Azazeel Read online

  For the days of the journey they mostly ate cheese, onions and salt fish, which I had never eaten, following the advice of my uncle who brought me up after my father’s death. On the river trip I vowed to fast and for the whole eight days of the journey I had only dried dates and water, seasoned with my prayers. The day we reached the furthest point they wanted to travel down the Nile, the owner of the boat asked me where I was heading next, and when I told him he gave me some advice. ‘Don’t go into Alexandria in your monk’s cassock because in that troubled town you don’t know who you’re going to meet first.’ And he gave me some of his clothes.

  In a sudden flash I realized that he spoke the truth and that our Father in Heaven wanted to convey this message to me through the voice of this man. With a heart full of affection and gratitude I wished them good fortune, then made my way northwest through green fields stretching as far as the eye could see. The flatness of the land and the broad vistas frightened me. There are no hills in the Nile Delta to restrict the view, just open plain, endless cropland and kindly people whose womenfolk go out with them to the fields. Near the town of Damanhour I found a group of peasants heading to Alexandria on their donkeys. I went along with them, dressed in a gown of the kind we wear in the south of the valley, where gowns are fuller at the sleeves and in the chest. I carefully folded up my monk’s cassock and the distinctive cap we wear and put them at the bottom of my bag, under the books, with the old wooden cross between them.

  In the group bound for Alexandria there were ten men, seven mules, three sheep and two women, one of them old. Their guide was a pompous man who never stopped making suggestive remarks, including the obscenities which pagans use. In a whisper he asked me why I was going to Alexandria and he laughed when I told him I was going in search of learning.

  ‘In Alexandria there are nicer things than learning,’ he said.

  I did not ask him to explain but he volunteered to elaborate. He moved his head close to my ear, until I could smell the unpleasant smell of onion on his breath, and whispered, ‘Alexandria is a city of whores and gold! Are you planning to stay there, southerner?’

  ‘That depends on the will of the Lord.’

  ‘Which lord would that be, cousin? In Alexandria there are many lords. The important thing is to have a relative there or you will suffer greatly,’ he said.

  ‘That depends on the will of the Lord whose glory is in heaven.’

  ‘Ah, so you’re Christian. So you have half the city, congratulations to you people of the tormented and crucified god.’ He chuckled. ‘You have half the world and there’s nothing for me, the eloquent peasant, now that my old gods have grown old... Strange world!’

  The midday heat grew fiercer as we walked hour after hour, and the pompous and loathsome guide never stopped talking. I asked a man who looked friendly and he told me in the Coptic dialect of the Delta that it was only two hours’ walk to Alexandria. The closer we came the more the green receded and more and more patches of rock and sandy ground appeared, separating the fields one from another. The advance of brown around us troubled me, for brown is the colour of death, sterility, and the temples of the dying gods. Never before had I seen this dull brown spread across the face of the earth until it reached right to the horizon. The shouting of the guide, the eloquent peasant, compounded my unease as he hurried us on to our destination. ‘If we reach the gates after sunset, you’ll have only yourselves to blame!’ he said.

  I tried to calm him down gently but to no avail. I explained to him that the old woman who was with them was ill and it would be hard for her to travel faster than we were already going, but he was not convinced. The cropland had completely faded away around us as we progressed, and the colour brown prevailed, the colour of autumn and of sin. As the sun prepared to set, a green blob loomed in front of us and at first I thought it was the city of Alexandria and I let slip my conjecture. The pompous guide ridiculed me and shouted at me in derision. ‘Alexandria green! Ha! No one colour can dominate the city of every colour.’

  After an hour of walking I realized that the green blob was the swamps and woods which ring the city on the southern side, close to the shallow lakes and the canal which comes from the Canopic branch of the Nile. I also realized that we would have to trace a long circle to enter the city from the western side, through a gate they call the Moon Gate. The brown now came back, to cover the earth again after a light redness had tinged it at sunset. After an hour’s walking the city of Alexandria appeared to us from afar like a dream. The eloquent peasant dug his heels into his donkey’s belly and headed off. ‘I’ll catch the gates before sunset, so I can spend the night inside the city!’ he shouted with disdain.

