On this page I'm going to put extracts of some of my work.
This is part of chapter three of
'A Man ~Out of Time'.
Eliezer floats peacefully on his back, resting his left hand on the stump of the mast, gazing up in idle contentment at the violet lightening which pierces the rotating sky. Sometimes he rises above the gentle sea and rests there for a moment before sinking back down into the warm welcoming embrace of the water. He watches in some puzzlement as a shiny bird flies overhead, trailing four distinct plumes of smoke behind it, leaving a clear trail in the blue but slightly dirty sky. He wonders for a moment how the sky can be both clear blue and dirty, but there is so much more to claim his attention. There is no sound except the gentle lapping of the waves sparkling in the sunlight Miriam reaches across from the low couch she is laying on to an ornately-carved low table and smilingly passes him a date, dripping with honey. The Nubian girl dressed as an Egyptian Mummy with amazingly coloured feet also smiles at him through the transparent wrapping around her face as she reaches above his head and does something he cannot quite see. Water slowly drips into his arm through a long, snake-like pipe he can see through. He can watch the water running down the pipe into his left arm, or rather he notices the pipe disappear into a white wrapping on his left arm, which he now sees is tied to the stump of the mast that, as he looks at, it takes on the appearance of a frame made of some sort of green, hard material. Eliezer thinks this cannot be. He thinks perhaps he is dead but this is no afterlife like any he has heard of and besides he is in pain and surely the afterlife contains no pain? He ponders his situation whilst Miriam plays a harp, which distracts him and makes pondering difficult because Miriam has never played a harp before. He feels pride that he has chosen a woman of so many hitherto hidden even unsuspected talents, to be his wife, as he watches her float above the couch, dancing in the air playing the harp whilst the Nubian girl attaches another snake-like transparent pipe to his arm and smiles at him through the transparent wrapping around her face. He now notices that she is not wrapped like a mummy, but rather is clothed in a white, loose-fitting one piece cloth which hangs down from the top of her head, covering both the front and back of her body, divides around her legs and seems to be too big for her, her head seeming out of proportion to the rest of her body until he notices that as she turns her head the cloth covering her head doesn’t turn with it. as if the whole suit of clothes is being somehow held away from her body. The man with the neatly trimmed beard also smiles at him as he floats companiably alongside Eliezer. Sometimes he floats above him, always smiling but looking somehow serious at the same time. Eliezer wonders about the strange white helmet the man is wearing; a little like a soldier’s helmet but not like one he has seen before. This one has a transparent visor that comes down to below the mans’ nose. Eliezer can quite clearly see his face. It seems to him to be a friendly face. The man is wearing bulky orange clothes, a little like the Nubian girls covering, but he has a breastplate of some sort on, although Eliezer doesn’t think it is a metal breastplate. The man now suddenly leaning over him bends forward, and looking down at him stares intently into his face. He speaks.
“Ma shimka?”
Eliezer smiling at him, not understanding but thinking the sound and rhythm of the words are familiar. He wants him to say more words because nobody says any words to him that sound familiar, they only smile. Or stare without smiling. Eliezer nods to encourage the man.
“Meayin ata?”
Eliezer beams at the man in delight, this is splendid. He feels sure he will be able to understand the man if only the noise from above them would stop. The mans face abruptly becomes that of one much younger, who swiftly and without smiling or speaking wraps Eliezer in a sort of leather harness which is not leather but something else then straddles his body as the noise becomes deafeningly painful and the wind beats down on them and they are lifted up towards heaven.
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Saul looked across at Dr Ngosi Williamson and shook his head.
“Can’t you reduce the sedation a little? I’m not certain but I think there was a glimmer of understanding there”.
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Like it? How about this, an extract from the same book, chapter four.
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A warm early morning in London. The office looks over the river Thames that is just beginning to come alive with water traffic. No tourist sight-seeing boats as yet but some barges are on the move and the newly instigated water-taxis are moving early commuters to their places of work. Coffee and croissants in an office in the imposing steel and glass Century House that commands a reasonable view of the River Thames.
An agitated Professor Adrian Smethurst, a gifted and world-renowned lecturer at the London School of Middle Eastern Studies, who had been almost physically dragged from his bed at some bloody ungodly hour of the bloody morning and bloody dragged to bloody Century House with hardly any bloody explanation, looks daggers at the man in front of him.
“And exactly how the bloody hell do you think I’m going to be able to advise you on the possible implications for the governments middle-eastern policy if all you tell me is that some unspecified man may have unspecified possible knowledge of something? You bloody people bloody amaze me, you really do! And this is what you call breakfast, is it?”
