Azazeel (26 page)

Weeks after I arrived the abbot asked me to spend part of each day in the building on the left as one comes in through the dilapidated gate. The building consists of a single large hall on the
western side of the monastery. He said he would set the building aside as a clinic for any sick people who might come from the nearby houses and villages. He said I could also turn it into a
library where I could arrange my books and some of the other books which were piled up in boxes in the room next to the refectory. I liked the idea and at first I spent long days there without any
patients coming. I took the opportunity to have a look at my books again and browse through the books which I took out of the boxes. Most of them were New Testaments and prayer books. I arranged
the books on wooden shelves which the village carpenter skilfully made, just as I had commissioned, all along the western wall opposite the side with the window overlooking the level inner
courtyard of the monastery. I organized the books by subject: medicine and pharmacy first, then history and literature, and before all else books on Christianity. In the middle of the hall the
carpenter successfully repaired the table and chairs, and so I ended up with the library of which I had long dreamed. I was at ease there because it was as far as possible from the mysterious and
frightening building which lay right on the other side.

Two days before the carpenter finished his work we were at the door of the big church after the end of Sunday mass and a plump boy of about fifteen was sitting on a stone in the corner of the
open space which stretches from the monastery buildings to my own building on the western side. The abbot called him and he came running up, happy for no particular reason. The abbot told me I
could use the boy’s help in the work of the library and treating the sick, and he suggested that he hoped the boy would learn useful things from me. I nodded my head in consent and after
invoking a blessing for us he added, ‘He’ll be helpful to you, because he’s a good boy and his name is Deacon.’

I smiled when I heard the boy’s name, Deacon. His appearance and age did not suggest he was a deacon. Was he given that name in the hope that one day he would become one? At the goat pen I
asked the boy and he told me the abbot gave him that name when he was still a baby. I was surprised and the boy seemed to have no objection to telling me more. I sat on the wall overlooking the
plain to the west and the boy told me how they found him as a baby at the door of the big church one Sunday morning. He was two days old and so weak that he did not have the strength to cry. The
abbot offered him to the local Christian women, for one of them to take him but none of them was willing. But a poor woman, one of the initiates, volunteered to breastfeed him twice a day, and the
wife of the village priest volunteered to give him shelter in her house. So they joined forces to help him and the abbot gave him the name Deacon.

‘The mother I never knew abandoned me because she was afraid,’ said the boy.

I was amazed at the simplicity with which the boy told his story, without any regret or shame, as though he were telling an ordinary tale which could happen to anyone. That was the first lesson
I learnt in this monastery and it was very useful in a mysterious way. We have no need to be ashamed of things imposed upon us, whatever they be, as long as we were not responsible for them. To a
great extent that helped me forget what my mother had done to me in my childhood, and what I had done and had not done because of my fear and my weakness.

Deacon the plump boy became my assistant in all my work, and as the days passed I discovered that he really was a good boy, with a pure heart. Together with the monk we called Pharisee, he
worked hard to help me organize and clean up the books until the place became worthy of the name library.

Several months after moving here I settled down and began to feel that this monastery was my final resting place. At that time I was about thirty-five years old. I was still a young man with
high ambitions. In those days I was in the habit of saying my prayers in the dead of night, then joining the other monks at mass. When they all made their way to their work, I made my way to the
library and would leave it only to go to prayers.

At the beginning of my stay here the monks would insist that I join them for lunch and I would decline, saying that I made do with one meal a day. The ascetic life I lived had taught me to
survive on very little food. The abbot too ate only one meal a day. He is a man pure in spirit, cheerful and energetic, and spends most of his time in prayer and preaching. He sleeps little and he
talks to the villagers who visit the monastery in a friendly tone full of love. The people in the village below the monastery and in the neighbouring villages know his worth and are well disposed
towards him.

The first patient to visit me for treatment was a relative of the abbot and a childhood companion of his, several years his junior. He had chosen the life of a farmer and in his youth he and his
father had improved a swathe of land on the plains which stretched north of the monastery. Then he and his family lived deep in the countryside. The man was more than sixty years old and suffered
from such constant nausea and vomiting that he had lost much weight and his strength had declined. I took his pulse and it was weak. I examined his urine and stool and determined that he was
suffering from gastric debility and indigestion. I treated him with mild restoratives for the intestines and stomach and forbade him foods that are hard to digest, without forcing him to make too
many changes to his usual diet. After his digestion had recovered, I gave him a powder made of bitter berries which grow in Egypt, mixed with seeds which have an astringent effect on the stomach
and strengthen it by removing the moisture. In treating him I did not observe the medical principle which people often propound these days and attribute to Galen, I mean the principle that every
patient must be treated only with plants that grow locally. I do not believe it is correct and I have never seen it confirmed in any book. After four weeks the man had completely recovered and was
back in good health. After his recovery the man came to the monastery bringing many presents from the bounty of his land. My prestige rose among the monks and the abbot was happy.

After I had been here four months there arrived at the monastery three large trunks containing the books which Bishop Theodore of Mopsuestia had promised me in Jerusalem that he would have
copied. I was quite delighted by the books and began with pleasure to arrange them in the empty spaces on the shelves. I had an enjoyable time reading them. I would spend a long time among the
books and when night came I would fall asleep seated in the library. In my room I kept the books which were banned and those which were not permitted to the general public: in all about a hundred
books and scrolls. Those in the library amounted to more than a thousand. The books donated by Bishop Theodore included his own commentary on the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, a complete
set of the twelve books of Hippocrates, and fourteen of the sixteen books known as
The Compendium of the Alexandrians
because the ancient doctors of Alexandria extracted it from
Galen’s epistles and scattered fragments.

