Mother Nile

by Warren Adler

  Lifting his head over the gunwale, Si could see the car’s headlights, like giant eyes peering into the river. He felt, suddenly, a terrible twinge of pity for the old man. They would certainly harm him, if only out of frustration.

  “Just head upriver,” Si called to Hassan. He nodded, smiling. He had enjoyed the excitement. Although he did not understand the reason for it.

  They passed the lights of Luxor and tacked forward. The breeze quickened, and they were able to make some headway. Soon the lights were left behind, and the boat moved soundlessly through the tunnel of darkness, the river glowing faintly by the light of a tiny sliver of moon.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  When he awoke, the air had cooled. He had lost any sense of time, but it was still dark. Abdel was sleeping beside him on the deck. Hassan sat slumped beside the tiller, moving mechanically as if he sensed the wind’s action. Anwar and Moshe slept on the foredeck. Si shook Hassan’s shoulder.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  Hassan lifted his head and looked around him, peering into the murky darkness. Both sides of the river seemed exactly the same. Not a single light dotted the shore. Then he looked up at the canopy of stars shining down through the soft air.

  “About thirty miles south of Luxor,” he said hoarsely, moving the tiller hard to lee and heading toward the western bank. The boat slipped through a tangle of bulrushes and grounded itself in the mud. Anwar rose as if on cue, and he and his father pulled down the sails and unbolted the mast, swinging it downward over the cockpit. They were now invisible to the river traffic.

  Carrying a rolled canvas over his head, Hassan, followed by Anwar, waded through the bulrushes to the shore. Si heard him roll out the canvas and cough lightly. Then all human sounds ceased. Waterfowl, insects, and animals stirred lightly, offering a restless babble of soft lilting sounds.

  Lying down on the deck, Si stretched out and put his hands behind his head, watching the vast display of stars. They were a hive of activity, other worlds in ferment. Once again, he sensed his connection with the past, the universe, the endless flow of life and death. Beside him, Abdel whispered his name and moved closer to him.

  “It feels like there is only us,” Si said. “But it’s an illusion. We are in the thick of life.” He reached out and she rolled close to him, her arm passing over his chest. He could hear her beating heart. It recalled the beat of his mother’s heart. He could not remember exactly when, knowing only that he had listened to it, concentrating on its mysterious rhythm, as if it were music. It struck him that he had not listened to other hearts, had not lain this close to any other human being. Not this way. The reaction of his body was not brotherly, and he moved in a subtle separation.

  In the enveloping darkness, he felt oddly secure, lost in the joyous warmth of a great womb. He wondered about Isis, where she was, what she dreamt. Was she also looking at the stars? He tried to summon up the physical characteristics of her face, her body. Did she walk erect, with soft padding steps like his mother? Did she know she was a princess? What did she long for? It was a question that drew him back to himself.

  It had puzzled him as a boy, and later as a man, that he had never craved anything, never could find a demand in himself, a passion. Nor was it something that he ever felt was missing in him. Not until now. Nothing was more important, more passionate and invigorating, more obsessive, more stirring of all his inner needs than what he felt now. The road to Isis.

  “I’ll find her,” Si said, knowing Abdel was listening, as if his original objective needed restating.

  “But suppose…” He felt her hesitation.

  “Suppose what?” he pressed.

  “Suppose she does not want to be found. By you. Certainly not by…” Again, she hesitated. “By them.”

  “But I must find her,” he protested.

  “Why?” she asked. He had not wanted to confront that question, and it annoyed him to be asked. He searched his mind for the one definitive answer, remembering his mother’s confession, his own original romantic view.

  “Because she exists,” he said, finally.

  Abdel moved away from him. Reaching out, Si coaxed her toward him. His hand touched her face. He felt her warm tears.

  “I hope you never find her,” she said, stifling a sob, which perplexed him.

