was a famous rarity, a lavishly illuminated Hebrew manuscript made at a time when Jewish belief was firmly against illustrations of any kind. It was thought that the commandment in Exodus “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or likeness of any thing” had suppressed figurative art by medieval Jews. When the book came to light in Sarajevo in 1894, its pages of painted miniatures had turned this idea on its head and caused art history texts to be rewritten.
At the beginning of the Sarajevo siege in 1992, when the museums and libraries became targets in the fighting, the codex had gone missing. The Bosnian Muslim government had sold it to buy arms, one rumor said. No, Mossad agents had smuggled it out through a tunnel under the Sarajevo airport. I never believed either scenario. I thought that the beautiful book had probably been part of the blizzard of burning pages—Ottoman land deeds, ancient Korans, Slavic scrolls—that had fallen in a warm snow upon the city after the flames of phosphorous bombs.
“But, Amitai, where’s it been the past four years? How did it turn up?”
“You know it’s Pesach, right?”
As a matter of fact I did; I was still nursing the ragged end of a red wine hangover from the raucous and highly unorthodox Passover picnic that one of my mates had hosted on the beach. The name for the ritual meal in Hebrew is seder, which means order; this had been one of the more disorderly nights in my recent history.
“Well, last night the Jewish community in Sarajevo had their seder, and in the middle of it—very dramatic—they brought out the haggadah. The head of the community made a speech saying that the survival of the book was a symbol of the survival of Sarajevo’s multiethnic ideal. And do you know who saved it? His name is Ozren Karaman, head of the museum library. Went in under intense shelling.” Amitai’s voice suddenly seemed a bit husky. “Can you imagine, Channa? A Muslim, risking his neck to save a Jewish book.”
It wasn’t like Amitai to be impressed by tales of derring-do. An indiscreet colleague had once let drop that Amitai’s compulsory army service had been in a commando squad so supersecret that Israelis refer to it only as “the unit.” Even though that was long in his past when I first met him, I’d been struck by his physique, and by his manner. He had the dense muscle of a weight lifter and a kind of hypervigilance. He’d look right at you when he was talking to you, but the rest of the time his eyes seemed to be scanning the surroundings, aware of everything. He’d seemed genuinely pissed off when I’d asked him about the unit. “I never confirmed this to you,” he’d snapped. But I thought it was pretty amazing. You certainly don’t meet that many ex-commandos in book conservation.
“So what did this old bloke do with the book once he had it?” I asked.
“He put it in a safe-deposit box in the vault of the central bank. You can imagine what that’s done to the parchment.… No one in Sarajevo’s had any heat through at least the last two winters…and some metal cash box…metal, of all things…it’s back there now.… I can’t bear to think about it. Anyway, the UN wants someone to inspect its condition. They’re going to pay for any necessary stabilization work—they want to exhibit it as soon as possible, to raise the city’s morale, you know. So I saw your name on the program for next month’s conference at the Tate, and I thought that, while you are coming to this side of the world, maybe you could fit this job in?”
“Me?” My voice actually squeaked. I don’t go in for false modesty: I’m great at what I do. But for a job like this, a once-in-a-lifetime career maker, there were at least a dozen people with more years on the clock and better connections in Europe. “Why not you?” I asked.
Amitai knew more about the Sarajevo Haggadah than anybody alive; he’d written monographs on it. I knew he would have loved this chance to handle the actual codex. He gave a deep sigh. “The Serbs have spent the past three years insisting that the Bosnians are fanatical Muslims, and finally, maybe, a few Bosnians have started to believe them. Seems the Saudis are big donors there now, and there was opposition to giving the job to an Israeli.”
“Oh, Amitai, I’m sorry.…”
“It’s all right, Channa. I’m in good company. They didn’t want a German either. Of course, I suggested Werner first—no offense.…” Since Herr Doktor Doktor Werner Maria Heinrich was not only my teacher, but also, after Amitai himself, the leading Hebrew manuscripts specialist in the world, I was hardly likely to take any. But Amitai explained that the Bosnians were still carrying a grudge against Germany for setting off the war in the first place, by recognizing Slovenia and Croatia. “And the UN doesn’t want an American because the U.S. Congress is always bad-mouthing UNESCO. So I thought you would be good, because who has any strong opinions about Australians? Also I told them that your technical skills are not bad.”
“Thanks for that ringing endorsement,” I said. And then, more sincerely, “Amitai, I’ll never forget this. Thank you, really.”
“You can repay me by making good documentation of the book, so at least we can print a beautiful facsimile. You’ll send me the pictures you make, yes, and a draft of your report, as soon as you can?”
His voice sounded so wistful l felt guilty about my own elation. But there was one question I had to ask him.
“Amitai, are there any issues of authenticity? You know the rumors, during the war…”
“No, we have no concerns there. The librarian Karaman and his boss, the director of the museum, have authenticated it beyond doubt. Your job is merely technical at this point.”
Technical. We’ll see about that, I thought to myself. A lot of what I do is technical; science and craftsmanship that anyone with decent intelligence and good fine-motor skills can be taught to do. But there is something else, too. It has to do with an intuition about the past. By linking research and imagination, sometimes I can think myself into the heads of the people who made the book. I can figure out who they were, or how they worked. That’s how I add my few grains to the sandbox of human knowledge. It’s what I love best about what I do. And there were so many questions about the Sarajevo Haggadah. If I could answer just one of them…
I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I threw on my sweats and went out, through the nighttime streets still faintly sour with the mingled stink of spewed beer and deep-fryer fat, down to the beach, where the air blows, clean and briny, over half a planet’s worth of uninterrupted ocean. Because it was autumn, and a midweek night, there was hardly anyone around. Just a few drunks, slumped by the wall of the surf club, and a pair of lovers, entwined on a beach towel. No one to notice me. I started walking along the edge of the foam, luminous against the lacquered darkness of the sand. Before I knew it, I was running and skipping, dodging the breakers like a child.
That was a week ago. In the days following, that feeling of exhilaration had been gradually buried under visa applications, reissued airline tickets, UN red tape, and a thick dollop of nerves. As I staggered down the stairs from the plane to the tarmac under the weight of my case, I had to keep reminding myself that this was exactly the kind of assignment I lived for.
I had barely a second to take in the mountains, rising all around us like the rim of a giant bowl, and then a blue-helmeted soldier—tall and Scandinavian-looking—leaped from the middle vehicle and seized my bag, hurling it into the rear of the van.
“Steady!” I said. “There’s delicate equipment in there!” The soldier’s only reply was to grab me by the arm and propel me into the backseat, slamming the door and jumping in front alongside the driver. The automatic locks clicked down with a definitive thunk, and the driver gunned the engine.
“Well, this is a first for me,” I said, trying for some wan levity. “Book conservators don’t usually have much call to travel in armored cars.” There was no response from the soldier or the thin, drawn civilian hunched over the wheel of the immense vehicle, his head pulled into his shoulders like a tortoise. Through the tinted glass the devastated city passed in a blur of shrapnel-splashed buildings. The vans drove fast, swerving around cavernous potholes made by mortar shells and bumping over bitumen