Azazeel (17 page)

SCROLL NINE

I
remember well how I crept like a thief towards the door to the Great Theatre and how embarrassed I felt at my ragged clothes among the elegant
people, although the monastic life teaches us not to care whether clothes are ragged or not. The guards at the door showed me the way to the lecture and I went in with the others. It was a large
hall set on the western side of the theatre, not part of it but surrounded by the same garden. The audience for the lecture was large, and included women. It was the first and only time I attended
a lesson given by a woman. Everything in Alexandria is strange and different.

All those coming in for the lecture were speaking Greek and all had studied philosophy. That much was clear from their mutterings and subdued discussions. Before the lecture started their talk
was full of the names of ancient philosophers, but they did not mention any of the saints or martyrs, as though they were living in another world. At first I thought I was going to hear a very
pagan lecture, but then I discovered that mathematics has nothing to do with paganism or faith.

At the entrance to the hall stood a sun-clock and the shadow of the dial was almost touching the pointer indicating ten o’clock in the morning. People had come early. I stayed among them
an hour, absorbed in myself, while they were busy with their quiet chatting and discreet laughter. They had clean clothes and their faces showed signs of ephemeral worldly affluence. I sat close to
the door, at the end of the third row of wooden benches. In my discomfort and from the feeling that I was out of place in the audience, I sat as rigid and brittle as a piece of old wood.

Moments before Hypatia appeared, a man sitting on my right in the second row looked towards me and greeted me with a smile. I returned the greeting with a timid smile, because a smile is the
only answer to a smile. The fat man was about to start a conversation, had not the trumpets sounded to herald the arrival of the governor of the city, Orestes, who sat in the middle of the row. His
retinue spread out to the sides and the first row filled up. Hypatia came into the vast hall and everyone stood up for her, including the men. They stood up so suddenly that I did not see her
enter. When they had applauded her and sat down again, I watched her walk up the two steps to the podium. She stood like a dream before the audience, who settled down on the benches. She prepared
to speak and everyone fell silent, as silent as the statues in the long Avenue of Rams in Thebes.

Before Hypatia uttered a word my heart began to flutter and race, so much so I feared that those around me would hear my troubled heartbeat. Hypatia was a dignified and beautiful woman, very
beautiful in fact, perhaps the most beautiful woman in creation. She was about forty years old, and her nose and mouth, her voice and hair and eyes, were all perfect. Everything about her was
magnificent. And when she spoke she was even more sublime. Several months later I learnt that she had been interested in learning since childhood at the hands of her father, the famous
mathematician Theon, and that she had helped him while still an adolescent with the commentaries which he wrote on the works of Claudius Ptolemaeus, author of the
Geographia
and the Great
Treatise
⁶
on astronomy.

Hypatia. When I write her name now, I can almost see her in front of me, standing on the platform in the large hall like a celestial being who had descended to earth from the mind of gods to
bring them a divine message of compassion. Hypatia had what I had always imagined to be the appearance of Jesus the Messiah, combining grace with majesty. Her limpid eyes were slightly blue and
grey. Her forehead was broad and radiated a heavenly light. Her flowing gown and her bearing had a dignity to match the aura which surrounds deities. From what luminous element was this woman
created? She was different from other women, and if it was the god Khnum who shapes men’s bodies, then from what fine clay did he shape her, and with what heavenly essence did he mould her?
Oh my God, I am blaspheming.

Once she had mounted the platform, Hypatia was silent for no more than a few seconds. Then she raised her eyes towards her silent audience and started to speak. ‘Friends,
a few days ago I received from the island of Rhodes letters containing many observations and comments on what I have said in my lectures explaining the eminent Diophantos’s book on
calculating unknown numerical values. In view of the extremely specialist nature of the subject, I shall postpone a discussion of it until after this lecture, lest I bore those among you who are
not mathematicians, although I believe the philosophy which most of you want us to talk about today can be solidly based on mathematics. You know, my brothers and sisters, that Plato the Great
wrote on the door of his school in Athens, the Academy, the words: “Only he who has studied mathematics enters here.” Nevertheless I will speak first about philosophy, then read my
lecture in a separate session to discuss the mathematical questions which arise in the book of the eminent Diophantos the Alexandrian, for those of you who wish to follow the subject with
me.’

I was following her avidly with my eyes. She had looked towards me twice during her speech, and her eyes frightened me. I had studied philosophy for years in Akhmim, but I had never heard anyone
say such things. She was explaining to us in elevated Greek how the human mind can discern the order inherent in the universe, and through thought reach to the essence of things and thus identify
their accidental and variable qualities. Phrases from basic philosophy tripped off her tongue, phrases which I had long heard from others, but when she spoke them it was as though she was opening
my mind and instilling them inside. Even when she talked about the well-known theories of the Pythagoreans, such as their saying, ‘The world is number and harmony’, from the depth of
her expression and the succinct way she expressed it I realized that all beings emanate from the rhythms of a single system, and I understood from what she said things I had never understood from
other philosophy teachers.

Before the end of the lecture the idea occurred to me to be a disciple of Hypatia for the rest of my life, or a servant who walks behind her. I thought that if I went back to Octavia and
apologized to her for deceiving her for a whole three days she might forgive me. I would argue that I was afraid to lose her and decided to stay silent because I had done wrong. And Octavia would
forgive me, and kiss me again, and I would live with her and forget the illusions which drove me and took my steps I know not where. I would come to know the Sicilian master when he came back from
his journey, and know Hypatia from close by and study medicine until I excelled in it, and maybe find a cure for the disease we call Aa.
⁷
My thoughts wandered
and I was too distracted to follow the rest of the lecture.

