The Eye of Ra Read online

  ‘That was a Nommo,’ I said.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A cosmic idiot,’ I said. ‘For twelve thousand years they’ve been trying to use human beings for their own purposes one way or another, and yet they’ve failed every time. That creature was like Robinson Crusoe on a desert island, making the best of it, trying desperately to find a way to get home. It assumed human form, collected the old texts, got people working for it, built up institutions and organisations for the sole purpose of getting off this planet.’

  ‘Are you just going to let it go?’ Elena said.

  ‘Whatever it is, it won’t last long out in al-Ghul.’

  Ahmad hobbled up to us. ‘Jinns live for ever,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen plenty of them, even more ugly than that! Should have known that was a Jinn in disguise.’

  I examined Rifad and the injured crewman. Rifad was dead, but the crewman was still breathing. Elena’s rounds had gone low, into the thigh and groin and he was bleeding profusely. I opened the helicopter’s medical kit and staunched the bleeding with field-dressings. ‘He’ll be OK,’ I said.

  A burst of sound came over the radio — a fuzzy voice demanding answer.

  ‘You answer that and we’ll leave your body here for the vultures,’ I told the pilot.

  ‘Too late,’ he said, ‘they’re already on their way.’

  I helped Ahmad into the back of the Scout. ‘Will those camels find their way back alone?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘They’ll be all right. Our camels can find their way home over twenty days’ ride. Elena and I hurried off to unsaddle them while Ahmad kept an eye on the pilot. We stripped them, pointed their heads towards the Jilf and slapped their haunches to set them off. Then we brought the saddles and gear over and loaded them into the Scout. ‘What are you going to do?’ the pilot asked.

  ‘Nothing. You’re going to take us to the Jilf.’

  The rotors started, gyrating faster and faster until a great cloud of sand and dust wheezed through the open port. A moment later the Scout leapt off the sand like a grasshopper and was airborne. I craned out of the open side, seeing the desert going on and on, a pattern of black and amber — silicon sand-flats, alkali playas, ridges of sand, great mountain-dunes like fairytale pinnacles. Somewhere down there was a Nommo, an alien who’d become stranded in a foreign place, had moved mountains to try to get back home, and had failed.

  The Jilf came up with what seemed like incredible speed, from afar a great rock island in a pastel sea, its wadis traced with green, a patina of verdancy against the nothingness that surrounded it to infinity. In the far distance I could see the plains of the Khuraab — the Desolation — which we’d crossed on our way to Zerzura. On the very edge of my vision lay the labyrinth of the Sand Sea where the creature Akhnaton had once landed his star-ship. From up here, far above the desert, the whole landscape looked like the board of a massive game played by children. Perhaps that was how it had looked to the Nommos, but the game had ceased to be a game when they’d found themselves stranded inside it for ever. For the original landing party, back in the First Time, I thought, it would have been a bit like the crewmen of the Bounty stranded on an island in the Pacific. They had been worshipped as gods at first, been regarded with awe for their superior technology. As they intermarried with the natives and the generations passed, though, they had become more and more like them, and though their new ideas had influenced the native population profoundly, their own technology had been lost. Year after year, though, the descendants of the sailors had lit a great bonfire in the hope of attracting a rescue-ship, even though they no longer needed to be rescued, and indeed had probably forgotten the purpose of the signal-fire. The Nommos psi-gene programme had been like that, I reflected, and just as the signal-fire might have brought down on the island a pirate who’d robbed the crewmen’s descendants of power and taken over the place for himself, so the psi-gene programme had ultimately brought the rogue alien Akhnaton. How Rabjohn fitted in, I’d probably never know — another Nommo refugee stranded on earth more recently, perhaps, the victim of some new experiment. There was one thing I was certain of, though. As Renner had said, they were still with us. I was certain, because suddenly I could feel them, there just beyond the veil of consciousness, pushing like barbarian tribes to come in.

  The pilot put the craft down in front of the Cave of Pictures and even before we landed, scores of Hawazim came running out with their rifles, ready to open fire.

  ‘Don’t shoot,’ Ahmad yelled, lolling out of the open side, ‘it’s us!’

  Mansur and ‘Ali were among our reception committee. ‘What happened?’ Mansur asked.