Pilkington, a neat, precise man who thinks and reasons in a neat and precise fashion, sighs inwardly. He’s consulted Smethurst before and knows that he’ll have to sit through the invective because amongst it will be some pure gold ….. or possibly not in this instance as he can’t actually tell Smethurst anything of substance on which to cogitate. In point of fact, he thinks Smethurst has uncharacteristically neatly and precisely summed up the situation; and he always has coffee and croissants in the morning so yes, this is what he calls breakfast.
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Mid morning in a slightly shabby office in a non-descript office building that commands a fine view of another non-descript office building in a slightly shabby back street of Tel Aviv. The morning Sun has already made its mark on the temperature and the air-conditioning unit has its work cut out to keep the office at a comfortable temperature. That it is able to do so is because the unit is virtually brand-new, somewhat out of keeping with its surroundings.
Dr Shimon Barron looks up from the sheet of paper he has been studying.
“ I don’t understand. What possible advice can I give you?”
The man opposite glances over at the third occupant of the office who is apparently deeply engrossed in looking at a stain on the wall, and then shrugs.
“Just think out loud,” he suggests. Barron looks again at the sheet.
“What’s to think about. What we have here, apparently, is a report on a man called Eliezer who lived and hence in the normal course of events should have died approximately three thousand years ago. The man comes from, or came from perhaps should one say, a place called Suur that is not notable for anything in particular except that excavations have shown it to have been a smallish settlement on the coast of the ancient Kingdom of Tyre, now part of modern-day Lebanon. This man, impossibly, has been shipwrecked off the coast of Cornwall, in the UK and is now in isolation in the Royal Naval Dockyard at Devenport. Clearly impossible.”
“Ah, but what if it was possible? Try thinking laterally, my dear Doctor. Let your mind wander, as it will. Talk to me as your mind wanders.”
Barron frowns slightly, and then clears his throat.
“What is surprising, if we take this at face value for a moment and totally suspend our critical judgement, is that this man appears to be/have been? A ship-owner …… now look, this is getting confusing, I’m going to speak as though I totally believe what’s written on this piece of paper, which believe me I don’t.” The studier of the stain looks directly at him and nods.
“”Alright, well I hope that you’re not interested on my thoughts about time travel because I don’t have any except to say I think it’s probably impossible. My field of expertise is the impact of archaeologically ‘uncomfortable’ discoveries that differ radically from the previously accepted wisdom on any particular area and those discoveries’ effect on modern perceptions of the ancient world and how they may affect present day political or religious thought. Now, leaving aside anything that may or may not have occurred later than three thousand years ago, let me briefly summarise what the situation purports to be. An Israelite, three thousand years ago, so that’s roughly during the reign of either David or Solomon, sets up as a merchant and ship owner in a small village by the sea in the neighbouring kingdom of Tyre.”
The other two both nod, almost in unison. Barron is a gifted lecturer who has clearly marshalled his thoughts and is about to share them.
“Now, there are just a couple of problems with this, as we understand the political and economic situation of those times. The main problem, although I can think of a possible situation that might circumnavigate it, is that the kingdom of Tyre was a Phoenician kingdom. The Phoenicians were not a great martial nation but they were a great seafaring and trading nation. They survived by bending with the wind and making themselves virtually indispensable to any invaders. If you invaded Phoenicia, which incidentally didn’t exist as such but rather was a collection of small city-states, tribally-linked, who we now appreciate cooperated very, very closely but also very discreetly with each other, you found yourself being over-whelmed by offers of help. For example, should you have a need to transport your army anywhere by sea, the Phoenicians could do that for you. You might, as an occupying force, compel them to do so but for a reasonable fee they would arrange to provision your army, provide logistical support and advice pertaining to naval warfare. This arrangement made so much sense to the various invading armies of those times that there was a documented instance where the Persians wanted to attack a city that the Phoenicians had a trading treaty with. The Phoenicians refused, politely and cautiously to be sure but nevertheless still refused, to transport the Persians. Amazingly, the Persians accepted the refusal.” He pauses, looking round the room expectantly. The stain-admirer goes to the water dispenser and brings him a cup.
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“Look Adrian, I know this is all terribly vague, but imagine for a moment that, oh let’s say some historical facts came to light that might effect the internal politics of a major regional power in the Middle East.”
“Historical facts? What bloody historical facts? Which major bloody regional power are you referring to, Israel, Egypt?”
