Azazeel Page 2

  My room is the little circle of my tangible world, surrounded by a bigger circle which is this monastery, which I have loved from the first day I came inside years ago, where I have stayed ever since and where I was blessed with the peace of mind which I had long sought before coming here, until the events that I will relate took place.

  I came to the monastery from Jerusalem, Salem, Yerushalayim, Urusalim, Ilya, al-Quds, the House of the Lord. Many names has this holy city borne, this city surrounded by wilderness on all sides. I lived there several years before I came here, fulfilling the will of the Lord and following the guidance and advice of Nestorius, although he, God help him today, had first invited me to go with him to Antioch and live there till the end of my life. Then something came up and instead he urged me to come here. In his own hand he wrote me a letter of recommendation to the abbot, and destiny led me into events which I have witnessed or suffered, events which I would never have expected. Under my rough pillow I still keep the letter Nestorius sent with me to the abbot. The abbot gave it back to me when I asked him for it, a year after I came here from Jerusalem. Jerusalem, how far away you seem now, how my days there seem like a dream that shone in the firmament of my dull life and then went out.

  Why has everything gone dark? The light of faith which used to shine inside me, the peace of mind which kept me company in my loneliness, like a candle in the night, my serenity within the walls of this gentle room, even the daylight sun, I see them today extinguished and abandoned.

  Will these cares depart my soul? Will joyful news come to me after that which came to us from Ephesus, where the priests and bishops beleaguered the blessed Bishop Nestorius and toiled until they brought him down? Time has brought me down, care and anxiety have overcome me. What will become of deposed Bishop Nestorius, whom I knew in the days when he was a priest? We met in Jerusalem when he came on pilgrimage with the delegation from Antioch, four years before he was consecrated Bishop of Constantinople. We met at a time which now seems distant, after long years have passed, and in the meantime the places, the cities have come to seem remote, impossibly remote.

  Were we really in Jerusalem?

  SCROLL TWO

  The House of the Lord

  I well remember how in the middle of the day I entered Jerusalem from the dilapidated part of its high walls, the part which in former times included the great gate known as the Zion Gate, and set down my travelling stick there, after long wanderings among the villages of Judaea and Samaria.

  I entered Jerusalem at about the age of thirty, my body and soul exhausted by travel on earth and in the heavens and by roaming through the pages of books. I entered it with unsteady steps, close to collapse, in the dog days of Abib (July), and at the door to the great church I fell in a swoon. Some of the pilgrims carried me inside for the priest of the Church of the Resurrection to attend to me. He laughed when I told him I was a physician and a monk, and when I recovered from my fainting fit he joked with me, saying, ‘I knew you were a monk from the cap on your head, but from your fainting I could not tell you were a physician!’ Then he asked me my name and I told him it was Hypa.

  ‘Have you come on pilgrimage, or do you intend to reside amongst us, holy monk?’

  ‘On pilgrimage first, then let the will of the Lord be done.’

  I spent days in Jerusalem as a pilgrim after three years touring the Holy Places, in line with the advice of St Chariton the Monk, who worshipped incessantly in a desolate cave near the Dead Sea. When he bade me farewell, Chariton said, ‘My son, do not enter Jerusalem as soon as you reach the land of Palestine. Enter only when your heart is ready for pilgrimage and your spirit is prepared, because pilgrimage is just a journey of preparation, and travel is just a revelation of the sacred element hidden in the essence of the spirit.’

  On my wanderings I had passed by the places where the disciples of Jesus the Messiah once lived and where the Apostles began their mission. I spent months following in the footsteps of Jesus, as described in the Gospels and other books, starting with the town of Cana near Nazareth, where the Messiah performed the first of his miracles, when he changed water into wine for the wedding guests to drink, as it says in the Gospels. In Nazareth I found no vestige of his presence and no building left to speak of his time. I was puzzled, and I went out of my way to the other villages mentioned in the Torah, the Gospels, the canonical holy books and the non-canonical books which we have recently come to call the Apocrypha. On my journeys many doubts plagued me and I suffered terrors in my sleep, until three years of wandering had passed and that clear night came when I saw Jesus the Messiah in a vivid dream. His light filled the heavens, and in Aramaic he said to me, ‘If you are seeking me, you who are perplexed and astray, set aside your self, and leave the dead, and come up to see me in Jerusalem, that you might live.’ Jesus was addressing me in my visions, from up on his Cross, and there was no one around me in the wilderness.

  At dawn, the day after this annunciation, I set off straight towards Jerusalem. My heart rejoiced along the way, as I asked the Lord to purge me of the effects of drowning in seas of doubt, to bring tranquillity to my soul through his bounteous grace and to bestow upon my heart sound faith and the light of certitude.

  From the environs of Sidon, where the annunciation came to me, except for two hours in the dead of night when I tried to sleep under a tree, I did not stop until I reached Jerusalem, where I intended to settle for the rest of my life. But under the tree successive visions kept me awake: the Saviour suffering on the Cross of Redemption, the lamentation of the Holy Virgin Mother, the cries of John the Baptist in the wilderness, and what happened to me when I was in Alexandria. I could not sleep that night.

