House of Dreams (4 page)

My ears pricked up at this. “How can you prevent such a happening?” I asked her, trying not to sound too eager.

“Not easily,” she retorted, unaware of the importance of my question. “I usually suggest a thick syrup of honey and auyt gum in which acacia tips have been soaked. Crush the acacia first, and after three days, throw them away and insert the syrup into the vagina.” She gave me an oblique glance. “This can wait,” she said abruptly. “You must learn to assist the beginnings of life before you study how to prevent it. Give me the pestle resting in that dish, then go and see if your father has come in from the field and wants to wash.”

I think that my father must have compelled her to take her own advice, for not long after this conversation with my mother I heard her and my father arguing one night when I could not sleep for the heat of Shemu. Their voices had begun as a low murmur and then risen in anger and I listened while Pa-ari snored.

“We have a son and a daughter,” my father said sharply. “It is enough.”

“But Pa-ari wants to be a scribe not a farmer. Who then will till the soil when you are too feeble? And as for Thu, she will marry and take the skills I am teaching her into her husband’s household.” I could hear the fear rise in her, being expressed as anger, and her tone grew shrill. “There will be no one to care for us in our old age and I would be ashamed to trust to the kindness of our friends! I obey you, my husband. I do not become pregnant. Yet I grieve for the emptiness of my womb!”

“Hush, woman,” my father commanded in the way that prompted immediate obedience from us all. “I do not plant enough crops on my three arouras to support more mouths. We are poor but we have dignity. Fill the house with children and we increase our poverty while sacrificing what little independence we enjoy. Besides …” His voice fell and I had to strain to catch the words. “What makes you think Aswat is as peaceful and secure as it seems? Like all women you see no further than the path to the river where you carry the washing, and your ears open only to the gossip of the other wives. The men here are not much better. They direct the pedlars and wandering workmen to the women, to buy or to hire, and do not listen to their tales, for they are insular and suspicious of all who were not born here. But I have seen this Egypt. I do not spurn the strangers who come and go. I know that the eastern tribesmen are trickling into the Delta, trying to find land for their flocks and herds, and in the Delta there is trouble. It may come to nothing, or it may mean that the Good God may call upon all his soldiers to leave their fields and defend their country. How would you fare then, with babies to feed and your midwifery to perform as well? If I was killed the land would revert to Pharaoh, for as you say, Pa-ari is not likely to follow in my footsteps. Ponder my words with your mouth closed, for I am weary and need to sleep.” I heard my mother mutter something else and give a resigned sigh, and then there was silence.

When my father’s voice had died away I lay on my back, gazing into the pressing dark heat of the little room, and imagined the foreigners he had spoken of sifting slowly across the fertile soil of the Delta, a place I had never seen and barely heard of, spreading out, oozing southward along the Nile towards my village like the black mud of the Inundation. The vivid picture excited me. Suddenly Aswat shrank in my mind from being the centre of the world to a very small backwater in a threatening vastness, yet I did not feel lost or in danger. I wondered what they were like, these sinister people, what the Delta was like, what blessed Thebes, home of Amun the King of the Gods was like, and I was in a boat floating down the Nile towards the Good God’s fabled northern capital when I fell asleep at last.

2

AS I HAVE SAID
, I was eight years old when the inspiration came to me that if I could not go to school, the school should come to me. It was at about the same time that I began to work with my mother and my days were full of obligatory household chores but the need to learn was a constant ache, a kind of mild desperation that returned to nag at me in the few idle moments I had. My plan was simple. Pa-ari would teach me. He must know almost everything there was to know by now, seeing that he had been trudging along to the temple school for five years. One afternoon when our house and indeed the whole village drowsed under the fierce heat of Ra’s summer scorching and Pa-ari and I were supposed to be resting, I dragged my pallet close to his and peered into his face. He was not asleep. He was lying on his back, both hands behind his head, and his eyes had followed my movements in the half-light. He smiled at me as I bent over him.

“No, I won’t tell you a story,” he said loudly. “It’s too hot. Why can’t you sleep, Thu?”

“Keep your voice down,” I told him, settling back. “I don’t want a story today. I want a big, big favour from you, dear Pa-ari.”

“Oh gods,” he groaned, rolling onto his side and propping himself on one elbow. “When you use that wheedling tone of voice I know I’m in trouble. What is it?”

I studied him as he continued to smile at me indulgently, this brother whom I adored, this lordly young male who had begun to make pronouncements in Father’s assured way that brooked no argument. I kept no secrets from him. He knew how much I disliked helping Mother with birthings, how fascinated I was with her potions, how lonely I felt when the other village girls turned from me with smirks and giggles on the few occasions when I tried to play with them. He knew also of my need to be the daughter of a long-lost Libu prince out of that same loneliness. I assumed no haughty airs with him and he, in turn, treated me with a gentleness unusual between brother and sister. I touched his naked shoulder.

“I want to be able to read and write,” I said, the words tumbling out in a breathless spate of anxiety and embarrassment. “Show me how, Pa-ari. It won’t take you long, I promise!”

He stared at me, taken aback, and then his smile broadened. “Don’t be silly,” he chided. “Such learning is not for girls. It’s precious. My teacher says that words are sacred, that the world and all laws and all history came from the pronunciation of divine words by the gods, and some of that force remains enclosed in hieroglyphs. What use would such power be to an apprentice midwife?”

