The Eye of Ra

by Michael Asher

  ‘But where does the water come from?’ Elena asked.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. In the silence you could hear the ‘plunk, plunk’ of water droplets falling into the pool. ‘It’s fossil water,’ I explained, ‘it seeps out of the sandstone aquifers above us — from rain that fell thousands of years ago, probably.’

  ‘But it does rain here. Ali said it’d rained this year.’

  ‘Yes, the Jilf is a wind-trap — the peaks milk the rainheads of their moisture as they pass over. That’s probably why al-Ghul is so arid. It’s a rain-shadow area. By the time the wind gets there all its moisture is gone.’

  ‘But it doesn’t rain often,’ Mukhtar added. ‘One good rain in four seasons is enough to keep the wadis green.’

  ‘Why don’t other tribes use it?’

  ‘It’s a Hawazim secret. We’ve been coming to this place since the First Time, look...’ He shone his torch against the walls and Elena gasped. They were covered in etchings of human figures and animals, done in naturalistic style. We peered at them closely. The humans wore earrings, drawn unnaturally large to emphasise their importance; the artist wanted to make a clear statement about the identity of these people: they were Hawazim — or Anaq. They careened across the rocks like Chinese puppets, running, sitting, herding cattle, dancing roped together in some hypnotic dance, hunting animals. And what animals they hunted — buffalo with giant horns, reticulated giraffe, rhino, elephant — even hippopotamus.

  ‘Hippopotamus!’ Elena said incredulously. ‘But these can’t be for real. How could such animals live in a desert?’

  ‘It wasn’t a desert when these pictures were made,’ I said. ‘See: there are no camels in them. The people are herding cattle. I’ve often thought about these pictures. Camels were first brought to Egypt by the Persians in the sixth century BC, so they have to be older than that. The geologists say this area has been desert since at least 3000 B C, which puts them back much earlier. They must be at least 5000 years old, and they could be as much as 10,000.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Now look at these,’ Mukhtar said, holding up the lamp in another part of the cave. ‘You saw them when you were tiny, Omar, but you may not remember.’

  I didn’t, and what I saw now fascinated me beyond words.

  Here were a bunch of six figures with scaly, fish-like bodies and heads like featureless inflated white balloons. They were clearly differentiated from the Anaq, whose features were carefully drawn, and who surrounded these globe-headed men in deferential postures, kneeling or standing with their arms raised.

  ‘Gods!’ Elena said. ‘They’re worshipping the globe-heads as gods, but look here, they’ve become ancient Egyptians.’

  She was right. In the next tableau, the six globe-heads had become transformed into the gods of ancient Egypt, crudely but clearly drawn: ibis-headed Thoth, falcon-headed Horus, aardvark-headed Set, and three human-headed figures with fish-tails which might have been Osiris, Isis and Nepthys. While the other gods seemed to be standing around watching, Thoth was handing out bulbs of mandrake-root to the surrounding humans. It was a crude version of the image at the Khan al-Anaq temple we’d seen only a few days before.

  37

  By the time we got back to the entrance-cave, Aysha had arranged the saddles and boxes, laid out rugs and cushions and lit a fire of camel-dung. The cave was smoky now, full of the hum of voices from the Hawazim families around us, and the shriek of little children playing. Mansur came to join us, and Aysha poured us coffee spiced with cinnamon. ‘I feel unworthy of all this,’ Elena said, drinking her coffee, ‘I mean, you moved your entire clan across the desert to a different home just for us.’

  ‘For the tribe,’ Aysha said. ‘The tribe is sacred. We couldn’t allow any one of us to be taken by the police — and that includes you, Omar’s friend, our guest. It doesn’t matter where we live, in a cave, in the desert, in tumble-down houses, because to us home is people, not a place. The tribe is everything, place is nothing.’

  ‘But you know they’ll never let you get away with it,’ Elena said, ‘you killed policemen...’

  ‘We killed only two,’ Mansur said. ‘Both were about to attack you and Omar. A few may have been injured accidentally in the shooting and bombing, but it’s not our custom to kill unless somebody’s directly threatened. Not unless it’s a blood feud.’

  ‘Still, she’s right,’ I said. ‘No matter what the circumstances, they won’t forget it.’

  Mukhtar snorted. ‘The government has been trying to get rid of us as long as anyone can remember,’ he chuckled. ‘They haven’t succeeded yet. Besides, we have plenty of unsettled blood feuds with the police. And we never forget, either.’

  ‘God is generous,’ Mansur said. ‘We all go to the Divine Spirit when it is time.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’ Elena asked.

  ‘Tonight,’ Mukhtar said, ‘there will be a great Shining. The Divine Spirit will show us the way.’

