He walked me through the galleries, one after another, and told me about the things he remembered, toys, thrones, jeweled collars… Ruefully he called them “the family jewels. All that is left of us.”
“That isn’t true, Danilo. You’re here.”
“Barely.”
“You’re worth more than all of this, at least to me.”
“Flatterer.” Like me, he wasn’t much good at taking compliments.
We had dinner at a restaurant on the square. Steaks braised with a fascinating complex of spices. The wine had a bitter edge.
“Egyptian wine always does now. I suspect it’s because the Nile is polluted.” He took a long drink. “Everything is, in the modern world.”
“How long will we be here? Will you take me to Sakkara?” It was the burial ground of ancient Memphis, the place where the first pyramids were built. It was in use till the time of Cleopatra and beyond.
He shook his head. “No, we have to leave tomorrow. I’ll show you Sakkara on our next visit.”
There would be a next visit. I liked hearing it. I was falling in love with Egypt.
“But, Jamie, we are not here as tourists. We have work.”
* * *
He hired a felucca to take us up the Nile. I had expected another train ride, but he said that no train would stop at the places where we were going.
We left just after noon. The boatman met us near the famous bridge designed by Eiffel, the one that almost looks like his tower lay on its side. Danilo exchanged greetings with him in Arabic; then he greeted me in English. He helped us get our things on board, then took his seat at the rear, holding the tiller with one hand; with the other he hoisted that long, graceful, curving sail and we were off. We sat in side-by-side seats at the middle of the boat, which was named the Cleopatra.
The Nile was busy with traffic, water taxis ferrying people about, tourist boats loading and unloading their passengers, a few small steamers that had made their way upriver from the sea. There were also police boats. The made me nervous; I knew that Egypt was not exactly a friendly country for men who love men, not anymore.
I hadn’t had much sailing experience, a few trips to Pennsylvania lakes but not much to speak of. So, my first ride in a felucca came as quite a surprise. The long sail seemed to catch the least whiff of wind, and we moved so smoothly there was almost no sense of motion. It was quite startling; if it hadn’t been for the scenery moving by, I’m not at all certain I’d have known we were under sail.
The city surrounded us, an enormous metropolis, hotels, office buildings, there were even houseboats moored along the riverbank. All quite modern. Not what I thought of when I thought Egypt. Danilo pointed out a large floating structure, a barge with a superstructure erected on it, and told me it was the art academy where the ancient techniques of painting on papyrus had been revived a few decades back.
After a time, the city passed, then the suburbs, and we were in something like the Egypt I had always imagined. Or rather, had always seen in movies. I let my hand trial in the water.
Our boatman was named Mohammed Ali which, Danilo explained, was the Arab equivalent of “John Smith.” Mohammed was 50, perhaps; his face was just beginning to wrinkle. He spoke English surprisingly well while pointing out things he thought we might find interesting. The ruins of small temples or shrines stood here and there, not many. Further away from shore we saw columns and obelisks now and then, the remains of what had been great temples. Mostly the old land had been supplanted by the new. In the far distance, behind us, we could see Giza and the pyramids. Miles away; still visible.
After a time, Danilo put an arm around me, and I leaned against him. Almost at once I realized it might not be a wise thing to do. What would Mohammed make of it? I looked over my shoulder at him, and he winked at me. Nothing to worry about there.
The Egyptian countryside was as lush and green as anyplace I’d ever seen. Better than Ebensburg, certainly—there were no strip mines. All around us was the most profuse growth. Mostly the land was cultivated. Egypt is a long, narrow, green strip along the banks of the river; beyond those is desert. Every available foot of land was farmed, to feed the country’s large population. Here and there we saw small villages, some no more than half a dozen mudbrick huts clustered together on the riverbank.
Men and boys worked the land, often wearing nothing but loincloths. Others worked in galabeas. Some of them sang at their labors. Teams of oxen plowed. They walked slowly, sullenly in their wooden yokes. Danilo said it all looked much the way it had in his youth, millennia before. It would hardly have surprised me to see a royal barge pass us on the river. West Penn University seemed a lifetime away.
It was all so beautiful, and so strange compared to the things I’d always known, that I barely stopped to wonder where we were going. What were those “places where no train would stop?”
We dozed on and off; the movement was so gentle. I think Mohammed must have too, but I didn’t want to be so rude as to look back and see. As we traveled, there was less and less conversation.
We came to the great oasis called the Fayum, a huge fertile region, miles long. Date palms grew in abundance, and there were citrus groves, vineyards, even apple orchards. Without saying a word to us Mohammed pulled up to shore and tethered the boat to a big old palm tree. We went quickly ashore and filled our arms with apples, limes and grapes, then dashed back to the riverbank and set sail again.
I bit into a particularly large, particularly green lime. “I feel like Saint Augustine, stealing those apples he repented for, for the rest of his life.”
Danilo grinned. “His guilt over the apples was nothing compared to the guilt he felt for loving another boy when he was young.”
I looked at him, wondering what Mohammed might make of our exchange. “You’re not going to tell me he was one of us, are you?”
“Good Christ, no.”
