Imhotep

by Jerry Dubs

  He glanced outside. It was getting dark. Soon he could go for his evening run and burn off his frustration.

  When Tama had arrived he had been excited, both to see her and because he hoped that she would be able to understand him. He couldn’t pronounce the harsh sounding Egyptian words at all without his tongue. He could come close to a lot of English words, but not close enough. She tried to guess what he was saying, but they had given up after two days.

  Once Tim arrived, Brian would be able to write out his story and tell Tim what Siamun was planning. Until then he would build his strength for the day when he saw Siamun again.

  His ka had never felt this light. His spirit had expanded beyond him and was lifting him. He glanced down at his feet to see if they were still touching the smooth wood of the ship’s deck. He chuckled to himself.

  The river was rising, the famine would end. His godfather Khnum had brought the waters as he had promised in his dream. The man-god Imhotep had shown him the drawings of his pyramid tomb and explained its size. Could he build it? Djoser had asked him. It was built, so it will be built, Imhotep had answered with a shrug.

  Such a strange way to state it.

  At first Djoser had thought Imhotep tangled up the language when he said some things, but now he believed that Imhotep truly looked at things from far in the future. Imhotep had said that he had lived five thousand years from now and that he ‘remembered’ some things that hadn’t happened yet. He ‘remembered’ that the famine would end after the offering to Khnum. He ‘remembered’ that Djoser would not be killed at Kom Ombo. He ‘remembered’ that this giant pyramid would be built.

  Was Imhotep a god or a madman? Djoser smiled to himself. The people of the Two Lands might wonder the same thing about me.

  He leaned back against the rail at the stern of his ship. The current alone was moving the boat so rapidly that he felt a strong breeze on his face. The rowers were by their stations along the sides of the boat, but they were resting, putting the long handled oars in the water only to adjust the boat’s course, not to power it.

  He saw them talking among themselves, marveling over the power of the river. Sometimes he caught them looking at him, a touch of awe on their faces. They believed that his sacrifice had brought the river.

  Tonight they would reach Kom Ombo. He would visit with his sister Hetephernebti, be re-united with Inetkawes - he smiled at the memory of his celebration with the three sisters brought to Abu after the temple dedication, he still had the strength of a king - and prepare for the confrontation he expected at the Temple of Sobek.

  The words in the message Imhotep had received were burned in his memory. But even the idea of being attacked by a crocodile didn’t lower his spirits. Imhotep had assured him that he would not be harmed.

  He saw Imhotep and his young bride at the prow of the ship. She was standing now, her morning sickness over, and Imhotep was standing beside her, his arm casually draped over her small shoulders, pulling her close. He was looking at the passing land, turning to lightly kiss Meryt’s forehead and smile down at her.

  Djoser wondered what the world looked like through Imhotep’s eyes, if he saw the same desert, same eternal sky, if he felt the same intensity of the sunshine, smelled the life in the river below them.

  The living air that surrounded him seemed to lift King Djoser even higher. He stepped away from the railing and Djoser, “The Wise,” Horus Netjerierkhet, “Divine of Body,” King of The Two Lands, the “Golden Falcon” opened his arms, turned his face to the burning fire in the sky that was the god Re and began to sing a hymn of thanksgiving.

  Tama watched Brian and Pahket talk for a moment before he leaned down and kissed Pahket, turned and ran off into the night. Pahket kept her eyes on Brian until he disappeared into the darkness, then she turned and saw Tama watching her.

  Tama left the doorway of the hut and walked across the still warm desert sand to Pahket.

  Their conversation the night Tama had first arrived had been uncomfortable. Pahket had been worried that Tama would try to take Brian away from her again, as Pahket thought she had done at Khmunu so many weeks ago.

  Tama had seen Pahket’s cold distance, but didn’t understand it. During their flight from Khmunu to Waset, Brian hadn’t told her about Pahket, except to mention her as the servant girl at To-She who had cared for him. Tama understood that Pahket would be worried about punishment from Djefi, and she knew that Pahket was among strangers and away from everyone and everything she had known all her life.

