Unmarked Burial, 30 B.C.E., former Eastern Alexandria

There was no doubt how heavy his heart was with vengeance, and while belief had never been my friend I closed my eyes and cherished the image of Anubis watching his heart sink on that golden scale. The crinkles in my stomach soothed as the great god of the damned with a surge of terrible anger would throw the remnants of that wicked man down to the pits of the underworld. Destruction of his body, his soul, and his entirety to match the trail of pain his mere existence had left here. While the queen wiped her broken tears with soft linen carried on golden plates I’m sure she prayed her beloved’s heart was as true and light as it seemed. I know she begged Anubis to guide the Roman into the afterlife, whether she thought him real or not. That is the privilege of a gentle love, of a love in the privacy of silken sheets and intellectual conversation. That is a love for the few who can afford it. Yet, in death we all turn to the stories we were taught as children, in grief and in revenge. Today the queen and I both conjured the same figure in the chaos of our minds and despite the deep-rooted rage rotting my bones I silently prayed for her. Not for her Roman, but for her fractured heart and empire.

As a child I had a friend, it’s not been long since he died but I had mourned him long before. He had nifty fingers and an infamous grin, and I knew he loved me because he’d steal any book I’d request. However, he never wanted me to read them to him, so I would never love him back. Perhaps the knowledge scared him, but the probable tragedy is that it simply never interested him. He wanted to fight, to defend his nation despite never knowing the history of the land he claimed to love so much, a land that did nothing but fill his lungs with dust while he was consistently beaten to the ground by soldiers. He didn’t die for his land, but for a girl named Ife who was too young to understand what his drunken sacrifice meant. She didn’t marry his victor, but instead a passing merchant who escorted her away from the gory scene. I doubt she’s thought of him since. Perhaps only when someone has introduced themselves with his name, but would she even be able to conjure his image in her mind? That is often the case when you reside in the shadows of exuberance. We all watched those with wealth immortalise themselves in scandal, forgetting that we are already forgotten. 

I met the man I married through my father, so I knew it would end in death. My father had recruited him to cut reeds after one of my brothers died. He’d seen Aten at the burial and noticed he had strong arms and a determined eye. Harvesting papyrus was laborious and dangerous, and every day they would go to the river and sink their hands deep into the furious monster-infested water only to be repaid for their triumphs in bread and the alcohol that would turn them into the vicious creatures they feared so much. Aten was a quiet man with an angry soul, and he saw his life as a duty to which I was a stepping stone. We were married under a cooling breeze on a day that is remembered as the Roman’s return to his beloved queen. On the outskirts I lay awake beside a man I barely knew while the city drank in celebration of their reunion. There can be comfort in simplicity, and Aten was moulded to be simple. Work made him tired each evening, his arms covered in scrapes painfully embedded with sand, but he never would relinquish his marital duties and muttered prayers over my bare stomach in hopes for a child. Despite the size of his body he was softer than I would have thought, careful in fear of breaking me, but as the sun sailed over the sky and my belly remained as lifeless as my existence his rage became louder. On a day when the queen rode through the city with her Roman I found myself walking with the masses, all desperate for a glimpse of their love. I realised when I saw the flickers of gold in the distance what I had let become of myself. An unnamed girl too dead to be a mother but too alive to accept the fate laid out in front of her.

There comes a time in any life where a whisper sneaks into the mind. It doesn’t insist or pressurise but simply asks what different would look like. It was carried to me on that western wind the day I was wed, but I only began to answer the first time Aten looked at me with regret. I had many answers, some gloriously embellished in romance or revered status, and some crushingly brutal and jarring; yet, every answer was better than the one I was living, as even the worst were boisterous rather than still. It feels like taking your own life when you leave, deep down you know how it will end but you take that step into the sun anyway because you physically can’t stay in the darkness for one more moment or you’ll starve in the airless abyss.

In the city I looked grey, a singular cloud on a sunny day, but my feet knew how to keep moving and my mind filled with the confidence of adolescent hope. My eyes ignored the expressions of dismissal from passing faces until I saw a sign hammered into a stone wall and thought I’d found the path promised to me. Are you well? Am I well? The question floated in my head until it settled heavily in my eyes like condensation. When I finally asked the healer if he needed a scribe he tried not to laugh, but the way he shook his head and looked at the floor only made me want to sink back into the shadows, further than I’d even been before. He directed me to a backstreets female healer who might take more pity on me. She might understand. I smiled politely as he escorted me out of his business and his presence. Outside the light of day was thinning and a brilliant blue began to bleed into the air. The female healer did understand and gave me bread for my troubles, but she explained, in a tone like a worried mother to a spritely daughter, that there are few places for us in this oasis. That first night I spent on the temple steps the queen slept with her Roman in peace, hidden from our desperately hopeful eyes.

I wove baskets and the tips of my fingers bled. The women were kind but they gossiped and the heat beat down and burned the inside of my stomach. The Romans are coming. They called them savages, but we’re all covered in blood when we enter this life and our land is just as soaked with the vomit of half-naked drunken men than any other. Yes, but we have her. We have our queen. I once thought so too, but we’ve had her before, seven times over. We fear how the story ends, but belief and fear doesn’t change how we know the light will fade whether you believe Raa is to blame or not. The men feared a war, and so how quickly their allegiances change. Their love is not enough to heed off the evil spirits; the queen must choose her people over her Roman.

I heard about the Roman’s demise and then I heard him say my name. Aten was paler than he should have been, eyes were lost in hair and confusion. I wondered if he had been looking for me, or whether this was proof of the gods as they placed me in his tracks to pay for my misdeeds. However, as he walked towards me I knew it had to be the first as each step slammed and echoed with the rage of a man who had let his mind putrefy in the sourness of revenge. I didn’t run, not because I was tired of running but because I knew it to be hopeless. I had tried for my new life, the one I thought promised by a land gifted with gold, but I knew now that those promises were not meant for everyone and those who try to change their lot would only be greeted by the caged walls of their past. As he threw me to the floor I wondered who was watching, whether any of the women I sat with all day were staring with tears in their eyes, but all I heard was a man ask Aten what he was doing. She’s my wife. His voice was filled with sand and murky water. There were no more questions asked as he dragged me through the dust, his fingers woven and knotted into my hair. The ground was rough under my back but the sky above my eyes was clear and bright. 

I hope this is where it changes for her. I imagine her arising from the ashes of her broken heart and standing alone as the woman she was born to be. She’ll look to the gods and thank them for the many lessons they have taught her, and as she steps out into the city she helped grow she’ll see past the buildings and the art and the markets and she’ll see me. She’ll see the hands cupped over my broken, bleeding stomach and she’ll see that today I too felt the cruelty of a knife’s edge. She’ll see that I tried. She’ll see the gleaming sun setting on my hollowing body as another woman in gold, shimmering and alone. I use my last breaths to curse the man who killed me, but in the darkness my mind will continue to silently cry at how little my life was. Another girl in the shadow of a great image, a great building to hide the squalor from the sun and moon. Already forgotten.