“Israel.”
Smethurst looks genuinely puzzled.
“What possible historical facts could possibly affect modern day politics in a mainly secular state? Have any such unsuspected historical facts come to light?”
“Nooo, but it is entirely possible that they may.”
Despite himself Smethurst is intrigued.
Surely everything is known about the founding of the State of Israel in 1948? Any unknown historical facts are likely to involve, what? A hitherto unsuspected agreement with a neighbouring Arab state? Well if that were the case then the agreement doesn’t appear to have been very successful and how would that affect internal politics in Israel? Surely a situation like that would cause more internal grief to an Arab government? He shares his thoughts.
Barron drains the plastic cup and holds it out to be refilled.
“I presume you don’t want me to go into a mass of historical detail about the Phoenician city-states so let me cut to the chase, as I see it. The Phoenicians were a pretty tightly knit bunch that tended to keep outsiders at arms length, except when they wanted to make money out of them.” He laughs sardonically; “does that remind you of anybody else’s reputation Gentlemen? Therein lies the seed of a possible problem for modern-day religious perceptions, but I’ll come to that in a moment. This”, tapping the sheet of A4 paper on the desk in front of him, “is unlikely because the Phoenicians would not welcome an Israelite, an outsider, muscling in on their act. I could envisage an Israelite settling in a Phoenician trading city in order to facilitate the transhipment of good; mind you, historically the Phoenicians tended to establish enclaves in other peoples territory and handled the distribution from trading-ship-to-shore and onward forwarding of goods themselves. It is possible that they would tolerate an outsider handling the forwarding of trading goods, possibly if the outsider married into a Phoenician family” …….he pauses…..then continues but more to himself than to the others……. “but why would an Israelite trader settle in a small village and not the main city of Tyre itself? Maybe the goods were transhipped from Tyre to Suur then onwards ……no, that doesn’t make much logistical sense……mind you, Tyre is on an island so the goods would have to be transported to the mainland at some point, but why not further south…. Ach, none of this makes much sense; the obvious thought, would Israel have goods to trade with Tyre and hence this is a sort of reverse-enclave ….. but what goods did Israel export to Tyre? None that are mentioned in any conventional sources, it all seems to be trade the other way ……. Solomon did cede territory to Hiram, king of Tyre so maybe this Eliezer became a Tyrean subject and hence it was acceptable for him to set up a trading operation?” He drums his fingers on the table. “Possible, possible, but Hiram didn’t think much of the cities Solomon ceded to him….”
The one behind the desk softly coughs, Barron focuses on him.
“I need to think this through. I can see several possibilities here”.
“ And no doubt all intriguing, but what effect might any of this have on us today?”
“Well for one there is a train of thought backed by some very dubious archaeological evidence, if it can be called evidence, that maintains somehow the Phoenicians were part of the Tribes of Israel. The supporters of this theory espouse the idea that that Eretz Y’Israel was never promised to Moses by God because we already occupied a part of it, hence it ‘belonged’ to us anyway. If one were to accept that idea or something came to light which indicated the Israelites had maintained a presence in the area outside of Egypt then the religious justification for the State of Israel, namely that it was promised us by God, would be somewhat invalidated in the eyes of the Ultra Orthodox. Therefore”, he pauses for breath; “support for the political entity that is the modern State of Israel amongst the ultra orthodox would most likely fade away, making the country ungovernable. The other side of that particular coin goes something like this….”
***************************************
Pilkington shakes his head.
“Forget any secret agreements concerned with the foundation of the modern state, Adrian. Can you envisage anything in the distant past that might have a profound effect on the present day if what is accepted history turned out to be untrue or wildly inaccurate?”
Smethurst laughs. “Exactly what the bloody hell are we talking about here?”
“Can’t tell you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“A bit of both, but mainly can’t.”
“Then I don’t see that I can give you any bloody advice at all, so if that’s it I’ll take myself off and get a decent breakfast,” he half rises.
“Wait. Three thousand years ago.”
“What?”
“The situation in the area three thousand years ago. Suppose a new light was cast on those times?
Incidentally, what was the situation in those times?”
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Barron now has the full attention of both the others and unconsciously registering this, he realises he might be following a thread they want him to follow.
