by Suzanne Weyn
“I long to talk with you,” she said softly. “You are so different from me, come from so far away. I want to know everything about you.”
Together they walked into the garden.
Tetisheri grew to prize the time she spent with Taharaq in the garden. The mornings were particularly good for talking together because she did not perform until the evening.
She would rise early just to spend time with him as he tended the geese. He was careful to keep his back to the kitchen window as he spoke to her, careful to always be engaged in some chore. For her part, she worked on a silken wall-hanging that depicted cranes in flight. It gave her an excuse — she claimed she liked to sit out in the open air to work. It cleared her head, she said.
With these cautions in place, they spent pleasurable hours together every day. With Ramose away at war, she thought little of him and found that whenever her thoughts were not engaged on some task, it was Taharaq who came to mind.
Tetisheri was amazed by the things Taharaq could tell her. She’d never realized the Nubian culture was so rich. They had built pyramids before the Egyptians and had many more of them. It was the Egyptians who had learned from the Nubians.
“We call our people Te-Seti,” he told her, using the Nubian phrase. He had his back to the kitchen window and was planting small palms in a row by the back wall. “It means land of the bow, since our people are proud of their skills as archers.”
“And how did you learn to write so well?” she murmured, looking intently at her wall-hanging, pretending to be focused on the stitches.
He explained that his father had been a scribe at the royal palace. He was training his son to do the same. Taharaq believed language was the most important skill a person could possess and had worked hard to learn. But this had been cut short when he’d joined the rebels.
“Nakht could use a scribe,” she told him impulsively, putting down her craftwork, excited at the possibility. “It would not be as great as being a royal scribe, but Nakht is a rich and powerful man. Write something and I will show him.”
He nodded, still with his back to her.
The life of a scribe would be infinitely better for him than the life of a slave. She could never think of marrying a slave … but a scribe …
One day, she noticed that his eyes were red, irritated. When she asked about it, he told her that they had been bothering him lately. Tetisheri took a tin of green eye kohl from the small bag at her waist. “Let me line your eyes with this,” she offered. “It is the fashion, but it has a use. It contains ground copper, which protects against eye irritation.”
“Is it fitting for a slave to wear?” he asked as he fed the geese in their pen.
She grunted disdainfully. “What does it matter? Besides, you are not a slave born and you will not be a slave long. This will make you look more Egyptian. I will tell Nakht tonight about your skill and training as a scribe. You will soon begin your new life out of slavery.”
Ramose seethed as he watched them through the kitchen window. Blind Seth had told him this was going on, had been occurring the whole time he was away in Nubia. Blind Seth couldn’t see, but his other senses more than made up for the lack.
Blind Seth hated him. He made no secret of this until Ramose had threatened to use his influence with Nakht to have him thrown out of the household as useless. Once Seth was good and afraid of him, he put him to use. The old man may have been an unlikely spy but he was an effective one. They were sitting exactly as he’d said they would be.
Still, he would have known it himself, even if Seth hadn’t informed. The song she’d sung the night before — it was a Nubian song! He’d heard it himself at a festival while he was there. Where else could she have learned it but from the slave? And if he’d taught her a song, it meant he could speak! The night before he had been too furious at the song to stay, so she didn’t yet know he had returned. But now he was here to settle this — and put an end to it.
A darkness of jealousy descended like a cloud of locust as he watched her apply liner to the slave’s eyes. He sat right beside her on the bench! How gently, caressingly she worked.
Why did she touch him like that?
Ramose recalled the one time he had tried to take her into his arms. She had been stiff and turned her head away when he tried to kiss her. Her excuse had been that she was tired!
But now she was practically melting into this slave’s arms! What did she find so delightful about a slave?
Looking up, Tetisheri saw him and jumped away from Taharaq, sending her kohl pot spinning onto the ground. She arose, a frantic expression blotting out the laughter she’d been sharing. With a quick word to the slave she hurried toward the kitchen.
“Is it appropriate for the household entertainer to fraternize with a slave?” He attacked the moment she came through the kitchen door. “It’s bad enough that you associate with that servant girl. Have you no regard for your position in this household, or for mine? Is it your intention to make me the object of mockery?”
“Ramose, do not be angry,” she began. “But we must talk.”
“There are no words to excuse this,” he insisted angrily. “You will not spend time with him anymore.”
“I will speak to whom I please,” she stated.
He grabbed her upper arm roughly, beyond caring if he harmed her. He did not tolerate insubordination among his men in the army and he would not take it from a woman. “He will be sent to the stone quarry this very morning and you will not see him ever again.”
“Nakht will not allow it,” she shouted.
“I will supply two new slaves to Nakht, fresh from Nubia. He will not stop me.”
“You won’t,” she cried. “I won’t let you!”
Yanking her up close to his face, he spoke in a threatening growl. “You have taken my gifts and thereby implied your consent to be my wife. I will not be made a fool of, do you hear me?”
Tetisheri tried to shake him off, but his hold was too firm. “You’re hurting me,” she shouted, struggling to push him away.
