you’ve taken his usual parking spot.”

“He won’t be parking here again. Amir has moved on. He’s now at Princeton.”

“Lucky him.” Paul reflected for a moment then brightened up. “Oh, well he could be a nasty fellow, the way he spoke down to people. If you weren’t of use to him he had no time for you. I for one won’t miss him.”

“Yes, it’s true, great scholar but he was condescending at times and didn’t try to hide it.”

 “So, how about we meet for lunch?”  

“Sure, around noon at the faculty club?”

“Okay.”

And off Paul went, whistling. As usual he was fashionably dressed in a crisp fedora, loose tweed suit and blue and gray silk tie. It was of better quality than what most of the other teaching staff at the University of Toronto wore. I assumed he was trying to impress certain people. Perhaps it was because he worked with two of the few women graduate students at the U of T.  

I picked up the cardboard box from the passenger seat of my car. Careful not to shake it, I carried the carton of ancient papyri, paper and parchment up to my second floor office at University College. The Gothic Revival building was built along the lines of an imposing church but without a deity’s oversight or pity. 

I had been at my desk only a few minutes when Professor Lucas De Raad came in wearing a rumpled black suit and wide green tie over a substantial belly. 

“So I see my favourite lecturer is back from the Holy Land.” He pulled out a pack of Export ‘A’ cigarettes and offered me one. 

“I’ve decided to give it up,” I said. “My doctor tells me it worsens my colds and my wife says it makes my clothes stink.” 

Lucas had a reputation for treating everyone with empathy no matter how low on the academic totem pole they were. As a lecturer just having completed my PhD, I was on the lowest rung. Still he was unusually kind to me. I had been one of the Canadian soldiers that liberated the Netherlands and this gave me an advantage with the Dutch professor of Near Eastern studies.   

“Nancy’s opinion, I suspect, was the deciding factor in your giving up what is after all a pleasant habit.” He chuckled softly and took a deep puff, the smoke rising in a soft white cloud up to the high ceiling.  “And the box? Are those the scraps you wrote me about?”

“I hope they’re more than scraps.” 

He helped me clear my desk of everything; the lamp, leather desk blotter, bottle of ink and my Underwood typewriter. Together we laid out the carton’s contents of ancient texts on the table top.

We spent a few minutes in silence, cautiously looking through what I hoped was a treasure trove. 

“Ah,” Lucas said. “This one seems interesting.” He removed a magnifying glass from his suit pocket. Nodding his bald head, he began to examine a large piece of parchment that was mostly intact. 

“What is it?” I asked.

“From the parchment alone it is definitely a very old document. Based on the Arabic script I would guess Iraq mid eight to late nine hundreds. But don’t hold me to that assessment. One would need more time to investigate.” He fell silent. “It appears to be yet another version of Ibn Ishaq’s Life of Mohamed. As you know no two renditions are alike.” He sounded a little annoyed. “I’d bet money it’s Ibn Ishaq, but don’t quote me on that. Anyway I’ll leave you to it. I have a seminar beginning shortly.”

The rest of the morning was spent hunched over my desk, trying to sort out the documents. 

I met Paul for lunch at the busy faculty club.
“Here.” I handed him a manila envelope.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a gift, something I picked up for you.” 

He removed two large sheets of paper covered in tiny ancient Greek script. I handed him the magnifying glass I’d brought with me.

His jaw dropped. “It looks to me this comes from the Acts of Thecla.” He fell silent as he studied the documents. “Yes, I would say it’s Thecla but I’ve already found what looks like additions that are new to me.” He put the sheets down. “Thank you very much.” Getting half out of his chair he reached over the table and vigorously shook my hand. “But where did you find these?”

“In Jerusalem’s Old City. An Armenian recommended to me by Professor De Raad. I had hoped to find something in Aramaic or Hebrew but he had nothing of significance for me. By chance he mentioned these items. I’m glad to see you might find them useful.” I took a sip of my coffee. “Obtaining your texts was relatively easy. In my search I was forced to take a trip to the Jordan Valley. In Jericho I spent two sleepless nights in a hot and none too clean pilgrims’ hostel. It was only there I was finally able to find documents that might be of importance to me.”

“So what do Jericho and Jerusalem look like?” Paul said.

