The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

Posted by admin_akashic on Mar 4th, 2022 in Stories

I was coming home although I had no home and was a stranger upon the earth. I was coming home, and memory stung me no more, but time and knowledge had silted like sand over that bitterness. I felt neither sorrow nor shame, but only a restless yearning that gnawed at my heart.

We left behind us the prosperous, fertile Syria, seething with hatred and passion. Our vessel was rowed past the red beaches of Sinai, and the desert winds blew dry and burning over our faces although it was spring. Then there came a morning when the sea was yellow, and beyond it the land lay like a narrow green ribbon, and the seamen lowered a jar and brought up in it water that was not salt for it was the Nile water and tasted of the mud of Egypt. No wine ever tasted so sweet to me as this muddy water, hauled up so far from land. But Kaptah said, “Water is always water, even in the Nile. Have patience, my lord, until we find an honest tavern where the beer is foaming and clear, so that a man need not suck it through a straw to avoid the husks of grain. Then and then only shall I know that I am back home in Egypt.”

His godless and slandering talk jarred on me, so that I said, “Once a slave always a slave, even when he is robed in fine wool. Have patience, Kaptah, until I find a flexible reed cane, such as can be cut only in the reed swamps of the Nile, and then, indeed, you shall know that you are back home.”

But Kaptah was not offended at all, but his eyes were moved to tears, his chin quivered, and he bowed before me, stretching forth his hands at knee level, and said, “Truly, my lord, you have the unbelievable gift of hitting upon the right word at the right moment, for I had already forgotten how sweet is the lash of a slender cane on the backside and legs. Ah, my lord Sinuhe, it is an experience that I wish that you also might share, for better than water or beer, better than incense of temples, better than duck amongst the reeds, better than all these, it speaks of life in Egypt, where each fills his proper place, and nothing changes when time goes by but remains as it is. Do not wonder if in my emotion I weep, for only now do I feel that I am coming home after seeing much that is alien and perplexing and contemptible. Oh, blessed reed cane that sets each in his proper place and resolves all problems, there is none like you.”

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He wept for a while and then went to anoint his scarab, but I noted that he no longer used as expensive an oil as before, for land was near and he fancied no doubt that once in Egypt his own natural guile would suffice him.

When we berthed in the great harbour of the Lower Kingdom, I realised for the first time how weary I was of brightly coloured, voluminous clothes, curly beards and thick bodies. The narrow hips of the porters, their loincloths, their shaven chins, their Lower Kingdom dialect, the smell of their sweat, the smell of the river mud, the smell of the reeds and the smell of the harbour, all was different from Syria and all was familiar, and the Syrian clothes I wore began to irk and stifle me. When I had finished my business with the harbour clerks and had written my name on many papers, I went at once to buy new clothes, and after so much wool, fine linen was so sweet to my skin. But Kaptah resolved to continue as a Syrian, for he feared lest his name might still figure on the list of runaway slaves, though he had obtained a clay tablet from the authorities in Zemar, certifying that he had been born a slave in Syria, where I had lawfully bought him.

Next, we embarked with our baggage on a river boat to continue our voyage up the river. Days went by as we travelled, and we became again accustomed to the life of Egypt, and on either side of the river the fields dried up and slow oxen drew wooden ploughs and farmers walked the furrows with bowed heads, sowing their grain. Swallows skimmed with anxious twittering above the boat and above the leisurely flowing water and the mud into which they would soon vanish during the heat of the year. Curving palms lined the banks of the Nile, and in the shade of tall sycamores clustered the low huts of villages. The boat touched at landing stages of towns great and small, and there was not a harbour tavern to which Kaptah did not run straight away, to moisten his throat with Egyptian beer, to boast and tell the strangest lies of his travels and my skill, while his audience of dock labourers listened laughing and jesting and invoking the gods. Kaptah was in such a haste that he often was on the pier before the ships ropes were fastened, but when I reproached him about that, he said:

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