On The Bookshelf
Robert Stone's "Damascus Gate" is a thriller set in Jerusalem.
SANDEE BRAWARSKY
Special to The _Jewish News
I
n the opening pages of Robert
Stone's new novel, Damascus
Gate (Houghton Mifflin; $26),
a majnoon, the Arabic word for
madman, runs wild in the streets of
the Old City of Jerusalem, spouting
words of faith that only he under-
stands.
"Every religion has majnoon," a
Greek Catholic bartender
later tells Christopher
Lucas, the expatriate
American journalist at the
center of the plot. Many
majnoon make appear-
ances in the novel,
although the borders
between madness, reality
and inspiration sometimes
blur.
A much-acclaimed nov-
elist, Stone is the author,
most recently, of Bear and
His Daughter, a collection
of stories, and of five previ-
ous novels, including Dog
Soldiers, set in Vietnam
and the winner of a
National Book Award, and
A Flag for Sunrise, set in a
Central American country
in the midst of revolution.
His novels, true to their
settings, explore questions
of belief and loyalty, but
Damascus Gate is the first
to probe Jewish religious
themes.
Set in 1992, Damascus
Gate is a thriller, a novel of
ideas and also a novel of
Jerusalem, "the center of the world,
where earth touches heaven." Lucas
has stepped back from daily journal-
ism to write a book about the
"Jerusalem Syndrome," a not uncom-
mon psychological ailment in which
visitors to Jerusalem become con-
vinced they've been summoned to the
city for some metaphysical purpose.
Sandee Brawarsky is a New York-
based freelance writer.
In a complex web of events, Lucas
gets to know a Jewish man from New
Orleans struck with the syndrome:
Adam DeKuff is a mystic in search of
ultimate redemption, hoisted to
Messiah-like status by his self-appoint-
ed disciple, Raziel Melker, described as
an "an athlete of perception."
An American-born musician and
son of a congressman, Melker has been
a yeshiva student, a follower ()flews for
Jesus and a heroin addict. Lucas falls in
Right: Robert Stone: [Jerusalem is]
`full of secrets on every level,
secular and religious."
love with Sonia Barnes, an American-
Jewish black woman, a singer, aid
worker and practicing Sufi who believes
DeKuff holds the deepest truths.
Almost every day, the skeptical
Lucas, whose father was Jewish and
mother a Catholic, is asked, in some
other context, whether he is a Jew.
Usually, he answers in a flip way —
depending on who's asking — but the
question stays with him, and
Jerusalem seems part of his own search
for meaning and identity.
Meanwhile, the intifitda is raging.
Scenes — filled with danger, suspense
and profound conversations — unfold
in the Gaza Strip, as well as in all quar-
ters of Jerusalem. Among the strongly-
drawn characters are Palestinians, for-
eigners doing aid work for nongovern-
mental organizations in the territories,
Christian fundamentalists, Jewish set-
tlers, an Israeli human-rights worker, a
Polish-born soldier of fortune.
Unknowingly, Lucas becomes
entangled in a terrorist conspiracy. A
network of right-wing Jews and pre-
millenarian Christians plan to blow up
the mosques on the Temple Mount in
order to begin the rebuilding of the
Temple, hastening messianic times;
they are joined by political manipula-
tors with their own agendas. The
novel's twists are as intriguing as the
city of Jerusalem itself.
In an interview from his home in
Key West, Fla., the Brooklyn-born
Stone, who teaches at Yale and spends
part of the year in Connecticut,
explains that he was inspired to do a
book set in Jerusalem the first time he
saw the city.
On a spring
morning in the
mid-1980s, he
arrived at dawn
and was really
struck by "the
sun on the rose-
colored stone."
The city — "full
of secrets on
every level, secu-
lar and reli-
gious" — was
"crowded with
people from all over, seeking their
spiritual or literary or individual for-
tunes. Nobody was indifferent.
Indifference was a condition that
hardly existed."
Much about this novel is realistic.
In fact, Stone says it is based on events
in the news, although the characters
and actions are all fictional. He thinks
readers may be surprised by the level
of "tactical cooperation" between ele-
ments of the PLO and the Shin Bet.
"It would be a mistake to take a pure
`good guys' and 'bad guys' approach to
the complex problems in the area," he
says, and notes that he feels hopeful
about the potential for peace.
Over the course of 10 years, Stone
made 7 trips to Israel, lodging in the
western part of Jerusalem, other times
in the eastern sector, or at hostels in
the Old City. Readers will appreciate
Stone's- knowing familiarity with the
city, from the feel of its alleyways to
the way its varied residents play
"Jerusalem poker, the game of mutual-
ly hostile invisibility" in public.
Stone, who was raised a Catholic
but left the church in early adulthood,
says that being neither Jew nor Muslim
was at first a barrier in getting people
to speak to him, but he overcame it.
Repeatedly, he had to explain himself,
which, he says, helped him keep his
perspective.
Commenting on his ability to
pierce through the surface, he says:
"You're on a trapeze. You think you
have it right. You have to trust that you
have." Indeed, Stone got it right, creat-
ing a 500-page novel that's hard to put
down.
In order to present the seekers'
philosophies, the author read Gershom
Scholem's books on Kabbalah and other
works. "I found it sublime; I couldn't get
enough," he says. To some extent, he
adds, he based the teachings of DeKuff
on those of Shabbatai Zevi, the 17th-
century false Messiah; Melker is his
Nathan of Gaza.
To Stone, religion is "a metaphor
of enormous power and truth."
Although his view of the world is reli-
gious, he says that he lacks "the gift of
faith." But because he understands the
perspective of faith, he's able to create
characters for whom religion matters.
Did he question his own faith — or
lack of it — while in Jerusalem?
"Every day." El
5/22
1998
95