The Alchemists of Kush

by Minister Faust

  But Maãhotep, man. So what if he dressed like a preppy? The brother was gold.

  5.

  Sun-hewn Sunday. Final morning of their camp.

  Three dozen teens hustled from bunks to wash and eat breakfast so the seven youth who’d been readying themselves for four months could stand before them to reveal their gold.

  Sbai Nehet called them to speak each definition of the Alphabetical and Numerical Alchemy, and the meanings of Lead, Pyrite and Gold.

  The Resurrection Scroll.

  Q: What is E?

  A: E means to Evolve, to grow into new forms because of differences previously not perceived as advantages . . . .

  Q: What is H?

  A: H is Hero, one who struggles at great risk, not for personal reward, but to defend the vulnerable and create justice . . . .

  Q: What is M?

  A: M is minister, a person who ministers. To minister is to care for and serve others . . . .

  Q: What is X?

  A: X is X-ray, short wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation produced when high-speed electrons strike solid targets. To X-ray is to look through opaque surfaces to see what is hidden within . . . .

  Sbai Maãhotep asked each of the eighteen questions that summarised the whole of The Book of the Golden Falcon.

  The Revolution Scroll.

  Q: Where did my father travel and why?

  A: My father ranged the world to shine the light of his gold upon every eye that dared to see . . . .

  Q: Why did the Destroyer kill my father?

  A: The Destroyer killed my father because he sought to own my father’s lands, his scrolls, his kin and his gold . . . .

  Q: Why could I not recognise my own brother in the Savage Lands?

  A: The poison of the Swamps of Death afflicts its victims with shifting bouts madness and of blindness, so I mistook my kin for my enemy . . . .

  Sbai Nehet bade them call as one the Nub-Wmet-Ãnkh, and then engage the Catechism of the Birth of Gold.

  The Triumph Scroll.

  Q: Where did you gain your gold?

  A: I gained my gold from the heart of an exploded star.

  Q: What can “exploded star” symbolise?

  A: An exploded star is called a nova, a star too massive too contain itself, a rare place massive enough to form heavy metals such as gold.

  Q: What else can “exploded star” symbolise?

  A: Because our star is the source of all life on earth, “exploded star” can symbolise any dead parent, or any fallen scatterer of the seeds of life . . . .

  At the question, “Where do you keep your gold?”, they gestured to their hearts. At the question, “How do you share your gold?”, they cupped their hands at their mouths, like megaphones.

  Q: How did you learn to mine it?

  A: I learned to mine gold from the minds of my teachers, and my teachers’ teachers, and all their teachers stretching back to Sbai Usir Nebertcher.

  Then each performed their Daily Alchemy.

  And then as the Sbaiu declared them each to be Apprentice Alchemists, they met the applause of their brothers and sisters.

  6.

  Final surprise of their weekend at the wooden fortress: T-shirts for everyone. With a brand-new Alchemist crest designed by Raptor and Yibemnoot.

  After explaining how she’d finagled yet another grant to pay for the shirts, Seshat called upon the two young artists to X-ray for everyone their months of visual experimentation.

  Each element in the seal, said Raptor, represented one number in the Numerical Alchemy, and therefore one verse in the oath of Nub-Wmet-Ãnkh. Resurrection was the nova.

  “The scarab is Revolution,” said Yibemnoot, “because the scarab was called Kheper in Kemetic, which is just even called rotation or revolution or evolution. And the sunrise there on the falcon’s head? That’s maã~kheru, or Triumph—”

  Yibemnoot stopped, waited for Thandie and her huge eyes to quit conversating at her boys-in-orbit. After a moment, she made a show of straightening up.

  The spinal-column jed, ’Noot went on, was an ancient symbol of Lord Usir as the Great Father and also all Ancestors. The Hru-falcon was the I, the Hru that every person became in the epic struggle of his or her own life.

  Above the Hru falcon were the sen-eagle and sa-swan: Brother/Son and Sister/Daughter, with the Throne for the Great Mother, Aset the Avenger.

