Azazeel Read online

  Silently I thanked the Lord for steering the conversation away from the subject of Bishop Theophilus and his book, because I grew anxious, and I still do, whenever I hear mention of the bishops of Alexandria. Hurriedly I answered Nestorius’s last question. ‘Nothing, father, it’s the Book of Going Forth by Day, which tells of the Day of Judgement and how the dead should testify for themselves in the presence of God, according to the ancient Egyptian belief, and those are pictures of the old gods, very old gods.’

  ‘Extraordinary pictures, and who is this man holding the potter’s wheel?’

  ‘They call him Khnum, father, the god Khnum. The ancients believed he formed mankind from clay, then Amun blew into the clay to give man life. An ancient belief, father, an ancient belief.’

  ‘Khnum, strange name. Does it remind you of anything, Hypa?’

  ‘Yes, it does remind me of things, but how did you know, reverend father?’

  ‘From your troubled heart. In fact I can see you are about to cry.’

  Telling secrets has never been my practice, nor has trusting anyone. But that night I went and told Nestorius about the temple of the god Khnum which receives the flow of the Nile at the southern tip of Elephantine Island in southern Egypt, near Aswan. I told him about the archaic aura of reverence and sanctity which diffused for centuries through the temple and its compound. I told him about my father and how he used to take fish every other day to the sad priests who had lived entrenched within the temple for years, under siege, grieving that their religion was dying out with the spread of belief in Christ. My father would take me in his boat whenever he visited the temple, to offer the priests half of the fish his nets had caught over the past two days. We would go to the temple secretly at dawn.

  I could not help but weep when I described to him the terror of that dreadful dawn, when I was nine years old. The ordinary Christians had lain in wait for us at the southern quay, close to the gate of the temple. They were hiding behind the rocks before the boat docked, then they rushed towards us like spectres fleeing from the bowels of hell. Before we had a chance to recover from the shock of seeing them, they were upon us from their hiding place nearby. They pulled my father from his boat and dragged him across the rocks to stab him to death with rusty knives they had hidden beneath their ragged clothes. I snarled, cowering in the corner of the boat to defend myself. But my father was defenceless, and as they stabbed him he cried out for help to the god he believed in. The priests of Khnum took fright at the sounds which broke the silence and lined up on the temple wall, watching what was happening below them in dread and confusion. They raised their arms in imprecation to their gods and cried out for help. They did not realize that the gods they worshipped had died long ago and no one would hear their fearful prayer.

  ‘Poor thing, and did the mob come close to you that day?’

  ‘I wish they had killed me so I could be at rest for ever. No, father, they did not come so close. They looked at me like wolves that have had their fill, then came to the boat, grabbed the basket of fish and threw it at the temple gate, which was firmly closed. They carried my father’s mangled body and threw it on top of the basket. His blood and flesh, and the fish, mingled with the dust of the earth which was no longer holy. Then the thrill of victory and vengeance took possession of them and they shouted out and raised high their arms, stained with my father’s blood. Holding the rusty bloodied knives in their hands, they began to gesture at the terrified priests on the wall. They cheered and exulted, as they sang the famous hymn: ‘Glory be to Jesus Christ, death to the enemies of the Lord, glory be to...’

  I began to sob and Nestorius stood up and put his arm around me. I was cowering just as I did the first time, the time when he sat next to me, patted me on the head and made the sign of the cross several times on my brow. He kept repeating, ‘Calm down, my child.’ Then he said, ‘My child, our life is full of pain and sin. Those ignorant people wanted salvation on the old basis of oppression for oppression, and persecution for persecution, and you were the victim. I know your pain was great and I feel it. May the merciful Lord bestow on us His compassion. Arise, my child, and let us pray together the prayer of mercy.’

  ‘What use will prayer be, father? He who died is dead and will not return.’

  ‘Prayer will avail, my child, it will avail.’

