The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

So we trudged day after day the roads of Babylon and met merchants and stepped out of the way of rich men’s chairs and bowed as they passed. The sun burned our skins, and our clothes became tattered, and we grew accustomed to staging our performances on threshing floors of beaten earth. I poured oil into water and foretold lucky days and abundant harvests; to men I foretold children and profitable marriages, for I pitied their poverty and was loath to prophesy anything but good. They believed me and rejoiced greatly. If I had told them the truth, I should have spoken of unrelenting tax gatherers, hard blows and corrupt judges, hunger when crops failed, fevers at flood time, locusts and flies, scorching drought and rotting water in the summer time, heavy toil and death after toil for that was their life. Kaptah told them stories of sorcerers and princesses and of foreign lands where people carried their heads under their arms and turned into wolves once a year, and they believed his stories and venerated him and fed him well. Minea danced for them every day to keep in practice for her god, and they marvelled at her art, saying, “Never have we seen the like of this.”

The journey was profitable to me, for it taught me that, if the rich and powerful in all countries and great cities are alike and think in the same way, so also are the poor in all countries alike and think in the same way, even if their customs differ and their gods bear different names. I learned how the poor are more merciful than the rich for when they thought we were poor, they gifted us with porridge and dried fish without hoping for anything in return but did so only for the sake of their good hearts, whereas the rich drove the poor away from their doors with sticks and despised them. I learned that also the poor know joy and sorrow, longing and death, and how a poor man’s child is born into this world the same as a rich man’s child. My heart melted for them and their great simplicity, and I could not refrain from healing the sick when I saw them, from lancing boils and cleansing eyes that I knew would otherwise soon be sightless without my help. All this I did of my own will, asking nothing in return.

But why I so exposed myself to the peril of discovery, I cannot say. Perhaps my heart was softened by Minea, whom I saw every day and whose youth warmed my side at night when we lay on those earthen floors that smelled of straw and pungent manure. Perhaps I did it for her sake to bribe the gods by meritorious actions but it may also be that I desired to test my skill, lest my hands lose their steadiness and my eyes their keenness in the detection of disease. For the longer I live, the more clearly do I see that what a man does, he does for many reasons, and he does not always know why he does so. Therefore, the actions of man are as dust beneath my feet since I cannot know his motives or his purposes.

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We encountered much hardship during the journey, and my hands grew calloused, and the soles of my feet thickened, sun dried the oil from my face, and the dust blinded my eyes, but nevertheless, when I recall this journey of ours along the dusty Babylonian roads, it seems beautiful, and I cannot forget it. Nay, I would give much of what I have known and possessed in this world if I might make that journey once more, with youth, keen eyes and inexhaustible body restored to me — and Minea beside me, her eyes gleaming like moonlight on the river. Death shadowed us all the way, and the death would have been no easy one if we had been discovered and fallen into the hands of the King. But in those distant days I never thought of death nor feared it, though life was more precious to me than ever before, walking thus beside Minea and watching her dance on the sprinkled threshing floors whose mud had been hardened with water to tie the dust. In her company, I forgot the crime and shame of my youth, and every morning, when I awoke to the bleating of kids and the lowing of cattle, my heart was as light as a bird when I stepped out to see the sun rise and sail like a golden ship into the gentle blue of the sky.

At last, we reached the ravaged border country, but herdsmen, believing us to be poor, showed us the way so that we entered the land of Mitanni and came as far as Naharin without paying tax or encountering the guards of either King. Only when we came to the great city, where people did not know each other, did we venture into the corridors of the bazaar, where we bought new clothes and washed and dressed ourselves according to our station, after which we put ourselves up at the inn of the distinguished. Since my gold was fast running out, I lingered a while in that city to practice my calling, finding many patients and healing many sick, for the people of Mitanni were as curious as ever and loved all that was strange. Minea also attracted

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