“The other side to that argument has two parts. The first is the implication that the Israelites were responsible for the invention of the alphabet, which at the moment is credited to the Phoenicians. I’m talking about a written alphabet here, using twenty two individual letters to make up words, not some form of hieroglyphics like the Egyptians used. The logic is that if the Phoenicians were really Israelites who happened not to be living in Israel-proper at the time then the Phoenicians didn’t invent the alphabet because the Phoenicians didn’t really exist. The second part of the argument leads directly on from that, and this is where it could cause a lot of trouble. If the Phoenicians, whose descendants went on to become Lebanese, were really Israelites, then Israel has a historical claim on Lebanese territory.” He holds up a hand,
“I know; I know. Absurd. Tenuous in the extreme….. But it could be used by those who espouse a Greater Israel concept …….. those who insist on talking about Judea and Samaria ……he drifts into momentary silence. Possible …..it is possible the supposition that the Israelites and by extension modern-day Israel has a claim on Arab land might actually unite the ardent Zionists and the Ultra Religious….. the former espousing the idea of a Greater Israel as a political goal with historical justification and the latter seeing the establishment of a Greater Israel as some sort of divine sign that Israel should return to of theocratic state.”
“Rubbish.”
“Yes, quite. But when did an idea being rubbish ever prevent it from being used as a rallying call?”
“Ah.”
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“Three thousand years ago? Well, a lot of information that we do have comes from the Old Testament, which makes it automatically suspect. Oh, alright then if you’re going to bloody insist on this; Israel was a united country, firstly under King David, you remember, the young shepherd who felled Goliath with a bloody slingshot for chrisssake, then his son, Solomon, the one who wanted to cut the baby in half.”
Pilkington knows him well enough to appreciate Smethurst is being deliberately, provocatively, flippant and doesn’t rise to the bait.
“Oh, soddit, give me some more bloody coffee. According to a variety of sources, David re-unites the tribes of Israel, mainly by force, and then uses this union to attack neighbouring territories, amalgamating them into a sort of Greater Israel. His son, Solomon, inherits this expanded territory and proceeds to consolidate it by the usual methods, trade agreements and marriage. Unfortunately he doesn’t seem to have been as wise as he’s made out to be and he alienates……..hang on a bloody minute, something just occurs to me.”
“We were hoping it might.”
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And finally, just a bit of chapter six. The book contains twenty eight chapters so trust me I'm not giving much away.
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Edelman waited for the call to come through from Century House. The only son of Moses and Lena Edelman, born in Cyprus, in a British Concentration Camp that history and the British preferred to refer to as a transit resettlement camp, he had grown up in Tel Aviv. Moses, an Orthodox Jew, had had his faith severely tested in the Warsaw ghetto. As a young man blessed with a quick, enquiring mind, once the Nazis enclosed the ghetto he began to question what his stance should be. The Nazi atrocities in Babi Yar, coupled with the growing knowledge of the purpose of the camps which had been set up throughout Poland opened his eyes; wide. Being a young man, doing nothing but pray for salvation didn’t appeal, even though the Rabbis advocated that course of action. He certainly wasn’t a socialist but found some of the Zionist ideas appealing. Although he didn’t realise it at the time, he was in his own way rebelling against the straightjacket of Orthodox Judaism. Had the Nazis not crashed into the life of the Jewish community in Poland, he often thought in his later years that he would have drifted away from the ritual observance of his parents. As it was, realising at the tenth hour what was being planned for the Jews of Europe he became determined to somehow save himself and his family. A realist from an early age he regarded physically resisting the Nazis as pointless in the sense that it could only lead to death and what was important, surely, was life, but at the same time he rejected the idea of ‘keeping his head down’ and hoping for the best. Finding the Jewish community hopelessly divided over what course of action should be followed, he made his own plans. After slipping out of the Ghetto several times to test the waters, so to speak, he came to the conclusion that most Poles, with a few exceptions, were at best ambivalent to the fate of the Jewish community in their midst, German propaganda persuading many that the fact of the occupation was all the fault of the Jews and re-enforcing their anti-Semitism. Moses Edelman made his own arrangements for himself and his family to escape to Sweden. He put it to the family after the deportations began that they should leave; now. His parents refused, his older brother deferred to the judgement of the Rabbis and his younger sister stunned the family by announcing she was a Zionist and would be actively fighting with the resistance group which was just then being formed. Edelman displayed the clarity of thought and sense of purpose that he was to pass on to his son. He left the Ghetto; he left his family, vowing to reach Palestine, somehow help them and start a new life. His brother vanished without trace, his parents perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and his beloved ‘baby sister’ was caught and executed by the Nazis whilst trying to smuggle bread into the ghetto.
