Azazeel (6 page)

‘Are you asleep, Hypa?’

I came to my senses, and was delighted when the priest Nestorius took me by surprise and sat next to me. I sat up straight and shook my head to say that I was not sleeping. In Syriac, not the
Greek which was his customary language, he asked me kindly, with intent to jest, ‘In which sea of thoughts were you drowning, good Egyptian?’

‘Father, strange thoughts sometimes assail me. I was wishing I could become this tree in the shade of which we are sitting.’

‘Where do these ideas come from, my child?’

‘From deep inside me, and from the distant past. Pythagoras used to say...’

‘Pythagoras! That’s part of the old pagan culture, Hypa.’

It troubled me that I was always so impetuous in his presence, but he relieved my embarrassment with a kindly gesture, touching my cap with his holy fingertips and starting to recite a psalm
under his breath. He closed his eyes as he made the sign of the cross on my head, which was covered with a cap decorated with crosses. In a whisper, as though he were addressing the angels of
heaven, he said, ‘You are blessed, Hypa, with the light of the Lord,’ and I calmed down.

‘Father, do you think that paganism is all evil?’ I asked.

‘God does not create evil or do evil, and evil does not please him,’ he replied. ‘God is all goodness and love, but people went astray in olden times when they imagined that
reason was enough to know the truth, without salvation coming to them from heaven.’

‘I’m sorry, reverend father, but Pythagoras was a good soul, although he lived in pagan times.’

‘That may be, because the time before the coming of Christ’s glad tidings was also a time of God, and God’s sunlight shines on both the good and the evil, and who knows, maybe
God in his omnipotence wanted to prepare mankind for the coming of the Saviour’s gospel through flashes of enlightenment which paved the way for Christ, and the closer the time approached the
more frequently the signs of his coming appeared, until there came the great sign, John the Baptist, the voice crying in the wilderness.’

I liked what he said, and saw in it a plausible answer to a problem which had long troubled me, by which I mean the mysterious connection between Jesus the Messiah and his cousin John the
Baptist. How was it feasible that John the Baptist, as a human, could baptize God, or the Son of God, or the image of God, or the messenger of God, according to the various theories about him? I
asked Nestorius, ‘Master, do you believe that Jesus is God, or is He the messenger of God?’

‘The Messiah, Hypa, was born of man, and humans do not give birth to gods. How can we say that the Virgin gave birth to a god and how can we worship a child a few months old, just because
the Magi bowed down and worshipped him? The Messiah is a divine miracle, a man through whom God appeared to us. God became incarnate in Him to make of Him a harbinger of salvation and a sign of the
new age of mankind, as Bishop Theodore explained to us yesterday at that meeting where I saw you for the first time. By the way, why were you upset when the bishop referred to the mystery of
baptism?’

‘You are observant, father.’

‘That is not an answer.’

Nestorius made that last remark in jest, as though he wanted to put an end to the formality between us and encourage me to speak. That’s why I had no problem divulging to him one of my
biggest secrets, and I was pleased that my secret did not surprise him. I told him words to the effect that I had doubts about whether I was baptized, because my mother assured me she had me
baptized when I was an infant, but my father denied it, and I don’t remember that I went to church in my early childhood, so I find myself more inclined to believe my father. At the time I
did not want to tell Nestorius I had baptized myself, after I left Alexandria. I said, ‘It seems, father, that I was not baptized as a child.’ I expected that my words would surprise
him, but instead he surprised me, saying in a soft voice, ‘It’s not your fault. You must have been baptized, or you will be baptized, God willing. But how did you become a monk when you
had doubts about your baptism?’

‘For years I attended the big church in Akhmim, and my teacher the Akhmim priest deemed me suitable for the monastic life, and he initiated me when I begged him to. I had not told him of
my doubt about my baptism because I had forgotten the events of my childhood, or had chosen to forget them.’

‘No matter, Hypa, many besides you are baptized late, and some of them have become bishops with the passage of time. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan and Nectarius, the Bishop of
Constantinople, were baptized only on the day they were consecrated as bishops. The Emperor Constantine himself was baptized only on his deathbed, and he was called the Beloved of God, the Defender
of the Faith and the Ally of Jesus.’

I noticed that he mentioned the Christian titles of the Emperor Constantine in a tone that combined derision and sadness, and I wanted to hear from him more than he had disclosed. Proud of what
I knew and keen to understand more, I said that the emperor performed for Christianity momentous services which have lasted till our time, for in his age the people of our religion were a powerless
minority, no more than one tenth of the population of the Empire, and now they have become the majority in the Empire, both east and west, only one hundred years after the ecumenical council at
which this emperor presided. I added, ‘I mean, father, the Council of Nicaea at which Arius was excommunicated for saying the Messiah is human rather than divine and that God is One,
unaccompanied and undiluted in his divinity.’

‘You are truly devious, Hypa. What do you want to know from me, you clever physician, you monk who doubts his own baptism?’

I realized from his joking that he was not upset at what I said and would be happy to talk frankly about the mystery of this matter, which our clerics do not like to tackle. I was impatient to
know what he thought of the controversial Arius, whom the church of Alexandria hates more than it hates Satan himself. At first Nestorius tried to divert me from my intention by asking if I was
content living in Jerusalem. But I begged for a clear answer on what he really thought of Arius and his ideas. ‘Tell me the truth as you see it, reverend father,’ I implored him,
‘for you are shrewd of vision, god-fearing, pure in heart and judicious in reason, and my interest in knowing of this matter is great and keeps me awake at night.’

