Azazeel

by Ziedan, Youssef

  I had around me only the void and the sound of the sea. I pulled up my heavy bag, which was twice my weight, and threw my head on it, a head full of nothingness. The emptiness in me was painful, as was my loneliness. I fell into a trance, just like Jesus’s disciples on the evening of the Last Supper, when He told them that He was soon to leave them and go to His Father in heaven.

  I was startled out of my slumber several times, and woke up to distressing dreams. The last time was at sunset on the second day. I wanted to go back to sleep, back to unconsciousness. The floor and walls of the cave recoiled from me, and I wanted to doze off and not wake up. But I did awake and I could not sleep again until the following dawn. I had many hallucinations and fears haunted me. I was afraid of myself and of the days to come, of being alone among the rocks, and of the possibility that the cave was the lair of monsters. At the time I was not yet certain that Alexandria did not have hyenas or roaming wolves, and that giant lizards did not emerge from the sea, or crocodiles like those which come out of the Nile in the evening. There is nothing more dangerous than monstrous creatures moving around at night and roaming at dawn.

  After some fretting I realized that the rustling sound I could hear was the scuttling of the sea crabs which spent the night in the fissures of the rock. The light of the moon illuminated the entrance to the cave where the sands were interspersed with scattered lumps of rock. Except for the spot lit by the moonlight I could not see anything distinct around me or in front of me. I decided to turn my back to the entrance, turn my face to the wall, and lose myself in righteous prayer and fervent supplications, in the hope that the Lord would have mercy on me and forgive me for what Octavia and I had done. When I prayed for mercy for her, my eyes flooded with tears again.

  While I was absorbed with my prayers, it occurred to me to stay in the cave for the rest of my life, devoted wholly to worship, and to abandon medicine. Everything I had desired, I would renounce, and I would become, if my motives were sincere, a saint. I also had hopes inappropriate for a monk. ‘As the days pass, people will find out that I live here, and they will come to share in my spiritual power, and I will set the most impressive example of asceticism. Each day I will eat only one date, and when I grow thirsty, I will put the date stones in my mouth and move them around, and that will quench my thirst, as we used to do in the village when we were young. If the thirst persists, I will wet my lips with seawater and return to seclusion in the cave. It is said that the people of Alexandria do not respect outsiders, but they will welcome me when they see my piety, my godliness and my devotion to worship. The blessings of heaven will descend on my cave, and miracles will take place at my hands. Octavia may come among the throng to visit me one day, when she has seen the light. She will see me surrounded by the radiance of sainthood. I will not trouble myself with any of the vanities of this world, but only with praise of the Lord and observing the true nature of existence manifested inside me. I will burnish my soul until it becomes like a mirror, and I will transcend the cares of this world.’

  These thoughts comforted me and relieved my anguish. But with the light of the morning, hunger began to bite, distorting my thoughts and my naive hopes. I took a date out of my bag and chewed it slowly. It aggravated my thirst and even moving the date stones around in my mouth did no good. So I went out of the cave, alert as a cornered fox. As I went down to the sea I found no one around as far as my eyes could see. Everything but the air was still. I wetted my hands and put the water to my lips and tongue. The saltiness inflamed my thirst. I went back to the cave, dragging my feet, and huddled in the corner like a sorry cat licking a deep wound which there was no hope of healing. I realized that sleep was my only refuge. I tried to make myself drowsy and after long suffering I slept a deep sleep.

  I came out of my unconsciousness at noon to the sound of the seabirds, and to my hunger and thirst. I had never known hunger and thirst of such intensity. I put another date in my mouth, and slowly began to suck the juice. After a while I emerged from among the rocks and started to look around me. There was no one but me. Octavia was not standing in the spot where I saw her on the day when the current took me.

  I realized then that I do not like the sea. The Nile is more beautiful and gentler. The Nile draws life to its banks, while the sea drives from its shores everything that grows green. Nothing borders it but rocks. Alexandria is a city of sea and rock, a city of salt and cruelty. My solitude was tearing me apart, and the effects of feeling like a stranger were wearing me down. In the early afternoon a powerful idea came to my mind. I thought it would prove my repentance, and bring me closer to the state of sanctity which I had invalidated. It would single me out from all my contemporaries, and I would be distinguished among them, and no one else would be able to do the same: I would castrate myself.

  I decided to go out immediately and look among the sand for a hair from a horse’s tail, wash it well in the seawater, take it back to the cave, and tie my testicles with the hair. I would bear the pain for days until my testicles fell off and I could relax for ever. After that I would not fall for the enticements of women. I would become like the angels. The gospel calls on us to do that but we have not responded because we are weak. The verses are clear in the Gospel of the Apostle Matthew: ‘For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.’ I would accept it voluntarily, content to sacrifice myself on the altar of chastity. I would do that, God willing, in the morning.