  The priest of the big church in Akhmim had told me that Alexandria, from the time it was founded and for a long time after, did not allow Egyptians like us to stay the night inside the city. The situation changed with the passage of time and after our faith spread the city became open to all. I still remember the priest’s face and the way he shook his head that day as he said, speaking in the Sa’idi dialect of Coptic: ‘The day will come when we will not let pagans or Jews stay the night, neither in Alexandria nor in all the big cities. One day they will all live outside the walls and all the cities will be for the people of the Lord.’

  I also knew that outside the walls of Alexandria there were poor people who had been living in wretched houses for decades, but when I arrived I was amazed at the number of tents which sheltered the descendants of those who were expelled every night and the profusion of miserable houses which the Egyptian peasants had built west of the city wall. When we arrived the travelling party dispersed around me without anyone saying a word and I found myself lost among hundreds of poor people, the sheep of the Lord, clamouring around the pots where their evening meal was cooking. Around their humble dwellings children were shouting out at the sight of their exhausted fathers coming home after a hard day’s work. Surly guards were looking around among the throng, and there were monks with long beards, strikingly unkempt and smiling at no one.

  The owner of the big tent, which rested on pillars of cheap brick, shouted at me, demanding that I pay for a night’s lodging, and I quickly complied. Staying the night at the walls of Alexandria is expensive for strangers. In our country no one charges when they take in guests. If I had kept on my monk’s cassock, I could have stayed in the clean church which I had just passed and from which I heard the loud voice of a man preaching in Greek. Of course, at the time, I did not think of changing my clothes. That would have aroused suspicion and could have caused me problems. I said to myself, ‘Never mind. I’ll go into the city as I once was – a poor man from the south of the valley, whose father fished from the Nile, keeping away from the crocodiles and the hippopotamuses. I am like the people who throng around me and my best protection is to mix in with the flock of the Lord and take refuge among them.’

  I withdrew to a corner of the large tent, exhausted, and felt around in my bag for the letter I had brought from the Akhmim priest who had taken my monastic vows. The letter was addressed to the priest Yoannes the Libyan, who lived in the big church known as the Church of the Wheat Seed and also as the Church of St Mark, to place it under the patronage of St Mark the Apostle and the Evangelist, who preached the gospel in the city and was killed by its rulers. When I felt the letter of recommendation with the tips of my fingers, it reassured me a little.

  I intended to spend days wandering around the city before going to the church, to see first everything I wanted to see and then to present myself to them and see what they wanted me to see. I thought I would learn much in Alexandria, as many had assured me, and this idea comforted me. I groped around inside my bag, brought out a handful of dry dates and started to chew them slowly, mindful that the Lord in His grace has granted us the pleasure of feeling sated after hunger.

  A man nearby, shabby in appearance but with friendly eyes, smiled at me. I offered him some of the dates and he took them. Then he stuck his hand into his
bag and brought out a piece of cheese to offer me. I declined but did not tell him I was fasting. He asked me where I came from and without thinking I said Naga Hammadi. His face lit up and he said, ‘I’m originally from Ansina (Samalout). I was born there but I’ve lived here many years.’

  The man shuffled towards me and began to tell me about his hometown, which lies in the heart of southern Egypt to the east of the Nile. He said he grew up in a village near a mountain called Bird Mountain, because birds come and land there every year and fill the air around. Then they suddenly leave after one of the birds sacrifices itself by putting its head in a hole at the foot of the mountain, and something unknown inside the hole wraps itself around the bird’s head and does not let go until the bird’s body has dried up and its feathers have fallen out. That is a sign for the rest of the birds to dive into the Nile and fly away at night, only to come back next year at the same time and repeat the cycle.

