Read Online The Jewel Trader Of Pegu by Jeffrey Hantover - Free Book Online

feel myself sinking with every step deeper and deeper in the swampy mud. He and his fellows could make a Sophist blush. They never kill a mosquito or a fly—they only brush them away. A fisherman doesn’t kill fish—he only takes them from the water. At first I smiled at the warp and weft their words weave, but now I grow somber at the tortures I have witnessed in my brief stay here. Their hands hover harmlessly over a mosquito on their bare arms, but with their own hands they hang in cruel fashion innocent women and children.
    I am learning that “the sad hypocrites’ assembly” can gather anywhere, and golden calves can be found in more places than the Sinai.
    How harshly can I condemn these believers in the Buddha, when on my travels I have found fools in every port? They at least embrace their fanciful faith with a childlike innocence, more endearing than the hauteur of Christians. The Gentiles laugh at the Peguans for their reverence of the Buddha’s tooth, kept in a magnificent temple built by the king’s father and enshrined in a golden casket studded with rubies and sapphires. They joke that he probably had more teeth than an ear of corn has kernels. Before the Gentiles laugh too loudly, they best look in their own naves, where their brethren kiss the bones of Jesus and pray to pieces of the cross kept in their own bejeweled reliquaries. If all his bones and all the slivers of the cross were put back together, he would be a grotesque giant and his cross heavier than the ship that brought me from India.
    So no need to worry that my long stay will turn me into an apostate. I will neither don the monk’s yellow robe nor take up residence in the House of the Converts when I return. Believers here must wash their feet before they enter a temple. I cannot imagine this practice in Venice: before feet touched water, the stench would overwhelm us all. We would never be able to revive the fallen for a minyan.
    I may make light with you of Win’s fantastical beliefs, but I would not insult his faith to his face. We have too long suffered the Gentiles’ revulsion to visit ill will on another man’s faith, even if he be an idolater praying before his gilded idols. Unlike our Gentile countrymen and the viper-tongued Franciscans, Win lives his faith humbly and makes no effort to save me by scourge and flame. There is much foolishness and childishness about this Buddha, but Win treats me fairly and is a man, for all I can see, who tries as best he can to live a decent life. I would wish no gentler epitaph.
    As always my thoughts are with you and Uncle.
    Your cousin,
    Abraham

----
    My father gave me my mother’s prayer beads the morning I left.
    “Take refuge in the Buddha, and remember,” he said, “wake before your husband and go to bed after he has lain down for the night.” Those were his last words to me. I left the village well before midday, when angry spirits might be about.
    I must go to Pegu. It is my fate. Father tells me the man I will marry is the son of a rich merchant. His father must have lived past lives of merit to be so rewarded in this one. I am fortunate, Father says, to be accepted by such a family. I know the man I will marry was born on an auspicious day. I know he has all his fingers and toes, and his body is unmarked by signs of past sins. I know that his cheeks are smooth, without a pockmark, since I never left a single grain of rice in my bowl. That is all I know. That is enough, my father says.
    I was ready to become a woman when the time came for my ears to be pierced. I am ready to wed. I thought I would marry a man from my village, but few young men remain. Many have fled into the forest; and those who have not, the king has taken for soldiers at the point of his bloody sword. When we were children, Ye Shwe vowed he would marry me one day, but he ran away in the spring.
    I am lucky to find a man who will have me. Even if I must go far away to Pegu.

    I will miss the smell of roses and