The Deceit

18

Even as Ryan reached for the kid’s cheap blue jeans, the Coptic boy fell from the balcony — and Ryan grabbed his ankle. The boy yelled, in horror and shock and surprise as Ryan employed all his aching strength to drag him back up over the balcony, to safety.

For a few seconds an epic silence prevailed, as if the entirety of teeming Middle Egypt had drawn breath.

Then the shouting started: angry, sweating men jabbing fingers at Ryan and the lad — What are you doing, he tried to rape her! The Zarraba kid was a rapist! What right have you got? It was very ugly and very dangerous. Ryan backed slowly away, moving into the room, protecting the kid with a fatherly arm. For several minutes he waited, with the boy, cornered, but trying to stay calm and still, his hands raised submissively, hoping the angry men would calm down. The Coptic lad whimpered beside him, hiding in his rescuer’s shadow.

But the mood didn’t abate; the mood was worsening. Now he saw why: dark shades in the corners, the women of the house, affronted by a strange male, hiding their faces like terrified ghosts.

This was worse than bad. Quite possibly the house was orthodox Muslim: Salafist. So in saving the kid Ryan had committed a cardinal sin by intruding on the family space, forcing the women to veil themselves in their own house. A terrible error.

A dozen men were shouting, one old man with half a row of teeth was tugging his hair.

‘Someone call the police. Lock him in a room. The American. Let’s put him in a cell. And the Coptic boy. Take them!’

Thrusting the old toothless man aside, Ryan grabbed the boy’s hand and bolted. He pushed open a door and threw himself and the lad down the dull concrete stairs, feeling the adrenaline of panic, two stairs at a time, three, jump, run. The voices were coming after him.

‘Stop him, stop the American, the dog, the fucking dog, the son of a pimp! Stop his dog of a boy!’

Five, six, seven stairs. Here was the door; half-closed. He kicked it open violently and the light outside almost blinded him.

But they were out, in the street. The crowds roiled as a platoon of policemen pushed through. A big police van was attempting to shunt the crowds apart, to drive them back. Where was Helen? Where was Hanna? What had happened to them? He could still hear the men behind him, still shouting, ‘Fuck him, the American, the monkey’s ass: there he is, by the hotel, there’s the boy, go and get them—’

‘Ryan!’

He swivelled. It was Hanna — gesturing. ‘Quickly!’ He was beckoning Ryan inside the hotel lobby whence they had emerged. There was little choice: Ryan dragged the boy inside.

The hotel lobby was quiet. Everyone was staring at them, the tall American and the small, scruffy Coptic lad: headscarved women were staring from their undrunk cups of shay, in contempt and dismay, as if Ryan had committed some awful crime, as if he had pushed the kid off the balcony, rather than saving him.

‘La.’

The boy wrenched his hand free of Ryan’s grasp. His eyes were filled with panicky tears.

Ryan spoke to him, quickly, in Arabic. ‘You must come with us. They will take you again. They will kill you.’

Hanna intervened. ‘This way.’ He pattered down the steps of the lobby out onto the terrace overlooking the Nile. ‘We have your bags. That was brave and very stupid. And now we have a boy to save. Let us go to the river.’

It clicked. Ryan realized, yes, of course, the Nile. There was a small flight of stairs leading from the grubby hotel terrace down to a pier. And yes, there was a small motorboat, with a tall Arab man in a white djellaba, frowning and anxious. Helen was already inside the boat with their bags. She waved urgently.

He didn’t need further encouragement. Hanna led the way but Ryan swiftly pursued, pushing the bewildered Coptic lad along. The three of them jumped into the boat and the man in white tugged his outboard motor into life and the little boat began its puttering course across the mighty Nile.

Instantly, suddenly, amazingly, peace descended; the peace of the eternal river, the cool breeze of the blessed Nile. They were OK, they had escaped.

The nearest bridge was maybe a mile downstream and jammed with traffic, there were no other boats in sight apart from one big coal barge, floating upstream. Ryan sat back, watching the East Bank recede, the hotel and the horror, the crowds. The boy sat at the end of the boat, covering his face with his hands. He looked barely sixteen, hardly more than a child.