  ***

  Before dawn, they breakfasted on the treacle and curdled milk, which, Si was surprised to discover, tasted delicious. They moved upriver under good winds as the sun rose over the low hills of the east bank. Although Hassan couldn’t read the words on the map Si’d given him, he had no trouble discerning the geography of the Nile.

  “It is my river,” he said, proudly. “There is not a bend from Aswan to Luxor that I don’t know like this…” He raised his hand and showed his palm.

  He kept the felucca as close to the wind as possible, and in the strong morning breezes, the boat heeled precariously, making it difficult for Si and Abdel to keep hidden. They passed Esna and headed south toward Edfu, following the markings on the map.

  Abdel said little, huddling under the mast. Occasionally, Si would poke his head above the gunwale, surveying the river. A number of feluccas plied their way in either direction. Sometimes, tourist boats passed and barges loaded with crates. Hassan and Anwar waved to every boatman that passed, sometimes shouting their names. Even Moshe barked a greeting.

  “You seem to know everybody,” Si said.

  “The river is my home.”

  He was gregarious and friendly, obviously content with his life on the river. In addition to Anwar, he told them, he had four children with his two wives, and because he owned the boat he considered himself prosperous, although he admitted that it had taken two generations to save enough money to purchase the boat.

  His contentment was enviable. Both wives got along well, he explained, another validation of his success.

  “It is not easy to please two women,” he said, winking and puffing out his chest. With Anwar, he was alternately severe and affectionate, and father and son caressed each other without shame, with Moshe joining in. When he was severe, Hassan did not hesitate to strike his son or the dog.

  “With the exception of the disease of the snails, Allah has been good,” he said, a paper-rolled hash cigarette between his teeth, the smoke curling out of his mouth as he talked.

  “The what?” Si asked.

  He was startled at Si’s ignorance, and shook his head. The information was common knowledge in his world. But to Hassan, the world was the river.

  “It lives in the snails and comes in at the feet.” Nonetheless, he was barefoot, but showed the bottoms of his soles, hardened like leather. “There is no medicine for it.”

  “You mean people just die.”

  “Slowly,” he said. “They sicken and die. My father died from it.” A shadow of gloom crossed his face. “And the big dam has made it worse.”

  Si looked at Hassan’s feet. Anwar, too, was barefoot.

  “Allah watches over us.” Hassan shrugged, responding to the unspoken inquiry.

  “He also watches over the snails,” Si said, but it seemed to make no sense to Hassan and again, he shook his head and smiled.

  “I suppose you think I’m stupid.” Si laughed. Behind Hassan, scraping out pots on the deck, Anwar nodded with a big broad smile flashing across his coppery face. Si envied them their world, their river, their Allah, their harmony with nature.

  “What makes him so happy?” Si whispered to Abdel later. The sun had gone down, and they sat up at the prow just under the boom with Moshe between them.

  “He has his place,” Abdel said, caressing Moshe’s mangy coat. “Not like us,” she whispered. His instinct was to protest, but he reconsidered. Hassan was primitive and uneducated and superstitious. But he was content. He belonged to something. It was a state of mind that Si had never attained, and he en
vied the man.

  Hassan pointed out the village of Edfu on the east bank, a tiny cluster of lights, which he knew from his map, marked the halfway point between Luxor and Aswan. A French team was excavating about two miles upriver, not far from the bank, and Si instructed Hassan to put the boat in about a mile from the site.

  “No fires,” he said. Hassan nodded, slapping Anwar’s hand as the boy lit a match to ignite the kerosene stove. Dogs barked in the distance. Moshe barked in answer to what struck Si as a generic welcome. The dogs seemed as plentiful as people. Si quickly stepped onto the shore. Abdel jumped after him.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “With you.”

  “No, Abdel.”

  “My name is Samya,” she whispered. Even in the darkness, he could see the familiar pout. He was momentarily confused. Why did she choose that moment to tell him that? He studied her face, seeing the subtle difference in her, and she lowered her eyes in embarrassment.

