The Eye of Ra

by Michael Asher

  ‘People have been trying to categorise me all my life,’ I said. ‘The kids at school, my colleagues, now you. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that there’s no them — there’s only us.’

  ‘Yes, that liberal “we’re-all-brothers-together” shit sounds so sweet from the high-horse of inherited money, doesn’t it. There’s always them, even in Egypt: you’re rich, you’re poor, you’re a stupid Sa’idi, you’re a dumb Fellah, you’re a kaffir Copt, you’re a treacherous Bedui — even a dirty Hazmi. Your problem, Ross, is that you’ve never belonged to anything. I’ve got your record from the Antiquities Service. You were a misfit there too. You were with Cranwell at Karnak and later at Bahriyya, where you helped him excavate the Temple of Ptah. Cranwell was the only one you would work with, but you fell out with even him in the end. You had your own programme, it says here, which you followed to the exclusion of everything else. Excellent field Egyptologist, it says, superb analyst, incisive mind, acute observer, photographic memory. Inclined to be individualistic. Not a good team-player. Difficult with colleagues and superiors, follows own initiative even if contrary to official policy. That’s why you were never given a major dig, only minor ones. The directorate had you down as untrustworthy. They suspected that you massaged the evidence so that it supported your own theories — theories, it says here, that were often wildly improbable. Says you claimed to have found an 18th-Dynasty stela at Madinat Habu, which you were suspected of having forged. Is that why you were dismissed from the Service?’

  I felt the blood rushing to my head. This was pure libel. I was tempted to open my mouth and deliver a vicious refutation, but it suddenly occurred to me that Hammoudi might be baiting me. I removed my glasses and rubbed them slowly on my shirt-cuff, forcing myself to breathe deeply three times. ‘That’s absolute nonsense,’ I said.

  ‘All right, then why were you dismissed?’

  ‘My views were unacceptable.’

  ‘And what are your views?’

  ‘That ancient Egyptian civilisation is not indigenous, that it came to the Nile Valley from an older civilisation.’

  Hammoudi snorted. ‘You mean, like Atlantis?’

  ‘If you want to call it that, yes.’

  ‘I’ve heard that kind of rot from Westerners before. They can’t stand to believe that our ancestors — my ancestors — developed a civilisation thousands of years ago when they were still cavemen. But then you’re not really a Westerner, are you, Ross?’

  ‘I’m not interested in political ideology, if that’s what you mean. I work with facts.’

  Hammoudi smiled grimly. ‘Oh, really,’ he said, ‘then perhaps you can explain a fact to me. Why does it say here in your official record that you were dismissed for trafficking in stolen antiquities?’

  For a moment I just stared at him dumbly. The idea of selling vital historical artefacts was as repugnant to me as to any serious archaeologist. I had always been absolutely scrupulous in recording my finds: unlike many, I didn’t even keep small items out of nostalgia. ‘That’s preposterous,’ I stammered. ‘I never heard anything so ridiculous!’

  ‘Then you deny that you were arrested at Cairo International Airport in 1992 carrying a statuette of the god Thoth in your luggage?’

  I was about to deny it. Then I remembered. It was true, I had been stopped by Customs police on my way out of the country in ‘92 for carrying a Thoth statuette. It was the genuine article, dating back to Old Kingdom times, and quite valuable, but I’d explained that I was removing it only for academic purposes — actually for a lecture I was doing in London — and would be bringing it back.

  ‘I wasn’t arrested, only stopped at Customs,’ I told him. ‘It was a matter of not having the right form. Anyway, once I’d done the paperwork they let me take it, and I brought it back. It’s now in the Egyptian Museum.’

  ‘Says “arrested” in your record. No mention of you being allowed to take it, or bringing it back. Sounds to me as though you paid somebody a big bakhshish.’

  ‘Listen, that piece is in the Egyptian Museum. Ask Abbas Rifad, the Director of the Antiquities Service. He catalogued it himself. Ask him, he’ll support me.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Ross. You see, Rifad says he’s the one who sacked you for illegal trafficking. See for yourself: his signature is on the report.’

  ‘He’s lying.’

