The Healer of Midian

Joseph Helmreich

In the years immediately after the Great Kingdom fell, it was said that a traveler could scarcely unhorse without being set upon by bandits. The land’s good fortune had turned as a potter’s wheel, with every storehouse from Thebes to Elephantine laid empty, their fallen keepers sprawled on the ground. The Nile had shrunk, the earth was parched, and ransacked secrets poured down the pyramids’ limestone steps like bile. Anyone who could, abandoned Egypt altogether.
The healer, it was presumed, had been among such fortunate exiles. Though reticent about his past, his accent and craft remained unambiguous. There were even rumors he’d practiced medicine in the Per-Ankh, the House of Life, during the last years of Usermaatre Setepenre, though others thought he had more likely served as a simple village physician. The old man in the robe had heard these stories, first from a family of shepherds and then in more detail over beer and chickpea stew in the home of a kindly spice merchant. In both cases, the healer had been spoken of in reverential tones and his miracles attested to, though not firsthand. The old man in the robe was determined to meet the healer and, after ruminating on how exactly he’d make his approach, eventually set out with a band of frankincense and myrrh traders for his temple in northern Midian.
When the old man arrived shortly after nightfall, having made the final leg of the journey alone on a plump donkey gifted to him by the traders, the temple turned out to be a tiny and nearly shapeless stone structure propped up in the shadow of Mount Lauz. At the entryway, he was received by the healer’s attendant, a tall Moabite, likely a slave, with a bumpy forehead and blank expression. The old man indicated his milky and infirm left eye and reached into his satchel to retrieve a small jug of frankincense oil, another gift from the traders (they had pitied him for his infirmity and evident poverty). The Moabite accepted the oil and led him inside and then into a dark, low-ceilinged chamber where candles illuminated healing objects in the carved-out shelving of the walls. Ointment jars, vases, and animal-shaped amulets took on mystical qualities in the flickering gleam. The Moabite directed him to a frayed wickerwork stool and, taking on the air of a palace guard, positioned himself rigidly beside one wall while they waited for the healer to join them.
He appeared several minutes later, tall and slightly stooped with no hair at all, not even eyebrows, and wearing a haphazard-looking patchwork of skins. He didn’t even glance at the old man as he moved to the front of the room, assumed his position behind his table, and began to light various incenses. Finally, amidst the mingled scents now wafting through the chamber, the healer looked up and peered through the smoke at his new patient. He tapped below each eye as a question and the old man tapped below his left in response. The healer removed a silver goblet from the shelf behind him and then reached beneath his table and produced two more objects: a linen pouch and a small blade. He set all three down in front of him and muttered what was evidently some kind of incantation, though the old man couldn’t make it out. The healer then tilted one end of the pouch, allowing a lumpy fruit bat carcass to slide out onto the table. He lifted the dead bat with one hand and the blade with the other, and carefully slit the creature’s throat over the goblet. As the dark, syrupy blood drained into the cup, the healer shut his eyes and uttered another incantation, slightly louder than before, though no clearer. The words this time seemed to emanate from deeper in his throat and his head bobbed hypnotically as he repeated the indecipherable phrase over and over again. As his intensity increased, the very walls seemed to throb with anticipation for whatever was about to come next.
But the old man had seen enough.
“Can it really be,” he said in flawless Egyptian, “that a Sem priest who served in the great temples of Osiris now peddles the mysteries of Hecka for profit?”
The healer opened his eyes and turned to his attendant. “Get out,” he said. When the Moabite failed to move, he repeated the order much more loudly, and the attendant shuffled out of the room.
The healer turned to the old man and squinted into the darkness. “Who are you?”
Receiving no reply, he waved his hand across his chest and several candles flared up theatrically, briefly lighting up the surrounding area. When he saw the old man’s face, he involuntarily recoiled. He quickly recovered, however, and when he looked again, his fear was already transforming into wonder.