  ‘We met a Jinn,’ Ahmad said, ‘a real one.’

  ‘God protect us from the Stoned Devil!’

  ‘Are the camels loaded?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, amnir.’

  ‘We’d better get moving. The government are already on their way.’

  ‘What about this thing?’ Mansur asked.

  ‘Stand back,’ I said.

  I took his rifle from him, cocked it and put five rounds through the fuel tank which exploded with a clap and a whiplash of smoke and orange fire. Mansur and the other tribesmen ducked as bits of debris whistled over their heads.

  ‘Throw a cam-net over the hulk and take the pilot and the wounded man to the Water Cave. Leave them food.’

  Within minutes, the caravan was winding out of the cave-mouth, a great train of camels, an entire tribe on the move. Within the hour we were streaming out of the Siq, heading south towards the Sudanese border. It was thrilling to be among these people, moulded by the desert, who fitted the landscape like a hand in a glove. First came the warriors, the men of the tribe on their fast camels in their russet jibbas, wearing their scarlet headcloths, or merely letting their great plumes of fat-smeared hair blow in the wind. Then the women and children in their litters mounted on bull-camels, carrying rolls, tents, grinding-stones, cooking-pots, gourds, baskets and waterbags, the entire worldly possessions of their people. Finally came the true wealth of the tribe, the milch-herd — fine fat camels, being driven by ragged herdsboys on camels that seemed to dwarf them. The camels lifted their heads proudly, stepping out towards the desert horizon, and the men began to sing, softly at first, then louder and louder, the deep-throated chorus of the tribe. Mansur rode close to me at the head of the caravan, and fixed me with his good eye. ‘Omar,’ he said, ‘I know you only promised to stay to ease Father’s going. We won’t hold you to your promise if you want to go.’

  I looked at Elena whose camel was pacing near me. ‘We couldn’t go back even if we wanted to,’ she said. ‘And you know, the desert would be a fine place to bring up a child.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to go back,’ I said. ‘Back to what? Human beings are made to belong, and I belong here, in this place, with these people. My ancestors wandered the desert for millennia; this life is good enough for me.’

  What of the Message I was carrying? What of the Guardians? The Message would have to wait, I thought, at least for now. Without collateral many wouldn’t believe me anyway — in the end it just came down to faith.

  ‘There’s just one thing puzzling me,’ I said to Elena, ‘Hammoudi told me Zerzura was a delusion. He said you told him I’d never left your side, not even for a moment.’

  She regarded me with liquid eyes, shining in the full sunlight. ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you,’ she said. ‘He’s right — you never did.’

  It was almost sunset when we came to the frontier — a line on a map somewhere without much significance to the Hawazim. We halted the caravan for a moment to drink, then mounted up. We were just about to start forward, when Mansur’s eye blazed. ‘Look!’ he yelled, pointing to the sky. A helicopter gunship was racing towards us like a vulture; even from ground level I could see that it was bristling with machine-guns and cannons. There was a figure — a tall, powerful-looking man leaning out of the open port at the back, secured by a belt, with his feet on the land
ing-ski, and both hands on the stock of a heavy machine-gun mounted on a brace. I pulled a pair of binos out of my saddle-bag and scanned the craft. ‘It’s Hammoudi!’ I said.

  The Hawazim cocked their rifles in unison and trained them on the chopper. A couple of rounds from its cannon would have wiped every man, woman and child out, I knew, but no one thought of running away. If this was it, we would fight. I watched the chopper as it dropped closer and closer. The tension mounted almost perceptibly as fingers tightened on triggers. ‘No, wait!’ I snapped suddenly. ‘It’s not coming.’

  The aircraft buzzed over our heads, kicking up dust, stirring the camels, and banked sharply east, flying in a direct line along the imaginary frontier. ‘It’s the border,’ Mansur said suddenly, ‘that’s the legal limit of Egyptian authority.’

