Why, though, no matter how hard I try, is the effect of that smile fading gradually away, as Catherine noted? Why do I feel dejected and why is my heart telling me that something is about to happen — that thing which I assuredly deserve from Ni'ma and maybe from the world.
7. Catherine
Another try, on this hot day.
All I gained from the first visit was one word — one name, Maleeka — and an encounter, cut short, that I shall never forget.
I never expected this wall of silence. I told myself, 'It's a stage. It will pass and I'll manage to get close to them.' I've tried all I can. After we arrived, I wanted to go up to Shali and meet the people there. I saw panic on Ibraheem's face when I asked him to accompany me to the town market. He said to me, 'Madame, I'll buy anything you want for you.' 'But Ibraheem, what I want is to go into the town and see it!' He answered that he himself couldn't go in and see. Whatever I might want from there, he'd have to send one of the children to buy. Had I forgotten that they didn't like strangers entering their town and wandering among the houses?
I should have understood that without Ibraheem's help. Since I arrived no one has spoken to me. When I leave the house and wander around it, on my own or in Mahmoud's company, the boys and girls who play in the sandy space move away. If I approach them, smiling, they flee towards the town. I have never come across the like of it in any other place. Even the people in the small villages that I've visited in Upper Egypt and the Delta, even the Bedouin in the desert in the areas where there are antiquities, would approach and surround me out of curiosity. Before I learnt Arabic, they used to try to communicate with smiles and hand signs. Why then are they like this here? Why cannot I gain their affection, or at least get to know them? Walls around the gardens, fortifications around the town, and a wall around the fortifications — how can the world have wounded them so deeply that they have to curl up on themselves inside all these layers of shell? It's another puzzle that I shall have to try to solve as I research the puzzles of Alexander. I have to reach them before I can get to him. I need their help to get anywhere.
Also, I have to break this isolation before I turn melancholy. If I hadn't had the books and the reading and the idea of the search, I would have become completely lethargic during these last weeks. Even Mahmoud is with me and not with me. He goes to the police headquarters in the morning and comes home again in the afternoon to eat and sleep for an hour or two. Most evenings, he goes back again to the headquarters, and sometimes he mounts his horse and goes out with his cavalry on patrol in the desert, staying out until after midnight. I can't blame him for anything. I had hoped, though, that the desert journey and life here would have brought us closer together. At first, I was optimistic. There was only us and love was our only pastime. Then he started to fall victim to ennui and I too no longer experienced the pleasure to which I'd become accustomed from the start of our relationship. Let us postpone thoughts of that. I am grateful to him because he gives me the whole of his days off. We walk together or hire donkeys and wander among the closed gardens and around the lakes and sometimes we go out into the desert. Last Friday, he went with me when I decided to start by visiting the temple of Amun — the temple of the oracle who created the whole legend of Alexander.
He waited for me at the bottom of the hill on top of which stands what remains of the temple's sanctuary. He said he couldn't wander about in the midst of houses where families and women lived. I, as a woman, could do so, but he couldn't, because of their traditions and customs. He wasn't aware that it was impossible even for a woman.
I knew of course before setting off that on the ascent to the temple I would pass houses built into the mound that were inhabited by some of the Aghurmi families, and I was hoping that a miracle might happen to break the silence if I met people face to face. As I climbed with difficulty the treacherous, crumbling steps, however, I saw women, as soon as I got close to any of the houses, closing their doors. Friendly smiles were of no use and neither was the 'Good morning' that I'd learnt to say in their dialect from the children who play in front of the house. Their responses were angry mutters and they slammed the doors hard.
After the tiring climb and the disappointment, all I found of the temple were ruins whose outlines were clearer from the bottom of the hill.
I was astonished at what I saw. The halls of the temple had stone gateways that were, however, blocked with yellow brick, turning them into houses, with wooden doors. I could find only one open hallway, which was preceded by a corridor, and I found traces of carvings on its entrance and walls, though I couldn't make out what any of the carvings were or read the writings inscribed on the walls. Thick soot had rendered these illegible, and I realized when I saw the primitive stone ovens scattered about the place that the women had been using the hall as a communal kitchen, which they had abandoned as soon as they'd realized I was making my way there. I tried carefully to wipe off with the palm of my hand the soot that hid the traces of a drawing of the god Amun, but my hand got dirty and the black covered over what had been visible, so I gave up the attempt.
Was it possible that this hall had been the Holy of Holies of the temple where Alexander had received Amun's oracular message? How could I find out if I couldn't see the rest of the temple? If I were the sort of woman to cry, the tears would have burst from my eyes as I compared what I'd read about Alexander's procession here as it passed between the decorated walls, surrounded by song and with the glory of the coloured images on either side, and the state it was in now. A kitchen? The Holy of Holies a kitchen?
I descended filled with sorrow and anger. I paid no attention now when the women once again closed their open doors as I groped my way down the stairs. At one of the turns on the darkened staircase, however, and among all those closed doors, I was surprised to find one door slowly and carefully opening and the whisper of a barely audible call. A girl appeared in the doorway. A face appeared whose beauty, like a light in the surrounding darkness, filled me with joy. She smiled at me and whispered something in the unknown language. I made signs to her to show that I didn't understand. She held a hand out towards my chest and gestured with the other at her own and said in a whisper, 'Maleeka.' She went on looking enquiringly at me but as I was whispering in turn 'Catherine', a shrivelled woman's hand came out and dragged Maleeka back, and the door quietly closed. I remained standing there for a while. Where had the beauty of that face come from? A smooth white skin and fine, well-proportioned features — grey eyes and full rosy lips, chestnut hair, of which a single thick lock fell across her brow, and the rest of which hung down on either side of her face in hundreds of fine plaits with silver decorations to form a frame from which emerged the radiant face. Perhaps her features were not out of the ordinary for a beautiful face. If so, why did I find myself nailed to the spot because of it? Was it the shock of friendliness in the midst of all this incomprehensible hostility? Maybe.
Let me forget about that too and think about what awaits me today. Like Mahmoud, I hope I have better luck when we visit the temple that they call here Umm Ma'bad, or Umm Ebeida. This too is a temple't o Amun and its style points to its having been built in the age of the Egyptian awakening that preceded the Persian invasion. I've seen it many times from the outside during my walks in the oasis and I hope it's been spared the vandalizing of the carvings and inscriptions whose forms were recorded by the German traveller Von Minutoli at the beginning of the century. He, as I realized merely by looking at them, had erred frequently and obviously by copying the hieroglyphs as though they were simply pictures. The book is with me, and if the carvings have remained intact, I shall endeavour to correct those mistakes.