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Moses still remembers a time when he was certain that one day Rameses would become god.
He grew up at his brother’s side and with each new sunlit day felt how, within Rameses, there came to be yet another fraction of the divine: filling him up drop by drop with light and gold, promising the inevitable day when fate would catch up with him at last and spill over the brim. It is what once had happened with Seti, though of course neither Moses, nor Rameses had been there to witness it. The transformation had passed them by, but its result they had seen with their own eyes. Their exalted father, stern and all-powerful, the whole of Egypt resting in his dry, outstretched palm, bore divinity the way all living things upon the earth bear skin; wholly, inseparably, inexhaustibly. He was Horus, and Horus was he, and it was the only truth, simple and clear, indisputable. Once, knowing this had been as simple as to know that after night comes day and after sleep—awakening. And with that same simplicity Moses believed that when the time came, and father passed from simply Seti into Osiris-Seti, Rameses would take his place, and Horus would shine through his deeds and words the same way it had once shone through their father’s.
And even more yet, from deep childhood and into early youth Moses saw his own self as a nearly divine creation. This belief, as a dull languor, was born somewhere deep within his chest from a caustic, cloying sense of power and exceptionality: the whole Black Land converged into a single point of importance in the figures of father and mother, and in a golden thread stretched forth, ensnared him and Rameses as well in the same yellow, blinding glow. Servants and handmaidens did not dare raise their eyes when speaking to them, commoners seemed like ants in the sand from the height of the palace balconies, and even their divine ruler, his great royal wife, and the crown prince at times bent to Moses’ childish whims. To their beloved son and brother. A pampered young prince.
Moses used to reach his hands towards the sun enclosed in flesh and bone and skin, and the sun answered, took him into its arms. Thus, upon his father’s knees, cheek pressed to soft linen garments, listening to the steady, quiet sound with which the drought-heated air entered and left his body, Moses used to sink into an almost ritualistic, profound state of calmness, known only to those unburdened with conscience and small children. This, he thought, is how it feels to be chosen by gods—until one stifling desert morning decades later, Yahweh, having taken pity, descended to him in a voice in a burning bush, and in a trembling in the belly, and in fright, and in grace; always in grace.
Thus Moses came to know true divinity, and gods of his cradle, of that place he in his youth called home, all of their once mighty forms, stayed only upon the lips of Egyptian priests and in the paintings on cool walls of temples.
Then, of course, there was the road.
He rode along the same sandy paths by which he had fled Egypt years before, through the same vaguely familiar places, and a burning shame and fear seized and bound his body. Alongside stretched his people, his people; exhausted and gaunt, bent to the earth by decades of hard labour, dirty and indifferent like cattle. How could he have abandoned them? How could he have found sanctuary in Midian, lived and felt joy and freedom knowing what suffering they endure at this very moment? Cowardly choosing to forget it, trying not to remember.
Somewhere there among the people, just as worn down and dried out by labour, bent towards the earth his brother and sister by blood. The years erased their faces from his memory and Moses so feared not recognising them upon seeing, so feared his gaze slipping past. He searched every face while the camel obediently carried him and Tzipporah closer and closer to the palace, and each one—each man spent beneath the whip, each labour-worn woman—fell into his soul with a frightening, aching weight. His enslaved people. How long had he been blind to their torment! To think of it was unbearable, so he did not think: prayed to The Most High with fervent pleas for a modicum of strength and courage to face the Pharaoh.
And despite the trembling in his body and weakness in his legs, he believes himself ready to face Seti. The man he had once called father, in whose love he had bathed like in burning rays of sunlight, whose equals he had known neither in wisdom, nor in strength. And later on—neither in cruelty, nor in fury. Moses hardens his heart and imagines his aged face, imagines the pride in his features, the contempt in the tone of his mighty voice. But it is not he who sits upon the throne. And the figure of a woman next is not that of Moses’ mother.
So many years have passed. How many, precisely? When did Seti die? When did Rameses have to don his nemes, take Egypt into his hands? Without the great, boundless Nile with its annual inundations, days in desert Midian stretched into an endless straight line, never curling into a circle, never beginning from the start. Years clung to one another, blurred, and at times it seemed to Moses like countless of them had flown by, and at others—that only yesterday he had met his precious Tzipporah anew and his life had found a new point of return.
Once, Moses could not have imagined a world in which he would not stand beside his brother on the day of his coronation; his succor and solace, the only one who would understand his pains and worries on that day. Rameses had feared that date so deeply in his youth.