  But gently, Origen had done many years ago what I intended to do the next day. Some considered him a saint, while others thought he had done wrong. The bishop of Alexandria in his time – Demetrius, known as the vine-tender – condemned his deed and described it as an abomination. He was angry with Origen and dismissed him as head of the theological school, even expelling him from the church hierarchy. So how would they view my deed when, if I went ahead with it, I could not possibly replace what I would lose and neither could I possibly join a monastic order? In other words, there was no way to resist selfish desires and the lusts of the flesh. They would excommunicate me and throw me out of the church, wrapped in shame and accompanied by resounding curses. My idea was hopeless. I will never think of castrating myself again.

  Shortly before sunset I was apprehensive about spending another night in the cave, so I went out to the beach and walked westwards. In spite of myself I looked several times towards Octavia’s house and also fell on my face several times too. The sun was about to set, its redness enhanced by the blue of the sea on my right, while on my left I came across more and more houses the further I walked towards the centre of the city. The houses also had more floors and grew increasingly grand and palatial. A little further I noticed some guards by the sea but I did not approach them. I realized that I was about to reach the site of the royal quarter, which was no longer royal now that most of the palaces were haunted and a refuge for dogs. I avoided going west and headed south to wander among the houses, on the chance of finding there some warmth for my tremulous heart, and water or food. In the distance I saw a church with a big cross on top and I headed towards it, touching with my fingertips the valuable letter of recommendation buried in my bag.

  At the door of the church there was a crowd of Christians talking in whispers. There was goodness in their faces and around their necks hung crosses of dyed wood and carved ox bone. They did not look at me and I did not hesitate. I went straight up to them and addressed them. ‘Good evening, my brothers. I am a stranger from the south, and I bear a letter for the monk Yoannes the Libyan.’

  They did not know him and took little interest in me. One of them advised me to ask after him in the Caesarion church and told me how to reach it. I left them and headed in the direction suggested. Out of shyness I had refrained from telling them I was very hungry and thirsty. At one of the junctions I asked a doorman to give me a drink of water and he did so. He asked me
where I was going and seemed angry when I told him. I can still remember the suspicious look he gave me when he found out I was looking for a monk who lives in a church. I mumbled him a thanks and passed on. After a while I came across the ruins of an old dilapidated house, and I sat for a moment to rest my feet, leaning my back against the crumbling wall.

  The night weighed heavily on the sky and the stars looked as if they were struggling to relieve the darkness. Alexandria’s houses take no notice of the dark. The windows are ablaze with lights and nightfall does not stop people moving about, for they love to stay up late, and I think they do not sleep much, either at night or by day. They are fatter than the people in my native country and they have whiter and fresher complexions. Good wine makes the complexion radiant and improves its colour.

  I did not rest long at the abandoned house, though I did think of going in and spending the night there, but changed my mind. Twice along the way I asked for the Caesarion church before I reached it. It overlooked what they call the eastern harbour, because a larger harbour lies to the west. This Caesarion church was big, with high walls covered in scratches and damaged. I later discovered that it had been a temple, then became a church, and later reverted to a temple for pagans.

  At the door to the church I was accosted by a man wearing a tight ecclesiastical cassock close to bursting from his vast body. He had a strange appearance: the body of a wrestler dressed in the cassock of a priest. His eyes were intense and his face had the cruelty of an executioner rather than the humility of a priest. Because my clothes disposed him to despise me, he looked at me with contempt, folding his arms across his chest. With an anxious tongue I asked him if this was the Caesarion church, and he nodded his head, pursed his lips and looked as if he were about to bite me on the shoulder. Softly I asked after the priest Yoannes and he shook his head violently as if to say he did not know him and did not want any more of my questions. I moved away from him hurriedly until I reached the junction between the street coming from the sea and the big Canopian Way. I then should have crossed the Canopian Way, headed right towards the southern quarter of the city, known as the Egyptians’ quarter, and slipped in among them. But I was walking aimlessly, unaware of the layout of the city or how its quarters were arranged.

  I thought of leaving the city to spend the night outside the walls, to return in the morning as though I were entering for the first time, undoing everything that had happened over the last few days. I headed towards the walls with a resolve to leave, but on my way I passed by the large garden surrounding the Great Theatre. When I went in and found it empty and a good place for people like me to sleep, I abandoned my resolve to leave the city and huddled up under a large tree from which hung branches coiled like the braided hair of girls. Sleeping here was safer than sleeping in the rocky cave, and warmer, so I lay down hungry to the grassy smell which diffused from the ground. Many times that smell came back to me later, in places where there was no grass.

  That night my sleep was full of dreams and my dreams were full of Octavia, Octavia the gentle and cruel, Octavia who cried and laughed, the sleepy, the cheerful, the righteous, the pagan, Octavia the angry. At dawn I opened my eyes and realized that it was Sunday, the day of the lecture. I said to myself, ‘It wouldn’t matter if I stayed another day in the city wearing my southern clothes. I’ll see Hypatia, then leave the city to spend the night among the wretched peasants. Tomorrow I’ll come back here in my monk’s cassock and go straight to the great Church of St Mark, where I will find the people I really belong to.’