  My eyes followed the retreating aircraft. The last thing I saw was Hammoudi grinning and waving as the aircraft turned again to the north, and spun off low into the distance leaving only a pattern of ripples on the blowing sand.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Hawazim, the Ancient Egyptians and Their Traditions

  The ancestors of the Hawazim belonged to two separate strains. The first strain may be traced to the Anaq — stone-age hunter-gatherers who spoke an unknown language and who inhabited the regions west of the Nile in prehistoric times. This tribe, who had no domestic animals except for dogs, lived by hunting the abundant fauna — elephant, giraffe, wild oxen, zebra, antelope, and other species which roamed the lush prairies of what is now the Western Desert, the most arid area on earth. Like most hunters they possessed an animistic religion which attributed to everything — each tree, hill, stream, rock and valley — its own characteristic spirit. The Anaq also worshipped the stars, and the sun in the form of the sacred sun disk, which was later to become the symbol of the ancient Egyptian sun-god, Ra.

  The second cultural and genetic strain among the Hawazim came from the Bedouin — Semitic camel-herding nomads whose origin lay in northern Arabia, and who began to wander down the Nile with their herds and black tents around the 8th century AD. These Arabic speaking Muslims who worshipped the One God, Allah, originally roamed the fringes of the Nile Valley, but were so persecuted by successive waves of stronger tribes and by governments during times of stability, that they were pushed farther and farther out into the margins of the desert. Here they met and fused with the descendants of the Anaq, producing a hybrid culture, Arabic speaking, superficially Muslim, and yet with strong influences from traditional Anaq religion and culture. The Hawazim are unique among Bedouin, for example, in referring to ‘The Divine Spirit’ in addition to ‘God’, and the use of the sacred mandrake and the Shining ritual are examples of religious practises amongst them surviving from prehistoric times.

  Because of their hybrid nature, the Hawazim were traditionally looked down on by the so-called ‘noble’ Bedouin, yet they were also feared for their seemingly supernatural ability to survive in the arid desert.

  ***

  The Hawazim language is Arabic, with the addition of a small stratum of Anaq words. For Westerners, the tongue appears extremely logical in its construction since almost every word is based on a sequence of 3 consonants (‘roots’), each set conveying one idea. Thus the sequence K-T-B conveys the idea of ‘writing’, and no matter what prefixes, suffixes or infixes are added, any word having these consonants in this order must be connected with the idea of writing. Thus, KiTaB means ‘a book’, maKTaB means ‘an office’, KaaTiB means ‘a clerk’, KaTaBa means ‘he wrote’, yaKTiB means ‘he writes’, KiTaaBa means ‘handwriting’ etc etc. The language contains some exotic sounds not found in English, the most common of these being the consonant ‘ayn, pronounced by producing a slight retching noise in the throat, and usually signified by a’ in English texts. This sound exists in names such as ‘Ali, ‘Abdallah, Sa’udi-Arabia, Sa’idi, and even in the word ‘Arab itself when properly pronounced.

  Arabic forms plurals differently from English, often changing the form of the noun itself. Thus, in Arabic, the word bedawi (a Bedouin man) usually becomes bedu (all the Bedouin), in the plural. There is also a feminine form, bedawiyya (a Bedouin woman). In the case of the Hawazim, the masculine and feminine singulars respectively would be Hazmi (a Hawazim man) and Hazmiyya (a Hawazim woman). The possessive in Arabic is usually formed by what is known as ‘the construct’, which expresses belonging. Thus one would not normally say ‘a Hawazim camel’ in colloquial Arabic, only ‘a camel belonging to the Hawazim’ or ‘a camel belonging to a Hazmi’ (jamal hagg al-hawazim/ jamal hagg hazmi). For this reason the English forms ‘a Hawazim camel’ or ‘A Hazmi camel’ can be used interchangeably, having no direct counterpart in Arabic.

  Like other Arabs, the Bedouin generally do not possess family names. A child has a given name which is then followed by the word wald (son of) and then the name of the father. The son of a man called Ali, for example, might be called Hassan wald Ali, (other forms of ‘wald’ are ‘wad’ bin’ and ‘ibn’). In the case of a girl it might be Fatima bint (daughter of) Ali. A full name usually includes 3 generations, so, if our Ali’s father was called Sayid, his son’s full name would be Hassan wald Ali wald Sayid. Among townsmen, though, the ‘wald’ or ‘bins’ is assumed and therefore generally missed out. A townsman named Daud whose father was called ‘Rashid’ would merely be called Daud Rashid.