  In the pre-sunset cool, Elena and I walked down to the wadi where the camel-herds were browsing in the acacias under the watchful eyes of the herdsboys and their armed guards. We wandered past them, nodding and exchanging greetings, and sat down on a bank of soft sand. There was silence except for the occasional snatches of song from the herdsmen, the snarl of a camel, the buzz of insects in the grasses, the gentle whisper of the breeze. The ghibli had cleared the air, unlocking the chalk smell of the open sands, the multiple odours of grazing camels and heavy acacia-bloom. I felt my body relax completely for the first time since I’d returned to Egypt. I didn’t want to think about Orde Wingate’s diary, but I knew we had to face it some time. I’d been brooding on it all the way through the storm, and now I had to tell someone. To my surprise, though, Elena pre-empted me.

  ‘We’re no nearer to the bottom of this are we, Jamie?’ she said.

  ‘If you mean we still don’t know who killed Nikolai and per-haps Julian, you’re right.’

  ‘Why, “perhaps Julian”?’

  I recounted my experience at Giza: the man who’d sounded like Julian but had run away too fast, the hunchback’s story that he’d spotted Julian after he was meant to be dead, the alleged Julian’s phone call to Doc, and the bulky Julian-like figure I’d glimpsed at Nikolai’s shop. She sucked in her breath when she heard the last bit.

  ‘You’re trying to tell me Julian killed Nikolai, and tried to kill you?’ she demanded.

  ‘I didn’t say that. The fact is I just don’t know.’

  ‘So that’s what Hammoudi meant when he said it was a “thieves’ fall-out”.’

  ‘I don’t go for it. I mean, Julian and I were like two fingers for more than ten years. He sometimes threw tantrums, but I never knew him do anything he thought dishonourable. He just wasn’t that kind of guy — passionate about his work to the point of obsession, yes, but never concerned over material issues. Anyway, even Hammoudi didn’t seem convinced that it was really a rift between thieves; he kept rattling about “deep-penetration” and “Source Jibril”.’

  ‘That man’s a psychopath.’

  ‘Maybe, but he’s not an idiot. Look: Wingate’s story is that Carter and Carnarvon found something in Tut’s tomb they referred to as anachronae.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It’s an archaic term used by archaeologists to denote artefacts which seem to be out of time in a dating sequence.’

  ‘So the secret find was “out of its time”.’

  ‘That’s the implication. Whatever it was, this find revealed the fact that Tut’s father, Akhnaton, had been buried out in the desert somewhere. So far it makes sense. Akhnaton was a heretic. When he died his henchmen thought his mummy would be ripped up for compost and his shrouds used as toilet-paper, so they built a tomb for him and Nefertiti far out in the desert where no one would ever find them. Over the centuries the rumour of his burial-place became transformed into the Zerzura legend — a white city with a king and queen asleep on a hoard of treasure. Now I think of it,
I’m a dummy not to have seen the resemblance to a pharaonic burial a mile away. So they’ve got this secret find and they’ve discovered that Akhnaton’s tomb — the legendary Big One of Egyptology — is not on the Nile like all the rest, but stuck out somewhere in the boondocks.’

  I paused to watch a herdsboy nearby milking, a plump she-camel, standing on one leg with the other foot lodged against his knee, his hands working nimbly at the animal’s udder, squirting the milk into a wooden bowl. The she-camel lifted her great grasshopper head, and groaned contentedly. When he’d finished, he put the bowl down and tied up the teats with a rope and peg, to stop the young suckling and finishing the milk. He brought the bowl over to us and offered it to me. ‘Drink!’ he said.

  I passed the bowl to Elena, and she took it apprehensively. ‘Take it with two hands,’ I told her, ‘and squat down when you drink. It’s an offence to drink milk standing up.’ She squatted on her haunches and gulped. When she passed it back to me, there was a half-moon of white froth around her mouth. I giggled and drank deeply. The milk was warm from the udder, and slightly salted. You could taste the flavour of the desert herbs in it. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and gave the bowl back to the boy.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘The thanks is to God.’

  We watched as he hurried to offer the milk to the nearest guards. ‘Good stuff, camels’ milk,’ I told Elena, ‘but watch out. If you’re not used to it it gives you the Mandi’s Revenge.’

  ‘Now, you tell me.’

  ‘Sorry. Anyway, where were we?’

  ‘Yes. They discovered that Akhnaton’s tomb is out in the desert and that it’s the legendary Lost Oasis, Zerzura.’

  ‘Right, and what’s the next thing they want to do?’

  ‘To track it down, of course.’

  ‘Right, but what actually happens is that Carnarvon snuffs it, followed by two dozen of his chums. How come?’