  “We chose the god Jehutí’s scribe palette to represent Replace-Elevate,” said Yibemnoot, “because you can even just write right over your old scrolls, all the old lead and pyrite ideas, and replace them with golden ones.”

  “The Maãt feather is for justice,” finished Raptor, “for Righteous-and-Mastery. The Ujat or Eye-of-Hru is Create-Supreme, and the ãnkhs and shenu in the falcon’s talons, those’re Peace-Life-Eternal.”

  Might’s well’ve been Christmas morning the way those kids scrambled for their shirts.

  In the madness of the modelling, Jackal yanked Raptor over to the side.

  “Smooth, bruh. Damn, I should be takin lessons from you!”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Getting that girl off to the side for two months . . . ‘designin shirts.’”

  Raptor: cheeks burning. Tried slamming shut his grin. Teeth got in the way. “Get outta here.”

  Both looked over at Yibemnoot who was walking back from changing around the corner. Overtop her vest, the t-shirt’s Alchemical crest. And as she passed, on her back: the word-stack Nub-Wmet-Ãnkh, gold on black.

  “Shit,” whispered Jackal, “way she’s all up in that tight t-shirt, I’m like, ‘You wanna design something with me right now, sweet thang?’”

  Raptor shoved him away, laughing.

  And stuffing clothes and afropicks in knapsacks, and hauling everything onto the bus.

  And the lake gone first, and the highway streaking past, and yellow prairie revealed from melting snow as far as the horizon.

  And knowing he was losing something by leaving.

  And the city coming back, and around them.

  And even with what he’d suffered and survived in the wilderness of his childhood, he mourned going back to the concrete jungle.

  Not in misery. Maybe just a stealth nostalgia, a love he’d never known he had, suddenly, suddenly remembered, like the scent of oranges after a bad cold, like sunshine after endless rain.

  7.

  “Yo, yo, yo, kid! Shit’s not right!”

  So said Wa-Wa, tromping out of the shop, freshly-cut heads turning to watch him bug the hell out.

  The sixteen-year-old Rwandan—known to his mother as François—was so angry didn’t even realise he was bunching up the flyers he had in one hand and strangling the rolled-up posters he had in the other.

  Raptor, irritated: and not just as the waste of good printing, which he took away from the kid immediately.

  François had totally messed up inside Duke’s, the Jamaican-owned hair shop on Khair-em-Nubt. Worse, he’d melted down while wearing his Alchemist t-shirt on Alchemist business. Out promoting the Kush Party, only three months away.

  Raptor, burning to spit it in Wa-Wa’s idiot face: You fucked up in there! You came in street, you left street, and now you’re in the street. And dumping mud on our name by doing it, genius!

  Instead, gold-minding: three . . . extremely . . . deep . . . breaths . . . .

  Started drawing the kid out, the way Moon’d shown him, getting the kid to explain what’d happened, in the correct order, so Wa-Wa could see how he’d tripped the owner’s alarms, and broken his own geometry.

  “Dude was tryinna punk me, man!” railed Wa-Wa.

  “Maybe he was, Wa, but X-ray that. Punk. Power-Unity-Nature-Knowledge. You collapsed in there. How’d you lose your Unity?”

  The Rwandan’s face expanded like it was going to go Hindeburg. “I—”

  “Breath is power, Wa.”

  Wa looked into the blue sky, sucked down a breath and held it. April sun played on his closed eyes
.

  “Hold it in . . . . ”

  In a minute they started again.

  “I lost my, my Unity,” said Wa, “cuz I, like . . . I forgot . . . my Knowledge of my own Nature . . . . So I couldn’t, like . . . use my Power?”

  “Transformed. So show me the geometry in there.”

  “When the owner rolled his eyes, I wanted to like haul off an smoke im.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “An he’d already kept me waitin an hour—”

  “Really? When’d we go in there?”

  “Okay, okay . . . like, fifteen minutes.”

  Raptor raised an eyebrow, just like Moon would.

  “Okay, ten. But that old bastard was lookin at me, lookin at my pants like he thinks I’m all ghetto—”

  “Okay. You had the knowledge of the Kush Party. And you have the knowledge to step into a shen and do the Daily Alchemy in front of everyone. You can teach it like a preacher. So you’re geometrical, right?”