“Jericho is a dusty little town, a maze of narrow streets and small flat-roofed stone houses. As for Jerusalem, the Jordanians left all the Christian sites intact. Of course I visited, among other spots, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was nice to tour these places but all the Christian locations could use sprucing up.” I stopped to take a bite of my salmon. 

“The Muslim, Armenian and Christian quarters have not changed much since I was there in 1950. When the Jordanians took over they leveled most of the Jewish quarter. It remains an uninhabited jumble. On the Mount of Olives the Arabs took a hammer to the Jewish tombs.” Paul offered me a cigarette but I declined. “But now that things have more or less settled down between Jordan and Israel, it seemed safer than my last visit.” 

A short man in a black suit and tie approached our table. “Ho, ho, ho look who’s here.” With a muscular hand he patted first Paul then me on the back. Moe Haddad was a middle-aged scholar attached to the U of T’s Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies where he taught Aramaic and Arabic language. A gregarious man with a mop of auburn hair and his usual toothy smile, he seemed like an affable and approachable fellow. But he had a reputation for being a sometimes overly competitive academic. He was the author of many articles and three books on the subject of pre-Islamic Arabic literature. His output over the last decade had declined as had his reputation. One had to be cautious when dealing with him. 

“Roy, I’m told you’ve got some interesting manuscripts,” he said to me.

“Yes, Lucas must have been talking to you.”

“Of course. He said he didn’t know much about the documents so suggested I ask you. Anything there that might be up my alley?” 

“I’ve only just gotten back so I haven’t had much of a chance to look through them properly but if I see anything you might find of value, I’ll let you know.”

I had no intention of letting him know. There were people in my department I would sooner allow to be involved than Moe. He was not beyond taking credit for other people’s work. A year earlier Moe had submitted an article to the Journal of Near Eastern Studies implying that he was the principle researcher and author. In fact it was Amir Karan who had been the main researcher and not Moe Haddad. Amir didn’t officially complain having already arranged to leave the U of T for Princeton. 

After lunch with Paul, I had to put the papers I’d brought back from Jordan aside and begin preparing for the courses I was to start teaching in three weeks time.

That evening I told my wife, Nancy, about how kind Lucas De Raad had been to me.

“He’s a fine man,” she said. “It was so nice of him and his wife to have invited his grad students for supper twice last year. But the documents Dr. De Raad said might be important, who was this author Ibn Ishaq?”

I was wary of getting into too much detail since I was never sure if Nancy was really fascinated or merely being polite. “He wrote the first biography of Mohamed a hundred years or more after the Prophet’s death. Every subsequent biography of the man is based on Ibn Ishaq’s work. The Quran tells almost nothing about Mohamed’s life. Without the information in Ibn Ishaq’s book there would be no biographies of Mohamed. None.” 

“You mean there are no other sources from that period?”

“No. Even with Ibn Ishaq’s biography, it’s hard to know what is fact and what is fiction, his tale is full of miracles and magic. Not the kind of story one can easily accept as necessarily historical.”  

“Not like the Bible?” Nancy said.

 I detected a glint of mischief in my wife’s beautiful green eyes. It was impossible for me not to grin. She looked lovely wearing the gold chain and cross I’d bought for her in Jerusalem’s Old City. We were still newlyweds and I found anything she wore charming. 

“Let’s not get into that,” I said.

There had been Anglican ministers on both sides of our families for generations. I had an uncle who was an Anglican bishop in east Africa. But my studies had made it clear to me that religion must be seen from an impersonal, scientific point of view if one is to do proper work in the field. 

“Lucas, like most scholars of Islam, is convinced of Mohamed’s historicity so I think it’s best for me to accept that, at least until proven otherwise.”

Nancy shrugged her shoulders and got up from the sofa. “I’ll get supper on the table.”

“So shall we open a bottle of wine?” I said. “How about that Cabernet?” 

*****

My box of documents had come from a shady dealer in Jericho. Perhaps he’d over-charged me but then again, neither of us was all that certain of the importance of these papers. My Greek and Latin were only fair but I had a good handle on Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic. The parchments I bought in Jericho were written in Aramaic and Arabic. While I had left most of the papers in a locked cabinet in my office, I took home the nine Ibn Ishaq pages. 

