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Excerpt:

The Rose Garden (from "A New Song")

San Francisco, Nov. 10, 2006

Standing looking out the window, Yakub took a sip of grape juice, then quoted something, speaking in the tongue I had come to recognize as Arabic. He translated:

The goblets were heavy

when they were brought to us

but filled with fine wine

they became so light

They were on the point of flying away

with all their contents

just as our bodies are lightened

by the spirits.

“Who wrote that?” I finally asked.

Yakub turned from the window. “Idris ibn al-Yamani, an eleventh-century poet from the Andalus. In medieval Spain, there was a collision of monotheistic cultures, a brief flowering from the temporary reunion of the brothers, Ishmael and Isaac.” He switched topics: “You know, as a Muslim, we are prohibited from drinking wine.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “That’s okay, I’m not much of a wine drinker. As a doctor, I’ve seen too many people in liver failure to want to go out that way.”

Yakub nodded, then said, “We Muslims drink a different kind of wine.” He began to speak in Arabic again, his voice musical:

In memory of the beloved

we drank a wine;

we were drunk with it

before creation of the vine.

Answering my question this time before I asked it, he said, “That one is by Umar ibn al Farid, a great Sufi mystical poet from my homeland, Egypt.”

We stood in silence for a couple of moments, and then Yakub said, “Please, help yourself to some food! Sit down!”

We both took some of the appetizers on small white dishes. The dates were sticky with sugar, perfectly sweet and soft. I avoided the cheese-stuffed figs, thinking the al-Shadis would likely be serving the savory meat I smelled, and wanting to avoid breaking the Jewish proscription against eating meat and milk at the same meal. My own version of kashrut, keeping kosher.

I sat down on the corduroy couch, then looked at Yakub and said, “Didn’t you say you were going to tell me something about redemption today? Some sort of secret or another?” I said it casually, but this question had been on my mind all week.

Yakub, who had sat down next to me, now looked at me sharply. “You remember that?”

“Yakub,” I said. “Jewish people are obsessed with redemption.”

“Really?” he said, with interest.

“Yes! Don’t you know the story of the Exodus and God’s redemption of the Jewish people from slavery? And we’re always working on ways to get the world back to where we started, the Garden of Eden. You know. The real redemption.”

“Of course,” he said, looking hard at me, his green eyes probing my face, and I felt that drawing feeling again, like a current. Then he nodded. “Yes, I have a secret about redemption.”

I felt my breath catch.

“I will tell you. But Rachel, do you know? I have only told one person about this before. Rawiyya, my wife. And now she is dead. As for the boys, they know very little about the family legend. But I will tell you. Since I told you I would.” He paused.

I was about to reply when we received the dinner summons from below.

“Time to eat!” called Hana.

“We’ll be down in a sec,” I responded, agitated that I had not yet heard the secret.

Yakub paused a moment longer, laughing at my curiosity, and I noticed how white and even his teeth were, how attractive his smile. He began, speaking very softly, “There is a legend.” He paused.

I nodded enthusiastically, encouraging him to keep going.

“It’s a legend about a poem,” he continued.

“A poem?”

“Yes. My family has spoken of this legend for millennia. But twelve years ago, my uncle showed me true evidence of its existence.”

“A poem?” I repeated, stupidly. “What kind of a poem?”

Yakub spoke, and I watched his mouth as he said, “A poem that will redeem the world.”

Unburdened of his secret, Yakub stopped. He looked at me, gauging the effect of his words, the air still buzzing with electricity.

Author's Note:

On the Sefirot and the Way

Oh humanity! We have created you from a male and female and made you into nations and tribes that you may get to know one another! The noblest of you in God's sight is the one who is most righteous.

Qur'an, 49:13

Through history, religion has done much to divide us. Each group argues for its own exclusive truth, allowing faith to justify hatred, holocaust, torture, genocide. In our modern era of terrorism and atomic weaponry, religious conflict has the potential for horrific consequence.

But let us reassess our starting point. Must we believe that the story of one faith supersedes or cancels that of another? Or could we instead learn from the lessons of nature, applying a quantum metaphor, and so accept the the coexistence of two mutually-exclusive truths? In other words, could we believe that the stories of each faith, though different, may each be equally true?

The book, A New Song, explores these questions, treading the space at the nexus line between Islam and Judaism in a thriller novel that spans three continents and four millennia. The novel's heroes, Yakub al-Shadi and Rachel Roseman, pursue an age-old Bedouin legend on a journey that takes them from California to a library of ancient documents in Cambridge, England, an Inquisition-era synagogue in Cordoba, an abandoned gravesite in Cairo, and finally, to the sacred cities of Jerusalem and Makkah. They are pursued by an ancient adversary, one whose family suffers from the dysmorphisms caused by millennia of inbreeding. Despite their maladies, they have developed the singular genius of using language as a mortal weapon. In the end, Rachel and Yakub make a profound discovery, one with import to all those who wish to see our world at peace.