After Hephaestion, I contemplated the meaning of the things that had determined my life.
Amun inducted me into the ranks of the immortal gods and I believed in that, so I behaved as a god and tried to recreate the world and mankind. From time to time I would remember the lessons of Aristotle and a wave of self-doubt would sweep over me regarding what I was doing; the wounds of the immortal gods do not bleed, they know no pain, and they do not attempt suicide out of regret or despair — and I tried to end my life at least twice.
That may have been the third time, when I drank to excess at a banquet put on by some garrulous friend in Babel. He kept urging me to continue drinking, even after I had become fatigued and sick. Why would I have obeyed him had I not wanted in the depths of my soul to be done? Following the banquet I was stricken by the fever that put an end to my life in days.
My whole adventure in Asia lasted seven years and my entire life on Earth thirty-three years, during which I never knew peace of mind.
What, then, have you understood, you who call to me to waken my spirit? Are you listening to me? And are you now any the wiser?
Here, in the world of death, I know for sure that I am not a god. The immortal life of the gods does not take place in blind darkness and impotence. I am confident now that I did not understand the oracle of Amun, if his oracle was speaking the truth in any case and if Amun was a god. Why, then, have I been afflicted by this retribution?
Of the prophecies of the Egyptian priests, the only one that turned out to be true was the one concerning the afterlife. I learnt from them that the spirit hovers around the body and goes on living after its departure for forty days. It can see everything that it could before it left its owner. And indeed there was another Alexander, a final Alexander, who let out a breath like a sigh of relief at the disappearance of an intolerable burden as he lightly rose, like a feather in space, and watched himself, watched his dead, laid-out body.
What my spirit saw thereafter made me not greatly regret departing the world.
They left my body forgotten on its deathbed in the palace for seven whole days, during which my faithful friends and the commanders of my army argued over who should inherit my dominions. They excluded the foetus Roxana was carrying and another son of mine, whom they said was a bastard and therefore unworthy of inheriting the throne. None of these excuses was anything but a means to get to what all of them were striving for without openly saying so. In the end they appointed my half-witted half-brother to rule so that the commanders of my army could divide up the empire among themselves.
Only after all this did they remember Alexander and embalm him and anoint him with perfumes. They also decided to construct a wagon to transport me to the oasis of Amun, which I had designated in my will as my burial place. It was not given to me to see that wondrous vehicle over whose description I have heard them waxing lyrical, saying that it was like a huge temple with statues and images on either side, where my relics were held in a golden coffin.
And I saw who wept for me too.
Roxana and others of my women wept for me. The only woman, though, who was destroyed by grief was the mother of Darius, my most dogged opponent, who had been my prisoner for years and who I had often in my moments of anger treated slightingly. Following my death, she didn't think of how ill I had treated her; she remembered only that I had spared her life when I could have killed her, and that I had truly loved her and told her once that she was my second mother.
She alone wept for me till her death. She alone said she couldn't bear life without me and refused to eat or drink until she died, five days after I did, while my closest companions were struggling with one another over who should succeed me.
How did the depth of that love manage to escape me during my entire life? And what else in the world escaped me?
My spirit saw her and kept her company and screamed at her in an attempt to talk to her, but without a voice. It screamed at her not to die for my sake because, in truth, I wasn't worth it.
Part Two
9. Mahmoud
My crisis? Catherine asks me about my crisis? I ask myself about it?
There was my crisis. In one instant, the crisis of Mahmoud Abd el Zahir was made plain.
In a few seconds, the false image of the past that I'd drawn for myself fell away and with it all my hypocritical thoughts on life and death.
I boast to myself of a heroic past and deliberately forget the moment of ignominy. I think of myself as being unfairly treated and a martyr in the police, when I may be the worst of them all. The mutinous officer! I liked the role, so I believed myself. Perhaps I also deliberately passed this legend on to Catherine from the first days of our relationship and in our sentimental conversations mixed anguish over what the British had done to Ireland and Egypt and what I specifically had suffered at their hands.
But let's face things now; the time for deception is over. What precisely did I do during the revolution? I ran from the beach to the hospital transporting the wounded and the dead, did I? No, men of the native population, wearing gallabiyas, not military uniform, climbed up to the forts and fired the guns alongside the artillerymen. They picked up the wounded and the dead, soldiers and relatives who had fallen in the fighting, and carried them on their shoulders to the carts which it was your role to gallop in front of. Women from Alexandria did the same and climbed up to the forts and were wounded and never thought of themselves as heroines or martyrs. They lived saying nothing and died saying nothing. And what did you do exactly?
You fired on the Bedouin after they opened fire on you? What else would anyone have done to defend himself? The war in which thousands died left you with an injury as a result of a bullet in your shoulder that neither ended your life nor threatened it. You didn't even receive the bullet while fighting the enemy who were invading your country. No, it was like a wound received in some fleeting accident on the road, yet you lived your life thinking of your wound as a medal worn under the skin and a badge of glory. Now all that's gone, so what's left of your image?
There remains the betrayal by Tal'at, your colleague and old friend, which you have likewise continued to carry inside you as an emblem of the way the world has let you down and betrayed you. You were summoned to appear before the commission of inquiry at the ministry the day they interrogated the officers accused of working for the revolution and sympathizing with the revolutionaries. They had found the old complaint against me by the Italian officer and reopened the investigation.
I felt happy when I saw Tal'at at the commission. I wanted to ask him about his health and how his wounds were faring but contented myself by smiling and nodding in greeting. He nodded too but then looked away. Then the Circassian head of the commission began his interrogation of me and addressed to me questions I didn't understand and found laughable.
'Did the breaking of the photograph depicting the August Khedivial Presence in front of the Labban police station take place in your presence?'
'No, it did not.'
'Did you observe, during the burning of Alexandria, individuals from the army distributing quarterstaves to members of the civilian population and inciting them to smash and rob stores?'
'No. On the contrary, the opposite occurred, as I mentioned at the first investigation. I saw soldiers from the army arresting looters and executing them.'