“Sorry, Professor,” growled the Rock. “It’s Captain Glauser-Röist. Not Dr. Salina.”
Farag smiled. “Not quite the same. Ottavia?”
“Here I am,” I said, taking his hand. He opened his eyes and looked at me.
“Sorry to bother you two,” the captain said, ill-tempered, “but we have to get back to the Patriarchate.”
“Have you checked your clothes yet, Captain?” I asked, still gazing at Farag and still smiling. “The clue for the test in Alexandria is important.”
Glauser-Röist quickly turned out all the pockets in his pants and jacket. “Here it is!” he exclaimed, lifting up the familiar folded piece of paper.
“Let’s see,” said Farag. He sat up, still holding my hand. “Have they marked us on our backs?” he asked quickly, very surprised.
“On our cervical vertebrae,” I confirmed.
“Hey! This one really hurts!”
The captain read from the clue and held it out to Farag. “If you don’t let go of the doctor’s hand, it’ll be very hard for you to take it.”
Farag laughed and quickly caressed my fingers before letting them go. “I hope you don’t mind, Kaspar.”
“It’s not my concern, Professor,” the Rock affirmed, very serious. “Dr. Salina is a big girl. She knows what she’s doing. I suppose she’ll straighten things out with the church soon enough.”
“Don’t worry, Captain,” I clarified. “I haven’t forgotten for a minute that I’m a nun. This is a private matter, but since I know well what you are thinking, allow me to tell you that I am fully conscious of the problems this will cause.”
The poor man was so obtuse about certain things, and I thought it was better to appease him.
Farag examined the paper and his jaw dropped. “I know what this is!” he blurted out, very agitated.
“Of course you know, Professor. The next test is in Alexandria.”
“No. No!” He shook his head frenetically. “I’ve never seen this place in my life, but I know I could find it.”
“What are you two talking about?” I asked, snatching the paper from Farag’s hands. This time the message wasn’t written on that rough paper, but was rather crudely drawn in charcoal. One could make out the image of a bearded snake wearing the pharaonic crowns of High and Low Egypt. It also had a medallion with the head of Medusa. From the creature’s rings, tied up like a sailor’s knot, emerged the thyrsus of Dionysus, the Greek god of vegetation and wine, and the staff of Hermes, the messenger god. “What’s this?”
“I don’t know,” answered Farag, “but we won’t have any trouble finding it. We have a computerized catalogue of the city’s archeological finds in the museum.” He looked over my shoulder and pointed to the drawing. “I would have sworn I could recognize nearly any Alexandrian work with my eyes closed. Even though this image looks familiar, I can’t remember where I’ve seen it. See the mixture of styles? Hermes’s staff and the pharaohs’ crowns? The bearded serpent is a Roman symbol. Such a bizarre combination is typical of Alexandria.”
“Professor, would you mind going over to that garage and asking where we are?” the Rock interrupted us again. “And ask if they have a phone. My cell phone was ruined in the cistern.”
Farag smiled. “Don’t worry, Kaspar. I’ll take care of it.”
“Here’s the Patriarchate’s number,” Glauser-Röist added, handing Farag his daybook, open to the number. “Tell Father Kallistos where we are and ask him to come get us.”
I wasn’t one bit happy that Farag walked so decisively toward that junk pit and disappeared, but he wasn’t gone five minutes. When he returned, he had a broad smile on his face.
“I spoke with the Patriarchate, Captain,” he shouted as he walked back. “They’ll be here right away. We are on the remains of what was the Great Palace of Justinian and Theodora.”
“The Great Palace of Justinian… this place?” I said, looking around skeptically.
“That’s right, Basileia. We’re in the Zeyrek neighborhood, in the old part of the city. This patio is all that’s left of the imperial palace of Justinian and Theodora.” He walked over and took my hand.
“I don’t understand, Farag,” I murmured, distressed. “How could they let things get this bad?”
“Byzantine remains don’t have the same value to the Turks as they have for us, Basileia. They don’t understand any religion but their own, with all the cultural and social implications that come along with that. They preserve their mosques, but do not feel the need to preserve the sacred places of foreign religions. This is a poor country. It can’t be concerned with a past that does nothing for their best interest.”