“I hope Father will live for hundreds more years,” he would say, half in jest.
He feared failing to endure, feared staining the dynasty, the sacred name of their great father and their great line. He feared that unbearable weight of power he had seen upon Seti’s shoulders, feared the droughts and the floods of the Nile, all thousands of rituals, and most of all, of course—to remain in history a shameful shadow, an unworthy son and heir of an illustrious family. Those fears he did not dare to voice to their father, was ashamed to confess to their mother, and even to Moses he revealed them only in moments when he was not quite himself: in the heat of an argument, full of anger and venom; or overly flushed with wine after a lavish feast; or in those rare moments after night terrors when Rameses would sneak into Moses’ chambers in a vulnerable search for consolation.
It took no small amount of time, attempts and missteps for Moses to find the right words but it did happen eventually. Moses remembers it as though it was yesterday. That night all three things came together: an intoxicating feast, an ugly quarrel between them earlier, and his brother’s terrible visions of the night. In the dark and stuffiness, pressing close to Rameses on a bed that in the recent months had suddenly become too narrow for them both, overcome with a feeling of pity for him and a fervent desire to be of use, Moses had finally located the core of his brother’s worry.
“I will never be able to share the weight of rule with you. But you will not be alone in it either. Rameses—” he groped for his brother’s hand, squeezed, whispered feverishly. “Do you hear me? As long as I live, you will not be.”
Rameses shut his eyes and exhaled bitterly, as if at once undone by exhaustion. He drew closer, nuzzled up plaintively, gratefully—forehead to forehead, nose to nose, Moses’ sharp knees to his. His next exhale fell into Moses’ inhale, and immediately after in reverse, and they both shuddered with it, went still. Moses heard rather than saw how Rameses opened his eyes, and then felt Rameses’ hand upon his jaw, a light pressure urging him to part his lips. They shifted, fumbled, trying to find rhythm, to align themselves together. Inhale on an exhale, exhale on an inhale. Rameses’ breath smelled of red wine and something unmistakingly his and his alone, something intimate, familiar.
Moses remembers thinking then that this must be how the very essence of Rameses smelled. His Ba, the soul of his Ka. And he is allowed to breathe it in, to hide it somewhere deep within himself, mixing it with his own. Allowed to give his own essence in return.
Take, Moses thought each time he exhaled and saw in the moonlight how Rameses’ lips parted wider, receiving his breath into himself, swallowing it deep into the warmth and darkness of his body. Take, take, take.
The memory evokes a surge of love within him as much as it does a burning shame. He had not known what he was doing and had not understood exactly what he had promised Rameses that night. And now he stood at his brother’s feet and saw him as though for the first time, taller still, broader still than he remembered. How he had come into his manhood, how he had grown while Moses had not been there. A tall, slender wife at his left hand, a small son at his right.
Where had Moses been this whole time? With whom had he been?
Moses fears and expects anger, the old prideful resentment, the arrogant detachment of someone who had once been a brother and a friend to him, and who now, in his absence, had become the great and mighty ruler of all Egypt, unapproachable and inhuman. But the reality proves scarier, more painful: his brother’s heart is wide and open, his love as boundless as it had been in their youth. Moses feels it will remain in his memory forever, as if carved in stone, the way Rameses’ face lights up with recognition, and with disbelief, and vulnerability, and then a blinding, overwhelming joy.
Yahweh, to You I offer my prayer, harden my heart.
Rameses, like a child, hurriedly runs down the steps and in a moment is right beside him, and then closer, and then some more. Moses gasps in shock in his embrace, feels his feet leave the ground, and clutches at Rameses in return—bare, clean-shaved skin under his palms is warm and soft with scented oils, well-kept, smooth. It smells faintly bitter of myrrh where Moses presses his nose into his brother’s neck, smells of sweat and sun, metalically—of the heavy golden ornament upon his chest. This long-forgotten, familiar mix stuns and blinds him, strikes weakness into his knees. He stands there, unable to draw enough breath, and for a moment forgets the One Who Is, forgets Tzipporah behind him, the Hebrew people a heavy burden upon his shoulders; he is fifteen once more, looking up at his god-lit brother, and wants nothing more than to be adored by him, and to adore him in return.