  “Well, you’re still Abdel to me,” he said. During the long sail, she had been mostly silent, brooding, and he had deliberately left her alone, remembering his mother’s long bouts of kayf. Perhaps she is reevaluating her stake in all this, he told himself. But he could not find the courage to chase her away.

  Annoyed with his hesitation, he grudgingly nodded consent, and she followed him along the narrow, hard dirt trail that ran parallel to the river toward Edfu.

  The town was stirring as they arrived in what passed for a main street. Merchants were preparing their wares and those who plied their various cottage industries and services were putting their tools in order for the day’s work. He asked specific directions to the site from a man ironing a djellaba with a device strapped to his foot. The man gave them elaborate instructions, although the site was no more than a quarter of a mile from the Temple of Horus, a Hellenic version of an Egyptian temple, which dominated the village. The legend on the map had indicated that the temple had begun under the reign of the Ptolmies, the dynasty that came after the death of Alexander the Great.

  At the dig site, they were directed to a self-absorbed Frenchman sitting under a tree, smoking a pipe, and inspecting a piece of broken pottery. A group of Egyptians squatted nearby, painting numbers on bits of stone. The excavation site was smaller than the others he had seen.

  “Ezzat? Vaguely,” the Frenchman said, biting hard on the stem of his pipe, making his Arabic difficult to decipher. He was not interested in being helpful.

  “A well-known archaeologist,” Si said, trying to jog his memory. The Frenchman removed his pipe. “My interest is in what the Greeks did here,” he snapped with patronizing restraint. He seemed inordinately touchy, inspecting Si carefully.

  “You don’t look like an Egyptian,” the Frenchman said, after a blatant inspection.

  “American,” Si said grudgingly.

  The Frenchman nodded.

  “I thought so,” he said, looking suddenly at the workmen.

  “Can’t get the bastards to work. Merde! Sometimes, I think it is revenge.”

  Si resented his criticism, but resisted telling the man he was half Egyptian.

  “My field is the Ptolmies. The authorities are a bit paranoid about anything foreign. The fact that Napoleon invented their bloody Egyptology cuts no ice. It took me ten years to get this dig going—” He might have gone on, but Si cut him short.

  “Well, it’s their country,” he murmured.

  “Look around you. See what they did to it.”

  “Looks all right to me,” Si responded defensively.

  “It’s in the eye of the beholder,” the Frenchman snapped, fixing his pipe between his lips and dismissing them with an arrogant glance. Si, frustrated and annoyed, started to leave. The Frenchman ignored them. As they moved away, one of the workmen stood up and followed them. He was an old wiry man with gray hair, set off against almost jet-black Nubian skin.

  “I know who you mean,” the man said, his eyes peaceful and alert. “I worked with him in the old days. And in Abu Simbel.” Si’s interest perked up. “A fine man. A great scholar.”

  Si nodded, his pulse quickening, letting the man ramble on.

  “When you see him again, please send him Abdul’s greetings. He always praised my work.” The man hesitated, showing pleasure in the memory. “‘Mamoud,’ he would say to me. ‘You have a great instinct for history.’” The man smiled, showing a sparse line of ruined teeth. “I saw him last year in Kom Ombo.”

  Kom Ombo? It was unfamiliar, and Si’s frown must have indicated his confusion.

  “The Temple to the Two Deities: Hawar, with the hawk head, and Sobek, the crocodile,” Mamoud explained, proud to display his knowledge. “A restoration project. Some of the reliefs are fading. He would sit on the high wall and watch us. He has become quite old. I did not recognize him. But you see, they were making an error in one of the figures.” He kneeled, and with one of his fingers, drew a figure in the dust. “The eye, you see, they had confused the shape…”

  Si did not interrupt him, absorbing little of the explanation. Then the man stood up.

  “He signaled me to come up, and I recognized him instantly. ‘It is wrong, Mamoud,’ he said to me, pointing out the error, and explaining the correction.” Mamoud’s smile faded and he grew morose. “He tried to deny that he was Dr. Ezzat. But, you see, he had called me by my name. Beyond that, he did not acknowledge anything more. But I knew him, you see—”

  Si interrupted what seemed like a much longer explanation.

