Sinai Tapestry

by Edward Whittemore

  Those who survived were aging bloated men, elderly asthmatics tormented by malignant rectal tumors and virulent skin diseases, which flourished particularly in their groins and armpits. In this rampant state of decay, so advanced it could warn local tribesmen of approaching danger when the wind was right, the Mamelukes supported themselves in barbaric luxury by laying waste to the countryside and selling the Africans they captured to Arab slave-traders. After briefly arousing themselves for a sortie they would return to their barges on the Nile and relapse into a deathlike stupor, stretched out under awnings their retainers doused with water day and night in a useless effort to cool their wheezing mountainous bodies.

  Since they never took off their underwear, scratching couldn’t help. Even flicking a fly away seemed useless. Instead they lay with their glazed eyes fixed on the wilderness, dully wondering how their once lavish life on the Mediterranean, so rich in soothing breezes and perfumes and other extravagant splendors, had been reduced to the parched oblivion of this lizard’s existence hundreds of miles from nowhere.

  On one of these barges in 1813, Martyr’s great-grandmother gave birth to a daughter as black as she but with the light blue eyes of her beloved Sheik Ibrahim. The Mamelukes had no use for a girl, so mother and daughter were sold to an Arab slave-trader who included them in a shipment to the Nile delta, where they were bought to pick cotton. In due time the daughter gave birth to a daughter and that daughter to a son, also deep black with light blue eyes. Both those mothers died of dysentery soon after they bore their children and the boy was therefore raised by his great-grandmother, who finally succumbed to dysentery herself in 1892, after nearly eight decades of servitude.

  Upon her death, little Cairo Martyr was freed by his master as an act of Islamic mercy.

  Thus thrown alone into the world at the age of twelve, illiterate and without any skills, the boy did what any other black child in Egypt would have done in the latter half of the nineteenth century. He wrapped his kerfiya around his head and walked through the dust to the capital to seek the advice of a former slave named Menelik Ziwar.

  Among Egyptian blacks, Menelik Ziwar’s position was unusual in several ways.

  Since slaves were brought up in the religion of their masters, the vast majority were Moslem. But Menelik’s branch of the Ziwars happened to be Copts, and Menelik had taken the trouble to teach himself to speak Coptic, the extinct form of Egyptian that had been used in the country during early Christian times.

  He shared this distinction with only one other man, the head of the Coptic Church or Patriarch of Alexandria, whose duty it was to appoint the head of the Church in Ethiopia, the only country where this Christian sect was the state religion, and also the only country in Africa not ruled by Europeans.

  Since no one else understood the tongue except Menelik and the Patriarch, they took the opportunity to confer in it whenever they met. Of course no one knew what they were saying, but it was widely assumed among Egyptian blacks that Menelik’s influence in independent black Africa, by way of his relationship with the Coptic Patriarch, surpassed that of any other black in the world.

  Even his name tended to confirm this special status, the historical Menelik having been the first emperor of Ethiopia.

  Nor was it just his political influence that enhanced his standing in the black community. Menelik Ziwar was also the greatest Egyptologist of the nineteenth century.

  Menelik’s master long ago, a wealthy cotton broker named Ziwar, had sent his own son at an early age to be educated in England. The Ziwar son had returned to Alexandria with a sound knowledge of archeology, but having been away so long he knew nothing of everyday Egyptian corruption. In order to do fieldwork he needed a competent dragoman, or guide and interpreter, who could oversee his thieving workmen and hand out baksheesh up and down the Nile. The Patriarch of Alexandria immediately pointed out that he had to look no farther than his own household and the sagacious slave Menelik.

  The Ziwar son and Menelik joined forces in digs throughout the delta. Menelik quickly learned to read hieroglyphs and was soon offering suggestions about where they should dig. Natural intelligence exerted itself and before long the apparent slave was the teacher, the apparent master the pupil.

  Yet Menelik remained the perfect dragoman in every respect, even after he was freed. He stayed modestly in the background, so much so that although his discoveries eventually made his master’s name famous in all the academic centers of Europe, no one outside the black community in Egypt, and no one at all in Europe, had ever heard of the Ziwar who was important—Menelik, secret scholar and revered African folk hero.

