Napoleon's Pyramids (18 page)

He rode among his troops like a triumphant lion, receiving their accolades and bestowing congratulations in turn. All the disgruntlement and acrimony of the past weeks had disappeared in the joy of victory. Napoleon’s intense fury appeared to have been sated by the day’s intensity, and his wounded pride over his wife’s betrayal had been assuaged by slaughter. It was as merciless a battle as I could imagine, and it had spent all emotion. Josephine would never know the carnage her games had unleashed.

The general found me sometime that evening. I don’t know when—the shock of such a huge fight and storm had blurred my sense of time—or how. His aides had come looking specifically for me, however, and I knew with certain dread what it was he wanted. Bonaparte never gave himself leave to brood; he always thought ahead to the next step.

“So, Monsieur Gage,” he said to me in the dark, “I understand you have captured yourself a Mameluke.”

How did he know so much so quickly? “It seems so, General, by accident as much as intention.”

“You have a knack for contributing to the action, it seems.”

I shrugged with modesty. “Still, I remain a savant, not a soldier.”

“Which is precisely why I’ve sought you out. I’ve liberated Egypt, Gage, and tomorrow I will occupy Cairo. The first step in my conquest of the East is completed. The second hinges on you.”

“On me, General?”

“Now you will unravel the clues and discover whatever secrets these pyramids and temples hold. If there are mysteries, you will learn them. If there are powers, you will give them to me. And as a result, our armies will become invincible. We will march to unite with Tippoo, drive the British out of India, and seal the destruction of England. Our two revolutions, American and French, will remake the world.”

It is difficult to exaggerate what the emotional effect of such a call can have on an ordinary human being. It’s not that I cared a whit about England, France, Egypt, India, or making a new world. Rather that this short, charismatic man of emotional fire and blazing vision had enlisted me in partnership with something bigger than myself. I’d been waiting for the future to start, and here it was. In the day’s carnage and supernatural augury of weather I’d seen proof, I thought, of future greatness: of a man who changed everything about him for better and worse, like a little god himself. Without thinking through the consequences, I was flattered. I bowed slightly, in salute.

Then, with my heart in my throat, I watched Bonaparte stalk away, remembering Sydney Smith’s dark description of the French Revolution. I thought of the heaps of dead on the battlefield, the wailing of Egyptians, and the disgruntlement of homesick troops joking about their six acres of sand. I thought about the earnest investigations of the scholars, the European plans for reform, and Bonaparte’s hope for an endless march to the borders of India, as Alexander had marched before him.

I thought of the medallion around my neck and how desire always seems to defeat simple happiness.

It was after Bonaparte had disappeared that Astiza leaned close.

“Now you will have to decide what you truly believe,” she whispered.

T
he home of Ashraf ’s oddly named brother was in one of Cairo’s more reputable sections, which is to say it was in a neighborhood marginally less dusty, disease-ridden, rat-infested, stinking, and crowded than the city’s norm. Just as in Alexandria, the glories of the East seemed to have eluded Egypt’s capital, which had little provision for sanitation, garbage removal, street lighting, traffic management, or corralling the marauding dog packs that roamed its lanes. Of course I’ve said much the same of Paris. Still, if the Egyptians had marshaled their dogs instead of their cavalry, our conquest might not have been so easy. Scores of the mutts were shot or bayoneted each day by annoyed soldiers. The executions had no more impact on the canine population than swatting had on the incessant flies.

And yet, as in Alexandria or Paris, there was opulence amid the squalor. The Mamelukes were masters at squeezing taxes from the oppressed peasantry and spending it on monuments to themselves, their palaces exhibiting an Arabic grace missing from the heavier structures of Europe or America. While plain on the outside, the finer houses inside had shady courtyards of orange, palm, pomegranate, and fig, gracefully pointed Moorish arches, tiled fountains, and cool rooms rich with carpets, cushions, carved bookshelves, domed ceilings, and brass and copper tables. Some had intricate balconies and
mashrabiyya
screened windows that looked over the street, as carefully carved as a Swiss chalet and as concealing as a veil. Bonaparte claimed for himself the recently constructed marble-and-granite home of Mohammed Bey el-Elfi, which boasted baths on every floor, a sauna, and glass windows. Napoleon’s academics were housed in the palace of another bey named Quassim who had fled to Upper Egypt. His harem became the invention workshop for the industrious Conte, and his gardens the seminar room for the savants. The Muslim mosques were even more elegant, their Moorish minarets and soaring domes matching in grace and grandeur the finest Gothic churches in Europe. In the markets the awnings were bright as rainbows, and the oriental carpets draped on balustrades like a garden of flowers. The contrasts of Egypt—heat and shade, wealth and poverty, dung and incense, clay and color, mud brick and gleaming limestone—were almost overwhelming.