I could almost taste the things he was saying, feel the excitement of such mastery. “But what if I don’t become a midwife?” I said urgently. “What if one day a rich merchant is going by in his golden boat and his servants lose an oar and they have to put up overnight right here at Aswat, and I’m down on the bank doing the washing or even swimming and he sees me and falls in love with me and I marry him and then later his scribe falls ill and there is no one to take down his letters? Dearest Thu, he might say, take up the scribe’s palette, and then I am struck dumb with shame, for I am nothing but a poor village girl without learning and I can see the scorn on his face!” I was quite carried away with my own story. I felt the shame, saw my unknown husband’s pity, but then all at once my throat dried up. For part of the story was true. I was indeed a poor village girl without learning, and the realization was like a stone growing heavy in my heart. “I am sorry, Pa-ari,” I whispered. “Teach me, I beg you, because I want to understand the things you know more than anything on this earth. Even if I remain nothing but a village midwife, your labour would not be wasted. Please.”

A silence fell between us. I looked down at my hands lying curled in my lap and I knew he was regarding me steadily. I could almost hear his thoughts, so motionless was his body.

“I am still only a nine-year-old schoolboy,” he said quietly after a while, speaking without moving. “I am nothing more than the son of a soldier farmer. Yet I am the best student in my class and if I choose I can go to work for the priests of Wepwawet when I turn sixteen. The written word will assure me a position as a scribe if I want it one day. But what would the written word do to you?” He reached across the dimness and took my hand. “Already you are not satisfied, Thu. Such knowledge will only hurt you further.”

I grasped his fingers and shook them. “I want to read! I want to know things! I want to be like you, Pa-ari, not helpless, without choices, condemned to stay in Aswat for the rest of my life! Give me the power!”

Helpless … condemned … These were adult words coming from some part of me that did not know I was only eight years old, unformed and gangly and still in awe of the giants who ruled my world. Tears of frustration came to my eyes. My voice had risen and this time it was Pa-ari who warned me to be quiet with a swift finger to his lips.

Wrenching his hand free he held it up in the universal gesture of submission.

“All right!” he hissed. “All right. May the gods forgive me for such an act of foolishness. I will teach you.”

I wriggled with joy, my earlier misery forgotten. “Oh thank you, dearest!” I said fervently. “Can we begin now?”

“In here? In the dark?” he sighed. “Honestly, Thu, you are tiresome. We will begin tomorrow, and in secret. While Mother and Father sleep we will go down to the river and sit in the shade, and I will draw the characters for you in the sand. Then you can see my pieces of pottery, but Thu,” he warned, “if you do not concentrate I will not bother with you for very long. Now go to sleep.”

Happily, obediently, I pulled my pallet back to its place and collapsed on it. Now I was engulfed in weariness, as though I had walked a long way, and it was the greatest pleasure to close my eyes and surrender to unconsciousness. Pa-ari’s breathing had already deepened. I had never loved him more.

I prayed constantly and incoherently through the following morning that no village baby would choose that afternoon to be born, that I would not have to wait to use one of the communal ovens to bake the bread for our evening meal and thus fall behind with my other work, that Pa-ari would have a good morning at school and not be too grumpy and tired after his barley cake and beer to keep his word. But all went well on that momentous day in the middle of the month of Epophi. He and I paraded meekly to our room and sat tensely waiting for our parents to succumb to the stupor of the hour. It seemed to take a long time before their intermittent comments ceased and Pa-ari signalled me to get up while he carefully lifted the bag that held his precious bits of clay so that the pieces did not clink. Together we stole out of the house into the blinding white heat beating up at us from the deserted village street.

Nothing stirred. Even the three desert dogs, the colour of the beige sand that had spawned them, were sprawled motionless under the thin shade of a straggling acacia bush, their endless hunt for food forgotten. The portals of the crude grey houses were dark and empty. No birds sang or flitted in the drooping river growth and our bare feet made no sound as we ran towards the water. It was as though all living things but the two of us had been spirited away and the village would stand untenanted under Ra’s dazzling bright gaze for ever.

The river had not yet begun to rise. It flowed beside us with a turgid majesty, brown and thick, its banks exposed, as we picked our way to a spot out of sight of the village and the road that ran between water and houses. There was no grass in the place where Pa-ari turned aside, only a hollow of soft sand beneath a sycamore. He lowered himself to the ground and I joined him, my heart racing with excitement. Our glances met.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

I nodded and swallowed, unable to answer aloud, and his head went down as he opened the drawstring of his bag and tipped its contents in a pile beside his knee.

“You must learn first the symbols of the gods,” he told me solemnly. “It is a matter of respect, so pay attention. This is the totem of the goddess Ma’at, she who brings justice, and her feather stands for truth and the correct balance of law, order and rightness in the universe. Her feather is not to be confused with the Double Plumes of Amun, he who resides in great splendour and power at holy Thebes.” He handed me a branch. “Draw for yourself now.” And I did so, enthralled, captivated, and something inside me whispered, now you have it, Thu. Now it is here, within your grasp. Aswat is not your world any longer.

I learned quickly, soaking up the information as though my soul had been the parched, cracked earth of Egypt itself and Pa-ari’s symbols the vivifying deluge of the Inundation. I mastered twenty names of the gods that day and I pictured them in my mind as I went about the evening’s tasks, whispering them to myself over the lentils and dried figs I was helping my mother prepare for our meal until she said tartly, “If you are speaking to me, Thu, I can’t hear you, and if you are saying your prayers I wish you would wait until your father lights the candle before the shrine. You look tired, child. Are you well?”

Yes, I was well. I hurried through my meal, earning another reprimand from Father, for all I wanted to do was climb onto my pallet as soon as possible so that I could sleep, and make the next afternoon come all the faster. That night I dreamed the symbols, all golden and glittering as they swept across my vision, and I summoned and dismissed them at will as though they were my servants.