  When little Cairo went to seek his advice the black Egyptologist was already an old man. After years of stooping in cramped tombs he had developed severe arthritis and now he never went on digs himself. Instead he instructed others where to look and interpreted the findings they brought to him, dictating the monographs they subsequently published under their own names, anonymity having long since become a habit with him.

  Between times there was an endless stream of respectful young petitioners arriving from all over Africa, black boys and girls starting out in life who wanted to know what to do and how to do it.

  Due to his arthritis Menelik was most comfortable when stretched out flat on his back. And since so much of his life had been spent in tombs, not surprisingly he found a sarcophagus most to his liking as a bedchamber.

  The one he had chosen for himself was a particularly massive block of stone originally occupied by the mummy of Cheops’ mother. Upon his retirement in 1880, Menelik Ziwar had the sarcophagus lowered into a sepulcher he had discovered in Cairo under a public garden beside the Nile. And this was where he had held court ever since, on his back in a bed at the bottom of the sarcophagus. Petitioners were ushered into the sepulcher one at a time for consultations that might last a few minutes or most of a day, depending on how often the old scholar dozed off in his soundproof and nearly airless subterranean vault.

  Little Cairo stood in line in the public garden for several weeks, waiting for his turn to come. At last it did and an attendant pointed down the steep stairs that led to the vault. He was told to close the door behind him at once, the master’s eyes being no longer accustomed to daylight. He tiptoed down the stairs, took a deep breath and slipped inside the door.

  He found himself standing in a small gloomy chamber with the dim outline of a gigantic sarcophagus looming up in front of him, a single taper at its head. He took another deep breath and tiptoed across the floor to peek inside.

  He gasped. Far down in the hollow depths of that massive block of stone, amidst piles of books and mysterious inscriptions five thousand years old, lay a withered mummy with a huge magnifying glass on its chest. Little Cairo was terrified. Abruptly the mummy’s withered hand floated up in the air and clasped the magnifying glass, then raised it. Behind the lens the enormous unblinking eye from antiquity was fully two inches wide.

  Caught you, cackled the mummy.

  Little Cairo began to shake. His teeth chattered and sweat ran down his face. A dry crinkled smile spread across the mummy’s mouth.

  There there, son, stop carrying on like that. I’m only the man you came to see. What’s your name?

  Little Cairo whispered his name.

  Is that a fact? said the mummy. Well you certainly didn’t get that from your master, so where did you get it?

  From my great-grandmother, sir.

  Her last name was Martyr?

  No sir. She didn’t have a last name, sir. But that’s the one she gave me, sir.

  Odd. Why?

  I don’t know, sir.

  Never gave you a hint?

  No sir.

  She raised you?

  Yes sir.

  Everyone else died before their time?

  Yes sir.

  Dysentery?

  Yes sir.

  Hm, that’s the paradox isn’t it. The Nile gives us the land but takes its toll in return. Good water is
also bad water. Now admit it, son. A moment ago I caught you frightened by the past and that’s not the way to get ahead when you’re black the way we are. And speaking of the past, what do you know about yours?

  I know where my great-grandmother came from, sir.

  Nubia, I’d say, by the looks of it. Except for those eyes of yours. Where did you get them?

  From my great-grandfather, sir. A wandering Circassian, sir.

  Is that what he told her? What else do you know about him?

  He was an expert in Islamic law, sir.

  He told her that too, did he?

  Yes sir.

  I see. Did he happen to have a name?

  Yes sir. His name was Sheik Ibrahim ibn Harun, sir.

  The mummy’s dry smile crinkled across his face again.

  Ah, yes, I do see. That young man was a wanderer, there’s no doubt about that. In any case he picked himself up and went on his way and your great-grandmother was subsequently captured and sold into slavery?

  Yes sir.

  The Mamelukes?

  Yes sir.

  Oafs, all of them. Dazed pederasts running to fat. She wasn’t very fond of them, was she?