  But it wasn’t until she had seen the way Pahket looked at Brian when she thought no one was watching that Tama understood why Pahket had rescued him. And later, when Brian had tried so hard to talk to Tama, she had noticed Pahket’s concern. At first Tama had thought Pahket was worried about what Brian might say about Djefi, but this morning she awoke with an understanding. Pahket was jealous of her.

  There was no need for that, Tama thought. If Brian wanted to be with Pahket, then Tama would give them her blessing and wish them well with an open, unburdened heart. One did not try to control and direct one’s own heart! How foolish to try to steer another person’s love.

  But I am lucky, Tama thought. I have lived my life with truth and acceptance. Pahket has lived at To-She amid the fears and control of Sobek and Djefi. The accident of our birth can control our life if we let it; we spend our life struggling against the invisible bonds of prejudice and ignorance and custom and habit. But all we have to do is recognize them and they drop away.

  Now she saw Pahket’s expression harden as she approached. Tama wanted to hold her and comfort her. Pahket had been so brave to rescue Brian and it was clear that she loved him.

  She should feel happiness not worry, Tama thought.

  Pahket looked up at her frightened and defiant.

  Tama reached out and took Pahket’s hand. She felt it hang limp and cold in her grasp.

  “Little sister,” Tama said. She stepped closer and dropping Pahket’s hand, she put her arms around her and hugged her. “We should talk.”

  “We both want the same thing.” she felt Pahket stiffen slightly. “We want Brian to be happy. I can see that you love him and I see that your love has saved him and makes him happy. That is good. There should be no coldness between us.”

  She released Pahket and stepped back to watch her face. She glanced over Pahket’s shoulder into the darkness.

  “He will be gone for some time. Come, we can talk.”

  Diane saw a flash of brown and suddenly Yunet's hand slapped her hard across her cheek.

  She put her hand to her cheek and glared at Yunet, who glared back at her, her own anger bubbling over. Diane heard an ugly, barking laugh from Siamun who was standing a few feet away, watching them.

  “Do you want to die? Are you that stupid?” Yunet screamed at her.

  Diane shook from the anger and humiliation she felt.

  “Fahk yu,” Siamun said, imitating the words Diane had spat at him as he walked past her a moment ago.

  “Faahhk yuuuu,” he shouted, laughing at her.

  “Don’t you ever touch me again,” she commanded Yunet.

  Yunet slapped her again, a quick, stinging slap. Diane turned her head from the blow and kept looking away from Yunet. She walked a step away from her and started to cry. There was nowhere to go on the small boat, no way to escape from Siamun and Yunet.

  Siamun watched a moment longer and then, sensing that the excitement was over, walked to the stern of the boat to piss over the side.

  Diane felt Yunet approach her.

  “Diane,” she whispered. “That was for Siamun’s sake. I’m sorry. I would never hurt you, but I had to hit you, otherwise Siamun would have. I saw his face.” She hesitantly reached out and touched Diane’s shoulder. “I know him, dear one. I know how he would enjoy giving you pain.”

  Diane bent down, lowering herself to the deck of the boat. Curling against the side of the boat she covered her face and cried. Everything had gone wr
ong. She couldn’t remember the last time anything had been right.

  This trip she and Brian had planned was supposed to be an escape from the day-to-day existence that had become meaningless, from the mindless shopping, work, sex, laundry, television, movies, eating, cleaning, more cleaning - the zombie-like life that she knew was waiting for her after college.

  She cried into her hands, the warm tears on her skin the only reality she could believe in. Whenever she had tried to grasp the real world, it always seemed to elude her.

  She had been what everyone wanted - a baton twirler and cheerleader for her mother, field hockey player for her daddy, prom princess for everyone, compliant back-seat date for her boyfriends. She handed in her homework on time, she dotted her ‘i’s with a little heart, she wore the right clothes and said the right things.