Helen shook her head. Her eyes were also a little red. Had she been crying? The sight must have been ghastly from below.

Hanna was talking to the boy. ‘Why did you do it? What did you do in there?’

The Coptic boy said nothing. His T-shirt was an advert for a ten-year-old Batman movie. His teeth were very white, his eyes very dark. A handsome young lad, but just a boy. Shamed and cowering.

Helen interrupted. ‘Give him a chance. He … they were about to murder him.’

Everyone was momentarily silent.

The West Bank of the Nile was nearly in reach, the white-robed boatman was standing. Ryan looked at the boy. ‘What is your name? Please tell us. Where are you from? How can we help you?’

The boy shook his head; then he stood up and jumped from the boat onto the riverside, as the boat collided with some disused old tyres hanging from the dilapidated wooden jetty.

‘Wait!’ Ryan jumped on to the jetty. ‘Please, wait!’

The boy paused. He nodded in an odd fashion, his eyes bulging, as he yelled, in Arabic, ‘You do not understand. Why did you stop them? I did it. I walked into the house, I touched their girl. I knew they would find me and try to kill me. I wanted them to kill me. I wanted them to kill me. I am Zarraba.’

Then he turned on his heel, and ran.

Ryan looked at Hanna, who looked at Ryan.

Helen cried, ‘What? What did he say?’

‘He said he wanted to die. He said he went into the house, hoping they would kill him.’

‘Then he was clearly suicidal.’ Hanna smoothed his goatee. ‘And your attempt to save him was egregious.’

The boatman had finished tethering his vessel. Ryan felt the snag of something nasty, tugging at his memory. ‘But there’s something else. The Muslim men. They called the boy Zarraba, pig person. That’s another name for the Zabaleen, isn’t it? And isn’t that where it all began? Sassoon, in Cairo?’

It was Helen who answered. ‘Yes. The murdered monk, seen by Sassoon. Wasef Qulta. He was a monk at the Monastery of the Caves in Moqqatam. Where the Zabaleen live.’

The white-robed boatman was waiting patiently for payment.

Hanna frowned. ‘A seductive mystery. But we’re not going to solve it here and now. Nonetheless the documents in our possession become ever more intriguing. And potentially remunerative. Mr Harper, you will have to translate it, you studied under Sassoon. In London. You can do this.’

‘It’s impossible. I had a look — I don’t know Akhmimic.’

‘Nothing is impossible. Quantum physics says the moon is potentially made of Brie. If anyone can translate those papyri, it is you. But come — first you need peace. I know a place where we can hide, for a few days, here, in Panopolis, the ancient city of Min, the Ninth Nome of Egypt. Akhmim.’

Hanna paid off the boatman with a handsome wad of Egyptian pounds. The three of them crossed the quayside to the street, where Ryan surveyed the quiet scene: low houses, donkey carts, a few barber shops; it was all much quieter than Sohag.

A few minutes later they were climbing out of a taxi in the centre of Akhmim.

By Egyptian standards the town was pretty, if impoverished: distressed churches leaned against even older mosques; weavers sat in houses by large open windows, to catch the light. Weaving was an ancient trade here, as Ryan knew. Some of the oldest textiles in Egypt came from Akhmim: the town’s lineage was extraordinary.

‘I have friends here,’ said Hanna. ‘An old Coptic family, quite distinguished. We can rest and hide out, like fugitives! We are safe, for the moment, from all that unpleasant kerfuffle in Sohag. Just along here — yes.’

They had come to a large modern house overlooking a scruffy open space used as a haphazard open-air museum; even from here Ryan could see a statue of Bastet, the cat goddess, and Sekhmet, with his lion head.

The Egyptologist in Ryan would normally have been deeply intrigued: he’d always wanted to visit Akhmim, given its amazing history, and had never quite found the time. But right now he wanted to be in a room, with the air conditioning on. And the doors firmly closed. The memory of the boy’s face wouldn’t leave him. Why did the Zabaleen boy want to kill himself? Was it just coincidence that he was Zabaleen? Or did it connect — somehow — to Qulta’s murder?