“It’s not possible,” he whispered. “It was I who presided over the Opening of the Mouth ceremony for Your Majesty’s soul. It was I who identified Your Majesty’s body on the shore of the Sea of Reeds!”
His patient gave the barest smile. “You probably shouldn’t boast about that.”
The healer fell silent. He lit several more candles so he could see more clearly and then he simply stared at the old man’s face for a while. He seemed to be examining every crevice and shadow, while the old man just stared back at him, slowly getting annoyed. 
“I don’t understand,” the healer finally said.
“You do,” the old man replied. “But you don’t want to. You guided someone else through the Underworld to enjoy my reward in the Field of Offerings. Meanwhile, I’m still here and quite sorry to see what the gods have made of you. Almost as pathetic as what they’ve done with me. If I still had faith in them, I would demand an explanation.”
The healer looked surprised.  “Have you lost your faith in the gods?”
The old man smiled and seemed to laugh, though without a sound. “Since I was told I was one,” he said, “I’ve found divine power very disappointing. I disavowed it long ago and I challenge these other so-called gods to do the same. Look at our home! Savage invaders pillage our palaces and temples while our good citizens waste away or bleed out in the streets. Is that the order and balance, the ma’at, these gods mean to preserve? But then we learned long ago, didn’t we, just how limited gods can be.”
The healer did not immediately reply. These were words he’d never think to utter himself about the gods, but how could he argue? “Well,” he finally said, “Except for One.”
The old man gave no response, but simply looked at him. The healer, however, understood the man’s silences as well as his words. “You were there,” he protested. “You witnessed it all the same as me. Even now, His legend grows. They say He leads them under a cloud by day and a fiery pillar by night. That sweet cakes drop from the heavens to satiate them and water flows out of desert rocks. That those who try to curse them find their words transformed to blessings against their will!”
         “Yes, I’ve heard these tales,” replied the old man. “Do you know what else I’ve heard? That they’ve suffered repeated plagues and catastrophes in the wilderness. That nary a day goes by without some attempted revolt against the shepherd, now a pathetic and broken old man. That after all these years of wandering, they’re no closer to their ‘promised land’ than when they set out, and that their God, if such exists, if He’s real, long ago abandoned them.”
“If He’s real! You were there! The rivers gushing with blood, the suffocating darkness, the…”. The healer’s voice broke off and then he finished the sentence more softly: “the loss of our precious boys. Your Majesty was there when the sea itself broke in two!”
“I was there,” the old man replied, “But what did I actually see? I’ve learned a great deal since then. Take the River, for instance. Yes, its algae is usually blue or green, but did you know it can also be red? And that a big enough bloom might not only color the water, but also kill off the fish and send frogs leaping onto the riverbank to die? To rot and stink and attract vermin and disease?”
“And the Great Darkness?” challenged the healer.
“If you recall, the eruption at Kallisti occurred not so long before. A very strong wind could probably have carried enough ash to cover all of Memphis and beyond.”
“Your Majesty, you can’t possibly believe—”
         “Just as a strong enough wind can sometimes uncover a shallow sea bed.”
The healer could scarcely believe what he was hearing. Though he never had nor ever would worship a Hebrew god, these words still seemed blasphemous. “And which gods,” he demanded in as measured a tone as he could manage, “Do you suppose would have sent these strong winds at just those times?”
“The same gods who are protecting our people today: none. Just the shepherd and his brother and their artful trickery.”
The healer looked at him with astonishment. “Does Your Majesty really think he can explain away all of the great wonders and terrors we experienced as ‘artful trickery’?”
“No,” the old man answered. “There is one I cannot.”
“And which is that?”
The old man paused as a certain wistfulness came into his expression. “Do you remember the night that you and Jambre rushed into my chambers and pleaded with me to relent and release them?”
“Of course.”
“I knew you were right; I had already concluded the same. But I couldn’t do it.”
