The Egyptian (36 page)

I asked him, “Why must this be, Aziru, and why do you bear so great a hatred toward Egyptians?”

He stroked his curly beard with a sly smile and said, “Who says I hate them, Sinuhe? I do not hate you. I grew up in Pharaoh’s golden house, like my father before me and all other Egyptian princes. I learned there that in the eyes of the educated all peoples are much of a muchness. No nation is either braver or more chickenhearted, crueler or more compassionate, wickeder or more virtuous than another. Among all races there are heroes and cowards, straight men and crooked—and this is true also of Syria and Egypt. Rulers therefore hate no one and acknowledge no difference between nations—but hatred is a great force in the ruler’s hand! It is more potent than many weapons, for without hatred no arm is strong enough to wield a weapon. Therefore I am doing what I can to kindle hatred between Syria and Egypt, and I shall blow on the flame until it blazes up into a fire to consume Egyptian sovereignty in Syria. All the cities, all the races of Syria shall learn that Egyptians are more despicable and cowardly and cruel, more corrupt, greedy, and thankless than Syrians. They shall learn to spit when they hear them mentioned and regard them as usurpers, oppressors, bloodsuckers, torturers, and defilers of children until their hatred can move mountains.”

“But none of this is true, as you said yourself.”

Throwing out his hands with a shrug he said, “What is truth, Sinuhe? When their blood has soaked up enough of the truth I offer them, they will swear by all their gods that it is the only truth and will believe no one who affirms the contrary. They will be persuaded that they are stronger, braver, and more righteous than any other people in the world. They will fancy that they love freedom more than they fear death and starvation and hardship, and they will be ready to pay any price to gain it. I shall teach them this. Many already believe it, and each believer will convert others until the new truth has run like wild fire throughout Syria. It is also a truth that Egypt once entered Syria with fire and blood and therefore with fire and blood must be driven out.”

“Which freedom is it you speak about to them?” I asked, fearing his talk on Egypt’s account.

He raised his hands once more and smiled gently.

“Freedom is a word with many meanings; some mean one thing by it and some another, but this is of no importance so long as the freedom is never attained. Many are needed to achieve freedom. When it has been won, it is safest not to share it but to keep it for oneself. I believe that the land of Amurru will one day be called the cradle of freedom. A nation that believes all it is told is like a herd of cattle that can be driven through a gate by means of a stick, or like a flock of sheep that follows the bellwether without reflecting where it is bound. And perhaps it is I who drive the herd and lead the flock.”

“You must indeed have the brain of a sheep to talk thus dangerously. When Pharaoh hears of it, he will send his chariots and his spears against you. He will break down your walls and hang you and your son head downward from the bows of his warship when he returns to Thebes.”

Aziru only smiled.

“I do not think that I am in any danger from Pharaoh, for I have received the symbol of life from his hands and have raised a temple to his god. He believes in me more than in anyone else in Syria—more than in his own envoys or in the officers of the garrison who worship Ammon. I will now show you something very diverting.”

He led me to the walls and showed me a dried-up, naked body hanging by the heels; it was crawling with flies.

“Look closely,” he said, “and you will see that this man is circumcised: he is indeed an Egyptian. He was one of Pharaoh’s tax gatherers who made so bold as to come prying here to find out why I was a year or two in arrears with my tribute-money. My soldiers had good sport with him before they hung him on the wall for his impudence. By this I have ensured that Egyptians do not willingly travel through the land of Amurru, even in large bands, and the merchants prefer to pay their taxes to me rather than to them. You will grasp the significance of this when I tell you that Megiddo is under my dominion, obeying me and not the Egyptian garrison, who cower in the fortress and dare not venture into the streets of the city.”

“The blood of this poor man will be on your head,” I said appalled. “Your punishment will be terrible when the deed is known, for one may trifle with anything in Egypt rather than with its tax gatherers.”

I sought to explain to him that he had a mistaken notion of the wealth and majesty of Egypt and warned him against being puffed up. Even a leather sack swells when filled with air yet when pricked collapses. But Aziru merely laughed and flashed his golden teeth, then ordered in more roast mutton on heavy silver dishes so as to display his wealth.

