by Daniel Caet
“Uriel, I do not understand, what place is this?”
“This is the city of the dead, Helel, the west side of the city of Thebes.”
“Did you bring me to a tomb field?” I asked indignantly.
“Open your eyes, my little Helel, you judge too soon,” he answered patiently. “It is true that this is a tomb field, but it is much more than that, it is an example of how the world you knew has changed. Man has always felt the need to perpetuate himself, to feel that he is above time, but the people you are about to meet have taken that desire to incredible extremes. If there is something that man has learned to hate, it is oblivion. The people you will meet are different from the people you met in Sumeria, in their eagerness to perpetuate themselves they are capable of creating the most incredible wonders, but almost all of their life is structured around what can or should happen in the next.”
“I still do not understand why you brought me here.”
“I brought you here because this is where you must be,” he said without letting me reply. “Do you see that river? It is the center of the life of this people, it gives them everything they need, and they profess absolute respect to it, so much that they have turned it into a god although, as you will see, they have turned almost anything into a god. They call him Nile. Look across the river, Helel.”
I obeyed but the sun that reflected in the waters did not allow me to distinguish anything, suddenly a timely cloud partially covered the sun and I could see what Uriel wanted to show me. A magnificent city was before me, great buildings that I thought should be its temples and palaces rising above the rest of buildings as if they wanted to challenge the same sky. The extension of that city left me speechless. If Uruk and Kish had seemed like great cities, it was simply gigantic.
“That is the city of the living, Eastern Thebes, the city of a thousand doors. Here ends my trip and yours begins, Helel. You will enter the city of the living from the city of the dead because in reality this is your rebirth, your new beginning.”
“My new beginning, yes, but the beginning of what?”
“That can only be determined by you” he answered with a smile.
“Will I see you again?”
“I do not know, but if it never happens, remember that my thoughts will always be with you”
Without saying another word, he handed me a bag of food and some clothes that Fasit had prepared for me the night before and he embraced me with tenderness. I clung to him without wanting to let him go until I realised I was hugging the air, Uriel had left, and I was alone again. With no other way but to continue forward, I began the descent of the hill.
The road to the river was long and when I reached the plain where I had seen the one floor buildings the sun was already high. The buildings turned out to be small temples dedicated to deities that I did not know. In some of them I found older women who had brought some small offerings in the form of food. I was surprised to find no priest in any of them, but I preferred not to give importance and to continue my way. When arriving at the river it was evident that there was another problem, there was no bridge to cross. A pair of small wooden boats with a square sail and two oars in the stern were waiting in what looked like a small dock. I assumed that they were engaged in the transport of travellers and corpses between the two banks, but I could not risk using their services. To begin with, I had nothing to pay for the trip, and my presence would undoubtedly have raised the question of how I had managed to get there in the first place. Although I had not tried my powers since my rescue by Uriel, I did not think I would have any problems transporting myself to the other shore, but for that I needed to get to an area where no one could see me.
I walked for a while on the riverbank until I found an area covered with vegetation perfect for my purposes. In a moment I was on the other side, in another mass of similar vegetation and I started my way to the city. When I reached the wall, it became evident why they called Thebes the city of a thousand doors. Despite having a great wall, this had a door every few steps, some guarded by guards others totally unprotected. I wondered how they did to protect the city in case of attack with so many entry points. I chose one of the smallest doors to access and after passing it I understood why the need for so many doors. Thebes was a real labyrinth. The adobe houses rose one or two floors above the ground and lacked windows to the outside as a measure of protection against heat. The buildings continued with each other leaving very little space between both sides of the streets. This made the streets cool and dark, but all of them seemed the same and soon I was completely lost. All the streets were deserted, and I understood that something must be happening. Suddenly the sound came to me, a kind of distant song. I tried to find its origin from alley to alley hoping to find someone who could guide me. After a long time, I found myself on a street that was blocked by people and, interestingly, finding men and women was a slight form of relief. I worked my way through the crowd trying to see where I was, which did not make them very happy. When I reached the first row I could see that the street led to an immense avenue flanked by statues that represented creatures with the body of a lion and the head of a ram and that stretched as far as the eye could see. The sound of the song became more and more intense and I could see that some kind of procession was approaching.
“What is happening?” I asked the woman next to me who looked at me with a distrustful face before answering me.
“Where do you come from, man? It is clear that you are not from Thebes if you do not know what is happening. It is the pharaoh, he goes in procession to the temple of Amun-Ra to deliver his offerings as every year.”
I did not know what a pharaoh was, but I deduced that he must be some kind of king of the city and Amun-Ra one of its gods.
“Excuse me, as you said, I'm not from around here.”
“Never mind,” said the woman, now smiling. “if you're not Egyptian, it's normal that you do not know our traditions. When we have foreigners in the city, the trade works well. My son works at the docks and he has told me that more and more ships arrive from more distant places. Look, they're coming!”