Moses met Lena Goldman in the camp in Cyprus. Her parents, well to do, sophisticated and middle class from Emmen, a small community in the North East of Holland and uncomfortably close to the border with Germany, had sent her elder sister to England in late 1938 on the pretext of furthering her English language skills, foreseeing the disaster that was about to befall Europe in general and the Jewish community in particular. The plan was for Lena to join her sister after Elsa had found some form of employment. Fate in the twin guises of British policy towards European Jews and the Nazis arriving in Holland intervened. A neighbour agreed to take Lena in and hide her but could not or would not help the parents. Arrangements were made by the parents to disperse the family possessions amongst non-Jewish friends and neighbours, and then they too vanished into the Nazi death camps following deportation from their native Holland. Her mother was murdered on arrival in Treblinka, her father survived until the end of the war, but tragically and ironically died in Bergen- Belsen two days after it had been liberated. The two sisters had been re-united briefly after Holland was freed from the Nazi occupation, Elsa begging Lena to return with her to England where she had married and was now a naturalised British citizen. After an emotional week, the sisters having some family possessions returned to them by neighbours whilst others professed friendship and sympathy served them afternoon coffee and cakes on what the girls recognised as their family crockery, Lena decided that her future lay outside of Europe, in Israel. Intercepted by the British whilst attempting a landing on a beach in what was to become Northern Israel from a barely seaworthy, beaten-up Greek tramp steamer, Lena found herself in Cyprus.
Thus it was that Moritz Edelman, the only son of Lena and Moses Edelman, late of the British resettlement camp in Cyprus, waited with impatience in his office in Tel Aviv for his call to be taken by Bernard Watson, his counterpart in Century House London. That Watson’s father had been a junior officer in the resettlement camp in Cyprus, was not known for his sympathy towards the Jewish refugees desperately attempting to reach Palestine and had in fact physically assaulted Moses Edelman on one occasion was known only to Moritz Edelman, who could not under any circumstances be described as an Anglophile. Would he make any effort to preserve British dignity or would he rub Watson’s nose in it? He supposed if he could retain a pragmatic approach dealing with the Palestinian so-called security service, knowing that Palestinians taught in their schools that one day the Jews would be pushed into the sea he could be pragmatic with the British. But he could perhaps have just a little fun.
“Bernard, my dear chap. How are you?”
Watson in actual fact wasn’t feeling particularly chipper. He’d worked out that not only was their ‘tame rabbi’ in Devenport probably not so tame but that also the breach in security had another source. If that wasn’t irritating enough, it seemed likely that the Israelis, in the shape of the man on the other end of the phone line, had information from an American source that might or might not be official but almost certainly concerned data from the American satellite in geosynchronous orbit above the Western Approaches. Data that were never shared with the British. The Americans were vague in the extreme about what this satellite’s purpose actually was and this effusive greeting from a man he professionally, albeit grudgingly admired but personally disliked didn’t make him feel any better.
“Fine, fine thank you Moritz”, with the ‘T’ softened to the point that it sounded like he was calling the other ‘Morris’. ”What can I do for you?”
“More a case of what I can do for you, old boy;” Edelman’s ‘English accent’ was pure Dick Van Dyke phoney baloney Cockney and a source of much amusement amongst his three children and now seven grandchildren; he knew it sounded like a foreigner putting on a fake Cockney accent; he reckoned it would irritate the hell out of the ‘proper and correct’ Watson. He was absolutely correct.
“Bernard, I ah, I have some information about an unusual event in your part of the world and perhaps I can share it with you, always assuming you’re not already well aware of it, of course?” No trace of Dick Van Dyke now. All business.
“Oh, really? Well perhaps if you could give me some indication about what this unusual event was then I can tell you if I know anything about it”. Both men were being guarded, but as yet neither was recording the conversation.
“The event involves a person who is an Israeli citizen; a completely innocent bystander who is, as you British put it, helping you with your enquiries”.
“An Israeli citizen you say, interesting”.
“Yes, well you know us, any Jew is a potential Israeli citizen; but as it happens this person, although living” a brief but obvious pause for emphasis” or having lived, in another land is a citizen of the Kingdom of Israel”.
“Now, I may be incorrect in this Moritz, but I was under the impression that your Head of State was usually referred to as ‘Mr President’? Have you been taking a leaf out of our book and discovered some sort of royalty?”
Damn, damn, damn the man. Stop this irritating verbal fencing and get to the point.
“Well these days”, again the pause for emphasis,” of course it is, as you said, ‘Mr President’.