  She had gone to the college her parents chose, she had joined the sorority her friends had joined and taken the popular classes. But there had been minutes, then hours and later days when she had grown depressed, wondering where this was leading. She knew there was a life waiting for her, a wonderful life with a wonderful man doing wonderful things, but she didn’t understand how this would happen.

  She had never had to decide anything, the choices had always seemed so clear and easy, and everyone had told her so.

  She had awakened one afternoon following a party her sorority had held with its brother fraternity and, after she had thrown up, she had looked at the house: the sleepers with their mouths open, their clothes in disarray, the nearly empty bowls of chips and pretzels, the oily chunks of cheese, the fallen beer bottles and half-filled plastic glasses. She smelled the stale, spilled beer, the sour air filled with the farts and belches of the drunken sleepers.

  A swirl of dust motes had hung in the air in front of her, dancing in the hazy slant of the afternoon sun squeezing through the slats of a window blind. Watching them float, she had reached out slowly, trying hard to not disturb their slow, whirling orbit. She had known she would feel nothing. She had known she was acting this out for herself, trying to imbue the moment with meaning.

  Suddenly she had imagined seeing herself from a distance: a hung-over slut standing in the middle of a leftover party, her hair limp and skanky, hoping to find enlightenment in some of drifting skin cells sloughed off when a drunk scratched his head in his sleep.

  She had felt her lower lip tremble and had known that part of her mind was staging the quiver, trying to elicit sympathy from herself.

  She had showered, packed her clothes and left the school, determined to make her life her own.

  She had met Brian and they began to live together. But soon the newness and excitement of ‘real life’ had dulled and she began fear that this was all there would be. She wondered if an affair would awaken her, if a new job would give her life meaning, if a baby was the answer. Then one night she stumbled across a television show about the pyramids. They seemed so permanent and long lasting. Whoever built them knew the answers, she had thought.

  Now she was in that distant past and the people here were savages. No, she thought, that wasn’t true. Yunet had been kind and understanding, serene. When Diane had first met her, after the horrifying trek across the desert, Yunet seemed to be everything Diane was seeking. She was the answer to questions Diane hadn’t known enough to ask, the touchstone who would open a mystical doorway for Diane.

  She felt the rough timber of the boat on her bare skin and the tingling echo of the slap against her cheek. She remembered the feeling of superiority she had felt when she had ignored Brian at Kom Ombo and then the horrible shock of seeing him helpless and tortured by Siamun.

  Slowly her eyes focused on the grain of the wood, the random lines and widths. Within she felt a hardening, a real resolve, not the pretentious resolve she had felt in the sorority house.

  Never, never again would she allow events to control her. Never again would she simply react.

  This is my life, goddamn it, my life. I'll listen and watch and think. Then I'll decide what to do. If I fuck up, I fuck up, she thought. No more acting.

  Even as she made her decision, she realized that she had been ignoring Yunet’s soft voice. Yunet was explaining something, telling a story.

  “And so there were no children,” Yunet was saying.

  “I was sad, I wanted children. But for Siamun it was something much worse. I don’t know if he cared about children. I think now that he didn’t. But he wanted to prove he was a man. It was important to him.”

  She stroked Diane’s face lovingly, overjoyed to see that she didn’t flinch or withdraw.

  “He began to drink more and more. The other guards mocked him, offering to come to our house and help him plow. He got into fights with them, terrible, violent fights. Djefi was First Prophet by then. He made Siamun commander of the guards. It forced the other men to stop mocking him and it ended the fights.

  “But he was angry with me, Diane. He thought I was somehow emptying his seed from my womb. Our sex turned more and more violent. Then one night he began to choke me even as he was in me. I cried and struggled to free myself. I felt the light begin to fade and then my hand found a knife. I slashed at him, unable to see what I was doing.”

  She leaned closer and talked more softly. “I would have killed him, Diane. I wish I had. The knife sliced off his ear. He screamed, as much at my audacity as at the pain. He took the knife from me and then pinned me down, sitting on my chest, using his legs to hold down my arms.

