Leonie (71 page)

“All right,” he’d agreed at last, “let’s go to Egypt and see this Temple of Ptah and the notorious statue of Sekhmet for ourselves. We’ll get it out of your system once and for all, Léonie.” It was
time Léonie was cured of her belief that Sekhmet ruled her destiny.

Léonie turned her gaze to the near bank, past the cluster of houseboats where red-tarbooshed servants were busy washing decks and polishing already-shining brass rails, to the desert landscape that was finally releasing its long-buried treasures and the secrets of its gods to an interested world. But not her secrets, not yet. They had been in Luxor for three days and she hadn’t yet been able to bring herself to visit the Temple of Ptah and the statue of Sekhmet. Why am I putting it off? she wondered. I keep telling myself it’s because I want to find out about my family first, so that I’ll feel more Egyptian, closer to my roots and my past. But was that the truth? Or was it fear? And if it is fear, then what am I afraid of?

“Léonie.” Jim appeared on deck, a cup of thick black coffee clutched in one hand. He grimaced as he tasted it, and took a seat next to her. “Well, what are our plans for today?”

“I thought we might see the Valley of the Kings—the tombs are supposed to be fascinating.”

His glance was skeptical. “No Sekhmet today?”

“Not today, Jim.”

He sipped his coffee. At least the tombs would be more interesting than struggling with uncomprehending bureaucrats in crumbling offices, where lethargic ceiling fans did nothing to dispel the overwhelming heat, but merely spread another layer of fine dust over the desiccated papers of centuries. Pyramids of papers heaped in piles on cabinets and floors, lurking in corners like toppling curled-edged towers. Maybe one of those brittle dusty papers contained the births and deaths of a family named Bahri, but he was pretty certain they would never find out.

“I thought we might go to some of the local villages,” said Léonie. “We could speak to people, ask them if they knew any families named Bahri.”

“I’ll get a guide who can interpret for us,” said Jim, “but I don’t want you to raise your hopes too high, Léonie. Promise me.”

Léonie knew it was only a remote possibility. “I promise,” she sighed.

Habib Yassin was only twenty-four but he was already an experienced guide. He was, as he told his clients, more at home in the
tombs and the temples of the past than he was in his own dwelling. “I was born in the wrong century,” he said, polishing his spectacles on his shirt as they made their way toward the Valley of the Kings. “I should have lived in the eighteenth dynasty—and maybe I did.”

Léonie looked at him curiously. “What do you mean, Habib?”

Habib placed the gleaming spectacles on his formidable nose. His eyes, round and dark as twin cherries, shone with enthusiasm from behind their thick lenses. “The ancient Egyptians believed that when you died you journeyed through the underworld and if you survived that journey you would be born again. I feel so at home in the ancient culture that sometimes I think that is what happened to me.” He grinned at Léonie cheerfully. “You’ll understand what I mean when you see the tombs.”

Nothing Habib had said, nor any pictures or books, could have prepared them for the immensity of what they saw. The great mortuary temples of King Montuholep II and Queen Hatshepsut loomed from the craggy background of the massive cliffs of Deir al-Bahri, awesome in their colossal scale and antiquity.

Jim held Léonie’s hand in his as Habib spun tales of 1100
B.C
. as though it were yesterday. It was impossible not to be overwhelmed by the brooding majesty of a place that was at once so ancient and yet so immediate.

Léonie peered through the dusty light of the tombs at the painted friezes. The colors glowed brightly, terra-cotta and coral, turquoise and gold.

“They are not merely stories and legends,” murmured Habib next to her. “These people lived. The kings ruled their lands, they had children and palaces and their special gods.” His finger pointed out the details of the frieze. “The man you see with oxen: he existed, he farmed that land, he owned those oxen … and he looked exactly the way you see him there.”

“I feel almost as if I knew them,” breathed Léonie.

“History is timeless because it lives on in all men,” said Habib. “We are all of us shaped by the events of the past.”

“Will you go with us, Habib?” asked Léonie suddenly. “To the villages. I have to find my own past.”