  I entered Jerusalem from the Samaria road in the heat of the day, and I was gripped by those feelings of alienation that overwhelm me in large cities. The heat was fierce and the tumult great. On my way to the Church of the Resurrection I passed by markets and many houses, monks and merchants and people of every kind – Arabs, Syriacs, Greeks, Persians and those of other nations whose languages I could not make out when they spoke amongst themselves. I had forgotten the tumult of big cities during my long wandering through the villages of Palestine, and I fled from the crowd to the walls of the church and its big open door. I had hardly arrived when I was overcome by my hunger and exhaustion and from assiduously glorifying the Lord. My bag, laden with books and papyrus scrolls, weighed heavy on me, and then I fainted that faint for which the priest of the church treated me.

  I spent days among the monks as a pilgrim and they were kind to me, although they often asked me about the lands I had passed through and the hardships, and about the saints I had met or the martyrs whose tombs I had visited. They were insistent in asking about Alexandria and I answered them to the extent that the time, place and circumstance demanded, enough to satisfy the curiosity of the monks and priests who were asking.

  In my first days in Jerusalem, I thought about the secret of pilgrimage and asked myself what drove me out of my native country and brought me to this holy spot. Could I not have touched the essence of holiness in my soul while secluded in the desert close to my homeland? If a place can reveal what is inside us, and travel can bring that to light from the depths of our being, is it not possible that humility, chastity, the monastic life, and constant prayer and glorification of the Lord can bring to light divine grace and the saintliness that is latent within us? Where then lies the aura of places? Is the aura a secret inside us that pervades places when we reach them after travelling with impatient zeal? The awe I felt when I reached the walls of the Church of the Resurrection, did it arise from my sense of the imposing building, or was it from the meaning implicit in the event of the resurrection itself? Did Jesus really rise from the dead? As God, how could he die at the hands of men? Is man able to kill and torment God, and nail him to a cross?

  ‘Would you like to stay in the church with us, or will you live in the city to treat the sick among the people of the Lord and those who come
here as pilgrims?’ The kindly priest asked the question several days after I arrived, and I left the choice to him. No one chooses, but rather it is the will of Heaven, which permeates things and words until it mysteriously reaches us. I said that to him and he smiled in satisfaction.

  Then God’s will was done and the priest of the Church of the Resurrection gave voice to it: ‘You can live in the room which the monk from Edessa built, close to the courtyard of the church. I mean that room which is on the right as you go out through the main gateway. You can stay there, and be with us and with the people at the same time. The room has been closed since the monk went to his resting place two years ago, God have mercy on him. He was a saint. I’ll ask the courtyard servant to clean it out for you and you can stay there from tomorrow.’

  I realized then that they were wary of me, and not yet comfortable with this Egyptian monk who had descended on them without a letter of recommendation and without any explanation. If I had stayed inside the church, they would have accepted me among the monks only after years of observation. If I had stayed in the city, the tumult would have killed me. The place suggested was right, halfway between the city and the church, neither here nor there, like me: betwixt and between.

  I spent my first night in the Edessan’s room, as they called it, happy that I was staying in a place where the Lord was worshipped faithfully for twenty years in succession. I saw that as a good sign and a refuge for my troubled soul. Here right by me was the Church of the Resurrection, to which I had been called, and from my only window I could see the groups of believers and lay people who came to the church on pilgrimage and on visits throughout the year.

  The monks and priests who serve the Church of the Resurrection are good and simple, and most of them warmed to me when they learnt that I practise medicine and the art of healing. They were not interested that I was a poet. The servitors of the church, the deacons and the young priests were friendly towards me and often dropped in, seeking treatment. As for the old priests and the senior monks, I would go to them inside the church when they summoned me.

  Most of the diseases among the people in Jerusalem arose from the arid climate and the lack of diversity in their diet. Most of the time, their staples were olive oil, coarse bread made from unsifted brown flour, goat’s cheese and meagre fruits. The people of Jerusalem have a rough life. The weather is mild most days in summer, but bitterly cold at night and in winter.

  When I had settled in somewhat, months after moving in, and my doubts had abated with so many believers around me, I started to compose hymns in Syriac, drawing inspiration from the heavenly spirit which glorified the place and filled it with awe. Here is part of a long hymn I composed during that time:

  This is where the light of Heaven appeared,

  Banished the dark from the face of the Earth and gave souls comfort against affliction.

  This is where the Sun of Hearts rose,

  With the radiance of the Saviour, shining with compassion on the Cross of Redemption.

  What is the Cross?

  It is the upright pole of sanctity, intersected by the crossbeam of mercy.

  Let us open our arms to the horizon of mercy and stand upright, facing sanctity.

  Let us be a Cross that bears its cross,

  And follows Jesus.

