One night, when the air was hot and sticky, and the only sound one could hear was that of the night crickets and the occasional cries of curlews, Kiya sat on the roof of her house. She gazed up at the few scattered stars in the sky, while braiding her dark coarse hair. Her father was on the lower floor preparing dough to bake for the next day. In the silence, Kiya thought she heard something, or someone. A call maybe, a familiar sound. With her hair half-braided, she made her way down the stairs.
“Aba, did you call for me?” She asked her father.
“No.”
But she was sure she had heard something. She went out into the front yard, her bare feet brushing against the damp grass. Despite the warm night breeze, her limbs were shaking. And after a few seconds of silence, she thought that maybe the voice she had heard was that of a fleeting curlew or perhaps the summer wind blowing in from the southern desert.
And then she heard it again—this time louder. “Kiya, here.”
The voice echoed from the river’s direction.
A fog formed above the still waters of the river, and a twirling breeze stirred the scent of Jasmine into Kiya’s nostrils. She shivered like the river’s reeds and thought of running back into the house.
“Come, Kiya. Come closer.”
She took one cautious step forward. Two steps. Five steps. Until her toes met the lukewarm water of the Nile River. “Who are you?”
“I can be anything you want me to be. I can be love; a love more lasting than the love of your father, and more embracing than the flooding river tides,” the void said. “Or I can be fear, if that’s what you want. You know what fear is, don’t you?”
It took her a while to say anything. She was still looking at the empty space above the water, her knees quivering, her face pallid.
“What do you want?” She finally asked.
She didn’t get an answer back. She waited and waited for the voice to say more, and only when the normal sound of the night crickets and the curlews returned, did she go back inside.
– – –
The next day, Kiya and her father rose with the morning star to make fire in the oven, knead the dough prepared from the night before, and bake bread on the fire. The largest loaves they ate with fried eggs and black honey, while the rest they put in straw baskets covered with white cloth. After breakfast, they hit the road to Deir El-Medina grand temple to sell pigeons and bread to the worshippers who streamed from all corners of the land of Kemet to offer sacrifices on the altar there.
There were many shrines in the temple. But one particular shrine attracted thousands of worshippers—the shrine of the god Sobek. Tut was one of his worshippers. Once they reached the temple, he would grab Kiya’s little hand and lead her to the shrine to pay homage to the god.
The dark congested space, with shafts of light coming through the small timber windows; the heavy fragrance of sandalwood and frankincense; the intricately patterned olive green wall tiles and high ceiling—it all nauseated Kiya. In the middle of the shrine, a colossal granite statue of Sobek stood high, with his human body and crocodile face wearing a mischievous smile, a smile that announced dominion and deception.
When Kiya once asked her father about his love for Sobek, his face darkened. “It is fear more than love,” he said. “I, like everybody else, fear the gods—their brutality, their unpredictability, their fury. Who am I to ignore them, to challenge them, or to think that I really have a choice? Freedom is an illusion, my dear, just like love. Fear is the only truth when it comes to worshipping the gods.”
“Why are you afraid of the gods, Aba?” Kiya asked.
“I can’t predict them, my love.” Grief clouded Tut’s eyes as he turned to watch a couple of kids running in the temple’s courtyard. “Thirteen years ago, before you were born, your mother’s womb was closed. For many years, we prayed to Sobek to grant her fertility. We burnt offerings by the altar, and raised prayers night and day, until he finally answered. When I knew that your mother was pregnant, I was ready to do anything for the gods; my heart carried real love for them. I promised Sobek that in return you would be raised to become a priestess at his shrine. But, after a week of delivering you, and for no apparent reason, your mother breathed her last. I wept for her like never before. I wept for her and for my callowness in believing that the gods give freely. The love that consumed my heart for Sobek turned into fear. And it is nothing but fear that has driven me to worship the gods ever since.”
Fear. Love. The two words had possessed Kiya ever since she’d heard the voice at the river the night before. For a twelve-year-old, such words were ghosts with no faces.