  ‘Could they have been bumped off by someone who wanted to keep the whole thing under wraps?’

  ‘Bang on! There was a curse on Tutankhamen’s tomb all right — Karlman was correct in that — but it wasn’t any hidden guardians. It was flesh and blood, some group who not only wanted to run Akhnaton’s tomb to earth, but were also pretty desperate to make sure no one else rumbled it. In fact they were willing to go to any lengths to make sure.’

  ‘But somebody did rumble it: Wingate for one, and the Zerzura Club, too.’

  ‘Right. So we’ve got two little bands of interested parties. One lot — the Carnarvon Group — are wasted, the others — the Zerzura Club — go look for the tomb, but don’t strike lucky. Wingate comes along and does hit it, but on the way his whole party disappears — probably wasted too. Wingate is allowed to live, though.’

  ‘So if you’re right, whoever’s protecting the secret of Akhna-ton’s tomb has already whacked thirty-seven people. That’s large-scale murder!’

  ‘And there are other possible victims, don’t forget: at least four. If Julian is dead, there’s him, Nikolai, Ronnie Barrington and probably Ibrahim Izzadin, the former DG of the Antiquities Service.’

  ‘A nice fat total of forty-one.’

  ‘Yes, and that’s the problem, Elena. I can’t imagine anyone knocking off forty-odd people for the sake of a pharaonic tomb. As you say, this is really big-time murder — mafia stuff.’

  ‘But think of the value: if there was anything like what there was in Tut’s tomb, it would be worth millions.’

  ‘That’s true, but Wingate himself wrote that whoever found Zerzura would solve a mystery of “earth-shattering” importance. OK, on its own Akhnaton’s tomb would have been a major archaeological discovery, but would it qualify as “earth-shattering”? I don’t think so. It wouldn’t have altered the lives of people, nor changed the world. And if Wingate was right, he must have solved the mystery. It would have made him famous. Yet he never breathed a word about what he found.’

  ‘Maybe he only found the ushabtis?’

  ‘I don’t believe it. I reckon Wingate was being forced to hide something — something that had immense global implications, something that some group were prepared to kill for, and keep on killing over six decades. Doc found out that the Zerzura Club was a front for British intelligence, for a start. If my hunch is right and all those people were rubbed out to stop them blabbing, it has to have been for something far more mouth-watering than just another pharaonic tomb.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘The only way we’re going to find that out is by visiting Zerzura ourselves.’

  38

  We climbed up the steep path to the caves in the wake of the camel-herds being driven to their night quarters by herdsboys, chanting rhythmically and tapping their camel-sticks. The camels were magnificent creatures, not large as camels go, but strong and perfectly formed. The Hawazim referred to their camel-herd as al-bil, and were intensely proud of it. It had been bred from generations of prime stock and most of the animals were the unusual colour they called aghbash — off-white, with an undertone of cobalt blue. The sour smell of saltbush-fed camels filled our nostrils, and the animals keened, grunted and snorted as they climbed. Across the valley, the sun was slipping down into a square in the rock-wall the Hawazim called ‘The Gateway of the Sunset’ — another doorway into a different dimension —throwing long sequences of colours across the wadi floor, stretching out the spiny shadows of the saltbush and the flat-topped acacia scrub. A silence had descended on the Jilf, even more serene than that which had reigned by day. ‘It’s like being on a different planet,’ Elena said softly, ‘no cities, no slums, no motor-cars, no engines. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world like this all the time!’

  The entrance-cave was in twilight now, but a large bonfire was already blazing in the centre of the great vaulted hall, and men and women were spreading their rugs and cushions around it.

  Their shadows were giant cameos on the high rock walls. Mukhtar, clad only in his sirwal, saw us coming, and beckoned us over. His hands were stained orange and I saw that he’d been pounding some reddish substance in a stone mortar. ‘Demon’s Apples,’ he said. ‘You’ll both join us in the Shining tonight?’ Elena gave me a puzzled glance.

  ‘It’s a great honour to be invited,’ I told her in English, ‘and an insult to refuse. I’ve never been invited before myself.’

  Elena eyed the orange mess cautiously. ‘They drink that?’ she asked.

  ‘Al-liksir,’ Mukhtar said, ‘it was the gift of the Ancient Ones to our ancestors — The Divine Water that brings the Shining. Will you join?’

  ‘Is it dangerous?’ she asked.

  ‘No more dangerous than riding across the desert in a ghibli,’ I said.

  ‘Will you join, Omar?’ Mukhtar asked.