The door of the house swung open. They were taken inside by a smiling, attractive, unveiled, middle-aged woman, who chattered in Arabic with Hanna. She wore a crucifix, kissed Hanna on the cheek, teased him about his pot belly. Helen disappeared into the bathroom.

The peace and coolness of the house was an unutterable blessing. Ryan was beginning to see exactly why Helen had recruited Hanna: he really was an operator, a player. He calmed things down and got things done, smiling with his very white teeth, talking in charming French and Arabic and English.

The Coptic woman showed Ryan to a large clean bedroom, where he dropped his bags and fell asleep.

Two hours later Helen knocked on his door. ‘Come. I want to film you.’

A few minutes later he was sitting in the large white-painted living room, clearing his throat, talking to camera.

‘Akhmim is, for Egyptologists, a truly tantalizing little city, rich in historical and cultural associations. The history of the town dates back to the earliest traces of Egyptian civilization, the Badarian culture of the fifth millennium BC. The sixteenth-century historian, Leo Africanus, claimed it was the oldest city in Egypt.’

Helen nodded her encouragement.

But Ryan was getting used to this anyway, talking to camera. He actively enjoyed it: he was using his knowledge. Teaching things to an unseen audience was better than talking to bored kids from New Jersey. It was maybe better than mixing concrete in the Abydos sun. He continued.

‘Religiously, Akhmim has played a role out of all proportion to its size. The family of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, the first monotheist in history, came from Akhmim. Likewise, alchemy was born in Akhmim: the greatest alchemist in history, Zosimos of Panopolis, of the fourth century, lived here. Indeed the very word alchemy, and the word chemistry, might mean “that which is from Akhmim”, since the city was also known as Khemmis or Chemmis, hence “chemistry”.’

He paused, and leaned an inch nearer the camera. ‘Then there is magic: Pharaonic and Egyptian magic all came from Akhmim. The wizards who duelled with Moses in the Bible were traditionally Akhmimic. Moreover, Hermes Trismegistus, the founder of Hermetic philosophy, of Western occultism, was likewise said to have lived here. And Sufism — the great cult of Islamic mysticism — was formed here, in the ninth century, with Dhul-Nun al-Misri.’ He sat back a fraction. ‘The associations are therefore endless and outstanding. Arguably, this tiny desert town is the religious navel of the world, more Jerusalem than Jerusalem. And of course, our documents, the Sokar documents, are written in sub-Akhmimic, the local dialect of Coptic, the oldest and most impenetrable form of that Gnostic language.’ He stopped, abruptly, thinking hard.

‘Why have you stopped? That was OK.’ Helen sounded aggrieved.

He put his hand up for quiet, then called across the living room to Hanna, who had been idly leafing through a book. ‘Is there a monastery around here with an intact library? Dating back to the fourth or fifth century?’

‘There are dozens of monasteries! This region is one of the cradles of Coptic faith. The White Monastery had the finest library in Egypt after Alexandria was burned. That is where Sassoon found the Sokar documents, as we know.’

‘Yes, but the White Monastery was ransacked, pillaged. I just need a library with an intact run of codices — it doesn’t have to be huge, just intact, unbroken.’

Hanna stood up. His face was delicately flushed. ‘Because, if you can compare one text with the one before, and the one before that, going back through the decades, you will be able to see how the language evolved. You will be able to decipher the papyrus! Très audacieux! I know exactly the place. The Monastery of St Apollo. The Holy Family were meant to have sheltered there, in the Flight out of Egypt. But then they sheltered everywhere: they had a strange need for constant shelter. We require a taxi. We must be discreet.’

The drive took twenty anxious minutes, into the desert to a tiny, humble monastery tucked under a large cliff, pitted with Pharaonic tombs, like the sockets of eyes in skulls; all of it next to a shallow, artificial and very ancient-looking lake-pool.

Hanna did the preliminary and ancillary work, subtly smoothing their entrance into the monastic precincts, making generous offers to the preserved body of St John the Dwarf, taking tea with the bearded abbot, and telling diverting stories. He made sure water and fruit was brought to Ryan, as Ryan toiled in the little library among the musty parchments and fragile codices and doddering manuscripts and cracked ostraka — writing preserved on potsherds.

