The Book of Longings(82)

We ate in silence. After I dressed and made myself ready for the journey ahead, I opened the goatskin pouch that held the red thread. It was fragile, the thinnest of filaments, but I would wear it this day for him. He helped me tie it onto my wrist.

The family waited in the courtyard. I embraced each of them before Jesus walked with me to the gate, where Judas, Yaltha, and Lavi waited. The drizzle had stopped, but the sky was sodden.

We didn’t linger with goodbyes. I kissed Jesus’s mouth. “May this severing not cut us apart, but bind us together,” I said. And holding my bowl and my scrolls to my chest, I set my face toward Egypt.





ALEXANDRIA


    LAKE MAREOTIS, EGYPT


    28–30 CE





i.

We sailed into the great harbor of Alexandria after eight days of turbulent seas. Though our ship—a vessel that bore Egyptian corn to Caesarea and returned to Alexandria with olives—had hugged the coastline, the waves had left me unable to keep down food or drink. Throughout the journey, I had lain curled on my mat belowdecks and thought of Jesus. At times, my distress at traveling farther and farther away from him was so great, I wondered if my sickness wasn’t from the pitch of the sea at all, but from the pain and tumult of leaving him.

Still weak and nauseated, I forced myself to leave the ship’s hull for my first glimpse of the city I’d dreamed about since Yaltha first began telling me stories of her greatness. Standing beside my aunt, I inhaled the foggy air and drew my coat to my neck, the clamor of the mainsail snapping ferociously over our heads. The harbor swarmed with ships—large merchant ships like ours, and smaller, fleet galleys.

“There!” said my aunt, pointing into the gloom. “There’s Pharos, the great lighthouse.”

When I turned, I was met by a spectacle I couldn’t have imagined. On a small island facing the harbor, a massive tower of white marble rose in three grand tiers toward the clouds, and at the top, a magnificent blaze of light. Even the Temple in Jerusalem couldn’t compare to it. “How do they make such a light?” I murmured, too awed to realize I’d spoken the thought aloud.

“The fire is reflected by massive bronze mirrors,” Yaltha replied, and I saw in her face the pride she felt for her city.

A statue crowned the pinnacle of the lighthouse dome, a man pointing skyward. “Who’s that?” I asked.

“Helios, the Greeks’ sun god. See? He’s pointing to the sun.”

The city brimmed along the waterfront, shining white buildings that stretched into the distance. My nausea forgotten, I stared transfixed at one of them that jutted out into the harbor, a dazzling edifice that seemed to float on the water’s surface. “Behold,” Yaltha said, watching my face. “The palace of the royals. I once told you about the queen who lived there—Cleopatra the Seventh.”

“The one who went to Rome with Caesar.”

Yaltha laughed. “Yes, that, among other things. She died the year I was born. I grew up hearing stories of her. My father—your grandfather—said she would write on nothing but papyrus made in our family’s workshops. She proclaimed it the finest papyrus in Egypt.”

Before I could take in the news that Cleopatra had made reference to my family, an imposing columned structure loomed up. “That’s one of the temples to Isis,” Yaltha said. “There’s a grander one near the library known as Isis Medica that houses a medical school.”

My mind had become dizzy with wonder. How alien this place was, how gloriously alien.

We grew silent, letting the city slide past like the contours of a dream, and I thought of my beloved, of how far I was from him. By now he would’ve attended Salome’s wedding in Cana and departed for Capernaum to assemble his followers and start his ministry. The memory of him standing at the gate when I departed brought a twist of pain. I longed to be with him. But not in Galilee. No, not there . . . here.

When I looked again at Yaltha, her eyes were misted, whether from wind, happiness, or her own twist of pain for Chaya, I couldn’t say.

When we disembarked, Apion hired a flat-roofed litter for the four of us with curtained windows and cushioned seats, pulled by two donkeys. We bobbed along the Canopic Way, the main corridor of the city, a cobblestone street so wide it could’ve fit fifty litters side by side. The street was lined on either side with red-roofed buildings and people milling about—women with uncovered heads, and girls, not just boys, trotting behind their tutors with wooden tablets hitched to their waists on cords. Catching sight of a brilliantly hued Egyptian woman, winged and kneeling, painted inside a portico, I made an exclamation of surprise, and Yaltha leaned to me and said, “Winged Isis. You’ll see her everywhere.” We came upon a line of horse-drawn chariots driven by men in helmets, who, Apion informed us, were on their way to the hippodrome.

A resplendent-looking pediment suddenly protruded in the distance. My heart gave a lurch. I couldn’t see the building’s facade, but the roof seemed to preside over the city. “Is that the great library?” I asked Yaltha.

“It is,” she said. “We will go there, you and I.”

During our voyage my aunt had described how the library’s half million scrolls were meticulously cataloged and arranged, all the texts in existence in the entire world. She’d told me of the scholars who lived there, how they’d determined the earth was round and measured not only its circumference, but its distance to the sun.