  ‘Really. What would be the point in that? Rifad tells me that he had grave suspicions of your friend Julian Cranwell, too. He couldn’t prove anything, but Cranwell had some crooked friends, like Nikolai Kolpos, the Antiquities Dealer. We’ve been watching him for years.’

  ‘What do you want, Captain Hammoudi?’

  ‘What I want,’ he said, standing up and walking around the desk with slow and insinuating menace, ‘is for you to remember who is asking the questions here.’

  He flicked another Cleopatra out of the packet and lit it, sucking the smoke in deeply, and blowing it towards my face in a long bluish jet.

  ‘Why were you running around the Giza plateau at night?’

  ‘I thought I might find some clues to Cranwell’s death.’

  ‘In the dark? Without even a torch. I might be a stupid Sa’idi, mister, but even I don’t swallow that one.’

  ‘All right. I thought I might find him alive.’

  Hammoudi and Mustafa exchanged a glance. Then the Captain leaned over and fixed me with a hard stare. ‘Cranwell is dead, Ross,’ he said. ‘He died of a heart attack at the pyramids.’

  ‘His body isn’t in the morgue.’

  ‘Ah. I heard you’d been poking your nose in there. Dr Amin may look an idiot, but he’s not. Did you really think he didn’t see you running for the broom cupboard? Cranwell isn’t in the morgue because his relatives requested the body immediately back in Britain.’

  ‘What relatives?’

  Hammoudi advanced towards me, eyes blazing. For a moment I thought he was actually going to hit me. ‘There you are, asking damned questions again,’ he said. ‘Cranwell’s body was shipped home by the British Consulate at the request of relatives. The case is closed.’

  He picked up a yellow form from the file and held it before my eyes. It was an official request for the transfer of a body to the authority of the British Consulate. Julian Cranwell’s name was clearly written on the form, which was stamped by the Consulate and signed personally by the British Consul, Melvin Renner. On the base of the form was an Arabic stamp and the words ‘Transferred 1/4/95’.

  I tried to maintain a nonchalant expression, but Hammoudi knew I was crushed.

  ‘We don’t like people launching private investigations here,’ he said, slapping the form down on the table so hard that I jumped. ‘Cranwell is dead. Died of a heart attack. His body has already been shipped home. The case is closed. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  ‘Now get out and go home. Go back to England, where you belong. If you belong anywhere. Let me get one sniff of your meddling again, and you’ll be where that poor sod is next door. Got it? Good — piss off!’

  Sergeant Mustafa dragged me to my feet. As we paused for Hammoudi to open the door, he said: ‘Actually I feel sorry for you, Ross. The truth is that you’re neither one of us nor one of them. You’re nothing. You’ll always be nothing.’

  Mustafa marched me to the exit, back down the corridors smeared with dark stains. Just before we reached the main door he suddenly swung me into a dark entrance. He forced me up against the wood and before I could react, delivered two stinging punches into my stomach. The breath gushed out of me, and as I staggered, he caught me by the hair, wrenched my head down and kicked me viciously in the ribs, once with each foot. Then he jerked me up again. ‘So you’re sorry!’ he grunted, ‘I’ll make you sorrier, Afrangi bastard. That’s for ruining my nose!’ He gave me another two kicks in the groin, and four rabbit-punches in the kidneys before he threw me out into the street.

  16

  Doc’s 504 was parked inconspicuously in the shadows
when I reeled out of the police station into the night. Mustafa’s kicks had been delivered with expert force and, I suspected, long practice. I wondered if a rib was broken. I’d clocked Doc’s car even before she opened the door, and I slumped into the front seat painfully. ‘You look terrible,’ she said. ‘What did they do to you, Jamie?’

  ‘Bastards!’ I said. ‘Don’t ask. Just drive.’

  The lights of the Corniche went past in a dream. Doc drove in silence, with continual side-glances at my red and swollen wrists — glances I ignored. My ribs stung like hell every time I took a deep breath. My balls ached. But it wasn’t the physical pain that hurt me so much: I was enough of a Bedui to accept Mustafa’s right to revenge. What really hurt was Hammoudi’s last sledge-hammer remark: ‘You’re nothing, Ross. You’ll always be nothing.’

