Azazeel

by Ziedan, Youssef

  I stepped back and leant my back against the wall of an old house. I could not take my eyes off Hypatia’s body. The attack on her had raised pandemonium and the soldiers of the Lord were raving with that fever that possesses wolves when they b ring down a quarry. Their eyes protruded like the eyes of madmen and in their passion they hungered for more blood, more hunting. They gathered around Hypatia as Peter stopped to catch his breath. One of them laid a hand on her again and others joined in, pulling at the front of her silk dress, which was torn and soiled with blood and dirt. They took hold of the embroidered dress at the seams and pulled but it did not give way. Peter pulled so hard so suddenly that he almost fell on top of her, but soon he regained his balance and was back up. He resumed dragging his victim along, while his followers bent down behind him, trying to get hold of Hypatia’s dress. Hypatia, the Savante of the Age, the pure and holy, the lady who suffered the torments of martyrdom and in her agony transcended all agonies.

  At the corner of the street, running parallel to the sea, stood an old woman with grey hair, waving a cross. ‘Skin the whore!’ she cried. It was as if the old woman had uttered a divine command. Peter stopped suddenly and his followers stopped a moment too, then they resumed their shrill screams. I left Octavia’s body behind me and, aghast, I caught up with the others, hoping that Hypatia might escape them, or that the governor’s troops might come and save her from them, or that some miracle from heaven might occur, or... I wasn’t far from them but not too close, and I saw the result of the old woman’s inspired suggestion. They fell upon Hypatia’s dress and ripped it. They fought over the silk dress until they pulled it off her body. Then they pulled off her underclothes, which were tight around her body, and took pleasure in ripping them up as they hollered. The old woman was shouting at them like a hysteric, ‘Skin her!’ And Hypatia was shouting, ‘People of Alexandria!’ Those too far away to reach her body were shouting, ‘The whore, the witch!’ Alone, I was silent.

  Hypatia was now completely naked, and completely crumbled in her nakedness. She had abandoned hope of deliverance, completely crushed. They brought a rough rope from I know not where and tied it around her wrist, paid out two or three yards and then started to drag her along by the rope tied to her wrist. Thus I learnt that day what the old woman meant when she inspired Peter the reader and his followers to skin her.

  The streets of Alexandria are paved in stone to stop them getting muddy from the rain in winter. The stones are carefully fitted but not without gaps, and the edges are sharp because of the hardness of the stone. They tear to shreds anything dragged across them, and if it has a skin they peel the skin off. If it is a human, they skin him. In this way they skinned Hypatia at the end of their rough rope, shredding her skin off and ulcerating her flesh.

  Among the scattered rocks at the edge of the eastern harbour, behind the Caesarion church which was once a temple and then became a house of the Lord where Peter read the gospel every day, there stood a pile of seashells. I did not see who picked the first one up and brought it over towards Hypatia. Those I did see were many, all holding shells and pouncing on their victim, and with the shells they scraped the skin off her flesh. Her screams reverberated in the skies above the unhappy city, the city of Almighty God, the capital of salt and cruelty.

  The wolves grabbed the rope from Peter’s hand and pulled Hypatia off. She was now a piece of red lacerated flesh, or rather many pieces. At the door to the abandoned temple, at the edge of the royal quarter or Brucheum, they threw her on a large pile of wood, and when she was dead they set fire to it. The flames rose and the sparks flew. Hypatia’s screams had died away. Her wails of pain had reached the vaults of heaven, where God and his angels and Satan watched what was happening and did nothing.

  ‘Hypa, what’s that you are writing?’

  ‘Shut up, Azazeel. Shut up, damn you.’

  SCROLL TEN

  Wanderings

  I remember well how I stood, broken and ashamed, at the gate of the abandoned temple. The crowd was breaking up and the tongues of flame from the wood around Hypatia’s dead body were dying down. The rest of her body, like the rest of the wood, was just charred fragments.

  I came out of my stupor to realize I had no idea where I should head. Should I go back to the Church of St Mark, which had been my refuge and my shelter for the past three years, and join my brothers there in their ecstatic celebrations of conquest and victory over the last symbol of a dying paganism, and declare with them that we rejoiced that the true faith had been proclaimed and had achieved complete control of the city? Or should I throw myself on the dying embers around the body of Hypatia and embrace it, in the hope of catching a remaining spark of that fire which had burned inside her, and die with her, making amends for my second act of cowardice? The day my father was killed I was cowardly because I was young and powerless. So why did I shy away from coming to Hypatia’s aid when she reached out towards me? Octavia tried to protect her, and invoked the help of the god of Alexandria called Serapis, and she ended up a lifeless body cast on the side of the street, with her innocent blood for a shroud. My father did not call for my help, but Hypatia did... The woman caught in adultery did not ask Jesus for help but he saved her from the hard-hearted people who wanted to stone her. And me, I did not save the sister of Jesus from the hands of my brothers in Christ, but they are not my brothers, and I am not one of them, nor am I my old self.