“But it’s culture, history!” I was furious. “It’s who we are!”
“Here, people survive as best as they can,” he replied. “The old churches are converted into houses, the old palaces into garages. When those fall down, they look for other churches and palaces where they can set up their homes or businesses. It’s a different mentality. Simply put, why preserve it, if you can reuse? We should be grateful they preserved Saint Sofia.”
“As soon as the Patriarchate’s car gets here, we’ll go directly to the airport,” Glauser-Röist announced laconically.
I was alarmed. “From here? Without changing our clothes or taking a shower?”
“We’ll do that in Alexandria. It’s just a three-hour trip, and we can freshen up on the Westwind. Would you rather explain what we did down there?”
Naturally, I didn’t want to do that, so I didn’t put up any more objections.
“I hope it’s not too difficult to get me back into Egypt…,” murmured Farag, worried. When he left his country, he had been accused of stealing a manuscript from the Monastery of Saint Catherine of Sinai and was forced to cross the border into Israel with a fake passport from the Vatican.
“Don’t worry, Professor,” the Rock calmed him down. “The Iyasus Codex has been returned officially to the monastery we borrowed it from.”
“Borrowed!” I exclaimed sarcastically. “There’s a slight euphemism.”
“Call it what you like, Doctor. The important thing is that the codex is back in the Saint Catherine Library, and the Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches have given the abbot appropriate apologies and explanations, and Archbishop Damianos has rescinded his accusation. So, Professor, you are completely free to return to your home and your work.”
Farag couldn’t believe his ears. He began to get angry, very slowly, like a caldron that heats up and builds pressure. The captain stayed calm, but my legs were trembling. Although Farag had an affable personality, I knew he had a short fuse.
“Since when is the codex in Saint Catherine?” he muttered, his teeth clenched.
“Since last week. A copy of the manuscript was made, and we had to return it to its original state. I reminded them of the condition we found it in, unbound and its pages loose. Then, through the Coptic- Catholic patriarch of your church and the patriarch of Jerusalem, His Beatitude Michel Sabbah, the conversations with Archbishop Damianos ensued. His patriarch, Stephano II Ghattas, also talked with the director of the Greco-Roman Museum of Alexandria. As of yesterday, you have special access indefinitely. I thought you would like to know that.”
Farag’s face deflated, and incredulous, he looked at me and looked at Glauser-Röist several times before he could say a word. “I can go home…,” he stuttered. “I can go back to the Museum…”
“Not to the Museum, at least not yet. But you can go home this afternoon. Does that sound good?”
Why was he so emotional about the possibility of returning to Alexandria and getting back his job in the Greco-Roman Museum? Didn’t he tell me that being Coptic in Egypt was like being a pariah? Didn’t the Islamic war kill his little brother, his sister-in-law, and his five-week-old nephew on the steps of the church just the year before? He had told me all this the first time we had lunch.
“Oh my God,” he exclaimed, lifting his arms to the sky lik
e a runner who reaches the finish line. “Tonight, I’ll be home.”
As he was expounding on how much I was going to like Alexandria and how happy his father would be to see him and meet me, the car from the Patriarchate drove down one of the side streets and picked us up on the opposite end of the dump. It took me an eternity to reach the other side because the ground was covered with sharp refuse which would have cut my feet. After I sat down in the car with a big sigh of relief, I discovered the drive wasn’t going to be the peaceful respite I had hoped. Sitting beside me in the backseat of the Patriarch’s chauffer-driven car was our expert in Byzantine architecture, Doria Sciarra.
