Pharaoh (5 page)

‘Do you know what this rhythm is? It’s a call. When a Bedouin crushes coffee in his mortar, the sound that he makes travels for great distances and anyone who is passing, anyone wandering through the solitude and immensity of the desert, knows that a cup of coffee and a friendly word are waiting for him in this tent.’

‘Nice.’ Blake nodded, slowly beginning to recover. ‘Moving. The noble servant of Allah sounds his wooden mortar in the urban desert and saves from certain death the stupid loser abandoned by the cynical and decadent Western civilization.’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Husseini. ‘Some coffee will make you feel better and put a little blood in your veins. I swear you were about to die of exposure when I found you. You probably didn’t even notice, but at least two of your old colleagues passed right in front of you without even condescending to saying hello. They saw you looking dazed and half dead from the cold, sitting on a slab of frozen stone, stiff as a piece of dried cod, and they didn’t even ask you if you needed any help.’

Well, maybe they were in a hurry. It is Christmas Eve. Maybe they hadn’t finished their shopping – the presents for the kids, the cheesecake for dessert. You know how it is . . .’

Yes,’ said Husseini. ‘It is Christmas Eve.’

He took the coffee that he had crushed in the mortar with the spices and poured it into the pot of water that was boiling on the stove. The aroma immediately became more intense, but softer and more penetrating. Blake realized that it was the smell of the spices and coffee that permeated the carpets on the floor, along with that of incense.

Husseini handed him a steaming cup and offered him a Turkish cigarette. He sat on his heels in front of Blake, smoking in silence and sipping the strong, aromatic coffee.

‘Is this what it’s like in your tent in the desert?’ asked Blake.

‘Oh, no. In my tent there are beautiful women and luscious dates. There’s a wind from the east that carries the fragrance of flowers from the high plain and you can hear the bleating of lambs. And when I walk out I see the columns of Apamea in front of me, pale at dawn and red at dusk. When the wind picks up, they sound like the organ pipes in your churches.’

Blake nodded, then took another sip of coffee and a drag on his cigarette. ‘So,’ he said, ‘why didn’t you stay in your fucking tent in the desert? What are you here for if you hate it so much?’

‘I didn’t say that I hate it here. I said it’s different. And I said so because you asked me. And if you want to know the truth, the only place I lived after the age of five was a refugee camp in southern Lebanon: a filthy, stinking sewer where we played among rats and garbage.’

‘But . . . what about the columns of Apamea, pale at dawn and red at dusk, that chime in the wind like organ pipes?’

‘Those I only dreamed about. That was how my grandfather – Abdallah al Husseini, may Allah preserve him – described them to me, but I’ve never seen them.’

They sat in silence for a long time.

‘I don’t understand why you were kicked out,’ said Husseini eventually. ‘I’d heard that you were one of the best in your field.’

‘You can say that again,’ answered Blake, holding out his cup for more coffee.

Husseini filled it, then said, ‘There was nothing I could do about it, because I’m not a full professor, but what about your friend Olsen? He could have cast a vote in your favour.’

‘Olsen had to leave for Egypt and so he couldn’t be there, but he sent in a note protesting the decision. Only him. No one else stood up for me. Anyway, if you really want to know how it went, I’ll tell you. But it’s a long story.’

‘It’s Christmas Eve and we both have time on our hands, I’d say.’

Blake lowered his head into his hands, overcome by a sudden wave of memories and anxiety. Maybe it would help to talk about it; who knows, maybe he’d get a handle on how to extricate himself from the whole mess, regain credibility.

‘It was about a year ago,’ he began. ‘I was examining some microfilms with texts from the New Kingdom which had been transcribed by James Henry Breasted just before World War One broke out. Stuff from the period of Ramses II or Merenptah, and there was something about a possible connection with the biblical Exodus. On the edge of the sheet, next to the transcription, there was a note scribbled in the margin. I’m sure you’ve seen samples of Breasted’s handwriting . . .’

Husseini nodded. ‘Of course. Go on.’