“Of course, madame.” He hesitated. Jim had explained her mission and he, too, felt it was fruitless. “But the villages are not what they once were. Many people left to find work in the cities. The
people are scattered now in Cairo and Alexandria. There is little left here but the dead.” His arm encompassed the tombs.

Léonie’s eyes met Jim’s. He shrugged, but said nothing. “We can at least try,” she said stubbornly. “And then tomorrow we’ll go to Karnak.”

And Sekhmet, thought Jim. At last.

Léonie lay on her bed staring at the ceiling. Only the rhythmic whirr of the ceiling fans and soft slap of the river against the houseboat disturbed the hot afternoon silence. Jim sprawled beside her, sleeping on his stomach, his naked body damp with sweat. She reached out a hand to touch him. It was too hot to lie close together as they usually did, and she missed the physical contact. Why had she brought him on this wild goose chase? She would never find her family, she knew it now. The villages had been depressing, the fly-ridden poverty overwhelming. Instead of bringing her closer to her roots, the images of black-garbed old women in baked-mud houses, now indelibly imprinted on her brain, had made her feel more alien than when it had all been just a vague dream. If that were her past, then she felt no part of it.

Cairo, yes, that she had understood: the city with its hot crowded streets and mysterious lonely alleyways, its souks full of splendors and spices and trashy souvenirs and ancient scarabs, and sinister stores whose narrow fronts led tunnellike into dim shadowy rooms, where they sold who knew what. And the city’s smart hennaed ladies whose dresses came from Paris, but whose cosmetics and perfumes were pounded and pressed right here in the souks, and the urbane businessmen, handsome in freshly pressed linen suits and panama hats, buying gold trinkets for fleshy mistresses from artisans who sat cross-legged on their mats fashioning exquisite earrings and necklets in complex ancient patterns.

Léonie sighed. She had felt a part of Cairo, but not this. She knew now what Habib had meant, the Valley of the Kings was more alive than the villages. Perhaps her grandfather had lived in one of those places and run away to escape the stultifying tentacles of the past. Léonie couldn’t imagine her father here; it was easier to think of him as a dashing young athlete, charming the star-struck girls in the audience as he rode bareback in some circus ring, or perhaps keeping some assignation in the mysterious alleyways in the souks of Cairo.

And what about Sekhmet? Was that also just a dream? Suddenly she could wait no longer. She would go to the Temple of Ptah now, this afternoon. She glanced at Jim, still fast asleep beside her. It would be better to go alone.

She slid gently off the bed and peered at the clock. It was four-thirty. By five the sun would be losing its strength, and at five she knew that Habib would be in the café near the ferry station.

Habib held the sunshade protectively over Léonie’s head as they walked together down the long avenue lined not with trees, but with magnificent ram-headed sphinxes that led to the Temple of Mut. The sun’s rays were still hot and she could feel damp beads of sweat forming on her back beneath the fine muslin of her dress. They were going to see the hieroglyphs on the gate of the temple—the same ones that were inscribed on her figure of Sekhmet.

Habib began to explain the convoluted history of the temple. “Often when a great Egyptian king died he was created a god, so that he became a combination of king and god. Thus, on his death, King Amon’s name was linked with the sun god Ra and became Amon-Ra. The goddess Mut was his consort and the symbolic mother-goddess. This temple—alas, now just a ruin—was erected by King Amenhotep III to replace an earlier structure on the same site. Mut and Bastet, the sacred cat-goddess beloved of the ancient Egyptians, were closely associated with Sekhmet. Many, many small statues of Sekhmet were found in this temple—some say more than six hundred—and that, madame, is probably where your statue came from.”

The temple was a crumbled ruin, only the lower courses remaining to show its previous size and grandeur, and Léonie’s hope crumbled with it. The columns of the gates were broken and badly eroded but the flaking stone still showed traces of the hieroglyphs that were the poem.

Habib ran a finger across the powdery surface as he translated:

Praise to Sekhmet …

She is the mistress of all the gods

It is she who gives the breath of life

to the nose of her beloved

She is the one who is great of strength

Who protects the lands
.