  Wa-Wa, looking down, nodded. Like he didn’t believe he’d ever done anything right.

  “Now, you say that man was looking at you. He owns a business. Making money offa cuttin heads like yours every day, brothers with pants so big they make yours look like Spandex.”

  Wa-Wa laughed, but he was still angry. Raptor thought, Did I just say that? Sounds like something Moon would say.

  “You had the gold. But you kept it down in the mines. Next time, you wear your gold. Stand up straight. Look him in the eye. Don’t mumble. Shake his hand confidently. Make your case quickly, try to up-sell him and then jet. Transform?”

  Wa-Wa nodded.

  “Young Falcon,” pressed Raptor, straightening his own spine. “Transform?”

  Wa-Wa stood up straight, looked him in the eye and announced, “Transformed.”

  Other Street Falcons were working Khair-em-Ãnkh-Tawy and Khair-em-Sokar. Nehet was contacting NGOs and community committees, Seshat was working the City for clearances and permits and whatever else you needed for a block party in Kush, and others were trying to get the city’s best reggae and hip hop bands for E-Town’s first Pan-African festival.

  Raptor resolved to take Wa-Wa back to Duke’s the next week. They walked to the next business.

  “Yo, Brother Raptor,” said Wa, perking up. “I like got this idea I thought maybe you could help me with. We could both make some money . . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “But, uh, I don’know if Brother Moon would approve.”

  Took in a breath. So did Wa. Both let them out before continuing.

  “I don’t know either, but tell me your idea.”

  Wa-Wa told him.

  And then continuing to seek sign-ups for the Black Pages project and sponsorships for the Kush Party, they kept on canvassing every community-owned business on Khair-em-Nubt.

  8.

  “And those, those rhinestones—”

  From behind Senwusret’s bedroom door, Thandie was practically bursting with laughter.

  Raptor burst in and snapped, “What’s that sposta mean?”

  It was dark in Senwusret’s bedroom recording studio with the curtains drawn. But reflecting the PC’s light, Thandie’s giant eyes were as bright as oven elements when she aimed them at Raptor.

  She must’ve thought that look alone would finish him off. Girls as pretty and tall as she was could usually walk over anybody.

  But she had no idea who he was or what he’d done to survive.

  When he didn’t back down, she tilted her head forward like an axe. “Excuse me?”

  Jackal and Senwusret opened their mouths to defuse, but Raptor wasn’t playing that.

  “Think I didn’t hear you? Cracking on brothers like Wa-Wa and Ahmed, saying they’re ‘ghetto,’ laughing at Yibemnoot cuzza how she dresses—”

  “I think your girlfriend can stand up for herself,” sniffed Thandie, then turned back and tossed her hair like a White girl.

  The Supreme Raptor: “Maybe that shit plays with your fan club, Thandie, but it’s worthless with me. Brothers like Wa-Wa and me, sisters like ’Noot, we’ve escaped kot-tam wars. You think we’re afraid of people like you? Suburban snot-nose suck-asses who think they’re better’n us?”

  “You’d better back off, Rappy, before I—”

  Senwusret: “Whoah, whoah, whoah—”

  Jackal: “My peoples, chill! Chill!”

  Jackal hustled his best friend down the hall.

  “She likes bad boys, Jackal,” said Raptor, “or at least she thinks she does, but she’s got no idea just how bad I am—”

  “Yo, bruh, c’mon, she’s just—like you said, she’s suburbs, knawm sayn? She doesn’t know any better—”

  “Why’d she even tryinna join us, huh? She’s no Alchemist! Never will be! She doesn’t belong—”

  “Yo, Raptor, c’mon. Alchemy doesn’t belong to you! If she’s good enough for Brother Moon and Sister Seshat—”

  “She’s using you,” said Raptor. Like he was laying a gun on a table between them.