  The primitive ancestors of the Hawazim probably belonged to much the same stock as the original inhabitants of the Nile Valley, and thus there is a common stratum in ancient Egyptian and Hawazim (Anaq) mythology. To both, the star Sirius, in the constellation Canis Major, was of great importance. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, and throughout much of the early period of Egyptian civilisation its heliacal rising (that is its first rising after a period of invisibility), happened to coincide with the beginning of the annual inundation of the Nile — the most important event in the Egyptian calendar. Since the 12 lunar months fell just short of an actual year, the regular rising of Sirius therefore enabled the ancient Egyptians to regulate their calendar by introducing a 13th intercalary month every 2 or 3 years. The Egyptians identified Sirius with the goddess Isis, one of the neteru who founded ancient Egyptian civilisation, and the Hawazim had also inherited a parallel tradition that Sirius was the birthplace of human culture.

  If you enjoyed reading The Eye of Ra, you might be interested in Shoot to Kill by Michael Asher, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Shoot to Kill by Michael Asher

  1 - The Maroon Machine

  On my first morning in the Parachute Regiment Depot at Aldershot, I met a sour-faced corporal. ‘Excuse me, mate,’ I said, ‘but where’s the Personnel Selection Office?’

  The corporal was a barn-door of a man, an inch shorter than me. He sniffed suspiciously. ‘You a recruit?’ he inquired.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Then I’m not your fucking mate! See these tapes?’ He pointed to the two snow-white chevrons stitched on his heavy-duty pullover. ‘I’m a corporal, and from now on you call me corporal! Got it? You’d better get it quick, or you’ll be out on your arse before your feet touch the ground!’ That was my welcome to the Parachute Regiment.

  I followed his directions in something of a daze. Was he supposed to talk to me like that? I wasn’t really in the army yet. I came from a school where colonels and generals were ten-a-penny in the Old Boys’ Club. A corporal seemed very small fry.

  I introduced myself to the clerk at the reception-desk. He was a corporal too. He was taciturn and morose with a moustache like a barbed-wire entanglement and sad brown eyes. ‘Name and number?’ he snapped.

  I told him my name. ‘I haven’t got a number,’ I said.

  ‘Everybody’s got a number!’ he replied. ‘Oh yes, here we are, Asher, private fourth class, 24246810, Asher, M. J. That number is yours till you die. Don’t ever forget it!’ Then, when I had put my suitcase down, he handed me a sweeping-brush and gave me my first order. ‘Get
sweeping!’ he said.

  The Personnel Selection Officer was a crusty captain who had risen through the ranks. ‘Why did you volunteer for the Parachute Regiment?’ he asked me.

  ‘Well, sir,’ I said, ‘I wanted to jump out of the sky.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have tried growing a pair of wings, then!’ he suggested drily. He studied the file on his desk. ‘I see you enlisted under an “S-type” engagement, as a potential officer,’ he commented.

  ‘Yes, sir. I failed the Regular Commissions Board, so I joined the ranks.’

  ‘Well, at least you haven’t given up. That’s one thing in your favour. But it’s not easy being an officer in this regiment. This regiment is the best there is. You’ve got to be the best. We’ll be watching you, private. Now go and see the clerk. He’ll assign you a billet.’

  The clerk with the moustache told me to wait outside the store. A floppy latex mattress came sailing out and almost knocked me over. ‘Get on the ball!’ the clerk said, grinning. Then he fixed me with a piercing stare. ‘Do you piss the bed?’ he demanded.

  ‘No!’ I answered, surprised and indignant.

  ‘If you stain the mattress, you pay for it!’ he said. ‘Now get that bugger up to your billet, last room on the left.’

  The room was on the second floor of a four-storey block of granite and glass: ‘the most up-to-date barracks in the country’, the recruitment literature had claimed. Modern it was, but its newness only emphasized the atmosphere of bleak austerity. Each room held four bunks of a scarred battleship grey. With each bunk came a wooden bedside locker and a large equipment locker. As I squeezed my mattress in through the door, the lockers creaked open ominously. Their innards were turbid with fluff and sprinkled liberally with fag-ends and empty contraceptive packets. A formica-topped table, much chipped and besmeared with boot-polish, had been pushed into a corner. Four stand-up chairs were piled against a plate-glass window. I dropped my mattress on the bare springs of a bed near the window. Then I went back to collect my bedding.