  My self-esteem must have rested on a very slim foundation. All my life I’d been struggling to convince myself that I was something, but I’d never really succeeded, never really felt that I belonged. I was as exotic to my Hawazim cousins as I’d been to the other kids at school. With the instinct of the torturer Hammoudi had winkled out my weakness with hardly any effort. He was right. I’d never quite found out who was ‘us’ and who ‘them’. I knew deep down that the decision to take up Egyptology had been a quest to combine the two parts of me, to find out who I really was, as if you could examine your past, your antecedents with the sort of supposedly ‘objective’ view I was taught at school and university. There I’d been, peeling away at the layers of the past, always finding another layer beneath, always thinking that one day I’d come to the point where I could say, ‘This is it, this is where I began.’ I suppose I’d realised long ago that no such point existed. A sense of belonging couldn’t be proved by scientific objectivity: it had to be felt, it had to be believed. Right now I believed that I was nothing and no one, and tonight not even my usual ability to focus on hard data could turn my thoughts away from a despairing sense of self-contempt.

  At Doc’s flat I wouldn’t let her touch my wrists or look at my ribs. I locked myself in my small room and threw myself on the bed. A migraine was coming on, but I didn’t call Doc for help. I decided to let it ride out, to remind me that I was nothing and not worth treating. I lay there for hours, staring at the ceiling and moaning quietly to myself, while the nauseating visual effects gave way to searing pain. Once or twice I heard Doc rapping softly on the door, saying, ‘Jamie, are you all right?’ But I ignored her. Even Doc was the enemy. Why the hell had I come? For a moment Julian’s problem had shown me a way out of myself, out of the sloughs of depression I’d fallen into in Britain. For a moment it had restored to me a sense of purpose. Now that purpose had gone. I no longer knew whether Julian was alive or dead, and part of me no longer cared. Just as I no longer cared about my unconventional views on the origins of Egyptian civilisation. ‘I deal with facts,’ I’d told Hammoudi, but in my heart I had known it was a lie. Hadn’t I actually developed those views to undermine the apparent certainty of an establishment I’d never felt myself part of? I wanted so much to belong, but only on my terms, only by being me.

  I drifted into a kind of sleep, dreaming of the day Ahmad wald Mukhtar, my cousin, and I had ridden out on camels to Burj at-Tuyur, the ‘Tower of Birds’, a lone knoll of limestone in the desert where flocks of quail roosted on their arduous journey south. The Hawazim sometimes set up nets to catch the small birds, which they considered a great delicacy; by the time they reached this latitude, anyway, they were exhausted and almost tumbled into the nets. I had no interest in catching quail, but I was interested to see the lanner falcons that occasionally flew this way to hunt them, and more especially in the addax which were sometimes seen around these parts. Even in my childhood the addax were scarce. The Hawazim would shoot an addax on sight for its meat, and a thirsty traveller would drink the gastric juices from its stomach. The desert was littered with their horns, stuck upright in the sand to announce the hunter’s small conquest. You couldn’t tell if the horns had been there for years or generations.

  That day we had seen no addax or lanners, nor even a quail, but we had camped near the hill, under a sky electric with stars. Ahmad had watched them, no less entranced than myself until I, anxious to show off my school-bred knowledge, asked him, ‘What are the stars?’

  My cousin had looked at me in surprise. He was a squat youth, enormously powerful but immensely good natured. I’m sure he guessed that I was showing off, but anyway he laughed. ‘The stars are the stars,’ he said. ‘They are lights in the sky. The Divine Spirit made them. That’s all there is to know about stars.’

  For a moment I’d really been tempted to demonstrate my superior grasp of modern physics, to show him what a bumpkin he was, but his humility stopped me. I knew suddenly that, in his way, Ahmad was right. The stars were lights in the sky, made by God, and that was all you needed to know. The Hawazim had no need for physics. They knew why everything was there without being told. Everything around them was God’s work. Their universe was a manifestation of the Divine Spirit. It struck me then how wonderful it must be to live in a world of certainties. The Hawazim knew who they were. They knew why they were here. By other standards they were ignorant, yet they had a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging to the earth which reduced my intellectual knowledge to a mere shadow.

