Djamose’s first actions in land of Sobek were to trip on his own feet and splay headlong into the dirt. His first sensation was of sand in his mouth. His first emotion was surprise, followed hard by confusion. Rolling over, he sat up to face his father.

“Why did you push?” he asked, too stunned to be angry. “I was going!”

Bib-useka stepped forward, helped Djamose to his feet, brushed the dust from his skirt.

“I’m sorry, Djamose. Are you okay?”

“I was going. You didn’t have to push. Why did you push?”

Bib-useka could have told Djamose that his country was not kind to the Children of Bibleb and there was value in being introduced to it with grit in your teeth. He could have said that he pushed him forward else he surely would have pulled him back, marched him home and hoped in vain that he would never have to endure the cruelties and degradations that were his birthright. 

“Because your grandfather pushed me,” he shrugged. “And his father pushed him”

Indeed, the fathers of Bibleb-Akhet had been pushing their sons into Egypt at least since the time of Ahmosis, and quite possibly much longer than that.

“It’s just something we do.”

“Well, it’s stupid,” said Djamose, who understood the authority of tradition well enough, but didn’t understand that one.

“Yeah, it’s pretty stupid. Why don’t we forget it?”

Except that Djamose had already forgotten it. He’d no sooner gathered himself sufficiently to notice the green paradise stretching away to the horizon than he fell victim to a very different kind of shock. The parched desert falling away before him ended abruptly in a wall of graceful palms, the line between sand and sumptuousness so straight and sharp it might have been cut with a butcher’s knife. Lush fields carpeted the land beyond, criss-crossed by shining blue ribbons of cool water. The far distance blazed white, like Ra somehow brought to ground, and although Djamose had never before seen more water in one place than could be held in an earthen jar, he somehow knew he was looking at that impossibly vast accumulation called sy-Sobek. Its scintillating face burned into his mind like real fire, and the wonder of it left him all but speechless.

“It’s…it’s…”

“It’s where we’re going,” said Bib-useka, suddenly all business. “Come on.”

Djamose was lucky he didn’t fall flat on his face again. The path was rocky and rutted, but he never once looked down, his eyes fixed on the marvel of Ty’ Sobek as if he was afraid that if he glanced away it would disappear like a dream. The smell of life was so strong it felt like food in Djamose’s nostrils. The air felt as cool as dawn, as thick as wet clay, as soft as old linen. His head was a storm of thoughts and questions and urgent observations, but none substantial enough to emerge through his mouth.

Father and son walked in silence toward Sobek’s verdant fence, and in short order arrived at what Djamose initially took for a very strange house. It stood on a low stony prominence to the right of the road, a sharply angled mud-brick pyramid perhaps 10 feet high with a dusty portico jutting out toward the road. The entire structure was covered in white plaster, mottled by a dozen patch jobs of varying age and sparingly painted with faded botanical motifs. That it looked nothing like any house Djamose had ever seen didn’t affect his judgment, since it didn’t look like anything else he’d ever seen, either. To the left of the trail directly opposite the pyramid hunched a tired and especially thirsty-looking acacia tree. A tattered blanket thrown over its branches did little to augment the meager shade beneath its thin canopy, and under that poor shelter reclined the first Child of Sobek that Djamose had ever seen.

“Good morning, Ba-baht!” his father called out, with a wave. “Sobek’s blessings upon you!”

The figure weakly raised one arm and as quickly let it fall.

“Doing any business today?” asked Bib-useka, cheerfully.

“I’m not getting rich, Bibi,” the man replied, without rising. He was thin and dry brown and seemed to be built of brushwood and rotten leather. His voice was reedy and high and, Djamose thought, unpleasant to the ear. Still, since only his mother and maybe two or three of his father’s closest friends would presume to address his father by the rather familiar diminutive “Bibi”, and then only rarely and only in private, Djamose was pleased to conclude that Ba-baht was either a very dear friend of his family, or a man of great position in Hawat-ha, and probably both.

“Old Weepy’s a tight one,” Ba-baht went on, “and getting saddled with a load of wet dirt didn’t exactly loosen him up. That Ptahbesu is a real bastard,” he chuckled.

“Yeah, the donkey didn’t look too happy either,” Bib-useka nodded. “Ba-baht, may I introduce you to my son, Djamose? This is his first trip to Hawat-ha and he’s very excited.”

Ba-baht yawned and stretched out his arms, crackling audibly and exposing the one tooth left in his mouth. It was a sorry yellow specimen sticking straight-up and dead-center from his lower jaw.

“Is he now?” grinned Ba-baht. “That’s a shame.”