Storyfest

“The Governor of the Province, an extremely wealthy and infamously corrupt man, had been taking some Saudi investors on tour, stopping at the edge of the ruins of the ancient Necropolis for a brief visit.  Two shots were fired from somewhere among the Tombs, and the Governor was dead.  His police guard immediately sought out the assassin or assassins.  A gun was never found, but after ten minutes they saw a small solitary man moving away from them.  The called on him to stop, three times, but he never stopped nor turned around.  A warning shot was ignored. A police then shot him, and he fell dead. Nothing was found on him but a small book written in Coptic with an address here in Upper Egypt scrawled on the inside cover.  The police have been sent to the address, and have identified a Witness who knew the dead man.”

The Security Officer hated the raw desert and the intrigue that was always part of the landscape of Upper Egypt. Last month he was here tracking reports than an Israeli intelligence officer was gathering information.  Before that, a group of the Islamic Brotherhood were agitating at the city mosque.  And more than once he was here to investigate thefts of the Egyptian antiquities by unscrupulous art dealers from Alexandria or Rome.  How often had he been forced to come to Upper Egypt because the nomads where constantly causing trouble with their intertribal disputes and blood feuds.  Finally there were the poor and dirty Copts who were always protesting mistreatment and persecution.  Tired of it all, the Security Officer was already eager to return to Cairo -- hopefully by the next day.

He put the typed report aside as the Witness was brought in. She was a young woman, dressed modestly in black.  But around her neck was a small necklace with a Coptic cross. The Security Officer braced himself for trouble and accusations of persecution. He left her in the room standing alone, and crossed the threshold, past the guard, to the outer room. Then he leaned over the secretarial desk to speak privately to his aide.

“Who is she?  Tell me quick.” he said in a hushed but rushed voice.

“She’s young, but she is a doctor at the maternity hospital in Suez City. She returned here last month after her father died.  She works in a clinic for the poor.”

The Security Officer turned around and crossed the threshold again. Stiffly polite, he bade her to sit down.  But his inquisition began quickly.

“Who is the dead man?” he sharply demanded.

She struck back with a loud lamentation, “My older brother, Anthony.”

But the Security Officer offered no sympathy. “And what was he doing among the Tombs?”

“He lived there, a hermit, praying for the sins of Cairo.”

The Officer’s eyebrow’s shot up and he gave her a long, fixed stare. There was such condemnation in her voice when she named Cairo.  Then he pointed to the tattered leather book sitting on his desk. “And what is this, a prayer book?” He could not read the Coptic script.

“It is the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

He himself hated these disputes among Muslims and Copts.  In his youth he had been a socialist, an enthusiastic supporter of President Nasser.  Now the Security Officer was a cynical old secularist.  And Upper Egypt was a haven for all kinds of religious fanatics and political troublemakers. But the Security Officer knew that he had to change his tack with this crazed woman. He would not let her provoke him with her religious fanaticism.

“So you pray to God a great deal?” he asked.  But the Witness did not speak.  He waited.  Finally she whispered rapidly, forcefully, with suddenly flashing eyes:

“What should I be without God?”

That question terrified the inquisitor, and he immediately turned back to the material evidence on the table. He opened the book to a marked page.

“The book has a single marker inserted in one place.  Read it for me.”  The Security Officer leaned forward, placed an elbow on the table, and wearily leaned his head on his arm.

The Witness said sternly, “It is from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter five, beginning with verse thirty-eight.” The Security Officer then looked away sullenly.

She spoke yet more sternly, and loudly, so that the guard outside the door heard every word of her proclamation. 

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’  But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.  And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good...”

At that moment she thought of the Egyptian Sun blazing high in the sky, and she remembered the Pharaoh who believed in the One God. Then she promptly changed the remainder of the Scriptural passage.  She said, this time with tenderness:

“...and sends the rising flood waters of the River Nile on both the righteous and the unrighteous.”

The Security Officer was startled by her reference to the Nile, and wondered if these words were indeed in the Christian book. Or, had she just falsified her own scripture to give some obscure political or religious message to him.  He was wary of his witness.

But the image of the Nile had brought the Security Officer back to his job in Upper Egypt... and the Tomb... and her dead brother Anthony.

“Why then did he not stop when the warning shot was fired? Why did he walk away, with his back defiant to the Law?” shouted the Security Officer as he pulled back and sat upright in his chair. At the same time he slammed his clenched fist against the table. He wanted answers. Now.

She lifted her head from the Book, and locked his eyes with her gaze.  For a moment they were both silent.  And then a torrent flowed from her

“Anthony, O My Anthony!  He was deaf.  A deaf mute.” she sobbed. “He was a Fool for Christ.”

The Security Officer jumped to his feet and rushed to the door. He swung it open and yelled to his orderly: “Write quickly a certificate of release for the witness.  Just the date and her name.  I’ll sign it right away.”

And so the Security Officer stood under the lintel of the door between the two worlds while his assistant quickly typed out a few lines on the old typewriter.  In one room the typewriter clicked.  In the other the woman sobbed. The guard standing attentively by the door fetched it from the aide, and he briskly gave it to the Security Officer. The man from Cairo returned to the table and pushed it in front of the Witness.

“You are being released.  Just sign it and give it to me.”

She put the Book back on the table, took the pen he offered, and read the sheet.  Then she carefully crossed out a word and wrote in another word.  He could see she had crossed out her family name.  His eyes begged her for an explanation.

“I have no more family.  Anthony is dead.  Now my country is my family.  Everyone, Muslim, Copt, the Jews and even the Unbelievers.”

She pushed the paper across the table towards him.  He held it in his hand and softly recited her name.

“Mary... of Egypt.”