  I heard Nestorius’s voice tremble. When he raised his bowed head from his chest, I saw that tears were running into his beard and that his eyes were inflamed and red from grief. Pain filled the lines of his face, reflected on his brow in the form of a deep sorrow.

  ‘Have I grieved you, father?’

  ‘No, my child, don’t worry. Arise and let’s pray.’

  By the meekness of the Virgin we prayed, and we prayed long until dawn came to paint the black of the sky a deep blue. As we sat in silence right after praying, I could hear from afar the crowing of cocks and the twittering of the birds which sleep on the branches of the trees in the courtyard of the church. Nestorius broke our silence by inviting me to go outside with him and walk around the church wall. ‘May we receive,’ he said, ‘some of the mercies of the Lord at this blessed dawn.’

  Between the first break of daylight and the time when the morning sun had spread across the ground around us, we walked twice around the large space within the walls of the church. Then we went to the opposite side, where the houses are clustered together as if for safety. The morning sun is troubling to those who have stayed up all night – as I have long seen and felt – and I still suffer from it on most days. In rhythm with our leisurely step Nestorius told me some of his childhood memories from the town of Marash, some of the events of his youth in Antioch, stories about him and his master Theodore of Mopsuestia and other things that had happened to him in the course of his life. On that Jerusalem day that inadvertently brought us together, Nestorius was forty-one years old. Of course I will not say now what he told me about himself that day, because it would not be right to write that down, and I know that he told me what he told me only to cheer me up, trusting me with secrets that had nothing to do with me and which I could not possibly disclose here.

  After we had finished our second turn around the walls and were heading towards the houses, I saw from afar people beginning to stir about their usual daily business. I noticed three deacons of Antioch waiting for us at the door to my locked room, looking around anxiously. When we reached them, Nestorius said goodbye to me and went off with them towards their lodge. But first, with a smile laden with the burdens of our long night, he said, ‘You may join us today at lunchtime, and if you cannot, I will meet you in the church courtyard at the ninth hour of the day,’ meaning in the afternoon when we say the last of the daytime prayers.

  I went back to my room so completely exhausted that I almost fell asleep at the door. When I was inside I collapsed on my bed, and slept a deep sleep with no dreams. At noon the clamour of visitors at the door of the church awoke me and I stood up, my body heavy and my soul drained. With unsteady steps I made my way towards the jar of water, took a listless drink, then washed my face with drops of water which I poured into the palms of my hands. When I half-opened my window, the light poured in and filled the corners of my soul with its sudden radiance. I was reorganizing the treasures hidden under my bed when a gentle knocking on the door disturbed the calm, and I heard a call I had grown accustomed to in those times: ‘Father, physician monk.’

  It was an Arab man dressed like a merchant, come to report to me that he had a cataract in his left eye two years earlier and now he was losing the sight in his right eye, because the water in his eyes was not staying together in one spot so that it could be drawn off through a thin tube. I gave him a powder and told him to use it as a poultice and come back in two months. In two months! I wonder, did the man come back two months later and find me gone?

  That day the Arab man asked me how much he should pay and I told him the usual, ‘The Lord will reward me, but if you want you can give something as a donation
to the church.’ The man thanked me and tried to kiss my hand, then left. When I closed the door behind him, I reverted to my inner world full of the worries of a lonely man and the sudden flashes of light which would come upon me without warning. I finished off sorting out my books and scrolls and arranged them under my bed as they were. When I had organized the meagre belongings in my room, I went out in the early afternoon into the courtyard of the church.

