THE SMITING TEXTS

by Roy Lester Pond

  When they finished, they landed and hit ground, with no more than the slightest bump, at the edge of a sugar-cane field.

  Anson felt as if had come down to earth. The sun was staring now.

  Chapter 39

  HE HAD COME alone to the bazaar following a phone call at their Luxor hotel.

  “Mr Anson Hunter?” the voice on phone had said.

  “Yes.”

  “I knew your father, Professor Emory Hunter. I am in possession of certain information about his activities, which I would only be willing to share with you.” It was the voice of a cultivated Egyptian man. “You must come alone to the bazaar now, where you will be recognised and taken to meet me.”

  The man hung up and the earpiece buzzed and so did Anson’s brain with speculation.

  Who was he?

  Was it wise to go alone? It could be dangerous. He recalled the attack on Bloem. He also recalled the educated voice. This was no thug. He had to go, and alone, if that’s what the informant wanted. It could lead to answers at last.

  Luxor had a countrified smell to it, he thought, as he approached the bazaar, an atmosphere magnified by the heat of the day. The town reverberated to the clip of horses’ hooves as gharries, shiny black carriages, scurried among the tourist buses and local traffic. The market funnelled a stream of locals and tourists, hemmed in by stalls and sellers, towers of baskets, chickens in cages, stacks of fruit, and everywhere the presence of Egyptian linen, muffling the locals in hijabs or galabeas, hanging in awnings, or strung on lines from the first storeys of buildings, in racks of galabeas, dresses, blouses and tea towels.

  He joined the busy throng.

  “Hello, you Engleesh?” a trader called hopefully.

  He kept moving.

  You will be recognised, the caller said. But by whom? Those two lean men in striped galabeas like nightdresses, slouching in a doorway, their faces half hidden by grey scarves? Perhaps. They moved as he looked at them and left the doorway. They were coming in his direction. Anson felt the humidity grow under his jacket.

  “You very handsome man, Sir,” a vendor said, stepping from his rack of galabeas. “You want galabea? Only Twenty Five Egyptian pounds!” A smiling face appeared, wearing a moustache, Omar Sharif style.

  The two men fell in behind Anson. Should I keep going? No, I’d like a closer look at them. He turned back suddenly as if succumbing to the blandishments of the galabea vendor. It gave him a chance to view the two directly. Lined faces. Hard eyes that slid away from his inspection. They brushed past him.

  Encouraged by his return, the vendor piled on the pressure.

  “I give you good price,” he said. “This special one - only forty Egyptian pounds! Thirty-five, maybe, for you?”

  Anson watched the two men move away from him. He gave them a few moments, then followed. They did not look back. Perhaps he was mistaken.

  He looked around as he joined the stream.

  Goods for sale spilled out at the shoppers in a chaos of choice. He saw a stack of crude Egyptian souvenirs, a collection of Nefertiti heads, an army of ushabti statues like a collection of antique garden gnomes and everywhere images of Tutankhamun in garish fake gold.

  An urchin child came from nowhere and tugged at his sleeve.

  “You come, please.”

  “Oh yes? What is your father selling? Or is it your sister?”

  Big brown eyes, serious eyes, implored him.

  “You come see Doctor, you come.”

  The boy went ahead, darting a look back at Anson to make certain he understood and was following.

  Doctor?

  Chapter 40

  THE BOY LED HIM past a rug stall to a gold and jewellery shop. So this was to be the meeting place. But what would a jeweller know about his father? Could this be right? The child had referred to a doctor.

  Puzzled, Anson entered the dim refuge of the shop.

  The jeweller, behind a counter, bared a shiny pate as he bent to take out a tray of turquoise necklaces. He held them out for the inspection of two Japanese women. A European couple on the other side of the shop admired a display of bracelets made of interlinked golden cartouches, a series of ovals in filigree containing the royal names of Egyptian pharaohs.

  Anson’s eye fell on a sold gold ankh necklace on a chain. The Ancient Egyptian symbol of eternal life, he thought. It made him think of Kalila and her Coptic cross.

