Pyramid Texts Read online

  First published in 2007 by

  The American University in Cairo Press

  113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt

  420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018

  www.aucpress.com

  Copyright © 1994 by Gamal al-Ghitani

  First published in Arabic in 1994 as Mutun al-ahram

  Protected under the Berne Convention

  Translation copyright © 2007 by Humphrey Davies

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Dar el Kutub No. 1534/06

  eISBN: 978 161 797 148 8

  1 2 3 4 5 6 13 12 11 10 09 08 07

  Designed by Sally Boylan/AUC Press Design Center

  Printed in Egypt

  This translation is dedicated to the leaders and members of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, which provided the perfect setting and company for its drafting.

  A First Text

  Anticipation

  When the boy first came to know him, the man was still at the beginning of his quest, though the boy only became fully informed as to his story once it was over. Between the beginning and the end long years elapsed, years that continue to echo and stretch ahead, like the man’s presence, even though he ceased to be there beyond a shadow of a doubt from that moment at which it became no longer possible to meet with him and talk to him.

  In spite of this, he is certain that the man is there, that he can go at any time and will find him. At widely separated, unconnected instants, the man haunts his memory, his presence so strong his hands can almost touch him and his ears almost hear him. He is, however, most closely tied to certain places, which the boy cannot pass without sensing him.

  The memory cannot recall a given moment disassociated from a given place

  There are moments during a day in winter, or in the fall, or in summer, at which he appears, smiling gently, his body well-built, his back straight, his chest out. During all the long years, he never changed the way he sat, or the direction of his eyes and his gaze, even when talking to others, or that expression of amazement that was always bursting unbidden from his lips, as though he had just that moment beheld a wonder.

  Many places evoked him, the most important among them al-Azhar and its surroundings—the sidewalk next to the Barbers’ Gate, which led to the broad space that contained the courtyard; the surrounding columns; the sundial on the west side; the overlooking halls of the different student nations; the shadows; the awesome dignity of the passing shaykhs; and the breath of the Righteous Ones who, having known, had stayed and loved.

  Love without knowledge is impossible

  The moments themselves stretch back to his boyhood, to his earliest time, when all was promise and looking forward was natural, what everybody did. To that sidewalk he came as a boy of fewer than ten years, crossing to reach it the square of al-Husayn. There was no barrier then dividing the street and the place was all of one piece and more deeply familiar. Nearby ended the line of the No.19 streetcars, with their frowning and melancholy exteriors, which stare out at him now from a place deep within his over-burdened memory—their paint a pale yellow, the wheels black, the headlights deep-set.

  How did he discover the way to him?

  He cannot specify exactly how, or be sure of anything. Perhaps it happened while he was roaming with his companions after leaving the nearby intermediate school. Crossing the square of al-Husayn, or that of the House of the Judge, they would start exploring the world, but when they came to al-Ataba Square or the Opera House, they dared go no further unless accompanied by their parents and relatives, though those places were close enough by their present standards.

  Everything is relative

  If he were to measure the wonder he felt then against what he feels today, his crossing of al-Azhar Street would be the equivalent of going to the North Pole now, or to the edges of Siberia, or the Bering Straits. Indeed, scarcely any power today exists that can provoke in him the shudders of yearning and apprehension that he used then to feel on traversing any mysterious passageway.

  Beginnings are always of great moment, and are never repeated

  Beginnings are an instant, one containing place and time. Certain points can be fixed; others get lost in the totality of the dissolving structure. That is why it is impossible to specify a particular day for his first sight of Shaykh Tuhami. How did he find his way to him? There is no sure answer, except to say that he was one of the first he had contact with and dealt with without intermediary, at that early age. The shaykh displayed old books for sale, arranging them next to the ancient gray wall, books with many different titles—books of law, commentaries and histories, novels printed in this century or the last. He sat on stacks of books secured with strong cord, the palms of his hands touching between his knees. He would write the prices in pencil on the back covers and he never argued or discussed, but if the customer proposed a lower price, and this seemed to be due to a lack of means, he would simply nod and give him the book for whatever he could pay. If, however, he detected any sign of disdain, he would give him a harsh look.

  Day is born of night and night emerges from day

  He would regard him in silence, kindly. Having satisfied himself as to the seriousness, despite his young age, of the boy’s interest, the man would suggest something to him, guide him. The boy would take the book, sit down on the other side, and not get up again until he had finished. Often imaginary worlds would consume him and he would not come to his senses again until the waning of the light, the setting of the sun, and the approach of the men charged with lighting the high lamps that looked down on the street, who would prop up their slender ladders and climb quickly to the top holding long sticks that ended in a kind of globe. Every day he followed their progress with interest, and never has he looked upon a street lamp in any city he was visiting or on any bridge he was crossing without immediately recalling the features of those anonymous fleeting figures.