The procession reached us, and the length was immense. The first part of the group consisted of about fifty men, completely shaved and with a leopard skin or something similar on their shoulders, they were the ones who generated the song while holding some incense burners that gave off a very intense smell. I was surprised that everyone bowed their heads when they passed by showing a respect almost closer to fear than reverence. Priests undoubtedly. Behind them came the central group of the procession, much less orderly.
About twenty soldiers armed to the teeth protected a central group of people consisting of a tall, thin man surrounded by a group of women and men a few steps behind him. It was easy to guess that this man was the main figure in that spectacle, the pharaoh as the woman had called him and the group that followed him must surely be different members of his court, wives, children and possibly ministers and advisors. I was struck by the seriousness of the man who circulated in the center of that crowd without paying the slightest attention to any of the vassals who had come to see him, almost as if they did not exist, as if he walked not through this world but through a superior one. The procession ended with the parade of large numbers of cattle that undoubtedly formed part of the offerings prepared for their god. I was about to leave that show that did not interest me in the least when something caught my attention. In the group that accompanied the pharaoh a tall young woman with a big black wig and the eyes painted in Kohl as seemed to be their custom caressed her belly showing an incipient pregnancy. The woman turned her head slightly showing a friendly smile and her face struck me like a dagger making it impossible for me to remove my eyes from her.
“Who is that woman, the pregnant one?” I asked the woman again.
“Let me see,” she said, moving slightly away to see better. “I think she’s lady Anksemkepté, one of the wives of Prime Minister Sarureptah.”
I kept l
ooking at her as she walked away without being able to explain the reason for the fixation and I saw her slightly delayed in the procession to reach out to another woman who was walking just behind her. Grabbing her hand, she took her to where she was and they both turned in my direction pointing at something in one of the buildings, smiling in confidence, and that's when my heart stopped. The second woman was young, although somewhat older than the first, she also wore a black wig at the height of her shoulders and painted eyes, but all this did not prevent me from recognising her. Those eyes were not easy to forget, and my head began to spin trying to understand everything that was shown before my eyes. The woman who was sweetly holding the girl's hand was Sadith.
“The other woman,” I shrieked and grabbed my new friend by the arm. “Who is the other woman?”
My newly acquired friend looked at me like I was crazy.
“I do not know,” she replied. “Some servant of the lady Ankhsemkepté I suppose. What is wrong with you?”
The procession moved away, and I could not see them anymore.
“That woman, that lady. If I need to find her, how I can do it, where does she live?”
“But, has the heat affected you? Where do you want her to live? In the Pharaoh's palace of course,” she said, looking at me incredulously. “The ladies of that category only leave the palace for these processions, burials or to go to the market from time to time with their slaves and maids.”
I released the woman who broke away from me as if I had the plague and was lost in the crowd that had disbanded after the procession. I stood there in the middle of the street, unable to think of anything except that I needed to talk to Sadith, I needed to ask a thousand things, to find out how it was possible that she was alive a thousand years after I took her for dead. I did not know how, but I had to get to talk to her.
The following days were hell. Finding Sadith became a real obsession. I was convinced that she was the reason why Uriel had made me go to Thebes and, although I did not know what she could tell me, I knew that I could not pass up the opportunity to talk to her and know what had happened after her disappearance. Unfortunately, the task of finding her was not going to be easy. The woman in the procession had told me that the only place apart from the royal palace where I could find her was the market. What she had not told me was that the city of Thebes had a dozen major markets and at least another four or five minors. They happened on different days and they sold different products. I tried to go around asking all the merchants if this was a market where the people of the palace used to go, but those people, thinking that I could be a possible wealthy buyer given my appearance as a foreigner, always told me that I was in the right place and that the royal family would come at any time. The result was that I spent days in markets of all kind waiting in vain for a visit that never occurred. In all that time I was forced to sleep in the streets and eat what I could steal from the market stalls I visited, since I had nothing of value to exchange for room and board, and the bag Fasit had prepared had emptied long ago. I was beginning to despair and my exhausted mind was beginning to consider assaulting the Pharaoh's palace as a coherent option when luck smiled on me a little. When I went through the door of a tavern I heard how a man of those who worked on the docks complained about the enormous number of packages that had been unloaded for one of the merchants of the city. In particular, he complained about the enormous number of bird cages that had arrived for the prime minister's wife and how she herself would come to choose the ones she wanted the next day in the market of the scribal district. The man continued bellowing saying that if she were his wife he would teach her to take care of his husband's bird instead of wasting money on that nonsense, and the rest of the tavern laughed in chorus, but I was not listening. If, as the man said, the lady Anksemkepté was going to go to the market the next day, there was a possibility that Sadith would accompany her and that would be my only opportunity to talk to her.