  The Hawazim had no doubts. They rarely questioned. But like it or not my schooling had condemned me to endless uncertainty. Just before dawn I awoke suddenly with a pair of questions demanding resolution. First, how had Hammoudi known I would be at the pyramids last night, when no one was aware of my rendezvous but Doc and the alleged Julian Cranwell? Second, and even more important to me, why had Abbas Rifad lied about the reason for my dismissal from the Antiquities Service? The more I thought about Rifad’s behaviour the more furious I became. I have a memory like a tape-recorder, especially for conversations, and I can recall the exact words people used years afterwards as if they had been carved in my head with a knife. I remembered my last meeting with Rifad and felt the same bitter taste in my mouth that I always felt when I thought about that interview. Rifad had called me in from my dig at Heliopolis and I’d arrived at his office in the National Museum in Tahrir Square actually believing — poor fool that I was — that I must at last be due for promotion. To tell the truth, I’d never liked Rifad, and he knew it. Karlman had put his finger on it when he’d called him a pen-pusher. He was a small, plump, balding man with a big ego and a pompous style. It wasn’t quite true that he’d never got his hands dirty on a dig, but his field-work had certainly been minimal, and always where there were bright lights and T V cameras and celebrity guests. Everyone in the Service knew he was more interested in politics than Egyptology.

  When he called me into his office, he was holding a recent issue of The Antiquarian Digest between thumb and forefinger as if it was a fragment of rotten fish. ‘Mr Ross,’ he said, ‘Ahlan wa sahlan. There is a piece in this magazine entitled: “Was Egyptian Civilisation Created by Refugees from Atlantis?” It has your name on it.’

  ‘It should do, it’s my piece.’

  ‘So you don’t deny writing it?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Well, ahem, let’s say — and I am being tactful here, you understand — that the piece is not worthy of you, and not worthy of the Antiquities Service.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘For a start it bears a question mark, and secondly it’s a perfectly valid view. Egyptian legend is packed with references to strangers who came from afar bearing gifts of knowledge. Take Thoth, for instance. He’s said to have invented the measurement of time. Accurate measurement of time is one of the main building-blocks of civilisation, and in the legends, Thoth is said to have brought this skill from overseas. If the legend is based on fact — as many legends are — it suggests that superior knowledge came to the Nile Valley from a sophisticated civilisation which preceded ancient Egypt, but which is now lost to history.’

  ‘Y
ou mean like Atlantis?’

  ‘Look, Atlantis is just a story. I don’t mean the “lost continent” which was said to exist beyond the Pillars of Hercules, but I’m using it as a generic title, a symbol for an ancient, unknown civilisation. If you’d read the piece properly you’d know that.’

  ‘I really don’t want to argue with you about this. I’ve warned you enough about your wacky theories. Don’t you realise they’re giving the Antiquities Service a bad name? You’re making us a laughing-stock.’

  ‘What about free intellectual exchange?’ I protested. ‘My theory is unconventional, but it’s still a reasonable interpretation of the facts as we know them.’

  ‘A laughing-stock,’ Rifad insisted, ignoring me. ‘This is a prestigious academic body and we can’t put up with ridicule. You must retract this article publicly and at once!’

  ‘I can’t do that, Dr Rifad. I’ve been working on this theory for ten years.’

  ‘Then I must have your immediate resignation, Mr Ross.’

  And despite my arguments and Julian Cranwell’s intervention, that had been that. Now that shit was telling the police that I was involved in illegal trafficking of antiquities. To be labelled ‘lunatic’ was bad enough, but for a self-respecting Egyptologist to be accused of stealing antiquities like some fifth-rate treasure-hunter was too much. By the time streaks of morning light were shooting in through gaps in the Persian blinds, my depression had given way to unadulterated anger. To my Hawazim ancestors reputation was a sacred thing, to be preserved by blood-letting. That’s why I’d never begrudged Mustafa his kicks in the ribs. I knew I wasn’t about to put a bullet through Rifad’s skull, but at the very least I would confront him with his lies. When Doc knocked at the door a few minutes later I flung it open to find her looking at me with deep concern etched on her face. how stupid it had been of me to think of her as ‘the enemy’. Doc was the only friend I’d got.