Bahaa Taher - Sunset Oasis

Would Fiona still be proud of me, as she said she was, if she heard all this? She says she used to be jealous of me, then became proud of me! Why? She isn't aware, then, that it was I who was usually jealous of her. All my life I've seen her as the ideal of beauty and the goodness that wins people's hearts. She is the closest person to my heart but still I always envied her all that, and maybe I'm still jealous of her even now. She didn't want to tell me whether she had loved Michael or not. She left my question hanging. Maybe she's right — let's leave him to rest in peace! And let's leave her own question about why I married him hanging too. I don't know the answer, so let's leave all the ghosts of the past alone. The ghosts of the present are more than enough. The ghost of Maleeka alone is enough.

Let me then indeed get back to work. Work will at least make me forget the search for that peace of mind that never comes. Fiona counsels me to keep going — is there any alternative? It seems that something pursues me to make sure I keep going.

I devoted myself for several days to reading whatever writings by the historians I had available about Alexander's end, going over again what I knew, questioning it in the light of whatever new information I could find. Maybe that way I would find the evidence Fiona wanted before talking about the conclusion. My intuition and obsession were not enough. She was right. Always, as usual, right!

I set out the facts, in the hope that they might reveal something. What happened after he died? They wanted to carry out his wishes and have him buried in the Oasis of Amun next to his father, and they bestowed great honours upon him, building him a wagon of vast size as a mobile sepulchre that would transport his corpse from Babel to Egypt, and they decorated the sides of the wagon with pictures and gilded statues that told the story of the king-hero-god. It was pulled by dozens of mules, the jingling of whose hundreds of bells could be heard from miles away as it proceeded along the highway on its funereal passage to Egypt, across the deserts, valleys and forests and through cities he had built and others he had destroyed.

The wagon took two years to cover the distance from Babel to the Nile valley, but it never completed the journey to its goal in the Oasis of Amun as he had requested. Ptolemy, the king's deputy, received it and diverted it to his capital of Memphis in Upper Egypt, and he erected the king's sepulchre there, so that Alexander might be a witness and guarantor of the glory of his ambitious follower, who lost no time in announcing himself king. When the capital was transferred from the south to Alexandria, he took the corpse there and built a sepulchre between the miraculous lighthouse and the splendidly endowed library that he had built. It was no longer simply a sepulchre then. It had become a temple to the god Alexander, son of Zeus-Amun, with columns of the Grecian Doric order, the objective of crowded processions of pilgrims on his annual festival, while others came at any moment to seek his blessing and worship the embalmed god in his marble sarcophagus, which, after a time, they exchanged for another of glass, whose transparency made his form appear more brilliantly. The centuries passed and the temple remained a place to be visited by all the great who passed through Alexandria, among them Julius Caesar and Mark Antony — both accompanied, no doubt, by Cleopatra — and then in later years by many of the Roman emperors. All of them abased themselves before the conquering, never defeated hero, and they may have envied him, as no one after him ever achieved the same glory.

Suddenly, however, after six long centuries, mentions of the sepulchre and the corpse disappear altogether. Following the adoption of Christianity as the Roman Empire's only religion a zealous emperor issued an order for the closing of all the temples to the heathen gods, including that of Alexander.

But where did the embalmed god in his glass sarcophagus go, and where his temple? Why was no trace of him left behind? The historians have no answer to these questions. Did he drown in the sea, as my father used to say, or was he obliterated by the action of time, as Fiona said?

Why does my mind refuse to accept this truncated end to the long and majestic legend?

Is it my mind which refuses, or is it that I'm clinging on to the hope of myself having some great achievement in life? Why not? Life is very short, as Alexander understood, and those who have the capacity to leave some trace behind them shouldn't hesitate or prevaricate. He conquered the world and I dream only of seeing him in the arms of his father Amun, his last testament thus realized, so that I too, through this, may realize some modest glory! Something to compensate for my failure with Mahmoud and with Michael and to make me forget for ever the ghost of Maleeka. Even should I not succeed, it is still an attempt worthy of my time. Whatever happens, peace of mind will remain beyond reach.

Despite this, my intuition provides the story with a logical and believable ending. Christianity did not put a swift end to paganism in Alexandria or in Egypt. There were Christian martyrs who accepted torture and death in defence of their divine beliefs, but there were also martyrs to the pagan gods who were content to be tortured by the Christians and to sacrifice their lives for the sake of Amun, Isis, Horus and others. Why should there not have been among these loyal followers of the gods adherents of the cult of Alexander, son of Amun-Ra? There were many of them in those days, so what if, after the closure of the temple, they transported the body of their god secretly to his father's oasis? It would be the ideal place. It was far from Roman rule, Christianity had not yet entered it, and the worship of the Egyptian gods continued to flourish there for centuries, far from the eyes of any power that might govern Egypt. It would have been logical then for his loyal worshippers to think of moving him here and carrying out his last wishes after centuries of exile. My mind says why not, and my sixth sense says he is close, but where is the evidence?

I also reread everything the travellers who had visited the oasis had written about the temples of Siwa and its antiquities. I paused as I always do at the description of the obliterated Doric temple near Lake Khameesa. The area and dimensions of the temple as described by the French traveller Cailliaud are those of a typical Greek temple. More important still is his reference to the style of the columns as Doric, and his statement that it was the only one of its kind in the oasis. Where, though, is that temple now, for me to deduce from it any evidence for anything?

Captain Wasfi could have helped me and we could have gone together to look around there, in places I could not have gone on my own. But Mahmoud continues to impose imprisonment. I'm not allowed even to invite Wasfi for a discussion. Fiona will have nothing to do with him after he described the revolutionaries as traitors, and she doesn't welcome the sight of him. Why such a puritan, Fiona? He's talking about the revolutionaries of his own country, so he can say what he likes, and Alexander the Great wasn't the English Cromwell, who declared open war on Connaught and slaughtered its people, so why take your anger out on the Macedonian king? Also I need Wasfi now to help me. I have to think of a way.

Before that, however, there's something I have to make sure of myself. What am I to do?

'Why not, Catherine?' said Fiona heatedly. 'Go out!'

I looked at Zubeida, on whose wrinkled face were written refusal and doubt. I had tried, with Fiona, to explain to her in Arabic, Siwan and sign language that I wanted to borrow her donkey for a short while and return it safely to her. She, however, kept repeating stubbornly, 'The izit is sick.' The donkey was sick! I tried to convince her with gestures that I wouldn't tire it and wouldn't be late; in fact, I'd be close to the house. Fiona tried to reassure her and pointed downwards with her forefinger, saying, 'Soldiers downstairs,' meaning they would protect me, and the donkey, if anything happened. Then she put her hand on Zubeida's shoulder and said with her bewitching smile, 'I'll buy you another izit!' At this, Zubeida agreed to lend me the donkey, but grudgingly.