The Medusa Stone

Monastery of Debre Amlak Northern Eritrea

Morning prayers were long over, but the sun was still an hour from rising. The moon hung shining and fat, three-quarters full and bright enough to wash away the glow from Venus, the morning star. April was rainy season, yet the downpours had not come to the lowlands; the desert stretching into the interior of Africa had not seen a drop. However, the air was chilled with humidity, forcing the twelve monks and their abbot inhabiting the ancient monastery to wear heavy woolen mantles. With their legs bare and their feet in leather sandals, they shivered in the pre-dawn light as they prepared to break evening fast at the long table in the dining hall.

Situated along a razor crest of mountains that cleaved across the desert floor and afforded the monastery some reprieve from the worst of the summer heat, the retreat had a commanding view of the surrounding flats, as if its original builders had an eye for defensive positions rather than the sequestration of its inhabitants. Constructed in the twelfth century as an outpost of Christianity and expanded once during the 1600s, the abbey had enjoyed continuous occupancy until the latter part of the twentieth century, when the intense fighting between Eritrean freedom fighters and the occupying Ethiopian army forced the brothers to evacuate to another monastery in Ethiopia. Contrary to the “scorched earth” policy practiced by the Ethiopians at the close of the conflict, when they returned, they discovered that their abbey had not been molested save for a few stray bullet holes that marred its stone facade.

The monks sat at a wide plank table built five hundred years earlier by another, nameless brother, the chairs added over the centuries by different hands, both skilled and unskilled. It was a point of pride among those assembled to sit at the most uncomfortable and poorly constructed chair as possible — that bit of added discomfort testified, in a small way, to their fealty.

Their meal was simple, a spongy unleavened bread which they tore into small pieces to dip into the gray/green stew of peas, lentils, and peppers. They all drank black coffee, brewed from beans from their own bushes.

Breakfast was the only time the monks allowed themselves full discourse. All other conversation was restricted to prayers and singing. While not exactly informal, the breakfast meetings contained an air of relaxation not normally associated with men who made their devotion by the selfless sacrifice of monastic life. The ages of the men ran from the mid-teens of the three novice boys to nearly a hundred. The abbot, however, was not the eldest of the group, as was normal practice.

When the monastery was abandoned in 1983, the head abbot at the time had vowed he would never return, feeling shame in breaking the chain of occupation stretching far into the past. He died while they were still in exile, and many of the elder monks refused to return home in honor of their friend. Those that did come back made it clear that they would not take the reins of leadership in order to show deference to their fallen leader. Thus it fell to a younger man, an Ethiopian by birth, who had been part of the monastery since he was a novice.

Not knowing his own age but guessing it to be around sixty, Brother Ephraim (he had used the name for so long he scarcely remembered the one given to him by his parents) sat at the head of the table in the oldest, most dilapidated chair, the pewter plate before him mopped clean with the last of the bread. Small bits of food clung to his mostly silver beard. He spoke Latin, conversationally.

“Did our little friend return last night to harass the chickens? I heard a disturbance about an hour after midnight services. I thought maybe our jackal was back.”

“Alas no, brother. He has not returned, and I fear he may not,” one of the monks responded sadly, for in this dead land the return of even a single scavenger was seen as a renewing of life. “I saw his body across the valley yesterday. He had been shot.”

“God works to return what man has plundered from the earth by the war, and yet we continue to defy Him. I fear the day when He no longer replenishes that which we use up.” Brother Ephraim shook his large head with disappointment.

“That day is closer than you think,” the eldest of the monastic family muttered, a monk who had lived here for almost nine decades. “Judgment is coming.”

“Yes, Brother Dawit. His Day of Atonement is never far away,” Ephraim agreed patiently, for the elder monk had lost much of his mind as well as his eyesight. Dawit’s body was paper thin, his skin so parched that even candlelight could silhouette the delicate bones in his hands. In recent weeks his health had deteriorated alarmingly, and his thoughts had become scattered and disjointed.

“Not His day, brother, but another’s,” Dawit cawed. “Before we face God’s judgment, we will be questioned by men, and our answers will offend them most grievously. They will take up arms against us and all others who defy them. They know of a secret meant to be kept forever. The sins of our fathers are about to be revealed.”

There was a silence for a moment, and Ephraim was about to reassure the aged monk when Dawit sat straighter in his chair, his milky white eyes glaring sightlessly. “My brothers, the time has come for us to accept the shame of the distant past. The deaths of the children will be exposed. The Evil, brought to earth from hell itself, will kill again. Many will die in order that many more will be saved. You know nothing of this, Brother Ephraim, for our chain was broken and secrets were not passed to you by your predecessor. But there are truths within these walls that will pit nation against nation if they are divulged. Judge wisely, brother. The fate of the Lord’s battle with Satan rests upon your shoulders. Why do you think none of us wanted your chair when we returned?”

