Azazeel (25 page)

SCROLL THIRTEEN

T
he day I saw this monastery for the first time it seemed to stand where the earth meets the sky. It was winter at the time and the cool breezes of
the day’s end were blowing away the weariness of travel and infusing a mysterious splendour into the world. We climbed the hill to the monastery, pushing the mules a little harder. I was
hoping that this would be my last stop. I had tired of constantly moving and the time had come for me to find a refuge for the rest of my life and enjoy some peace of mind for a time. Then I would
die a quiet death and my soul would slip away from the tumult and commotion of this world to the serenity of the heavens. The monastery looked like the last stopping place on my incessant travels,
which had gone on so long that I was no longer at ease anywhere. I thought the will of God had finally brought me here, but later I realized that this was just the imagination of an exhausted
man.

The monastery is what is left of an old building which might go back to pre-Roman times, certainly a long time. Some of the monks here think that at first it was probably a castle or the home of
a forgotten leader. But because I am familiar with the temples in my native country, those which are still standing and those which are ruins from the centuries which have elapsed, I am sure the
monastery building was a temple in former times. In fact it was a magnificent temple. This is what the scattered stones suggest, as well as the fine marble altar around which they built the
monastery’s big church. The ruins of temples have a special aura which an Egyptian like me cannot mistake.

I have not told anyone here what I believe about the origins of the place, and anyway they are not very interested in history here. They are concerned only with the present and whatever stares
them in the eye, and perhaps they are justified in that, or lucky. As for me, when I am in seclusion I have often thought of past times when this place was full of people who believed in the old
god. I thought of them and of the god, and the thoughts distressed me – everything is transient, everything on the face of the earth disappears, except the great pyramids of Egypt, which
refuse to disappear. Even if the base of the pyramid is invisible under the sands, we can see the rest of the pyramid protruding from the sands and we can be sure that the pyramid is there, however
much of it is buried. What happened to the gods for whom they built the pyramids, and to the old god who was worshipped on the site of this monastery for hundreds of years past? Where is that god
now, after everything that has come to pass?

After long reflection I realized that the various gods are not to be found in temples or other impressive buildings. They live in the hearts of the people who believe in them, and as long as
those people are alive, their gods live through them. If the people die out, the gods are buried with them, just as the god Khnum died after the death of my father, and the last few priests who
were besieged in the big temple at the south of Elephantine Island must all have died by now and their temple must have been demolished or been converted into a church for a new god. At the trial
of Jesus the Messiah, a man bore false witness against him, saying, ‘This fellow said: “I am able to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days.”’ But they did not
understand that the temple was Jesus the Messiah himself, who really did destroy their temple, then rebuilt it when he rose from the dead after three days. We also did not understand what Jesus
meant when he referred to the Apostle Peter, saying, ‘On this rock I will build my church’, because we did not grasp that every church ever built or yet to be built must be based on the
apostolic mission of Peter and his faith, which knew no doubt even if it had times of weakness. For, as it is written, Peter denied Jesus the Messiah three times in one night, and Jesus had
foretold what he would do, without rebuking him for the denials he would make or for the fact that Peter would shy away from helping him. Jesus did not want his help, but rather redemption and
sacrifice, so what good would Peter’s help have been and what harm did his denial do?

I denied Hypatia in the face of her killers and I denied myself for three days with Octavia, because I was afraid. Fear now comes naturally to me, from the day they killed my father in front of
me. And today, why should I fear death? I should rather be afraid of life, because it is more painful. And why does not faith falter from time to time, like a summer cloud that scatters and
vanishes, delicate and shadowless? I will never build a church and no church will ever be built on me, because I am not a rock like Peter the Apostle and because my faith is tainted by many
doubts.

What led me to say all this? What was I saying in the first place? Oh yes, this monastery which aspires to heaven, and the first days I spent here. I was describing the place and I should go
back to the story I was telling.

The monastery stands on the top of a high hill, surrounded by other hills and plains. The gate is an opening in an old wall which partially surrounds an open space with old
Roman columns, some still standing and others in pieces on the ground. The monastery entrance is on the southern side, with a steep climb up the hill, while on the other three sides there is no
slope either up or down, just a steep drop which makes the monastery look like a balcony with vistas to the north, east and west as far as the eye can see. Below the monastery on the southern side
there is a small village with houses scattered chaotically, about thirty houses all nestling at the foot of the hill. At the start of the slope leading up to the gate on the right-hand side there
are rooms of the kind that soldiers live in, and on the day after I arrived I found out it was the base for a contingent of ten Roman soldiers who have been living below the monastery for years to
protect it, after it was the target of many attacks by thieves and highwaymen. Imagine how wicked they must be, to attack a monastery and rob monks who had already renounced all the possessions of
this world!

At the foot of the slope on the left-hand side, where the hill is less steep, there are green expanses of land in the form of broad terraces, with an abandoned cottage in the middle. The dry
trees surrounding the cottage and the withered bushes around it and above it show that this land was cultivated in the past in the ancient Babylonian manner, as with the Hanging Gardens. But where
did they get the water needed to irrigate the plants, or did they perhaps rely solely on the rains? I wondered about this as I climbed the slope, and I found out the answer later.