  No sir.

  I daresay. But all this happened at the beginning of the century and that’s hardly the past. For all practical purposes the past ends with the destruction of the New Kingdom. Know when that was?

  No sir.

  The XXX Dynasty. An unfortunate period. Yes, I can see it now.

  The mummy closed his eyes. After about ten minutes of silence he stirred and scratched his nose. He raised the huge magnifying glass once more and the eye two inches wide reappeared behind the lens.

  Did you say you were looking for work, son?

  Yes sir.

  Any English?

  No sir.

  No matter, you’ll pick it up. You’re Moslem, I take it.

  Yes sir.

  Of course. Your great-grandmother had a long memory and she wanted to see some scores settled. An extremely proud woman?

  Yes sir.

  It fits, but that’s for the future. Right now you need a trade and I think you should start as a dragoman, as I did. There aren’t many trades open to us and that’s a good way to begin. You need contacts.

  Yes sir.

  Right. You’ll begin as an apprentice and work your way up. Now listen carefully, here are the rules. Be dignified, never cringe or whine or roll your eyes. Be correct but solicitous with the ladies, correct but slightly less stiff with the gents. When you don’t understand something always say, Yes sir, and nod vigorously, pretending you do. Upon receiving a tip bow deeply and murmur how happy you are to have performed this service, ending with an air of undefined suggestion, a momentary hesitation will do it, that even more complex services are available, should you be called upon for them. Above all, smile. Smile and smile and look as if you thoroughly enjoy what you’re doing no matter how tedious and silly it is. At the same time be absolutely discreet, going only so far as to hint that European travelers often find the desert air invigorating. And be gentle. Never harm anyone in any way. Did your great-grandmother tell you that?

  Yes sir.

  I thought so. When it comes to settling scores she had bigger things in mind. Well on your way then. The attendant outside will give you an address. Tell them I sent you and return in a week to give me a progress report. In fact return every week until further notice.

  Yes sir.

  And you ought to know I wasn’t asleep when you came in, nor a few minutes ago either. People think I’m sleeping when actually I’m just taking a trip. You can’t understand a particular dynasty without spending time in it. Do you see?

  Yes sir.

  Nod vigorously when you say that.

  Yes sir.

  Good. Come around next week.

  Yes sir, whispered little Cairo, tiptoeing away from the massive block of stone.

  He became an apprentice dragoman and to his surprise he found the profession had little to do with guiding tourists or haggling for them in the bazaars. Instead his duties were largely sexual.

  Most Europeans who wintered in Egypt, it seemed, seldom left the spacious verandas of their hotels, where they moved graciously in circles, favorably remarking on the weather and unfavorably deploring the slack manner and slovenly appearance of the natives. The minority who hired dragomen to venture into back streets were those seeking the sexual license associated with the East, an anonymous debauchery far from home, exactly what a dragoman could provide.

  In this stolid atmosphere of overt Victorian gentility and covert imperial vice, young Cairo learned his trade without particular ambition. Each day at noon he went to the office of the Clerk of the Acts, the senior dragoman in the city and the head of their benevolent association, whose job it was to advise apprentices and distribute assignments. The appointments were spaced well apart, in keeping with the leisurely pace of life pursued by the English in Egypt. And in any case a dragoman’s clients spent a considerable amount of time sleeping, both because they found the heat enervating and because of the opium they took.

  So there were many quiet hours in which young Cairo could dream of the future during those first lonely months in the city, while listening to a man or a woman snore, and inevitably his dreams turned to the astonishing event so often recalled by Menelik, the forty-year conversation the old man had once held with his dearest friend, an English lord and legendary explorer, Plantagenet Strongbow.

  Menelik had first met Strongbow in the summer of 1838, a few weeks after the explorer returned from one of his mysterious early excursions, this time to outer Persia.