Nancy and I lived in a small house on Melrose Avenue well away from the campus and interruptions. Upon examining the old texts under a strong light and magnifying glass I was at first disappointed to see just another copy, with minor variations, of Ibn Ishaq’s Life of Mohamed. There were holes in the parchment and some of the corners had broken off. The lettering was very small, as was usual and many of the remaining words were faded to the point of being nearly invisible. I was nevertheless able to decipher most of the document. I made note of every variation in the pages from any earlier copies that were known to me. These deviations could be of interest to experts in the field. My intention was to make them the subjects of scholarly articles I was anxious to write and see published. As they say in academia, it’s publish or perish and I intended to publish.     

I slipped into a trance scrutinizing my lucky finds. Nancy had to pull me away from my work.

“Roy, your supper is getting cold.”

After eating, Nancy and I washed the dishes. I then relaxed over a brandy. The summer heat was lifting in the late afternoon and we decided to go for a stroll. That evening I was too tired to return to studying my parchments and went to bed early. 

The next day following supper I returned to the Life of Mohamed. After a tedious hour of going over mostly well-known territory, I came across a remarkable discovery. My hands shook. I had to put down the magnifying glass. It seemed too good to be true. A forgery no doubt, an ancient forgery but still an important discovery. 

“Where’s the brandy?” I asked Nancy. It was getting late and she was in her nightgown preparing for bed.

“There isn’t any left, I’m afraid. Why?”

“I’m not sure if I need to celebrate or just calm my nerves.”

“Well, there’s that bottle of Teacher’s scotch on the bottom shelf next to the crystal vase.”

“That will do.”

“What’s it all about? It’s not like you.” 

“Let me first have that drink and we’ll look together.” I pointed to the two sheets in question. “It begins at the bottom of this page and continues at the top of the other. 

“In the middle of an Arabic narrative, an Aramaic text suddenly appears claiming to come from one of Mohamed’s wives. She says her tribe was attacked at night while asleep in a fort. The woman was kidnapped and forced to marry the Prophet. Here’s my rough translation.”

“…there…My father al-Haarith…me… Juwayriyha he said, if anything happens…look out …little brothers and sisters…dismissed his fears. Our com[munity] was guaranteed…by Mohamed so I slept well…that night…Khaybar for[tress]…betrayal…All the men were killed…too old to fight. They [slaugh]tered all the old women…mother. The y[oung] [wom]en and girls…distributed among…I was captured by Thaabit ibn Qays then sold to a mad man and…to marry him…violated like the [other] women…” 

“This Juwayriyha paragraph is very likely an ancient fake. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t of scholarly interest. The lines are in Aramaic and were inserted by someone into Ibn Ishaq’s Arabic language Life of Mohamed. These parchments don’t appear to be old enough to go back to the time of the Prophet that’s for sure. The style of script is similar to other documents I’ve seen that have been ascribed to somewhere between eight hundred and one thousand AD.”

“I’m not sure I understand why you would spend your time on something that is probably bogus,” Nancy said.  

“You’re right, there’s little chance of this interpolation being authentic but it still has value. The author of this insertion claims to be Mohamed’s seventh wife, Juwayriyha bint al-Haarith. It would have been a rare woman or man for that matter who could read and write at that time. There are many questions that need answers. Why and who wrote this? Who was their intended audience? What did they hope to achieve by it?” 

I felt uncomfortable talking to Nancy as if I were pleading my case. There were many problems with the document beyond what I told her. There was a real possibility the whole document was a recent forgery, all nine pages of this Life of Mohamed. The parchments could be ancient but the words on them written recently. They may have been cooked up in someone’s back room weeks ago, not centuries ago. “It is still an extraordinary find, I think.” My voice trailed off. It was clear from the frown on Nancy’s face she understood I had many doubts. 

“Don’t take chances with your career.” She brought her sweet face close to mine. “You’re a lecturer. You don’t have tenure. My advice would be, if you’re not absolutely certain this document is genuine or absolutely certain it’s a forgery, take time in researching it. Consider how it fits in with what is known, talk to your colleagues, talk to Professor De Raad and other experts in your department. Publishing an article prematurely would be a mistake, I believe.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

“Come,” she said taking my hand, “let’s go to bed and be naughty before I get too big.” She pointed to her stomach and giggled.

I placed the parchments in the filing cabinet in my home office and put them out of sight and out of mind. The next weeks were a whirlwind of activity preparing lectures and teaching courses. Some of my best students were veterans of the recently concluded Korean War. They had survived the bloody conflict and were keen to get on with life. I owed them my full attention. My examination of Juwayriyha’s story was placed on hold. It had waited hundreds of years and could wait a little longer.