  I felt my heart melt like water between my ribs and then turn to air. The sky, the sea, the houses and the embers at the entrance to the burned temple, all turned in my head, and I fainted. When I came to at sunset, terrified, the cold sent a shiver through my body. The front of my cassock was soaked with water, which those around me said they had splashed on me to bring me back to consciousness. There were three of them surrounding me – an adolescent boy, a black woman in middle age and a monk advanced in years. I looked around and found myself lying in front of a small house in the street which runs from the Caesarion church to the burned temple. I did not ask how they had carried me there. I staggered to my feet, and when I stood up my head throbbed with the sound of Hypatia’s screams, which still filled the sky for me and mixed with the sounds of the sea nearby, the sea from which I once thought that life began and which I later found out was the end of everything, when I learnt that a time will come when the salty sea will cover the whole world and the colour green will die and life will disappear.

  The monk and the boy tried to support me but I pushed their arms away. After stumbling twice I managed to stand upright. In my left hand I grabbed the cross hanging on my chest and yanked it, and the thread around my neck broke. The monk and boy were shocked and the woman broke into tears. I felt a sudden relief when I pulled the cross from around my neck and dropped it to the ground to the amazement of the three. The monk bent down and picked it up and the boy took two steps back towards the wall, and the woman wailed. I moved away, fleeing them, escaping everything.

  My steps led me to the Canopian Way, and I followed it eastwards without knowing why I was walking in that direction. I was roaming without forethought, without reflecting on my purpose. I noticed nothing along the way, until I emerged through the Sun Gate after dark. As soon as I went through the gate I ripped my cassock at the front and it hung down at my sides. I walked through the Jewish quarter with its houses stretching along the eastern wall. Their dogs barked behind me and almost grabbed the dangling shreds of cloth, and the night was pitch black.

  I met no one along the way, neither Jews nor non-Jews, as though not a living soul remained in the whole world, neither human or jinn, angel or devil. The Lord was not with me, or was resting after a new creation which he had made in another six days. Alone I wandered over mud and sand, along the edges of sea, lakes and salt flats... away from Alexandria.

  In the middle of the night I reached the village of Canopus but I did not go in lest someone see me or I see someone. In the early morning I crossed the Canopian branch of the Nile on a decrepit woo
den ferry with two oars. Around me were peasants, a goat and sacks full of grain. The owner of the ferry did not ask me for the fare, and I kept walking eastwards. I don’t remember the villages and fields I skirted, other than some scenes which now seem like a dream, and images of the lakes I passed, lakes where reeds grew so high they looked like giant thorns stabbing at the sky. The first verses of the Book of Habakkuk kept coming back to me: ‘How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.’

  I wandered like the Jews in the years of their great wandering in the Sinai desert to which I was heading. Why did my steps take me towards Sinai? Was that part of a divine plan which I did not understand? Or was fate playing with me, giving me a taste of every vicissitude, that I should see Christians in this country carry out deeds which I would never have imagined? When I meditate today on the works of fate, I wonder why I left Alexandria through the eastern gate. Was not the western gate closer? Or did I perhaps want to put my years in Alexandria behind me? I went in by one gate and left by the one opposite, as though my stay was just a transient passage which I wished I had not made. Would it have been more appropriate to head west that day and spend the rest of my life in one of the five peaceful cities of the Western Pentapolis dotted along the shore of the sea in the Libyan desert? Are they not distant cities fit for my heavy soul? Or perhaps I turned away from them because those cities are subject to Alexandria. If I had gone there at that time, I would not have met Nestorius in Jerusalem nor seen Martha here, and fate would not have played games with me nor sprinkled salt on my wounds. Even today I find no answer to my questions and have no choice but to say that it was the will of the Lord, the Lord secluded behind the panoplies of His mysterious wisdom or behind our chronic inability to understand who we are and what is happening around us.

  ‘There’s no need to talk about that now, Hypa, go back to your story and finish it off, because you are running out of time, for in twenty days you will leave this monastery.’

  ‘Azazeel, don’t you ever sleep?’

  ‘How could I sleep when you are awake?’

  I kept walking eastwards, inanimate. I was hurrying towards an unknown goal and at some point I realized that I did not even know my own self. My past life no longer existed. Thoughts and images crossed my mind without taking root, just as my feet stepped along the ground without stopping. I felt that everything that had happened to me and everything I had seen in the past days and years were nothing to do with me. I was someone else, not the person that once was and now was no more.

  I reached an open area at the end of the Nile Delta, where the land meets the sea in vast marshes, where the water is a mixture of salty and fresh and deep enough only to reach my knees. Dunes of black sand stretched as far as my eyes could see. Here on the surface of the water I threw away my shredded cassock and my head cap. All I had left on was my inner linen gown.

  When I threw the clothes away, I felt somewhat relieved of a burden. The late morning breezes rippled the water as I waded in, and with the ripples I felt that I was not walking but flying off to a new world. There was nothing around me as far as I could see in all four directions. Just the shallow water on all sides. I spoke to myself out loud, in Coptic. ‘Here the land merges with the water and the sky, and here I shall start anew.’ The idea came over me and suddenly captured my imagination. I took off what I was wearing and piled it on top of one of those sandy domes which protruded from the water here and there. Then I waded in until I lost my footing. I headed north and met the wind with my bare chest. I opened my arms wide and started to recite a prayer I had never read in any book, nor heard at any mass.

