Yasmina
Yasmina made peace with her horse. He was a good puppy, as she sometimes called him. She named him Sulayman and felt like she was getting the hang of this riding business. The merchant caravan crawled along, slow as a turtle. They carried linens from the Nile, soap from Alexandria, and finely crafted items from Fustat and they headed toward Damascus. The first night camp was on the Giza Plateau under the moon shade of the pyramids.
“The sphinx looks covered in sand,” Yasmina said. She made al-Rahim and Aisha ride with her to look at it. A servant of Mubarak, a Christian Egyptian named Zayd who knew the area well led the way. “I’ll be anxious to see Jerusalem when we get there a month from now,” Yasmina added.
She felt disappointed on seeing the sphinx. The temple was almost completely filled in and buried, and the lion was completely covered so only the head stuck up above the sand.
“The temple of Horus is only visible from the few columns that stick out from the sand,” Zayd explained. “The face on the statue is said to be the face of Horus… What?” he asked because Yasmina kept vigorously shaking her head.
“It is older than that,” Yasmina said before her mouth opened up. “The sphinx is a lion, it was originally a full lion at rest with front and back feet, and a lion face and it got carved hundreds of thousands, maybe two hundred thousand years ago or more. It was carved by the Gott-Druk under the eye of the giants who ruled all this land in the three hundred thousand years before the extinction event… You don’t need to know all that.”
“Sekhmet was the lion goddess of the ancient people,” Zayd said.
Yasmina shook her head again. “She came later. My older-younger sister Sakmet or Sekhmet or Mehit in some places was born maybe four or five thousand years ago, so relatively recently.” She waved off any questions “Anyway, after the extinction event, God removed all the ash and dust, so we had the sun again. He let there be light. He stabilized the rotation of the Earth and separated the waters from the waters and all that. Genesis, you know. That was what, fifteen thousand years ago? Fourteen? Sixteen? I don’t know. I was not around then.”
“Your sister?” Zayd had to ask. “How could you have been alive? I’ve heard the Earth was created just five thousand years ago. Of course, I’ve also heard nine thousand years ago…” She waved off his questions again.
Yasmina took a breath. “Anyway, the powers in nature, the titans decided human beings needed more direct guidance, in a sense. The gods, so-called, began to be born around the time of the flood. You know, the ones who showed Allah-God in all things so no man would have an excuse. Well, Osiris got born in there somewhere and eventually, maybe some five thousand years ago, the Ra, the king of the gods of Egypt gave the Nile to Osiris. That was when the pyramids got built.”
“Wait,” Zayd interrupted. He was having a hard time grasping all this. “There are many pyramids around the land. It is said the ancient people tried and failed but learned how to build these perfect pyramids. They were the last built.”
“Oh, the Egyptians tried and failed with many,” Yasmina agreed. “But they were just trying to replicate the wonders of Giza. To be honest, there are many pyramids around the world, and some are bigger than these here. The giants built pyramids when they ruled the earth over those two or three hundred thousand years. The people who built these pyramids on Giza got the idea from the giants and made the pyramid design an integral part of their own culture. But you don’t need to know all that. I can tell you that the sphinx, the “Place of the Lion” was a landmark place for meeting between different people groups. As civilization began to develop along the Nile, eventually the people removed the lion face and re-carved it into the face of Osiris. The temple to Osiris was built here earlier, like when Osiris received the gift of the Nile…”
“Lady?” Aisha pointed and wanted to ask about Osiris’ nose.
Yasmina looked but she started winding down. “Of course, Osiris got killed at bout that same time. Horus took over, but they could not really re-carve the sphinx again. Horus wore glasses for reading. Anyway, the temple got mostly abandoned. Ptah used it from time to time. Memphis was not far away. I suppose Sekhmet came here often enough, not because of the lion, though. Ptah was her father.”
“Your sister?” Zayd asked.
Yasmina nodded. “Different father,” she said, and saw al-Rahim waiting patiently with his arms folded. Yasmina looked down.
“Are we finished?” Al-Rahim asked. Yasmina nodded without lifting her eyes. “Because I believe our friend Zayd brought us here to tell us something.”
It took Zayd a few moments to focus his mind back on the real world. “Indeed. I meant to warn you. My master, Mubarak took money from the governor to take you to a safe place, but he has no intention of fulfilling that contract. We are headed toward Palestine, but before we get there, he plans to sell you to the Qarmatians, thus making twice the money for the same prize. He will tell the governor he brought you safely to your destination, but they were attacked and the Qarmatians came and took you by force. He might even lie and say he tried to get you back, but the Qarmatians were too strong and fast, so he could not catch you.”
“Doesn’t anyone tell the truth anymore?” Aisha asked quietly.
“Evidently not,” Yasmina said, and they mounted to ride back to the camp.
Before dawn, when Zayd and his men were on watch, al-Rahim led them away from the caravan. The instructions were simple enough. Head due west until they came across a road in the wilderness. That would be the road through the western delta and would take them eventually to Alexandria. Al-Rahim said that would work. He had a letter addressed to the Sharif, the governor of Alexandria.
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