– – –
In the first month of the Shemu harvest season, Tut caught The Poor Man’s Disease. It started off as a mild fatigue, then dry coughs, then losing more and more weight until he had to wrap his loincloth twice instead of once, then dry coughs with blood, then fever, then night chills and hallucinations.
At first, Kiya didn’t comprehend what was happening; she had never come this close to death before. For her, death was something she heard about every time her mother’s name was brought up, or whenever someone in the village disappeared and never came back. But this time death was close, so close it visited their house and stayed with them for several months. At first, it was a light guest; its presence went almost unnoticed. But day by day, it made itself more comfortable, until she could smell its thick presence in every corner of the house, until she could see it in Tut’s absent eyes, hear it in his non-stop coughs; until she came to believe death wasn’t going to leave till it claimed Tut’s soul.
Tut died and left Kiya alone. She didn’t weep, neither that day nor in the days after. It was as if a thick rope was tangled around the trail of her tears. Her neighbors prepared everything for the funeral—they embalmed Tut’s body after removing his liver, intestines, stomach, and lungs, putting each in a stone canopic jar. The jars were to be buried with his body, no gold nor precious belongings, only loaves of bread, jugs of black honey, and his wooden lute. By sunset, all the mourners from Deir El-Medina and the neighboring villages boarded boats and crossed to the Western side of the Nile, where prayers were recited and his body was buried.
Through all of it, Kiya watched in shattering silence, the same way she used to watch hoopoes flying in the sky or boats sailing on the river. Hired mourners did all the crying and wailing, while she further withdrew into herself.
“A twelve-year-old girl can’t live alone,” some of the neighbours said during the funeral. Yuf, one of the neighbours, went and asked Tut’s cousin, Ramose, if he would adopt Kiya. But he said he would need some time to think it over.
“Take your time,” Yuf said. “But remember, Kiya’s father left her a house by the Nile, and you’ll be the only custodian once you take her in.”
– – –
For the next four months of the harvest season, Kiya stayed at Yuf’s house. One late night, the tight rope around her tears untangled, and found their way to her eyes—tears of confusion, of missing her father, of not knowing where he was. Those tears turned into angry waves and a flood that gushed out of her body. She wanted to flee from herself. There was no reason for her to exist. No light. No family. No home. Even the Nile with all its vastness seemed limited compared to her despair. Could it contain her? Could it save her from herself even for a fleeting moment?
She took off all her clothes and ran into its waters, swimming for as long and as fast as her limbs could carry her; until her racing heartbeat outran her racing mind; until the impossibility of her survival felt less impossible.
– – –
A silhouette of a man stood watching Kiya from afar as she swam in the river. Her black spontaneous hair and growing breasts ignited a fire deep down his belly. For long minutes, he stood motionless with parted lips, watching her. And then he walked down the road to Yuf’s house.
Yuf and his wife were lounging on the front porch of their house smoking dried lotus, when they saw Ramose approaching.
“Finally, Ramose! I’ve been waiting for your visit,” Yuf said.
“Yes, I’ve been planning this visit for some time now. I had to make some arrangements before I came down here.”
“Ah, does this mean you’ve decided to adopt Kiya? Come, have a smoke.”
Ramose sat next to Yuf. He reached to the tray on the table, and selected the thickest darkest dried lotus petals which had the strongest flavour. He packed his wooden pipe and tucked it between his lips.
“So, you have made up your mind, yes?” Yuf asked.
“Yes,” Ramose said as he frowned. “But I won’t adopt Kiya. I will marry her.”
– – –
“You can’t let him marry her,” Yuf’s wife said after Ramose left.
“Why not?” Yuf asked.
“He is more than four times her age. Besides, you know his reputation: He buys young girls, marries them for a year or less, and then moves on to the next one.”
“Look, we have nothing to do with this. Ramose is Kiya’s only relative. If he wants to marry her, fine. At least we won’t have to carry her any longer.”
Yuf’s wife stayed awake all night, thinking of how to tell Kiya the news. Does she even know what marriage is? She felt bad for a young girl like her, losing her father, and now losing herself to an old man.
– – –
“Kiya, next week you’ll move in to live with Ramose, your father’s relative,” Yuf’s wife told her the next day. “He wants to marry you.”
