Decker nodded.
The professor waited for Decker to say something but he remained impassive. “Was there something else behind the drawing?”
“What do you mean, behind?”
“Underneath. Like Palimpsest.”
“Why?” asked Decker. He did not know where the Professor was going.
Then Hassan told him that one of the most basic tenets of Arabic architecture was the focus on the inside, as opposed to the outside of a building. Rarely did a façade of a Muslim building give any indication of the organization within. Indeed, hidden architecture could be considered the dominant motif of Islamic architecture.
“That’s often the function of calligraphic texts,” explained Hassan, “to identify the purpose of a building.”
“But Western buildings use calligraphy,” Decker said. “I remember a book I had when I was a kid about the Notre Dame cathedrals. Calligraphy isn’t unique to Islamic architecture.”
“Perhaps not. But while European architecture is created as a balanced plan, Islamic architecture shows no such characteristic. Indeed, there is a kind of dissolution of this balanced plan, its… ” He paused for a moment, struggling for the word. “… absorption into a maze of additional structures which accumulate around the nucleus of the original design. Like crystals.”
“Crystals?”
“Exactly. And like crystals, there is a basic geometrical organization to this growth. Islamic architectural drawings are executed across a grid of squares, which represent the structural modules of the plan. Simple divisions of the basic grid determine all the dimensions, such as those of the dado, the door, the doorframe, the rows of upper windows, and so on. The walls form a perfect cube, while the height of the dome corresponds to the diagonal of the generating square. This is almost universal in Islamic architecture. Proportioning is based primarily on arcs drawn from the diagonals of squares to give ratios of one to the square root of two — the ‘Golden Ratio,’ as Pythagoras called it.”
“I’ve heard of that. That’s Phi,” said Decker. “It’s used in Western architecture too. Like at Monticello, in Virginia. The house that Thomas Jefferson built.”
“The formula was carried back by the Crusaders from the Middle East,” Hassan said with a nod. “The masons who built the Gothic cathedrals of France used the same ratio. And Jefferson was a freemason. Freemasons are the intellectual and spiritual cousins of the original medieval masons.”
Decker closed the book and handed it back to Hassan. The professor had been so reluctant to speak at first, and now he could scarcely contain himself. It was clear why he was legendary as an academic, and why he was so often sought after as an expert on Islam. A lifelong, ferocious advocate on behalf of the Palestinians, he made great copy, a dramatic yet incredibly well-researched and well-balanced counterpoint to the pro-Israel intellectuals he so often combated on TV. Not only was his knowledge of Middle Eastern politics considerable; not only did he serve, from time to time, as an advisor to PLO General Secretary Mahmoud Abbas himself; not only was he an architect of the American Muslim sensibility, but he was charged with passion, driven by a deep abiding interest in, and a great love for all facets of Islamic cultural history.
“The very possibility of enlarging a given structure,” Hassan said, “in almost any direction by adding units of every conceivable shape and size to the original scheme, totally disregarding the form of the original structure, is a characteristic that Islamic architecture shares with no other major culture. Furthermore, the multitude of decorative treatments goes hand in hand with this non-directional plan, the tendency toward an infinite repetition of individual units — bays, arches, columns, passages, courtyards, doorways, cupolas, what have you.”
He sighed and leaned against the wall. He stared at the fallow garden. “Islamic art is an art of repose, Agent Decker, intellectual more than emotional, resolving tensions by design. Patterns are limited to well-defined areas but are, at the same time, infinite — in the sense that they have unlimited possibilities of extension. Water and light are also of paramount importance since they generate additional layers of patterns, and help to transform space. It is this variety and richness of decoration, with its endless permutations, that characterizes Islamic buildings rather than their structural elements. In the Islamic context, these infinitely extensible designs have been interpreted as visual demonstrations of the singleness of God. His presence everywhere. Indeed, Islamic architecture is like the Qur’an itself. There are those who think there is little order in the sequence of the Qur’an. In truth, those who reflect upon the flow discover not one order, but a multiplicity of orders in the sequence and juxtaposition of its Sura, depending upon the character of their quest.”
Professor Hassan stiffened. Decker heard voices and a group of students began to file in through a door at the far side of the cloister. He could hear French — Parisian French. Hassan began to fiddle with his briefcase. He slipped the two volumes back inside, slammed the case shut, and clambered to his feet. Decker stood beside him. “No, no, sit down,” Hassan said, hissing through his teeth. “I’ll contact you again,” he added, moving off.
Decker watched the Professor amble slowly down the portico, gazing lackadaisically at paintings and woodcuts on the walls. The students buzzed, and swerved, and swirled around him. Then he vanished through a portico into the Late Gothic Hall.
After a few minutes, when the students had passed by, Decker circled around the other way, past the Early Gothic Hall, the Pontaut Chapter House and Langon Chapel, moving backwards through time. He made his way along a long stone corridor, down several flights of stairs, and finally exited in front of the museum.
The sky was cloudy and white. It looked like it was going to snow. He started walking back along the promontory toward his car. Decker could see the distant Hudson River far below the palisades, studded with blocks of ice, chugging lethargically along, and it brought to mind the Mississippi, Iowa and home. Or, what had once been home. The Quad Cities hadn’t changed much over the last decade; yet they seemed so far away now, so alien and small — just as the tapestries remained predominantly the same; only the audience was different.
Then, out of nowhere, he remembered what Warhaftig had told him the first time they had met: El Aqrab is no ordinary killer.
But how a poor kid from south Lebanon, the son of a part-time electrician, could be the same man who had learned to paint with fire, to illuminate the Qur’an with incendiary pain and death, with a calligraphy of flames, Decker simply couldn’t fathom. It was indeed a mystery, as inscrutable as those initials on the tapestries within.
Chapter 17
The three mules of Gulzhan Baqrah arrived in Syria early Sunday morning — hungry, dusty and ground down by the road. It had taken them more than twenty-five hours of non-stop travel to make the journey from Kazakhstan to Rasht in Iran, then by land in separate cars and trucks and even, for a few hours, on horseback through the mountainous regions of northern Iraq, before finally arriving in Damascus. They traveled along separate paths to a small, non-descript apartment building just south of Al Shouhada Square, where a young man named Ghazi Khadeja greeted them. Khadeja did not know much about the operation other than the fact that the three men were important friends of Gulzhan Baqrah. The men washed up and had a hearty meal of lamb and raisins and falafel bread.
Just before noon, as the sound of the muezzins called the faithful to prayer, a man arrived at the apartment. His name was Moustapha. Tall and skinny with a scruffy thin black beard, Moustapha carried a message from Gulzhan Baqrah for each of the three mules — their instructions for the next leg of their journeys. Within an hour following the noonday prayers, the mules were packed and ready for the road, assembled in a little courtyard behind the apartment building.