A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore

by Mohamed Mansi Qandil

  I was at Edfu when I heard that the tomb of Amenophis II had been looted. A telegram bearing the news reached me swiftly. I had to return as quickly as possible to the Valley of the Kings. I spent the whole day shifting from one mode of transportation to another. When I arrived on the western shore I headed at once to the tomb. I descended its broken stairs into the depths, holding onto ropes for support, clutching a blazing torch. This was the most capacious of the tombs, used to inter a number of kings. The mummies had remained within it until recently, until Maspero asked me to move them to the museum in Cairo. I had in fact transferred all of them, with the exception of King Amenophis himself, whom I judged it unseemly to remove from his house.

  I raised the torch to see. The mummy of the king was there all right, but it was mutilated, the head separated from the body, the forearms from the upper arms. The thief who had done this knew what he was doing—he was looking for any trinkets with which the mummy might be adorned; whether he found any or not I don’t know. He hadn’t dared to lift the fragments of linen packed with pitch to see whether anything might be hidden underneath, in the center of the mummy.

  I turned around to see whether there was anything else besides the damage to the mummy. I didn’t find the model of the sailing boat that had been in one of the corners. The kings had taken care that there should be such a boat amongst the goods closed within their tombs, for at a time when the wheel was unknown boats were the only means of transportation in life, as well as the way in which souls were conveyed to the afterlife. Once again, the thief had known what he was doing.

  I was suffocating with the heat in that place, and beside myself with agitation. I extinguished the torch I was carrying and began stumbling toward the exit, feeling my way along. The watchmen, looking at me with indifference, responded lazily to my questions; as usual, they had seen nothing, they had heard nothing—they too were collaborators; indeed, it may have been one of them who arranged the theft. I turned my attention to the area surrounding the tomb, hoping to find some traces. At the entrance to the chamber I found two footprints, which had left their impression in the moist sand at the time of the robbery; the sands had dried beneath the sun, and the tracks had stayed as they were.

  I knew whose footprint this was: the deep-sunk heel that seemed as if it was separated from the sole; the broad toes, each pointing in its own direction. This firm print, which seemed designed to show that the land belonged to none but the owner of that foot, the way an old wolf might mark its territory with its urine.

  My first and most essential skill woke within me. I brought my papers and pencils and began sketching a picture of the foot. I drew it to scale and in the minutest detail, shading in around it as necessary to render it clear and unmistakable. Then I took it to the police. I had irrefutable evidence—no one could deny it.

  The evening of that very day, policemen descended upon Abdel Rasul’s house, having crossed in force from the eastern shore. The officer in charge, who was English, had responded to my urgent request, and my insistence upon the enormity of the offense. They turned the house upside down, but found nothing. They knocked upon the walls and dug beneath them in search of a secret cache, but again to no avail. They did not leave Abdel Rasul alone, however. They beat him and cut off his moustache; they unwrapped his turban and used it to bind his hands behind his back. Then they drove him before them amidst the villagers, who watched what was happening and trembled. I was standing close to the river as they propelled him toward the ferry. He looked directly at me, breathing hard. He was angry, feeling the insult. Ignoring the hands of his captors belaboring the back of his head, he focused his gaze on me. Each of us felt betrayed by the other.

  “If I were English like you,” his eyes said to me, “would you have treated me this way?”

  They drove him past me. He had played me false; never had I imagined that he would take advantage of my absence and plunder my tombs. But were the tombs mine . . . or his?

  He remained in prison for a number of weeks, but the judge paid no heed to the evidence I had submitted, not taking it seriously. Late into the night I heard the sound of drums and mizmars celebrating the safe return of Abdel Rasul to the village. The viper depicted upon the gates of Habu had stirred, and paradise was no longer safe.

  Abdel Rasul did not come near me after that, but I saw his footprints everywhere, his constant effort to remind me that I was living upon his land. In fact, however, he was the least of my enemies. The most dangerous of them lived on the other shore: the innumerable dealers in antiquities, foreigners who got them for next to nothing from the peasants and sold them in fantastic quantities to the museums of Europe.