‘So you know how neat and regular it is. Well, that note, like I said, seemed really hurried, and it referred to another folder of his writings where he supposedly specified these connections to the Exodus. The note wasn’t even that clear, but I was intrigued by the idea. It would have been the discovery of a lifetime. Actual historical proof of the Exodus! I looked for that phantom folder in all the cellars and back rooms of the Oriental Institute, searched through all the old records, but there was no sign of it anywhere.’

Husseini passed him another cigarette and lit up one himself: ‘Yeah, you even came to ask me about it. I remember now . . .’

‘That’s right. Anyway, I turned up nothing. Nothing at all. And yet that note had to mean something. It became kind of an obsession for me. Then I got an idea. Maybe Breasted didn’t leave all his writings to the Institute. Maybe there were private collections, even though they weren’t mentioned anywhere.

‘I started by looking for his heirs. Thank God, City Hall records were already on the Internet by then, so it wasn’t as hard as I’d thought it might be. In the end I found Breasted’s last descendant: a fifty-year-old lawyer who lived in one of those nice old houses on Longwood, on the city’s south side. I introduced myself as a researcher and asked him about a folder that might have contained the transcriptions of hieroglyphic texts that I was interested in, without really letting him know what I was after.’

‘How did he react?’

‘Oh, he was very cordial. He said that I wasn’t the first to come looking for that transcription and that I should give it up, because no trace had ever been found of any such folder, and his great-uncle’s papers – what was left of them – had been sifted through at least a dozen times over the years, whenever someone like me chanced upon that note. He offered to let me examine his library if I wanted to try it again, but said that nothing had ever turned up. Courteous as he was, he made me feel like a real fool.

‘If only as a matter of pride, though, I accepted his invitation and started to look through the papers in his private library, not really convinced that it would get me anywhere. I went back the day after and the day after that, because I’m stubborn and I just didn’t want to give up. Well, I finally came upon a trail that I thought might help me to find the solution.’

‘Feel like eating something?’ interrupted Husseini. ‘It is dinner time, after all. I don’t have much in the house. How does desert-style sound?’

‘Sounds fine to me,’ said Blake.

Husseini put some pita bread in the oven and took a pot of spicy sauce out of the refrigerator, along with some hummus, hard-boiled eggs, cheese and beans.

‘Do you have any beer?’ asked Blake. ‘Or are you observant?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Husseini, handing him a bottle from the refrigerator. ‘My mother was Maronite.’

Blake continued his story as they ate. ‘Breasted had a lover. Her name was Suzanne de Bligny, the widow of a French diplomat from the consulate who had settled down in Minneapolis, and there was correspondence between them. I also found out that Mrs Bligny’s late husband had been stationed in Egypt, at Luxor.’

‘I can imagine,’ said Husseini. ‘The golden age of Egyptology! The heyday of the Hôtel du Nil, of Auguste Mariette and Emil Brugsch . . .’

‘Well, their letters suggested that they keenly shared these interests. I found out that Madame de Bligny had a daughter, Mary The´re`se, who married a certain James O’Donnell, an air force officer who was shot down in combat over England.’

‘A dynasty of widows,’ commented Husseini, placing the warmed sauce on the table.

Blake spread some on his pita bread and added some beans. ‘It would seem so. In any case, it turned out that Mary The´re`se O’Donnell was still alive. She was eighty-five years old, and she had kept all the correspondence between Breasted and her mother. I asked her if I could consult it and I finally found the folder that I had been searching for all that time.’

‘And I can imagine that in the meantime you neglected everything else: departmental meetings, academic parties, student visiting hours. And your wife, right?’

‘Yeah, I guess so,’ admitted Blake. ‘I was so taken by this investigation that I didn’t even realize time was passing, or what I was neglecting. I didn’t stop to think that an unguarded trench is immediately occupied by the enemy.’ His expression clouded over, as if all the distressing thoughts that had temporarily lifted, had suddenly renewed their grip.

‘What did you find in that file?’ asked Husseini.

Blake hesitated, as though he were reluctant to reveal a secret that he had kept to himself up until that moment.