The common soldiers found themselves in surroundings considerably less luxurious than the officers: dark, medieval homes with no conveniences. Many of them promptly proclaimed the city disappointing, its people hideous, the heat enervating, and the food gut-wrenching. France had conquered a country, they wailed, that had no wine, no proper bread, and no available women. Such opinion would moderate as the summer cooled and some females began to form liaisons with the new rulers. In time the troops even grumpily admitted that the
aish,
or baked flat bread, was actually an agreeable substitute for their own. The dysentery that had plagued the army since landing increased, however, and the French army was beginning to suffer more casualties from disease than bullets. The absence of alcohol had already caused so much grumbling that Bonaparte ordered stills to make a libation from dates, the most plentiful fruit. And while officers were planning the planting of vineyards, their troops quickly discovered the Muslim drug called hashish, sometimes rolled into honeyed balls and spiced with opium. Drinking its brew or smoking its seeds became commonplace, and throughout its occupation of Egypt, the army was never able to get the drug under control.

The general entered his prize city through a main gate at the head of a regiment, bands playing and flags flying. At Ashraf ’s direction Astiza, Talma, and I entered a smaller gate and threaded through twisting lanes past bazaars that, two days after the great battle, were half-deserted, their flaws lit by the harsh sun of noon. Boys threw water to hold down the dust. Donkeys with baskets slung on either side forced us into entryways as they squeezed down alleys. Even in the heart of Cairo there were village sounds of barking dogs, snorting camels, crowing roosters, and the call of the muezzins to prayer, which to my ears sounded like cats mating. The shops looked like stables and the poorer houses like unlit caves, their men squatting impassively in their faded blue
galabiyyas
and smoking from
sheesha
water pipes. Their children, jaundiced and covered with sores, stared at us with saucer eyes. Their women hid. It was obvious that the majority of the nation lived in abject poverty.

“Maybe the finer neighborhoods are elsewhere,” Talma said worriedly.

“No, this is what you have responsibility for,” Ashraf said.

The notion of responsibility had been preying on my mind, and I told Ash that if his brother would receive us I’d grant the Mameluke his freedom. I really didn’t want to support another dependent besides Astiza, and in fact the entire idea of servants and slaves had always made me uncomfortable. Franklin had a pair of Negroes once and was so discomfited by their presence that he’d set them free. Slaves were a poor investment, he’d concluded: costly to buy, expensive to maintain, and with no incentive to do good work.

Ashraf seemed less than pleased at my mercy. “How am I to eat if you cast me out like a foundling?”

“Ash, I am not a rich man. I have no means to pay you.”

“But you do, from the gold you just captured from me!”

“I’m supposed to pay back what I just won in battle?”

“Is that not just? Here is what we will do. I will become your guide, Citizen Ash. I know all of Egypt. For this, you will pay me back what you stole. At the end, we will each have what we started with.”

“That’s a fortune that no guide or servant would ever earn!”

He considered. “This is true. So you will hire my brother as well with the money, to investigate your mystery. And pay to stay in his household, a thousand times better than the sties that we are passing. Yes, your victory and your generosity will buy you many friends in Cairo. The gods have smiled on all of us this day, my friend.”

That would teach me to be generous. I tried to take solace in Franklin, who counseled that “he who multiplies riches multiplies cares.” That certainly seemed true of my game winnings. Yet Ben was as obsessed with a dollar as any of us, and drove hard bargains, too. I never could get a raise out of him.

“No,” I told Ash. “I will pay you a living wage, and your brother too. But only when we’ve discovered what the medallion means will I give you back the remainder.”

“This is fair,” said Astiza.

“And it shows you have the wisdom of the ancients!” Ashraf said. “Agreed! Allah, Jesus, and Horus be with you!”

I was pretty sure such inclusion was blasphemy in at least three religions, but never mind: he might do well as a Freemason. “Tell me about your brother.”

“He is a very strange man, like you; you will like him. Enoch cares nothing for politics but everything for knowledge. He and I are nothing alike, because I am of this world and he is of another. But I love and respect him. He knows eight languages, including yours. He has more books than the sultan in Constantinople has wives.”

“Is that a lot?”

“Oh yes.”

And so we came to Enoch’s house. Like all Cairo habitations the outside was plain, a three-story edifice with tiny, slitlike windows and a massive wooden door with a small iron grill. At first Ashraf ’s hammering brought no answer. Had Enoch fled with the Mameluke beys? But finally a peephole behind the grill was opened, Ash shouted imprecations in Arabic, and the door cracked open. A gigantic black butler named Mustafa ushered us inside.

The relief from the heat was immediate. We passed through a small open atrium to a courtyard with murmuring fountain and shading orange trees. The home’s architecture seemed to create a gentle breeze. An ornate wooden stair climbed one side of the court to screened rooms above. Beyond was the main living room, floored in intricate Moorish tile and covered at one end with oriental carpets and cushions, where guests could lounge. At the opposite end was a screened balcony where women could listen to the conversation of the men below. The beamed ceiling was ornate, the arches pleasingly peaked, and the sculpted bookcases crammed with volumes. Draperies billowed in puffs of desert air. Talma mopped his face. “It’s what I dreamed.”