On the first day, he worked back through the codices and parchments, comparing, annotating and decoding. The mental work was hard but rewardingly exhausting. He felt the kindly face of Sassoon smiling over his shoulder. ‘Not bad, not bad for an amateur philologist. Not bad at all.’ He deciphered the name of the author; he cooled himself by taking a swim in the salty lake next to the monastery.

Helen joined him in the lake, Albert paddled. Ryan couldn’t help noticing her lissom, suntanned body, in her swimsuit; he wrenched his gaze away. It was a physical effort to do so.

Albert and Helen retired to the town in the afternoon; Ryan kept working. Then at last he commuted back to Akhmim in the dark, safe from sight, and slept in the quiet clean house. That night there were no bad dreams.

On the second day, he returned to the monastery at first light, when the old mud bricks were cold to the touch and the desert cliffs tinted a pale tangerine. This day, he began to examine their papyrus in particular, but it was desperately difficult: so much was illegible, erased and defaced, the peculiar sub-Akhmimic alphabet so intractably old and unusual. At moments he felt he was close to a breakthrough, but it didn’t come.

The starlit drive back to Akhmim that night was melancholy. He sat alone in the kitchen and ate fuul and flatbread for supper, staring at a Coptic calendar on the walls, thinking about the boy and trying not to think about what he had said; remembering his wife and trying not to remember her death. Rhiannon.

His lonely meal was interrupted by Helen. She sat down opposite, over a beaker of water. And spoke.

‘Tell me your story, Ryan. What happened to you? Why did you disappear?’

This was Helen’s manner, of course: abrupt, but not necessarily rude. Just dispensing with preliminaries and seizing the information. He was getting used to it.

Ryan exhaled, and gazed in her almost flawless blue eyes. ‘It ain’t pretty.’

‘Tell me.’

He told her. How he had met and fallen in love with a young woman when he was studying under Sassoon in London, at the beginning of his glittering career, after leaving Harvard. This was when Ryan Harper was the coming man — Sassoon’s successor, the brilliant new Egyptologist.

He said the word ‘brilliant’ with an ironic grimace. Helen nodded. ‘And so? Then?’

A deep long pause. ‘We moved to Egypt. Working in Saqqara. We were very happy, the happiest I had ever been. What does Freud say is the key to happiness? Work and love? Well, I had both. Then Rhiannon got pregnant, and we were both overjoyed, literally, beyond joyous.’ He swallowed some fuul and flatbread, swallowed the choke of grief. ‘She died in childbirth. A local infection, perinatal malaria, from the Delta. And the baby … My daughter went first, she died too. And that’s when … well …’

The silence in the kitchen was morbid. Ryan picked up his plate and took it to the sink and washed it, noisily.

Helen spoke behind him. ‘That is terrible.’

Ryan scrubbed the plate clean, and stacked it. ‘My parents were Baptists, but I was never ever religious. And yet, what happened to Rhiannon and the baby — that killed something in me, killed the hope. I hated everyone, resented everyone. Then I stopped hating the world and began hating myself. Blaming myself. Should I have brought Rhiannon to Egypt? Unsanitary Egypt? Maybe I made a mistake?’ He shrugged. ‘Then I stopped caring. And started drinking. I got into fights, messy arguments, insulting important people. In Egypt, as you know, you have to play the politics. Kiss the babies of bureaucracy. I didn’t. I was sacked. They were right to sack me. I drifted for a bit, a succession of demotions. By the time I was twenty-nine I’d had enough: I gave up the academic work and got a simple job as a charity worker in Abydos, trying to save the temple there, the Oseirion, from drowning. They have terrible problems with the water table, because of Aswan.’

‘You raised some money for this cause?’

‘Sometimes. Mostly I just got stuck in — physical labour, digging ditches. Hard yakka, as the Australians say. I enjoyed not having to think.’

Helen gazed at the table, then at his face. Then she said, ‘I did notice your hands. They are tough, bruised, not the hands of a scholar.’

‘Well I’m not, not any more.’