Dawit craned his fleshless neck around the room, his blind eyes falling unerringly on those older members of the brotherhood who, like himself, had refused to take the leadership of the house. “We did not do it to honor the former abbot. We all despised him, though none would make that admission. What he knew made him a hate-filled, bitter man, one concerned more with the decisions of this world than contemplation of man’s place in the next. Such was the nature of his position, of yours, young brother.”

Ephraim had gone a little pale under his natural dusky complexion. He was stunned by the coherence of Dawit’s speech, even if he didn’t understand the content. “And what were these truths, brother? Who will question us?”

Dawit’s body shook with the effort of his outburst, his narrow chest heaving under the dark cloak. In the eyes of the other clerics, the strain of speaking seemed to age him further. “I do not know. I do not wish to know, and if you had a choice, neither would you. But God’s will be done, and it is up to Him to reveal what that is.”

Later that day, as the sun slid silently past its zenith, Brother Ephraim went out walking. The heat was ferocious, but he still wore his woolen vestments. It was dangerous where he wandered. After the war, a team sponsored by the United Nations had painstakingly cleared the hundreds of land mines planted in the area around the monastery and the fields the monks used for pasturing their goats. Nearly twelve square miles had been decontaminated, but beyond the little red markers, the land was fouled with can-sized bombs. Ephraim knew he’d stepped over the boundary, but his thoughts were too deep to pay that fact particular attention.

He had spent his life devoted to the Church, and unlike many others who had taken up the calling, his faith had never wavered. But as he walked across the desert, he felt a superstitious dread tingling his spine. He wanted to discount Dawit’s ramblings, but he could not. Dawit’s tirade had rattled him, not to the core of his faith but at least to the core of his manhood, for what the old brother said sounded more of the work of man than of God.

The role of monks and the monastic system was not the spread of the gospel nor the recruitment of new members to the fold. A monk’s single occupation was prayer and contemplation for the salvation of others. It was the most difficult of callings for one never knew, like a parish priest watching his congregation flourish, if their devotion had been successful, if they had really touched the lives of others through their work. Thus Ephraim had had very little contact with the world outside of this valley. Dawit’s words had unsettled him. He was well armed to attack questions of faith, but ill equipped to deal with issues between men. It was a world as alien to him as the monastery was to those who lived beyond its cloistered walls.

There were two things he needed to do, two deeds that that would help him put into context what Dawit had said. He had little doubt that the old brother knew something he was unwilling to divulge, so Ephraim felt he had to prepare. The first deed, a guilty pleasure learned at the other retreat in Ethiopia, he looked forward to more than he cared to admit. The other was a mortal sin — the breaking of a confessional trust.

Suddenly, he whirled around so that his long robe danced against his exposed legs, and he started back the way he had come, his stride more determined, his path more direct.

In the cliff below the monastery was a deep cave, its mouth hidden from easy view by a fold-back of the valley wall, a natural sandstone screen. The cave had been used long ago as a resting place for shepherds lost deep in the desert and by primeval men, who had painted the walls with frescoes of their hunts. Before making it his personal sanctuary, Ephraim had watched it for many months to make certain he was not intruding on the solitude of one of the others. He did not know how many of his brothers in the past centuries had used the cave as their own retreat from the house.

Because he had planned for a long walk, he carried a flask of water and a modest meal of dried vegetables and a little salted mutton. Now inside the cave, he removed these items from the pocket of his robe and set them on the carefully swept sand floor. He placed the food against one wall next to the other flasks brought from previous visits and left for those times he came unprepared. He was surprised to realize he had built up quite a cache and wondered if it wasn’t time to spread it out into the desert for the small nocturnal creatures and the keen-eyed vultures.

The light in the cave was dim and ill suited for his purposes, and he had forgotten to bring a candle again. As he settled against a smooth wall, the coolness of the stone leaching through his cloak, he knew that part of his pleasure was the suffering afterward, as if the eyestrain was in some small way a penance. His heart pounded with anticipation, and he felt a tightness in his stomach as he did every time he reached for one of the books. The volumes were old, their leather worn by countless hands and the harshness of their African home. They were meant for a fine library in Europe.

Because Ethiopia and Eritrea — Abyssinia as the region was known then — were Italian colonies up until 1940, Ephraim had learned to speak the language as a young boy, and while he was sorely out of practice, he could read it well enough for the books to bring him tremendous pleasure and insight into the workings of the outside world. He had found the five volume set at their temporary home in Ethiopia. Selecting a book at random, Ephraim began to read laboriously. It was prophetic that the passage was from Othello, the scene in which the Moor realizes he’s been betrayed by his lifelong friend, Casio. Brother Ephraim’s love for Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets was his most guarded secret and also his only real tool for understanding the outside world.

Only after a few hours with the Bard would he tackle his second task, one that would make the monk realize that life today had become much more complex than even Shakespeare could have imagined.