  SCROLL NINE

  The Sister of Jesus

  I remember well how I crept like a thief towards the door to the Great Theatre and how embarrassed I felt at my ragged clothes among the elegant people, although the monastic life teaches us not to care whether clothes are ragged or not. The guards at the door showed me the way to the lecture and I went in with the others. It was a large hall set on the western side of the theatre, not part of it but surrounded by the same garden. The audience for the lecture was large, and included women. It was the first and only time I attended a lesson given by a woman. Everything in Alexandria is strange and different.

  All those coming in for the lecture were speaking Greek and all had studied philosophy. That much was clear from their mutterings and subdued discussions. Before the lecture started their talk was full of the names of ancient philosophers, but they did not mention any of the saints or martyrs, as though they were living in another world. At first I thought I was going to hear a very pagan lecture, but then I discovered that mathematics has nothing to do with paganism or faith.

  At the entrance to the hall stood a sun-clock and the shadow of the dial was almost touching the pointer indicating ten o’clock in the morning. People had come early. I stayed among them an hour, absorbed in myself, while they were busy with their quiet chatting and discreet laughter. They had clean clothes and their faces showed signs of ephemeral worldly affluence. I sat close to the door, at the end of the third row of wooden benches. In my discomfort and from the feeling that I was out of place in the audience, I sat as rigid and brittle as a piece of old wood.

  Moments before Hypatia appeared, a man sitting on my right in the second row looked towards me and greeted me with a smile. I returned the greeting with a timid smile, because a smile is the only answer to a smile. The fat man was about to start a conversation, had not the trumpets sounded to herald the arrival of the governor of the city, Orestes, who sat in the middle of the row. His retinue spread out to the sides and the first row filled up. Hypatia came into the vast hall and everyone stood up for her, including the men. They stood up so suddenly that I did not see her enter. When they had applauded her and sat down again, I watched her walk up the two steps to the podium. She stood like a dream before the audience, who settled down on the benches. She prepared to speak and everyone fell silent, as silent as the statues in the long Avenue of Rams in Thebes.

  Before Hypatia uttered a word my heart began to flutter and race, so much so I feared that those around me would hear my troubled heartbeat. Hypatia was a dignified and beautiful woman, very beautiful in fact, perhaps the most beautiful woman in creation. She was about forty years old, and her nose and mouth, her voice and hair and eyes, were all perfect. Everything about her was magnificent. And when she spoke she was even more sublime. Several months later I learnt that she had been interested in learning since childhood at the hands of her father, the famous mathematician Theon, and that she had helped him while still an adolescent with the commentaries which he wrote on the works of Claudius Ptolemaeus, author of the Geographia and the Great Treatise6 on astronomy.

  Hypatia. When I write her name now, I can almost see her in front of me, standing on the platform in the large hall like a celestial being who had descended to earth from the mind of gods to bring them a divine message of compassion. Hypatia had what I had always imagined to be the appearance of Jesus the Messiah, combining grace with majesty. Her limpid eyes were slightly blue and grey. Her forehead was broad and radiated a heavenly light. Her flowing gown and her bearing had a dignity to match the aura which surrounds deities. From what luminous element was this woman created? She was different from other women, and if it was the god Khnum who shapes men’s bodies, then from what fine clay did he shape her, and with what heavenly essence did he mould her? Oh my God, I am blaspheming.

  Once she had mounted the platform, Hypatia was silent for no more than a few seconds. Then she raised her eyes towards her silent audience and started to speak. ‘Friends, a few days ago I received from the island of Rhodes letters containing many observations and comments on what I have said in my lectures explaining the eminent Diophantos’s book on calculating unknown numerical values. In view of the extremely specialist nature of the subject, I shall postpone a discussion of it until after this lecture, lest I bore those among you who are not mathematicians, although I believe the philosophy which most of you want us to talk about today can be solidly based on mathematics. Y
ou know, my brothers and sisters, that Plato the Great wrote on the door of his school in Athens, the Academy, the words: “Only he who has studied mathematics enters here.” Nevertheless I will speak first about philosophy, then read my lecture in a separate session to discuss the mathematical questions which arise in the book of the eminent Diophantos the Alexandrian, for those of you who wish to follow the subject with me.’

  I was following her avidly with my eyes. She had looked towards me twice during her speech, and her eyes frightened me. I had studied philosophy for years in Akhmim, but I had never heard anyone say such things. She was explaining to us in elevated Greek how the human mind can discern the order inherent in the universe, and through thought reach to the essence of things and thus identify their accidental and variable qualities. Phrases from basic philosophy tripped off her tongue, phrases which I had long heard from others, but when she spoke them it was as though she was opening my mind and instilling them inside. Even when she talked about the well-known theories of the Pythagoreans, such as their saying, ‘The world is number and harmony’, from the depth of her expression and the succinct way she expressed it I realized that all beings emanate from the rhythms of a single system, and I understood from what she said things I had never understood from other philosophy teachers.