  In Your name, You who are too sublime to bear a name

  Too holy to be portrayed, confined or labelled

  I devote myself to Your sake, that Your eternal splendour might shine on Your mirror

  And that You might shine with all Your light, Your radiance and beauty.

  In Your name I devote myself to Your sake, to be born again from the womb of Your might,

  Helped by Your mercy.

  I began to repeat this prayer with my eyes shut. And with every repetition my voice grew louder, until after dozens of repetitions it became a roar that filled the void around me. The primal void from which things began. When the sun reached its zenith and I no longer cast a shadow in any direction, I bent down and scooped the pure water into my hands. I stood up and threw the water on to my head to wash away everything that had happened. I baptized myself and in that sudden moment of insight I gave myself a new name, the name I am still known by – Hypa – which is just the first half of her name.

  After the baptism I picked up my clothes, and when I was dressed I felt like the other person who had been latent inside me. Now I am Hypa the monk, not that boy whose father was betrayed by his mother and killed in front of his eyes. I am not the adolescent who was brought up by his uncle in Naga Hammadi, nor the young man who once studied in Akhmim. I am the other person, aided by the mysterious kingdom. I am the twice-born.

  My shadow lengthened in front of me as the sun declined towards sunset, and I walked behind my shadow, which led me to the east. Without expecting an answer, I asked myself, ‘Should I walk on to Jerusalem, to seek there the origins of Christianity, or should I keep walking until I reach the place to the east where the world begins, or should I look deep into myself to discover my own east and comprehend the godhead?’ I did not wait for an answer because all answers are one. It is the questions that are many.

  Shortly before sunset I reached a place where the borders were clear between the land, the sea and the sky and again I saw in front of me trees and people, and realized for the first time that people are like trees and trees are like people, although people have shorter lives. On the edge of a village where fishermen lived, I spent the night leaning my back against an old dilapidated wall that looked about ready to collapse. I slept in a sitting position and in the morning I went into the fishing village. There were not many people in the few houses. I asked a man as thin as me, who was making nets, if he needed my help. He helped me over my hunger with a bowl of fish soup with pieces of white fish meat in it. The fish in those regions are different from the fish I knew in my home country. Fish from the sea is bigger, tastes better and is better suited for human consumption. Before then I used not to eat fish, but that day I took to it as though the person who once did not eat it was someone other than me.

  I spent days with the man making his nets, eating with him the food that his old wife brought us twice a day. Then I took leave of him to continue my journey eastwards. A few days later I arrived in a town by the name of Damietta, inhabited by fishermen, boat builders and some merchants. I passed three months in this town, or maybe even a few days more. By day I worked as a carpenter in the shipyards and at night making nets, and I slept only a few hours a night. The boss was the chief fisherman there and had about twenty apprentice workers such as me and about the same number of fishermen and skilled craftsmen. The man was a Christian, if one assumes that a good man must have a religion. He really was good, although he was rich. Why did Jesus the Messiah say it was harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle? I once told that man in Damietta that his job, combining fishing with boat-building, was the best job a Christian man could do, because St Peter the Apostle, the rock on which the church was built, used to work as a fisherman, and Joseph the carpenter had brought up Jesus the Messiah. The man smiled and said, ‘I know that, but I did not choose fishing or carpentry. My father and my grandfather before him chose them for me. If I had had the choice, I would have preferred to be a farmer, so that I would not always be frightened that the sea will swallow up one of my men.’ He shook his head in anguish and proceeded to inspect the work of the carpenters and fishermen.
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  After a few weeks staying in Damietta, I started to prescribe medicines for the sick, and they would recover. That made me famous there as a physician. But I was in a hurry to leave them, especially after I turned down an offer from the chief to stay among them forever and take a wife from among them. I bade them farewell and left Damietta. The chief pressed some money into my hand and gave me a bag with a gown of goat’s wool, a traveller’s blanket and some dry food. It was winter and I left at dawn, and Jerusalem was my goal.

  I walked east for days and the green fields became fewer and fewer. The views of the sea and the blue lakes disappeared behind some hills, and the colour yellow prevailed. I was at the gates of Sinai with its unbroken deserts and all the desolation, poverty and sterility they entail. At the edge of the desert there stood a humble monastery, alone in the midst of the sands, and solitary in appearance. I noticed it from afar but I did not approach it, and I did not ask myself what I would eat in the Sinai desert, for there are no green herbs there for me to pick and stuff in my belly, as I used to do earlier on my journey. In fear of the wilderness I had chosen, I spent the night under a friendly tree within sight of the monastery at a distance. At dawn a monk from the monastery saw me when he went out early to graze their sheep and goats. He came up towards me with a loaf of bread in one hand and his shepherd’s staff in the other. I had not spoken to another human for two days, but I could not avoid speaking to him once he kindly offered me the loaf.