Nobody stopped me as I climbed towards the monastery or when I walked in. The open space at the entrance was bounded on the western side by an old rectangular building of white stone, which
appeared at first sight to be separate from the monastery. That is the building which I would convert into a library once I had settled in. On the left of the entrance, on the western side, several
buildings stood together: the main church, then a large storeroom, then a two-storey building which, judging by its appearance, provided rooms for the monks and underneath, on the ground floor, a
guestroom, a small kitchen and a large dining hall. On the side opposite these buildings there was a chicken run and next to it a stable roofed with palm fronds, with three donkeys and many goats
and sheep. On the left as one crossed the square there was an empty area strewn with old stones and the capitals of broken columns, where the prickly boxthorn grows. On this northern side of the
monastery stands the little church, next to a large detached room which I knew at first sight was the abbot’s room.

At the end of the square on the eastern side stood a building like a closed box, large and mysterious, which they called the citadel. The building is about three storeys high but it has
absolutely no windows or doors, just a smooth wall with only a small hole at the top, hardly big enough for a person to pass through bending down, if he were to climb the steps of the ladder which
hangs down from the hole. The ladder is made of plaited rope, with wooden runners so that it can be rolled up when necessary. The roof of the building is in the form of a large dome steep on all
sides and so smooth it would be impossible to stand still on it. I may have more to say about this building later.

After we went through the monastery gateway, which had no gate, the servant unloaded my luggage in the middle of the square and asked me to wait while he informed the monastery people of my
arrival. While I was gazing out at the plain which stretches away from the western edge of the monastery, where the paved road to Antioch can be seen, one of the monks came up and greeted me, and
told me that the abbot would meet me in a while in the refectory. The refectory was an old dilapidated building roofed with palm trunks and fronds. The stones of the walls are carefully laid but
there are cracks in the edges. An earthquake must have struck in this region long ago, bringing down the building which was standing here, and these parts that remained became a monastery.

The abbot came into the hall with two monks of kindly Antiochian appearance. The faces of the monks here are friendly, unlike those of Egyptian monks, which are hard and sickly from excessive
fasting and from the predominant colour of the silt which the Nile flood brings every summer. The abbot is a venerable man not yet so elderly, with a quiet voice and a calm manner, and dignified.
His face beamed when he read the letter from Nestorius the priest and at once he welcomed me to join them.

After dinner a young monk rose and took me to the room which I described when I started writing. He sat with me for an hour, quietly explaining to me the way of life in the monastery. The way of
life is not very different from the way of life practised in most monasteries – a little work during the day, and many prayers and hymns for most of the time. I wanted to ask the monk about
the mysterious building at the far end of the monastery compound, but I preferred to bide my time.

My first days in the monastery were quiet and pleasant. I spent my time reading and worshipping, and my soul was at peace. The reverend Nestorius was right: this monastery suited me in
mysterious ways which I could sense but not rationalize. The only thing that troubled me was that massive and silent building with the domed roof and the mysterious aura, standing alone at the far
eastern edge of the monastery. With the passage of days I learnt some things about it, but even more things were impossible to discover. They said they called it the citadel because in the past the
monks took refuge there from constant raids by robbers. They would spend the night inside and preserve their goods and their lives within its walls. They would go in and out of this safe womb using
the ladder hanging from the opening high up. It was not in fact solid but contained rooms linked by corridors, and in the base were buried the monks who had passed away over the last hundred years,
which was the age of the monastery. I was also told that they built this protective building on top of the cemetery seventy years ago to share in the spiritual power of those buried. The building
has four secret floors rather than three, with a stone stairway that snakes up through the middle, linking the ground to the ceiling by way of the four floors. The stairway has one opening at the
top which can be closed from inside with a thick block of copper.

They said in whispers that about fifty years ago the monks stayed inside the dark building a whole month while the robbers besieged them and camped out in the big church, but the robbers found
no way to storm the monks’ refuge. Many astonishing miracles took place during that month. The first and most amazing was that the face of Christ appeared three nights in succession in the
full moon, and the last of them was that the robbers woke up in alarm during their last night, drew their swords and started to fight each other, driven by a terrifying frenzy. They did battle
until they killed one another, and in the morning their bodies were strewn across the open space in front of the big church. All of them died within one hour and there were more than twenty of
them. Everyone here confirms this story and swears that the abbot witnessed it himself when he was a young boy.

The building and the stories about it puzzled me. I imagined the interior in the form of corridors coiled around each other as in an ant colony, but built above ground and overlooking on the
southern, western and northern sides a deep chasm which no one could climb from the plains below the high hill of the monastery. I had a notion to enter the building but I did not tell anyone, and
I never saw anyone else go in throughout the time I was there. They say here that after the contingent of Roman troops came twenty years ago the raids stopped and the troops spared the monks the
trouble of constant fear and hiding all the time. No one goes into the building any longer, except when one of the monks dies, when they bury him in the cemetery at the base. No one has died here
in the past five years so I have not had the chance to go in with them or even to see them go in. I have been told, secretly and indirectly, that in a secret room in the building the abbot keeps
the nails which were hammered into the hands and feet of Jesus the Messiah when he was crucified in Jerusalem, and that these nails glow at night, and that when they hid in the building the monks
used that light to see in the dark. This is what they whispered to me two years after I settled in the monastery.