Rameses smiles, so tall and magnificent before him. He does not let go of Moses, hovers, runs his hands all over him, laughing lightly at his simple shepherd clothes with a sly narrowing of kohl-darkened eyes. As though the years between them had not existed, as though they were still children. Moses feels his face flush with an ill-timed embarrassment, and he is suddenly overly aware of himself, grows self-conscious under his brother’s gaze, as though he has stumbled into a royal festival in a silverfish-eaten nightshirt.
He looks like a savage, and all at once he wants to cast off the coarse, heavy garments from his body, to let the servants wash and shave him, anoint his skin in oils and perfumes. Wants back into his soft precious fabrics, just for a moment, into the warm gold of circlets and necklaces, so as to resemble Rameses again, the way a star might resemble the white disc of the sun. As it befits the younger brother to resemble the elder. It is a foolish, childish thought, it lights up and at once dies down, leaving an itch under his skin and a bitter dryness in his mouth behind it.
No, Moses regrets nothing. Nothing, except, of course.
The priests manage first. They finish his thought before he himself can think it through—when he was a child their ability to do so used to frighten him in earnest. He averts his eyes. All these years later, and he is still seized by terror and nausea at the mention of his horrific act. He remembers that overseer of the slaves so clearly, sees him before his eyes with such precision and could, it seems, reproduce his features on papyrus even now. How horrible. How unthinkable.
But Rameses’ heart is vast and proud. His beloved brother, his morning and evening star; he spreads his arms wide and forgives Moses what cannot be forgiven, lifts the terrible crime of murder from him with an easy wave of his hand. Proclaims him prince and brother. Home at last. Moses feels his throat spasm tight and painful, feels something hot and caustic burn somewhere behind his eyes.
His mighty brother in this moment seems more godlike than ever. If only he could truly lift this dreadful sin from him, turn back time and wipe it off the fabric of life. Guardian of Ma’at, did he not fear the balance breaking? Or, blinded by love, did he truly deem him innocent?
Against his will, Moses returns in thought to Egyptian doctrine and clearly sees, as though before his very eyes, how the scale of the universe tips downward the moment Rameses proclaims him innocent. A slight disturbance of the divine balance, and through a crack, chaos and murk has already begun to seep into Egypt, striking the cattle, drying the Nile. Think of your people, Moses wants to say. Think of your son.
There was a time when he, too, had called Egypt his people, thought of the Egyptians as his own—now it seemed that had been in some other, distant life. In that life Rameses’ son might have been his nephew, and Moses would have loved him as his own. And in this one does, in truth, he realises with a kind of wonder. Cannot help it. Feels how a tenderness towards this unfamiliar child swells and strains within his chest, and understands that he came to love him the moment he saw him; just because the boy is a continuation of Moses’ brother, a pinch of his soul in a new body.
It seemed the boy’s mother had not left a single trace upon his face, and he had been born the very image of Rameses as Moses remembers him from childhood. For a moment it startles him, strikes his head with a disorienting lightness—the boy curiously watches him with Rameses’ eyes, tilts his head, draws his brows together.
These soft childish features, once Moses had seen them daily upon Rameses face, until one day his brother woke taller, grown, having somehow changed in a single night. Moses, who had spent all of their childhood hanging on his brother’s every word, had, of course, at once burned with a fierce envy of the sharpness of his youthful features, the keen line of his beautiful jaw. For hours he would admire his brother, for hours would resent him for daring to grow up without him, to leave him behind in childhood. For years he counted the days to his own coming of age, every morning peering into a silver mirror, expecting to see there someone taller, and sharper, and broader-shouldered.
And now time has curled into a circle, the cycle has run its course, and the sun has been born anew; the same childishly rounded cheeks, the same small and soft cartilage of the nose. Moses had not thought he would ever see that face again, and had not known just how much he missed it. His heart fills and overfills, grows until it begins to press against the cage of his ribs.
He has to speak. He has to speak. Moses glances back at Tzipporah for a moment, finds her piercing eyes, draws strength from the firmness of her gaze.
He fears and hopes that he will not find words, but when he parts his dry lips to speak, his voice comes out more unwavering and unyielding than ever. Yahweh speaks to him and his soul is enriched a hundredfold with wisdom, his body fills with strength, is infused with courage. Moses tightens his grip on the staff and feels his sweaty palm slide against the smooth wood.
