The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

But Kaptah said, “This would be a day of great joy to me, unless you had a phenomenal and unbelievable skill to mix wormwood in my cup of joy. Although I am weary counting the years that have passed since I last drank the water of the Nile, ants run across my back when I think about Theban pleasure houses and taverns, especially one called The Crocodile’s Tail, thus named because the tavern landlord claims witches mix his wines as powerful as a swipe by a crocodile’s tail. He spoke truth for I had to experience it many times myself — although I have no time to go into details. My point is that if you plan in your incomprehensible madness to travel to Egypt by boat, I cannot follow you, since we already have come this far and could travel by land without fear and without drowning to salty waters. As you know, I have sworn never again set my foot on a ship’s deck, and I should not break my oath for I might offend the scarab and we would lose our good luck.”

I reminded Kaptah about the despicable discomforts he had experienced riding on donkey’s back, and he became serious. I also reminded how all of Syria seethed from resentment towards Egyptians, and therefore if travelling by land, we could meet far greater trouble than at sea. Kaptah started scratching his head and contemplated for a long time and finally said:

“My lord, will you swear that we travel aboard a coastal ship that does not let the shore go out of sight, for even if it is slower than a long-haul ship, it visits several harbours with many things to see and new kind of taverns. Be that the case, I will follow you aboard the ship, but this has to take place so that my feet do not touch the ship’s deck. Therefore it would be best if I get drunk and you have me carried aboard and keep me drunk the entire journey so that I cannot stand on my feet, for there is no other way for me to keep my oath without breaking it.”

I accepted his proposal except for the drunk part, for I was eager to see the coastal towns of Syria to know if the hate towards Egyptians had spread to all cities and report it back to Horemheb. So Kaptah sold our house, and I gathered my possessions and left Zemar a rich man. I had Kaptah carried aboard and kept him tied up in bed, saying he was ill so that he would not break his oath.

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It is needless to describe our voyage, which is to me now as a shadow or an unquiet dream. When at last I stepped aboard the vessel that would bring me back to the Black Land to once more lay my eyes on Thebes, the city of my childhood, such intense and restless longing filled my soul that I could neither stand nor sit nor lie still, but I paced to and fro over the crowded deck, amongst the rolled-up mats and bales of merchandise with the smell of Syria lingering in my nostrils, each passing day increasing my eagerness to see, in place of the rock-bound coast, the low-lying land, green with beds of reeds. When the vessel lay to for days on end at the quays of the cities along the coast, I had no patience to explore these places or to gather information, but the braying of donkeys on the shore mingled with the cries of the fishmongers and the murmur of foreign tongues into a roar that to my ears was indistinguishable from that of the sea.

Spring had come again to the Syrian valleys, and seen from offshore, the hills were as red as wine, and in the evenings the spring turned the foaming surf of the beaches to pearly green. The priests of Baal made shrill commotion in the narrow alleys and gashed their faces with flint knives until blood flowed, while women with burning eyes and dishevelled hair followed the priests, pushing wooden barrows. But all this I had seen many times before, and their alien ways and raw frenzy revolted me when before my eyes there floated a mirage of my homeland. I had thought that my heart was hardened, that I had by now adapted myself to all customs and all faiths, that I understood the folk of all complexions and despised none, and that my one purpose was to gather knowledge; but the consciousness that I was on my way home to the Black Land swept all the numbness from my heart like a hot flame. I laid aside my foreign thoughts like foreign garments and was Egyptian once more in my heart and longed for the smell of fried fish at dusk in the alleyways of Thebes, when women light their cooking fires before mud huts, and I longed for the savour of Egyptian wine and for the waters of the Nile with their scent of fertile mud. I longed for the whisper of the papyrus reeds in the evening breeze, for the chalice of the lotus flower unfolding on the shore, for the colourful pillars with their eternal images, for the picture writing in the temples and for the smell of incense in the stone columns — so mindless was my heart.

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