We didn’t stop here, however. Mustafa led us through a smaller courtyard beyond, bare except for an alabaster pedestal carved with mysterious signs. Above was a square of brilliantly blue sky at the top of towering white walls. The sun illuminated one side like snow and cast the opposite into shadow.

“It’s a light well,” Astiza murmured.

“A what?”

“Such wells at the pyramids were used for measuring time. At the summer solstice, the sun would be directly overhead, casting no shadow. That is how the priests could pinpoint the longest day of the year.”

“Yes, that is right!” Ashraf confirmed. “It told the seasons and predicted the rising of the Nile.”

“Why did they need to know that?”

“When the Nile rose, the farms flooded and labor was freed for other projects, like building pyramids,” Astiza said. “The Nile’s cycle was the cycle of Egypt. The measurement of time was the beginning of civilization. People had to be assigned to keep track of it, and became priests, and thought of all kinds of other useful things for people to do.”

Beyond was a large room as dim as the courtyard was bright. It was crowded with dusty statuary, broken stone vessels, and chunks of wall with colorful Egyptian painting. Red-skinned men and yellow-skinned women posed in the stiff yet graceful poses I’d seen on the tablet in the hold of
L’Orient.
There were jackal-headed gods, the cat goddess Bastet, stiffly serene pharaohs, black-polished falcons, and blocky wooden cases with life-sized paintings of humans on the outside. Talma had already described these elaborate coffins to me. They held mummies.

The scribe stopped before one in excitement. “Are these real?” he exclaimed. “A source like this could cure all my illnesses…”

I pulled. “Come on before you choke to death.”

“These are cases from which the mummies have been removed,” Ashraf told him. “Thieves would discard the coffins, but Enoch has let it be known he will pay to collect them. He thinks their decoration is another key to the past.”

I saw that some were covered with hieroglyphics as well as drawings. “Why write on something that would be buried?” I asked.

“It may be to instruct the dead through the perils of the underworld, my brother says. For us the living, they are useful to store things in because most people are too superstitious to look inside. They fear a curse.”

A narrow stone staircase at the rear of the room led down to a large vaulted cellar lit by lamps. At Ashraf ’s invitation, we descended to a large library. It was roofed with barrel vaults and floored with stone, dry and cool. Its wooden shelves were crammed floor to ceiling with books, journals, scrolls, and sheaves of parchment. Some bindings were sturdy leather, light glinting on gold lettering. Other tomes, often in strange languages, seemed held together by tendrils of old fabric, their smell as musty as the grave. At a central table, half the size of a barn door, sat the bent figure of a man.

“Greetings, my brother,” Ashraf said in English.

Enoch looked up from his writing. He was older than Ashraf, bald, with a fringe of long gray locks and a heavy beard, looking as if Newton’s gravity had tugged all his hair toward his sandals. Dressed in gray robes, he was hawk-nosed and bright-eyed and his skin was the color of the parchment he’d been bent over. He carried an air of serenity few people achieve, his eyes betraying a hint of mischief.

“So the French are occupying even my library?” The tone was wry.

“No, they come as friends, and the tall one is an American. His friend is a French scribe…”

“Who is interested in my dehydrated companion,” Enoch said with amusement. Talma was staring, transfixed, at a mummy posed upright in an open coffin in one corner. This casket, too, was covered with fine, indecipherable writing. The mummy was stripped of bandages, some of the old linen in a tangle at its feet, and incisions had been made in its chest cavity. There was nothing reassuring about the body, a dark brownish gray looking starved from the drying, the eyes closed, the nose a snub, the mouth open in a rictus that showed small, white teeth. I found it disturbing.

Talma, however, was happy as sheep in clover. “Is this truly ancient?” he breathed. “An attempt at everlasting life?”

“Antoine, I think they failed,” I observed dryly.

“Not necessarily,” Enoch said. “To the Egyptians, the preservation of the dead physical body was a requirement for everlasting life. According to accounts that have come down to us, the ancients believed the individual consisted of three parts: his physical body, his
ba
—which we might call character—and his
ka,
or life force. These last two combined are equivalent to our modern soul.
Ba
and
ka
had to find each other and unite in a perilous underworld as the sun, Ra, journeyed each night through it, in order to form an immortal
akh
that would live amid the gods. The mummy was their daytime home until this task was completed. Instead of separating the material and the spiritual, Egyptian religion combined them.”

“
Ba, ka,
and Ra? Sounds like a firm of solicitors.” I was always uncomfortable with the spiritual.

Enoch ignored me. “I have decided the journey of this one should be completed by now. I’ve unwrapped and cut him to investigate ancient embalming techniques.”

“There is talk these tissues could have medicinal qualities,” Talma said.

“Which distorts what Egyptians believed,” Enoch replied. “The body was a home to be animated, not the essence of life itself. Just as you are more than your ailments, scribe. You know, your trade as scribe was that of the wise Thoth.”