The Cairo Codex (3 page)

“Nothing so delicious,” I answer. “Only a moonfish stew. Our eldest caught two large ones last night.”

“Are you sure they are fresh?” demands Noha. “A terrible death comes to people who eat bad moonfish.” I see a smile tug at the edges of Rachel’s lips; both of us are used to Noha’s scorn.

“Thank you for your concern, Noha,” I manage to say politely. “I do believe they are fresh. We cleaned them last night and kept them in a cool place in the cave.”

Noha scowls but says nothing in return. Scornful comments accompany Noha wherever she goes, though she saves the most cutting comments for her husband, Isaiah.

My youngest son waits for me inside the cave, where he has been listening to our conversation. “Why are you so kind to Noha, Mother? Her angry words make us all join in her misery.” He sits halfway onto one of the wooden chairs, placing his elbow on the edge of the table.

“The more difficult it is to extend kindness, my son, the more we please God by offering it. Noha gives us all a chance to please God. But today I’m afraid I wasn’t very successful in my heart.” I pull eight clay cups from the wall.

My son grins and stands, taking the cups from my hands and placing them on the table. “But why is she so angry?”

“When we left Palestine, your father invited Isaiah and Noha to come with us. Noha opposed the journey, thinking it too dangerous and uncertain. She didn’t want to leave her family. I understood. But Isaiah agreed to make the journey. Even before she arrived, Noha had made up her mind she would never be happy here.” I take eight large wooden spoons from one of the niches carved into the cave wall and place them on the table below the cups.

“Will Noha ever be happy, Mother?”

“She may never be happy. God has not given her a happy heart.” I reach out and tousle my son’s dark auburn hair, pleased that he is still a child and welcomes my caresses. “What have you learned from the Rabbi today?”

A glint of mischief flickers through his deep brown eyes. “I find it most curious. The Rabbi quoted God’s word, ‘He will give rain to your land at the right season, the spring rains and the autumn rains.’ But it doesn’t rain here, Mother.” He sits down again and places his chin in both palms.

“You are right to be curious. Sometimes I am confused as well, but I have noticed that when God does not send rain, He sends the Great River to overflow and make the land fertile. Listen for God’s meaning and He will speak to you, my son.” I notice an intense glimmer in my son’s eyes when he wrestles with God’s purposes.

He sits very still and gazes at me for a long time before nodding.

“I’ve heard more about Isis in the market,” I say after the family sits down to our dinner of moonfish stew. There are eight of us at the long cedar table, including Rachel’s husband, Samir, and Noha’s husband, Isaiah. The late afternoon sun reflects off the eastern cave wall, holding the April warmth.

“Isn’t she a pagan god?” asks Rachel, picking up the basket of warm bread and passing it to Noha.

“An Egyptian goddess of medicine and wisdom, Rachel. One worshiped by man,” I say, my wooden spoon suspended over my bowl of stew. “Her husband, Osiris, lord of the underworld, was killed and cut into pieces by his jealous brother, Seth. From what I’ve heard in the market, Isis found the parts of Osiris scattered about the Great River, turned herself into a sparrow hawk and hovered over his body, fanning him back to life with her long wings.” Feeling playful, I allow my spoon to become a bird and swoop through the air, landing on my young son’s nose. It gives me pleasure when he giggles. “Isis became full with child,” I continue, “and gave birth to a son, Horus, who became a powerful falcon god and avenged his father by slaying Seth.”

“That is so,” Samir rumbles in his deep voice. “Isis is a giver of life. The Greeks call her Theotokos, Mother of God.” Although Samir converted to Judaism in order to marry Rachel, his heart belongs to the beliefs of his own people, and he takes pride in these stories. He reaches for the jug and looks around the table to find who is in need of more wine. Noha sets her cup down with a loud thud, signaling her disapproval of the story; she has expressed dissatisfaction before with my fascination with these Egyptian gods. She calls it childishness. Perhaps it is.

Samir refills her cup. Wine is a rarity in our household, reserved for days celebrating births and the Seder. Today is the day of Isaiah’s birth.

My young son stops eating, his expression intent. “Is this true, mother? Can people come back to life?”

“If God wills it, my son. God is all-powerful.” I feel unease with the sound of my own words and glance toward my husband.

He smiles at me and nods slightly before turning his attention to his older son. “What do you think of the power of other gods?” Our oldest son has been watching Noha’s agitation and is startled by the question.

He pauses before answering. “I hear much talk of these Egyptian gods with magical powers at the canal,” he replies, taking another piece of bread. “They do not know of the one true God. And I’m not about to tell them.”

“Why, my boy? Why do you not share the word of God?” asks Isaiah, visibly disappointed. Without children, Isaiah considers our son as his own. I pity Isaiah sometimes, elderly now and cowed and bent by years of marriage to Noha.

“They would ridicule me,” says our oldest. “I’ve heard it said that the Jews only need one God because we are a simple people.”

I watch my husband closely as he stares at our son. Is he questioning his real motivation? I share his doubts.

My husband turns. “Isaiah, what is your thinking about these strange gods?

“I . . . I know there is but one God. It is not proper to talk of other gods.” Isaiah is even more hesitant than usual, aware that Noha has turned away, upset about something he may or may not have done.

