Shadow of Ararat

THE PLAIN OF JERASH, THE THEME OF ARABIA MAGNA

H

Ahmet walked back into the camp, his staff making a faint tap-tap sound on the cold ground. Night was upon the plain and the sky above was a vast dome of stars. The moon, narrow, rode over his left shoulder. One of the Bani Hashim guards stirred as he approached, then settled back into the velvet shadow of the boulder that he was leaning against. On the other side of the stones, the dim light of a fire barely illuminated the tents of the caravan guards. The priest picked his way among the tent ropes to where Mohammed sat on a folding canvas chair. The merchant looked up as he approached, putting aside the heavy scroll that he had been squinting at in the light of a candle stub.

The caravan had been traveling north for six days from the city in the hills. The dusty metropolises of Philadelphia and Gerasa were behind them. In each place the signs of the mobilization of the Nabatean state were apparent. They had passed two bands of infantrymen sitting by the side of the road outside of Gerasa the day before. This whole day they had climbed up a long rocky slope that led up from the valley of the stream called the Jerash. The sun had beaten at them like a smith in the forge. With the fall of night, there was a little relief from the heat, though the stones continued to be warm to the touch for hours after sunset.

Ahmet was a little awed by the open desolation of the countryside. Endless leagues of towering rocky hills and barren plains had passed as they rode north. Stinging winds cut at them from the deserts to the south and east. Intermittently tribesmen appeared out of the heat haze with flocks of sheep or goats. Widely separated oases offered some hope of water and relief from the sun. When he had said as much to Mohammed, the Southerner sneered.

“This is easy land,” he replied, his hand light on the reins of the chestnut mare he favored. “In the south, beyond the An’Nafud, the land is harsher. There my people live, on the edges of the great sand. There it takes skill to survive.”

It was a long way from the fertile valley of the Father of Rivers. Ahmet had shaken his head and urged his camel onward. Night fell and they were still far from the nearest rest house. Mohammed led the caravan into a low saddle between two hills where the rise of the land offered a little shelter and had them make camp.

Ahmet sat down next to the merchant, folding his legs under him.

“What do you believe?” he asked the man sitting next to him.

The merchant stirred. “I do not know,” he said. “My people believe in many gods. There are four goddesses who rule the heavens and the seasons. The god Hubal, who dwells in the stone house at the well of Zam-Zam, is said to be the first among these gods. I have seen his shrine, and it is unremarkable save for the black stone that is the altar there. The priests say that it fell from the sky, bearing the blessing of Hubal. There are other gods too, but I do not know all of their names.“

“My homeland is possessed of ten thousand gods,” Ahmet said. His voice showed the shadow of his homesickness for the green olive groves and palms of the school.

“What do you believe, priest? Do you believe in this Hermes Trismegistus?”

Ahmet laughed softly. “Hermes Trismegistus is not a god, my friend. He is a symbol of what man may accomplish. The doctrine of my faith is that though there are gods like Set and Apollo^Ra and the others, the focus of man’s existence is upon his own betterment. Hermes Trismegistus was the first teacher of our sect, a powerful sorcerer who first learned how to see beyond the world of the eye and the nose and the mouth.”

Ahmet motioned to the stars, the tents, the camp. “All of these things that you see are only reflections of what the ancients call a true form. Like shadows on a wall. Even you and I are not what we appear to be. We are echoes of our true selves, what my people call the ka, or the Jews the soul.”

Mohammed carefully rolled up the scroll and slid it back into the case. “I have been reading this book, the torah. It speaks of a pair of gods, one male and one female, who made the world and all of the things in it. It says that man is the final creation of these gods, who are not named. Does your Trismegistus believe that?”

Ahmet shook his head, though the motion was almost undetectable in the dim light of the fire. “No. Trismegistus teaches us that the totality of existence was created a very long time ago by a single force. There was a breath of creation that made all that is, but not in the forms that we see now, around us. This one force is the only true god, the creator. Every race of men knows that some power beyond them created the world and gave it shape and meaning. Trismegistus teaches that all of the gods that men worship are reflections of the ultimate form of this first, true creator. In my land we call the first creator Ptah. All other gods sprang from Ptah. Trismegistus would say that all other gods are reflections of the true god.“

Mohammed grunted and combed his beard with his fingers. “How do you worship, then, this god without a face? Are there no idols to give it form?”

“No,” Ahmet answered, “we do not believe in idols. The mind of man, we believe, is the temple of this god of creation. Of all creatures only man is blessed with the knowledge of god and the ability to apprehend the magnificence of the god. We live simple lives, we do not collect goods or riches. We give ourselves up, in a way, to the apprehension of god in all the works that it has formed.”

“But where did man arise, then…”

They sat by the dying, then dead, fire for long hours, talking. Above them, the wheel of stars turned in its course until, finally, the eastern horizon began to lighten.