The Tenth Saint (9 page)

Sarah nodded.

“A terrible Noba warrior dared threaten the king. But it was the will of the Lord of all that I survive and rule the land. My medicine man placed himself between my body and the lance-blade and fell in my place. It was the loss of a fine and brave man. But his sacrifice was not for naught, for my troops killed the enemy and took prisoners and returned home victorious, thanks to the might of the Lord of heaven.”

“The Lord of heaven. Ezana was the Christian king,” Sarah recalled. She was well versed in Aksumite history but downplayed her knowledge. “I don’t understand how this is relevant.”

“Patience, Doctor.” He called up a different screen, this one showing a stele. “This is from an obelisk erected near your expedition site, on the cliff where Dabra Damo now stands. It says, ‘Let it be known that the brave medicine man who was sanctified by the church of the Lord of heaven is laid to rest with the highest honors and privileges for saving the life of King Ezana, king of kings, ruler of Aksum and of the vast empire. May his soul be forgiven and accepted into the kingdom of heaven by the Lord of the land and of heaven and of all things holy. I have raised this gravestone by the power of the Lord of heaven and if anyone defaces it or removes it, let him and his race be removed from the face of the earth.’” Matakala paused and looked at Sarah.

She kept staring at the words. “You say this stele was near our site. Where is it now? I should like to see it.”

“It is in private hands, I’m afraid. This was stolen from Ethiopia by bandits many years ago and sold on the black market to a German collector. No one knew where it was until he died and his estate was auctioned. We tried to acquire it but were outbid by an anonymous collector. We managed to get these photos from the auction house.”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me why you asked me here.”

“It’s … complicated.” Matakala seemed to weigh his words. “Are you a person of faith, Doctor?”

“I am a scientist. I believe what I can see, hear, and touch.”

“This is a matter of faith. Let me see if I can put it plainly. As you may know, our faith recognizes nine saints—the Tsadkan, or righteous ones. These are the pious men who spread the word of Christianity and built monasteries across our country. But according to Coptic mysticism, there was a tenth saint. We had no proof of this until we saw the inscription on this stele. It’s all there, etched in stone: the man to whom the stele refers was made a saint by the Ethiopian church a good century before any of these nine men walked our lands.”

Sarah interrupted. “What do you know about this tenth saint?”

“According to legend, he wasn’t Ethiopian; he was from the West. That’s conjecture, but it’s all we know.” He leaned forward. “Dr. Weston, we need your help.”

Sarah knew what was coming. She gritted her teeth and let him talk.

“We believe what you have found is the tomb of our tenth saint.” His gaze hardened. “I cannot emphasize enough the significance of this individual to our religion. We …” He raised a loose fist to his lips. “Let me put it another way. As a guest of our government, you have certain rights. No one disputes that. We are prepared to grant you a state-subsidized labor force in order to hasten your excavation of the royal necropolis, but we must insist that this particular find be turned over to the Ministry.”

Sarah’s face burned, but she spoke calmly. “Presuming I cooperate, what will the Ministry do with it?”

“The saint belongs to the sacred ground of Dabra Damo Mountain. We intend to return him to his gravesite and seal the tomb. We will then turn everything over to the church. Those are the wishes of our bishop, and we are obligated to abide by them.”

“And wipe out the historical record,” she said with an ironic smile.

“I know this is not the way of the West, Doctor. But it is how things are done in Ethiopia.”

“And if I refuse?”

“I don’t recommend it. It would be unwise to challenge the powers at play here.”

“Mr. Matakala, first of all, I am not challenging anybody. I am completely within my rights to be here.” The moment felt surreal, as if someone else were talking through her as she watched the scene unfold. “Secondly, my first and only commitment is to science. My job, if you didn’t know, is to research and document ancient history through remains such as these. I don’t care if the tomb in question is of Jesus Christ himself. That would not stop me from excavating the truth; it would compel me to do so. You see, Mr. Matakala, just as you believe the devout have a right to keep their holy man buried in silence, I believe the people have a right to know their past. So I’d say it’s your will against mine.”

“Be careful, Doctor. You don’t know whom you’re up against.”

“Is that a threat?”

“I suggest you give some thought to our request— if you want to continue working in Ethiopia, that is.”

Sarah nodded and briskly turned toward the door.

“Oh, Dr. Weston?” Matakala called. “Have you ever seen this?”

Sarah stopped and took a deep breath. She turned to face him.

The ideogram from the burial site filled the projection screen.

Against a tide of emotions, she struggled to keep an expressionless face.

“This is the symbol of an ancient religious brotherhood. Its members will stop at nothing to protect what is theirs.”

She fixed her gaze on his.

Matakala closed the laptop. “Around here, people only get one warning. If I were you, I wouldn’t squander it.”

Five

D
ays wax and wane, winters give way to spring, and famines claim the lives of the weak, but tribal life persists as it always has, earnestly and without ceremony. The way of the nomad is to accept everything as it comes: there is no anticipation for better days, no longing for the unrequited, no despair for loss. The day-to-day existence is hard enough without such complications. Egoism is a luxury the nomad cannot afford, not when there are goats to milk, sheep to shear, camels to saddle, bread to bake, children to feed, blankets to weave, night skies to interpret, seasons to predict, music to play by the campfire.

Days go by mostly without event; nothing, at least, that would shatter the sacred routine. The men and boys spend every hour of daylight driving the livestock to water and grasses and letting them have their fill, not knowing what tomorrow may bring. Pastures are few and far between in the desert, but the Bedouin knows how to navigate the sands to find errant patches of life or, better yet, full-blown oases where streams flow and plains are fertile and palms are pregnant with dates. They do not linger long, only enough to bolster the strength of the beasts and replenish their own supplies. The law of this inhospitable land is unwritten but commonly respected: every passing tribe consumes modestly, then allows the resources to replenish themselves for those who come next. It has been done this way for centuries, and no one questions it. Greed is a serious infraction in these parts. The shaykh of any tribe that breaks the law is hunted down by the violated and variously humiliated, robbed, or beaten, depending on the extent of his trespass.