  A figure in black hijab and sunglasses entered the shop. A traditional Muslim female. She drifted soundlessly to a glass case. There she bent to inspect a tray of earrings. Was she young, old? Her movements were graceful and easy. Young, he guessed. She could be beautiful, too, but only she would know. Who could guess at her charms when she was wrapped in a shroud of dark cloth?

  It was hard to believe that such a woman had attacked Daniel. Far from feeling unnerved by the sight of a traditional Arab woman in black veil, Anson felt a twinge of sympathy. She looked to be in mourning for her femininity.

  She rested her hands on the glass to peer inside. He noted her hands, gloved in black, the fingers slender, gently fluttering as if, denied the natural sun, they were trying to warm themselves in the glow of the jewellery shining from the case. He experienced a deeper pity. What had happened to the young daughters of Egypt who opened up their beauty to the light, like Nile flowers, and whose images graced the walls of ancient tombs? This twenty-first century woman of Egypt had already joined the shades of the dead.

  The child approached the shop owner and whispered in his ear. He looked up at Anson but gave no sign of greeting or recognition.

  The woman followed his glance and turned her head to regard Anson. He saw himself reflected in dark glasses, shining lenses the only sign of life in the veil. He stared back. I will not conspire in this travesty against womanhood by treating her as if she is invisible, a non-person. He smiled at her in a friendly way.

  She averted her face.

  The owner gave Anson a wave of his hand. He went through a draped doorway to the back and Anson followed, going down a passage. It was dark behind, with a chink of light in the distance, shining out of drapes.

  “The Doctor is waiting for you,” the man said, pointing. He left Anson in the darkness, returning to serve his customers. Anson hesitated, feeling a claustrophobic sense of unease. Doctor will see you now? What doctor?

  There was only one way to find out. He went cautiously down the passage, parted more curtains. A man stood up from a small jeweller’s workbench and offered his hand.

  “I’m Doctor Naguib Hassan, Zagazig University, an associate of your father’s. And you are his son Anson.”

  He was a distinguished-looking Egyptian, wearing golden spectacles.

  “Please sit down.” He indicated a stool and sat down at the bench himself. “Thank you for coming. I have taken leave of absence from the University and I am making myself scarce for a while, here in Luxor.”

  This man knew my father, Anson thought. Could he shed light on the mystery of his father’s murder and on his discoveries?

  “I’m agog to hear what you have to say about my father. What can you tell me?”

  “We were former colleagues and friends. I admired him. Your father arranged for students to be educated in America. He showed great kindness to young students, especially disadvantaged young women. He was like a father to many.”

  There it was again. My father had plenty of time for young female students like Kalila, he thought. But not for a son, it seemed. Sad, yet understandable. I can’t really blame him. I’d prefer slender, dark-eyed young women too.

  “Your father left something with me that I want to show you.” The man bent down and lifted an object covered in a black cloth, which he placed on the workbench.

  The object stood about twelve inches high. “Please keep what I am showing you in absolute confidence. Your father did not steal it to keep for himself, but only borrowed it for study. I want you to see it for yourself. It is a piece of the Egyptian underworld.”
<
br />   Chapter 41

  “LOOK”. Like an illusionist revealing a missing rabbit, Doctor Hassan pulled off the black cloth.

  It was like letting the sun into the jeweller’s workshop. A statue in yellow gold threw out spangles of light. It was a statue of a kneeling pharaoh, holding a round-topped tablet of text in front of his body. The golden face was severe and strong, like the face of a black granite sphinx he had seen in the Cairo Museum. He recognised the features of Pharaoh Amenemhat III.

  “Is that gold?”

  “Gold, yes. Of the purest grade, my relative the jeweller has established this for me if I ever doubted it. It is an object known as a stelophorous statuette, a figure holding a stele or vertical tablet of text in its hands, a pharaoh shown kneeling in an attitude of worship. I am a specialist in the History Department of Zagazig University and my specialty is the Middle Kingdom and First Intermediate Period that immediately preceded it. This, I can tell you, is a Middle Kingdom statuette of the Pharaoh Amenemhat III. It is hollow-cast pure gold, but its chief value is not the gold it is made from, though the intrinsic value must be considerable, but rather its significance. I don’t know where your father found it. The only thing he would tell me is that it stood in a niche like a signpost or commemorative plaque in front of a doorway to a remarkable lost hypogeum. But I know what this tablet is saying. I won’t read you the literal translation - it’s stiffly archaic in the Middle Kingdom manner – but, in essence it is declaring that this tablet in the king’s hands commemorates his bringing together of the gods in a Great Duat, or necropolis, that he has built for them anew.”