  The weather was not hot but I took shelter in the shady corner. In my usual place on the right side of the courtyard, beyond the big door, I leant the back of my head against the leafy tree which was my favourite there. I felt as weary as a traveller back from a long journey. I closed my eyes and began to fantasize that the tree and I had become one. I felt my soul slip out of my ribcage and infiltrate the trunk of the tree, then plunge deep into the roots of it and push on up into the high branches. My being swayed with its leaves, and when some of them fell from the branches a part of me fell with them. At the time I remembered the fragments of Pythagoras I had read in Akhmim, where he says that in a momentary flash he remembered many of his previous lives, including one life in which his spirit was a tree. I wanted to become a tree like this one forever, a tree that gave abundant shade but did not fruit, so that no one would throw stones at it, but that people would love for its shade. This is a dry country and the aridity is severe, and if I became this tree I would take pity on those seeking my shade, and my shade would be a solace I would give them without recompense. I would be a refuge for the weary, not a temptation to those seeking fruit. That day I prayed with the fervour of someone who is far from home, and far from himself, and I called on the Lord within me. ‘My merciful Lord, take me to You now, and save me from my ephemeral body. Have I not lodged my soul in this beloved tree and come closer to perfection, for every midday I take pity on the pilgrims who visit this sacred spot, pilgrims purged of sin through your light. In winter I will wait for Your love of the world to fall as rain, and every morning breathe in the dewdrops which the cold of the night brings to me, and nothing will divert me from singing the praises of Your heavenly glory. Trees are purer than mankind, and love God more. If I became this tree, I would spread my shade over the wretched.’

  ‘Are you asleep, Hypa?’

  I came to my senses, and was delighted when the priest Nestorius took me by surprise and sat next to me. I sat up straight and shook my head to say that I was not sleeping. In Syriac, not the Greek which was his customary language, he asked me kindly, with intent to jest, ‘In which sea of thoughts were you drowning, good Egyptian?’

  ‘Father, strange thoughts sometimes assail me. I was wishing I could become this tree in the shade of which we are sitting.’

  ‘Where do these ideas come from, my child?’

  ‘From deep inside me, and from the distant past. Pythagoras used to say...’

  ‘Pythagoras! That’s part of the old pagan culture, Hypa.’

  It troubled me that I was always so impetuous in his presence, but he relieved my embarrassment with a kindly gesture, touching my cap with his holy fingertips and starting to recite a psalm under his breath. He closed his eyes as he made the sign of the cross on my head, which was covered with a cap decorated with crosses. In a whisper, as though he were addressing the angels of heaven, he said, ‘You are blessed, Hypa, with the light of the Lord,’ and I calmed down.

  ‘Father, do you think that paganism is all evil?’ I asked.

  ‘God does not create evil or do evil, and evil does not please him,’ he replied. ‘God is all goodness and love, but people went astray in olden times when they imagined that reason was enough to know the truth, without salvation coming to them from heaven.’

  ‘I’m sorry, reverend father, but Pythagoras was a good soul, although he lived in pagan times.’

  ‘That may be, because the time before the coming of Christ’s glad tidings was also a time of God, and God’s sunlight shines on both the good and the evil, and who knows, maybe God in his omnipotence wanted to prepare mankind for the coming of the Saviour’s gospel through flashes of enlightenment which paved the way for Christ, and the closer the time approached the more frequently the signs of his coming appeared, until there came the great sign, John the Baptist, the voice crying in the wilderness.’

  I liked what he said, and saw in it a plausible answer to a problem which had long troubled me, by which I mean the mysterious connection between Jesus the Messiah and his cousin John the Baptist. How was it feasible that John the Baptist, as a human, could baptize God, or the Son of God, or the image of God, or the messenger of God, according to the various theories about him? I asked Nestorius, ‘Master, do you believe that Jesus is God, or is He the messenger of God?’

  ‘The Messiah, Hypa, was born of man, and humans do not give birth to gods. How can we say that the Virgin gave birth to a god and how can we worship a child a few months old, just because the Magi bowed down and worshipped him? The Messiah is a divine miracle, a man through whom God appeared to us. God became incarnate in Him to make of Him a harbinger of salvation and a sign of the new age of mankind, as Bishop Theodore explained to us yesterday at that meeting where I saw you for the first time. By the way, why were you upset when the bishop referred to the mystery of baptism?’

  ‘You are observant, father.’

  ‘That is not an answer.’

