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“if you do not concentrate I will not bother with you for very long. Now go to sleep.”
    Happily, obediently, I pulled my pallet back to its place and collapsed on it. Now I was engulfed in weariness, as though I had walked a long way, and it was the greatest pleasure to close my eyes and surrender to unconsciousness. Pa-ari’s breathing had already deepened. I had never loved him more.
    I prayed constantly and incoherently through the following morning that no village baby would choose that afternoon to be born, that I would not have to wait to use one of the communal ovens to bake the bread for our evening meal and thus fall behind with my other work, that Pa-ari would have a good morning at school and not be too grumpy and tired after his barley cake and beer to keep his word. But all went well on that momentous day in the middle of the month of Epophi. He and I paraded meekly to our room and sat tensely waiting for our parents to succumb to the stupor of the hour. It seemed to take a long time before their intermittent comments ceased and Pa-ari signalled me to get up while he carefully lifted the bag that held his precious bits of clay so that the pieces did not clink. Together we stole out of the house into the blinding white heat beating up at us from the deserted village street.
    Nothing stirred. Even the three desert dogs, the colour of the beige sand that had spawned them, were sprawled motionless under the thin shade of a straggling acacia bush, their endless hunt for food forgotten. The portals of the crude grey houses were dark and empty. No birds sang or flitted in the drooping river growth and our bare feet made no sound as we ran towards the water. It was as though all living things but the two of us had been spirited away and the village would stand untenanted under Ra’s dazzling bright gaze for ever.
    The river had not yet begun to rise. It flowed beside us with a turgid majesty, brown and thick, its banks exposed, as we picked our way to a spot out of sight of the village and the road that ran between water and houses. There was no grass in the place where Pa-ari turned aside, only a hollow of soft sand beneath a sycamore. He lowered himself to the ground and I joined him, my heart racing with excitement. Our glances met.
    “Are you sure?” he asked.
    I nodded and swallowed, unable to answer aloud, and his head went down as he opened the drawstring of his bag and tipped its contents in a pile beside his knee.
    “You must learn first the symbols of the gods,” he told me solemnly. “It is a matter of respect, so pay attention. This is the totem of the goddess Ma’at, she who brings justice, and her feather stands for truth and the correct balance of law, order and rightness in the universe. Her feather is not to be confused with the Double Plumes of Amun, he who resides in great splendour and power at holy Thebes.” He handed me a branch. “Draw for yourself now.” And I did so, enthralled, captivated, and something inside me whispered, now you have it, Thu. Now it is here, within your grasp. Aswat is not your world any longer.
    I learned quickly, soaking up the information as though my soul had been the parched, cracked earth of Egypt itself and Pa-ari’s symbols the vivifying deluge of the Inundation. I mastered twenty names of the gods that day and I pictured them in my mind as I went about the evening’s tasks, whispering them to myself over the lentils and dried figs I was helping my mother prepare for our meal until she said tartly, “If you are speaking to me, Thu, I can’t hear you, and if you are saying your prayers I wish you would wait until your father lights the candle before the shrine. You look tired, child. Are you well?”
    Yes, I was well. I hurried through my meal, earning another reprimand from Father, for all I wanted to do was climb onto my pallet as soon as possible so that I could sleep, and make the next afternoon come all the faster. That night I dreamed the