The women have their own responsibilities. At dawn, they collect the daily water for cooking, drinking, and washing. They prepare the meal for their goum, as the Bedouin family is called, in the morning and let it sit in covered pots until the men come in from the plains. Depending on the day’s bounty, the meal might be as elaborate as mutton stew on the days a sheep is slaughtered or as simple as a watery legume broth mopped up with globs of sticky cornmeal or bread baked in a sand oven. On a good day, the men bring fish they catch in the streams and the women rub them down with crushed cloves and cook them over an open flame.

After the siesta, when everyone naps to escape the punishing heat of the midday sun, the men return to the grazing lands and the women gather in circles to gossip, giggle, and sing as they weave their daughters’ dowries. Weaving and embroidery are hardwired into the genetic code of Bedouin women, so much so that it is customary for proud fathers to proclaim that their daughters are born holding needle and thread. Traders offer fancy beads, sacks of pepper, spices, and ivory amulets in exchange for the weavings, but the Bedouin women decline, not because they cannot be parted from their masterpieces but because they are serving a useful purpose, like separating the men’s quarters from the women’s or keeping the children warm on icy winter nights.

Evenings are special in the desert, a time for the goums to celebrate surviving yet another day on this unforgiving land full of dangers and hardships and interminable solitude. Men and elders, women and children take their places in the circle by the fire, chatting to their neighbors about not much at all until one of the younger men begins the festivities by pounding on a goatskin drum or scratching the strings of the rababa. The others join in one by one. The flutist blows into a clay pipe, releasing the cheerful, simple singsong of the animal herder. The old me n contribute to the percussion by shaking small dried-goatskin casks filled with date pits or seeds. The women are the singers of the group. Sitting together in a chorus of sorts, they sing of the seasons or the day’s events or love, their melancholy high-pitched voices piercing the silence of the night like claws of a tigress ripping the flesh of her prey.

Gabriel waited for the blood ink to dry before putting aside the length of dried goat hide that had been presented to him as a gift when he had emerged from the healer’s tent. It was symbolic of new life, an offering to show renewal of the flesh. He had been with the tribe many moons, too many to count, spending most of his time in solitude, observing and writing. He knew nothing of the desert, the sky, or these people who huddled by the fire night after night, their faces glowing copper in the blackness. He kept a journal in English, the only language he knew, hoping the recording of his impressions would help him come to an understanding of this place.

It had. What had started as impatience and intolerance of a culture utterly unknown to him had evolved into a sort of compassion. The nomads let him be but never treated him as an outsider. He was always welcome to participate, or not, and tonight was no different.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

Hairan gestured toward the fire circle as he spoke.

Gabriel didn’t have to speak the language to understand the old man wanted him to join the festivities. He was reluctant. “Thank you,” he said, waving off the invitation. “I don’t think I am up to it. Perhaps another night.”

Hairan nodded, but the children had no use for such courtesies. Encouraged by the invitation of the chief, they rose from the campfire and gathered round the stranger. Giggling, they examined his long, pale fingers, his ashen blond hair, knotted and wiry from dryness and neglect, the unruly reddish beard covering his face from the cheekbones down, hiding his milky skin and giving him the gruff cast of an old man. The boys kneeled around Gabriel and lifted up his robes to see what unusual features lurked beneath, whispering their curiosity to one another. One took Gabriel’s hand and pulled him toward the group. The other youngsters joined in, expressing their enthusiasm with laughter, until he had no choice but to accept the hospitality of his hosts.

The children led Gabriel near the young men of the tribe, and he took his place among them, awkwardly nodding his greetings. He wrapped his woolen blanket around his body to ward off the chill and tried to get lost in the background. It was impossible. Everyone was aware of his presence. He knew he was as unfamiliar to these people as they were to him. They all stared, not in a threatening manner but in study, as if prolonged exposure to the subject would help them understand his nature.

Gabriel avoided meeting their eyes, staring instead at the belly of the fire. Perhaps the Bedouins did not feel threatened by him, but he wasn’t sure he felt the same of them.

How had he ended up amongst these people? He struggled to recall something about his life before, but he could not. Memory was a charlatan, cheating him of something so basic as his identity. It was as if his life had begun on the night he’d woken, tenuously clinging to life, in Hairan’s tent. All that came before was a mystery whose veil had yet to be lifted.

He stared at the fire and tried to concentrate. What came to mind was the same jumble of nonsense: faces with no names, unfamiliar places, images ebbing and flowing like the tide of his dreams.

The shrill voice of a woman singing a cappella interrupted his racing thoughts. She carried a tune admirably, her voice rising and falling and reverberating in her throat, floating dreamily in the space between reality and illusion. Everyone was still, transfixed by the chanteuse, as if nothing mattered but her song.

Gabriel was surprised by the reverence for beauty displayed by the people he had dismissed as philistines. A wave of shame washed over him.

The songbird’s anthem was the prelude for an entire evening of dance and song. The musicians played with a fervor usually reserved for big events, like the passage to spring or a birth, human or animal. The instruments wailed under the continuous pounding, plucking, and blowing.

The women kneeled before the men and poured wine from goatskin bladders into small clay cups. Taneva, the eldest of the womenfolk, bowed before Gabriel and poured wine into his cup. The old woman looked at him with the tender eyes of a mother and smiled broadly, revealing the four teeth that clung like stalactites to her purple gums.