  The most notorious of these was the German dealer Ansinger, who supplied the Berlin Museum with smuggled artifacts. He was active and strong, and the law protecting foreigners prevented me from getting anywhere near him or even thinking of laying a hand on him. I knew he had got his hands on an important artifact, perhaps the most significant archaeological find yet uncovered—namely, a colored statue or bust of a queen—something of this nature, at any rate. He was keeping it somewhere, waiting for the right moment to smuggle it out to the Berlin Museum. So Emilia whispered to me, pointing him out to me at a party.

  “He’s the most prodigious of all the thieves around here,” she told me. “Look how sure of himself he is. He’s happened upon things no one else ever has.”

  Winter society in Luxor was full of gossip and rumors, but Emilia spoke wrathfully of Ansinger, and I was even more enraged than she. But I did not have the authority to search his lodgings—he was a truly formidable enemy. The only thing I could do was prevent him from crossing to the western shore.

  He didn’t forgive me for it—since I took up this employment no one had forgiven me anything. He wrote an article for one of the French newspapers published in Alexandria that was a savage attack on me. He wrote in French, so as to get the immediate attention of Gaston Maspero, saying that I did not deserve this position, being nothing but a copyist, uneducated and unqualified; that from the time I assumed the responsibility for the valley there had been one disaster after another, with tomb robberies increasing—as if he himself were not one of those thieves; that the roof of King Seti’s tomb had collapsed and Amenophis’s tomb had been plundered; that there had been no end of catastrophes. What truly saddened me, though, was what happened on a certain October morning.

  It was a warm morning, and for the first time in a long while I dreamed about Rosa. She was standing before me in the same place where we had been accustomed to watch the sun set behind the temple walls. She was asking for my forgiveness, hoping for another chance with me. I woke longing to visit my flower garden, but I found the gazelle dead. It lay there stiff-legged, its ears strained as if to listen, its glassy eyes vacant, and its body cold. I cried out in anguish and turned about fearfully, only to find another corpse: my donkey, San Atun, lay dead as well. The valley of the dead was indeed full of the dead, and they were meant for me. I hurried to my charger; him I found, fortunately, still standing. Some miracle must have kept him alive—or perhaps his turn had not yet come.

  Furious, I spurred him forward, plunging into the streets of al-Qurna, which were empty. I knew everyone rose with the dawn to go to the fields or to cross to the other side of the river, where work was to be had serving the tourists. I pounded my fist upon his door and shouted, “Come out here, Abdel Rasul!”

  I thought he must have done his deed and fled to the other side of the river, but out he came. He was wearing only his undershirt and long under-trousers. His moustache was awry, his head bare, and his feet unshod. His appearance did not deceive me—I knew he had not slept that night—that he had been lurking about my house, looking for an opportunity.

  “You vile traitor!” I shouted at him. “You’ve killed my animals—I’ve no doubt you set out poison for them!”

  He gazed at me steadily. “Why,” he said, “would I do such a thing to helpless beasts? If I wanted to
poison anyone it would be you, yourself.”

  His reply infuriated me all the more. I was shaking, and my stallion, Sultan, stamped his hooves uneasily. “You couldn’t get to me,” I said, “and so you killed them.”

  “Our beasts also die,” he said. “Where do you think you’re living? This is the valley of the dead—the place is full of snakes and scorpions, wolves and jackals. Give thanks to your English god that you wake each morning and find yourself still alive!”

  He didn’t retreat, but stood there with his chest thrust out. I remembered his humiliation, when he was being shoved here and there by the police; now, at this moment, he was stronger than I was. He could take revenge, and not for himself alone; rather, he had gained the power to threaten me. I jerked the stallion’s reins and departed; there was no point in turning to the police; this was his land, in the end, and he was surrounded by kith and kin, while I was but a passing stranger, as he had said to me on more than one occasion.

