The Sleeper in the Sands (27 page)

As I stood before her, she rose to her feet. She took my hands and laughed once again. ‘Isis!’ she exclaimed. ‘You have named your bitch - Isis! O my love’ -- she paused to kiss me - ‘you cannot know what a sacrilege that is.’

‘There is much, it would seem, which I cannot know.’

‘Cannot?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Yet you are here, are you not?’

I stared at her in silence a long while. ‘What will you tell me, then?’ I asked her at length. ‘What do you wish to know?’

‘The Secret Name of Allah. For otherwise, O my Beloved, our daughter will be slain.’

Leila sat back on her throne, her smile impassive. ‘What would you be willing, O my Love, to pay for such a secret?’

‘Whatever I must.’

Again she raised an eyebrow. ‘Indeed?’ She laughed. ‘Indeed?’

‘Provided that such a secret can indeed be revealed, there is no price I would not pay.’

‘There is a secret, most certainly. Once, long ago, it was sheltered in this very place, where it was known as the Secret of the Name of Amen. What its power could be, you have already seen for yourself, in the valleys and the temples of this ancient place. How can you doubt, then, that there is a power abroad greater than man can understand? If you would become the master and the lord of mortal things, if you would venture into the Land of Darkness and learn of the magic of the ancient jinn, if you would gain youth, and wisdom, and immortality, then, yes, O my Husband - there is indeed a secret, and a great one, to be learned.’

Silence, close and heavy, filled the perfume-scented hall.

‘And the price?’ I asked at length.

‘Is something you may easily pay’

‘Tell me what it is.’

But Leila shook her head.

‘How can I agree, then, to what I do not know?’

‘But my Beloved, my Beloved -- you have already agreed.’

I bowed my head in consternation and doubt. ‘We all belong to Allah,’ I thought, ‘and must all return to Him at last.’ And then I considered my daughter, how she was the sun and the moon and the stars of my life, and how there was nothing in all the world I would not dare to save her life. And then I considered further the wondrous magic of my wife, the manifold proofs which I had been granted of her powers, and the knowledge which she possessed of far-off worlds and distant times. And then in the end I considered my own desires, and how I had always longed to master the wisdom of the Ancients, and fought, in Allah’s name, against the lure of that temptation. All this I considered as I gazed upon the beauty of my wife, and as I did so I felt my thoughts begin to melt and swim and fly and I knew that I could fight against my own desires no more.

‘O most powerful Jinni,’ I said, ‘for such I can no longer doubt that you are, tell me your secret and what I must do.’

But Leila shook her head. ‘First,’ she answered, ‘I would tell you a tale.’ And so saying, she indicated a throne of gold beside her own, and gestured to me that I should take my place upon it.

‘What tale would you tell me?’ I asked her as I sat down on the throne.

‘The Tale of Pharaoh and the Temple of Amen.’

‘I would be most eager to hear it, for it appears to promise many great wonders and surprises.’

Leila smiled. ‘Nor are you wrong, O my Beloved. For until you have heard it, you will understand neither the secret of the powers I wish to grant you nor the price I shall demand in return - for you must learn, O my love, how all that is has already been, and, it may be, in time to come will exist once again.’

‘Tell me, then, and let me learn everything.’

‘As you wish it, so let it be.’ And Leila smiled a moment more; and then she said:

Interpolation, inserted within the sheets of the manuscript given to Lord Carnarvon

The Turf Club,
20th Nov, 1922

My dear Lord Carnarvon,

I cannot, as I glance through this manuscript again, forbear to recall my initial excitement, so overpowering that it almost caused me pain, upon realising the implications of this seemingly fantastical tale. I will confess that I had at first been dismayed by its ludicrous implausibilities, and considered myself the victim of a monstrous hoax -- yet still, through all the fantasy, I had begun to glimpse a faint residue of truth, as when, sifting through the wastes of rubble, one catches the outline of some artefact long buried in the dirt. A tomb had been found in the early Muslim period -- that much was clear - and it had been found undisturbed, with all its treasures intact. What wonder, then, in that primitive and superstitious age, if the discovery of a Pharaoh in his full regalia of death should have come to breed legends of a curse, so that it came to be imagined that the King had not indeed been dead? One need not believe in the literal truth of Haroun al-Vakhels tale, of course - that the Pharaoh had been seen risen upon his horse, riding with an army of demons against Karnak -- to recognise the hints of a truth extraordinary enough.