Husseini lowered his gaze and helped himself from the platter. ‘You don’t have to answer me,’ he added. ‘We can talk about something else. Women, politics. With everything that’s been happening out my way, there’s plenty to keep us occupied.’

Blake ate quietly for a few more minutes. It was quiet outside too. No one was on the streets, and the snow, which had begun to fall heavily, muted even the tolling of the bell in the university tower. Blake stood up and walked to the window. He thought of the scorching sand of the Valley of the Kings and felt for a moment that he’d dreamed up the whole thing. Then he continued with his story.

‘The file referred to the note that I had read in the Oriental Institute papers, and there was the beginning of the transcription of a hieroglyphic text that began with this phrase:
I followed the Habiru from Pi-Ramses through the Sea of Reeds and then into the desert . . .
’

Husseini nodded. ‘Impressive, no doubt about it. How it matches the beginning of the Book of the Exodus. But you know that the ethnic name
Habiru
has been interpreted very differently by the experts. Although it’s commonly assumed to mean “Hebrews”, there’s no way that can be taken for granted. I hope you didn’t go and shake up the whole Institute on this basis alone . . . They would obviously have put your ass on the line.’

‘The style of the ideograms was extremely similar to the so-called “Israel Stele”,’ observed Blake, clearly offended.

Husseini seemed to reconsider. ‘No, that’s very impressive, I’d say. Sorry, I didn’t mean to question your competence. It’s just that certain things are very hard to believe. I’ll make more coffee. Would you like some?’

‘Sure, as long as you don’t start playing that music with your mortar again.’

‘American-style, filtered,’ said Husseini, taking a pot from the coffee maker, ‘otherwise we’ll never sleep again.’

‘That transcription, backed by Breasted’s reputation as the foremost expert in the field, contained the most explicit evidence of the historical reliability of the Book of Exodus ever found in any source apart from the Bible. And so I was determined to get to the bottom of it. Breasted had diligently noted where the original could be found. He had seen the papyrus in the house of a certain Mustafa Mahmoud at El Qurna, and had tried to buy it for the Oriental Institute. He had only managed to read the first line and copy the ideograms before the papyrus was put away.’

‘El Qurna is a tomb raider’s paradise. Crawling with forgeries as well, my friend. My bet is that he fell for a trap.’

‘Even so, I felt that the stakes were too high for me to drop my investigation there, and anyway Breasted was no dupe. If he was convinced that papyrus was authentic, I’d say there was a good chance that it was. Having weighed all the pros and cons, I thought it was worth the risk and I persuaded the department to allocate a considerable sum for field research that I would carry out personally. Olsen’s vote was conclusive for the financing.’

‘So you failed. And afterwards they were all there like vultures waiting to pick at your carcass. Right?’

‘Just a minute, dear colleague. I’m not that stupid. The papyrus did exist. And probably still does.’

Husseini took a deep drag on his cigarette and shook his head. ‘Nearly ninety years have passed—’

‘I’m telling you that the papyrus existed . . . does exist.’

‘If you can’t prove it, it’s as if it didn’t, and you know that better than I do. Anyway, I’d like to know how you can be so sure. You’re not going to tell me that at El Qurna you found the heirs of Mustafa Mahmoud—’

‘I did, as a matter of fact. Even better than that.’

‘Better?’

‘Photographic evidence. Partial, dark, but extremely significant.’

Both men were quiet, the Arab scholar watching the thin line of smoke that rose from the butt of his cigarette, his guest turning the empty coffee cup over and over in his hands. The whine of a police siren echoed distantly between the glass walls of the skyscrapers, travelling through the curtain of snow all the way to the room where they were sitting, like a disturbing, alien wail.

‘Continue,’ said Husseini.

‘I knew I was playing for high stakes. Looking for a document which may lie at the very basis of thousands of years of tradition means running enormous risks – a short circuit at best, but a catastrophe at the worst. I knew I had to move cautiously and I was careful not to expose myself directly. I took one of my students, Selim Kaddoumi, along.’