“Our Law also teaches tolerance and understanding. It is good to understand what others believe, is it not?” My husband says this with a gentleness he reserves for Isaiah and for me.

Isaiah lays down his spoon, preparing to speak, then changes his mind.

“Will our faith become weak if we talk of other gods?” our youngest asks, leaning forward, his elbow almost tipping his stew, his chair threatening to skid out from under him.

“Steady, my boy,” cautions Isaiah, placing his calloused hand on the back of the boy’s chair.

“Father . . . can it lead us astray?” he persists. “The Rabbi says, ‘Beware of letting ourselves be fooled into swerving aside to the worship and homage of other gods.’”

“I see your curiosity must be satisfied, my son,” says my husband. “God also tells us, ‘If you cry to intelligence and call for knowledge, seeking her out as silver and searching for her like treasure, then you shall see what reverence for the Eternal is and find out what the knowledge of God means.’ Knowledge makes us stronger. Ignorance makes us weak. If our faith is so weak that we can only keep it by shielding ourselves from knowledge, then we are not accepting the tests that God has set before us.” My husband tears off a piece of warm bread and dips it in his stew. He pauses, waiting for our youngest to speak.

“But how are we to know what God wants of us?”

Silently, all of us gathered around the table tip our bowls to sip the last of the moonfish stew and pass the plate of figs.

S
HE WAS
running.

Ahead of her, the yawing mouth of a cave reached deep into the flaking sandstone cliffs. Terror propelled her limbs. But what was she running from?

Moments ago, she’d been standing by a river, the sunlight skimming across the water, warm sand rising between her toes. She’d felt at peace, and yet beneath her contentment had lurked a darker worry, an omen of danger just out of sight.

Now, the blackness of the cave closed in on her. There was nowhere else to run. She couldn’t breathe. She—

Justine jolted awake with a gasp, her forehead pressed against the cold aircraft window. Overhead, the seatbelt sign pinged—they’d be landing soon.

She forced her racing pulse to slow and shook her head to dislodge the last remnants of the dream. Outside the window, the sapphire Mediterranean came into view, and the unsettled feeling left by the dream was replaced by excitement. Leaning forward, she placed her palm on the window as though she could reach out and take hold of Africa, the country that had beckoned to her since she’d visited with her parents as a teenager. At twenty-six she was returning to Egypt, free to discover it with her own eyes.

The plane passed over sparkling beaches; the new Alexandria Library rested near the shore like a giant disc, a spaceship with hundreds of Oriental eyes. Continuing its descent, the Lufthansa 747 aimed south across the verdant Nile crescent, emerging atop a landscape of tawny desert stretching as far as Justine’s eye could see. The sight ahead was nearly indecipherable: a tan, leathery blanket covering the city of nearly eighteen million, a few skyscrapers protruding above its smothering shield. She smiled as she recalled a comparable sight: two deep ochre towers extending above a white fluffy mantle of fog—the Golden Gate Bridge.

As they made their approach into Cairo International Airport, the runway met the plane with jolting intimacy. Reaching for her briefcase and purse, Justine stood up precariously and wormed her way back into a lightweight blue suit jacket. She was both exhilarated and apprehensive about what lay ahead. The Community Schools for Girls project would give her insight into today’s Egyptian girls, as well as help her to understand her own confusing roots.
How am I to understand myself as a modern Egyptian woman? Am I an heir of Isis or of today’s Islamic women cloaked in hijabs?
These were the questions on her mind.

She stared out the windows as she waited to exit with the other passengers crowding into the aisles. No longer the glorious view of Alexandria and the delta—leathery brown smog blocked her vision now. Heat rushed in from the open doors and the familiar chime signaled that everyone was free to go. Free to go. What an unfamiliar, though exhilarating, notion.

She had never really felt “free to go.” Raised by an Egyptian mother and a Berkeley professor father, she was often caught in the cultural crosscurrents of two stalwart individuals, both with immutable ideas about how to raise their headstrong daughter.

Justine’s Egyptian mother, Lucrezia, deliberately sought to marry an American, assuming she’d enjoy a more emancipated marriage than she could have had with one of her own countrymen. She was wrong. Morgan Jenner, with his roots in the American Midwest, was more than moderately protective of his exotic wife and young daughter. Each having disappointed the other, her parents divorced shortly after Justine moved to Chicago for graduate school.

Chicago had not been the liberating solution she had hoped. The endless demands of graduate work felt like a form of voluntary servitude. But here she was, for the first time, free of her father’s control . . . free of school . . . doctorate in hand . . . assuming her first professional position . . . free to go.

It seemed like a lifetime since she’d last walked through these corridors. When she was fourteen, her father, a renowned archeologist, had accepted a two-year assignment on a dig near the Serapeum at Saqqara, and her mother had come planning to take classes at the Cairo Modern Art Museum. Lucrezia, speaking rapid Arabic, had insisted on a customs line that didn’t exist, since the Egyptian custom was to cluster and push until you reached the desired window. Morgan had tensed against the press of bodies and held tightly to both his wife and daughter, juggling his briefcase and computer over his broad shoulders.

Justine remembered her mother reprimanding him sharply, “This is my home, Morgan. I can take care of myself.” Without answering, he had loosened his grip on her, but not his daughter.
No, not his daughter
. She’d been the last among her friends to date, and even then he’d insisted that a parent or another couple accompany her.