‘Fine, let’s get up and walk over to the lodge, because I’d like to check up on Bishop Theodore. I’ll tell you about Arius and his heresy while we’re on our
way.’

We did not take the direct route to the lodge, but went out of the church gate and walked to the right alongside the high wall, then crossed the open space that stretches from the end of the
church wall to the beginning of where the houses are clustered, on the eastern side of the city wall. This route was quieter and more pleasant, and further from the tumult. We were walking at a
steady pace, stopping sometimes when Nestorius was busy clarifying a subtle point, and so we arrived after an hour or more. On the way he told me things I hesitate to write down now, especially in
these dark and gloomy days.

Sleep is a divine gift without which the world would go raving mad. Everything in the universe sleeps, wakes up and sleeps again, except our sins and our memories, which have
never slept and will never subside. Today I awoke from a sleep full of dreams so strong they seemed like reality, or perhaps it is my reality that has collapsed and faded until it has turned into
dreams? I have started to feel the breath of death close by me, almost brushing me. Will I perhaps die in my sleep or in the church at prayer time? I think that my fear of the end, and not
Azazeel’s insistence, is what drives me to write. Or perhaps I want my voice to reach beyond whatever comes to an end with my death. Last month the oldest monk in this monastery died and was
buried there. He died on the threshold of the Lord, free of all sin. How will I die, and where?

Writing raises within us storms we have stifled, digs our memories out of their hiding places and brings to mind the most atrocious of happenings. In distant, receding periods
of my life my faith has consoled me and filled me with joy. But today gloom surrounds me on every side and tempests rage within me, strong enough to cut me adrift from all creation. What will be
the fate of Nestorius after all that has happened to him? Where, I wonder, will I go after I complete this chronicle? Will I again see my beloved Martha who has gone? I thought she had left me in
peace, but after she was gone I felt the sting of anxiety and the tremor of desire. I wish I had stopped her going to Aleppo and saved her from the danger of singing at night among the drunken
merchants and the villainous Arabs, and saved myself from what I am suffering now. Since she left I have never forgotten her tearful eyes, and my worry for her has not abated.

‘You are the reason, Hypa, you are the reason, because she begged you to save her from that, and to save yourself, but you did not dare.’

‘Azazeel!’

‘Yes, Hypa, the Azazeel who comes to you from within yourself.’

Thus is the trinity of my torment completed – my worry about the fate of Nestorius, my curiosity about the fate of Martha, and Azazeel’s sudden appearances. How long must I bear this
torment, and when will I be free of this triple affliction? O God, save me, for I...

‘Hypa, don’t be silly and carry on with what you were writing.’

‘And what was I writing?’

‘What Nestorius told you at the eastern wall of Jerusalem. Fear nothing, for writing will not make matters worse and I don’t think anyone will read what you write for years, so write
tonight, that you may be truly yourself. Who knows, poor man, maybe after your forty days of seclusion news will come that Nestorius turned defeat into victory. Perhaps you will see Martha again in
her lovely Damascene dress and take her with you when you depart, as expected. Perhaps you will find joy with her for the rest of your life and the anguish in your heart will abate.’

Azazeel has strong arguments and he usually wins me over. Or is it that I have emboldened him by tugging him towards myself, as he claims, with my constant hesitation and my
chronic worrying? In any case, there is no cause for concern. The morning is nigh, and there is nothing dangerous in what I am going to write now. This piece of parchment is almost full and only
this small space remains clear of ink. In it I shall write a summary of what I heard that day from Nestorius. I will write it in my own words, in Syriac, so that it is binding on me, not an
argument against him.

The reverend Nestorius said to me in Jerusalem that day, in his elegant Greek accent, ‘The truth is, Hypa, that it is all a fraud. Satan was the driving force behind everything that
happened a hundred years ago at the Council of Nicaea. By Satan I mean the devil in the form of temporal power, which goes to people’s heads. Then they challenge the authority of the Lord and
tear each other to pieces; then they lose heart and are scattered to the wind. Their passions overwhelm them and they act foolishly and violate the spirit of the faith in seeking to obtain the
vanities of the transient world. What happened in Nicaea, Hypa, was null and void through and through. Emperor Constantine was in such a hurry to declare his sovereign authority over all Christians
that he would not wait until his new city Constantinople was complete before calling the ecumenical council, so he held the council in nearby Nicaea.

‘A year earlier the emperor had been busy with a single purpose – to assert his authority through war on his former military comrades, and when the wars ended in their defeat, he
wanted to gain spiritual authority over his subjects, so he called the heads of all the churches to the ecumenical council, ran the sessions and interfered in the theological debate. Then he
dictated the resolutions to the bishops and priests who attended, though I don’t believe he ever read a single book of Christian theology. In fact he didn’t understand Greek, the
language in which the theological debate raged between the bishops in Nicaea, and basically he wasn’t interested in the theological dispute between Arius the priest and the bishop of
Alexandria of his time, Alexander. That’s clear from the emperor’s letters to them, in which he describes their disagreement over the nature of Jesus Christ as trivial, vulgar, foolish
and crass. He tells them they should keep their opinions to themselves and not bother people with them. The letter is famous and there are copies of it in the diocese.