  Nestorius made that last remark in jest, as though he wanted to put an end to the formality between us and encourage me to speak. That’s why I had no problem divulging to him one of my biggest secrets, and I was pleased that my secret did not surprise him. I told him words to the effect that I had doubts about whether I was baptized, because my mother assured me she had me baptized when I was an infant, but my father denied it, and I don’t remember that I went to church in my early childhood, so I find myself more inclined to believe my father. At the time I did not want to tell Nestorius I had baptized myself, after I left Alexandria. I said, ‘It seems, father, that I was not baptized as a child.’ I expected that my words would surprise him, but instead he surprised me, saying in a soft voice, ‘It’s not your fault. You must have been baptized, or you will be baptized, God willing. But how did you become a monk when you had doubts about your baptism?’

  ‘For years I attended the big church in Akhmim, and my teacher the Akhmim priest deemed me suitable for the monastic life, and he initiated me when I begged him to. I had not told him of my doubt about my baptism because I had forgotten the events of my childhood, or had chosen to forget them.’

  ‘No matter, Hypa, many besides you are baptized late, and some of them have become bishops with the passage of time. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan and Nectarius, the Bishop of Constantinople, were baptized only on the day they were consecrated as bishops. The Emperor Constantine himself was baptized only on his deathbed, and he was called the Beloved of God, the Defender of the Faith and the Ally of Jesus.’

  I noticed that he mentioned the Christian titles of the Emperor Constantine in a tone that combined derision and sadness, and I wanted to hear from him more than he had disclosed. Proud of what I knew and keen to understand more, I said that the emperor performed for Christianity momentous services which have lasted till our time, for in his age the people of our religion were a powerless minority, no more than one tenth of the population of the Empire, and now they have become the majority in the Empire, both east and west, only one hundred years after the ecumenical council at which this emperor presided. I added, ‘I mean, father, the Council of Nicaea at which Arius was excommunicated for saying the Messiah is human rather than divine and that God is One, unaccompanied and undiluted in his divinity.’

  ‘You are truly devious, Hypa. What do you want to know from me, you clever physician, you monk who doubts his own baptism?’

  I realized from his joking that he was not upset at what I said and would be happy to talk frankly about the mystery of this matter, which our clerics do not like to tackle. I was impatient to know what he thought of the co
ntroversial Arius, whom the church of Alexandria hates more than it hates Satan himself. At first Nestorius tried to divert me from my intention by asking if I was content living in Jerusalem. But I begged for a clear answer on what he really thought of Arius and his ideas. ‘Tell me the truth as you see it, reverend father,’ I implored him, ‘for you are shrewd of vision, god-fearing, pure in heart and judicious in reason, and my interest in knowing of this matter is great and keeps me awake at night.’

  ‘Fine, let’s get up and walk over to the lodge, because I’d like to check up on Bishop Theodore. I’ll tell you about Arius and his heresy while we’re on our way.’

  We did not take the direct route to the lodge, but went out of the church gate and walked to the right alongside the high wall, then crossed the open space that stretches from the end of the church wall to the beginning of where the houses are clustered, on the eastern side of the city wall. This route was quieter and more pleasant, and further from the tumult. We were walking at a steady pace, stopping sometimes when Nestorius was busy clarifying a subtle point, and so we arrived after an hour or more. On the way he told me things I hesitate to write down now, especially in these dark and gloomy days.

  Sleep is a divine gift without which the world would go raving mad. Everything in the universe sleeps, wakes up and sleeps again, except our sins and our memories, which have never slept and will never subside. Today I awoke from a sleep full of dreams so strong they seemed like reality, or perhaps it is my reality that has collapsed and faded until it has turned into dreams? I have started to feel the breath of death close by me, almost brushing me. Will I perhaps die in my sleep or in the church at prayer time? I think that my fear of the end, and not Azazeel’s insistence, is what drives me to write. Or perhaps I want my voice to reach beyond whatever comes to an end with my death. Last month the oldest monk in this monastery died and was buried there. He died on the threshold of the Lord, free of all sin. How will I die, and where?