On the distant horizon, just at the limit of my vision, I thought I could see pyramids. I remembered that this region was the seat of the pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom. I had seen their statues, or photos of them, done in a surprisingly realistic style for ancient Egypt. They looked sad, or tired.
Suddenly, quite abruptly, Danilo leaned close and kissed me. I looked back to Mohammed in alarm, but he was smiling a benevolent smile.
The great oasis receded behind us, and there was more of the familiar farmland, more of the small villages. It was noticeably warmer. We had left the European winter far behind us. Mohammed stripped off his galabia and wore nothing but a loincloth. His body was lean, muscular, pleasingly dark.
A massive square tower of stone rose up on the western bank. I recognized it: the Meidûm Pyramid. It had collapsed during construction, killing thousands of men. All that remained was a central core, a great stone block whose sides sloped gently inward. Around its base was the rubble from the collapse and, under it, the unexcavated bodies of all those workers. No archaeologist had ever dug there, even though the pyramid was one of the most fascinating monuments in the country.
Everywhere death existed side by side along with vibrant life.
* * *
Just before sunset Mohammed pulled to shore again. The jolt of the Cleopatra touching land woke Danilo, who had been sleeping in my arms. Groggily he looked around, then turned to ask where we were. Mohammed said one word, “Ibada.” Some yards inland I could see another small village, a few dozen mud brick houses. There were a few children playing in the streets; no one else was visible.
Ibada. I had never heard of it; it meant not a thing. But I was still a far way from being an expert on Egypt. “Why are we stopping, Danilo? What’s here?”
“Come on. This is one of the places I especially want you to see.”
The setting sun made everything seem to glow with a wonderful red-orange life, and the long dark shadows made a vivid contrast. We jumped ashore and headed not to the village but to a low rise just beyond it.
It was a vast open field. At first gla
nce there was nothing. Literally nothing, no vegetation, for the first time along the river, just dirt. Then I began to realize that it must be the remains of a city. I could see, I thought, where streets would have been. And here and there columns stood, most of them broken; I could see what must have been their capitals lying on the earth. The place was much larger than I’d realized at first.
Danilo took a few steps, and I followed him. He bent down and ran his fingers through the dry soil. “Look at what time and humanity have done to love.”
I was lost. “Is this Amarna?”
“No.” He looked at me, then pressed his hand to the earth again. “We’ll be there soon enough.”
He was in no mood to be communicative. I didn’t quite understand why. But I left him to himself and wandered off among the ruins, what there were of them.
It must have been a magnificent place. The streets were wider than most in Pittsburgh. There was a crumbling ghost of an amphitheater; I guessed it must have held a thousand people or more. I traced the foundation of what would have been a temple, I thought. Nearly 60 feet by 60. This had been no provincial town. Then a fragment of stone caught my eye. On it was inscribed the name of the god Eros in Greek and Latin. This had been a Greek city, or a Greco-Roman one, not Egyptian.
The sun set and the sky began to darken. On the eastern horizon a white glow shone; the waning moon would rise soon. I saw Danilo walking among the shadowed ruins, much as I was doing myself; but he seemed preoccupied, and if he knew it all and was grieving for what had been here. Off at the edge of the city Mohammed stood, quiet, watching us.
I crossed the open space to Danilo. “Please tell me, where are we?”
He looked up into the sky, then at me. “The temple you found was his. The temple of the beautiful young god.”
“Eros.” I said it confidently.
“No. Eros was honored here, as was his mother Aphrodite. But this city was built to honor the young god who had died here. He drowned in the Nile not far from where Mohammed moored our boat.”
It finally dawned on me. When I said his name, it came out almost a whisper. “Antinous.”
“Yes.” His voice was low too. “I walked at Hadrian’s side when he laid out the city, much as Alexander had done four centuries earlier at Alexandria. This was the greatest monument to love ever built.”
Antinous had been a boy in his late teens—my age, I realized—when he came here with his lover, the emperor Hadrian. Somehow the boy had drowned in the river. And the emperor’s grief encompassed the whole of his empire.
“You should have seen them together, Jamie. I have never seen two human beings more obviously mad with love for one another. They were two halves of one soul.” He kissed me. “Like us.”
Still again I found myself looking cautiously to Mohammed, but there was no sign he found our love in any way objectionable.
“It rocked the empire. The death of the beautiful boy athlete shook the world, Jamie. Hadrian made him a god. Temples were erected all across Europe and Asia. For centuries after Hadrian’s death, people worshipped in temples devoted to his young lover. Not till the Christians took power and began to stamp out what they called ‘pagans’ did his cult die out.”
“A fit god for us, Danilo.”
“A fit god for the world, if the world would only see.” His voice turned bitter. “Certainly he’s more deserving of worship than the tripartite man-god.”
The moon was above the horizon now. Everything took on its spectral white glow. Amid the ruins of Hadrian’s love, we kissed again. And made love.
It seemed there was nothing in the world but Danilo’s touch. A spark of pure pleasure shot through me; for that moment nothing else existed. The touch of the divine. Around us, the ruins seemed even vaster than I had realized. The city seemed to stretch on forever.
