Azazeel (34 page)

The next few days and months passed tediously, then summer came upon us and the heavy hours of daytime stretched out, while the fleeting nights grew shorter – the nights
that mark our lives as passing patches of cloud mark out daylight hours. I often used to, and still do, gaze into the horizon in the afternoon and at sunset and feel that the clouds in the sky are
in the form of divine scriptures, or messages from God in a language which is not spoken and can be read only by those who realize that it is based on shapes rather than letters. This realization
was one of my secrets, though I did one day divulge this secret to the abbot, who bowed his head for a long time and then said, ‘Perhaps they are a manifestation of that which is deep inside
us, of the word of God which is latent within us.’

Among the strange events which took place at the end of last summer, that is the summer of the year 430 of the Nativity, was that doves landed around the monastery. One morning a large flock of
mountain doves came down, doves which we usually see alone or occasionally in pairs. This time, many dozens of them suddenly covered the monastery hill and circled the air above. The monks were
delighted, except for Pharisee, and they saw it as a miracle foretelling that the site of the monastery would receive many blessings from heaven. The mountain doves are different from the domestic
kind that people breed at home in Egypt and which they eat when young. They are smaller in size and harder to digest when eaten, and their feathers have a subtle sheen. They have only one colour,
namely grey, unlike the domestic pigeon, which comes in white, brown and mixes of colours, so it is easy to tell the individual pigeons apart. But mountain doves are uniform, like many clones from
one dove. Their wing feathers are light grey and the tips of their wings have two dark bands. The grey has a slight sheen, especially on the head and the neck.

One strange thing about these doves is that they do not take fright when people move, so when people came very close they would just fly a short distance and land nearby. Only Pharisee was keen
to frighten the doves and drive them as far away as possible, while the other monks were surprised at his behaviour and could not understand what was behind it.

The second day after the doves landed, the monks came up with all kinds of explanations for why they had landed and why they were staying around the monastery. Some said they had moved here to
enjoy the verdure of the hill, while others said they sensed the spirituality of the place and liked the company. Yet others said the doves were obeying a divine command to live here, a command
given so that the monastery would be graced with the presence of God and the spirit of peace. Doves really do have an aura of peace. I enjoyed watching them in the early morning and before sunset.
I would spend ages contemplating their behaviour, marvelling at how they would spend the night in cracks in the walls and in places where the stones had broken loose, without nests to nestle in and
hatch their young, as we know from the habits of domestic doves and in fact of birds in general.

On the third day after the doves landed I was sitting at the wall overlooking the northern plains. We had finished the morning prayer and I had no desire to go to the library. I stayed a good
time watching a group of doves flying between the columns and the walls, sometimes landing on the ground and picking up with their beaks whatever they found fit to eat. I was sitting still and the
doves grew accustomed to my presence and were coming close, just as the birds grew accustomed to the flute of King David and landed around him. After a time I could tell the male doves from the
females, and I noticed that they all showed constant goodwill towards each other and did not lay special claim to one mate rather than any other. All doves like each other. The male ruffles up his
feathers and walks around a nearby female nodding his head, and if she stays still he mounts her, and otherwise he flies off to another in the hope that she will stay still. Meanwhile the first
female waits for another male to come hovering around her and if he pleases her she acts willing by moving close to him and not flying off, which amounts to permission for him to mount her. Doves
copulate often and all day long never cease from courting and coupling, especially in the afternoon and shortly before sunset. I was sitting happily at the wall with the doves around when Pharisee
appeared from afar, with his usual rolling gait. He sat down near me and started to pick up pieces of stone to throw at the doves and drive them away from us. I asked him what he was doing and he
said angrily that the doves covered the monastery with excrement and the constant cooing of the males disturbed people asleep at dawn. I gave him a sceptical look, unsure if he was telling the
truth, and he added, as though he were announcing a secret, that the doves aroused the passions and induced people to commit sins, so people should not look at them if they wanted to be godly.
Pharisee’s ideas are as strange as he is.

The fourth day after the doves landed they left as suddenly as they had come. The monks lamented their departure, as I did after listening to them for the past three days. I spent the night in
the library and in the first part of the night I had dreams full of doves. In the second half of the night I lit a candle, as though I was going to look at the books, but my mind was wandering far
away, assailed by questions without answers. Where did the doves go when they left us? Were they really a sign to us and a portent from heaven, or was it just a coincidence? Will the doves come
back after a time, or was this an event which will not recur? Why don’t people learn from doves how to live in peace? The dove is a simple bird and pure in spirit. Jesus the Messiah once
said, ‘Be as innocent as doves.’ The dove is peaceful because it has no claws, and people should renounce the weapons and military equipment which they hold. The dove does not eat more
than it needs and does not save food, so people too should give up hoarding supplies and stashing away resources. Doves live a life of perfect love: the males do not distinguish between a beautiful
female and an ugly female, as people do. As soon as a dove reaches the age to fly it no longer recognizes any father or mother but joins the other doves in a perfect community where selfishness and
individualism are unknown. Why don’t people live in this way, reproducing in peaceful groups, as was the case with humans in the beginning? All would live as one, living a wholesome life,
then die without drama, as other creatures die. Men and women would choose partners to suit them, to live together lovingly for a time, then part if they wished and join up with someone else if
they wanted. Everyone would treat the young as the offspring of all, and women would be like doves, asking the males only for courtship and brief encounters, because women...