Protector of those she loves
.
Sekhmet with fearful eyes

The mistress of carnage

The messenger who brings pestilence and death

Sekhmet the great mistress of power

Who sends her flame against her enemies
.

Her enemies have been destroyed
.

The rest of the poem had disappeared as dust on the desert wind, and Léonie stared at the mysterious symbols carved here by some long-dead craftsman, their mute message unraveled from the centuries for her by the gentle young Egyptian at her side. This was where her statue had come from, though how it came into her father’s possession she would never know. She ran her fingers over the carvings and the stone felt warm and alive under her hand.

Now she was ready for Sekhmet.

The Temple of Amon was vast and its columned magnificence had suffered less from the eroding dry desert winds. Léonie caught her breath as they walked through its courtyards, marveling at its beauty.

Habib led her through the series of six magnificent columned gateways, until at last they stood in the courtyard of the Temple of Ptah. Léonie felt a chill run down her spine. The sun was sliding down toward the horizon, but its amber rays gave a bright normality to the scene. Why, then, should she feel afraid? It was just a temple, it was a long time since people had worshiped here.

Nervously she followed Habib into the northernmost room, shivering in the sudden chill of the thick stone walls.

“This is the sanctuary of Ptah—alas, without the splendors it once contained.” Habib led her through to the next chamber. “And this is the chamber dedicated to Hathor, the flamboyant goddess of love.”

The stone walls of the chambers were dry and crumbling, but still seemed to emit a dankness that was only partly eliminated by the rays of thin sunlight filtering through the small apertures in the walls and roof. Léonie suddenly wished that Jim were with her. Reluctantly she turned to the third chamber.

“In there, madame, you will find the great statue of Sekhmet. It is carved from granite and was erected in the eighteenth dynasty by King Thutmose.…”

Léonie hardly heard Habib’s explanations. She was suddenly
overcome by the feeling that this was all a mistake. She wanted to leave, to run from here. But she couldn’t. She
had
to see her.

She stepped toward the shadowy doorway, resting her hand on the dank wall.

“Wait, madame, I’ll come with you,” called Habib.

“No. No, please. I want to go in alone.”

Léonie closed her eyes to accustom them to the darkness, and the dank air pressed against her closed eyelids. Something rustled nearby and her eyes flew open in panic. Immediately in front of her the massive statue of Sekhmet loomed like some startling apparition from another world. Instinctively, she stepped back a pace, fighting the choking feeling of terror that threatened her.

A thin shaft of light pierced the darkness, filtering its single beam onto the leonine head of Sekhmet. The solar disc that symbolized her connection with the god of the sun glowed like a dusty corona above the beautiful face with its stylized mane. The body was carved strongly yet it was infinitely female with high rounded breasts and slender shoulders. As the deity who granted life, Sekhmet held in her right hand its symbol, the ankh, and in her left was a papyrus scroll indicating her power to allow life to flourish.

Léonie stepped forward again, the peculiar fascination of the statue holding her in its spell. There was nothing to be afraid of, she was sure of it now. It was just the darkness and the unexpected size of the statue that had made her uneasy. She lifted her eyes to Sekhmet’s face. The granite looked smooth and cool. “I’m here,” she whispered at last. “I don’t know what I expect from you, but I came—finally.”

The sightless lion face was unmoving and Léonie took a step closer. She was within touching distance, all she had to do was to reach out. Do it, she told herself. All these years you’ve wondered about Sekhmet, more than wondered, you’ve believed that Sekhmet had power over you, that your fate was predestined. Touch her.

She stroked the smooth granite hand. The stone was icily cold to her touch and yet her fingers were burning. She cried out in pain, stumbling as she tried to pull back.
She couldn’t move!
The shadows swirled around her and she sank to her knees, clinging to the outstretched hand of Sekhmet. Her mind was alive with strange noises and colors and heat. Then all at once a sense of peace came over her, there was no pain in her fingers now, just the
soothing warmth from the granite hand in hers. Léonie raised her head and gazed at the face of Sekhmet illuminated by the final ray of the sun. She hadn’t been wrong all these years; she knew it now. There was no way to know how or why, maybe in some past life she had been bound with Sekhmet—whatever it was she must accept it.