Marriage was another word, like death, that was unfamiliar to Kiya’s ears. Unlike death, marriage was supposed to involve happy scenes—people laughing, clapping, dancing, eating; a man and a woman, close together; a new home; children born to life. But, Ramose and she? No. Like the pigeons Kiya used to raise only to see their blood shed to please the gods, she was to become an old man’s sacrifice; fresh blood at his aging altar; soft skin to his dry bones; young sweetness to his bitter mouth.
No! her mind cried out. But her tongue was frozen. The darkness became darker, the pit became deeper, and the mouth that had used speak a few words after Tut’s death became shut tight, like a graveyard.
– – –
The death that Kiya once feared now seemed tempting compared to marrying Ramose. It was just another sort of sacred union, in a sense, but with death she got to choose what she would unite with. She thought of the Nile. She knew that if she swam south towards the cataracts, the turbulent water rapids would sweep her up and end her life.
– – –
It was past midnight and everyone was sleeping. She slinked out of the house and walked towards the river, her limbs aching from not moving for a week. The fresh breeze met the stale sweat on her body, and she came to notice how dirty and stiff her body was.
She took off her dress, and as she walked towards the steep edge of the riverbank, she heard footsteps behind her.
“You sweet thing, what are you doing here at this late hour of night?” She turned to find Ramose standing right behind her. His presence threw her off, and she skipped to snatch her dress off the ground and put it back on.
She stood for a second staring at him, her mind caught up in questions of what had brought him here and what she should do—run back to Yuf’s house? Or swim forth unto the river?
“Yuf told you we’re getting married soon, didn’t he?” Ramose asked.
She looked at him, his stooped posture, his bald head, his sly looks. Death will at least be more beautiful, she thought.
“I’m not getting married to anyone,” she said.
Ramose laughed, loudly and bitterly. He stepped closer to Kiya until she could feel his warm breath on her face; it carried the stench of beer. “A girl like you should never say no to a man like me, but, you know, I like young girls with strong personalities; they intrigue me.”
He took another step closer to Kiya, who now stood at the edge of the muddy riverbank. He touched her cold cheek with his rough fingers, gazing at her mouth, “I can’t wait to—” before he could say anything further, Kiya stepped around him in one swift movement, and without thinking, she lunged at his back, throwing him off balance. Ramose staggered before losing his footing and falling down the slope of the riverbank into the deep, cold water.
“Bitch!” he gasped.
Kiya stood on the riverbank watching Ramose as he struggled to keep his head above the water. As she turned around to leave, she heard a loud hiss. She looked back, and right behind Ramose, a scaly body broke the surface of the dark waters, moving swiftly towards him. Ramose looked behind him, and started crying for help. He tried to swim towards the shore, but his uncoordinated movements further submerged him instead. The beast crept towards Ramose, its eyes fixated on him. Kiya stiffened as she watched the emerging creature attack Ramose— its massive jaws clamping down on the old man’s body, its colossal tail churning the water. Ramose screamed and gasped and rose and sank, until he stopped moving all together. His mangled body was soon swallowed by the water, and the smell of fresh blood lingered in the air.
– – –
After doing away with its prey, the beast started swimming towards the shore, its eyes now centred on Kiya. But she didn’t run away, instead she looked the beast straight in the eye, like a convict looking at her saviour.
Kiya’s father once told her that the gods sometimes respond to prayers when you least expect it. She had never seen a god before, yet she knew it was him—Sobek. He was now out of the water, his greyish-green body four times her size, his scaly tail more than two meters long. He wore an ornament of lapis lazuli and gold in his right ear and gold anklets around his front feet. Standing a few centimetres from her, his lunar eyes locked into hers.
“Sobek Ra,” Kiya said softly.
“Kiya,” Sobek Ra said. “You haven’t answered my question yet.”
“What question?”
“If you were to choose, would you choose love or fear?”
“It was you?”
“It was me.”
They sat together, side by side, on the damp earth. Sobek smelled of fresh green algae and stale blood, and the sound of his breath, raucous and deep, infiltrated the night. Hours passed like a thief. Time stopped all at once, as if there was no before and no after. Until the songs of the early-hour bulbuls and the aurora sky alerted them to the nearing morning.
