Bahaa Taher - Sunset Oasis

I told myself, 'Even if I don't attain that, the joys of this world are scarce enough!'

I tried to stretch out that joy, to wrest it from the world so that it might last, but there was always another Alexander, the one who wrested me from joy, the Alexander of blood who chased away the Alexander of song. Throughout my short life, there was always an Alexander against an Alexander.

But the songs are also associated in my mind with my meeting with Amun in His oasis. I entered Egypt as a conqueror and the Egyptians received me as a liberator and a saviour because I freed them from occupation by the Persians, who humiliated them and ruined the temples of their gods.

I showered their priests with gifts and made offerings to their gods, so they loved me. I didn't worship those gods or know them, and in the beginning I recoiled from their frightful images. What could the Greek gods, with their noble, beautiful, human faces, have in common with the scowling animal faces of those Egyptian gods, which evoke terror? They are not to be compared. The divinities of the Greeks take the worshipper to the peak of Olympus, their refuge, so that man may share with them their sublimity and joy. The gods of the Egyptians, though, scared me and gave me to think that man was a stranger to them, a cipher in a world ruled by the frightening gods. They also cast into my soul a new doubt. They created a third Alexander, who asked, 'Which is more proper for the life of man on Earth — delight or fear? Which of them is more conducive to right conduct and the good?' And I did not arrive in my depths at an answer, but I tried to impose the answer.

Despite this, I showed every respect towards those gods and it wasn't all hypocrisy. It was also a way of getting closer to their great one, Amun, whom I hoped would show me the secret of my birth and destiny. Since my youth, I had heard that the seeker of knowledge must make his way to Egypt and that Plato, my master Aristotle's teacher, had said that the Greeks, despite all that they prided themselves on by way of practice and philosophy, were mere infants when compared with the Egyptians. Would the oracle of Amun fulfil my hope? His fame had spread to Greece in the distant past and reached such heights that they had made Him one with Zeus, the leader of their gods. It was said too that every prediction of the oracle of His oasis had come true, so that many Greeks came to him to seek his counsel.

Did I, though, believe that? I did. One Alexander believed and another Alexander refused to believe and I hoped for a miracle at Amun's hands that would make the two of them one.

In those days there were only two of them.

I laid the foundation for my city Alexandria on the shores of the sea. Then I decided to make my way to the oasis. The court was upset. They warned me of the desert that had destroyed an army of the Persian Cambyses, and that it was then midwinter, the season of storms. And I heard their mutterings that I was going there to receive the title 'Son of the God' from the priests, even though the Greeks and Macedonians hate those Eastern beliefs. The utmost pinnacle a man can reach in our belief is to become a hero like Hercules, which is to say 'immortal' but lower than the gods. It's only in Egypt, where they deify their kings, that the gods adopt a man and make him one of them. Some men of my entourage said it was just another caprice of Alexander's, a challenge to those before him who had failed to cross that trackless waste.

I listened to it all but said nothing, and I rode my horse westwards along the shore, and the thought came to me that, as I had tamed this raging black stallion when I was a boy

and all the knights of Macedonia had failed to subdue it, so would I tame this desert.

I headed south towards the oasis, accompanied by a small number of soldiers and friends, and every disaster did indeed befall us on the way. The water stored in leather bags ran out two days into our journey, seeping into the sand or evaporating into the air, and the caravan was stricken with panic. Suddenly, though, rains fell from the sky, and they refilled the water skins and one of the soldiers said in excitement, 'See how the gods' concern guards Alexander from harm!', though another muttered that, on the contrary, it was the season of the rains and there was no miracle in it. I smiled to myself, thinking, 'Which of them is right?' Then the violent storm arose and the wind and sand scattered our cavalcade east and west, and when the wind abated and the whirlwinds moved away, we had lost our path, fatigue had ground us down, and we no longer knew which track to take.

Later in my life I read that certain writers said it was a flock of crows which saved the caravan and set it on the right course. They said that this flock had continued to hover above us by day and its cawing had guided us by night till the end of the journey. Others wrote that, no, a sacred Egyptian cobra had appeared before the caravan and led us to the oasis of Amun.

And what of it if it was the stars which guided the riders? Mortals, though, are entranced by stories of crows and snakes, and the Greeks are no different to the rest, and nor was I, despite all the teachings of Aristotle. How I wished, though, that I might be different!

I reached the oasis of Amun early in the morning after a week, and a large golden sun flooded the temple of the oracle with its light. I saw a procession of pilgrims proceeding on foot up the hill. I, though, spurred my horse in quick bounds to the top of the rise and arrived before them all. My heart quickened as I looked around me. Everything was new and unfamiliar to my eyes. Below me, in the middle of the desert, I saw a green sea of palms and another large sun, exactly like the sun in the sky, shining from a spring at the foot of the temple, and yet others flashing among the blue lakes that dotted the sands. In front of the entrance to the temple with its decorations of brightly coloured painting, I saw the priestesses of Amun, the breeze moving their diaphanous robes so that they undulated about their slender, dancing bodies like white wings, as though they were about to fly away, high in the air, towards that sun to which they waved their arms in supplication. They were singing a low song whose words I could not understand, but their voices, quavering as they chanted, had the ring to my ears not of a prayer of entreaty but of a lover's whispered plea. To whom? To the gods? To Amun alone? To me?

I dismounted, my heart still beating hard in my chest at what I had seen and heard and all that awaited me in this place, but despite that I moved with the dignity of a king, and directed my steps towards the high priest, who stepped out from among the chanting priestesses and came forwards to receive me. His head was completely shaven and he too was wearing a flowing white robe. He bowed at length before me, then, extending his hand, welcomed me in Greek: 'He has been waiting for you, Son of the God and Master of the World.'

I gestured to the entourage who were following me and they presented him with gifts and offerings. He accepted these and then led me towards the entrance of the temple. My companions were about to enter with me when he stopped them with a wave of his hand. It was not permitted to any but me to penetrate the sanctuary. We went forwards together through the door of the Holy of Holies, the singing and the dancing stopping in the outer courtyard. A sudden, thick silence fell, and a white cloud of incense the like of whose fragrance had never before caressed my nostrils gusted from the interior of the temple. A dread such as I had never known in all the battles in which I had faced death swept over me.

I entered the place where the statue of the god sits on its gilded throne so that His priest might announce the oracle, for the priest does not speak of his own volition. And in the darkened Holy of Holies and amidst the clouds of incense came the voice, deep and calm and slow, emerging through the walls from nowhere and everywhere.