The captain sat next to the driver. I made sure Farag got in through the other door, so that he sat on the other side of Doria, trapping her between us. I acted delighted to see her, as if the day before hadn’t had the slightest impact on me. I was amused when she wrinkled her nose at our smell. She was hurt because we had left her behind to entertain the doorman at the Fatih Camii. When she went back to the patio and didn’t find us anywhere, she walked to the car and waited until nightfall. Worried and alone, she returned to the Patriarchate. She wanted us to tell her everything, but we ducked her questions with insipid answers, telling her superficial things like how hard the test had been and the terrible pain and torture we’d endured. Frustrated, she lost interest. Neither of us could tell her about one of the greatest discoveries in history, our finding the burial chamber of Constantine the Great.
Farag was as charming toward her as he had been the day before. But he didn’t play her game and didn’t respond once to her silly insinuations. I was perfectly calm and at peace with myself: at peace about Farag and about how Doria had wanted to hurt me and only managed to do so fleetingly. She still wanted to make a fool out of me, and I didn’t let her. I smiled, chatted, and joked as if the day before had been a day like any other, not the day my world had come crashing down around my head, only to be raised again by the tenderness of Farag’s hand. Now he was all that mattered to me; Doria was nothing.
When the Patriarchate’s car left us at the vast hangar where the Westwind was parked, I said good-bye to my old friend with a couple of kisses on her cheeks despite her discreet attempt to avoid them. I’ll never know if she ducked my kisses because she felt guilty or because of how I smelled, but the fact remained I kissed her forcibly and repeatedly thanked her “for everything.” Farag and the captain shook her hand. She sped away in the Patriarchate’s car, never to be seen again.
“What did Doria tell you yesterday that changed your mood after lunch?” Farag asked me as we climbed the stairs.
“I’ll tell you later,” I hedged. “Why is it that you didn’t come up to me if you had noticed how upset I was?”
“I couldn’t,” he explained as he greeted Paola and the rest of the crew. “I had cornered myself in my own trap.”
“What trap?” I asked surprised. Glauser-Röist had finished talking to the pilot as we took our usual seats. I thought I should wash up a bit before plopping onto the white upholstery, but I was very curious about what Farag was saying, and I didn’t want Glauser-Röist to interrupt him before he finished.
“Well… The thing with Doria, you know.” In his eyes shone a mocking smile I didn’t understand.
“No, I don’t know. What trap are you talking about?”
“Ottavia, don’t be so serious!” he joked. “In the end everything turned out fine.”
“I hope it’s not what I’m thinking, Farag,” I warned seriously.
“I’m afraid so, Basileia. I had to get your attention somehow. Are you happy?”
“Happy! What do you mean am I happy? You put me through hell!”
Farag exploded in a fit of laughter, more a little boy than a grown man.
“That was the whole point, Basilea! In Athens I thought I had lost it all! You have no idea how it was for me to see you get up and say to me ‘Shall we go?’ At that moment I looked at you and understood that to persuade a woman as stubborn as you, I’d have to use a nuclear bomb. And Doria worked out fine, didn’t she? The bad part was that after bombing you, you wouldn’t even look at me, and if you did it was with utter…” The Rock had joined us. “I’ll tell you later.”
“That won’t be necessary.” I responded as I got up and pulled my toiletries out of my bag. “You’re a cheater.”
“Of course I am!” he explained, delighted. “And many other things, too.”
The Rock fell into his chair, and I heard him sigh.
“I’m going to freshen myself up a bit,” I said without looking back.
“Remember, you have to be sitting here when we take off.”
“Don’t worry.”
The flight to Alexandria took three hours. During the trip we ate, talked, laughed. Farag and I almost mutinied when the captain took the Divine Comedy out of his backpack and suggested we prepare for the next circle of Purgatory. In spite of feeling fresh and rested after almost twelve hours of sleep, I was mentally exhausted. If it had been possible, I would have asked for a vacation and followed Farag to the ends of the earth, some place where nothing and no one reminded me of the life I was leaving behind. A changed woman after that, I would have been more willing to finish the tests we still had to take to get to the blessed earthly paradise. I felt uprooted. My home was now that airplane; my family was Farag and Captain Glauser-Röist; my work was hunting down those centuries-old relic thieves. Thinking about Sicily was painful; it made me sad, and I knew I’d never go back to the apartment in the Piazza delle Vaschette. What would I do when all this was over? Thank heavens I had that unscrupulous trickster, Farag Boswell, I thought, looking at him. I was sure he loved me and would be at my side until I put my life back together.