  “Did he live near there?”

  “I was not sure. Then I saw him again in the village some time later. He was sitting on a donkey cart with, I suppose, his family. A woman. Small children. There was a young woman with him, I think.”

  Si looked at Abdel, who was also concentrating on the man’s story.

  “Mamoud.” It was the Frenchman, booming out the man’s name with irritation.

  “I had better go now,” he said, politely. “But if you see him, you must send my regards.” The Frenchman stood up, glaring at them with anger.

  “Is there anything you might tell me about the young woman perhaps?”

  Mamoud shrugged.

  “I am very bad at modern people,” he said, breaking into laughter at his little joke.

  “…the way she looked.”

  Si waited for the laughter to die down. The man scrutinized Si’s face, and his laughter ended abruptly.

  “Yes, something,” he said, scratching his chin, sprouting with tiny gray hairs. His face lit with the sudden glow of recollection. He studied Si’s face.

  “Her eyes. Green. Like yours.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The sun had risen higher, the heat falling like a shroud over the village. Crowds had filled the main street lined with the usual stalls selling indigenous foods, the same offerings wherever he went in Egypt, oranges, bananas, beans, flatbread loaves, goat cheese, flyspecked lamb carcasses. They moved through the effluvium to the river’s edge. The town reflected a ravaged sense of time, clearly reflecting his own mood. Time seemed a personal enemy now, as if the abrupt knowledge had clotted its passage, leaving him suspended in a cloud of indecision.

  Had Si secretly wished that the search might not end? He had observed this letdown in himself at other times, like finals week at school, at that moment of greatest expectation when the test papers were handed round, or when he first touched the flesh of a tired prostitute in the off-campus brothel. It was less disappointment than an unmasking, showing the sudden brutality of reality that intruded on his scrim of fantasy, hastening the cruel dismantling of delicious suspense.

  He watched a group of women kneeling at the river’s edge, pounding clothes on the moist rocks, smiling and chattering, surrounded by naked children, their ancient burdens lightened by the company. It frightened him to think about the mission’s end, r
emembering the old drifting, the plethora of choices and alternatives that had confused him, the causeless, uninspiring bobbing and weaving from one dead end to another. How he envied the purposefulness of these fellaheen and their families, spared by definitive hard labor from the confusion of perceived uselessness.

  “The worst thing that I can do now is to lead them to her,” he said, suddenly. It was, he knew, perhaps an unconscious wish to abort the pursuit.

  “I told you that from the beginning,” Abdel said.

  “Whatever she did, she at least managed to remain safe.”

  He looked around him, studying the faces that passed along the trail at the river’s edge.

  “So far, we have not been so clever,” he said gloomily.

  She lowered her eyes, perhaps contemplating the illogic of her own involvement.

  “It seemed so simple at the beginning,” he said. “All your life you’re searching for something. You don’t know quite what it is, but you know it’s there, nagging at you, biting at your insides. Then, suddenly, it seems to appear. You grab at it. You push for it. You’ll do anything in the world to get at it. Anything. No one can stop you. You’re invulnerable. No hardship, no pain, no danger is too much to get at it.” He watched her, but she turned her face away and looked toward the river. “When she told me about Isis… you must understand that her love, her protection, was fierce, smothering. I used to wonder if I hated her…” He paused, asking himself now, why am I telling her this? “…So you see, Isis became the missing key…” The key to what? “…to the thing I was searching for.”

  “Isis…” Abdel jeered, her voice rising. She moved suddenly, climbing the bank, regaining the road, heading back in the direction of the boat. Her action confused him, and he tried to dismiss it. Why should what she did concern him? He shrugged and rose, walking slowly along the path toward the boat, deliberate in his pace, trying to decide among the alternatives that rose in his mind.