it is safest not to share it but to keep it for oneself. I believe that the land of Amurru will one day be called the cradle of freedom. A nation that believes all it is told is like a herd of cattle that can be driven through a gate by means of a stick, or like a flock of sheep that follows the bellwether without reflecting where it is bound. And perhaps it is I who drive the herd and lead the flock.”
“You must indeed have the brain of a sheep to talk thus dangerously. When Pharaoh hears of it, he will send his chariots and his spears against you. He will break down your walls and hang you and your son head downward from the bows of his warship when he returns to Thebes.”
Aziru only smiled.
“I do not think that I am in any danger from Pharaoh, for I have received the symbol of life from his hands and have raised a temple to his god. He believes in me more than in anyone else in Syria-more than in his own envoys or in the officers of the garrison who worship Ammon. I will now show you something very diverting.”
He led me to the walls and showed me a dried-up, naked body hanging by the heels; it was crawling with flies.
“Look closely,” he said, “and you will see that this man is circumcised: he is indeed an Egyptian. He was one of Pharaoh’s tax gatherers who made so bold as to come prying here to find out why I was a year or two in arrears with my tribute-money. My soldiers had good sport with him before they hung him on the wall for his impudence. By this I have ensured that Egyptians do not willingly travel through the land of Amurru, even in large bands, and the merchants prefer to pay their taxes to me rather than to them. You will grasp the significance of this when I tell you that Megiddo is under my dominion, obeying me and not the Egyptian garrison, who cower in the fortress and dare not venture into the streets of the city.”
“The blood of this poor man will be on your head,” I said appalled. “Your punishment will be terrible when the deed is known, for one may trifle with anything in Egypt rather than with its tax gatherers.”
I sought to explain to him that he had a mistaken notion of the wealth and majesty of Egypt and warned him against being puffed up. Even a leather sack swells when filled with air yet when pricked collapses. But Aziru merely laughed and flashed his golden teeth, then ordered in more roast mutton on heavy silver dishes so as to display his wealth.
His study was filled with clay tablets, for messengers brought him intelligence from all the cities in Syria. He received tablets also from the King of the Hittites and from Babylon, of which he could not refrain from boasting, though he would not let me see their contents. He was most curious to hear from me about the land of the Hittites, but I perceived that he knew as much of it as I did. Hittite envoys visited him and spoke with his warriors and chieftains.
When I understood this, I said, “The lion and the jackal may make alliance to hunt the same prey-but did you ever see the choicest morsels fall to the jackal’s share?”
He only laughed. “Great is my thirst for knowledge, and like you I seek to learn new things, though affairs of state prevent me from traveling as you do, who are without responsibility and as free as the birds of the air. What harm, then, if the Hittite officers advise my chieftains in the arts of war? They have new weapons and experience that we lack. This can only be of service to Pharaoh, for should war ever come-why, Syria has long been Pharaoh’s shield and often a bloody one. This is something we shall remember when we come to cast our accounts together.”
When he spoke of war I thought of Horemheb and said, “I have enjoyed your hospitality too long and must now return to Smyrna if you will place a chair at my disposal. Never again will I step into one of your terrifying chariots. I would rather be clubbed at once. Smyrna has become a wilderness for me, and doubtless I have sucked the blood of poor, indigent Syria too long. I intend to take ship for Egypt. We may not meet for a long time-perhaps never-for the memory of Nile water is sweet in my mouth. Who knows but that I shall remain to drink of it since I have seen enough of the world’s evil and have also learned something of it from you.”
Aziru replied, “No one knows what tomorrow may bring. Rolling stones gather no moss, and the resdessness glowing in your eyes will not allow you to stay long in any one place.”
We parted friends; he gave me a chair and many presents, and his warriors escorted me back to Smyrna lest any should offer me violence because I was an Egyptian.
At the gateway into Smyrna a swallow darted like an arrow past my head; my mind was troubled and the street scorched my feet. When I had reached my house I said to Kaptah, “Gather up our belongings and sell this house. We are bound for Egypt.”
3
It is needless to describe our voyage, which is to me now as a shade or an unquiet dream. When at last I stepped aboard the vessel that would bring me on my way to Thebes, the city of my childhood, such intense and boundless longing filled my soul that I could neither stand nor sit nor lie, but paced to and fro over the crowded deck, among the rolled-up mats and bales of merchandise. The smell of Syria lingered in my nostrils, and each passing day increased my eagerness to see, in place of the rock-bound coast, a certain low-lying land green with beds of reeds. When the vessel lay to for days on end at the quays of the cities along the coast, I had not serenity enough to explore these places or to gather information; the braying of donkeys on the shore mingled with the cries of the fish sellers and the murmur of foreign tongues into a roar that to my ears was indistinguishable from that of the sea.
Spring had come again to the Syrian valleys. Seen from offshore the hills were red as wine, and in the evenings the foaming surf of the beaches gleamed a pearly green. The priests of Baal made shrill commotion in the narrow alleys. They gashed their faces with flint knives until the blood flowed, while women with burning eyes and disheveled hair followed the priests, pushing wooden barrows. But all this I had seen many times before; their alien ways and brutish frenzy revolted me when before my eyes there floated a faint vision of my homeland. I had thought that my heart was hardened, that I had by now adapted myself to all customs and all faiths, that I understood the folk of all complexions and despised none, and that my one purpose was to gather knowledge. However, the consciousness that I was on my way home to the Black Land swept like a reviving flame through my heart.
I laid aside my foreign thoughts like foreign garments and was Egyptian once more. I longed for the smell of fried fish at dusk in the alleyways of Thebes when the women light their cooking fires before the mud huts. I longed for the savor of Egyptian wine and for the waters of the Nile with their scent of fertile mud. I longed for the whisper of the papyrus reeds in the evening breeze, for the chalice of the lotus flower unfolding on the shore, for the picture writing in the temples, for the colorful pillars with their eternal images, and for the smell of incense between those pillars. So foolish was my heart.
I was coming home although I had no home and was a stranger upon the earth. I was coming home and memory stung me no more. Time and knowledge had silted like sand over that bitterness. I felt neither sorrow nor shame; only a restless yearning gnawed at my heart.
Astern of us dropped the Syrian land: prosperous, fertile, seething with hatred and unrest. Our vessel, urged forward by the oars, glided past the red beaches of Sinai, and the desert winds blew hot and dry over our faces although it was spring. Then there came a morning when the sea was yellow, and beyond it the land lay like a narrow green ribbon. The seamen lowered a jar and brought up in it water that was not salt; it was Nile water and tasted of the mud of Egypt. No wine ever tasted so delectable to me as this muddy water, hauled up so far from land.
Kaptah said, “Water is always water, even in the Nile. Have patience, lord, until we find an honest tavern where the beer is clear and foaming, so that a man need not suck it through a straw to avoid the husks of grain. Then and then only shall I know that I am home.”
His godless talk jarred on me, and I said, “Once a slave always a slave, even when he is robed in fine wool. Have patience, Kaptah, until I find a flexible cane-such a one as can be cut only in the reed swamps of the Nile-and then, indeed, you shall know that you are home.”
He was not offended, but his eyes filled with tears, his chin quivered, and he bowed before me, stretching forth his hands at knee level.
“Truly, lord, you have the gift of hitting upon the right word at the right moment, for I had already forgotten