Around five in the afternoon, the pilot announced that we were about to land at Al Nouzha Airport. It was a sunny, 80-degree day.
“We’re home!” Farag exclaimed, thrilled.
There was no way to keep him in his seat as we landed. Poor Paola pleaded with him a hundred times. But he wanted to see his city, wanted to get there before the plane did. I wouldn’t have let anyone stop him for anything in the world.
Not even in my wildest dreams had I imagined that Alexandria would become a special place because of the love I had for this man. Of course, I’d read about Lawrence Durrell and Konstantinos Kavafis. Like everyone else, I knew some facts about the city, founded by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. I listened to Farag talk about its famous library, which housed more that half a million volumes on the entirety of human knowledge at that time, and about its lighthouse, one of the World’s Seven Wonders and how it guided the hundreds of merchants who entered its port, the largest in classical antiquity. I knew that for centuries it had been not only the capital of Egypt and the most important part on the Mediterranean, but more important, the literary and scientific capital of the world. Its palaces, mansions, and temples were admired for their elegance and wealth. It was where Eratosthenes measured the Earth’s circumference, where Euclid systematized geometry, and where Galen wrote his tomes on medicine. It was also in Alexandria that Mark Anthony and Cleopatra fell in love. Farag Boswell himself was an example of what Alexandria had been until not too long ago. A descendant of Englishmen, Jews, Coptics, and Italians, he was a mixture of cultures and characteristics which conferred on him, at least for me, a unique and wonderful status.
“Are we going to have a welcome committee, Captain?” I asked the Rock, who had spent a long time talking on the phone in the plane.
“Of course, Doctor. A car from the Greco-Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria will pick us up. We will meet with the patriarch, Petros VII, at his headquarters, along with His Beatitude Stephanos II Ghattas and His Holiness Shenouda III, leader of the Copto-Orthodox Church. Our old friend, Archbishop Damianos, abbot of Saint Catherine of Sinai, will also be there.”
“Looks like it’s going to be a party…,” I grumbled. “You know, Captain? I never would have believed there were so
many holinesses and beatitudes. At this moment my head is a jumble of holy pontiffs.”
“And how about the ones you’re not going to meet, Doctor,” he answered ironically, crossing his legs. “For Orthodox Christians all the apostles were equal. Each has the same authority when they govern their flock.”
“I know, but it’s still hard for me to equate them to the pope. As a Catholic, I’ve been educated to believe there is only one legitimate successor to Peter.”
“Long ago I learned that everything is relative,” he explained in one of his rare fits of openness. “Everything is relative, everything is temporary, and everything is mutable. Perhaps that’s why I search for stability.”
“You?” I was surprised.
“What’s wrong, Doctor? Can’t you believe that someone like me is human? I’m not as bad as Pierantonio told you.”
I was silent because I know he’d caught me.
“There’s always an explanation for what we do and who we are,” he continued. “And, if you don’t believe me, just take a look at yourself.”
“You know about my family, too?” I whispered, lowering my head. I realized I didn’t want to discuss that with anybody, least of all Glauser-Röist.
“Naturally!” He let loose one of his rare outbursts of laughter. “I knew when I met you in Monsignor Tournier’s office. Just like I knew you were the sister of Pierantonio Salina, guardian of the Holy Land. That’s my job, remember? I know everything, and I see everything. Somebody has to do the dirty work, and that, unfortunately, falls to me. I don’t like it, I don’t like it one bit, but I’m used to it. You’re not the only one who’s going to give their life a new twist. Someday I, too, will leave the Vatican and live calmly in a little wooden house next to Lake Leman, devoting myself to what I really like: tending the soil, trying out new growing techniques and production systems. Did you know I studied agricultural engineering at the University of Zurich before I became a soldier and Swiss Guard? That was my true vocation, but my family had other plans for me. You can’t always escape what your family inculcates in you from the day you were born.”
The Last Cato Page 40