people’s mouths. Perhaps our memory stays in the hearts of those who work with their hands and have their backs beaten with sticks, and they will remember us still when your Aten has been long forgotten and the accursed name of your Pharaoh has been hewn away from all texts. Perhaps a vague memory of us remains in the minds of the people, and the children learn of us already from their mothers’ bitter milk and they learn from our mistakes. Then they would know already at birth what we ourselves needed to be taught. They know that there is no difference between one man and another man and that the skin of a rich and distinguished man breaks easily when it is cut with a knife; and that blood is blood whether it bleeds from a hungry or a satisfied heart. They know that those who are slaves and poor must not trust Pharaohs nor royal physicians nor laws nor words of the nobles, but only trust the power of their fists and that they need to make their own laws. Those who are not with them, are against them, and there is no mercy in this matter nor difference between men. In your heart, Sinuhe, you were not with us either. So you were against us even if you gave us bread and spoke to us confusing words about Pharaoh’s Aten. All gods are alike, and all Pharaohs are alike, and all nobles are alike, though they’d not admit it. These are the words of Meti, the fish gutter, and I do not regret my words since soon I will die, and my body will be thrown into the river and vanish, and I will be no more. But something of me will remain wandering on this earth, and you will know me as the uneasiness in slaves’ hearts and as the secret fire in their eyes and as the bitterness in skinny mothers’ milk when they feed their poor children. I, Meti the fish gutter, will sour everything until everything becomes sour and the last great dough is baked.”
I realised from his words and eyes that misfortune and fear had clouded his reason. But he reached for my knees with his scarred hands and held me, whispering to me, “You, Sinuhe, who have learned so much and can read and write, you of course believe that a fish gutter cannot think. But though thinking is hard and troublesome, I have had many days and nights to think while chewing grass and sucking the salty ropes of fish baskets. Therefore I already know what was our mistake and why we had to die. You see, we had the power and land already, but we did not know how to use the power and we settled for
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plundering and fighting for loot and drinking ourselves drunk — each trying to best benefit from our power. We ate and drank ourselves full when we should have killed — and killed after killing until we had killed everyone who was not with us. But we had not mastered the art of killing in our misery, and in our hunger and poverty we had too much respect for human life, and only the cat beast Pepitamun and the black Ay taught us the art of killing by killing us all. This learning came too late for us to benefit from it, but while I have been hiding in the empty reed basket, I have seen many dreams about killing, and I leave these dreams as my legacy to those who come after me; and these dreams sneak around in the dark when I am gone, and they sneak to the dreams of the slaves and to the poor until their fingers and toes start twitching while seeing my dreams when I am already long dead.”
He stared at me with feverish eyes and squeezed my knees with his scarred hands. Then I lowered myself on dust before him and raised my arms and said, “Meti the fish gutter, I see that you have a knife hidden under your rags. Kill me, if you think I am guilty. Kill me, Meti the fish gutter, since I am weary of dreaming and have no joy anymore. Kill me, if that satisfies you. That is the last favour I can do for you.”
He got a cleaning knife from his belt and tried it on his scarred palm, watching me until his eyes blurred, and then he started weeping and threw the knife away from his hand and said, “Killing is useless, now I understand it, and killing wins nothing, since the knife hits blindly the guilty and the innocent alike. No, Sinuhe, forget my words and forgive me my wickedness, since when a man hits another man with a knife, he hits his brother with a knife, and perhaps we poor and slaves knew this in our hearts and so could not kill. Yet perhaps we won in the end and not those who killed us — but they lost, and lost part of themselves while they were killing. Sinuhe, my brother, perhaps there will be a day when a man sees another man as his brother and does not kill him. May my tears be my legacy to my brothers when I am dead. Let the tears of Meti the fish gutter sneak into the dreams of the poor and the slaves when I am dead. Let my tears rock the children of skinny mothers to sleep. Let my tears weep in the thunder of the mills from eternity to eternity so that anyone who has my tears in his heart finds his brothers around him.”
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