As she broke free of him, Ramose grabbed for her. He clutched the cord holding the pendant around her neck. The gold cord broke and it clattered onto the floor.
Tetisheri rushed out of the kitchen so he did not see, at first, that the slave had come into the doorway. And when he did turn to notice him, he held the image of the man’s face for only the most fleeting of seconds before the rock-hard impact of the man’s fist snapped his jaw.
Taharaq did not know if Ramose lay dead or simply passed out. He was certain, however, that if they caught him now his own death was assured.
It had been a rash, stupid thing to do. He’d acted on impulse when he heard Tetisheri cry out.
But, staring down at Ramose, he felt as if it was an act that had been inevitable, and he was deeply satisfied.
He knew his satisfaction would be brief if he was caught.
The kitchen was empty, but in a minute someone was bound to enter. His eyes lit on Tetisheri’s bejeweled Eye of Horus pendant gleaming there on the floor. Scooping it into his hand, he dashed back out into the garden.
Keeping close to the house, he moved quickly around the back. It was not difficult to climb to the top of the garden wall.
He could make his way into Luxor and find the boatman Nerfi had spoken of. He had the pendant for payment. But the man Nerfi had told him of would be nearly impossible to inquire about without calling attention to himself, and they would be searching for him. He had to find Nerfi somehow. She had to help him find the boatman.
Crouching low atop the stone wall, he peered out onto the palm-lined road running in front of the house. A trader trudged beside two camels loaded with bundles, most likely on his way to Luxor. That was the way; if he stayed off the road, he could follow it into the city.
He dropped to the ground on the far side, flattening himself against the outside wall of the house. Tetisheri’s room was not far. If he had luck, she would be there. She could summo
n Nerfi for him.
Would Tetisheri go with him?
No, it was too dangerous.
He couldn’t ask it of her. He would return for her. He would tell her to wait for him. He would become a scribe like his father before him. He would come back as a man of means who she could be proud to wed.
Amun-Ra scorched the sky from the highest point. “Great Amun-Ra,” he prayed, “keep me alive in Tetisheri’s heart. Allow me to return to her on time’s swiftest wings.”
From the kitchen, a woman screamed.
Ramose had been discovered.
The news of Taharaq’s escape reached Tetisheri as she sat in her room stroking her small cub. Nerfi rushed in to report that he had broken the strong jaw of which Ramose was so proud, but Ramose was now up and on the hunt.
“He’s wild with rage,” Nerfi told Tetisheri in a rush of frantic words. “His face is swollen and raw and he doesn’t seem to even feel the pain. He’s out of his mind.”
Fear gripped Tetisheri, squeezing her around the chest, cutting off her breath. Putting the cub aside, she reached up and laid her hand on the mural of Isis for support. “Help me, Mother, what should I do?” she implored.
Her green Eye of Horus pendant was suddenly flung up onto the sill of her open window.
Her eyes darted to the image of Isis and then to Taharaq, who had climbed into the window, pendant now again in his hand.
Tetisheri didn’t understand. What was he doing there?
He suddenly cried out, an anguished howl of pain. Then he plummeted to the floor, a sword plunged into his chest.
She recognized the sword’s ornate handle instantly.
Whirling around, Tetisheri faced Ramose. He was terrifying in his fury, his eyes burning madly, his right cheek swollen to twice its size. His chest heaved with the effort of hurling his sword with such force that it had pierced Taharaq clear through.
“You will hang,” he snarled at Nerfi in a muffled growl. “Smuggling slaves is a high crime.”
“I wasn’t,” Nerfi protested, trembling.
“Blind Seth heard you tell him to steal the pendant for payment. He came here just now to give it to you. You saw it yourself.”
Ramose pried the pendant from Taharaq’s fingers and faced Tetisheri. “He attacked me for it after you left the kitchen.”
With a flick of his finger, he set the Eye of Horus spinning on its cord. A shard of sunlight flashed the lights from its multifaceted emerald around the walls.
Ramose grabbed Nerfi under her armpit, lifting her onto her toes, and dragged her, white-faced with fear, toward the door, tossing her toward two of his men. “Lock her in her room. I will see to her later.”
The kohl that rimmed Tetisheri’s eyes ran in two black rivers down her face as, with one hand, he turned and shoved her against the back wall. “These two slaves will disappear and we will forget this ever came between us,” he mumbled thickly.
“I will never marry you!” she shrieked at him. “I will go to the temple of Isis and become a priestess there!”
“I will see you dead before that happens,” Ramose replied as he left.
Tetisheri let herself slide slowly down until she sat beside Taharaq. How could she have loved this man? He had stolen from her. He had intended to leave her there to face Ramose alone.
And she had believed, had been convinced beyond doubt, that she loved him.
She had been so wrong about him.
And, despite it all, she loved him still.
Tetisheri hugged herself and slowly began to rock back and forth. A humming came from a place within her that she had not known existed, and yet it was strangely familiar. The humming rose slowly, transforming itself into an anguished wail.
The cry of sorrow fills the chamber. My beloved is so distraught that she does not realize that I have my arms around her. Do not wail so, dearest love, I am beside you.