  I dug a big hole behind the house and buried the gazelle and the donkey in it. While I was heaping dirt upon their still bodies, I realized all at once that I no longer had a place in this valley. When Maspero’s telegram reached me, informing me of my transfer from the Valley of the Kings to the northern district, I understood that everything was preordained, and that I must leave this hot and savage place just when I had taken my first steps in the realm of archaeological excavation, having learned—thanks to a great many scholars, amateurs, and thieves—how I might discover the secrets of that strange parcel of earth.

  After protracted delays and postponements, excuses made on myriad pretexts, I at last took my leave. I crossed the river on a felucca. I hadn’t told anyone when I was going, but I found Abdel Rasul standing on the shore. This was the moment of his final triumph over me, and I expected him to greet me with smug satisfaction and derision, but he did no such thing.

  “I’ve come to bid you farewell,” he said. “I bear you no grudge. If you should return to Thebes, you will be my guest.”

  He said nothing of what had come to pass between us, neither his betrayal of me nor my treachery toward him. He was noble in his way, despite his abject poverty. He was at any rate more honorable than the robbers operating on the other side of the river.

  As the boat began its northward journey, all the temples, obelisks, and lofty columns passed before my eyes in a silent farewell. I understood that this place would be ever in my heart, and that I would return to it someday—but when? I didn’t know.

  I received my assignment as director of antiquities, specifically as director of Lower Egypt. I sensed that Maspero still trusted me and didn’t want to leave me in the lurch—merely to lessen the volume of criticism directed at him and his men. He exchanged me for a Mr. Arthur Weigall, assigning each of us to the position formerly held by the other: a straightforward trade, as he told me in all simplicity; to me, however, it meant exchanging one world for another—exchanging a land I knew and loved, whose details I had memorized and dreamed about at night, for an alien realm about which I knew nothing. I was no longer that callow youth who had disembarked at Alexandria thirteen years earlier. I had changed: I knew Arabic well, I had encountered many kinds of dishonesty and treachery, and I had grown skilled at working in the field of excavation and exposing what was real and what was false in the world of antiquities. But Cairo was not my domain. The raucous society of foreigners alarmed me; I would have to seek out my own cave, my private cell.

  I decided to live at Saqqara, at the midpoint between two worlds, close to the dividing line between Upper Egypt and the Delta. It was a primitive region, full of promises yet to be unearthed. I had been there in the company of Flinders Petrie after he moved there from Tel al-Amarna. Here was ancient Memphis, which had been the capital of Egypt for thousands of years, after the Pharaohs discovered that Thebes was too remote to rule over such a vast empire. The area was enchanted and wretched at one and the same time: full of royal tombs and mastabas, small pyramids and the huge stepped pyramid that was the only one of its kind, funerary temples, and even Coptic monasteries. It was a veritable complex of interconnecting ancient remains, but subject to ruin on an alarming scale.

  Perhaps, I persuaded myself, I was getting closer to the dream of discovering Akhenaten’s tomb, waiting for me somewhere in this area. Even with the sadness that weighed upon my heart, I was confident that matters would improve. In spite of myself, I was pervaded by the dream that had possessed Newberry, who had now left Egypt and settled in London. I had heard about the discovery of the walls of ancient Troy, in Turkey, as well as that of the Labyrinth on the isle of Crete, and I dreamed of making a comparable discovery—a discovery so significant it would raise my status from that of a mere copyist to that of an explorer whose name would be remembered in books and encyclopedias. I was certain, just as Newberry had been, that the tomb of the heretic king was waiting for me somewhere!

  But then some Frenchmen, those frogeaters, got in the way and spoiled everything.

  There were only fifteen of them: a number of men, as well as two women and two children. They arrived on a Saturday at midday—a cold January day. It was clear that Saqqara was the last stop on their crazy expedition. They were exceedingly drunk and boisterous, and they filled this silent realm of ancient ruins with their brouhaha. They were looking for a place to rest, and all they could find was Mariette Pasha House, where Petrie and his wife were staying. It was a government house established by the head director, Mariette, who had founded the Egyptian Department of Antiquities. As long as Petrie was there stopping the area from being utterly ruined, Maspero gave him the right to live there.

