Bahaa Taher - Sunset Oasis

I leapt from the horse. There were many ghosts here around this temple. I could feel them without seeing them. Ghosts of the pharaohs? Ghosts of the palm trees? Ghosts of the murderers? Who had sent them after me? Sabir and Wasfi? Tal'at? Harvey? Catherine?

A murmuring and a muttering filled my ears. Braying of donkeys, horses' hoofs, singing and the beating of drums. All the sounds of this small, closed world. No! I must finish the job before I lose my mind. I must settle accounts swiftly.

I grasped the horse's neck and turned its head towards me, and it stared at me with its bloodshot black eyes. What are you trying to tell me? That there's no time left? That maybe you can take me to some other place where we can make a new start? But it's not in my fate to be saved. If pain, toil and the thrusts of betrayal and injustice were a price that could purchase salvation, I would have been saved, and everybody else would have been saved with me. So off with you! I took the saddlebags, smacked his rump and shooed him away, but he dawdled, unwilling to move. I chased him to the edge of the palm trees and left him on the road, where he remained standing, snorting and pawing the ground with his hoofs. Let him. The important thing was for him to be far enough away.

I returned to the temple and stood for a moment contemplating it, the bags over my shoulder. So this was the glory the British were revealing to us so that we could know we had once been giants and were now dwarves!

The ancestors, jolly good! The grandchildren, though — fit for nothing but occupation.

Wasfi was very proud of this discovery, which kept the masters masters! This nightmare had to end. I didn't believe what Sheikh Yahya had said of Maleeka, that she had loved these accursed ruins and seen beauty in them, and that he had loved them for her sake.

I didn't believe it! Maleeka and Wasfi could have nothing in common!

The sheikh, as his mind wandered, imagined things, and all these phantoms of the past had to disappear.

I took the sticks of dynamite out of the saddlebags and entered the temple. A lot of sticks here, beneath the entranceway that supports the whole structure. Then to the inside. Here remains of columns formed entrances and chambers full of carvings, carvings of the dead.

All was well. What I had was enough. More sticks beneath the walls themselves. Not a trace must remain of the temple. We had to be done with all the stories of the ancestors if the descendants were to wake from their delusions of greatness and their false complacency. One day they'd thank me! They'd have to thank me!

I extended a fuse from beneath the columns and the edifice to the outside.

The horse was still where I'd left it, snorting angrily. All was well. Was that the sound of his hoofs pawing the ground, or of other hoofs, or more of those tricks that my hearing played on me?

It didn't matter. I had to make haste. I lit the end of the fuse that extended from the bottom of the structure and stood and waited. Why did the spark move so slowly? On, holy fire! Devour the holy temple so that we can be done with all these fables!

Then something happened. Much hubbub and many approaching voices. On!

Explosions and a shower of stones flying through space. I would have preferred the whole temple to catch fire. What do you say, Catherine? Will these stones do to build a new, solid flight of steps? Will they do for a house?

Or perhaps another tomb? Do what you like with them but you won't find any carvings on them from now on. I swear I'll not leave you a single carving!

Forgive me, Maleeka, you were braver than I. And forgive me, Fiona, because I couldn't wait, and forgive me, Ibraheem, for I've gone on ahead of you as I promised you I would, though the stones fall around me and not on top of me. Why, then, am I waiting outside? Is cowardice going to take me again at the last moment? No! I'm coming! On! Into the temple!

I run but fall to the ground before I get there. Before I fall, I see it bounding towards me. The stone smacks against my head, I fall, and sleep overcomes me, but I wake again and put my hand to my head and neck and feel the stickiness and warmth of blood and touch the large splinter that has fastened itself in my neck. I try to pull it out with my listless hand but fail. There is no pain. And suddenly a light blazes up inside me. Yes, now I see everything, understand everything in life that I failed to grasp. I try to raise my head but can't. The light dies down to be replaced by the onslaught of heavy slumber and I hear a deep, tremulous voice crying my name as though weeping, and I say, as I close my eyes, 'Thank you. Thank you for coming too late.'

In writing this novel, whose events take place at different historical epochs, I have drawn on a number of books and studies, and the reader interested in comparing reality with imagination has the right to consult these and participate with me in certain speculations around them.

1. Siwa Oasis, by the late archaeologist Ahmed Fakhry, was my point of entry to this work, having caught my attention with its indication of the connection between District Commissioner Azmi and what happened to the temple of Umm Ebeida in 1897. I have tried in this novel to understand the character and the event. Fakhry's book, which combines the accuracy of a vastly erudite scholar with the style of a talented writer, was of the greatest use to me in evoking the atmosphere of Siwa in the nineteenth century, especially in terms of two customs — the internecine wars and the treatment of widows.

2. The customs of the nineteenth century have now disappeared and Siwa has become an authentically Egyptian region whose inhabitants speak Arabic, which is the language of instruction at all the various levels of education in the oasis, albeit they preserve their original language for communication among themselves. Siwa continues to be distinguished by its rare beauty, which in ancient days enchanted Herodotus (on the basis of hearsay) and Greek, Arab and foreign travellers with its forest of palms and olives, its gardens, its sweet and salt lakes, and the springs that well up in the midst of this green land encompassed on all sides by yellow sands. The pyramid-like remains of Shali still stand in the middle of the town, after having been 'melted' by heavy rains in 1926. I add my voice to those of the other lovers of this beautiful oasis who point out the need to ensure that efforts at modernization and development respect its unique character.

3. Siwa remains the land of Alexander the Great, who consulted the oracle in its celebrated temple, which towers there to this day. For the picture that the novel draws of the most famous of famous Macedonian kings I sought the help of a number of works of history, of which the most prominent is the Life of Alexander by the Roman historian Curtius, who shows a greater interest therein in Alexander's human side than in the conquests and military feats on which other books concentrate.

I also read with great pleasure The Memoirs of Alexander the Great , a fictitious autobiography by the living Greek writer Nestor Matsas, translated into Arabic by the Tunisian man of letters el Tahar Guiga, who has added to the work numerous footnotes that greatly enhance the text.

4. Alexander's tomb: people of my generation will remember the sensational headlines that proclaimed the discoveries of the Alexandrine Greek waiter Stylios and how close he believed he had come to stumbling across the tomb of Alexander under the Mosque of the Prophet Daniel, the sole result of these efforts, however, being to threaten the mosque's foundations, thus causing the authorities to curtail his activities. To this day, a Polish archaeological mission continues the search for the tomb in Alexandria. Others, however, search for it in other likely places and probable sites across three continents. The instigator of the theory that his tomb is in Siwa is the Greek scholar Liana Souvaltzi, who commenced digging in the oasis in 1989, her work leading to the discovery of several new archaeological sites there. While she claims that she was on the point of discovering the tomb itself, her researches were stopped in early 1996 following a disagreement with the Department of Egyptian Antiquities.