  They are for visiting, not for dwelling in

  Such moments never come to him without his recalling the shaykh’s posture, his mysterious smile, and how he would gaze westwards as though waiting for news, or expecting something to come to him from that quarter, or following some matter hidden to all but him. In those days the sky over the city was clear, sharp, and someone standing on the Muqattam Hills could, if his eyesight were good, count the stones of the pyramids.

  The pyramids—Shaykh Tuhami’s goal, the center of his interest, the focus of his thoughts, the reason for his presence in the city. In this spot, from his place on the sidewalk, he would circumambulate them and scrutinize their features, indifferent to the numerous buildings erected in the intervening space that prevented his eyes from actually falling on the towering structures.

  Sometimes the mind will see what the eye cannot, and sometimes the eye will grasp what the mind cannot

  Often he would see sundry presences, even though these were distant and lay beyond the compass of the eye. Often he would be unaware of the manifestations of the physical world, even though these stayed long before him. He was not alone in this, nor was it something peculiar to him; indeed, it is common to all.

  He said that one standing at the top of the middle minaret of al-Azhar could take in the most precise view of the pyramids of the west.

  Has any person seen, or any ancient text spoken of, pyramids in the east?

  Limpid clarity obtained twice a day, at sunrise and sunset. Despite the minaret of Muhammad Bey Abu Dhahab being so close that one standing on its balcony could, without raising his voice, converse with another looking down o
n him from the minaret of al-Azhar, the pyramids looked different from there. For years he observed every detail at each of the five times preceding the prayers, three of them in the blaze and brilliance of the light, once as night gathered and fell, and once again as it weakened and approached its extinction. Five times a day he would climb the spiral stair, wide enough to allow only one to pass. Many still speak of the power of his voice, of how it would reach the most distant ear, how it would flood the vast spaces. It spoke of how he saw the pyramids, and of how their appearance changed throughout the hours of night and day.

  Can you see them at night?

  He would run his thin, long fingers through his triangular beard. The pyramids were always with him. When he could not see them with his eyes, he beheld them with his heart. The more one concentrated the clearer they became, whether at dusk or dawn, and he who persisted, he who lived in perpetual weakness, agitation, and despair, saw wonders.

  What seems clear on one occasion is obscure on others, and what is ambiguous at one time becomes plain at another

  This is the most he would say concerning seeing and not seeing. He did not say why he had attached himself to al-Azhar. He gave no details, did not say what science he studied, or where—in the halls of which nation—he lodged.

  He would overflow with speech, sentence upon sentence, if the talk was of the pyramids, but was meager, grudging, when it turned to himself. These silences and eruptions of his excited the boy to guesswork, to attempts to fathom the matter that never ceased through the different phases of his acquaintance with the man and brought him to conclusions that, over time, became certainties. Thus he became convinced that the shaykh had attached himself to al-Azhar for some reason that had to do with the pyramids, and that his failure to complete his studies was likewise connected to them. In either case, he was not his own master, was not free to choose or refuse.

  He who asks is ignorant, but does he who answers have knowledge?

  It is impossible to be certain. Sometimes one can only ask and lose oneself among endless interpretations. Was it his purpose in attaching himself to al-Azhar to pore over the manuscripts preserved in the Depository of Aqbugha? Or the Library of Taybars? Or within one of the halls of the various student nations? If so, what had kept him from those documents during his sojourn near the pyramids? Any person could take himself off to the libraries of al-Azhar and consult whatever he wished. Or was there word of some manuscript that could be made available only to one who stayed and readied himself? Was what he sought concealed within the minaret, so that the perfection of his call to prayer, the beauty of his voice, the power of its cry, and the quavering sweetness of its tones—all of which had become so familiar to the many who would wait for him to ascend, direct his gaze toward the west, raise his hands, press his fingers against the tips of his ears, and give tongue—all constituted a form of pleading?

  Was his contemplation of the pyramids even intentional?

  If he had wanted a high place, he could have gone to the Muqattam, where he could have frequented the Mosque of al-Juyushi, at its peak, or the Mosque of the Seven Grandchildren. Was he searching for some hidden cache?

  He who perseveres arrives, and he who crosses the barrier of time sees all

  When the boy first made his acquaintance, the shaykh frequented the sidewalk near the main, or Barbers’, gate, beneath which were preserved the ancient manuscripts with their thick leather bindings, and he would leave it only for the Greater and the Lesser feasts, when, days ahead of time, the security forces would surround the whole area out of solicitude for the Leader, who on these occasions always prayed in the nearby mosque of Our Master al-Husayn. To tell the truth, they treated him kindly and respectfully and spared him the harsh words and treatment they meted out to the itinerant peddlers and loafers who haunted the spot. Gathering up his books, he would leave in silence for no one knew where.

  The boy never asked, though the sight of the empty sidewalk would stir up in him an early sense of loss whose echoes and resonances remain still. He always asks himself, at what stage did the man judge himself to be, at what way station on the path of his struggle to comprehend the pyramids, when he came across him?