  The Frenchmen invaded the house; fortunately, Petrie’s wife was not there—the house was empty but for a single watchman armed only with a cudgel, which he dared not raise against the Frenchmen. He fled from his post and went to the other watchmen stationed in the area, but they were likewise fearful of taking them on. Europeans claimed a deadly inviolability in a country they had assiduously humiliated for years upon years. There was nothing Raïs Khalifa, the chief watchman, could do.

  “I’ll go and fetch the foreigner, Carter,” was all he said.

  I was away at the edge of the desert, and with me were a number of guests whom Maspero had sent from Cairo. As soon as I heard what had happened I decided to return at once, but matters in Saqqara deteriorated faster than I could get there. The Frenchmen had become still more inebriated, and decided to go into the Serapeum, a complex of passageways and mausoleums and funerary temples surrounding the pyramid. The watchmen were still just as fearful as before. The guard told them they could not enter without paying the admission fee and purchasing tickets. Then Mr. Mohammed Effendi came and asserted his authority, amid the clamor of objections and protests. In the end they gave in, but they bought only eleven tickets. They wanted to enter all at once, but the guard stopped them. He wanted each of them to show his ticket, but they broke down the flimsy door and entered in spite of him. They dispersed through the corridors; not one of them knew anything about the character of the place, and no guide dared approach them when they were so riled up. Off they went, and then they came back again.

  “It’s too dark in there,” they shouted at the watchman. “We want candles.”

  The guard had nothing of the kind; such was not the custom. They grew more enraged. One of them punched him in the nose, laying him out on the ground. Then they demanded their money back from Mr. Mohammed Effendi, but the man couldn’t do it. The tickets had already been processed, and a refund would come out of his salary, which was small to begin with—he would lose every piaster of it and more. Once more, they set upon him. They snatched his tarbush, the symbol of his status relative to the other workers, threw it on the ground, and trampled upon it. They took all the money he had on his person, then returned once more to Mariette Pasha House to carry on with their wild debauch.

  When I got there I found all my workers in a bad way, beaten and insulted. The doors to the
house had been pulled off their hinges and there were wine bottles everywhere. I would not have imagined that these people could imbibe such quantities. They stared at me in perplexity when I entered the house—perhaps they hadn’t expected any other Europeans here, only the humble peasants.

  “You gentlemen,” I said to them, “have destroyed private property. You have no right to be here, and you must leave at once.”

  They all burst out talking at once. They were speaking French and, as is usual with the French, the women spoke loudest. One of the women came forward. She spoke a bit of English, and recounted to me in halting speech what my men had already told me outside. I said to her, “You have no right to take back the money, nor any right to be here, and if you don’t leave immediately I shall evict you by force.”

  One of the men stepped forward then and brought his fist toward my face; I was able to get hold of his arm and push it away. I turned to Raïs Khalifa and asked him to assemble the watchmen who were at hand. I was being threatened, and there was no retreat. The Frenchmen, though, as soon as they saw the watchmen coming to attack them armed with sticks and chairs and whatever was to hand, delivered a painful blow to Raïs Khalifa’s head. He looked at me and asked what to do.

  “Defend yourselves,” I told them firmly.

  And, for the first time, the watchmen took courage and raised their sticks and clubs and laid into the Frenchmen, delivering blows to their heads and bodies—it was the first time Egyptians, since the defeat of their leader Orabi, had dared to raise weapons against Europeans. They drove them out of the house, so the Frenchmen began to pelt us with stones, but the clubs overtook them until they all took flight and cleared off. Some of my men were wounded, and many of the furnishings had been demolished. I saw to the men first, and then went to submit a procès-verbal of the incident at the al-Badrashayn police station—but I found that the Frenchmen had arrived there before me.