  “Gods - as in transfigured pharaohs who have joined the gods?”

  “Possibly, yes.” Doctor Hassan sounded cautious.

  “I wonder which pharaohs?” Anson speculated aloud, his voice falling to an awed whisper. “If this image is just the label on the outside, what treasures lie inside?” he said in an awed whisper.

  A shadow detached itself from the curtains. He saw a gloved hand reach out and snatch the statue by the head, swinging it away.

  The Egyptian historian gave a gasp of surprise. Anson shoved back his stool. A veiled woman in black stood with them in the room. She clutched the statue to herself, holding it in the corner of her arm. In her other hand, she held a weapon. The mouth of a firearm seemed to dilate in front of him and he stopped.

  “Must you die, too, son of the father?” the invader whispered through black cloth. “Try to stay alive!”

  She backed away through the curtain and fled down the passage.

  “Stop her!”

  Anson ran out through the shop. He almost tripped over a Japanese woman who lay sprawled on the floor, pushed aside by the fleeing attacker.

  Where did she go?

  Anson ran out of the shop. He bumped into a tourist wearing a straw sunhat.

  “Excuse me!” the woman said caustically.

  He hit a stream of people moving past.

  Which way had the thief gone? This was outrageous, a brazen heist at gunpoint that had taken them totally by surprise. How could it possibly have happened?

  He dodged a knot of locals and jumped over a rolled up carpet, hunting for a sign of the thief.

  She was everywhere.

  Women in the traditional black hijab filled the place.

  This was the height of futility, the thought crossed his mind as he ran, zigzagging through clamouring Egyptian vendors. It was like trying to recognise a balaclava-clad bandit on a crowded ski slope.

  Black veils, here, there, over there. A moving black shape caught his eye. People crossed in front of her and obscured his vision. She was gone.

  He pushed through the throng. The figure seemed to put on a spurt. He made a dash. There she was. She vanished around a basket stall. He went after her, running her down.

  “Stop!”

  The hurrying black form kept going. In another bound he reached her. He grabbed her shoulder. She turned around, her face exposed. An old woman’s face, the brown skin lined like a map, looked up. A frown deepened the lines.

  “Pardon me,” he said.

  Offended, she muttered in Arabic. It was a rule. You didn’t go touching Islamic women and he had laid hands on her. She clucked at the breech of propriety, her eyes angry. A vendor yelled at him.

  He turned in a circle, searching for any sign of movement that might betray a fleeing thief. Just the normal chaos, a bustling confusion, with shopkeepers and customers going about their haggling. Hopeless. The thief had probably handed the stolen piece smoothly to an accomplice outside and gone to ground.

  “Must you die, too, son of the father? Try to stay alive!”

  What had she meant? Who was she? Was this the same mysterious apparition that had attacked Abuna in his cave? Have I seen my father’s killer, a woman shrouded in black, like a widow grieving?

  He went back to the gold shop. The shop owner was standing at the doorway, looking afraid.

  “Doctor Hassan has gone.”

  “Who was she?” he said

  “The woman in hijab. I could not see. But a most wicked woman to be sure.” The man spread his hands in empty bafflement.

  “Are you planning to call the police?”

  “Oh no, please, no police. Doctor Hassan requested no police.”

  No police? Surely the theft of such a precious artefact could not go unreported? Or could it? Perhaps this reaction was not so surprising after all. Calling in the police was probably the last thing the Doctor wanted. It was also the last thing Anson wanted. We already have enough watchdogs, he decided, without bringing in the local police.