It was October reading week before I was able to get back to working on what claimed to be Juwayriyha’s statement. I asked my friend Paul Wilson to come by my home for lunch and to bring his camera. He was an excellent photographer and had taken pictures of ancient documents in the past for his own work. Paul brought with his Hasselblad, a tripod and lights. He spent over an hour setting up and taking photos of my Ibn Ishaq’s Life of Mohamed parchments. The following day he returned with the negatives and three blown up copies of each photo he’d taken. I found the enlarged pictures easier to read than the originals. It was clear I had deciphered the nine pages of the Life of Mohamed correctly. 

I brought the originals and one set of the photos back to the university so that Dr. De Raad could have a good look. A photo of the first page of Juwayriyha bint al-Haarith’s testimony I mailed to Princeton University for Dr. Amir Karam’s opinion. 

Lucas cautioned me to not send a copy of page two, the most volatile part of the document. It spoke of her kidnapping and sexual slavery. Revealing this page to the academic world could make or break my career and had to be handled with skill.

A week later Amir phoned my house. “This is a remarkable find you have. I wish I could see it in person but based on the photo I believe you should act prudently. Publish this only after further research and consultation make clear what you are dealing with. I would caution you that many people will take offence if you suggest that the Juwayriyha bint al-Haarith section might have a historic basis. Do you understand my drift?” Long pause. “Be careful how you report your research results, not to expose yourself to ridicule or danger. Scorn is one thing, we’ve all been exposed to that, but violence is another.”

Professor De Raad and I worked diligently on an article regarding the Juwayriyha bint al-Haarith interpolation into Ibn Ishaq’s Life of Mohamed. We intended to submit our findings to a respected but somewhat obscure publication, The Journal of Levantine and Islamic Studies, published in Scotland by Leirce University.  

The Monday after reading week when I got to work I was astonished to find the door to my office ajar. How could that be? It was a heavy wooden door with a sturdy interior latch deadbolt. My heart raced as I stepped over the threshold. 

The office was a disaster. Papers covered the floor in heaps. The locked drawers of my desk and filing cabinet had been forced open. Who would do such a thing and why? I was speechless. 

By the entrance inside my office lay a ladder. When I raised my eyes I noticed the transom window over the door was open and one hinge broken. Someone using the ladder had entered from the hallway through this ventilation window, opened the door from the inside and slid the ladder into the room.

Just then Paul appeared carrying his photography equipment. I’d asked him to take pictures in my office of the other documents I’d brought back with me from Jordan.

 “What the hell’s this?” he said.

“Someone broke in.” 

I phoned the department head who in turn called the police. Two young policemen showed up, took down my statement and left. 

Together Paul and I carefully picked up all the documents from the floor. I frantically searched for my precious parchments, Ibn Ishaq’s Life of Mohamed, but could not find them. The pages had disappeared including Juwayriyha bint al-Haarith’s account of her abduction and forced marriage. They were gone, all gone! 

In the late afternoon a handyman who worked for the university arrived. Ted Evans and I had spoken a number of times over the years. A garrulous man in his sixties, he kept on chattering about his daughters and their idiot husbands as I stood in a daze watching him. He repaired the transom window and the locks on the filing cabinet and desk. As he was about to leave he turned to me and said, “When you see Dr. Karam give him my regards.”

“I don’t know when I’ll be seeing him. He’s living in New Jersey you know.”

“But I saw him here earlier this morning. Very early really, about seven. He was getting into his car, leaving.”

“You must be mistaken.”

“Oh, no. It was him alright, tall, thin wearing his usual beige fedora with a leather ribbon above the brim. I waved but he didn’t seem to notice me. He was driving a new Ford with New Jersey plates. Poor man was walking with a limp. I don’t recall him having a limp.”

“Was he carrying anything?”

“Just his tan satchel.” 

---

Abe Margel worked in rehabilitation and mental health for thirty years. He is the father of two adult children and lives in Thornhill, Ontario with his wife. His fiction has appeared in Half Hour to Kill, UPPAGUS, Ariel Chart, Fiction on the Web, Scarlet Leaf Review, Academy of the Heart and Mind, 2020 and 2021 BOULD Awards Anthology and the Spadina Literary Review.