“My father once told me humans never get to choose their destiny,” Kiya said, pulling her slender legs towards her chest. “He said that the gods control us like paper dolls.”
Sobek sighed. “Destiny is a conundrum. Some people choose to love their destiny, and some people fear it. Your father never accepted what fate had in store for him. He thought he could appease the gods with words and bounties to change what is meant to be. He blamed me for his wife’s death, and failed to see death as just another station towards a new life. .”
He turned to face her. “But you, Kiya, you are different. When death called for you, you followed. And so in return, I grant you the freedom to choose. Choose to die in fear, or choose to die in love.”
She pressed her toes in the cool soft soil beneath them. “What difference would it make? Death is death.”
“No, Kiya. Death is a clown with many faces. A fearful death kills both the body and spirit, but a loving death is an altar. You offer your mortal body for your soul to soar.”
Kiya looked out at the clouds. Small scattered clouds merged to form a white river in the sky. Small clouds merged in her mind too. A sudden sound of an approaching cart alerted both of them. Sobek sprang to his feet.
“It is time for me to leave,” he said, lumbering towards the water.
“Wait, I haven’t made my choice yet,” Kiya said.
“Yes, you have,” he looked back at her with a smirk on his face. “Wait for me at the shrine.” Then he swam away.
– – –
It was Akhet— the season of the annual flooding of the Nile. A season long-awaited and celebrated by all inhabitants of the Land of Kemet, for it brought fertility. Farmers prepared their lands to be fertilized by the silt-laden waters before sowing and harvesting the crops that were their only means of paying off the heavy taxes imposed on them by the Pharaoh. Merchants and traders would later buy the crops during the harvest season, and sell them in the big city markets across the region. It was the season of new beginnings, of recreation and rebirth.
During this time of the year, women unable to bear offspring would offer their sacrifices at the shrine of Khepri, the god of recreation and sunrise, to open their wombs. They visited the grand temple daily and walked counter-clockwise around the scarab statue nine times, one round for each month of pregnancy. Husbands and wives who had fallen out of love with each other rubbed their bodies with silt before making love by flowing waters to reignite their affection for each other.
At the shrine of Sobek, sacrifices were offered at the altar and priestesses, priests, and worshippers chanted day and night asking for the god to bless the crops, and the people, and for the waters of the Nile to fill the land and quench its thirst.
Amid the commotion, Kiya sat in a secluded chamber at the bath complex. Her head was shaved, and she wore a long bead-net linen dress. Three priestesses gathered around her—one plaited and waxed a long black wig, and put it on Kiya’s head; another adorned her face with red ochre and black kohl, and painted her nails with henna; and a third rubbed warm jasmine oil over her neck and arms. A high priestess kneelt in one corner of the chamber, burning kapet on top of coal embers and chanting the hymn of the Nile.
Hail to you, O Nile! Who manifests yourself over this land, and comes to give life to Kemet!
Mysterious is your issuing forth from the darkness, on this day whereon it is celebrated!
Watering the orchards created by Re, to cause all the cattle to live,
you give the earth to drink, inexhaustible one!
Path that descends from the sky, loving the bread of Seb and the first fruits of Nepera, You cause the workshops of Ptah to prosper!
Hail to you, O Sobek, Lord of waters. Protector of the justified and repairer of evil.
Healer, he who made the herbage green.
Hunter, he who with swift violence destroys the wicked utterly.
I approach you with humility and an honest heart,
and offer you a glorious bride with no blemish.
A virgin as your heart desires.
Today is your feast day, a wedding of heaven to earth.
Today, your bride will be offered as a living sacrifice on the altar of your Nile.
May the waters rejoice with the bride of the Nile, and flood to nourish our lands.
Kiya sauntered towards the temple gates, surrounded by priests, priestesses, and cheering multitudes. She rode the decorated red chariot pulled by black, heavily-muscled horses heading south towards the Nile cataracts. She was alone, completely alone. A bride with no groom.
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