As the days and months passed people came to know me, and patients began to trickle into the monastery from the surrounding regions seeking medical treatment from me. Most of them recovered
through the mercy of the Lord and good medicine, and I became famous in the nearby villages and towns. Sometimes their doctors would ask my advice, I mean their novice doctors. When the abbot
visited me he would often tease me, saying, ‘Blessed Hypa, you came to this monastery as a physician monk, and now you are a monk physician.’ He told me that many times in jest and with
a broad smile. One day I answered that I was also a poet, and he laughed and said, ‘Be a good physician and after that be what you want to be.’ He seemed to sense my distress at what he
said, and he tried to placate me by insisting that I read him some of my poetry. He surprised me when he told me that he loved literature, that he read Cicero’s speeches and had memorized
long passages of them. Without thinking, I said, ‘Cicero was a pagan, father!’

‘Yes, but he was very eloquent and gifted by the Lord. St Clement, one of the revered early fathers, loved to read his works.’

‘But father, he used to reproach himself for that, and it is said that in a dream he heard a voice rebuke him, saying, “Clement, you are a Ciceronian, not a
Christian.”’

‘These things, Hypa, reflect one’s inner struggles and the spirit’s constant agitation, which flares up and then dies down. Enough of that for now. Won’t you read me your
poems?’

‘Tomorrow, reverend father, I will read you some.’

‘So until tomorrow, if the Lord so wills.’

The abbot usually speaks in Greek, but he also speaks Syriac perfectly and sometimes he speaks in that language. Most of the people in these parts know the two languages but the abbot has a
profound knowledge of them both. He simplifies his language when he speaks with the ordinary believers, though his sermons and speeches are eloquent and elegantly phrased. What he does not express
in words he usually expresses with his eyes and hand movements, and he always deals with his monks, who revere him, using looks and gestures. I went into his room several times when I first settled
in the monastery and I never saw any books there. When I had discussions with him I discovered that he recalled quotations from memory without consulting or looking at books. I do not mean the
Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles because of course he knew them by heart. But the strange thing was that he remembered many pages of the diaries of the early fathers and could recite from
memory the resolutions passed by the holy synods. He even remembered Cicero’s speeches! He is a truly holy man, and puzzling. When did he read all these works? And why doesn’t he read
now? Was he really one of the monks who holed up for a full month in that building, fifty years ago? Why not, because he is about seventy years old, and if the date of the event is correct it would
have happened when he was in his twenties. Tomorrow I will ask him, after I have read him my poems. That is what I intended to do that day but destiny had something else in mind for us. The next
morning, while I was sitting in the library, sorting out my poems and choosing the ones to read to him, I heard the sound of approaching footsteps from behind the door. The sound on the gravel
suggested there were four or five people coming and I thought they were monks come to hear my poems with the abbot, but it was not the abbot.

It was an unexpected delight when the door opened and, beaming with pleasure, in came the good father, the pure Christian spirit, the reverend priest Nestorius.

‘Good morning, Hypa, I’ve come specially to see you,’ he said.

‘Welcome, reverend father, what a blessed occasion, by the Virgin Mother.’

A group of people came in behind him, trailing their solemn ecclesiastical garments. Judging by their clothes they were all from Antioch. The abbot came in with them, and behind him three of the
most senior monks in the monastery. We all sat down on the twelve chairs surrounding the table. They were a holy gathering and I was delighted when the abbot said, ‘The reverend Nestorius is
on his way to Aleppo to renovate the parish church and offices and he asked me about you as soon as he came through the monastery gate, and he would not sit down until he saw you.’

‘This is a great honour on his part, and on your part, reverend father,’ I said.

At noon two monks came in carrying plates. It was the first time anyone other than I had eaten in this large hall since I turned it into a library. The conversation ranged far and wide and the
priests and monks joined in until Nestorius sent them off to rest from the day’s journey and prepare for the next day’s trip. When the three of us were alone – Nestorius, the
abbot and I – he said he was delighted to hear that my reputation as a physician had spread among the people of the region. ‘Some of those in Antioch mention you with goodwill,
affection and admiration for your skill, although you have not yet spent a year here,’ he said, ‘and the brothers there have asked me to suggest you move to Antioch, if you want, and I
told them I would repeat the offer to you, although you rejected it that day when we were in the house of the Lord in Jerusalem.’

‘I thank you for your kindness, your Grace the reverend bishop, but I am content here,’ I said.

‘So be it, but why haven’t you planted your medicinal seeds and herbs, if you intend to stay? Or does the good abbot prevent you?’

‘No, father, not at all. I haven’t discussed the matter with him yet.’

Nestorius gave the abbot a friendly look, paused, and then, adjusting his cap as he spoke, said we should set about cultivating the land without delay, because growing medicinal plants would
bring much benefit to my Christian patients. Then he reminded the abbot of the old disused well in the middle of the open space between the monastery buildings and the library, suggesting we use
the well water to irrigate the plants in summer. Nestorius looked towards me and said, ‘This holy monastery is on high ground and on both sides of the path leading up to it there are terraced
pieces of land that are good for farming. At the bottom one could grow plants indigenous to hot countries and at the top plants from cold countries.’

The abbot smiled and said, ‘Well, holy Nestorius, so you’re also an expert in agriculture.’

‘This, reverend father, is basic information, but I’m thinking of something big, as though we were building a hospital and a big church in this monastery,’ Nestorius said.

The abbot approved and endorsed the idea, but I was wary of it. I was still frightened of having people clamour around me and I felt like a stranger among them. Here I had found rest from the
commotion of the world but if what Nestorius wanted was to happen I would help bring it about, out of respect for him, and then I would move on to live in any nearby monastery and I would be happy
to stay away from other people. That’s what I thought at the time, but then events unfolded.