  Jackal opened his palms. “Damn, Rap, that’s cold. She’s performing at the Kush Party and she just needs some music. That’s all. Sen an I both think she can really sing—”

  “So what? If this is how she talks about us! And I heard her sing when we were on the weekend camp, JC. No real voice—just all vocal tricks and sizzle, like some little wigger-girl who just started free-basing R&B!”

  “Free-basing” he learned from an online urban dictionary after Jackal dropped it on him the previous summer. His best friend scowled at the dis.

  “I’m telling you,” Raptor continued, “she’s using you, and when she gets what she wants, she aint gonna be whispering sweet nothings and draping her hair over your face. She’s gonna be sinking her claws into the next brother she thinks she can get whatever she wants from.”

  “Look,” said Jackal, flipping open his cell for the time, “her session’s running late, man. We can do Golden Eye beats tomorrow. You should just—”

  “And this is how it starts,” said Raptor, throwing his knapsack on his shoulder and hitting the stairs.

  “Rap! Rap!”

  9.

  Sunday evening, after supper. Raptor. His old bedroom at his mother’s apartment. Smelled like dust and sweat.

  Standing and looking through an art pad of inked drawings he’d done of Lupe Fiasco, Fela Kuti, Static, Hawk Man, Morpheus, and the original line-up of NWA.

  Once, at Moon’s place (usually he’d just call it his own place, too, but standing in his old bedroom . . . ), he’d been blasting some NWA while studying.

  It was the smooth-bumping “Always Into Something,” classic Dre production from Efil4Zaggin, crazy-ass wails and bass as dark and sweet as Coca Cola. Moon’d said, “You’re still down with NWA?”

  “Why not?” He didn’t even mess with Moon’s implication. “The beats are dope. And they’ve got great flow. You can’t deny that.”

  “Hitler had great flow, too. And way more fans.”

  He’d laughed at the audacity of that that. Moon was an expert at, what was the phrase he’d taught him? Reductio ad absurdum. “Look, I’m not saying I agree with the lyrics. And besides . . . long as I don’t act that way, does it matter? Fuh real, I’ve seen your DVDs. Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, Full Metal Jacket—”

  That was Moon’s turn to laugh. “Transformed, bruh! I surrender!”

  What else was left inside his old chamber of secrets? A half-dozen science fiction paperbacks he’d bought at Wee Book Inn, including Imaro, a “sword & soul” about another Earth where a warrior greater than Shaka and Imam Al-Mahdi combined scourged the unrighteous.

  A couple of manga robot models he’d built when he was thirteen and for that stretch of six months he’d had unlimited spending money, before the incident. His bed.

  He knelt down, felt for the secret lock-box he’d built into the foot of his box-spring.

  Didn’t need to look inside it.

  Stood up and looked at the room
again.

  Felt the room’s amputated separateness, its absence from him cool on his flesh like an autumn wind. He was a cobra marvelling at the sheath of skin it’d shed a whole version of itself ago.

  Wandered back out to the kitchen where the two adults were engineering the Kush Party.

  His mother glanced up at him. Her gaze: it looked on him, not at him. It didn’t clutch him anymore, but let him be.

  It was detached.

  Not out of abandonment or a severing. More like his mother was finally disentangled from him. Like at last she had enough distance that for the first time she could see him as an actual separate being, with his own life, his own needs, his own perspective different from her own, and she could actually make room for that.

  Amazing. Moving out had actually made them closer.

  “We’ve got vendors and NGOs up to our collar-bones,” said Moon. Then he nodded towards Raptor. “And some ultra-talented Street Falcons for performances.” Raptor smiled. “But for the average Jane and Jamal who could go anywhere on a hot summer day and night, our main stage damn well better have some musical acts like nuclear magnets, ’Weelo.”

  ’Weelo? That was new.

  “I can ask,” she said, not reacting to the nickname at all, like it was a bracelet or necklace she always wore, “Souljah Fyah, Politic Live, Haimanot Brehanu—”

  Raptor snorted.

  Whoops.

  She turned her eyes on him.

  “Well, I’m just saying,” he said as fast as he could, “you’re gonna get the best reggae band, hip hop crew and Ethiopian singer in town? Just like that?”