  Chapter 42

  THE NEXT DAY, the mountains of the Valley of the Kings soared across the river, golden and monumental against a blue-enamel sky that looked streaked with haze in the morning light. Rising above everything was the peak, shaped like a pyramid, overlooking the tombs of the most famous pharaohs in history - Amenhotep, Rameses, Thutmosis and the boy king Tutankhamun.

  “The peak has a name - do you know it?” Saneya told the group. “Meretseger - She Who Loves Silence”.

  It was five a.m when they left their hotel, the Hilton in new Karnak, travelling by coach. On their route to the Valley of the Kings, they passed flotillas of moored cruise boats and the grand old colonial solidity of the Winter Palace hotel and the towering columns of Luxor temple. Rising from its heart, Anson noticed the minarets of the Sufi mosque built by Abu al-Haggag, a Sufi shaykh, piercing the sky. A bizarre accretion - a Sufi mosque built in the heart of the Old Religion. Did that say something about Sufi affinities?

  The Mighty Hundred-Gated Thebes, now just a river town, would soon be reverberating to the clip of horses’ hooves as carts and horse-drawn gharries scurried among the tourist buses and local traffic along the Nile Corniche.

  The locals had spruced up Luxor with a coat of paint since his last visit, but the place still had a farming town feel to it, Anson thought. It was hard to believe that it was once the seat of pharaohs, the most powerful city on earth.

  He smiled at the incongruous sight of an ancient fellahin perched on his donkey-cart, laden with straw, while holding a mobile telephone to his ear.

  They planned to reach the barren region of the Valley of the Kings before the heat of the day grew too intense and they crossed over the Nile Bridge just as the sun rose. A thin mist spread itself across the river.

  High in the sky above the valley, a pair of hot-air balloons, one golden like a sun, the other electric blue, drifted over the distant temple of Deir el Bahari. They were like ideas in the sky, huge shining light bulbs that brought back a memory of the previous day.

  Anson looked out of the window of the coach as they travelled though emerald cane fields. The two colossal seated statues of Memnon, sitting stranded in an empty field, flashed past. Crumbled giants. These colossi had once guarded the entrance to a vast temple complex now completely vanished.

  They reached the Valley and climbed off the bus. A touch of Univ
ersal Studios had invaded the valley these days, he noted, giving a shake of his head. Lamentable. Visitors clambered aboard trolleys like motorized trains to approach the pyramid-shaped peak that presided over the valley. But the same golden light still suffused the rocky cliffs and hills that rose scarred by paths and penetrated by the shadowy black doorways of tombs.

  They agreed to split into groups.

  “For me, entering and walking through these tombs is like passing through a magical, mythological underworld,” Kalila said, going with him. “This is my favourite art gallery in all the world. You can keep the Louvre or the National Gallery. These paintings have a profound effect on me.”

  “Even more than Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa?”

  “Infinitely more. This is the art of eternity. When I look at the colours and freshness of the tomb frescoes, it demolishes the centuries. And though this art is about death, it brims with life and the love of it. It brings to mind the ancient maxim: 'Be of good cheer, forget and enjoy thyself. Follow thy heart, so long as thou livest; place myrrh on thy head, clothe thyself with fine linen, anoint thyself; forget sorrow and remember joy, until arrives that day of putting to shore in the land that loveth silence.'”

  “They loved life and detested death.”

  “Yes. There is a text that describes death as a person: ‘Death has a name and it is Come. Everyone to whom he hath called comes to him straightway, their hearts affrighted, through fear of him.”

  With the archaeological student murmuring beside him Anson walked in long, deep-cut galleries and he found himself imagining that they were two souls on a journey through the underworld. Kalila’s presence was soothing and calming.

  The tombs ran deep into the cliffs and their movement past the images of pharaohs, queens, and animal-headed gods and goddesses made them flicker with life like projected images. There was little sense of despair in this Egyptian underworld, Anson noted, no gloom of a modern graveyard.

  Didn’t everything about this place attest to the Egyptians’ conviction about survival, confirming that they went to their graves believing firmly in an afterlife? The tombs were pious theatres of heaven enacting the drama of death, transformation and ultimately survival. It was hard to believe that countless generations of Egyptian believers had come to their tombs resting on a delusion.