House of Dreams Read Free Page A

company when she goes to fetch Pa-ari.” He planted a kiss on the top of my hot head and turned away. I did as I was told, scuffing the dirt as I went, obscurely insulted at his laughter, though I was too young to know why.
    I found my mother peering anxiously down the path, a basket on her arm. She gestured to me impatiently as I came up to her. “Leave your father alone when he’s working!” she said sharply. “Gods, Thu, you are filthy and there is no time to wash you. Whatever will the priests think? Come.” She did not reach for my hand, but together we walked past our acres, past other fields, all thick with crops, the wandering line of palms on our left, the tangled river growth on our right, cool and inviting, with the wide reaches of the silver river glimpsed intermittently through it.
    After some minutes the fields stopped abruptly, the shrubs to our right straggled into nothing, and Wepwawet’s temple was there, its sandstone pillars soaring to the unrelieved blue of the sky, the sun beating impotently on its walls. From the time of my birth I had come here on the God’s feast days, watching my father present our offerings, prostrating myself beside Pa-ari as the incense rose in shimmering columns above the closed inner court. I had watched the priests moving in solemn procession, their chants falling deep and awesome in the still air. I had seen the dancers swirl and dip, the systra in their delicate fingers tinkling to draw the God’s attention to our prayers. I had sat on the temple water-steps, my toes in the gently sucking Nile, my back to the paved forecourt while my parents were inside with their petitions. To me it was both a place of exotic mystery, forbidding in its secrecy, and the focus of Ma’at in our lives, the spiritual loom to which the various threads of our life were firmly attached. The rhythm of the God’s days was our rhythm, an invisible pulse that regulated the ebb and flow of village and family affairs.
    During the time of the troubles a band of foreigners had come. They had camped in the outer court, set huge fires in the inner court. They drank and caroused in the temple, torturing and killing one of the priests who tried to protest, but they had not dared to violate the sanctuary, the place none of us had even seen, the place where the God lived, for Wepwawet was the Lord of War and they feared his displeasure. The village headman and all the adult men had armed themselves in righteous anger and had descended upon the brigands one night as they slept beneath Wepwawet’s beautiful pillars. The women spent the following morning washing the stones free of their blood and no man would ever tell where the bodies were buried. Our males were proud and brave, fit followers of the Lord of War. The High Priest had made a sacrifice of apology and restoration, reconsecrating the holy building. This was before my father and his troop camped beyond the village and went in search of beer.
    I loved the temple. I loved the harmony of the pillars that led the eye up to Egypt’s vast heaven. I loved the formality of the rituals; the odour of flowers, dust and incense; the sheer luxury of space; the fine, floating linens of the priests. I did not realize it then, but my appreciation was not for the God himself but for the richness that surrounded him. Of course I was his loyal daughter, I have always been that, yet I cared less for him than for a glimpse of a different existence that set me to dreaming.
    We turned onto the paving and made our way across it, my mother and I, passing between the pillars and into the outer court. Several other mothers waited there, some standing, some squatting on the stone, talking quietly. The outer perimeter of the court was honeycombed with small rooms, and from the dimness of one of them came the sound of boys’ voices raised in a sonorous chant that broke into an excited babble as my mother and I came to a halt. She greeted the women cheerfully and they