As we had so many times, we rested in one another’s arms. There was no pillow; we rested our heads on a broken capital. I thought I saw two men there with us, making love, too: Antinous and Hadrian. But it was only a fleeting dream.
When finally we got to our feet, we brushed dust and bits of rubble off one another. Danilo dressed. I stayed naked. When we got to the Nile again, I did what I knew I had to. I stretched my body and dove in. The water was cool and dark.
“Jamie, no! This is where he drowned.” He tried to catch hold of my foot, but I swam away from him and splashed him playfully. “Jamie, come back!”
But I kept swimming. It was the first time I’d been in the water for weeks. It felt wonderful. I was aware that my fingers felt fine, no pain.
When I finally swam back to shore Danilo grabbed me angrily. “Antinous drowned here. You might have, too.”
“No. We’re the new history, Danilo, you and I. What happened to them will not happen to us.”
“Don’t be a fool, Jamie.”
“I’m not. I’m alive. No water in my lungs, see?”
“Don’t do this again.”
I smiled. He had never tried to give me an order before. “Now take me to your father’s city.”
* * *
The moon climbed higher in the sky, and there were thousands of stars. They all seemed to grow brighter with each passing minute. The boat glided on the surface of the Nile like a ghost hovering over the face of the waters.
In little more than two hours we were there. Amarna.
Like the City of Antinous, it was a city no more. A vast open plain stretched off from the river. It was possible to see where streets had been, at least the larger ones. But of the buildings that had stood there, not one remained. Outlines of their foundations could be seen in the brilliant moonlight. Here and there a few stones were still piled together. At the far ends of the place I could see the ancient boundary markers that a team of French archaeologists had found and set up again, back in the 19th century. You could almost feel the presence of the inhabitants’ ghosts.
There was the faintest breeze, the only indication we were still part of a living world. From under his seat in the Cleopatra, Mohammed produced three torches. Danilo lit them, and we headed off through the ruins to the low cliffs beyond. I could see the entrances, black doorways gaping there.
As we walked Danilo stayed silent, mostly. But now and then he would point something out. “This was the Temple of the Sun. My sisters and I used to play in the courtyard.”
“And Tut?”
“He was never well.”
He gestured to our left. “The Street of the Fish Merchants. I’ve never tasted such delicious things.”
“Not even in Alexandria?”
“An upstart city.”
Alexandria was 2,400 years old. By Danilo’s standard an upstart. What must he think of me?
It took us more than an hour to make our way to the cliffs. The entranceways yawned, more and more noticeably. It was where the people of Amarna had cut their tombs into the living rock.
“There,” he pointed, “was the tomb prepared for my father. And my mother’s is just beside it. My two little sisters who died were buried in it.” He hesitated for a moment, then kept walking. “I still remember the ceremonies. The first burial rites I had ever seen. Mourners filling the city with their cries. Priests in the leopard skins looking fierce and lethal. It was all rather terrible.”
I think he was talking for himself more than for me. Family memories, still vibrant in his mind after three millennia.
The tomb entrances were carved with hieroglyphs and images of the gods, and of their occupants. We did not stop to examine them. There wasn’t time. It had already been a long night, and there was more to do.
Finally, we came to the last of the tombs, farthest to the south along the cliff. The doorway was perhaps eight feet high. Inside was perfect blackness. Danilo held up his torch so I could see the inscription over the lintel. I mouthed the words: Per-nefer-Set-hotep. It did not sound right, too long for a name, not complete enough to be an expression of anything else. I looked at him, a bit puzzled, and for the first
time all night he smiled.
He turned to Mohammed. “You will wait here for us.”
Mohammed nodded, and we stepped inside.
Our torches seemed blindingly bright in the surrounding blackness. It took my eyes a moment to adjust. There was a flurry of activity. Something rushed over our heads. I ducked. Danilo told me, “Bats. There isn’t a tomb in Egypt that isn’t occupied, sometimes by worse things than them.”
“Will they bite?”
“No, they’re far too timid. But if your reflexes make you look up at them, keep your mouth closed. When they launch into the air, they urinate.”
“So much for the romance of Egypt.”
I had been expecting a tomb to open before us. Instead there were two more doors, side by side. Over one was carved Per-nefer-Set; over the other, Set-hotep. My Egyptian was still halting, but I thought the first one meant something like, “Beautiful is the house of Set” and the other “Set is complete.” I kept my translations to myself though. No sense emphasizing my ignorance, not then, not there.
Danilo seemed to know what I was thinking. “Look inside them.”
I walked first to one door, then to the other. Now that my eyes had gotten used to the level of light, I could see a surprising lot. They were huge tombs, typical of what I knew of Egyptian tombs from that age. And they were mirror images of one another. Every last detail, the inscriptions, the images of the gods, all of it was mirrored from one tomb to the other. I had never heard of anything like it, and I looked to Danilo, quite baffled.
“They were lovers.” He smiled faintly. “Two of my father’s most trusted courtiers. The high priests of Set.”
It made sense. They had had their names joined in their joint tomb. Per-nefer-Set-hotep: joined for eternity.
“At the rear of the tomb, in the room where you would expect to find one sarcophagus, you will find a common room with two, side by side.”
The Blood of Kings Page 22