“Well, Your Majesty’s pride was—”
“Not my pride, you spouter of water; it was my will. It was as though it was totally frozen. I knew what must be done, yet I was utterly powerless to carry it out. This was not a reluctance, mind you, this was not a refusal; this was an overwhelming force the likes of which I had never experienced in my life. Forty years later, I still can’t come to terms with it. I, ruler of a million subjects, could not rule my own self.”
“Can anyone, Your Majesty?” the healer asked with a gentle smile. “Still, is it really such a great mystery that this should be the wonder you cannot dismiss? The other wonders damn you; this one absolves you. If the Hebrew God somehow prevented you from releasing the slaves, then you bear no responsibility for all the terrible consequences. You had no choice.”
“If the Hebrew God is real,” the old man shot back, “None of us have any choice about anything! Don’t you see? If there is one deity who reigns supreme, then there is one will that reigns supreme, and anyone who defies it is either a brute or a fool!”
“I suppose so. But on the other hand, if we can succeed at discerning that will, as the shepherd apparently could, it makes life very simple.”
“It makes life suffocating.”
At this, the healer smiled. “Perhaps you haven’t given up your divine claims, after all.”
The old man shook his head. “I don’t want to be a god. Only free.”
“And what does Your Majesty want of me?”
The old man approached him so that they stood facing one another, eye to eye. When the old man replied, his words were slow and deliberate: “I need you to tell me how the shepherd manipulated me. By what twisted sorcery did he paralyze my will?”
“Your Majesty, there is no such sorcery.”
“Of course there is! Do you take me for a fool?”
“There are trances used in the dream temples of Heliopolis—”
“This was no trance!  Why do you hold back?”
“I don’t, Your Majesty.”
“Are you in league with the shepherd? Perhaps that’s the real reason you and Jambre couldn’t replicate his wonders. Why you won’t speak the truth now!”
“On the contrary, I will speak it loud and clear: Algae did not redden the river, wind did not part the sea, and sorcery did not stay your hand. Your Majesty, I cannot force you to believe in the Hebrew God’s power, but I will not give you a false excuse to deny it.”
“It is you who are being false!” exclaimed the old man, his anger finally boiling over. He quickly tamped it back down. “You must lack motivation,” he said. “I can provide it.” He stepped closer and spoke conspiratorially: “I can offer you something extremely valuable to you.”
“Respectfully, the most precious jewels in the world won’t change my reply, Your Majesty.”
“Not jewels. Your life.”
Before the healer could respond, the old man’s khopesh was at his throat. The weapon, his sole remaining possession from his former life, had been carefully concealed in his cloak, and its swift reveal belied his age.
“I intend to slit your throat right now,” the old man said. “I am determined to carry this intention out. If you cry out for your slave, it will be too late. Your only chance at stopping me is to turn my very heart.” 
The healer looked back at him, sadly. He whispered something too soft to hear.
         “What?”
By the time the old man realized it had not been addressed to him, he could already feel his sword go limp in his hand and its handle begin to wrap around his wrist. He looked down and shared a brief second of eye contact with the slithering cobra his weapon had become before its hood opened and it sank its teeth into his forearm. He looked back up to the healer, but couldn’t see him clearly anymore, as his vision had already begun to blur.
In his youth, the healer had trained in the House of a Million Years, where he learned the secrets of embalming the royal dead and performing the sacred rituals to ensure their successful transitions to the underworld. Now, as he set out under a starry desert sky with two oxen pulling a covered cart, the irony did not escape him. The Last Pharaoh of the Great Kingdom lay dying only feet away, and the best the healer could hope for was to find a patch of earth soft enough to absorb the corpse.
The dying man had also once been preoccupied with his soul’s final journey to the Duat, but now such thoughts were far from his mind. As his chest continued to tighten while the rest of his body seemed to slowly come undone, he felt a profound sense of joy. The world would shortly go dim, but there was perhaps just enough time to right himself with God. This time, he prayed, there’d be nothing stopping him.