Didst thou not then go to the country of Kheta? Hast thou not seen the land of Aup? Knowest thou not Khatuma, Iktai, likewise? How is it? The Tsor of Sesortis, the city of Khaleb in its vicinity? Hast thou not made an expedition to Qodesh and Tubakkhi? Hast thou not gone to the Shasous? Hast thou not tramped the road to Pamakar?
-The Journeying of the Master of Egypt, from a 14th Century BCE papyrus in the British Museum
On the road to Egypt we stretch the starry spaces. Why save for poverty and wretchedness must we cross the desert of Atmour night upon night?
-Poem recited by Bilal Bakheet midway on Darb al-Arba’een, 1988
We were passing Sodiri, aiming for Khileiwa on the Nile and then another twenty days farther north to Binban. The country of Mahtoul? The land of Maraheek? The village of Iyal Bakheet? The road to Iktai, to al-’Urdi, to Atmour, to home? I was as lost on the Way of the Forty as was the Master of Egypt journeying on the Road to Pamakar thirty five centuries before me. Tubakkhi? Shasous? Khaleb? Maybe we passed them, maybe we didn’t. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, maybe I didn’t ask the right question. Or maybe I just hadn’t caught the last line of Bilal’s poem…Allah, You are generous, End our hardship…that is, Wake us from all this.