His study was filled with clay tablets, for messengers brought him intelligence from all the cities in Syria. He received tablets also from the King of the Hittites and from Babylon, of which he could not re frain from boasting, though he would not let me see their contents. He was most curious to hear from me about the land of the Hittites, but I perceived that he knew as much of it as I did. Hittite envoys visited him and spoke with his warriors and chieftains.

When I understood this, I said, “The lion and the jackal may make alliance to hunt the same prey—but did you ever see the choicest morsels fall to the jackal’s share?”

He only laughed. “Great is my thirst for knowledge, and like you I seek to learn new things, though affairs of state prevent me from traveling as you do, who are without responsibility and as free as the birds of the air. What harm, then, if the Hittite officers advise my chieftains in the arts of war? They have new weapons and experience that we lack. This can only be of service to Pharaoh, for should war ever come—why, Syria has long been Pharaoh’s shield and often a bloody one. This is something we shall remember when we come to cast our accounts together.”

When he spoke of war I thought of Horemheb and said, “I have enjoyed your hospitality too long and must now return to Smyrna if you will place a chair at my disposal. Never again will I step into one of your terrifying chariots. I would rather be clubbed at once. Smyrna has become a wilderness for me, and doubtless I have sucked the blood of poor, indigent Syria too long. I intend to take ship for Egypt. We may not meet for a long time—perhaps never—for the memory of Nile water is sweet in my mouth. Who knows but that I shall remain to drink of it since I have seen enough of the world’s evil and have also learned something of it from you.”

Aziru replied, “No one knows what tomorrow may bring. Rolling stones gather no moss, and the restlessness glowing in your eyes will not allow you to stay long in any one place.”

We parted friends; he gave me a chair and many presents, and his warriors escorted me back to Smyrna lest any should offer me violence because I was an Egyptian.

At the gateway into Smyrna a swallow darted like an arrow past my head; my mind was troubled and the street scorched my feet. When I had reached my house I said to Kaptah, “Gather up our belongings and sell this house. We are bound for Egypt.”

It is needless to describe our voyage, which is to me now as a shade or an unquiet dream. When at last I stepped aboard the vessel that would bring me on my way to Thebes, the city of my childhood, such intense and boundless longing filled my soul that I could neither stand nor sit nor lie, but paced to and fro over the crowded deck, among the rolled-up mats and bales of merchandise. The smell of Syria lingered in my nostrils, and each passing day increased my eagerness to see, in place of the rock-bound coast, a certain lowlying land green with beds of reeds. When the vessel lay to for days on end at the quays of the cities along the coast, I had not serenity enough to explore these places or to gather information; the braying of donkeys on the shore mingled with the cries of the fish sellers and the murmur of foreign tongues into a roar that to my ears was indistinguishable from that of the sea.

Spring had come again to the Syrian valleys. Seen from offshore the hills were red as wine, and in the evenings the foaming surf of the beaches gleamed a pearly green. The priests of Baal made shrill commotion in the narrow alleys. They gashed their faces with flint knives until the blood flowed, while women with burning eyes and disheveled hair followed the priests, pushing wooden harrows. But all this I had seen many times before; their alien ways and brutish frenzy revolted me when before my eyes there floated a faint vision of my homeland. I had thought that my heart was hardened, that I had by now adapted myself to all customs and all faiths, that I understood the folk of all complexions and despised none, and that my one purpose was to gather knowledge. However, the consciousness that I was on my way home to the Black Land swept like a reviving flame through my heart.

I laid aside my foreign thoughts like foreign garments and was Egyptian once more. I longed for the smell of fried fish at dusk in the alleyways of Thebes when the women light their cooking fires before the mud huts. I longed for the savor of Egyptian wine and for the waters of the Nile with their scent of fertile mud. I longed for the whisper of the papyrus reeds in the evening breeze, for the chalice of the lotus flower unfolding on the shore, for the picture writing in the temples, for the colorful pillars with their eternal images, and for the smell of incense between those pillars. So foolish was my heart.

I was coming home although I had no home and was a stranger upon the earth. I was coming home and memory stung me no more. Time and knowledge had silted like sand over that bitterness. I felt neither sorrow nor shame; only a restless yearning gnawed at my heart.