  The attainment of the stages is relative

  It was only some years later, after their relationship had deepened and their two souls grown close, that the man informed the boy of the reason for his coming to Cairo. Then he told him that he was from Morocco, his origins going back to a tribe that lived in the southern Sahara, whence his dark complexion and tight kinky hair. He had been born in a city close to the mountains, though it lay in a valley so well guarded that a person might reach its perimeter, be only meters from it, and still not see its buildings, streets, squares, and crossroads till he found himself actually among them.

  A word, or a look, or a nod may deflect a destiny and change the course of a life

  As a child in pursuit of the sciences, wisdom, and literature, he had frequented a shaykh who had made a circuit of the lands of the east and entered those of the Blacks, and he kept this man company until he reached adolescence, until the day on which he learned that a pilgrim caravan was about to depart. Seized by yearning, he consulted his shaykh, who blessed his resolve and confirmed him in it. Then the youth departed, covering stage after stage of the route, impelled not by his own intention but by the command he felt to make the pilgrimage and visit the Prophet’s tomb. Obedient to God’s call, he reached the Hijaz in the pilgrim’s consecrated state. There he circumambulated the Kaaba, ran between al-Marwa and al-Safa, drank from the well of Zamzam, stood upon Mount Arafat, prayed, and returned with the throngs to Mecca, remaining with them and keeping them close company. Certain moments held a particular poignancy for him: that when his eyes first fell on the Kaaba, swathed in its black robe, and when he beheld the people, their garments white in the darkness of the night, heading toward al-Muzdalifa, the ravines leading to it overflowing, the silent mountains looking down. All this, however, was as nothing compared to what he felt when he attended on the tomb of the Chosen One in al-Madina.

  He returned with his party, and as soon as he reached the Valley of Zamm after his long absence, and before seeking rest, he ran to his wise shaykh to tell him all that had befallen him. After listening for a long while, the shaykh suddenly said to him:

  “Tell me about the pyramids and what you saw of them.”

  The young man stammered and hesitated. Then he said:

  “I did not see them with my own eyes that I should speak of them, and I cannot say anything truthful about them.”

  The shaykh averted his face, saying:

  “I think little of the zeal of a student of science and wisdom who does not aspire, does not yearn, to see hidden wonders with his own eyes. Did you not twice pass through Cairo?”

  He nodded that that was so. His shaykh said:

  “Was there not between you and them no more than a horse’s gallop, or a single pull on the oars of a skiff? If that was not a failure of zeal, then what are we to call it?”

  Then he turned his back on him and bowed his head, and the young man was left with no choice but to turn and leave. However, from that moment on, no place where he resided seemed good to him, no place where he lay down brought him ease, and he realized that his days in the place of his birth had come to an end, that the years of settled life had passed, and that he had to depart.

  All things are from nothing

  For a second time he left the Valley of Zamm, but it was a different, distinct, exodus. The first time had had a term, and recognized stages. The second was a progress toward an incomprehensible unknown. In the first there had been an impulse that sprang from deep inside him. In the second he seemed to be compelled, albeit he was also content, and had a challenge: he had to bring back to his shaykh something the latter had not heard before, something that those who had gone before, even those who had seen the pyramids with their own eyes and left detailed accounts of them in their writings, had not known. In
this spirit he pressed onward, passing by villages and cities he had not previously seen, staying as a guest with people of whose identity he was ignorant, welcomed by people he did not know. When he reached the shore of Giza, he inspected numerous pyramids. He looked at them from different distances and at varying times. His shaykh had not specified a particular pyramid; he asked about them all. He became attached to the largest, never parting from it from the moment of his arrival in Nazlat al-Samman, the small village inhabited by former nomads who roamed around the pyramids in search of their livelihood and other profit. When he came, there were no built-up areas nearby. The road was broad and crowded, and on either side were fields interspersed with small houses and a scattering of people, who appeared, in the wide spaces, like squiggles of writing. The presence of the pyramids was overwhelming, powerful, and framed all other things. He was unequipped with any address, was not in search of any particular person, specific place, or given institution. Being at the door of God’s mercy, these things did not concern him. Nothing disturbed his slumbers, for he had an inner certainty that he would never lack for a place in which to take shelter from the loneliness of the night and the cruelty of solitude, and that he would never go without a morsel of food to satisfy his hunger. He was driven, indifferent to everything but what he needed to help him know the pyramids, so that after one day, one month, one year, he could return and, appearing at a certain moment before his shaykh in the quiet that enveloped the Valley of Zamm by night, tell him all that he had gathered by way of knowledge. He felt a certainty that it was difficult for him to describe or grasp that the whole matter would not take long and that the day would come when he would set off for the west, for the return. It would take, he thought, no more than a year.

  Man is unaware that he is always traveling, both when moving and when still

  When he alighted at the small village close to the feet of the Sphinx, he saw the white minaret that rose high above the houses, pointing to that place all may enter without invitation or hierarchy. At first, his appearance excited no curiosity. They were performing their prayers and when they had done, he sought out their imam, being now thin, confident, contented acceptance of God’s will written on his face.