  The man whispered to me that in his hometown there are many ‘changelings’, by which he meant old statues, including a strange statue of a man copulating with a woman. At the top of the mountain there is a church where monks live, called the Church of the Palm because when Jesus the Messiah passed by there during the Holy Family’s journey to Egypt he left the impression of the palm of his hand on a stone which turned soft for him, as a miracle and as a lesson for those who came after. ‘He also left the stick with which he brushed the flies off his sheep and goats,’ he added. I said to the man, whose name I no longer remember, ‘But Jesus the Messiah came to Egypt only as an infant.’

  ‘What are you talking about, cousin?’ he said. ‘Jesus the Messiah lived his whole life and died in Egypt.’

  I realized that the man knew nothing, or perhaps he knew something I did not know, or perhaps the two of us dreamt up what we thought we knew. I had no desire to continue talking with him so I told him I would like to go to sleep, then I covered my head with an old piece of cloth which the owner of the tent had given me and tried to sleep seated, as is my custom on dark nights, and most of my nights are dark.

  Before sleep overtook me I started thinking about Bird Mountain and the church at the top of the mountain. I should have passed by this town on my way so I could see the wonders that are there. We miss many things along the way. Egypt’s towns are full of wonders and miracles because they are full of believers. That night I could not sleep for the succession of sights I had passed on my journey and through my whole life: the young man and the monkey who climbed the palm tree before my eyes as though rushing to reach the dates; the church as small as a room where I spent the night on the banks of the Nile in Assiut, to which I was taken by a deacon who came from a town called Qous; sailing down the river on the boat of the poor merchants, and their ceaseless clamour; the tearful eyes of the deacon from Qous as he bade me farewell after the three nights I spent in the room attached to the little church which he served; my mother’s startled appearance when I told her I knew she had betrayed my father to her relatives, the ignorant Christians, and I ran away from her and she could not catch up with me and after that day I never saw her again; the time I wept when I found out she had married one of those relatives who killed my father; the image of our house from which I fled; abandoning my mother after I ran away and she remarried; the day I threw myself into the arms of my uncle who came looking for me and whom I saw in the guise of the Saviour; going to the big school in Naga Hammadi when I was ten years old; my uncle’s wife, a woman of Nubian origin, and the smell of the delicious food she cooked for us at dusk.

  I had almost fallen asleep, but I woke up when a stout priest with a stentorian voice came into the tent. He did not even wait till he reached the centre of the large tent, but began shouting out his sermon as soon as he came in on us: ‘I bless you, children of God, in the name of Jesus Christ, God the Lord, the Saviour,’ he said. ‘I grant you heavenly blessings, flock of the Lord, come close to Jesus Christ, as He is close to you. The Lord loves you, so love Him. Pray to Him before you sleep and when you awake. Sleep in the arms of His mercy. Love is the spirit of God, so love your brothers and your children, and love your enemies.’

  Nearby a peasant of malign appearance whispered to those around him, with the sarcasm of a lost sheep, ‘And does his master Cyril love his brothers the Jews?’ Those around him stifled their laughter, and one of them said, ‘Of course, he loves them so much he kills them and throws them outside the city walls.’ The priest with the stentorian voice did not turn towards them. Perhaps he did not hear them, or heard only the words he had memorized and repeated to them each night. He wrapped up his noisy sermon, which had wrenched me away from my secret memories, with these words: ‘Children of God, the house of the Lord is open to you. Come to church on Sunday morning and obtain his blessing. Turn to your Lord, so He will turn to you. Join the apostles, the saints and the martyrs.’

  After spewing this mouthful at us the priest left haughtily, as though he had preached the Sermon on the Mount, followed by the fat and silent soldier who had come in behind him. The people in the tent responded with murmurs and suppressed laughter, then busied themselves with idle chat as they passed around pieces of coarse bread, salty cheese and salted fish. The smell of onion filled the tent. I stretched out in my spot near the tent door, where the smell was less intense, and succumbed to a flood of dreams.

  I had many visions that night, none of them reassuring. I slept restlessly until awoken at dawn by the clamour of those sleeping around me. I mean their loud snoring, as well as the noise of those around the tent – the crying of an infant, the shouts of a man selling curdled milk and the chirping of the sparrows. I wished I could go back to sleep because I had a long day before me and did not know when it would start or end. In front of me lay an awesome world, concealed from me behind the gate of the great city. But I could not go back to sleep, so I made do with closing my eyes until the light had covered the ground and God’s sun shone on the righteous and the wicked, as it is written.

  I left the tent to look for some water to wipe my face, but could not find any. The people were busy with the start of another hard day in their lives. At their usual early hour they headed to the city gate. I was amazed to find that the city gate was not closed at night. In fact it was never closed, and the bottom part of each door was buried in sand which had turned to rock and salty rust, showing that it had not been opened for many years. So why did these people sleep outside the gate?

  The river of poor people streaming towards the gate swept me along. They were walking with heavy steps, not rushing. I walked along with them, succumbing to the current in this river of poor people as it submitted to the will of the Lord. The faces of those going in were sallow, their clothes old but clean, and they exuded a mysterious euphoria that belied their appearance. In a flash I realized that all of them, Christians and pagans, were the children of the Lord.

  The guards were at the gates, carefully examining those going in. They did not stop anyone, even if their alert posture suggested they were about to do so. The city wall was high, higher than any wall I had ever seen. Other guards stood on top, looking lazily towards us. The gate in the wall was wide enough to take many at a time. In the open gate there was a smaller door, wide enough for one person. The rust on the edges of it showed that it too had not been opened for many years. I do not recall seeing a single smile the day I passed through the Moon Gate.

  Alexandria is amazing, vast in extent. Its streets easily absorbed the river of people coming in, as though they were ants walking along a crack in a great rock. The streets were paved with small grey stones and there were pavements on the sides of most streets. That was when I understood the meaning of the word ‘pavement’, which the priest from Damietta, my teacher in Naga Hammadi, used to use in his speech. The streets are clean, as though the city were a newlywed who washes every night and wakes up cheerful. The labourers wash it every night and sleep outside the walls. On that early morning I did not see many of the city’s inhabitants. In my f
irst country, they would say the Alexandrians are not like us, they like to stay up late and do not get up early.

  The magnificence of the Alexandria houses and churches did not surprise me, because in Egypt I had seen old temples which were much more splendid than these buildings, but what did surprise me around the city was the tidiness and the elegance – the roads, the walls, the house fronts, the windows, the little gardens at the entrances, the balconies edged with flowers and decorative plants. The whole city was carefully constructed and elegant, although this ubiquitous beauty did not make me feel that Alexandria was the city of God Almighty, as they call it. I thought it more like the city of Man.

  ‘Hey southerner, this is the way to the stadium. Are you going there? Or to the Egyptians’ quarter?’

  ‘No, uncle,’ I said. ‘I’m going to the sea.’

  ‘The sea is everywhere. Go back where you came from, then head left, cross the Canopian Way and keep walking north. Keep the Boucalia church on your left and walk till you find the sea. In fact the sea will find you.’

  I thanked the volunteer guide, the guard of a house, and went off as he described. And why didn’t he leave me to wander around as I wanted and as the Lord wanted for me, so that I could see things that I did not expect? The Boucalia church which he mentioned I would see some months after that. It is said the remains of St Mark the Apostle are preserved in it. As for that day, on my way I crossed a small stone bridge over a freshwater canal which flows from the south of the city to the north and then debouches into the sea. I did not follow the course of the canal but preferred to walk east along the Canopian Way, the large street which cuts the city in two halves. The northern half is where the rich live, while the poor live in the south, though the poor of Alexandria are richer than the rich in my native country.