  With his seven-foot, seven-inch frame topped by a massive greasy black turban, and his lean torso wrapped in a shaggy short black coat made from unwashed and uncombed goats’ hair, both said to be gifts from a remote hill tribe in Persia, the haughty young English duke was a preposterous figure striding through the dusty native quarters of Cairo. His face was already deeply scarred from his travels and his body, in addition, was severely wasted from a recent encounter with cholera which had nearly been fatal.

  But perhaps it was the portable sundial strapped to Strongbow’s hip that most amazed Menelik, a monstrously heavy bronze piece inscribed with Arab aphorisms and a legend noting that it had been cast in Baghdad during the fifth Abbasid caliphate.

  Menelik had never seen a European dressed in such a manner, let alone an English duke, and never anyone wearing such an outrageous costume in the stifling heat of an Egyptian summer. Immediately he was intrigued.

  The young English duke was known to disdain his countrymen but was said to enjoy the company of genuine Levantines, particularly the poor and the devious who made their living as conjurers and gossips and refuse carters. On the basis of this rumor Menelik approached Strongbow in the bazaar one sultry day and introduced himself. Strongbow was on guard as always, carrying under his arm a short heavy club, a kind of polished twisted root which he raised menacingly whenever someone said something irrelevant to his needs.

  At the time Menelik was twenty, a year older than Strongbow. He was still a slave and a common dragoman, but he did speak Coptic and clearly possessed the keen powers of observation that would one day decipher the secrets of so many tombs. In fact there were probably very few Cairenes who could have described the lowlife of their city with as much accuracy and gusto as Menelik.

  He stepped forward smiling. As Strongbow automatically raised his club, Menelik shouted out an earthy Coptic greeting unheard in over a thousand years, an intricately vulgar expression once used by Nile boatmen who were on the most intimate terms with one another. Strongbow couldn’t understand the words of course, but he sensed their trend and liked it. He lowered his club and smiled, whereupon Menelik switched to a raffish Arab dialect and launched into a scandalous diatribe against certain Englishmen involved with criminal elements along the riverfront, which Strongbow enjoyed even more.

  The oppressive heat in the bazaar was
becoming intolerable. The two young men decided they needed something to drink and entered the first place they came to beside the Nile, as it happened a refuge for off-duty dragomen, a filthy open-air restaurant with trellises of leafy vines and flowers overhead, a pool where drowsy ducks paddled and a cage housing squawking peacocks listlessly twitching their tails. The cheap wine was strong, the spiced lamb tasty, the shrunken Arab waiters somnambulant as they puffed opium and drifted ever more helplessly with the hours.

  There in the soothing hum of the shade Strongbow and Menelik spent a long summer Sunday afternoon, eating and drinking and feeding the placid ducks, watching the nervous peacocks mate and enthusiastically discussing whatever stray topic came to mind, the two of them so drunk by the end of the afternoon they threw themselves over the railing into the muddy river before staggering off to late naps.

  A firm friendship was established that afternoon by the Nile. Thereafter, when he was in Lower Egypt, Strongbow always sent a runner to notify Menelik and the two of them would meet again on a Sunday in the same filthy open-air restaurant under the trellises of leafy vines and flowers, always at the same table where they had sprawled the first time, picking up their swirling raucous conversation as if they had never left it, heckling the peacocks and feeding the ducks as they gorged themselves on spiced lamb and endless carafes of wine, which they had to replenish themselves, the waiters having become too weak to carry anything as the years went by, Menelik making his way in a career of increasingly brilliant scholarship, Strongbow forever broadening the track of his daring explorations that reached from Timbuktu to the Hindu Kush.

  On his weekly visits to the sepulcher beneath the public garden, little Cairo listened in awe to the stories recounted by Menelik Ziwar, these seemingly unimaginable adventures and bewildering changes of fortune that were far beyond anything a lonely boy, only twelve years old and a stranger in a great city, could ever hope to know.

  Or so little Cairo felt. Old Menelik thought differently.

  Not so, said the wrinkled mummy at the bottom of the sarcophagus, smiling and encouraging the little boy. It may look that way now, son, but we can never be sure what fate may breathe into life. Achievements? Startling transformations? Just consider the Numa Stone for a moment.