He sees confusion reflect upon his brother’s face, sees how the smile that had been there before twists with displeasure. Rameses does not hear and does not want to hear, does not even want to listen to his pleas. He believes neither in the wonders of the One Who Is, nor in his, Moses’, words, and surely deems his little brother deluded, lost in the chaos of foreign lands and the senseless ideas far removed from the civilization and order of Egypt. But he is merciful, still. Is not angry, still, though since deep childhood he had always been quick to both anger and impatience whenever the world refused to bend to his will at a single command of his petulantly thrust-out lip.
With a conspiratorial tilt of his head Rameses beckons Moses to nearby chambers. Moses thinks that this is, perhaps, a good idea: one on one the conversation will flow smoother, and without the weight of hundreds of eyes on him Rameses will finally understand the gravity of his words. But the moment the heavy doors close behind them, cutting them out from the people beyond, his brother’s hands are on him again. Like a man parched, his brother leans into him, grabs his face with a confusing urgency, and then his shoulders, his arms, his palms, searching for something, demanding something. Until their foreheads meet, until nose brushes nose. Moses feels Rameses tenderly touch his cheek in a silent plea—the touch of his calloused fingers is so forgotten that it feels almost new—and does not know why he yields. Permits himself this weakness, unworthy of a grown man. He meekly opens his mouth and is met with his brother’s warm breath upon his tongue, is seized by a fine, shameful shudder at this wild sensation.
How strange. In his youth he had spent no little time puzzling over what restless agitation, what impatience and anticipation would overtake him in the moments of the most intimate closeness with his brother. Something akin to an itch impossible to scratch, a hunger no food could satiate. The feeling once unknown and unnamed, and now—Moses, a married man long in love—well understood and familiar. His mouth fills thickly with saliva.
Rameses squeezes his sides to the point of pain, holds him in place, nuzzles up with his forehead; wants, and cannot, to be closer still, to crawl beneath his skin. Or, maybe, not quite beneath.
“What foolish clothes,” Rameses whispers, amusingly irritated by a thick, coarse fabric on him, by the impossibility to truly touch him. His shamefulness licks heat deep within Moses body and he wants to recoil, wants to—
“Ah, Moses, I believed you dead.”
His body answers with a dull and dragging sensation within. Ah, his beloved brother. If only Moses could give him consolation. There is no fate worse than dying in a foreign land, and it pains him to imagine what his brother and mother must have thought days and years after his disappearance. Could they find peace for the lost soul of their younger son and brother, condemned to a second death without proper burial? He remembers clearly the sandstorm that had nearly taken him on the road to Midian, remembers laying down then upon the burning desert with tangled, pleading prayers to be left there.
Beneath the heavy, suffocating blanket of sand it had been relentlessly hot and impossibly quiet, and the sun had been nowhere to be seen. And could Moses, born of that golden-orange celestial disc, meet his end without it?
Rameses looms over him, a tall, broad-shouldered shadow, leaning in to remain just as close, just as tight beside him. The searing light reflects white and radiant from golden ornaments upon his body, blinding Moses’ eyes, past all discerning. Once, it had been so easy to dissolve into this. The unceasing rhythm of their breath, as the surging of a river wave upon wave; ever fated to meet the shore and be born anew, ever destined to repeat once more.
A little longer, just a moment more, Moses thinks. For he has missed him so.
“Gods, how I have missed you,” Rameses immediately mirrors his thought in a fervent whisper, hesitating not to give it voice.
Moses cannot allow himself such cruelty. He knows it now. He meets Rameses’ exhale with his own inhale and instantly notices that he cannot keep pace, falls out of the rhythm and back into the roar of people behind the heavy doors at his back, into a stifling air, into the cries and the cracks of whips somewhere far below, at the foot of the palace. An ever-hungry, loving thing deep within his being pleads and fawns, tugs, hurries him toward something for which he is late by a good decade.
Moses knows that Yahweh is a jealous and unyielding God. The One, the Omnipresent. Merciful, too, for it is mercy to speak His words, to atone for his great sin through service to His people, and to be filled by it to the brim and beyond. And yet, and still. With a frail, childish part of himself, taught and accustomed to loving his brother above all else, Moses cravenly wishes that someone other than he stood now in his place.
He can tarry no more. Moses parts his dry lips to speak, and even before the sound begins to form within his throat, he sees understanding and pleading crawl upon Rameses’ face a devastating shadow. His warm eyes, his strong hands a painful grip on Moses’ sides. The moment cracks, like dead earth beneath the tread of a sandal, and knits together no more.