  “I shouted and spat at him. He laughed. His warm blood ran down the side of his face and dripped onto me. He held my head down with one hand and with the other he sliced at my face. ‘I want you no more,’ he said. ‘And no one will ever want you when I am finished.’ ”

  Yunet sighed and looked off into the distance, remembering the night. “My screams had awakened our neighbors. They knew there was nothing they could do against Siamun, but they ran to the temple and brought Djefi. By the time he got there my uncles had already arrived and they had pulled Siamun off me, but not before he had given me this.” She ran a finger along the deep scar on her cheek.

  “Since then we have lived in a cold truce. He mocks me at every turn; I try to stay out of his way. But believe me, dear one, if Siamun thought for a moment that Djefi no longer protected me, he would kill me as brutally and savagely as he could. I don’t know what protection Djefi has extended to you, but we must be careful.

  “We must not anger him. Do you understand?”

  Diane nodded her head.

  “Do you forgive me?”

  Brian was gone, perhaps dead, although Diane refused to believe that. There were no police here, no one to turn to for help. If she was going to survive she knew she needed help. She reached up a tear-streaked arm and pulled Yunet close, hugging her.

  Preparation

  Brian pulled his eye back from the small spy-hole and shrugged.

  Pahket looked through it next and then pulled back and shook her head. “I don’t see him either,” she said. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

  She slipped out of the small alcove along the back wall of the courtyard where King Djoser was holding a feast to celebrate the beginning of the flood. Brian watched her walk along the wall for a moment and then turned his eye back to the spy-hole.

  He was hiding from the others, waiting for a chance to meet with Tim, or Imhotep as Tama and the others insisted on calling him now. Tama and Hetephernebti were helping him to hide; officially he was still an outlaw.

  He had spotted Djefi at the feast, and it was obvious which one was King Djoser, but Brian couldn’t figure out which one was Imhotep. The men all had their heads shaved and were dressed in tight, pleated kilts, except Djefi, who wore a long robe that failed to hide his fat stomach.

  And except for Djefi, they all looked the same color and size. Brian remembered that Imhotep was short by modern standards, so he fit right in with this crowd. They all had green kohl painted around their eyes, and most wore bracel
ets and necklaces. One guy had his on backwards; a big pendant that looked like a keyhole was hanging down his back between his shoulder blades.

  Brian looked at him harder. Shit, it’s Tim, I mean Imhotep.

  He was standing a few feet away from the king, a young girl at his side. He was talking with Hetephernebti, his face serious and intense. Brian shook his head. Tim had definitely gone native. If Brian hadn’t seen him before, he wouldn’t have been able to pick him out as someone who hadn’t been raised in ancient Egypt.

  Brain looked down at himself. He was wearing only a short kilt. His skin had been turned dark by the Egyptian sun and his head also was shaved. However, his unusual size and fast-growing beard, made him stand out from the natives.

  He saw Pahket at the edge of the courtyard trying to catch Tama’s eye. Tama, wearing the robes of a priestess of Ma’at, along with a long dark wig, and bracelets and necklaces, looked totally different from the woman with whom he had spent several weeks walking south from Khmunu.

  Tama saw Pahket and excused herself from a conversation with another priestess and an older man wearing a simple white robe. She walked around a line of long tables and took Pahket’s hand, kissing her on the cheek in greeting.

  The two women had become close friends, Tama acting as the older sister Pahket never had. Watching them, Brian realized how much he had been changed in the four months since his arrival in this ancient land.

  He used to undress women with his eyes, imagining the swell of their breasts, the size and color of the aureoles around their nipples, the small curve of their stomach. Now, with most of the women either naked, except for a belt, or dressed in transparent robes, he found that he looked more closely at their faces and, more importantly, at who they were.

  He still admired their nude beauty, but being surrounded by it, he discovered he had stopped obsessing about it.

  Tama had helped, teaching him so much on their trip. He had fallen in love with her, with her beauty, her spirit, her intelligence, her understanding. He knew that she still would welcome him as a lover, but he also knew that she would never make the kind of commitment to him that he wanted.