‘Hypa, what you are writing is incompatible with your monastic status.’

‘Leave me alone, Azazeel. You invited me to write, so let me write what I please.’

‘But you are going too deep. You still have much you were going to tell, and time is short.’

‘You’re right, you wretch.’

One hot afternoon in the months of autumn in the year 430 of the Nativity I was watching the clouds as usual, trying to decipher the symbols or bring to light the hidden
message within me, based on what I could see in the shapes. I heard voices coming from the direction of the monastery gate, so I rose from my usual sitting place on the dilapidated wall which
overlooks the broad northern prospect, and crossed the open space to see what the hubbub was about. Halfway up the slope which climbs to the gate from the plains below, near where there is a
ramshackle cottage which has been abandoned for years, there were two men, two mules and two women, one of them old and the other in colourful clothes but whose features I could not make out
well.

When they had unloaded the mules, the men went off with the animals and the women stayed behind, struggling to get the luggage into the cottage. Were they going to live there, I wondered. As I
thought the question over the priest came by on his way out of the monastery. He lives at the bottom of the hill in one of those small houses built around the hill and he was bound to know some of
the story. When I asked him, he told me that two women had come to live in the cottage, after the abbot gave them permission out of sympathy for their circumstances. He added, ‘The old woman
is ill, so I expect she will come to see you for treatment.’

At the dinner table the abbot was in his usual place reading psalms to us. He ate only a piece of dry bread with us and then thanked the Lord. He gestured to me and when I came up next to him he
leant towards me and said in a whisper that a small lyre would arrive on Saturday from Aleppo, and that he would assemble some deacons and a girl with a good voice for me to teach them some hymns
they could sing at mass on Sundays, as they do in big churches. ‘You could arrange some psalms for them, or some short verses from your poems, or some of Bishop Rabbula’s poetry,
because people love to hear music during mass,’ he added.

I nodded in agreement and I liked the idea, because I am by nature inclined towards music and chanting. I almost told the abbot that he was right when he decided to go ahead with his plan. Then
I had second thoughts and said, ‘Reverend father, as for musical instruments, didn’t John Chrysostom forbid the use of them in churches?’

‘That was forty years ago, or more, my child,’ he said, ‘and he did not say they should be banned, but that the Lord held them in contempt and liked to be glorified by human
voices. Our brothers in Edessa and Nusaybin studied the matter at several synods and came to the conclusion that it is permissible to use musical instruments in churches.’

‘Yes, sir, but what about the girl singing in church?’

‘She will come in from the outer door and she will chant standing outside the chancel, behind the deacons.’

I have always believed that music is a holy and heavenly art, which we can use either to chasten the soul or to arouse the passions. In my childhood I was fascinated by the pictures of musicians
on the walls of the temples in my home country. I would say to myself, ‘If they hadn’t dedicated music to worship they would not have depicted the musicians on the temple walls.’
But I did not talk about the subject at all with any fellow Christians. And now the days turn and the gifts of the Lord fall in our hands without any effort on our part, so we take pleasure in
music. I asked the abbot for permission to go to the library but first I told him, ‘Tonight I shall set about composing a chant, an amalgam between the psalms of David and some refined
monastic ideas.’

‘Under the protection of the Lord. Wait, my child. The chant will be in Syriac, because it’s the majority language here,’ he said.

‘Of course, holy father, of course.’

I crossed the courtyard from the refectory to the library, full of enthusiasm and pleasure. The light of the autumn moon carpeted the ground and reflected off the white pebbles, which looked
like jewels strewn among the sand in the courtyard. The night breeze was refreshing and my spirit leapt, soaring in exultation. My heart pounded as in my childhood when my father pulled up his nets
from the water of the Nile, or when my sick uncle’s wife called me to dinner, or when I left Naga Hammadi and headed for Akhmim. In fact our life is nothing but such rare moments of
pleasure.

When I went into the library an idea occurred to me. I would dispense with the music of the lyre or give it a limited role in the chant by arranging the music to be sung by the boys and the girl
with the melodious voice. In that way I would avoid as far as possible the objections of those who disapproved of musical instruments, and I would combine the lines of my poetry, which the girl
would sing, with the psalm which the boys would chant. I would compose my chants in the fifth metre under the Syriac system, which includes the pentameters and hexameters which I favour more than
any other. That night I said to myself, ‘I shall fill the big monastery church and all the churches around with spiritual chants that soar to the kingdom of heaven.’

I sat at the long table and lit the lantern, then scanned the shelves of books around me, wrapped up in my enthusiasm. I went to the shelves on the right and took out the Syriac translation of
the psalms. When I opened it, my eyes fell by chance on Psalm 16, and I wrote the first line of it on the parchment, then added to it, until I had this: