Azazeel (46 page)

He said, ‘It’s you who’s been trying to hide your thoughts, but we all knew!’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Nothing, Hypa. But when you had your fever attacks, you often called out a woman’s name – Martha. The fact that she is gone is a blessing from the Lord, for you and for us,
because we, as you know, want only the best for you and that woman was something quite inappropriate.’

I shut the door of the library behind me and threw myself down on the bench nearby. I don’t know how I fell asleep but I woke up in alarm at dawn, went straight to the table and devoured
all the fruit in the cloth. I was eating like someone sick with canine hunger and I was crying. I put my head in my hands, with my elbows on the table, and burst into tears and sobs. I recovered
after a while, and one idea had swept all other ideas from my head: everything was over, Nestorius was defeated, Martha had disappeared, Azazeel was gone and the people in the monastery knew the
truth about me. My whole life was over and ahead of me only death remained.

‘You have a long life ahead of you, Hypa, so don’t think about death now.’

‘Azazeel, where have you been?’

He explained to me that he had been, and would always be, around me, and that the real world was what was inside me, not in events which flare up and die down, which end only to start again, or
for something else to begin. I was surprised that he was not hiding and that when he appeared he was not morose. I was still bent down, my head on the table, with my eyes closed, gazing into the
void.

I asked him, ‘Should I take some poison to escape my predicament, so that my soul can return to its origin?’

‘Have you gone mad? Death has no meaning. All the meaning is in life. I am always alive, and I will die only when you die and when those who believe in me die, and those who discover that
I exist inside them. You have no right to kill me off by dying before your time is due.’

‘How can I go on living after everything that has happened?’

‘Live to write, Hypa. That way you will remain alive even when your time to die has come, and I will remain alive through your writings. Write, Hypa, because he who writes will never
die.’

Azazeel loves life because it is fertile ground for him. That’s why he hates those who advocate banning merriment and festivities. He cannot bear ascetics and those who cut themselves off
from life. He calls them idiots! I stood up and shut the window which opens on to the monastery courtyard. The morning light had begun to shine and I wanted to keep talking with Azazeel.

I leant my forehead against the wall and asked him, ‘Was it you I met on the outskirts of the town of Sarmada, and when I came down from Mount Qusqam in Egypt?’

‘What are you saying? I don’t exist independently of you. I am you, Hypa, and I can only be in you.’

‘Don’t you appear in the form of particular people, Azazeel?’

‘Incarnation is a myth.’

I heard the sound of footsteps and I opened the window again. It was a group of monks coming to visit me, as well as two servants carrying a big table with breakfast on it.
They told me that the abbot would join them and we would all have breakfast together here. It was very kind of them.

The abbot recited some psalms and then spoke to us, but as though he were addressing me in particular: ‘Children of the Lord, let us pray to God this blessed morning, thanking Him for his
blessings and soliciting His mercy. Know that God is always present in our hearts, even if His Throne is in heaven. I have seen that many of you were distressed by what happened in Ephesus, that
your faith was shaken and your hearts perturbed. What happened is saddening to us, so may the Lord bestow his pardon on all of us. But our way, we monks, has nothing to do with problems of theology
and the arguments between the heads of the churches. Those flare up from time to time and then die down, so let them be. In the meantime we have our way, which we have chosen with the help of the
Lord. One thing brings us together – the love of the Lord, the Gospel of Jesus and reverence for the Holy Virgin, whether she be the mother of God or the mother of Christ. We have renounced
the clamour of the world, and we know the Virgin in our hearts, not through the words of the theologians or their sects. Here we will adhere to the creed they drafted in Ephesus and we will rally
people around it in the fold of the Lord, or else Satan will play tricks with the common people if they are disunited. We have a way to God which is not defined in any written creed or by any
special words. The monastic life has a mystery which transcends words, rises above language and is too subtle to articulate. Monasticism, the communal and monastic life, will remain a beacon to
guide the faithful, a path for those who have dedicated themselves sincerely to their love for the Lord, and who have deep faith in Jesus Christ and reverence for the Virgin.’

I liked what the abbot said and I had a little to eat with the monks, but I was aware of Azazeel sitting in the far corner of the library, smiling mischievously and scornfully. The monks said
goodbye and the abbot reminded me that I needed to rest. He asked me if I wanted anything from the monastery kitchen and I thanked him.

In the afternoon I felt dissatisfied and uneasy. I was alone in the library and I summoned Azazeel in the hope that his strange opinions might distract me from my pain. I asked him what he
thought about what the abbot had said in the morning. He answered with a smile, deliberately trying to irritate me, ‘What could the abbot say, other than what he said? Otherwise he would have
to find somewhere else to manage, rather than this monastery.’ I thought he was unfair to the venerable father and when I shouted at him to be polite, he disappeared.

In the early evening I sat down at the table and made up my mind to write a new hymn. My head was ringing with poetry. I performed the night prayer alone and prepared pieces of parchment, then
wrote this poem:

I wrote the verses after many laborious attempts, as though I were digging the words out from deep inside myself and drawing blood. My body was still fragile and I was on the point of falling
into a deep sleep which would have taken me far away, but suddenly Azazeel’s voice rose up from the deepest and darkest spot in the emptiness inside me. His voice melted my heart and made me
feel that the sky had collapsed to the ground and I was trapped between the two. He was saying, ‘When will you write the real story, Hypa, and stop being evasive and singing about the pain
you feel? Don’t be like a dead man who speaks for the dead to please the dead! Tell the truth in your heart. For example: “Martha, revive within me for a moment the harmony we shared,
to bring light to my darkened heart and dispel my loneliness.”’