  The days passed quietly in Jerusalem, mild and monotonous until after the winter of the year 140 of the era of the Martyrs, or year 424 from the birth of Christ, and the city was preparing for Holy Week and Easter. I began to see more caravans of Arab merchants arriving in the square in front of the church. The goods became more colourful on the shelves of the city’s stalls, which had previously been bare. People were elated, and my heart had tremors whenever Holy Week approached. Before dawn I kept having dreams telling me that some great event was about to happen, but I would drive these thoughts away. Shortly before the holiday more and more sick visitors came to see me, many of them suffering from the ailments of travel, especially the old among them. I treated them with humectants and medicines which doctors call cordials, changing the patients’ habitual diet only when necessary to help them recover their strength.

  Of all the big processions which passed by me on their way to visit the church, one from the cities of Antioch and Mopsuestia was especially imposing – dozens of priests, monks and deacons walking reverently in their solemn ecclesiastical garments, led by a man carrying an elegant cross decorated on the edges with gold leaf. Walking gravely seven paces behind him came Bishop Theodore of Mopsuestia,2 the scholar and commentator, and behind them a large gathering of believers and lay people, chanting in unison: ‘Hosanna to the son of David, Hosanna in the Highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’

  I was watching them in wonder from the window of my room, and I saw the cortège passing through the large door into the church, like a throng of angels which had come down to Earth from Heaven. There were more than twenty priests and close to a hundred deacons, while the retainers walking behind them were too many to count. Bishop Theodore looked tired but cheerful. I decided to make my way through the cortège and I went right up to him. I kissed his hand and he kissed my head, as he did with a man of Kurdish features dressed in the Damascene style. Heavens knows what was in my heart, and in his mysterious heavenly ways the Lord brought about a meeting between me and the bishop two days later in a way I had not expected. The next day in the afternoon a priest from Antioch and two deacons came to me and asked me to go with them to the bishop’s quarters in the east of the city to check his health, or so they said. I asked them politely, but in surprise, how it was that their delegation did not have a physician. The priest said that the physician of their church was with them, then added gently and calmly, ‘But Nestorius the priest wants further reassurance on the health of the venerable Bishop Theodore.’

  That was the first time I had heard the name Nestorius and that would be the first day I saw him. I set off with them after filling my bag with herbs which invigorate and strengthen the heart and seeds which settle the stomach. I closed the door of my room firmly and we walked together, with the priest from Antioch ahead of us. We walked for about half an hour, enough to bring beads of sweat to our faces under the midday sun. I was wearing the cassock of a Jerusalem monk, which the goodly priest had given me a month earlier as a sign that I was accepted among them. At the door a priest from Mopsuestia received us and gave us cold water, for which I thanked the Lord. When I entered the bishop’s quarters I suddenly felt that something momentous was about to happen. We followed a long corridor and from a door on the right at the far end came a calm and solemn voice: ‘Blessed physician and venerable father, His Holiness Bishop Theodore is talking to some guests. Would you like to go in now or would you rather wait here until they come out?’

  It was the priest from Mopsuestia, and I asked his leave to go in and listen, if that was possible. He nodded solemnly in agreement and gently opened the door for me. The room was spacious and shady, roofed with palm fronds and airy. In the centre lay matting sprinkled with water perfumed with essence of basil, and on rows of benches on the four sides sat goodly men, monks, priests and deacons, about forty people in all, and their features indicated that most of them were people from the north. They had faultless pale complexions and their beards were bright white or blond, so much so that I was embarrassed that I was so brown and sallow and that my unkempt beard did not suggest that I was a skilful physician.

  In those days I did not care to trim my beard, as I have done recently. I sat in the place closest to the door, and in the centre of the opposite side Bishop Theodore was sitting on an antique wooden chair with armrests. He did not notice when I came in quietly and sat down on the bench opposite his chair at a distance. His words captivated me and I paid full attention to their subtlety, which I have often recalled. The clarity of his diction penetrated easily my heart and mind. I remember today much of what he said and when I returned to my room in the evening I wrote it down. Speaking in Greek,
he said:

  ‘On this holy ground where we are honoured to come as pilgrims, dear friends, the new age of Man began. Jesus Christ marks the divide between two ages and he initiates the new era of mankind. The first age began with Adam, and the second began with Jesus Christ. Each of the two ages has its nature and rules, known to our merciful God from eternity. The Heavenly Father created Adam in His image, that he might be immortal. But Adam was seduced by Satan’s temptation and disobeyed the Holy Lord and ate from the forbidden tree in the hope that he would become a god. The accursed Azazeel deceived him with his whispering. Adam sinned and was punished with expulsion from Paradise, judged by the holiness of the Lord God.

  ‘But because the Lord in His mercy loves mankind and originally created him without sin, He did not want to leave him stained with his first sin till the end of eternity. Mercy prevailed over the Lord and He sent His only son Jesus Christ in perfect human form to redeem mankind, save the world from the sin of Adam and through His sacrifice open a new age for humanity. After the Messiah, He sent the Apostles to guide us and give us the Gospels. What does gospel mean? As St John Chrysostom says, it means news of joy, because the Gospel brings glad tidings of reprieve from punishment and forgiveness of sins. It brings absolution, consecration and a heavenly legacy which puts Azazeel to shame, and it graces us with abundant hope.’