Astern of us dropped the Syrian land: prosperous, fertile, seething with hatred and unrest. Our vessel, urged forward by the oars, glided past the red beaches of Sinai, and the desert winds blew hot and dry over our faces although it was spring. Then there came a morning when the sea was yellow, and beyond it the land lay like a narrow green ribbon. The seamen lowered a jar and brought up in it water that was not salt; it was Nile water and tasted of the mud of Egypt. No wine ever tasted so delectable to me as this muddy water, hauled up so far from land.

Kaptah said, “Water is always water, even in the Nile. Have patience, lord, until we find an honest tavern where the beer is clear and foaming, so that a man need not suck it through a straw to avoid the husks of grain. Then and then only shall I know that I am home.”

His godless talk jarred on me, and I said, “Once a slave always a slave, even when he is robed in fine wool. Have patience, Kaptah, until I find a flexible cane—such a one as can be cut only in the reed swamps of the Nile—and then, indeed, you shall know that you are home.”

He was not offended, but his eyes filled with tears, his chin quivered, and he bowed before me, stretching forth his hands at knee level.

“Truly, lord, you have the gift of hitting upon the right word at the right moment, for I had already forgotten how sweet is the caress of a slender cane on the legs and backside. Ah, my lord Sinuhe, it is an experience that I wish that you also might share. Better than water or beer, better than incense, better than wild duck among the reeds—more eloquently than these does it speak of life in Egypt, where each fills his proper place and nothing changes. Do not wonder if in my emotion I weep, for only now do I feel that I am coming home after seeing much that is alien and perplexing and contemptible. O blessed cane that sets each in his proper place and resolves all problems, there is none like you!”

He wept a little and then went to anoint his scarab, but I noted that he no longer used as fine oil as before. Land was near, and he fancied no doubt that once in Egypt his own natural guile would suffice him.

When we berthed in the great harbor of the Lower Kingdom I realized for the first time how weary I was of brightly colored, voluminous clothes, curly beards, and thick bodies. The narrow hips of the porters, their loincloths, their shaven chins, their speech which was that of the Lower Kingdom, the smell of their sweat, of the river mud, of the reeds and the harbor—all was different from Syria; all was familiar.

The Syrian clothes I wore began to irk and stifle me. When I had finished my business with the harbor clerks and had written my name on many papers, I went at once to buy new clothes. After so much wool, fine linen was sweet to the skin. But Kaptah resolved to continue as a Syrian, for he feared lest his name might still figure on the list of runaway slaves, though he had obtained a clay tablet from the authorities in Smyrna, certifying that he had been born a slave in Syria, where I had lawfully bought him.

Next we embarked with our baggage on a river boat to continue our voyage up the Nile. Days went by and carried us further into the life of Egypt. On either side of the river lay the drying fields where slow oxen drew the wooden plows and laborers walked the furrows with bowed heads, sowing their grain. Swallows skimmed with anxious twitterings above the leisurely flowing water and the mud into which they would soon vanish during the heat of the year. Curving palms lined the banks, and in the shade of tall sycamores clustered the low huts of the village. The boat touched at the landing stages of towns great and small, and there was not a harbor tavern to which Kaptah did not run, to moisten his throat with Egyptian beer, to boast and tell fantastic tales of his travels and my skill, while his audience of dock laborers listened and laughed and jested and invoked the gods.

So I saw again the peaks of the three hills against the eastern sky, the eternal guardians of Thebes. Buildings now stood closer together; poor villages gave place to rich suburbs until the city walls rose up like hills. I saw the roof of the great temple and its pillars, the countless buildings about it, and the sacred lake. Westward the City of the Dead stretched away to the hills. The death temple of the Pharaohs glowed white against the yellow slopes, and the rows of pillars in the temple of the great queen still bore up a sea of flowering trees. Beyond the hills lay the forbidden valley with its snakes and scorpions where, in the sand at the entrance to the tomb of the great Pharaoh, the dried bodies of my parents Senmut and Kipa lay in eternal rest. Further south along the shore rose the golden, airy house of Pharaoh, hazy among its walls and gardens. I wondered whether my friend Horemheb dwelt there.