At dawn I went to the market of the district of the scribes and looked for any birds stall, and to my joy, there was just one, so I sat nearby waiting for the arrival of Anksemkepté. Several hours passed before the lady made her appearance, but I could finally see her reach the market on the south side. It was easy to recognise her thanks to the two slaves who carried the palanquin that protected her from the harsh midday sun and the two tall soldiers like towers that flanked her. And at her side, holding her arm, Sadith. This time I could see her better. Nothing had changed. Her long black hair had been replaced by that shorter wig that seemed to be the fashion in Egypt, but her face was still just as beautiful. She wore a tight linen dress that marked her figure and sandals decorated with what looked like little jewels. This time the makeup was much more discreet and that made her look even more like the Sadith I had known. I tried to approach her in a stupid move by shouting her name. She turned surprised to hear her old name and seeing my face, she was dismayed by surprise and could not hide that she had recognised me. Unfortunately, the soldiers who protected them were tremendously effective in their work and the blow I received in the stomach with the mast of one of their spears left me bent on the ground and breathless. I knew I could not make my sword appear and defend myself, not in front of so many people. Without hesitation a second soldier turned his spear in the air ready to stick it in my back while I was on the ground, but a scream of a woman stopped him. It was Sadith.
“Surely this man only wanted to ask for alms, there is no need for such a harsh punishment.”
The soldier withdrew his spear immediately clearly displeased. Sadith came up to me and helped me up from the floor. Her eyes were full of tears when she looked at me and they confirmed that she had recognised me.
“Do not fear anything good man, if it is alms what you want this is not the best place to ask for them. Go to the palace tonight and ask at the lotus door for me and you will receive what you are looking for.”
Her eyes did not stop staring at me as she spoke, blue eyes like the sea.
“Thanks, my lady.”
She nodded and turned to go back to the young woman who had observed the whole situation in silence.
“My lady, I do not know your name, I do not know who I should ask for,” I said as she walked away, but it was the other soldier who answered me.
“Ask for Lady Tyri.”
I could barely control my anxiety all day until sunset. I had to go to the first door I saw in the palace to ask one of the soldiers how to find the lotus door. The man did not hesitate to point his spear at me and ask me in bad terms what my affairs were in the palace. To my surprise, his attitude changed almost immediately as soon as he heard me say the name of Lady Tyri and told me to continue along the wall until I found a small door with a large lotus engraved in the stone of its frame. I followed the path he showed me until I found the door that turned out to be much further away than I expected, on the side of the palace closest to the river. I was surprised that the door, which was extremely small and wooden, was not guarded at all. Without really knowing what to expect, I knocked on the door and it opened to give way to a girl of about twelve or thirteen years who wore a wig that was too big for her head and that was dressed in a simple unadorned linen tunic. The girl moved away without saying a word and let me pass. The door gave access to an immense garden lit by torches and with plants and trees of all kinds. A dusty path ran parallel to a stream that was littered with lotus flowers that filled the air with a very pleasant fragrance.
“My lady is waiting for you at the end of this path,” said the girl, closing the door and disappearing between the plants.
I followed the path that she had indicated and that went into the vegetation. A little further ahead it seemed to be blocked by the branches of a willow that resembled a curtain. I removed them to pass and then I could see her. Sadith was standing in front of a kind of large pond where the little stream I had seen earlier died. The pond was also full of lotus flowers and surrounded by many willows that, with their branches, converte
d that area of the garden into some private enclosure, only visible from the other side of the pond. I went to her and when I was going to call her by her name it was her who spoke.
“You should not be here, Helel.”
Her words left me petrified. After more than a thousand years that was the coldest reception in the world and one that I did not expect at all.
“Sadith.”
“No one knows me here by that name, my name is Tyri,” she said, turning to show me her ice-cold face. That face, her way of looking at me reminded me deeply of Suriath. “I repeat that you should not be here.”
“It's you who invited me,” I replied, following her game.
“I mean Egypt, at this time,” she said angrily. “This is not your time, Helel, or should I call you by your other names? Lucifer, the exterminator …”
By her words it was easy to deduce that she knew of my actions and movements throughout the years prior to my confinement. That woman had a lot to explain and I was not going to leave without listening to everything she had to tell me.
“You can try to provoke me as much as you want, Sadith, but I saw your eyes in the market when you saw me, I saw the tears of joy in them” I said trying to approach her, but something solid hit me suddenly throwing me back.
“There is a protection barrier around me and this garden, you could not get close no matter how much effort you make, so you better not try it again.”
I got up as best I could and looked her straight in the eye.
“Sadith, what is all this? You say that this is not my time, but neither should it be yours. How is it possible that you are alive, what happened to you that night?”
