Existence by James Frey Page A

removed—to remember that he was there to serve the villagers, not to become one of them—he was not entirely able to succeed.
    Eben discourages personal relationships, individual bonds, anything that might distract Hilal from his commitment to the Aksumites as a whole.
    God loves all his children equally, Eben likes to say, and so must we .
    Hilal tries.
    â€œI have come with a new task for you.” Eben smiles gently, as if he has guessed at everything Hilal works so hard to hide. “Perhaps it will help you turn your attention away from the past.”
    â€œAnything, Master.”
    â€œWe have located the Book of Ouazebas.”
    Hilal’s eyes widen. “But I thought that was lost in the destruction of the Bayt al-Hikma?”
    Bayt al-Hikma, the House of Wisdom, once a crown jewel of the Islamic Empire and the largest library in the world, has been in ruins for nearly 800 years. Hilal believed the majority of its works—among them a sacred Aksumite manuscript from the 4th century AD—were lost forever. According to legend, the Book of Ouazebas tells the story of an early Aksumite king’s battle with the Brotherhood of the Snake. Some say it contains the secret of finding and defeating the brotherhood’s ancient evil leader, Ea, once and for all. Few have harbored hope of finding the manuscript intact.
    â€œThe book has resurfaced in Egypt,” Eben says. “It was found in an archaeological dig several months ago and has since found its way to the Museum of Antiquities in Cairo. As you can imagine, we’ve done our best to negotiate for its return to its native land, but the Egyptianauthorities refuse.”
    â€œYou want me to retrieve it for you,” Hilal guesses.
    â€œFor all of us,” Eben says. “This could be what we’ve been waiting for. The answer to centuries of fruitless searching, the weapon we need in our final war. You, Hilal, could save us.”
    Hilal sloughs off the guilt and regret that has been weighing him down for the last two weeks. He stands tall and proud. “I am ready, Master. Tell me what you need me to do.”
    All things being equal, Hilal prefers walking to any other form of transportation. He prefers to wear loose, flowing robes that conform to the motion of his body and flap in the breeze; he prefers sandals with a single strip that expose his feet to the sand and the elements. He likes to feel the ground beneath him and the people around him, to move through the world as the ancients did, at one with the Earth and its creatures.
    But walking to Cairo would take more than a month, and his master doesn’t want to wait.
    So Hilal takes a truck across the Sudanese border, then hops a rickety charter plane to Cairo, and does it all in the constrictive costume of a modern-day teenager. He wears jeans and closed-toe black sneakers and a garish T-shirt emblazoned with some nonsensical Japanese.
    â€œYou need to fit in,” Eben told him.
    â€œThey will stare anyway,” Hilal pointed out. “They always do.”
    He says it not with arrogance or false modesty, but as a simple truth. Hilal, with his dark skin smooth and fathomless as marble, his azure eyes, his high cheekbones and ivory smile, is beautiful—almost inhumanly so. He knows this because he’s been told, many a time, and because of the way strangers stare at him, sometimes with awe, sometimes with desire. It’s not a thing to be vain about or ashamed of, simply a quality he’s been endowed with, and he would be a fool to take exceptional pride in it. But he would be a bigger fool not to use it, when it can be used.
    Fortunately, the men on this plane—businessmen, from the look of it, convinced of the great import of their petty deals—have better things to do than wonder about the tall, almost regal seventeen-year-old sharing their airspace. Hilal dons headphones for the duration of the voyage and bounces along to an