For it was evident to me that the tomb described within the folk tale, point for point, was the same as that which Davis had found, and which he had persisted in ascribing to Queen Tyi. But I knew that Davis had been mistaken in his judgement - the pathologist had proved the skeleton to be that of a young man, a fact which the manuscript now appeared to corroborate. Who was it, then, who had been found in the tomb? Might not the tale I was reading give me some clue? And might not it offer me, in however garbled a form, clues as to mysteries more remarkable still -- and even, perhaps, the existence of a still intact tomb?

All these questions seemed to pound upon the beating of my heart - as also, no doubt, they are presently pounding upon yours. I shall keep you no longer, then, from the tale the Jinni told - for when she promised a wondrous secret, she told nothing but the truth.

H.C.

THE TALE TOLD BY THE JINNI OF THE TEMPLE OF THE SANDS

You must know, O Haroun, how in the depths of the ages and the antiquity of time, there was much which was known and now lies hidden, and many great wonders long forgotten, for the past is a desert filled with infinite buried things. Do not think that because you have never heard of a tale before, therefore it did not happen, for even in the lives of the Prophets there were deeds and events which were never recorded, and have long since been lost to the memory of this world.

By example, I might ask you what you truly know of Joseph, who was sold by his brothers into Egypt as a slave. You have read how he was purchased by a great man of the Court, and then falsely accused by the wife of his new master. You have read how he was flung into jail and then summoned by King Thoth-mes, Pharaoh of Egypt, to interpret the dreams which had been haunting his sleep. And you have read how Joseph explained the fat and the lean cattle, which King Thoth-mes had seen emerging from the waters of the Nile, as a warning sent by the will of the All-High -that the world would first enjoy the fruits of plenty, and then be reduced to bare bone by grim famine.

Everything happened just as Joseph had foretold, but since he had ordered granaries to be built, and filled them high with grain, the people of Egypt were able to be fed. And never had King Thoth-mes loved a man so much as Joseph, so that he raised him to be the Wazir over all his lands and gave him the title of ’the double of Pharaoh’, which no foreigner had ever been granted before. Joseph ruled with great wisdom and care, so that all the people too -- just like Pharaoh - came to love him, not only for having saved the land from famine but also for the kindness and generosity of his spirit. The priests alone hated him, seeing how he kept aloof from the worship of their idols - for in his heart Joseph never forgot that there was but a single God, self-created, eternal, omnipresent, whom he addressed in his own language by the sacred name of Yahweh. When the Egyptians learned of this, they named Joseph, as was their practice, after the name of his god, for they were pagans and had many strange customs and beliefs. Yahweh, in their own tongue, they pronounced as Yuya -- and so Joseph too they addressed by the name of Yuya.

Now it happened that King Thoth-mes, although young, began to sicken, for his flesh appeared to wither and thin upon his bones. When this was reported, the High Priest came to see him, and for a night and a day the two were closeted together in the innermost sanctuary of the great temple of Amen. Who this god ‘Amen’ truly was, or what his appearance might be, was kept hidden from all but the highest of the priests, and yet he was said to possess a terrible magic too great to be inquired after, too powerful to be learned. ‘Secret of transformations’, he was named, and ‘sparkling of appearances’; and yet in truth there was no one who had seen the god’s true form, and people would fall down all at once for fear lest his true name be revealed. So terrible was it whispered to be that even Pharaoh would hesitate to cross the High Priest, who claimed alone amongst mortals to have learned it, and the understanding of the universe and its mysteries which it brought.

When their Pharaoh fell sick, then, the people had prayed that such knowledge might restore him -- and to be sure, when he did emerge at last from the temple into daylight, the power of Amen’s magic appeared immediately apparent, for King Thoth-mes seemed again in fullest health and even in his limbs looked whole and strong. Even so, for many days afterwards his mood appeared much troubled, and those of his courtiers who dared to meet his stare would sometimes catch the glimpse there of a wild and brooding terror, such as seemed to have chilled his innermost soul. At length King Thoth-mes sent for Joseph, and would not be parted from him, but asked him many questions about the god which he worshipped, whom Joseph had claimed was far greater than Amen. When the High Priest learned of this, he came to King Thoth-mes and sought to persuade him to banish Joseph from his presence; but King Thoth-mes refused and indeed, from that time on, he took Joseph ever more closely to his heart.