‘And also you look like a …’ A brief, embarrassed smile. ‘When we were swimming, you are … stammig as we say in Germany. More like a worker on a farm.’

Ryan looked at Helen. This was different. ‘I also did a bit of teaching, to keep my income vaguely bearable. Bored American kids get to know their Anubis from their Horus. It’s a Study Abroad programme. But the kids have stopped coming, there’s hardly any work anyway. Because of the troubles.’

He stared at his glass of water. A few years ago it would have been whisky. But in the end he’d realized that hard physical work killed the pain better than any alcohol. Ryan sipped the water and looked at the German woman with her severe and high-cheekboned beauty. She had a hint of Nefertiti about her, the famous bust in the Berlin Museum. A slightly sad and Nordic Nefertiti. He decided to copy her curtness. ‘So. You? What’s your story?’

She was unfazed. ‘Not as sad as yours, but it has pathos. My father is an academic, quite well known, he still teaches politics at Heidelberg. Mother: hausfrau. We come from rural Catholic Bavaria — it is a little like your Deep South, very religious. My sister is — was …’ She blinked, the blue eyes blinked, twice. ‘She was the favourite, the star, the bright one, not me. She was the beautiful daughter and so clever, musical, a brilliant concert pianist, she had the great career … the Germans worship music.’

Helen poured herself a glass of mineral water. ‘She had a stroke, aged twenty-five. Ischemic. We do not know why. It can happen in teens and young adults, as well as old people. It can happen any time.’

‘She died?’

‘Yes and no.’

Ryan shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘She lies in hospital in Heidelberg today, in a coma. Persistent vegetative state is the precise medical term. Is she alive or dead? Maybe God knows, I do not know. I know she will never recover, not now.’

‘You believe in God?’

‘No. But the reflex is there, I suppose. This is why I work now, work so hard. My parents were broken by Anna’s stroke, so now I try to be her, the successful daughter. I am not, I fail, but I try. I do not have a husband, I rarely have boyfriends, I just work. I work to be someone else, to replace someone who has gone. There. My story. The End.’

Ryan sighed profoundly. ‘I am very sorry.’

‘Yes,’ Helen said, lifting her glass. ‘But at least we both understand. This is good. You know something, Ryan? Sometimes I do not quite trust people who have no tragedy in their lives. Now I can trust you.’

He lifted his water, they chinked.

The faintest sad smile on her lips.

‘Prost.’

‘Cheers.’

Ryan drank the last of his whiskyless water. And said, ‘But do you trust Albert Hanna?’

Helen shook her head. ‘Ah. Of course not, he is a serpent. But an amusing serpent. And we have no choice, we need him. And now I say good night. I hope it goes well for you tomorrow.’

Tomorrow came very early. He got up at dawn and crept outside, and got in the waiting old taxi, and drove through the surreal shadows of the dawnlit desert. Then he worked for six hours without a break, eyes straining in the darkened old library with the flickering lamplight.

Then at last he sat back, massaging his aching neck. He had a bulging notebook, literally full of notes. He picked it up and stepped out of the creaking library, emerging into the stark desert sun of the monastery courtyard. He was almost content: he hadn’t cracked the code, but he had definitely made a start. A very good start.

Helen and Hanna were sitting on a stone bench. Helen gazed at him — tense and waiting. Ryan regarded them both, and declared, ‘The guy who wrote it is called Macarius. He’s a sixth-century Copt. It’s all about religion.’ He paused. ‘And we have to get going.’

Hanna shook his head. ‘Why? Why can’t you stay here and translate it all?’

Ryan had his answer. ‘Because many times Macarius says I went to this place and I saw this here. But he doesn’t describe it; therefore, we have no idea what he’s talking about. How it fits in. We cannot solve the puzzle without following his logic — and his route.’

Helen was half-smiling. ‘This is good. We will make a better film!’

‘Or get arrested,’ Hanna said.

A silence settled on them all. The sunlight glittered on the lake-pool beyond the open monastery gates.

Hanna broke the silence. ‘Very well. The die is cast. Where then, Mr Harper, where are we going first?’

‘To Bubastis.’

Hanna nodded. ‘But of course. Bubastis. The city of cats.’