  I thought for a moment. The Shining had its risks, I knew. There was something inside me holding me back, some fear that once into this thing I’d no longer be able to hide from my real self. But I guessed I would never get the chance again. This was a solemn gift my uncle was offering me — a chance to join communion with the Hawazim — to be one of them. Mukhtar and his family had risked their lives for us, simply because I was a blood relative. I knew deep down that I couldn’t refuse.

  ‘OK, I’ll join,’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘And you, Elena?’

  Elena looked at me hesitantly. ‘What the hell,’ she said, ‘I’ve been hit, shot at and almost electrocuted. I rode for three days through a sandstorm. What have I got to lose?’

  It was pitch dark in the cave now but for the roaring bonfire. Beyond the opening, the night was softly moonlit and spangled with stars. The camels lowed and chewed cud soothingly at their hobbles just beyond the dividing wall. We sat down on rugs at the front amid a murmur of voices and a rustle of robes; the firelight skipped from one profile to another, outlining each for an instant then passing on. There must have been two hundred people sitting around that fire I guessed. We had been there only minutes, when Mu
khtar appeared out of the shadows, followed closely by Mansur, ‘Ali and a host of other tribesmen carrying sloshing waterbags. The crowd hushed. Mukhtar took the first waterbag and held it up before the assembly, his gaunt biceps straining. The light from the flames played along his spare body, as weathered as the sandstone stacks outside. ‘Behold the Divine Water!’ he cried, in a voice I hardly recognised. ‘We drink this in memory of the departed ones — all the souls of our family back over the generations to the First Time. We drink this that we shall join as one — living and departed — in the Divine Spirit that never dies.’

  ‘The Divine Spirit lives!’ the assembly roared back.

  Aysha and other women emerged from the crowd carrying carved wooden bowls and there was a slosh as Mukhtar emptied the first waterbag into one of them. Behind him, hidden in shadows, other bowls were filled. Mukhtar held his bowl up, ‘As amnir of the tribe I take first draft of this Water,’ he said. ‘May the Divine Spirit guide me in the Shining and direct me to the way.’

  ‘The Divine Spirit lives!’ the crowd roared again. Mukhtar put the bowl to his lips, took a long draught, and immediately sank to his knees, letting out a long sigh. The audience cheered and clapped. Mansur offered the bowl to each of us in turn. The other men moved silently along other rows handing their vessels around. I took the bowl from Mansur and looked at Elena. ‘Drink!’ my cousin said. ‘May the Divine Spirit guide you!’ I took a sip. The liquid tasted sour, like native beer brewed from sorghum. ‘Drink!’ Mansur ordered me, his one good eye sparkling excitedly in the light of the flames. I took a long swallow, then a second. Mansur passed the bowl to Elena, who drank without hesitation. Suddenly, tablas struck up with electrifying rhythm from out of the shadows, and at once hands began to clap in time. The fire crackled and sent bursts of wild light across the gathered faces. Voices began to chant, at first in waves of deep bass resonance like the sound of a great mountain-horn being blown again and again — waves forming and breaking until the bass was counterpointed by the shrill of the women’s chorus. As I watched, Mukhtar stood up in the firelight, his eyes scintillating, focused on something far, far away. He waved his brown arms, throwing back his ancient, ravaged head and howling out a song. Everyone stopped to listen, then roared back a response. On and on it went, Mukhtar roaring the lead ecstatically, the audience roaring back, and I realised suddenly that the amnir was literally guiding his people, moulding and shaping the form of their vision. At first I was simply aware that I’d been drawn into the music and felt myself swaying to it as the others swayed. Then, suddenly I’d slipped inside it — actually within the music, within the mouths and the minds of the singers and the song. Abruptly, the progression of the song seemed suspended, a continuously repeated pattern with no beginning and no end, lasting for eternity in a timeless now. I was still aware of the cave and the people around me — in fact I was much more aware of them than I’d been before. Suddenly, instead of being out there, a mass of distinct individuals, each an island to him or herself, they were suddenly in here: there was no longer any barrier between ‘me’ and ‘them’. All my life I’d desperately wanted to belong; now I saw with devastating clarity that everything was part of everything else, everything fitted like a vast cosmic jigsaw, everyone and everything belonged. There was no dualism of object and subject; existence was one. The sense of alienation I’d always felt was a self-invented obstacle. My life hadn’t begun with my birth, but with the birth of all creation; my real body wasn’t this corporeal envelope I wore, but the cosmos itself. I knew with equal certainty that I’d always been aware of this. I’d tried to suppress it, but in reality I’d never left the Divine Spirit. I knew suddenly that it was this sense of oneness that allowed the Hawazim to live as they did: they didn’t see themselves as individuals but as a whole, in daily connection with creation, with their true body, the universe.