It was about this same time that the sister of King Thoth-mes, who shared both his bed and his throne as Great Queen, gave birth to a son. No one was happier for his master than Joseph; yet he fell to thinking, as he gazed upon the infant Prince, how he had neither son nor daughter whom he could call his own. He turned to the nurse, and asked her what the name of the young Prince was to be. She answered him, ‘Amen-hetep’ -- which meant, in the language of the pagans, ‘Amen-is-content’. Hearing the name of this mysterious god, the High Priest of whom was his deadliest enemy, Joseph fell into even deeper thought and he felt a great heaviness descend upon his heart. ‘For I am a stranger in a foreign land,’ he said to himself, ‘and unless I have a family, there will be no one to whom I can pass on my name and teach the worship of the One and Only God.’ And then he turned and left the Palace, and he rode his chariot across the sands until he came to a valley set amongst the hills, where the bodies of the Pharaohs were laid to rest in hidden tombs; and while he was there, he lay down in the shade and fell asleep.

The moment he did so he began to dream. He imagined that he saw the valley of the dead Pharaohs below him, just as he had done while lying there awake, save that from the doors of the hidden tombs a flow of blood was oozing, rising up through the sand and the rocks, and dying the whiteness of the dust a sticky red. ‘This is a great horror!’ exclaimed Joseph, ‘but there is only one God, Whose will be ever done!’ No sooner had he said this than he heard a strange rumbling, like that of the waves of a mighty flood, and then he watched as a deluge rolled through the valley, and when it had passed all the stains of blood were gone. And when Joseph awoke he was filled with great astonishment, for he wondered what the rolling of the waters might portend. Although he considered it a long while, the meaning was kept hidden from him - yet he was certain, all the same, that some great miracle had been foretold.

Then it happened, as he was returning from the desert to the Palace of Pharaoh, that he passed along the road which led into Thebes. This road was very heavy with all kinds of traffic, with merchants and caravans from all the corners of the world, for there was no city more splendid, nor richer, than Thebes. As Joseph drove in his chariot through the crowds, his eye was suddenly caught by a long train of slaves -- Nubians, so it seemed, from the colour of their skin and their appearance -- who had been made captive in the wars of Egypt to the south. Joseph gazed upon the chains which fettered the Nubians, and he listened to their cries of lamentation and grief; and as he did so he remembered how he too had once been a slave, loaded with chains, and sold into a strange and foreign land; and straightaway he was filled with a terrible pity. He reined in his chariot and approached the merchant at the head of the caravan, and he gave him a purse full of gold for the slaves. Then he ordered that the chains of the slaves be struck away and, sharing out a second purse of gold amongst them, he told them that they were free to depart. At once all the captives began to weep for joy as they fell at Joseph’s feet, calling down the blessings of their gods upon his head; and then they rose, and began their journey back to their families and homes.

But one of the slaves still sat upon the road in the dust, a girl whose beauty put the fairest ebony to shame, and silent tears rolled silver down her face. Joseph crossed to her and sought to comfort her, trying to explain that she was free now to go. But the girl took his hand, and wet it with her tears, and she whispered how her parents and all her family had been slain, and her home and belongings burned down to the ground. Once again, Joseph felt a great upsurging of pity in his heart, and he drew her to her feet, and clasped her in his arms. As he held her, he felt his pity transformed into love, for he knew he had never seen such loveliness before; and he resolved that he would keep her, if she would have him, for his wife. So he led her from the dust of the road into his chariot, and drove her onwards to the Palace of Pharaoh, where he ordered her bathed and dressed in rich robes. And when he saw her adorned before him, he raised a cry of thanks and praise to the All-High, who had heard his prayers and thought to answer him; for Joseph never doubted that she was a gift sent from Heaven. He took her in his arms and brushed back her hair, as black and thick as the deepest night, and then he kissed her on her lips and asked her for her name. She answered his kiss softly; and then she whispered, ‘Thua’.