I stroke her lovely black hair but the aggrieved howl streaming from her lips will not abate.
What can be the cause of such sorrow?
My eyes rest on the body of a man. My brother, Aken, has been slain!
Alarmed, I leave my sobbing dear one and go to his side.
Soldiers come to lift Aken.
Tetisheri throws herself on his body, screaming at them not to take him, drenching his blood-smeared chest with her tears.
I do not understand.
Does she love Aken?
I did not know she had ever met him. But she must have known him. Why else would he have been here in her room? Perhaps he had escaped the stone quarry and come to free me — and been caught.
Tetisheri, what has happened here?
She gives no sign of having heard me.
Answer me, my love.
She can hold back the soldiers no longer and they carry Aken from the room. I follow, needing to be sure they prepare his body correctly for the afterlife, despite the fact that they despise him as a slave. Trailing them through the house, I stay near as they travel down to the banks of the Nile with Aken’s body draped between them.
My heart aches to think of my young brother, lying dead, his hand lifelessly trailing in the dirt.
I am overcome with horror as I realize what is about to happen. There will be no preparation of his body.
With not even a prayer to Osiris, his body is flung into the Nile. The soldiers turn back without a second glance, but I stand there on the riverbank watching as he floats back to the surface, face down. A small wave created by a passing barge pushes him over.
I see his face.
And at once I know the truth that my heart had been denying.
It is not Aken who has died.
It is I who am dead.
A crocodile appears in the water, gliding toward the body, and I turn away, unable to look.
So I am stranded there, unprepared to move to the Next World, the one that those with greater means have so thoroughly planned for.
I find that my movement in the world is swift, requiring little more than thought. In a blink, I return to Nubia once more to brush my mother’s coarse, black hair, to kiss her beloved forehead. Her two sons are gone and she is perpetually sad. My deceased father has left some valuables buried under the house. He has written the whereabouts on a tablet. My mother has it but can’t read it. She is afraid to ask anyone for help in fear that someone will steal her treasure. My father expected me to decipher it for her, and now I do, breathing the location into her ear. My mother thinks the information has come to her on the desert wind — and perhaps it has.
I visit Aken in the quarry. With an invisible hand, I help him carry his load.
But how much longer can my ka exist in this state? I am weakening already, though I experience no need for food, drink, or sleep.
Lost and confused, I roam the Valley of the Kings, thinking I might find the things I need in those great pyramids and tombs. When I go in, effortlessly passing through the massive walls, the wealth within staggers even my wildest imaginings.
Deep in the confines of one underground tomb, I meet a ruler, a hundred years dead, though not more than twenty years of age — the boy pharaoh Tutankhamen, son of Akhenaton. He is rummaging through the many things that had been stored there for his use. I am searching for my lute, he tells me. I am bored and desire to play.
I ask if he will take me to the Next World, but he says that Osiris, who rules there, would not allow it, not without the correct burial.
Desire to be reborn, he advises. Try again.
But how? I ask.
He shrugs, finding his lute in a golden case. You must surrender your love of this world, I suppose. Allow it to happen. Wish it to happen. Picture it in your mind.
I would not be a slave, I say. I would live a carefree life, free of ambition or desire.
Then think hard on this desire, Tutankhamen advises as his image fades from my view.
A mummy case in the corner of the tomb begins to glow with a vivid white light. The case grows until i
t is many feet tall. A strange hum emanates from within it.
I approach, irresistibly drawn to the light-filled case, and enter the light.
Pakistan, 538 B.C.E.:
Today I came upon a young man lying on the Peshawar road. I had met him in a friend’s home the evening before. His companion was a man who seemed of noble birth though roughly dressed. Clearly they had both been traveling a long time. His friend’s name was Guatama Siddhartha. The two companions had already had too much wine when they began to argue over the nature of the soul. This Siddhartha believed that the soul perished along with the body. My young nameless friend would have none of it, disagreeing vehemently. “The soul lives on and on!” he declared.
“How do you know?” Siddhartha asked.
“I don’t know how I know. I just know,” the drunken, nameless one insisted.
“Perhaps we are saying the same thing and it is only the nature of earthly time that eludes us,” this Siddhartha allowed, desiring to smooth the argument and make peace, I believe.
The nameless one shook his head. “No. I think not.”
“Perhaps one continues to be reborn depending on how one has behaved — for good or bad — in the previous life. One will continue to do this until all issues have been resolved or understood and then one can cease to exist and move on to the bliss of Nirvana,” Siddhartha explained.
The man whose name I did not know drained my friend’s wine jug into his flask and sucked it in. “I don’t understand anything you say these days,” he slurred.
“We have been drinking and carousing too much,” Siddhartha said. “But when I tried to fast in order to become holy, I nearly died of starvation. I have been thinking that there must be a middle way, a way that avoids the extremes of self-denial as well as the extremes of earthly pleasure.”
“Get out of here!” my nameless friend bellowed. “You’re no fun anymore. You’ve gotten too serious. You’re making my headaches come back.”