Then I listened to the end of the teacher’s lecture, and what she said still sticks in my mind. ‘My friends, even if understanding is in fact an intellectual process, it is also a
spiritual process, because the truths we arrive at through logic and mathematics, unless we feel them with our souls, will remain raw facts, and we will fall short of grasping how magnificent it is
that we perceive them. Two hours have passed that I have been talking to you and I know that I have gone on too long and tired you. So accept my apologies and my appreciation that you attended
today. I’ll come back to this hall in half an hour to talk about the mathematics of Diophantos. Those who choose to honour me by taking part are welcome, provided they are students of
mathematics, lest they hate it and hate me with it.’

The audience smiled and some of them laughed, and all prepared to go out behind her. I stayed planted at my place like the stones of the Pyramids, like the oval rocks on the banks of the Nile in
my old country. Hypatia would come back in half an hour, and where else could I go?

The rows had almost emptied out, except for some disciples who stayed gathering together their papers and moving to the front-row seats with their books. The governor, his retinue and the public
were hovering around Hypatia at the table, a table weighed down with varieties of sweet pastries. So that’s what the loudmouth crier meant, the day I came into Alexandria. I don’t like
sweet things and I did not eat any with them on that day, even though I was so ravenous with hunger that I almost fainted. Out of modesty I made do with two dates which were in my bag, and
refrained from standing in my tattered clothes among the elegant people who were eating.

After a long half-hour, the voices coming from behind the door went quiet, and the governor and most of the public left. Hypatia came back, surrounded by a small group of scholars and students
of various ages. She mounted the platform, as she had done the first time, and the hall fell quiet as it had done before. There were no more than twenty people and I was still in my place on the
third row when she pointed at me and said, ‘You can come to the front row, if you like.’

‘No, my lady, I’m comfortable here, but thank you for your kindness.’

‘Thank you for your kindness! Strange words, brother stranger.’

‘I’m from the south, reverend lady.’

‘Welcome to our city.’

I did not understand most of what Hypatia said in her second lecture. I was merely staring at her, regretful that in my youth I had avoided studying mathematics. When she spoke I was full of
enthusiasm and I made a resolution to do something which in fact I never did. ‘I’ll study mathematics with medicine and theology. I’ll study the principles of geometry and
arithmetic first, then specialize in them and excel.’ In those days I was like a dry leaf tossed by the wind, and I think I’m still like that!

After the lecture the audience hovered around her again. I don’t know how I found the courage, but I approached Hypatia fearlessly, and without her asking me anything I told her I had come
to Alexandria to study medicine and I planned to stay in the city five years to absorb the learning, then go home and treat the sick in my home country. I added in my outburst that throughout my
stay in Alexandria I would eagerly attend all her scientific sessions, even the mathematical ones. Throughout she smiled and took an interest in what I was saying, emboldening me to speak at
length, though my only motive was to keep looking at her. When I stopped speaking, she spoke. ‘So I’ll see you here next Sunday, good southern friend.’

‘My lady, do you not give lessons in medicine?’

‘No, my friend, I’m very sorry.’

As she answered my sudden question, her smile was enough to dispel my loneliness, my hunger and my sense that I was a stranger. She pointed at one of those standing around her, five middle-aged
men and a thin woman, and said, ‘This good colleague of mine, Synesios the Cyrene, also wanted to study medicine at the start, but ended up studying philosophy.’ She looked at him out
of the corner of her eye. ‘And now he wants to renounce philosophy, and believe in its antithesis!’

The man by the name of Synesios gave a pleasant laugh and tossed his head back a little. He put his right hand on my left shoulder affectionately and said, ‘Don’t believe the
savante, my brother, for she twice strayed from the truth in what she said; firstly when she described me as a colleague, when I am merely her disciple and she my teacher, and secondly in that, if
I follow the way of the church, that does not mean that I will renounce philosophy and believe in its antithesis.’ Everyone laughed at what he said, except me, and they prepared to leave the
hall. I never saw the man called Synesios the Cyrene again after that day but I heard later that he became a great man of the church in the Western Pentapolis known as Libya, in fact the bishop of
one of the five cities, I think the city of Tolmeita, also known as Barca.

They all went out and I tarried a while, my legs heavy. I had no idea of my purpose after this lesson, which I would have liked to last forever. Before disappearing behind the door, Hypatia
smiled and looked towards me as though she were impressing my features on her memory for the next occasion when she saw me, the occasion which I wish had never come. Hypatia left like a delightful
dream which gladdened a sad man’s heart for a moment, then faded forever.

At the theatre door I stood lost in thought as she mounted her two-horse carriage. The train of her embroidered robe was the last I saw of her, and the last beautiful thing I saw for days to
come. When her carriage disappeared from sight, I was back to my loneliness and anxiety. I had nowhere to go. For a moment I stood helpless, everything jumbled up inside me. With heavy steps I
turned towards the big garden, and when the sun rose high in the sky I went back to the tree under which I had slept the night before. Under it and around it many people were taking cover from the
midday sun, and among them was something I never expected to see: a group of my school colleagues from Naga Hammadi, all of them in ecclesiastical garments.

As soon as they saw me they gathered around me, delighted at my surprise arrival, though it was in fact they who took me by surprise. They asked me what brought me here and I said I was lost.
They asked me about my church clothes and I said they were torn and dirty and I was keeping them in my bag until I could mend and wash them, and to save myself from ridicule by the pagans. They
asked me where I was going and I said I had a letter for the priest Yoannes the Libyan. They knew him and led me to him, and so for the first time I entered the great Church of St Mark in
Alexandria, the Church of the Wheat Seed, surrounded by eight monks.