‘Shut up, you wretch. I will sing only of the living Christ, because poetry is like a string of pearls and the Christ Jesus said: “Do not cast pearls before swine.”’

‘Now you’re comparing Martha to swine! Wake up, Hypa, and come to your senses. Your desire for her is crushing you and breaking your heart. Go to her, take her and leave this
country. Delight in her and make her happy, then heap curses on me because I tempted you. Then all three of us will thrive, having fulfilled ourselves.’

I said to myself, ‘I’m not going to listen to Azazeel’s attempts to shake my faith. He’s a cynic and a troublemaker by nature. I’ll wash my heart with the water of
certitude and hold fast to my faith against his temptations, his heresy and his predilection for transient pleasures. However attached I was to Martha, it was temporary, like everything in this
world, and I will not sell the eternal for the sake of the transient, or what is precious for the sake of what is cheap. I will live my life in the living Christ.’

‘Is he alive? How so when the Romans killed him?’

‘He died for some days, then He was resurrected in glory from the dead.’

‘And how did he die in the first place? How could you believe that the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, a mere man, could kill Christ, who is God?’

‘That was the only way to save mankind.’

‘No, that was the only way to save Christianity from Judaism!’

I did not want to hear more from Azazeel but he kept whispering strange ideas in my ear as I slept. He said many things, such as that the Jews belittled the idea of the divine, which mankind had
long struggled to articulate. The ancient human civilizations elevated God, but in their Torah the Jews had Him preoccupied with mankind, and then He had to be restored to heaven again. So
Christianity came to assert that God existed on earth alongside mankind in the person of Christ and then, borrowing from ancient Egyptian myths, to raise Him to His original place in heaven, after
God sacrificed Himself, as they claim, to save mankind from the sin of their ancestor Adam. Were all sins erased after Christ? Would it have been difficult for God to forgive mankind with a simple
order, without imaginary suffering, a humiliating crucifixion, an inglorious death and a glorious resurrection?

Azazeel disappeared inside me and kept quiet. A sudden peace filled me, and then I felt a void enclosing me. After a while I rested my head on the void and slipped into
sleep.

SCROLL THIRTY

W
e magnify you, O Mother of the True Light and we glorify you, O saint and Mother of God, for you have borne unto us the Saviour of the world.
Glory to you, O our Master and King: Christ, the pride of the Apostles, the crown of the martyrs, the rejoicing of the righteous, firmness of the churches and the forgiveness of sins. We proclaim
the Holy Trinity in One Godhead: we worship Him, we glorify Him, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord bless us, Amen.’

That is the introduction to the creed which has come to us from Ephesus, with strict injunctions to circulate the creed among all people and recite it in all churches with the appropriate
reverence. I mean reverence for the text, I mean the text of the creed, I mean the creed of belief, I mean belief in God, the God whom Christianity restored to heaven.

I spent two days in the library arguing with Azazeel until I convinced him of some things, while he convinced me of some other things about which I had been indecisive. One thing he persuaded me
to do, which coincided with a whim of my own, was to retire to my room these forty days to write down what I have seen in my life, from the time I fled my father’s village up to my departure
from this place, tomorrow, to do what we have agreed I would do.

Now the forty days have passed and my writing ends today. I have recorded only what I have remembered or experienced deep inside myself. This is the last piece of parchment and most of it is
still free of writing. I shall leave that space blank in case someone comes after me to fill it. I will sleep a little now, then wake up before dawn, put the pieces of parchment in this box and
cover it with soil under the big rock at the monastery gate. With it I will bury the fear I inherited and all my old delusions. Then I will depart, as the sun rises, free...

Youssef Ziedan’s novel
Azazeel
took the Egyptian and Arabic literary scene by surprise when it first appeared in 2008. Previous Egyptian writers had played with
the history of ancient Egypt – most notably Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz with his three novels set in the Pharaonic period. But, as Professor Ziedan is acutely aware after the controversy he
has aroused, the brief Christian era of Egyptian history, which lasted for a few hundred years up to the Muslim invasion of 639 CE, was a gap that Egyptian authors had avoided, either out of
deference to the Coptic Orthodox Church or because the period appeared to offer little that would resonate with a modern Arab readership. Most of the extant histories of the period were in the
hagiographic tradition, written by Copts for Copts to celebrate the sufferings and achievements of their martyrs and founding fathers.

Within months, piles of the novel appeared on the pavements of Cairo, alongside the self-help manuals, political memoirs and teach yourself English books that are the staple of the Egyptian
popular book market. Many casual readers of Azazeel, at least initially, took at face value the literary device that is the framework for the novel; the notion that the story, written in Syriac and
recently discovered in northern Syria by a European antiquarian, was the work of an Egyptian monk born in Aswan, southern Egypt, late in the 4th century
CE
. If that were
indeed the case we would, of course, need to rewrite the whole literary history of the world, for there is no autobiographical work of comparable intimacy from such an early date in any
language.